Darth Dougal

I was really hoping that these bonus features ported over from the old DVDs would be slightly better quality due to compression. I never expected them to be worse. Waste of bloody money. I only purchased the UHD box set for the features and EP 9, as i will never watch the prequels. I wish i’d gone with my original plan and cancelled the box set when i ordered months ago and waited for the individual episodes to be released on UHD over here.

EDIT: Just checked “Anatomy of a Dewback” & ROTS’s “Within a Minute” features and both are 4:3 , jaggedy mess letterbox, the same as “The Beginning” . But ROTS’s “The journey” is 16:9 anamorphic but still suffers with the interlacing jaggedy mess issues

Aaarghh… that’s terrible. I hope you can get a refund.

Either way it might be worth alerting Bill Hunt at the Digital Bits about this, and the members of the Blu-ray.com forum if you are a member there. Bill Hunt might be able to get a response from Disney.

I just checked the Japanese release for the box set. It appears to have better packaging, but you pay dearly for it:

https://bit.ly/2VnwIzi

It looks like the discs are stored in separate cartons and the book is allowed to be just a book. The price though…

Chewielewis said:

I do wonder if that green tone is from the HDR to SDR conversion. These caps from the new HD bluray don’t seem to have the same tones on the stormtroopers.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Star-Wars-Episode-IV-A-New-Hope-4K-Blu-ray/257142/#Screenshots

I find that any HDR conversion screenshots hard to trust.

Good point. The screenshots near the top of the screen on that link look great. The shots lower down do not appear to have a strong colour cast but they look darker to me - something like one third of a stop in old fashioned camera terms.

I’m a bit brassed off with HDR… there seem to be so many pitfalls. A sales rep from a monitor company summed up his frustration with the HDR craze very well:

“Do you really want to wear sunglasses in the cinema?”

That’s a good question! Would he have kept it in a 1930’s/40’s milieu like the Filmation animated version did?

I guess we would need to find an interview where GL comments on the production design of the Flash Gordon serials or the ‘look’ of the comics. Lucas was/is a serious fan of comic art.

The Flash Gordon style clashes with the lived-in universe of Star Wars. I’m not sure a lived-in version of Flash would have been well received. Wisely the 1980 film is not at all realistic.

Strangely though, Lucas argued with cinematographer Gil Taylor over the use of diffusion in Star Wars. You can see it used in the Tatooine scenes but everything else is sharp. I can’t work out why Lucas wanted to use diffusion when the production design centred on realism. The prequel films all have a slightly diffused look. Maybe he was borrowing from Geoffrey Unsworth, the original choice for cinematographer on Star Wars. He was known for putting stockings on lenses - the best use of this being the opening sequence of 2001 where it looks spectacular.

pat man said:

Darth Dougal said:

I’d like to see that. I feel with a slight White balance adjustments and slight Contrast boost these will look great (Apart from the use of DNR).

With apologies (and thanks) to Broom Kid…

http://www.framecompare.com/screenshotcomparison/9JF2JNNU

That looks Fantastic. It took out that green hue in the highlights.

It’s just a few seconds’ work - correct white balance using the stormtrooper armour as the anchor then raise contrast a few points. What I wonder is, if everyone who compares these screenshots finds the original looks ‘too green’, how come this wasn’t corrected in the mastering?

I’d like to see that. I feel with a slight White balance adjustments and slight Contrast boost these will look great (Apart from the use of DNR).

With apologies (and thanks) to Broom Kid…

http://www.framecompare.com/screenshotcomparison/9JF2JNNU

oojason said:

Unfortunately I don’t think there has been a fan edit for the 1980 version of Flash Gordon (here or elsewhere) - though I hope to be wrong on that.

I’ll have to check the fanedit forum some time, maybe there will be something there.

I used to admire the costume design of the 1980 film a great deal, until I watched the documentary about Jodorowksy’s Dune (brilliant documentary by the way). Towards the end of the documentary there is a series of comparisons of original designs for the unrealised Dune project and the films that followed in its wake. It makes for rather depressing viewing.

That said, Ming’s palace guards (the ‘pig guards’ and ‘football players’) and the secret police costumes in particular are fantastic.

George Lucas developed Star Wars because he could not obtain the Flash Gordon rights. I wonder if his version would have been anything like as colourful, had he made it.

oojason said:

‘Flash Gordon is returning to UK cinemas in May’ from FilmStories (back in early March) - obviously the cinema re-release won’t be happening given recent events. But a 4K remaster for the 40th anniversary release as mentioned in the above article? Bring it on!

I love that movie. Has anyone ever made a fan edit with improved vfx that you know of? (Ducks for cover). Yes, I know that’s not inkeeping with the spirit of the forum but some tasteful improvements wouldn’t go amiss.

