Fang Zei

Slavicuss said:

pittrek said:

Fang Zei said:

Just an idea, but do we think it’s worth telling them exactly what we would want to see included in an ideal release?

What I’m picturing would mirror the Blade Runner set rather closely, with the final version (plus a few “final” surprises if that rumor about Han shooting first again has any weight) on disc one and the unaltered version on disc three. For ANH, the '81 crawl should be branched in as an option on the unaltered disc.

The middle disc could be the '97 version (timed to how it actually looked in '97) with the '04 and '11 edits branched in. The '04/'11 changes are few and far enough between that I feel like they could be easily branched if the disc is primarily the '97 version. It would provide interesting historical context like the three different versions of the Krayt dragon call, Boba Fett’s voice, different Emperor hologram and cgi Jabba, and Luke’s scream in ESB.

I’d settle for just the '97 version’s inclusion without '04 and '11 but I really do think '97 should be there. It’s the version that started this whole debate in the first place and it was shown in theaters in a major re-release.

Disc 1 - 1977/1981 versions via seamless branching + trailers and TV spots
Disc 2 - 1997 SE + 1997 trailers and TV spots, plus all 1997 TV specials/promos
Disc 3 - 2004/2011 versions via seamless branching
Disc 4 - deleted and alternate scenes, Making of, Holiday special, maybe a new docu?

Disc 5 - The ‘lost cut’ work print, to truly mirror the BLADE RUNNER set.

Except in the example of Blade Runner the workprint actually was the first version shown to the public. Granted, it was only for test audiences before the wide release, but even then it’s more relevant to Blade Runner since its accidental discovery years later is what led to the director’s cut.

Fox didn’t meddle with Star Wars the way Perenchio and Yorkin did with Blade Runner. George hated the “lost cut” and fired his original editor. His only “enemy” was the technological limitations of the time, although he can’t really use that as an excuse for stuff like Greedo shooting first.

Ronster said:

I think disc 2 should be 1997 / 2004 / 2011.

Who is honestly going to miss the way 2004 and 2011 looks?

This is exactly what I was going to say in my post.

The 04/11 color timing doesn’t need to be preserved. We already know they did a fresh 4k scan of the o-neg, with is conformed to the '97 version already. They might as well include it. But the 97/04/11 preference thread got me thinking that some people might end up preferring '04 or '11 over all other versions, and since there really weren’t too many changes done specifically for 04 and 11 it shouldn’t be too complicated to branch the changes in. However, I say that knowing there are some very subtle differences they might miss. For example, which version did they digitally fix Piett and the other officer’s insignia so it was on the correct side in the flipped shot toward the end of ESB? Because I honestly couldn’t tell you now if that was 97 or 04. That’s why including the 97 version takes priority for me over branching in 04 and 11. I’d rather have them include 97 exactly as it was and lose 04/11 than have them screw something up trying to include the different versions.

Of course, I say all of this knowing full well there is little chance they will even include 97. That story about Han shooting first again may be complete BS,* so the 2011 version might really be the final version. They could have easily ported over those changes when they went back and rescanned the 97-conformed o-neg for this newer 4k master we’ve been hearing about. If we get the unaltereds on blu/UHD, it will probably have the original version and the final versions on separate discs and that’s it. They probably won’t bother branching in the '81 crawl on the unaltered disc for ANH either, and that wouldn’t be a deal breaker. The original version of the crawl from those first four years when Star Wars took the world by storm obviously takes preference over the one that says “Episode IV: A New Hope.”

*Still, I’m really, really curious just what exactly Devin Faraci’s unnamed source inside Lucasfilm saw to lead to such a rumor. It really wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out to be true. I’d say it’s still considered the most egregious change that’s been made to these movies. Even George seems to realize this if his wearing the “Han Shot First” shirt on the set of Crystal Skull means anything at all. Also, wasn’t that shot further tweaked in both 04 and 11? Maybe he finally gave up on it. I can’t see him reversing many other changes, not that he hasn’t done it before (Luke’s scream in ESB). But I could see him fixing some vfx mistakes that still linger in the 2011 version. Some pretty blatant errors still persist in the Endor space battle, and you can see through the Falcon as it pulls away from the Rebel cruiser at the end of ESB.

