For those that are wondering, the bootleg williarob posted is actually in surprisingly good condition. It’s colors are very vibrant, and there are a few surprises:
Green corridor, but no blue R2-D2.
Oke, here we go. Here are four frames of different scenes in close proximity of the raw scan of the LPP used to create the SSE. For those that don’t know this, this is not a technicolor print:
Now, even for the raw scan, that is clearly blue shifted, it is pretty obvious, that the Leia/R2 corridor scene is green. However to make things more clear, I balance the Darth Vader shot (no match to the technicolor print), such that the stormtroopers, and the walls are white, and Darth Vader black (remember Mike Verta maintains the walls are slightly mint colored, so I’m actually overcompensating for any green shifts):
Now I use the color balancing LUT to correct the other frames:
I rest my case. Delibirate or not, the Leia/R2 corridor scene was definitely green for 1977 prints, technicolor or otherwise.
Damn! Good luck poita! Hope all will be well…
Still, photochemical timing of these specific shots to have such different color, for whatever reason, is something that isn’t ruled out, right? Whether intentional or otherwise.
Certainly not. Maybe Lucas wanted a different color for these shots, because he wanted to differentiate between these scenes, and the ones involving R2’s and C-3PO’s escape, to make sure the audience wouldn’t presume R2, C-3PO, and Leia were still in the same location.
I mean by power of deduction I am not sure how this is debated as some sort of mystery for so long, personally I think it is a problem with the print. If everything is green it’s unlikely the LD decided to light everything green no matter what environment they were in?
It’s not a problem with the print. As shown above, the color shift in the Leia/R2 scene is uniform and much larger than any shift elsewhere in the print, that may be attributed to a technicolor green shift. The only way this scene will have a neutral color, is if every other scene in the first reel is a nice shade of pink. So, like Sherlock Holmes said: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
nope the panels are not green, all of the green is at the bottom end of the color spectrum and green being the most luminous color would not act like this. If there was green light you would see more light on the front faces of those tanks on the wall and the red light would not pierce so precicsely through it.
by the laws of physics it’s impossible.
If they decided to make the whole bottom color range green either by accident or on purpose it looks like a mistake to me and a pretty bad one.
Thank god it does not look like that now.
Sorry, but wrong again. The green is not at the bottom end of the spectrum. In fact the entire color spectrum is shifted towards green almost uniformly. If you substract 17 RGB units from the green channel, and add 10 to the blue channel across the board, this:
…becomes this:
Now, since you were arguing earlier, that this is fading, logic would dictate that other shots in the same reel would fade in almost exactly the same way. Hence the C-3PO shot I posted earlier would have to look like this with the same correction:
Does this look right? I don’t think so…
The green color is also not unique to the Tech print, and seems to have been in all 1977 prints. I matched the Vader arrival scene of the raw LPP scan used for the SSE to the Vader arrival scene of the Tech scan (which is a neutral scene), and the Leia/R2-D2 shot that follows looks like this (don’t mind the artifacts, the video I have is very compressed, especially in the dark areas):
This is definitely not green or even cyan light. Light does not act like this especially Green light. It’s not lit with a green filter I can tell you that much.
Like I said, the panels could have been green, which even when lit with neutral lighting would give the entire scene a green cast, and the green cast of the Technicolor print would exaggerate this effect. As noted before, the panels in the back look pretty neutral grey, so different color panels is an option. Secondly, the scenes could have been timed this way, either delibirately or by mistake.
R2-D2 is not Cyan
And if a photo like that is really Cyan and green it’s not really reliable. But it is now a better indicator once you remove all the color that absolutely should not be there.
It’s also brighter because the smoke machine is not on. It’s clearly not the same take as in the film and the light is dimmer in the film.
Make the walls green if you want I don’t mind. but would it have been green when it was first struck and made very much doubt it. It’s probably gone green.
Things like that to me are just not worth the time of day. But I guess it’s fun if you want to watch a simulation of an old faded print add some dirt and flek and grime.
Sorry, but that’s incorrect.
Firstly, the photo is not reliable IF you assume it should not be cyan. Not every shot is filmed under neutral conditions, or color timed to be neutral. If the light is cyan, R2 will be cyan. If the light is white, but the walls are cyan, the reflected light from the walls will make R2 cyan. If the colors of the scene were altered in post-production to be cyan, R2 will be cyan. So, we simply don’t know how it was shot, or if it was retimed in post-production. The fact is both an UNFADED print, and a photo show a green tint. The green color was also confirmed by balancing the colors of a faded LPP (balancing a neutral scene, reveals the same green tint for the Leia/R2 scene). I go by the evidence, not presumptions.
Secondly, technicolor prints don’t fade, at all. They are known as “no-fade” prints, since if properly stored they last pretty much indefinitely. The Technicolor prints of Star Wars suffer from a green shift, but not to the extend, that a number of specific scenes shot with Leia in the corridor would turn green, but other scenes do not or far less green.
