Fang Zei

blast, I had something written in reply to baron's last comment, but I got an error page from the forum when I tried posting it, not sure that's ever happened before.

Anyway, what I said was that it's funny how baron should bring this up:

"I think Lucas may have actually thought it had a chance at a Blade Runner-type rediscovery with teenagers or something."

because that's pretty much exactly what happened with the friend I was rooming with at the time. I walked in and he was watching the single disc version on his computer with headphones. He still thinks the cgi is less jarring/out-of-place than it is in Star Wars.

I just had a little email correspondence with Bill Hunt in regards to that rumor mill post from a few days ago and here's what he had to say:

"Well, it’s not for sure, but that’s what I’m hearing right now. Not all of them, probably just the first three films, and then the second three would come out later. Fingers crossed. I’ll post updates in The Rumor Mill as I get them.

 

Bill"

By "the first three" he meant the prequels.

Sorry to double post, but I just got a reply from an email I sent Bill Hunt.

"Well, it’s not for sure, but that’s what I’m hearing right now. Not all of them, probably just the first three films, and then the second three would come out later. Fingers crossed. I’ll post updates in The Rumor Mill as I get them.

 

Bill"

I just emailed him back to ask if by "the first three films" he meant the originals or the prequels.

EDIT: he meant the prequels.

Honestly, I wish Lucas had never bothered with the GOUT. It has caused us so much frustration that I just wish he had held off until he was going to show the films proper treatment.

now this is interesting ....

Okay... here's an interesting bit of information that leaked on the Net yesterday. The Cool Toy Review website posted shots from a Lucasfilm sales presentation that revealed the Holiday 2009 release of a second LEGO Indiana Jones video game... and the complete Indiana Jones Trilogy on Blu-ray Disc. The post was pulled down faster than you can say Lost Ark, but a few other sites still link to the URL it was at, including The Pirate Universe. We're trying to confirm this with our industry sources, so we'll let you know when we do. Lucasfilm has already let it be officially known that Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season One is coming to Blu later this year via Warner (our sources say it will likely hit stores in November), so this would mean that Lucasfilm is embracing the format in a big way this year. Our sources have previously informed us that at least some of the Star Wars films may be on deck for Blu-ray release starting in 2010, but that's still a ways off. As is always the case with Lucasfilm news, we'll believe it all when we see the actual discs on the shelf.

-from the rumor mill at thedigitalbits.com

This is the first time they've ever mentioned that little bit about their sources saying to expect Star Wars on blu-ray next year, though I don't get why LFL would only put "some" of them out and not all six at once. I would think they'd finally give us all six movies together in one collection for the people who've been waiting so long (I mean, OOT or no OOT, it's supposed to be one big six-part movie, right?!?!?!) Yeah, I'm not giving much credence to that "some" part.

The other thing I'm seriously wondering is whether LFL will actually do everything right this time. Don't get me wrong, I hope blu-ray takes off, but how confident is LFL that they'll be able to successfully double and triple dip all over again on this brand new format?

Congratulations guys, this thread got me to break out my 97 vhs letterbox set for the first time in what must be years. I was even surprised to see none other than (at the time future) LOTR visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri in the feature about the SE restoration.

I even synced up the '04 dvd so I could do an a-b comparison. Luke's return to the homestead is a scene I payed extra comparison attention to since I remember a book at the library called "The Cinema of George Lucas" where they mention the '04 digital restoration of the OT and THX-1138 and the frame of film they used for Star Wars was from the shot of Luke running towards the camera yelling "Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru." My comparison, even though it's also between different formats, was pretty much what I remember seeing in that book.

I actually had a couple paragraphs typed out way back when this thread was started, but I cut and didn't paste. To sum all of it up, blu-ray has wowed me and being able to watch the original version of Blade Runner in 1080/24p makes me seriously wonder if we'll see Star Wars given the same treatment sometime in the next few years.

Otherwise, it's been a while since I've bought anything Star Wars, which I believe was the last issue of Dark Times back in June. My Cowclops v2 transfers, which I used to play ALL THE TIME, haven't been watched in months. Somehow, knowing that it isn't as accurate (in terms of color, etc) as the GOUT makes me actually consider laying down good money for that most recent boxset, but then I remember a) I don't have money to blow right now and b) the blu-ray, which will hit with some version of the movie on it sometime in the next few years, could very well include the original version in 1080p.