Just an idea, but do we think it’s worth telling them exactly what we would want to see included in an ideal release?

What I’m picturing would mirror the Blade Runner set rather closely, with the final version (plus a few “final” surprises if that rumor about Han shooting first again has any weight) on disc one and the unaltered version on disc three. For ANH, the '81 crawl should be branched in as an option on the unaltered disc.

The middle disc could be the '97 version (timed to how it actually looked in '97) with the '04 and '11 edits branched in. The '04/'11 changes are few and far enough between that I feel like they could be easily branched if the disc is primarily the '97 version. It would provide interesting historical context like the three different versions of the Krayt dragon call, Boba Fett’s voice, different Emperor hologram and cgi Jabba, and Luke’s scream in ESB.

I’d settle for just the '97 version’s inclusion without '04 and '11 but I really do think '97 should be there. It’s the version that started this whole debate in the first place and it was shown in theaters in a major re-release.

Ronster said:

Fang my spell check calls you Fang Zeitgeist

I’m stealing it.

Sorry, double post.

crissrudd4554 said:

JawsTDS said:

crissrudd4554 said:

It’s been pointed out on numerous occasions that it appears that the general public does not care one way or another about the changes. This may be true but I honestly don’t understand how this affects the chances of a future OUT release.

If they don’t care about the changes, then what’s the point of even reverting them? That costs money.

An OUT restoration is gonna sell better than a mere restored version of the same print of the SEs. It’s already a general consensus that people are fine with the BDs as is. If Disney/Lucasfilm intends to keep the market open to those films they’re gonna have to do more than simply restore the same SE.

This is why I’m convinced we’ll see an official OOT restoration when the time comes for a UHD release at the absolute latest. Not as many fans will pay for the SE yet again just so they can watch it at a higher resolution and with HDR. Lucasfilm will need to incentivize it a little, and what better time to do an all-versions set than the 4k release?

They could do an unaltered release on regular blu in the meantime, maybe even package it with a new transfer of the SE from the RMW 4k master instead of recycling the 2011 discs (which still use the 2004 master) yet again. But I feel like they’re not going to do that because they know many who’d buy it probably wouldn’t buy it again in a few years on 4k. Plus they’d have to share more of the profits with Fox whereas I-VI probably won’t hit 4k until 2020 at the earliest anyway. Better to wait and use the OOT to incentivize a UHD release.

They could still put it out on regular blu the same day, for those people who really don’t plan on ever upgrading beyond regular blu. Kind of like how the Blade Runner set was released on both dvd and the hd formats on the same day in 2007. Ditto for Close Encounters that same year with dvd and blu-ray.

Ronster said:

There could be genuine fear of a screw up that is all I am saying and it’s better to leave alone that is the vibe I get when in reality it would be better to try than to do nothing.

and you also need Mr.Lucus consent also.

It is possible to restore the film to its 100% unaltered form. There’s really no reason we should have to settle for “close enough,” and it would kinda defy the whole point anyway if it’s not the true original version. LFL surely realizes this well enough to not pull that kind of crap. Might that mean forgoing the Original Master Negative since it would risk the accidental inclusion of alterations from 97? Maybe, but there might be a foolproof way of using as much of the master negative as possible without that happening.

What Alderaan said.

I don’t have many other suggestions.

Stating who we are and the site’s original purpose of getting the unaltered’s released on dvd, and why that’s no longer enough, is indeed a good idea.

Maybe something to the effect of “we speak not only for ourselves, but for the many other fans around the world who would love to see the original versions restored.”

We might even want to appeal to their sense of responsibility over owning a piece of our cultural history. Film materials do eventually deteriorate. Just look at what happened with John Wayne’s The Alamo. Saving Star Wars, as zombie named his site, is ultimately what this is all about.