You say it’s not worth your time, but here you are…
I’m actually curious what NeverarGreat is doing for this shot:
It is definitely green on the Technicolor print scans I’ve seen, but all home video releases, and the 1997 SE theatrical release have neutral colors.
Not being bad or anything but unless someone went and changed the light bulbs from Red to pink in between shots then I think you can safely say that the Hue is incorrect compared to when Leia first pokes her head out with the Blaster.
So although people want to reproduce colors from different prints and so on I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. What ever is going on the film is somehow revising itself with different color hues.
The green walls make no sense what so ever it’s a problem with green in that technicolor print.
Trying to put things like this to bed should be easy I think, I don’t want to butt in and destroy things or anything like that and you never asked for my input. But this just seems a little to obvious what it’s meant to look like. From looking at the end of the film I think you can pretty much stamp “Watch out for color hues fluctuating” and not in any good way throughout the whole film. The question is what is the correct color hue?
If you put the lights red and tweak a small bit I think that now looks about right and R2-D2 and Leias dress now start to look a lot better. I can’t tell you if it’s in the right hue or not but I think the point is it is actually falling in to the bracket of color CORRECTION once the hue alteration takes place to take it away from pink and realize after all the lights were always red and the film made them pink. 😃
I think the big question is what is the correct Color hue? and it’s definitely not pink lights but it’s a shade of red whatever shade of red that is, is the final question… And I could not for the life of me tell you what shade of red it is meant to be 😃
This would need more Value added to it on the still I did which I have not done but that will bring out R2-D2 in a similar fashion or way to that of the Technicolor print. The exchange would rest on Green being the most luminous color verses simply replacing the Green with more Value probably in the Mid range (and top perhaps). So if you like the Value is correct of the technicolor print but it’s not as strong with Red and Blue or something like that. you just need to get the luminosity up to that of the technicolor print just not by using green.
Pushing Values slightly it’s around here somewhere… Like I said can’t tell you exactly and probably nobody else can either.
Actually, the pink is not in the print. It’s just in the quick color adjustment I did with the color matching tool to get the bluray to look like the print. So, adjusting the colors to match the color red won’t do much good in this instance. The green might be a little less strong in the projected print when compared to the sample, but not by that much. Like I said, the shot that preceeds this shot is a fairly neutral color (Vader’s entrance), so unless that scene is meant to be a magenta color, the Leia/R2-D2 sequence is just very green for the 1977 prints, Technicolor or otherwise.
Like I said before, even 1977 production photos show a green color for the panels in the front:
The question to what’s the correct color hue is very simple. namely, that there isn’t one. There’s the original theatrical color grading with it’s flaws, which in print form will vary somewhat from print to print, and manufacturer to manufacturer. Then there’s what was actually shot, which may vary heavily depending on the conditions. So, in the end you either choose to match a particular print or use multiple prints to estimate the color grading of the original interpositive. Alternatively, you grade it to a color, that’s most appealing to you.
Nice! Looking really good!
Having seen Neverar’s color for the entire Tantive sequence, it’s absolutely ideal in my opinion. This isn’t at all a comment about how things should or shouldn’t be, just my own personal taste. Jumping into the extremely green shots just throws me right out of the film. And if that makes me a 1980s ANH revisionist, then so be it. 😃
Should Neverar ever change his mind, I’ll just make sure I hang on to the current version for my own use. 😃
On a similar note, Poita recently said that he thinks the Rancor being bright blue in many Jedi prints could be an issue related to the film development labs. As with the hallway shots here, I’ve got to say I prefer the home video (and onwards) look if what we’re seeing is really representative of the theatrical. But maybe they were variable?
To make myself somewhat inconsistent, I’ll say that I also like the decision to keep the nice blue color of the shots with R2 getting into the pod (another thing that was changed in the home video version, I think).
Dre: I think you’ve got the slightest edge on that Droid Sale shot now, with just a bit more flesh color on the skin. But they’ve become very similar indeed.
I can symphatise with your reasoning. It does appear to have been delibirate though, as almost all the shots with Leia in the corridor have a strong green tint:
Just for comparison, here’s a scan of a 70mm frame of that same shot from jedi1.net:
It appears in the Tech scans, but also -1 LPP. I think MikveV once said, that some of the color choices in 1977 are a bit different by to today’s standards. Anyway for 4K77 I’m sticking with what’s on the print, and a Technicolor color palette, and I will hopefully get a chance to verify some of these points of discussion relatively soon during that screening.
Either way, I suspect NeverarGreat’s regrade will be absolutely stunning, and very representative of the original color grading.
Cool video poita!