Star Wars is my favourite - first film I saw in a cinema.

In those days it was common for cinemas to scrimp on the cost of projector bulbs, so they would often project the image at half brightness. A cinema image should be bright enough to read a newspaper by, according to Stanley Kubrick, but I cannot remember seeing any bright projections until THX auditoriums appeared in the UK in the the mid-90s.

Watching Empire was not a pleasant experience on the big screen, the action between Hoth and Bespin was too dark. You really had to have the Force with you if you needed a toilet break.

I watched ROTJ more often than the other two films on VHS, for the shallow reason of enjoying the superior effects. These days I would say Empire has the best direction and acting, and is the deepest on a philosophical level, but Star Wars had an impact like nothing else.

I had the action figures of Han, Leia, Luke (and maybe the droids) before seeing the film. It didn’t spoil a thing because nobody I knew had seen it. I also read the novelisation of Empire and the Marvel paperback adaptation of ROTJ before seeing them, but again it didn’t spoil a thing.

Broom Kid said:

Looking at the cap from above, thought I’d put together a comparison of “Here to Rescue Yous”

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/7DKY7NNX

I think I got those all labeled correctly.

Thanks for making this comparison. I think you did label them correctly.

I loaded the final capture from the 4k into Capture One editing software and a simple one click white balance adjustment gets rid of the very slight teal bias of the original image. Or at least, that’s how it appears to me on a calibrated monitor.

Indi73 said:

Darth Dougal said:

Cool project and a good way to pass the time at the moment 😃

What do you have in mind for the set?

One clue would be: I don’t like logos and ratings blocking the beautiful art of these covers

Interesting! There has been some impressionistic SW art over the years - do you have in mind any of the Celebration exclusive posters to use as front covers?

Cool project and a good way to pass the time at the moment 😃

What do you have in mind for the set?

I forgot to ask, please let us know if you get any feedback from people in the industry. It would be great to know the reaction from anyone in Lucasfilm or Disney.

doubleofive said:

https://www.wired.com/story/put-original-star-wars-on-disney-plus/

I finally published my history of the Special Edition, which actually breaks down every addition to the trilogy and how it actively harms the movie, and explains how both versions can live in peace.

I also reveal a mistake introduced in the SE that I’ve never seen pointed out before.

It’s quite a read, I hope you enjoy! A lot of you helped, in the end.

Excellent piece of work!

Do you know if Wired plan to include a version of the article in their print edition?

ThiefCobbler4ever said:

Quite the contrary, they look spectacular:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=17513551&postcount=69700

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=17513638&postcount=69701

The 2020 blu-ray images are nice to be sure, but does anyone else think these frames look a bit warm on the colour balance and lacking in contrast?

I guess those are nice problems to have in a way, not too much of a problem to solve.

Look at the final screenshot from Empire. The 2011 BD screenshot is closer to the scene as I remember it from all the physical releases up to 2011 and stills from the film. The 2020 frame is much more grey-blue or ‘Jim Cameron Cobalt’ maybe 😉

Broom Kid said:

Pretty sure that video was subsequently derided for being mostly inaccurate?

If you can point me to an article or video from someone who knows what they are doing, I would like to see it. That’s not meant to be a bar room challenge, by the way 😃

To be honest I don’t know exactly what kind of test people should conduct to verify the HDR content of video. Any advice on that front would be welcome!

RashadShehadeh said:

Apparently, the HDR and Dolby Vision on the original saga films is pretty piss-poor. Disney also didn’t bother to even re-scan The Phantom Menace natively in 4K and instead used the original 1999 DI. This is provocatively lazy.
Hell, pretty much all their releases are sourced from 2K DIs. Even their flagship stuff like Endgame!

There is a very good analysis of the HDR aspect (or not) of the Disney+ versions here, courtesy of Vincent Teoh:

https://youtu.be/VGZmMjPJiAk

I recommend Vincent’s TV reviews, if anyone is in the market for one.

Apologies if anyone else commented on this previously, but I wonder if LFL/Disney intend to sit on the unreleased footage from Ep. IV etc. and the OT editions until the 50th anniversary of Star Wars?

It’s a horrible thought, but maybe they are already thinking ahead to 2027?

A really sturdy and beautifully crafted box - it now houses my Despecialized Edition blu rays.

A shame about MVC - they often did some intriguing content and extras like that box. Decent prices too 😃
 

That’s the one 😃

HMV have the occasional UK exclusive. There is one at the moment for 1917, and they had some great steelbooks for Blade Runner 2049. Zavvi have some interesting stuff too.

Can’t wait to get my hands on the next version of Despecialized.

Here goes:

• Three different UK VHS editions of the original trilogy. I can’t remember if the first set was pan and scan but the second one was widescreen with a dark colour scheme and silver lettering. Unfortunately I fell for the hype around the final, THX release of the OT editions and sold the black VHS tapes - big mistake. The THX tapes had dreadful, smeary noise reduction.

• ‘Exclusive’ box set of the OT SE DVDs from a UK record store chain that doesn’t exist anymore (MVC maybe, not sure). The discs were not unique but they came in a decent quality black card box. Still have that, plus the separate prequel DVDs.

• ‘Complete Saga’ blu-ray box, with the painting on the front. Does anyone know who did that, by the way?

• First issue blu-ray discs for the sequel trilogy (Ep. IX on the way), Solo (4k) and Rogue One.

oojason said:

A basic and light-on-detail ‘unboxing’ type video on the ‘Skywalker Saga’ box set, at Nerdist _(4 minutes long)

Thanks for the link. After watching that I cancelled my order. Yes, I know… it was probably foolish to order in the first place!

I look forward to the next versions of Harmy’s trilogy after he gets his hands on the 4K discs 😃

Broom Kid said:
I think at this point, here in 2020, the reason Lucasfilm doesn’t give a press release or officially address why the original versions aren’t available is because the audience for it has become so niche that it’s no longer a concern they feel is worth addressing. The large majority of their audience doesn’t really care which version they get. This is unfair, of course. It’s short-sighted, and endlessly frustrating - and that reality has been artificially induced and then promoted by the company, and the company’s reticence to make those original versions available has further depressed any potential of that original versions audience ever growing again.

Thanks for your reply and very good analysis. I am puzzled though, as to why they do not at least say something along the lines of, “We want to respect George’s wishes regarding the first trilogy.”

But at least they’ve also apparently decided to not get in the way of that audience serving itself. So there’s that, I guess. And that audience has gotten amazingly, shockingly, rewardingly GREAT at servicing itself over the past 15 years, too.

Yes 😃 It’s one of the best things that has happened in the fan community for sure.

SilverWook said:

If JJ can’t get a straight answer out of Lucaafilm, who the heck can?

That’s very true.

Saying that, I have found that what people don’t say in answer to a question face-to-face can be as revealing as what they do.

For example when I go to trade fairs I find that if you deliberately make an incorrect statement, a company rep can reveal more in their rush to correct you than they would if you asked them a straight question 😉

Admittedly, employees of LFL and Disney will anticipate certain questions and I would not encourage anyone to deceive them into revealing things - merely encourage them to be helpful without breaking NDAs.

I hope this box set is not affected by any disc authoring errors or packaging defects.

I am wary of preordering box sets these days because of recent problems with the Red Dwarf box, Monty Python and also with CD sets e.g. Pink Floyd.

It’s very disappointing that yet again, an opportunity to release the OT versions has not been taken up. I wonder if there might be any opportunities for a member of the public to ask somebody senior from LFL or Disney why they have not released a public statement on the non-release of the OT Trilogy? I’m thinking in terms of a launch or presentation where there might be an open Q&A without the questions being vetted beforehand.

CJackson said:

For Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back, PanaVision cameras were used, but for Return of the Jedi they switched to Arriflex cameras. Why was this?

On an unrelated note, Return of the Jedi just didn’t look as good as it’s predecessors, in my personal opinion. I don’t if it’s the DP they used, or the director, or the cameras, but Return of the Jedi just didn’t look as good as Star Wars or the Empire Strikes Back.

Evening all (long time lurker, first time poster).

I agree with the suggestion that either Marquand or Hume preferred to shoot with Arri cameras. It is also possible that, by the time of principal photography, Lucasfilm had built its own camera inventory. Panavision cameras can only be hired.

As for the look of the film, it was shot on Eastman 250T 5293 colour negative film - new in 1982 and discontinued just a year later (Kodak replaced it with a faster 400 ASA stock). Although 250 ASA sounds laughably slow now, it was a fast film at the time, which meant ‘grainy’. Fast films became less grainy as Kodak refined their technology through the late 80s/90s.

Some of the Endor exterior shots looks underexposed to me - ‘muddy’ - but Alan Hume was a very good DP, so there might have been some characteristic of 5293 that was not well suited to low light (deep forest) daylight exteriors.

I’m guessing that the ‘T’ at the end of 250T stands for Tungsten, which meant the film was balanced for warm, artificial light. When you use tungsten balanced film in daylight, you get a strong blue cast which normally has to be corrected by a filter - but this might cost you a stop of exposure, negating the advantage of fast film. So perhaps some of the Endor exteriors were shot without filtration and the cast was corrected - but not eradicated - by colour correction in the lab.

This is all guesswork, I hope wiser people will chime in 😃