Oh, and I still think it’s worth saying “all versions” and not “both.” Even if we’re not going into detail about it in this letter (and we probably shouldn’t, it risks muddying the issue), saying “all” at least subtly reminds them that the '97 version never made it past laserdisc and that the '04 edit is stuck on dvd. Maybe a quick mention of how these movies have now been revised multiple times and that every fan has their prefered version. The “movie we grew up with” might be '77 for one person, '97 for another and '04 for someone else.

SilverWook said:

Fang Zei said:

Z6PO said:

Fang Zei said:

The exploitation of our nostalgia to sell the new movies and shows is a valid criticism. Touché, SilverWook.

But for me it goes even deeper. The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now were both revised and yet we can still view all versions in modern quality. Neither “Episode IV: A New Hope” nor its 1997 special edition won six academy awards in 1978, Star Wars did.

All versions of Close encounters of the third kind, all versions of Blade Runner… (and what about THX1138? I know it’s not Lucasfilm, but still…)

I’ve brought up CE3K/BR ad nauseum and those other examples just popped into my head.

I’d love it if Warner restored the '71 and '77 versions of THX-1138. Back when the dvd came out in 2004 my roommate picked up the single-disc sku out of curiosity (y’know, the one that had much crazier cover art for some reason?) and was watching it on his computer with headphones. I remember him saying that the cgi wasn’t nearly as jarring in this as it was in Star Wars. So yeah, anecdotal evidence and all, but the cgi being “not as jarring” kinda hurts the chances that anyone would care to see the original version. Not being nearly as well known a movie as American Graffiti is another thing going against it. Graffiti, meanwhile, hasn’t been extensively altered with cgi, so most people probably don’t know it’s not the same version that came out in '73.

Star Wars fulfills both criteria. It’s insanely well known and has been extensively/obviously altered.

Has your friend ever seen the original version of THX? The CGI is jarring as hell to me. 😉

I don’t think he had ever actually seen it before, no. To be fair though, neither had I. Not really, anyway. I think the most I’d seen of THX was one scene late at night on cable back in the 90’s, panned and scanned. For that matter I never even really heard it referenced outside of the connection to George’s company. My uncle randomly asked me back in the mid 90’s if I’d ever seen it (he just called it “THX” of course)* and I also remember seeing a vhs of it on the shelf at an fye or similar type of store around that same time.

Actually, now that I think about it, I did see that Star Wars fan film thing Kevin Smith hosted on Sci-Fi circa 99/2000 where they played the original short film Electronic Labyrinth and talked about how Coppola decided to produce it as a feature.

But this story with my roommate is an interesting example of how, even if you know a film has been altered, not having seen the original version beforehand can provide a totally different experience. How many people now look at the post-97 versions of Star Wars that way?

*Which makes me wonder, was it a more well-known movie than I’m thinking it was? Hearing Billy Dee Williams talk at Celebration Orlando about how he’d known who George was ever since seeing THX-1138 genuinely surprised me.

Z6PO said:

Fang Zei said:

The exploitation of our nostalgia to sell the new movies and shows is a valid criticism. Touché, SilverWook.

But for me it goes even deeper. The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now were both revised and yet we can still view all versions in modern quality. Neither “Episode IV: A New Hope” nor its 1997 special edition won six academy awards in 1978, Star Wars did.

All versions of Close encounters of the third kind, all versions of Blade Runner… (and what about THX1138? I know it’s not Lucasfilm, but still…)

I’ve brought up CE3K/BR ad nauseum and those other examples just popped into my head.

I’d love it if Warner restored the '71 and '77 versions of THX-1138. Back when the dvd came out in 2004 my roommate picked up the single-disc sku out of curiosity (y’know, the one that had much crazier cover art for some reason?) and was watching it on his computer with headphones. I remember him saying that the cgi wasn’t nearly as jarring in this as it was in Star Wars. So yeah, anecdotal evidence and all, but the cgi being “not as jarring” kinda hurts the chances that anyone would care to see the original version. Not being nearly as well known a movie as American Graffiti is another thing going against it. Graffiti, meanwhile, hasn’t been extensively altered with cgi, so most people probably don’t know it’s not the same version that came out in '73.

