Fang Zei

nickyd47 said:

Fang Zei said:

A new release of the SE wouldn’t be anywhere near as big of a deal as a restored OOT.

This “surprise announcement” (very vague) will either be the unaltered versions hitting blu-ray at long last or have nothing at all to do with a re-release of the movies.

I’m at a loss to think of what else it could possibly be if it’s not the OOT, but it’s definitely not the SE. Such an announcement would be met with “oh, that was it? meh.”

Either a home video release of the OOT or a 4K UHD release of the SEs

The SE in 4k would only appeal to the small percentage of people who’ve upgraded their hardware.

Again, this “surprise announcement” - whatever it ends up being - will have nothing to do with the SE.

A new release of the SE wouldn’t be anywhere near as big of a deal as a restored OOT.

This “surprise announcement” (very vague) will either be the unaltered versions hitting blu-ray at long last or have nothing at all to do with a re-release of the movies.

I’m at a loss to think of what else it could possibly be if it’s not the OOT, but it’s definitely not the SE. Such an announcement would be met with “oh, that was it? meh.”

SilverWook said:

Ironic we have the theatrical cut of TMP on Blu Ray, and not the Director’s Edition with all the CGI shots. Paramount’s penny pinching actually helped for once. 😉

I know, right?!

Although those blu-rays are still the hd equivalent of the GOUT for me, with the obvious exception of Wrath of Khan which has been restored not once but twice now while the other five were merely “remastered.” TUC happens to be one of the very first movies I ever saw in a theater. I was quite happy to hear the news that the bd would be the theatrical cuts, which for TUC would be the first release of the theatrical cut on home video ever. Even TMP couldn’t make that claim IIRC, as there was a release of the theatrical cut long before the “special longer version” became the norm on vhs (someone please correct me if I’m wrong).

Then the screencaptures started coming in…

Just as with the GOUT, there was an element of “I knew it was too good to be true.” TMP was the theatrical cut, but had been contrast-boosted and slightly dnr’d. Were they still using the same ancient hd transfer they would’ve done way back in 2001 before finishing the DE cgi at 480p? TUC was also the theatrical, but looked manipulated and processed as well. Unlike with TMP, there were actually clear signs of this being from an ancient 1080i master (stair-stepping and other issues). Maybe that was the tradeoff for it being the theatrical cut. Maybe there was a “barely hd” master sitting on the shelf (but from when???) and they simply dumped it to blu-ray.

Search for Spock and Final Frontier both looked passably decent, if just barely. But there was still an unwanted amount of dnr and contrast-boosting going on.

Then there’s Voyage Home. Ohhhh boy. Someone cranked the dnr knob up to eleven on that one. It looks like somewhat slathered the photoshop “watercolor” filter over every frame in the movie.

I actually caught back to back screenings of Search for Spock and Voyage Home at the AFI Silver back in September. SFS ended up being from a DCP when they had said it was 35mm (I noticed they’ve since stopped specifying what format their screenings are in). It actually didn’t look terrible, even though it was from the same flawed master used for the blu-ray.

But then I saw Voyage Home right after … and it was not only an actual 35mm print, but the european version with the kirk-narrated “previously on” intro! Let me tell you, after seeing the oscar-nominated cinematography in all its glory, there’s no way I’m buying a copy of this or any other pre-Abrams Trek film until it’s shown the proper treatment.

But hey, at least it was still technically given an official release in hd, which is more than the OT can say for itself.

doubleofive said:

Jay said:

SilverWook said:

It’s really up to Jay to create that sort of thing.

I created one years ago. Haven’t touched it.

https://www.facebook.com/otdotcom/

If anyone is particularly adept at social media and is interested in helping manage our Twitter and Facebook accounts, I’d be open to it. (I mean somebody who actually works in this space or has real experience building an audience.)

I mean, we’ve got 80k on the Revisited Page, but that all came naturally; no ads, no promotion. Not sure how we can translate that to OT.

You may have just defeated my entire argument for even bothering with another petition.

