Chewielewis

RU.08 said:
Right, but these subtitles were not burned-in they’re an optical composite that would be present in the IP.

If the subtitles are optically composited they would be done further down the line than the interpositive struck from the o-neg. They would be inserted into an internegative or a dupe positive, there would be several versions for different languages.

Chewielewis said:

I’d also like to point out that the GOUT version of that shot has the same clipped lightsaber effect. Sure, in 1997 they COULD HAVE gone back to the shot on the computer, rendered off another version, film out, telecine, edit into tape. But in 1977? no chance.

Who said anything about digital? This shot was an optical composite in 1977, and an optical composite when the photochemical restoration was performed for the 1997 SE. They re-composited the shot optically for the 1997 SE like they did most optical composites (the Speeder through Mos Eisley, the optical wipes, etc). What I’ve presented above is two composites, both made in 1997, with one giving a greater intensity to the lightsaber optical.

Pretty sure this one was a digital re-composite, as the hilt end of the blade is reshaped to fit with the prop, I don’t think they did that optically, only the dissolves and wipes were done optically.

What i’ve presented is how the lightsaber look can be caused by clipping highlights, how both the 1997 scan and the 1993 gout have the same clipping effect on the lightsaber despite comming from composites made 20 years apart.

You say that the only things in the shot that different are the saber blade, look again at 3PO. Here is a comparison between the TB and your color matched scan, see in the waveform, how the only things as bright as the saber are the highlights on 3PO and the light on the far left (cropped in the TB), and see how they are smeared, just like the bottom right corner of the saber blade.

Note the big chunk of dirt both on the TB and the 35mm. If these were entirely separately printed pieces of film that dirt would not be on both. Edit: It’s not on the 4K77 grindhouse edition, so its likely to be dirt on the SE interpositive.

I’d also like to point out that the GOUT version of that shot has the same clipped lightsaber effect. Sure, in 1997 they COULD HAVE gone back to the shot on the computer, rendered off another version, film out, telecine, edit into tape. But in 1977? no chance.

GOUT top 2004 bottom

RU.08 said:
Right, but you’ve brightened the entire background to get there. The point is this brightness difference is limited only to the lightsaber optical element - thus it’s from a 2nd composite, one made for telecine. There are two versions of the Jabba shot, and two versions of the Greedo shot (both with and without subtitles) so why shouldn’t there be two versions of this shot also?

Like I say, this is just a demonstration. I don’t have the exact transformation right and probably cant without the right materials. But it shows that the lightsaber look can be attained by clipping the highlights. Consider how different the transformations are between going from o-neg to low contrast interpositive to internegative to release print to scan to colormatch vs going from o-neg to low contrast interpositive to telecine to SD Tape. Different paths could affect the highlights differently.

And there really is no point in recomposing this shot, as you can see from the colormatch the only real difference is the lightsaber looking WORSE. Why would they do that? Why would they, finish the film, go back and change the intensity on the blades so they are blown out, create new film outs, telecine them, edit them into the video master, all at enormous expense for very little return.

I’m not saying that they CANT do that, its certainly possible, I just think very very very unlikely.

And subtitle shots are a different deal as the subtitles are not present on the interpositive which would have been scanned for this version. Subtitles are either cut or burn into internegatives so there are always clean versions of those shots avaliable. Clean versions aren’t made for the TV version they are made for international film prints.

Ok so i took the 35mm scan, and ran it though photoshop with a simple levels adjustment, cliping the highlights

And I get this result

Frame comepare here http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/K7P7NNNX

Obviously this is not scientific, it doesnt match exactly (due to the grain I think), but it shows how a simple levels transformation could be responsible for the TB saber looking that way. Its likely the super bright, high saturation lightsaber would have been simply clipped off through the telecine process.

As to why the Falcon lightsaber in the wide shot doesn’t do the same thing? You can compare the two sabers. Im Bens hut the glow is much brighter, almost as bright as the core where as the falcon saber the glow is much less bright and the saber has a harder edge. So where that levels transformation clips the soft glow in the hut, it doesnt affect the falcon saber in the same way.

The luke closeup is also different as the glow is almost invisible and the saber edges are very hard. Star wars is very inconsistent, there were probably several different ways they made the saber effects.