Star Wars fulfills both criteria. It’s insanely well known and has been extensively/obviously altered.

The exploitation of our nostalgia to sell the new movies and shows is a valid criticism. Touché, SilverWook.

But for me it goes even deeper. The Exorcist and Apocalypse Now were both revised and yet we can still view all versions in modern quality. Neither “Episode IV: A New Hope” nor its 1997 special edition won six academy awards in 1978, Star Wars did.

It would be interesting to compare this against the dvd and the two blu-rays (and the 4k UHD for that matter since it has a noticeably different look because of the hdr).

You could just as easily replace “the one we grew up with” with “the one that started it all” or “the one that became a phenomenon” if you want the same number of beats in that opening paragraph.

Just my two cents, take it or leave it.

I would definitely say “all” versions towards the end though and not “both.”

A few quick thoughts before I go to sleep:

We should avoid saying things like “the version we grew up with.” It starts everything off on the wrong foot when we make it about nostalgia. The OOT should be preserved because of its cultural importance, not because us older fans happen to have fond memories of it. Younger fans, after all, most likely grew up with some form of the SE and don’t have the same attachment to the unaltereds as we do.

Some of that stuff is great (the “shooting imaginary TIE fighters” part really got me, so bravo!), but it’s stuff like the '77 film becoming a phenomenon that we need to focus on. The fact that Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back have been in the National Film Registry since 1989 (the registry’s inaugural year) and 2010 respectively yet still can’t be viewed in modern quality might be worth mentioning as well.

I would also simply change “both versions” to “all versions.” If they can include five versions of Blade Runner, they can do the same for each of the OT films. I turn 32 next month and first saw the movies when I was 6 or 7, so I’ve got a very clear memory of a time before even the 1995 vhs release. Not only was the version I grew up with never released in anything better than 1993 quality, the version I actually did see on the big screen was never properly preserved on later formats either!

baron_lando said:

Meanwhile, even the movies they make fun of on the new Mystery Science Theater are in HD now! Argh…

Ain’t that the cruel irony?

The lack of respect shown to Star Wars isn’t just baffling because it’s an important film, it’s baffling because way less important films have been better preserved.

Even if they’re sitting on it until 2020 and it’s just a matter of “when” and not “if” (they would never tell us anyway), I still think some kind of open letter to Lucasfilm is a good idea.

We could explain to them in very straightforward terms that we simply want the same treatment given to the Star Wars saga that films like Close Encounters and Blade Runner have already recieved.

If it’s going to be three more years, they might as well take that time to get it right.

joefavs said:

I always thought Luke’s Dagobah food was a Twix bar when I was a kid.

It always looked like a carrot to me.

Wazzles said:

dahmage said:

Wazzles said:

yotsuya said:

Disco_Lobot said:

I laugh at people buying 4K TVs… your eyes are almost certainly not good enough to tell the difference in the vast majority of viewing scenarios. Total waste of money

http://bgr.com/2015/09/18/720p-vs-1080p-vs-4k-resolution/

If we were just talking about the absolute resolution, you are right. At my normal viewing distance I can’t tell the difference between 720 and 1080. I’m certainly not going to see much improvement from a 4k screen. But it isn’t just the resolution. The more pixels you have to display the image data, the better the image looks. The pixels start to disappear and be truly invisible. I’ve known this about printing for years, but when you apply it to video, it really helps the realism of the image, even if you are watching a 480 DVD. With the proper hardware, everything will look better on a 4k screen, even if you never get a UHD player or media.

My dad has a 43 inch 4K TV and DVDs look horrendous.

Often, if you turn off all that image enhacent crap, lower quality sources like dvd actually look better. I have a 51" 1080p plasma tv, and i think DVD’s look pretty damn good if they were authored at high bitrate. a bit soft, but good.

I have a 40 inch 1080p and DVDs look great unless I’m directly comparing them to Blu Rays. I honestly believe that 4k as a resolution is simply too high for a TV. As far as projecting goes, I’m sure it’s great, but when you’re watching 480i-1080p content from a 40-60 inch TV and sitting about 10-12 feet away, it seems unnecessary.