C3PX said:

 

Not sure, but I think George has talked about being inspired in part by LOTR before.

 

I even heard that's where the idea for Willow came from. Lucas couldn't get the films rights to LOTR, so he made Willow instead.

Got to love how it still says "limited time only."

I wouldn't bet on seeing a blu-ray release until after (or at least at the same time as) the 3D release, and my guess for that would still be next year. If anything were hitting this May, we'd know about it by now. Only false alarms like the GOUT are out of the blue.

skyjedi2005 said:

I mean unless he is waiting to put them on Blu Ray after the 3D releases in theaters if that even ever happens. 

This has been my assumption. He's been working on the 3D version for some time now, probably too long for it to just not end up happening, and I think that also means we'll see it sooner rather than later. I still think it would make perfect sense for them to get a trailer out with the 3D version of Avatar this December, with something like "coming next year, 3D Star Wars!" Then the audience is (hopefully) blown away by Avatar in 3D and can't wait to see what Star Wars will be like.

I would really, really hope that we see the end all be all blu-ray set after that. But I do get the sinking feeling that Lucas will drag things out just like he did with dvd, opting to put only the final versions out first and then include the original versions in a later release. At the same time, I think Lucas really has so many odds stacked against him in terms of what everyone will expect with the blu-ray debut that he'll have little choice but to include the original versions, especially if the sentiments about the franchise's declining popularity are fact and not opinion.

On the subject of people getting big-ass lcd's and plasmas with no HD content to play on them, just remember that back in the day unless you had a laserdisc player you weren't taking full advantage of your analog tv's capability, aside from what you got over antenna/cable/satellite of course. DVD finally changed that.

On the subject of blu-ray not being worth the upgrade over standard dvd, this is what comes to mind:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=15081975&postcount=3

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=15081979&postcount=4

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=15081981&postcount=5

The problem? DVD still looks too damn good. I've seen what blu-ray looks like on a huge projector, but watching dvd on a nine-year old player hooked up to a 40 inch bravia is good enough for the time being. I just watched raiders (from the '03 set) last night and it looked fine as long as I wasn't sitting too close. The '04 star wars set looks so clear that it hurts (just reminding everyone why we're here:). Heck, back in '04 my friend's family got a 60 inch lcd and a bose system. DVD's look AMAZING on it! He's got like 600 discs and counting and is therefore in no rush to upgrade.

What I'm noticing about blu-ray is that with these new releases the price is only slightly (if at all) higher than the two-disc dvd, with the single disc dvd being a few dollars cheaper. There's probably a huge demographic of people like me who want their dvd's looking better than hardware they've been using since '99 can provide, and when the time comes to upgrade it'll be worth it to just get a BD player for a few extra bucks. Then all they'll have to do is start buying on the new format for the same price they'd be paying for the two-disc dvd. This is what will allow BD to take off imo.

Hey, I would just be happy if we could get a movie on video that went at its original 24.000 frames per second rate.

This is kind of random, but I thought this as good a thread as any to post it in:

Over at AICN, Harry Knowles mentions in his story about the 20 minutes or so of Star Trek footage that was recently screened to the press that David Fincher was rumored to be directing one of the PT movies back in the day. Is this true?

I just find it kind of an odd coincidence considering he would've been in my top three (one for each movie) of directors for the PT. Him, Johnston and Darabont, all ILM/Lucasfilm alums.

Well there is one thing I found out recently that sort of burst my bubble / rained on my parade in regards to blu-ray:

I started browsing the avs forums and noticed a lot of threads where people would post the disc info for the latest blu-rays and they always said 23.976 frames per second. I never did quite get a full answer from anyone as to why this is the case, but after thinking about it for a while on my own I concluded that since some older hdtv's only went at 23.976/29.97/59.94 and not the whole number framerates then the signal would need to correspond. I guess you could call this "how I learned to stop worrying and love NTSC." It's one less advantage that HD has over analog, but it's not exactly a deal-breaker. Blu-ray does support 24.000p, which is nice to know.

