Fang Zei

m_s0 said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

I won't be convinced until the OOT gets a proper rerelease and the EU abandons the use of PT-styled Sith.

Agreed about the OOT, but I couldn't care less about the EU. Unless you consider this new trilogy part of EU, I suppose.

Like I've said in a couple other threads, we still don't really know what they're gonna do in regards to continuity. They're either going to "ignore" (i.e. just not bring up certain things because it won't have anything to do with this movie's story), which I think would be the best solution, or they're gonna press the reset button and "pretend it never happened" (i.e. come up with their own backstory of whatever's happened since Endor), which would be stupid IMO considering the EU has been doing exactly that for the last 20 or so years.

This rumor about Mayhew coming back would seem to indicate the latter, but all we really have is rumors at this point.

Anyway, it's cool they're writing that book. It'll probably introduce a whole new generation to McQuarrie's OT artwork. I kinda love the connotation in that woman's voice when she says "they've grown up on the prequels," like she really wants to say it but knows she shouldn't.

It only makes the OUT seem that much more conspicuously absent, indeed. You'd certainly hope this is a sign they'll be bringing it back sooner rather than later.

But for a scope movie like Star Wars, it really should be the full 2048 that's being used. 2K for scope is 2048:853, 2K for 1.85:1 is 1998:1080 and for 16:9 it's, of course, 1920:1080. 

Also, I find it interesting that the article is apparently (without an exact translation) saying that it's Disney, not Fox, that's doing this release. That either means Disney and Fox actually worked out a deal over the last 18 months, or that there's nothing legally stopping Lucasfilm/Disney from doing this in Australia and Germany but they wouldn't be able to do so in the U.S.

It may simply be that I'm overthinking this and that Fox is still technically distributing but that it was Disney's idea to do the release. Fox wouldn't be able to do such a release without Lucasfilm's blessing anyway, so this would make sense.

Most movies finished as a DI are only done so at 2K anyway. The theater gets it as a 2K file on a hard drive and the 4K projector upscales it. 

I was unaware that the C4 saga screening was done using a commercial cinema projector. IV-VI were only cleaned up at 1920:1080 HD resolution (although the source scan was 1828:1556 which is considered a 2K harvest of the "squeezed" anamorphic image on the negative of true cinemascope movies like the OT and TPM). The Lowry guys were very specific about that at the press conference in 2004 (with Hamill, Kershner, Jim Ward et al) when someone asked if it was 2K. They also specified full RGB resolution, which makes sense since they were doing this on 600 networked powermacs. I can only assume they meant 1920:817 for the actual 2.35:1 image itself. Either way, 1920 is still slightly below the 2048 of true 2K.

This info about the C4 screening, coupled with the fact that GL did go ahead and make additional changes to the Lowry master for the blu-ray, makes me wonder if he really did intend it as the basis for any and all future releases of the movies. Now that it's Disney's property, I would assume they'd want it transfered in a quality greater than just hdtv/blu-ray.

Y'know, now that I think about it, these are probably just the 35mm German prints from 1997.

SilverWook said:

If this 4K thing catches on, the Blu Ray masters aren't going to cut the mustard. They'd have to to go back to a film master, and that leaves the '97 versions and the OOT.

I doubt the Mouse nor Fox are going to let the 40th anniversary in 2017 go unexploited.

The Lowry master doesn't even cut the mustard right now in terms of a theatrical re-release. All of the digital projectors installed in theaters right now are at least full 2K res (2048 by 1080). Lowry only did the 2004 job with hdtv in mind. The projectors in theaters at the time were 1280 by 1024, I believe, with an anamorphic lens to unsqueeze the image to its full ratio (someone please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not so sure about that).

So, whether 4K tv catches on or not, the current digital master shouldn't be used with anything but a blu-ray reissue in mind.

Has the OT ever been exhibited theatrically as a dcp???? The Lowry master, aside from being used for its initial purpose in the 2004 dvd release, has only ever been used for hd broadcasts and the blu-rays. They've never used it to make a dcp for theatrical exhibition, not to my knowledge anyway.

Mike O,

Regarding FotR, you're probably right. The problem with that new transfer isn't so much the coloration as the lack of contrast in the image. A big piece of evidence is the dissolve to white when Arwen saves Frodo: on all other transfers it's bright white whereas it's just a pale shade of green on the extended blu-ray. It's the same problem with any other scenes that should exhibit "peak white," such as the letters in the title shot and end credits. When you consider that a recall would've involved exchanging not just one, but two whole discs, you can see why everyone involved would've agreed to just keep saying "it looks exactly as we intended." Pretty frustrating when - aside from that one significant problem that affects the entire transfer - it's actually a pretty big step up from the theatrical blu-ray in terms of detail. All previous transfers of FotR were telecines of filmouts. The extended blu-ray was the first time they made a transfer directly from the DI files.