It definitely makes a difference for projectors. Several years ago My uncle upgraded from a 1080p Domino projector to a 4k Sony SXRD that could also do 3D. The Domino looked perfectly fine, but with the Sony I noticed the pixels were no longer visible more than a few inches from the screen.

The pixel problem is something I’ve also noticed with TVs. It must have something to do with the display tech (ips/tn/va lcd vs plasma vs oled, etc), because I’ve seen 1080p sets in the same size range with noticeably different pixel visibility. 4k eliminates this problem for the most part.

Another funny thing to consider is the screen size / seating distance / screen resolution debate. I’ve also got a 40" 1080p but I sit less than five feet from it. The tv is a sony lcd from almost nine years ago. Right around that time, I remember there was the opinion that 1080p is wasted below 50". In other words, it was hard to see the difference over 720p unless the screen was at least that big. That may have been true at more normal seating distances, but I like to sit close enough to the screen to recreate the movie theater experience and the jump in resolution is definitely noticeable.

I seem to recall that a couple years ago the debate had turned into “4k is wasted below 80”."

towne32 said:

Fang Zei said:

towne32 said:

Wazzles said:

yotsuya said:

Disco_Lobot said:

I laugh at people buying 4K TVs… your eyes are almost certainly not good enough to tell the difference in the vast majority of viewing scenarios. Total waste of money

http://bgr.com/2015/09/18/720p-vs-1080p-vs-4k-resolution/

If we were just talking about the absolute resolution, you are right. At my normal viewing distance I can’t tell the difference between 720 and 1080. I’m certainly not going to see much improvement from a 4k screen. But it isn’t just the resolution. The more pixels you have to display the image data, the better the image looks. The pixels start to disappear and be truly invisible. I’ve known this about printing for years, but when you apply it to video, it really helps the realism of the image, even if you are watching a 480 DVD. With the proper hardware, everything will look better on a 4k screen, even if you never get a UHD player or media.

My dad has a 43 inch 4K TV and DVDs look horrendous.

It definitely varies by TV. Rtings.com has an SD category in their ratings, and some 4K TVs do a fine job, while others are pretty miserable. It also depends on the DVD player, of course. Something with composite output or a PS3 via HDMI? etc.

Even blu-ray can look terrible on the newer TVs if the settings are all cranked up to eleven.

A little over a year ago I was at a Best Buy where they were playing Captain America: The Winter Soldier on a 4k tv (it was an lg lcd iirc) with what must have been the out-of-the-box settings. It looked truly horrendous.

Oh, absolutely. I’ve got friends who are completely ignorant about audio/visual types of matters. And some of them will say that they “hate HD” because the picture looks terrible and unrealistic. I’ll ask them how they feel about the picture quality on their 1080p laptops and in movie theaters, and of course they think it’s great. But they’re familiar with HDTV meaning shitty interpolated motion, oversharpening, and the host of other features that people will turn on (or, often are turned on by default).

This happened with a friend of mine. I was talking about blu-ray and she asked if it was supposed to be better because she was watching one of the Harry Potter movies on blu-ray at her parents’ place and it “looked like home movies.” After thinking about it for a few seconds I was like “ohhh, I know what you’re talking about” and realized she was talking about the motion smoothing on the tv and not the resolution of the format itself.

If tomorrow comes and goes without an announcement, is it time to start drafting an open letter for the 25th?

towne32 said:

Wazzles said:

yotsuya said:

Disco_Lobot said:

I laugh at people buying 4K TVs… your eyes are almost certainly not good enough to tell the difference in the vast majority of viewing scenarios. Total waste of money

http://bgr.com/2015/09/18/720p-vs-1080p-vs-4k-resolution/

If we were just talking about the absolute resolution, you are right. At my normal viewing distance I can’t tell the difference between 720 and 1080. I’m certainly not going to see much improvement from a 4k screen. But it isn’t just the resolution. The more pixels you have to display the image data, the better the image looks. The pixels start to disappear and be truly invisible. I’ve known this about printing for years, but when you apply it to video, it really helps the realism of the image, even if you are watching a 480 DVD. With the proper hardware, everything will look better on a 4k screen, even if you never get a UHD player or media.