BobaJett said:

Colson said:

BobaJett said:

Thanks for the replies yall. Thats what I thought, but I wasnt quite sure. Basically a non-anamporphic disc will display in a 4:3 AR and when you stretch it all out to look right, youre basically enlarging the pixals which in turn degredates the image. To be honest, despite owning the GOUT, I dont think Ive ever watched it on my 16x9 TV. I wish the powers that be would offer scope copies along with the Bluray. That way youd get the full resolution instead of the 1920x860 or whatever it is.

The Blu-rays do have the proper aspect ratio and resolution, despite their myriad other issues.

No, they don’t. At 1.78:1 they do, but a scope blue ray is roughly 1920x856 or so. When you watch that with a projector, you get a slightly less than ideal image compared to an anamorphic scope theatre experience.

Slight correction: you’re mixing up the vertical resolution of 2k with the horizontal of hd. Scope is 2048x856 for 2k cinema and 1920:817 for hdtv.

For 35mm film, traditional 2x anamorphic cinemascope is something like 1880x1550 for 2k.

The Force is strong with the Gen Xers.

IP55 said:

Do you really think this is going to happen? It’s been fucking decades. If they thought it was a viable business opportunity they would have done it years ago. They aren’t gonna release an old version for a load of middle aged folk reminiscing. They’d rather spend cash on churning loads of utter crap out.

We have no idea whether it’s going to happen or not, hence preparing a social media message in case it doesn’t.

There’s no harm in trying.

Hence the “if we hear nothing out of celebration” part.

If they’re not going to announce anything there, when the hell will they?

Even if all they say is “yes, we’re doing a thorough restoration and it will be out next year,” that would at least be something.

I would even settle for them telling us right now in 2017 that it won’t be completed until 2020. Again, that would at least be something.

But if we hear absolutely nothing on the subject for the fifth year in a row? Maybe then we actually will need another petition.

I think you guys are right, btw. The '09 petition only had a few months to build up any sigs before George said “the blu-ray is coming next year and once again it will be (my latest) SE-only.” He’d made up his mind anyway.

With Disney it’s been a different story. I couldn’t help but take the hiring of Kasdan for Ep7 and Johnson for Ep8 as a sign that someone at Lucasfilm was paying attention and actually reading the comment sections spread across the internet. They know what we want.

I’ll say this much, if an OOT restoration is what ends up getting announced at celebration I’m going to be very curious how they managed to keep such a tight lid on it, MSW’s ultravague rumor-mongering aside.

ETA: I like SilverWook’s idea. Maybe we should have that tweet typed up and ready to send (and retweet), in case there’s no announcement?

joefavs said:

At this point I think the main reason I’m hoping this 4K OOT happens is so that I can stop coming here for bootlegs and getting sucked into the whirlpool of combativeness and negativity the General Star Wars Discussion board has become.

So I only just noticed that the link on the main page to the petition has been removed.

That was already seven years ago, and it didn’t get nearly as many signatures as the original one from the dvd days. Now a 4k-on-disc format is actually a thing.

If we don’t hear so much as a peep out of celebration, should we seriously consider a new one?

It could be worded to reflect the advances in home video technology and addressed, politely, to Disney, Fox, and GL (out of respect).

I’m just saying, we don’t need to have negativity just because Disney continues to deny us what’s ours. We can put that energy into something positive if we choose to.

I guess my main question - and I’ll try to word it better this time - is whether Harmy will still be using “recreated” shots (like he did with the dewback outside the cantina) or if he’s going to keep that kind of thing to an absolute minimum.

I understand that the majority (the roughly 80% of the film that remains unaltered) will be sourced from the blu-ray. But what I’m wondering is if the newly available print scans will fill in all the missing pieces or if Harmy will still need to do some recreating like he did with that dewback shot.

Will 3.0 of Star Wars still use “recreations” of the shots that were altered or will Harmy be using the available 35mm print scans?