The new transfer of Raiders is really more of a head-scratcher than a frustration. When you consider that they'd already done newer transfers of the three movies in 2008 (it's those transfers that were used for the Temple and Crusade blu-rays, in fact) and even struck new 35mm prints from them, you wonder what decisions led to them giving Raiders a radically different color-timing in 2012 from how they made it look in 2008.

generalfrevious said:

Mike O said:

Fang Zei said:

Yeah, I hate that directors can't leave well enough alone and have to digitally erase stuff from their older films. It becomes frustrating when a movie like Evil Dead gets a beautiful restoration for its blu-ray debut but is then altered from its original version because the director wanted to "fix" things.

By the way, did Cameron actually make alterations to T1? I remember reading about one or two shots that people had spotted, but I never saw screenshot comparisons. It's probably a given that he's made "fixes" to True Lies and The Abyss, which are hitting blu-ray later this year. I should probably brace myself for when the eventual remaster of T2 suffers a similar fate.

 What alterations were made The Evil Dead Blu-Ray? I know it didn't include the mono. The Terminator didn't include the original mono track, and much like he did with Aliens, Cameron has changed the color timing completely to that teal and orange that he wants it to swim in. I think the sadder part is that not only will T2, The Abyss, and True Lies almost certainly suffer the same fate (I still hate myself for supporting Wal-Mart and buying the HDX True Lies from Vudu, but it was the only place to get it.), and no one will give a damn. No one cares about the kind of revisionism practiced by Lucas, there certainly isn't anyone who gives a fuck about the recoloring on those films :(. The dark side of digital, change is easier than ever, and why? Because they can. And after Cameron spoke out against what Lucas did, too. FML.

 Those were minor technical points, aren't they? Cameron really hasn't done what Lucas has (right?), changing whole scenes around where another character shoots first, people screaming nooooo when they didn't in an earlier version, editing out original actors and replacing them with actors who weren't alive when  the original film was out, and shoehorning CGI from the late 90s into a film from the 70s. Then deride the real films as rough drafts and letting them disintegrate and be lost forever. This is a whole new level than just color correcting.

Raimi had some of the glaring bloopers - bloopers that kinda give the movie part of its charm - digitally erased. It's even more frustrating because they made brand new masters of both the 1.37:1 and 1.85:1 versions to include on the blu-ray (just as the old dvd had both framings), and they both have the same digital revisions in them.

Cameron didn't quite do the same thing as Lucas with his newer transfers of Aliens and Titanic, no, but then again I think Cameron puts more emphasis on the original version's edit being what makes it the "original version" than any digital revisions that may be found within otherwise identical edits, and he "fixed" a whole bunch of things in Titanic for its most recent release. Funny enough, the theatrical cut of Aliens on the blu-ray can't technically be called that from an editing standpoint either: Cameron corrected the order of four shots where Ripley picks up a flamethrower, puts down a machine gun, picks up a machine gun, puts down a flamethrower. Although I guess I should simply be thankful that the only thing he erased in Aliens (AFAIK) is Lance Henricksen's torso sticking out of the ground in a shot during the final action scene. It's almost like the snake pit reflection to Aliens' RotLA.

Similarly, Cameron seems to have left T1 alone for the most part, although I don't see why it was so much troubke to include the mono track. He's given it that new color timing, yeah, but those kind of things don't tend to bother me as much. I'll admit the most recent transfer of Raiders didn't look right to my eyes when the screenshots popped up online, but then again there seems to be disagreement as to just how the movie looked in '81. The new transfers of Fellowship of the Ring and AotC (Hey, back on topic!) also look weird to me, and I suspect it has something to do with digging up movies that were some of the earliest DI's after almost a decade.

SilverWook said:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disney-chief-reveals-star-wars-693950

Filming has already begun, according to this. Of course, that could simply mean crews out on location shooting background plates or something, not the actual start of principal photography.

 Anyone else notice the figure given by Alan Horn?

35 years, not the 30 given by Bob Iger.

Like I said, 30 years is the minimum, not the maximum.

There was a story recently (also by THR, I believe) that "sources" are claiming Mayhew will return as Chewbacca. Honestly, I don't know what to believe until a script leaks, and even then ....

Harmy said:

And the whole film just looks somehow unrealistic - I think the frame-rate conversion from 48 to 24fps may be at fault there, or maybe it's the fact that the film's been shot digitally, I don't know - either way, it is a visual disaster, as well as a storytelling one.

The big problem with shooting at double the normal framerate is that it necessitated an increase in the shutter speed, which results in a somewhat more choppy image than we're used to from the original lotr trilogy (and most movies in general, for that matter). They split the difference and instead of keeping a 180-degree shutter angle, which would've made the 24p version look ultra-choppy and unwatchable, they made it 270-degree. This results in a shutter speed of roughly 1/64 of a second. It's faster than the pleasant, 1/48 shutter speed we're used to, but not as harsh as the 1/96 we would've gotten with a 180-degree shutter.

There were reports that the 24p version had the motion blur digitally added back in, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. Either way, I think it's a plain fact that the movie wouldn't look the way it does if Jackson had just stuck to shooting in 24p. Shooting on Arri Alexa would've also given the movie a more filmlike texture. I think the big reason they went with RED was its ability to shoot 48fps in 3D (Jackson said the company had only just released the firmware upgrade for it as The Hobbit was about to start shooting).

This grand experiment with shooting in 48p has essentially resulted in a compromised 24p version of the movie. I saw both movies in the theater in 48-frame 3D because that's how they were actually shot and intended to be seen. It's just that they happen to be prequels to a movie that wasn't shot that way at all.

Yeah, Dark Horse did the "one hundred years later thing" already. When Lucas Books decided to close off the NJO era and start the Legacy era, they also decided to do this comic book that jumped ahead a hundred years from where they were in the chronology. Kinda like how TNG started as the TOS movies were still being made. I'm not sure if stories in the "hundred years later" setting are still being written, though.

The only time in either of the trilogies when exact numbers are actually mentioned is AotC, and it made sense because the audience was jumping ten years in just three. Episode VII, on the other hand, will be continuing on from a thirty-two (and a half) year old movie. Whether it's 30 years later or 40, it doesn't need to be brought up in the movie itself.

Yeah, I hate that directors can't leave well enough alone and have to digitally erase stuff from their older films. It becomes frustrating when a movie like Evil Dead gets a beautiful restoration for its blu-ray debut but is then altered from its original version because the director wanted to "fix" things.

By the way, did Cameron actually make alterations to T1? I remember reading about one or two shots that people had spotted, but I never saw screenshot comparisons. It's probably a given that he's made "fixes" to True Lies and The Abyss, which are hitting blu-ray later this year. I should probably brace myself for when the eventual remaster of T2 suffers a similar fate.

That bar was kinda BWW-esque, come to think of it.

I just happened to be watching late night tv a couple weeks ago, checked the lineup to see who was on Carson Daly, and stayed up to watch when it said Ron Moore would be on.

So cool how they just opened with him talking about working on the live action show that now may never be.

Actually, the night after Agents of SHIELD's pilot episode aired, the execs at ABC and Disney were apparently so enthusiastic about the high ratings they started rumbling about a live action Star Wars show. It wouldn't be surprising, though, if this ended up being set in the era of VII-IX, taking place concurrently with the ST and "spin-off" movies. In other words, just like SHIELD is set in the midst of the MCU movies.

You gotta wonder if those scripts for the originally planned show will ever get used in any way. They'd written, what, 50 episodes or so? Could the team behind Rebels be using them as a basis for their show?

On a side note, isn't it kinda baffling the way Lucas covered the PT era? The "real time" depiction of the three years between eps II and III were the one high point. I was so suprised to hear, just as RotS was hitting theaters, that there would be even more clone wars material coming down the pipe in another couple years. Talk about milking it. And then there's the live action show which would've finally shown what many were hoping for in Episode III .... just on the small screen. Now it might not even happen at all.

It's funny how several years ago, as the Marvel movies were being made (one of them by Joe Johnston), I thought to myself how this was exactly how the prequels should've been handled, and now, with this live action show taking place alongside the movies, it's true in more ways than one.

I'd be happy if he didn't do any homages at all. We had enough of that in the prequels, like Anakin and Obi-Wan walking into that bar on Coruscant.

The only connective tissue I really care about is the style of the filmmaking itself. We already know this will be shot in the same format as the OT, but I hope Abrams and Mindel are able to make it fit with the overall aesthetic established in those movies.

"GENESIS?!"

Nimoy even mentioned on the commentary that the alien guy's weird speech pattern was Yoda-inspired.

Padme said:

That is interesting.

I really liked JJ's rendition of Star Trek, but did notice a bunch of Star Wars themes throughout. (even without them being stranded on a desert planet with a cantina!) Not that I minded, since I love both Star Wars and Star Trek.

By the way, I am new here. Anywhere I am supposed to go to introduce myself? :)

 JJ's Star Trek had a cantina, it was just in Iowa instead of on Tatooine.

Harrison Ford's age actually match's up much better with Han's if they go with 40 years later, actually.

Han is supposed to be 33 in RotJ. Harrison Ford was 39 when they started filming. He'll be 72 in July and they start shooting this in May. If Han is 74, that's much closer to his actual age.