Here is the falcon shot with the exact same levels transformation applied. The glow is still present but its not hard clipped like the Bens hut shot.

I find this a lot more likely than the shots being completely rerendered for the TV release.

It does. In that comparison gif, look at the highlights on 3POs arm, they exhibit the same sort of hard edges.

It’s also possible that highlights introduced through optical compositing could be at a much higher level than highlights introduced though the original photography.

I don’t buy it, to me it looks more like some kind of clipping effect from the telecine. Some limiation from the tape format.

So on the Avid Facebook users group someone posted this image, noting the visible garbage matte around the Death Star II

That got a response by Marc Wielage, colorist for 2004s Star Wars and Return of the Jedi releases

Marc has a podcast interview here at mixinglight.com (star wars talk starts at -27:00) where he discusses the film restoration process and a little bit about working on Star Wars. Notably he states that there are two rumours going around that are incorrect.

The first is that because of Georges tampering which goes back to 1999 [sic], the original elements are now damaged and respliced and ruined for ever and ever. That is not true. All the pieces still survive, the original negative pieces still exists. In a hand full of cases, maybe a dozen or two dozen cases, theres a frame or two missing because of splices, film splices, that were made. But those pieces can be reconstituted through various means so its not a lost cause, it is possible.

The second rumour thats out there is that George absolutely detests the original theatrical versions and doesn’t ever wants them out. And the truth of the matter is, number one he sold the studio […] its really Disneys decision now. George does not have a say in it.

The second things is I asked the people at ILM, I didn’t ask George, but I asked some of the other people, do you think it would be possible for us to do this? Is there any harm being doing this way and they said the only reason why we aren’t restoring the original theatrical version of star wars is because it would take too much time and money. And we don’t want to spend the time and money to do it so it’s really a logistics situation, it’s not a creative choice.

Also in George Lucas’s head, the only version of the movies that exist are the ones that are alive in his mind at that moment. So to him the 1977 version of Star Wars no longer exists, only what he sees matters. And its hard to argue with the guy who created all the characters, directed the movie, […] and also owns the copywrites.

And an awkward hello if Marc sees this thread.

poita said:

I found the reference in one of my books:
"Massassi hangar, interior: “Thet had one complete X-Wing, a Y-Wing and some bits and pieces, painted ships. SO I took the plate, reduced it, and then put it down in the left centre; then I took the same plate, reduced it even more, and put it in the background on the right hand side of the frame; then I painted around it, just lots of little lights in the back, a couple of shapes, a few hoses hanging down. Youd be amazed how little is on that painting”

For a long time I actually thought they took the painting with them on set.

I’ve never noticed this before. How the hanger shot is duplicated in the distance.

It’s not looped, look at his hands.

If it were looped you wouldn’t call it a mistake, it would be intentional to fix a mistake or make a shot that didn’t exsist.

I think this would be interesting to see what a 1st generation optical print looks like.

oojason said:

pittrek said:

A few questions after I could think about the movie for a few hours

• why are all white men in this movie crazy or evil or crazy AND evil?
• why are crazy women in charge of the military? Don’t they have somebody like Mon Mothma? If they want to have a female military leader, why not somebody who knows what she’s doing?
• where are all the attractive women?
• why are capitalists portrayed as the true criminals?
• why did they suggest that Rey’s parents were important in the last movie but made to be some random nobodies in this one?
• who are the First Order? What power do they have? How did they get the power? Who is financing them? I asked the same question 2 years ago, I still don’t understand who’s who
• who was Snoke? How did he get to power? Why did he have force powers? How did he know all about the Jedi, the Sith and the Skywalkers?
• why was that dumb Asian woman or girl (can’t really tell her age, I thought it’s a little boy until she started speaking) in the movie? Why was she so stupid? Was she supposed to be a comic relief character? Why did she prohibit Finn from having a heroic death? Were they supposed to have a romantic relationship? Why didn’t they show it?
• why did Finn and that dumb Asian woman go on a 30 minutes long side mission which lead nowhere and was a complete waste of time?
• why did Finn fight that glossy armor woman? Was it the same glossy armor woman as in the previous movie? What was the point of this and basically 99% of Finn’s scenes?
• Why is Leia now Superman?
• Why didn’t Luke go personally to confront Darth Vader Junior?
• Why did Luke die? Especially in such a stupid and confusing way?
• Why was Yoda in this movie? Why is he acting as his stupid self from the beginning of Empire, where he PRETENDED he is stupid to test Luke? Why does he have the power to call lighting? Why did he prevent Luke from burning down the thing by burning down the thing himself?

Seriously, the whole movie was a giant WTF. Everything felt so forced and pointless. At least it looked beautiful.

I know this is not the point of this thread, but wow, that is an absurd list of ignorant questions with pretty obvious answers. I understand people not enjoying this film, but I’m hearing a lot from people who think up all sorts of petty bullshit to take it down.

Danfun128 said:

Why is it syncing to the Laserdisc audio and not the Cinema DTS? Just curious.

It’s got both now. Although I’m not sure which one is better.

Hi all

So I’ve re done a lot of stuff i thought i wouldn’t. Sync is redone, new audio tracks (thanks Schorman). I have a brand new Coruscant sequence that uses some pretty interesting technique that I think might be new to the Fanres community. Will elaborate soon, have to do a write up.

Im stuck on Subtitles again. Timing is all sorted, its just a case of getting the right alignment, character spacing, ect. With only a crummy VHS recording to work with, its not easy. It seems very difficult to get a one size fits all setting, and now I’m not sure if every subtitle uses the same character layout. longer ones seem more condensed. It doesn’t help that we don’t have the exact font used.

oojason said:

‘The Filth & The Fandom: “Give Us Legends” Group Takes Credit for Kelly Marie Tran Leaving Social Media’…

https://makingstarwars.net/2018/06/give-us-legends-group-takes-credit-for-kelly-marie-tran-leaving-social-media/

Very happy to be on the conplete opposite side to these types of “fan”.

Dwalin said:

Dear Dr Dre, thanks to your program Color Match v1_2, I started to repaint the movie the Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition.

This is great work, are you going shot by shot?

You should start a thread, a lot of people where would be very interested in discussing your methods.

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars
3. The Last Jedi
4. The Force Awakens
5. Solo
6. Return of the Jedi
7. Rogue One
8. Revenge of the Sith
9. The Phantom Menace
10. Attack of the Clones

I’m very close to swapping 9 and 10.

pittrek said:

1080p. NOT 2K.

The rest sounds about right but i’m pretty sure in 1997 digital intermediates were almost exclusively scanned in at 2K and not 1080p. Unless you have a source for this.

I figure the 2004 master was done in 1080p as it was done primarily for DVD/BR release and DCP hadn’t been invented yet.

Edit: There’s a great writeup about the whole workflow but i cant find it.
Found it. https://web.archive.org/web/20150227122715/http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

I think unless you have the right calibrated monitors ect you shouldn’t even attempt HDR.

Sure, if you buy and scan it.

Yes that could be nice, could be useful as an alternate color reference. Not just for me, having it on the spleen would be nice.

Understood.

ZigZig said:
I would be happy to go further in this discussion with you through private messages.

We’ll do just that.

That’s fine, I’m not asking for copies of your work. But you say you have a “True HD” source but as far as anyone is aware this source does not exists. If it does exists I want to know about it. If you want to keep it to yourself thats totally understandable.

And I think that’s a fair question when you come into my thread and show how all your work is much better than my work.

On the other hand, I already asked you for one of your sources 10 days ago (https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Phantom-Menace-on-35mm/id/56841/page/8#1208819) but you did not even answer me.

Sorry I didn’t follow up on that. I was in the middle of drafting this thread which would have that info. This is just a TV version I got of the 2011 master but panned and scanned, it’s not online. It’s no good for preservation but the subtitle timing is correct so it was an easier reference to use for dissolves than the Z master.

Ryan-SWI said:

The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
-Erased car in field: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/goofs?item=gf1407118

Probably not a lot of interest, but I’ve come across a bootleg DVD that has the theatrical screener as its source.

Wow i’ve been after this for a while, did you find it online or as a physical disc.

Can you tell me what sources you have? You don’t have to give them to me.