TV’s Frink said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

joefavs said:

At this point I think the main reason I’m hoping this 4K OOT happens is so that I can stop coming here for bootlegs and getting sucked into the whirlpool of combativeness and negativity the General Star Wars Discussion board has become.

You’re wrong! This sub forum isn’t monolithically bad!

You’re wrong! How could you even say that?!?!

Ah, it’s gonna be a fun four weeks until that celebration panel.

crissrudd4554 said:

A shame the current sets don’t include it though.

Hey, if this rumor about it being remastered in hd turns out to be true they could throw it in as an extra on the inevitable I-IX UHD box set just like how they included the vintage making-ofs from 77-83 on the blu-ray.

The extensive LotR appendices, completed in 2004 with the Extended Edition of Return of the King, were also done in SD. At least they and EoD were 16:9. The Alien Quadrilogy making-ofs from right around that same time (2003/2004) were 4:3 and had to be both cropped and upscaled when they were carried over to the blu-ray in 2010.

Dangerous Days was made in 2007 but only released on a regular dvd across all of the various SKUs of Blade Runner released that year (even for the bd and hddvd). It’s 16:9 and looks like it could have been done at a higher resolution and then downscaled. I’m not sure if this was ever definitively answered, but it’s been ten years and the documentary was never released in hd.

moviefreakedmind said:

Fang Zei said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Fang Zei said:

nickyd47 said:

SilverWook said:

That a documentary made in 2004 wasn’t shot in HD, (if only to future proof it) is weird.

So if anything, we’ll get an upscaled version of it

I feel like we don’t really know.

Did the guy who blabbed about it provide any kind of details?

Just that there were delays with Lucasfilm giving him the prints of the unaltered footage and that he was worried that if they wanted it soon they’d have to upscale things. This was about two years ago though.

Implying that they were actually doing a fresh scan of the unaltered material for the first time in decades? Interesting…

It was not clear what the delays were. He admitted to not knowing so it could have been anything from the scans being a work in progress to them not even doing scans. If the blu-ray forum man is right, then Disney/Lucasfilm has scanned, or is scanning, all of its Star Wars material in 4K.

We can only hope he is right.

Meanwhile, Disney has actually restored Song of the South.

Anything is possible.

moviefreakedmind said:

Fang Zei said:

nickyd47 said:

SilverWook said:

That a documentary made in 2004 wasn’t shot in HD, (if only to future proof it) is weird.

So if anything, we’ll get an upscaled version of it

I feel like we don’t really know.

Did the guy who blabbed about it provide any kind of details?

Just that there were delays with Lucasfilm giving him the prints of the unaltered footage and that he was worried that if they wanted it soon they’d have to upscale things. This was about two years ago though.

Implying that they were actually doing a fresh scan of the unaltered material for the first time in decades? Interesting…

nickyd47 said:

SilverWook said:

That a documentary made in 2004 wasn’t shot in HD, (if only to future proof it) is weird.

So if anything, we’ll get an upscaled version of it

I feel like we don’t really know.

Did the guy who blabbed about it provide any kind of details?

Cthulhunicron said:

What exactly does it mean for the negative to be disassembled?

Sorry, I wrote and posted my response without fully understanding the context of your question. I’ve edited my post above accordingly with additional information.

Cthulhunicron said:

What exactly does it mean for the negative to be disassembled?

The first thing they did for the Special Edition was clean up the original negative shot by shot and frame by frame. This process was started in 1994. The technology to do this digitally didn’t exist yet, as it would by 2004, so they were still doing this photochemically. Because the o-neg was made up of four different kinds of film stocks (one for the shots that would’ve come straight from the camera, another for the vfx shots, etc), it had to be disassembled in order to clean and chemically treat each shot with the tender love and care it needed. I’m not sure if this necessitated separating each and every shot (for example, the scene where Luke has dinner with Owen and Beru was presumably all shot on the same film stock, so maybe they were able to clean/bath that scene without disassembling it).

While they were doing this, they also redid the optical wipes. This would have involved separating the end of each scene from the beginning of the next.

