Can you please put up an uncompressed version on a certain non-vital organ website? Artifacts get in the way of actually appreciating your work. You were able to do this with your Grindhouse Empire. Why not this?
Ex Machina is one of the best things I've seen this year, and it made me look forward even more to seeing Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson in The Force Awakens.
What's wrong with the current Blu Ray? My Fantasia knowledge isn't up to snuff.
Yeah, even though the final clean/grade hasn't been done, for the time being it looks like the live action blends better with the matte painting than it does on the Blu Ray.
You can tell I've been on this site for too long because I mentally processed "grades" as "colour grad[ing]." Oy.
Also please keep in mind that the name "Snoke" did not show up once in that summary based on the established rumours, which confirms my theory that they're taken from an earlier draft. To put that in perspective, if we were discussing rumours about the original Star Wars from an early draft leak we'd be talking about the "Legion of Lettow."
Can we just get him/them to stop signing his/their damn name at the bottom of every single post?
jimjimmyjones85 said:
I know it's just a pet peeve, but the way in which this scene shows on screen has always bothered me. I don't know that there is anything that can be done about it, but it just is so in your face bad it irks me every time.
This came up a while ago, and if I recall correctly that matte painting and others would have been pretty seamless in theatres. I imagine that when Team Negative One puts out their preservation of Jedi said paintings won't stick out like a sore thumb. Another one of those situations where we probably weren't intended to see those shots at negative quality, and the added Blu Ray definition makes them look fake as all hell.
Did anyone manage to snag this while it was up? I love 2001 and I love Soderbergh as well (his adaptation of Solaris is my second-favourite movie), and based on a few descriptions of his changes it sounds like an entirely different and intriguing approach to the material. Is this kind of lost to the wastes?
I hope someone archived Steven Soderbergh's trimmed cut of 2001. At the very least, I hope there's a list of changes somewhere.
And didn't Negative One go from a home-built scanner to a used 4K a while ago?
Wow, I had no idea there was a new Blu Ray. Even if it is based on the same old transfer the lack of DNR pumps a bit of life into what's kind of a flat film, visually speaking.
Was T2 ever a very grainy movie for its time? The Skynet Edition Blu Ray is pretty smooth and it seems possible that some DNR was applied, seeing as how it was shot in the grainier Super 35 rather than scope, but I read an interesting piece from several years ago about how Cameron had gotten pretty good at reducing grain in his Super 35 masters by the time _Titanic _rolled around. Anyone more knowledgeable about the film’s history have an idea?
I was telling Frink how it's hilarious how cagey Negative One constantly is about himself and his project (yes, I'm going with the "it's just one guy" theory), like government or Lucasfilm agents are just about to bust down his door, when mverta is over in the Legacy thread all like "Hey, I'm Mike Verta! This is my restoration!" Granted Legacy won't be distributed in the same way the Team Negative One preservation will be but like, guy, if Harmy and Adywan haven't been given cease and desists you're probably good.
Thanks for the upload!
Oh don't worry, everyone around here is pretty familiar with Lowry Digital.
EDIT: A question for the Team: can you post a clip from one of the reels you've done a first correction/cleanup on? I think two was one of them. Nothing substantial, minute max, just to get an idea of what the finished product may look like?
And like, not a Dailymotion video, but uncompressed 1080p available to download to your hard drive. And yeah, I know you had that bit in the 8mm release, but that was like a few frames of dark, overly-cropped and downscaled footage.
Just think of it as something to tide us over and reassure us.
1080p, scaled down from a 4K scan.
EDIT: Sorry for the terseness. Wrote that while watching a movie. The film has been scanned at 4K and downscaled to 1080p so it will be easier to work with. As this is from a professional, theatrical 35mm print and not a low-resolution Laserdisc scan there is more than enough detail to warrant all 1080 lines of resolution. It's not the same level as the negative, but the last page or so of discussion has highlighted why that's not altogether a bad thing.
As per ronwlim's request, I've posted my cases I had made up yesterday. They look gorgeous on my shelf, though for the moment both Empire and Jedi are empty.
Pahahahaha, I scrolled down the page really quickly and it was like I was watching a flipbook.
Well now we're getting into that murky, almost philosophical territory of what the movie's ideal presentation is supposed to be: what's on the negative or what's visible to an audience via a 35mm or 70mm blowup print. "The negative" seems the obvious answer, but as we've learned, depending on the film, some parts of the frame aren't even meant to be seen (i.e. theatrical cropping). That could extend to detail as well.
Yeah, I mentioned in the Star Wars DE thread how some orange blotches could be seen on Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford's faces at times. Harmy said the actual discolouration was due to limitations of dealing with the official BD transfer, but those blotches are very clearly over-applied makeup. Filmmakers in 1977 weren't anticipating a future of Blu Rays and 4K, so some of these details weren't meant to be seen.
As I'm typing this I'm feeling even better about these restorations.
It's kind of sad how down you are on your own preservation at times. If you want a realistic yet hopeful idea of how good a print preservation can look, check out Criterion's Blu Ray of Solaris. The production credits don't specify if it was scanned at 2K or 4K but it looks excellent regardless.
Even if your work or Mike's work technically isn't on the same level as the original negative, keep in mind none of us really know how well the original negative looks, what with the official Blu Rays being 720p for all intents and purposes, DNRed, and kind of lifeless. You could very well have an amazing preservation when all is said and done--and with those pesky cue marks gotten rid of. ;)
Whatever. Some of that negative detail would probably have been partially obscured by the grain the Blu Ray stripped away, and depending on your distance from the TV you might not even notice the difference.
It actually hadn't occurred to me that the loss of detail was due to added grain. Interesting.
If theatre prints are copies of copies, etc., what's the intermediary? Interpositive?
DrDre said:
@Danfun128
Who's being offended? I think the bluray stinks to high heaven. However, having seen the samples I thought it very unlikely that the 35 mm LPP would beat the bluray in terms of detail, but since the video samples are compressed and the ESB Grindhouse looked very good, I was curious how the team would rank it. That's not such a weird question.
And to be fair, we've barely seen any of these full-quality, cleaned, uncompressed, colour-corrected scans in motion, just a few seconds here and there from the HD DEs of Star Wars and Empire. Probably the best example from those two is the--very brief--shot of Lando speaking into the mic in Empire, which looks tremendous, and unless I'm mistaken that's only at 720p.