Mark's and Luke's ages actually match up perfectly, as Luke was 23 and Mark is now 62.

Carrie would be playing a Leia who's several years older than she is, due to the five year gap between her and Mark.

Lando and Billy Dee are both 76.

Wedge and Denis are both 66.

It makes way more sense to set this 40 years later.

You're probably right, but if some official publication like, let's say, the novelization, comes out with a timeline in the first couple pages that places ep7 at 40 years post-Jedi, is anyone really gonna go back to this moment from what'll then be 21 months earlier and really care?

I mean, as long as they don't bring up an exact number in the actual movie (just as they didn't bring up exact numbers in the OT except for Ben's "a thousand generations" line about the Jedi Knights), it truly won't matter if it's officially 40 instead of 30.

Tobar said:

It's not just coming from Iger. The official Star Wars blog stated the same as well.

Yeah, but the quote had to have originated with an actual person. The third paragraph in this article confirms it originated with Iger, not the filmmakers.

http://badassdigest.com/2014/03/18/star-wars-episode-vii-still-shooting-in-may-set-30-years-after-jedi/ 

Maybe I'm placing too much emphasis on this distinction, though.

Tobar said:

KilroyMcFadden said:

1. I saw it in a tweet that was captured and posted either here or at TFN by someone from Lucasfilms (Dave Filoni?).  I'm not going to be able to link because it was weeks ago and is lost to me.  

2. The point is that I was answering the OP... "What do you hate about the EU?" answer being, that people continue to take it seriously after it has been rendered a pile of pro fan fic, referring back to the "nothing counts anymore" nature of the tweet to which I referred.

 Again, no such announcement was ever made.

What was announced is that the tiered classification system for the EU has been eliminated. Now whether it be movie, game or book they're all equal in the Star Wars canon now. With this, some material will most likely be labeled completely non-canon but what that material is has not been announced.

Exactly.

Everything made from here on out is either canon or non-canon. What remains to be seen is whether they'll leave the existing EU intact as canon or if it will retroactively be rendered non-canon or a toss up of both.

The biggest deciding factor is gonna be just how much Abrams and Kasdan care about the post-RotJ continuity. If their script for Episode VII is conveniently compatible with the books, great. If not, then I doubt they'd want to change even a single thing about the movie just to make it fit.

The tweet Kilroy refers to was from Pablo Hidalgo back in December. It caused quite a stir because he basically said the only things that were ever "canon" are the movies and the clone wars series. In other words "only what's up on screen." Everything else in this model is merely "continuity."

Since the "thirty years" line came from Iger and not from Abrams or Kasdan or Kennedy, I'm taking that news with a grain of salt. He's probably just saying that because it's been thirty years IRL since Jedi was made. Setting this at the forty year mark the books are currently at would make way more sense, since Luke's son is now almost twenty.* It's also worth noting that the actors in the OT were older than the characters they were playing, so setting it an extra ten years later basically evens it out.

I am, of course, still assuming that the existing EU isn't getting steamrolled to fit with the new movies, which remains a distinct possibility.

*Then again, who knows. There's been a lot of rumor and speculation from all the casting news. Abrams could very well intend Luke's son to be a kid only Anakin's age in Episode I. The guy made a whole movie starring a mostly younger cast (Super 8), so it's not like he'd be a stranger to this kinda thing. Also, Iger's line about "a new trio" can probably be taken at face value.

The "30 years after RotJ" line from the official site's announcement (and everything else in it, for that matter) apparently came from Bob Iger in a recent meeting with shareholders.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Going to an Indie Cinema is my preference.

They attract a better class of person than the multiplexes, people who respect the cinema, the film and their other cinema-goers. They're often cheaper, have better films, better snacks and if you're lucky some quality Ales on tap. Or on the other end of the scale, a gigantic iMax screen is often trouble free as the steep price of the ticket seems concentrate the minds of the viewers somewhat.

I shall be trying to book early for the latter where EpVII is concerned. Although funnily enough I hope my first screening of EpVII is packed to the rafters with loud cheering and boistrous fans (Some dressed in costumes and waving Lightsabers above their heads) just like there was for the SE Trilogy and EpI (EpII and EpIII just got silence). Let's face it I'm gonna go see it more than once, so I can go to a quiet screening the 2nd or 3rd or 4th or...

Ironically (or maybe not), I've found that the Saturday morning screenings - when the tickets are at their cheapest - always result in a better experience. The audience is as behaved as possible and there are zero projection problems.

You would think the people who payed more to see a movie would actually want to, y'know, put away their damn phone and enjoy the movie, but that's somehow never, ever the case. Maybe they feel like they've paid for that privilege, who knows.

Of course, you're absolutely right that skipping the multiplex and going to an indie cinema is the best solution.