I dunno, I guess the day they figure out how to get 2K cinema in your room is the day movie theaters die.

Now that I've downloaded it, question:

Do I actually have to burn it in order to open it, or can I open it straight from the hard drive?

Yeah I know, I was just wondering if he had to speed it up from the slower framerate or if it was already like that.

Adywan,

How did you get it to go 24.000p? Was the broadcast you used already like that or did you speed it up from 23.976?

By the way, until quite recently I was also under the impression that movies were always encoded on blu-ray at their original framerate since we now live in the age of hd, atsc, dvb et cetera and no longer have to worry about compatibility with the analog formats. After browsing avsforum, I noticed that whenever someone posted the disc info for a blu-ray it always said 23.976fps. I even joined just so I could post a question about this, and that's how I discovered that blu-rays are almost always made this way. I think this is because not all hdtv's can go at exactly 60i/24p, they can only do 59.94i/23.976p.

It's not so much Lucas lied as he told us a half truth. Lynne Hale's email said "existing prints are in bad condition," which could mean anything Lucasfilm chooses it to mean.

I don't think it's pre-rendered on any of the consoles. The Wii, PS2 and PSP ports were all done by Krome studios. The 360/PS3 cutscenes look so good that you would actually think they're pre-rendered, but apparently they're actually in-game.

It would need to be somewhere between the CE3K and Blade Runner sets in terms of size. You would need two discs per film, you couldn't seamlessly branch both versions onto the same disc since there are at least a hundred differences between the two. Then there's the color differences that we've all gone over at length. So one disc for the original version and one disc for the latest version would be just fine. If they really wanted to go all out, they could wedge a third disc in between the other two with the '97 version.

By the way, despite all this speculation of there being even further changes, I have a feeling the '04 versions are the end of the line. Getting Lowry to scrub the picture and adding TPM Jabba, Temuera's voice, Ian and Hayden are really all there is to it. I dunno, I just think that if Lucas was going to go ahead and make those additional changes back in '04 with Episode III (the final prequel) right around the corner, he would've made all of them at that time. The same goes for the dvd versions of AOTC and ROTS. TPM is the only one I'm still curious about.

I was about to say "Did someone actually up this thread?"

But seriously, you would think the fact that a fan went through the trouble of painstakingly restoring - in high definition - the original version of a movie when the guy who owns the rights to it won't would be enough to convince said copyright owner to release the damn thing (especially since it would be much easier for him to do an even better job, having access to the actual interpositives, prints, etc) and make a ton of money off of it! People all over the internet are talking about Adywan's project. Maybe Lucas will actually get wind of it and at least reconsider.

If I were LFL, I would do this:

Put the 3D versions on track to be finished by the end of next year and get a trailer out with the 3D release of Jim Cameron's Avatar in December of '09. I'm baffled by how they'd get all six movies into the theaters, but if things are particularly slow in January and February, get it out then. It would be like '97 all over again. Then get the blu-ray on track to street by the end of 2010. It would be awesome if they included as many versions as possible, but if I could at least watch all six films in their original versions in 1080p24, I'll be happy. The live action show apparently isn't hitting until 2011 at the earliest now, so they could slap ads for the show on the blu-ray.

Of course, this is only what I would do in LFL's shoes.

It's not like LFL didn't know what they were doing. There's a big huge elephant in the room when the '04 dvd's are enhanced for 16:9 television (like 99.999 percent of all widescreen dvd's out there) while the '06 bonus discs aren't and they go "but isn't that what you wanted?"

While there's no real point in "should have's," I do think that the whole laserdisc port vs. genuine dvd remastering thing is what allowed GL to get away with what he did. We can blame ourselves for this, but we'd be the only ones to do so. Who in their right mind digs up a laserdisc master of a 29 year old movie for its first time ever on dvd?!

No, I have a feeling George would've done this even if we had specified "remastered from an actual film print, thank you." No one at LFL ever even said they read that specific petition (as if there was any bigger one), they just said that there'd been a huge demand from fans for it.

Yeah but that's the thing, I remember LFL making an official statement way back when that they were supporting blu-ray.

I know the recent talk (even after January) from LFL is that they're playing the waiting game, but didn't they say wayyyy back in '06 that they were supporting blu-ray?