My dad has a 43 inch 4K TV and DVDs look horrendous.

It definitely varies by TV. Rtings.com has an SD category in their ratings, and some 4K TVs do a fine job, while others are pretty miserable. It also depends on the DVD player, of course. Something with composite output or a PS3 via HDMI? etc.

Even blu-ray can look terrible on the newer TVs if the settings are all cranked up to eleven.

A little over a year ago I was at a Best Buy where they were playing Captain America: The Winter Soldier on a 4k tv (it was an lg lcd iirc) with what must have been the out-of-the-box settings. It looked truly horrendous.

Cthulhunicron said:

Fang Zei said:

Cthulhunicron said:

Another topic I’m interested is what exactly is meant by negatives. The camera negatives are the first generation, the actual frames taken from the camera. I’m assuming when people talk about the negatives of Star Wars, they’re referring to the frames that actually contain things like lasers and stuff animated onto the film. I know also some shots are composites, so there would have to be multiple negatives for that (one for a background, one for a star destroyer, another for a planet, etc).

In order for the negatives to be conformed to the special edition, wouldn’t some negatives have to start out unaltered, get translated into some kind of digital format, adulterated with CGI additions, and then re-printed back onto film?

That’s exactly what happened. They had to scan certain shots into the digital realm in order to add cgi (think all of those shots in Mos Eisley) and then print it back out to a new piece of negative. The original, unaltered piece of negative was presumably kept in storage.

But even the composite shots from the original version you mention in your first paragraph had to be redone for some reason, either because the existing composite on the finished negative had faded or because George thought that a digital recomp would make those shots look better.

Presumably? So we still don’t know for a fact that they were saved?

Someone from Fox only just recently confirmed that they were saved. I still say “presumably” because it feels weird how we’ve heard about it from someone at Fox but not from anyone at Lucasfilm. There’s a complete lack of details on all of this.

Cthulhunicron said:

Another topic I’m interested is what exactly is meant by negatives. The camera negatives are the first generation, the actual frames taken from the camera. I’m assuming when people talk about the negatives of Star Wars, they’re referring to the frames that actually contain things like lasers and stuff animated onto the film. I know also some shots are composites, so there would have to be multiple negatives for that (one for a background, one for a star destroyer, another for a planet, etc).

In order for the negatives to be conformed to the special edition, wouldn’t some negatives have to start out unaltered, get translated into some kind of digital format, adulterated with CGI additions, and then re-printed back onto film?

That’s exactly what happened. They had to scan certain shots into the digital realm in order to add cgi (think all of those shots in Mos Eisley) and then print it back out to a new piece of negative. The original, unaltered piece of negative was presumably kept in storage.

But even the composite shots from the original version you mention in your first paragraph had to be redone for some reason, either because the existing composite on the finished negative had faded or because George thought that a digital recomp would make those shots look better.

Lets at least wait until 9:41 PM EST 😉

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-05-03-star-wars_x.htm

Amano said:

What about the difference between the “negatives” (with the optical effects applied to them) and the OCN (the reel that was in the camera back then)?

Even if they conformed the official “negative” into something else, there should remain the OCN frames somewhere for all scenes with optical effects (wipes and optical compositions etc).

With the OCN frames all optical effects would have to be recreated digitally which is probably a lot of work.

The wipes were actually redone optically (using the actual camera negatives for the relevant shots like you mention) as part of the restoration process before they made any changes. I think this resulted in the wipes not beginning and ending at the exact same frames and technically still counts as an alteration from the original version, although maybe someone can clarify if I’m wrong about that.

The vfx shots were re-composited digitally, presumably using the original VistaVision negatives (again, someone can clarify if I’m wrong). This definitely counts as a change, not only because the recomps were done digitally (although recomping of any kind would still be an alteration), but also because it resulted in slightly different positions for all the various elements.