In the first version of my correction, these shots were very green. After living with them like that for almost a year, I decided that it was too distracting and I brought them into a more neutral color scheme, though still with some green. Basically I corrected the entire scene to the colors of the previous shot. In this hallway shot, you see some set elements such as the piping on the upper left and the dividing panels which also appear in the previous shot, albeit with different colors. So all I did was match the colors of those elements - the panels becoming gray/green, the pipe becoming somewhat blue.
Yeah, it’s a really odd color choice. The other one is the blue R2-D2 when the droids enter the pod. This also only appears in the 1977 prints.
The green color is also not unique to the Tech print, and seems to have been in all 1977 prints. I matched the Vader arrival scene of the raw LPP scan used for the SSE to the Vader arrival scene of the Tech scan (which is a neutral scene), and the Leia/R2-D2 shot that follows looks like this (don’t mind the artifacts, the video I have is very compressed, especially in the dark areas):
Please don’t interpret my post as disparaging your abilities, that was not the intention. Yours is still much better than the Blu-ray, it’s just this one shot I thought was a little greener than usual. The photo you just posted looks just a tad less green to me too. But, I suppose I’m just used to the more neutral colors in the home releases, as you previously mentioned.
I didn’t take it as criticism. It’s just one of those weird things in the Technicolor prints. Here’s another shot that from that scene:
Here you can clearly see, that while the foreground is very green, the background and R2-D2 are fairly neutral, which makes it seem as though the scene was lit with a green light.
I thought it was generally accepted that the Technicolor prints tend to naturally lean towards green, but that this was not indicative of the original colors. Yours looks a little too green here.
I disagree, I applied a single correction to the Tech scans, which nowhere are as green as this shot. There are also many production photos, that show a similar shade of green for this scene:
Also not that the panels in the back are a neutral color in both my color correction, and the production photo.
I’m actually curious what NeverarGreat is doing for this shot:
It is definitely green on the Technicolor print scans I’ve seen, but all home video releases, and the 1997 SE theatrical release have neutral colors.
I’m not on my usual monitor, but these look a bit yellow to me?
It could be my screen though.
I think you’re right. I’ve updated the examples.
NeverarGreat:
DrDre:
They are now very close indeed…
It’s interesting to note, that with this correction the Tatooine scenes come out looking more desolate than before, and closer to NeverarGreat’s color grading of this shot, than my previous attempt:
Also, with this correction, there is no blue staining on the Sandcrawler as it is on the print, where there is no evidence of such color artifacts.
Here’s a few examples of an experiment I’m doing on the 4k77 print to reproduce a Technicolor color grading DrDre style using a single LUT to correct the Technicolor print scans 😉. These are bluray regrades based on this color grading:
Dreamaster said:
The extra contrast takes away the “film” look to me completely. REALLY liked the flatter one with “compromise” yellows though, seemed to be a great balance between “heavily stylized” and “raw camera footage.”Wish we could all load into a van and go watch the tech with you! I hope that comes to fruition for you!
Yeah, I think I also prefer the less contrasty version. Here’s another version, where I’ve adjusted the highlights, such that there is less blowout:
I may have an opportunity to go to a private screening of a Technicolor print, so I hope that will provide some answers.
Woah woah woah! Hold up! You can’t just casually drop something like that and not provide more details!
Through the 4K77 project we came into contact with a private collector, who by chance lives reasonably close to where I live. Although he wants to remain anonymous, and is naturally very protective of his collection of films, he said might be willing to arrange a private screening of his Tech for me to help with the project’s color grading. 😃
Looks a lot like your color balanced reel 1 of the LPP. That’s nice !
However, the blown out whites of the blu-ray remain in your attempt whereas Neverar resolved the problem in his work. So, I was interested about testing something : manually adjusting the curves of Neverar’s picture to approximately match yours, except for the far high color values. Here’s the (not perfect) result : http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/196918/picture:0 (compared to your last result and Neverar’s version).
Anyway, the question of the distinctive look of Tatooine’s scenes is still here and Neverar’s final result is probably the one that is the most correct.
I actually used Neverar’s result as a starting point, so the bluray’s blown out whites are definitely not there. I personally do prefer a more contrasty look, so that’s where the difference comes from.
Also, at this point the look of the Tatooine scenes is still debatable. However, I may have an opportunity to go to a private screening of a Technicolor print, so I hope that will provide some answers.
I liked the contrast of your previous version, but the sky really profits from either the reduced contrast or added yellows. DrDre, what if you lower the contrast just by a bit in comparison to the first version?
I fiddled a bit around with Photoshop and multiplied 30% luminance of the new one with the old one, which results in this:http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/196883
I really like it, but it’s just my view through a calibrated, but not professional display.
NeverarGreat, if you don’t want this discussion in your project, I can of course move that to a private topic 😉
Here’s the same colors as the last set with the contrast of the previous set:
I’ve added a bit more yellow, and reduced the contrast somewhat:
