Darth Lucas

bbhaltz said:

I managed to download them last night. As Jaws pointed out, the picture quality of ROTJ is definitely the worst of the bunch. ANH is probably the best looking, with ESB obviously being second best... But a close second at that.

ROTJ is definitely watchable though. It does look a bit like VHS, but surely it could be improved upon, no?

Here's another question I'd like to throw out there... What's the general consensus on Team Blu's ANH compared to Harmy's respecialized?

Do people prefer one over the other, or are they considered different leagues all together?

 It's not quite fair to compare them as they aim to do relatively different things. They also relied heavily on each other for help and support. They're two different beasts. If you want to watch the film knowing it was sourced completely from one OOT source, go with TeamBlu. If you want a clearer, crisper image and don't care as much that multiple sources were frankensteined together, go with Harmy. But it's really up to your own preference on what you find most watchable and enjoyable. Both are great and both have their flaws. 

Someone make a meme of Gordon Gekko saying "grain is good" please. haha

DrDre, are you planning to apply this color matching algorithm to your superresolution GOUT upscale? 

thanks for the offer To rip things for me. I actually have the same versions so I'm good on that front. As for suggestions I'm kind of taking this one film at a time do my focus is (as far as hp goes) completely SS/PS at the moment. I'm sorry there hasn't been much going on here lately. This project is still alive but as many of us know, life gets in the way so for this and other projects, it's been a slow burn. 

Wazzles said:

Mavimao said:

Harmy said:

For an effect shot, the original negative is the first generation copy of the finished shot, which would be in the assembled negative cut, not the individual elements - those are the original negative of the individual elements but not of the shot.

 Unless you're Stanley Kubrick on 2001, in which case, every element is shot on the same piece of film. 

 I believe they did this with Blade Runner as well.

 That is correct. slightly different techniques though. 

I'm just saying, if you're ever having a screening, I'm not far from LA *achem*

Damn.  Oh well, I'm sure there's hope for the future.  

As for the Artoo problem, I've had success in little tests just in photoshop of simply going into hue and saturation and bringing down the saturation of the blues until you see the artifacts disappear.  This removes the artifacts, gets artoo looking correct, and overall makes the image look alot better.  This works because basically all they did to make artoo "consistent" is to to boost the blues in every shot that has artoo in it.

Back when D23 was going on in August I attended a small panel about the restoration of disney films during which they showed a couple clips of a BEAUTIFUL scan of Song of the South intermingled in the presentation.  Of course very quickly everyone gasped at seeing it and got excited, at which point the guy explained that they aren't restoring it or releasing it, but that the studio wanted an archival scan.  This frustrated me to all hell because the couple clips they showed had very minimal damage and would be a very fast, easy cleanup and the colors were gorgeous.  The insistence of Disney to not release this film is baffling.  It would take maybe a couple of months to get it to a presentable point and would be easy profit for Disney and they STILL have no interest in a release because (to quote the presenter): "We don't make the decisions of what gets restored and released.  Corporate makes those decisions based on what they think people will buy.  Sad, and there are many things I would love to restore, but it is a business after all."

Yeah same guy.

No Bambi was not re-rotoscoped this way, at least not for the most recent release. At least according to this guy as I made a point of asking if they dI'd during his demonstration. 

Having talked to someone on the restoration team at disney I have to say they know what their doing when given sufficient time and funds for a project.  The problem is that if the executives don't think that the film will bring in big money from the re-release, they will give them not enough time and not enough money to do a really good job so we end up with crappy restorations.  To see what they're capable of with enough time and funds, look at the blu ray of Bambi.  I think it looks pretty spectacular. No frankenfilm there.

zhadow said:

Hey guys! I literally found out about the Despecialized Editions today. I'm downloading them onto my MacBook Pro with JDownloader2 and was wondering how I would be able to play them on it.  Yes I could use Google, but I figured it would be better if I asked someone here. 

 I'm on a macbook and I use vlc media player to play anything that isn't MP4 

*sigh*  I wish the thread didn't get bombarded with people asking questions that could be answered by a google search every time someone writes an article about despecialized.  

Can we all just agree that not all old movies are good and not all current movies are bad?  Cheese and crackers guys, seriously what is the point of all this pessimistic attitude?  Enjoy the good, try to forget the bad and just have a good time at the movies.  The problem with modern movies isn't that they're getting worse, it's that modern audiences don't know how to just sit back and enjoy a movie.  If it's not a goddam masterpiece, people can't enjoy it.

CatBus is the receptionist at Harmy's office, answering questions on his behalf whilst Harmy is busy with important business matters. 

I'm so incredibly excited that this has been completed and that it exists in the world.  We can all breathe a sigh of relief today no matter what happens from here on out.  My deepest congratulations and thanks to you, sir.  And if your new "job opportunity" is what we are all assuredly hoping it is, well then I am even more ecstatic.  Ladies and gentlemen of originaltrilogy.com, this will be a day long remembered; it has seen the end of the GOUT, and will soon see the end of the special editions.

Mike, have you been contracted by Disney, Lucasfilm, and/or Fox in any form for restoration?  If you haven't, definitively shoot it down. If you have, be very ambiguous in not saying yes or no...

Work in progress.  Don't worry, I'm gonna fix the x wings on the front, its just to see how it will look.

Yeah, remember they all have the george lucas interviews at the beginning  

I was only planning on English but i suppose if there is enough of an interest, I can potebtially consider foreign language tracks. 

And no, he seemed to be a little rushed and somewhat avoided talking about the other non ANH films.  The impression I got based solely on the way he was talking (again, this was a private conversation after the presentation) was that the people at Disney are interested in doing it, and that it's really FOX holding them back, which doesn't surprise me, since their track record on intensive restoration of ANY film isn't the greatest.  Seems like something they don't want to spend money on, but you never know.  Who knows; the man may have been insinuating that they were in the middle of negotiations with FOX, and that it was up to their final decision whether they can go forward with it or not.  There's tons of speculation that come out of what he said, but the main thing I'm taking out of it is that it seems to shoot down the rumors that GL included in the contract when Disney bought Lucasfilm that the original versions can never be released.

towne32 said:

Darth Lucas said:

So I was at D23 this past weekend and attended a small presentation on restorations of Disney films.  After the presentation I was talking to the guy privately and mentioned Star Wars and what the deal is with a possible release and restoration.  His response was "At least for A New Hope, that decision lies entirely with Fox."

Now, this doesn't tell us much, but what it tells me is that an official release IS possible, and that there isn't some detail in the contract put in by Lucas that Disney can never release the original versions as some people on this forum have speculated.  If that was the case this guy wouldn't have even entertained the notion of it.

 Interesting. Was just blabbing about this sort of thing over here. Without throwing that guy in particular under the bus, what kind of role did he have? Someone involved with actual restoration and these kinds of decisions for the company or just a presenter?

Did he have any further comment on the non-A New Hope films?

 Quite honestly I dont remember that man's specific title, however he was involved directly with restorations and seemed very knowledgeable on the subject. based on the presentation he gave, it seemed as though he was essentially one of the people calling the shots on how to go about restoring specific films and was rather high up on the restoration end of things.  He had said (as an answer to both my Star Wars question and song of the south) that essentially the restoration team has very little say in what films get restored and that all those decisions are made on a corporate level. 

So I was at D23 this past weekend and attended a small presentation on restorations of Disney films.  After the presentation I was talking to the guy privately and mentioned Star Wars and what the deal is with a possible release and restoration.  His response was "At least for A New Hope, that decision lies entirely with Fox."

Now, this doesn't tell us much, but what it tells me is that an official release IS possible, and that there isn't some detail in the contract put in by Lucas that Disney can never release the original versions as some people on this forum have speculated.  If that was the case this guy wouldn't have even entertained the notion of it.

so I'm at D23 (disney's convention) and this morning George Lucas was among those honoured as "disney legends".  During his acceptance speech he stated "not many people know this, but goofy was the inspiration for JarJar Binks."

Just thought i'd put this out there...

Given that I'm planning for all the bonus material to be on a separate disc, j am actually considering dropping the branching and seeing how well everything can fit as their own separate thing. I am happy to report that my computer is finally up and running again, so there should be much more coming out of the woodwork for this soon 

Get well soon Poita