The negative has been conformed to the SE since 1997. George decided to cut the changes directly into the negative because, as far as he was concerned, the SE was the official version of the movie now.

We recently got confirmation from the relevant person at Fox that the pieces of the negative replaced for the SE were indeed put into storage and not discarded. It’s worth noting, though, that many of the vfx shots had deteriorated by '97 because of the chemical properties of the specific film stock they were finished on. As a result, even the shots that weren’t completely redone with cgi still had to be replaced. Because the only alternative was going to a grainier second-generation source like an IP or sep, George instead had ILM go back to what I presume were the VistaVision originals (which I guess hadn’t faded as badly?) and recomposite those shots digitally.

I think I remember reading on zombie’s website that the negative need not be disassembled to reconstruct the unaltered version. Because a modern restoration would be done digitally anyway, they would simply need to take a scan of the o-neg as it is now, scan in the pieces that got replaced, and rebuild everything in the digital realm.

I’ve accepted that the theatrical prequels will probably never be officially released on modern formats and will likely become a historical curiosity. That’s what places like this are for.

But it would be nice if the Star Wars movies I grew up with (for better or for worse) were preserved in their original form for future generations. The OUT/OOT is what really matters, though. Obviously there isn’t nearly as much demand for the PUT/OPT.

Quick side question:

I’m just throwing this out there for anyone who might have the answer, but do we know exactly why Fox loses the rights to the other five movies in 2020 as opposed to some other time?

Just to clarify, I’m not asking for an explanation of why they’re losing the rights. That much has been made clear. I’m just wondering why it’s happening in 2020 and not some other time. I’m also curious how we were able to figure this out in the first place. There was an article written on some website shortly after the Disney deal that gave the 2020 date, but I don’t think it was ever explained how the writer knew it was 2020.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

And CPY

That also.

crissrudd4554 said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

I mean, unless they had leftovers just sitting around, why would they not use the new master?

And I imagine with the number of times the 04 disks were reissued, there weren’t many left by 2013.

I would imagine they would have just kept pressing the same '04 DVDs since it would likely cost less than designing and pressing brand new discs for something thats only minorly different from the previous DVD releases. I guess not.

Yeah, but for the prequels you’d have slightly different color timing on TPM (not to mention filmic anomolies like wobble, dirt and dust, and also slightly tighter framing) and significantly different color timing on AotC.

crissrudd4554 said:

rpvee said:

TV’s Frink said:

Hey look, you can get the 6-Disc DVD set that includes the GOUT from Amazon for only $310…and free Prime shipping!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EN71DG/ref=dra_a_ms_mr_hn_xx_P1400_1000?tag=dradisplay-20&ascsubtag=3bc20f423c91737175e22556e17a66d5_S

I didn’t know that set had the GOUT. I thought the only time those DVDs were released in one package was the rare Best Buy tin.

I have the tin case set. Anyways as Fang confirmed yes that set does have the GOUT sets just in slimmer cases and would be the final time, along with the PT, the SW films were in a DVD only set.

Quick question. The DVDs that accompanied the 2013 BD reissues. Are those new DVDs based off the 2011 BDs or just the 2004 DVDs repackaged??

I remember reading confirmation somewhere that they are indeed the 2011 versions.

chyron8472 said:

jedimasterobiwan said:

I hope it doesn’t make all the star wars fan edits not be available anymore. 😦

George Lucas himself had long since known about fan edits. When asked about it in an interview, he said, while bitter about people doing it, he just cared that he had his version with his name on it (the article in question was actually about SW:Revisited).

Disney has had more than enough opportunity now to drop the hammer down on fan projects, but they haven’t. I was just saying, and I stress hypothetically, that making it too easy can bring it more mainstream, which has the hypothetical capacity to annoy them into action.

I also doubt a small handful of third party sellers on eBay are on Disney’s radar.

Disney hasn’t dropped the hammer because they realize they have no one but themselves to blame for Harmy’s efforts over the last four years even being necessary.