Hal 9000

I’m in the process of giving ESB a fresh regrade, starting over using the LUTs provided by DrDre. I think it’ll be less ‘better because it’s different,’ and more ‘better because it’s actually better.’ Part of what I’m doing is to apply less correction in many scenes, as well as using different blends of LUTs.

The impetus and focus for this is the lightsabers during the duel in and around the carbon freezing chamber. I was and still am content with their color in this project, but I feel something has got to be done about the low contrast cores. With the new 19SE transfer to compare to, the 2011 BluRay just won’t do.
While no usable source for the 19SE is available, I wonder whether its appearance would be too different to blend in with the BluRay’s other carbon freezing chamber scenes. Comparing the two, they feel rather distinct from each other.
Another option would be to just borrow from Adywan’s Revisited for those sequences as I did for the Wampa. However, I would prefer to retain the original sabers without them being totally recreated. He also added yellow light whenever the sabers collide which I’d prefer not to include. However, using Revisited only for key shots in which no sabers collide may work well enough. (I believe I’ve gotten the carbon freezing scene graded to a close match to Revisited for this reason.)
A third option would be to cull from work from other members which I may not be aware of. Ideally merely restoring the white cores of the sabers, perhaps through adjusting settings within a mask without completely redoing the saber effects.

(I’m of course hoping that my eventual primary source for ROTJ, be it Adywan’s or something else, will already have reckoned with the BluRay’s botch-job with the sabers during the third act, whether through hard work or using the 19SE.)

Because mine is a function of Google being my ISP. A new one wouldn’t hold much.

Plus I’m not in a place where the extra hassle of doing a whole new set of encodes of all three films (12 total) would be trivial. BUT, like I said, having those alternate crawls available on their own is more than okay with me.

I am running out of space, so I probably wouldn’t release a whole alternative slew of encodes, but if Ridley wants to render alternate crawls I would host them for anyone wishing to cobble them into the edits themselves.

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Thanks for that; glad you enjoyed it and can appreciate some of the hopelessly obscure details. 😃

More evidence that this version use the 1997 special edition as its base, with subsequent changes being re-created fresh.

Right; the end result would be 1080p, so there’s less reason to put a ton of work into starting over. (ROTJ can still benefit if my eventual source, Adywan or otherwise, used anything from the new transfers.) ESB might be revised to use the new transfer during the duel to get rid of the missing cores without resorting to Revisited in which they were completely redone.

No; I’m really not up to something like that and depend on the coloring abilities of others around here for the most part.

Once we’re out of what is now being called ‘The Skywalker Saga,’ I think there’ll be significantly less pressure on everything to be great.

lazerpanda said:

Was wondering if I could get a copy of your fan edits Hal.

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The extended cell bay set backdrop looks more realistic in the 04 version to me, with the 19SE being a little closer to the 77 version.

I got whiplash reading that.

It’s so weird for that one new brief shot to be framed closer than all the rest which are the same.

Wow, that’s super desaturated.

I’m not free to do screen caps at the moment but I’ll try to later.

Seems like most redone 2004/11 changes are no better or worse, with some being a bit better and some being a bit worse.

snooker said:

Shaw’s eyebrows look different to me, but that might just be the colors.

JEDIT: They’re totally different, and much much more seamless.

Wow, you’re right.

poppasketti said:

Replace “these are the first steps” in Rey’s TFA vision with “maclunkey.”

Replace all audio and quotes in the sequence into controversial SE changes. (Luke’s scream, Vader’s “nooo”, Boba Fett’s new voice, Jedi Rocks, etc.)

This is why I was reluctant to put out an alternate “Padme Dies” version of my edit: awesome edits that are available that feature such an ending.
Sounds solid, Dom. I’m glad you’re putting it out there.

I enjoyed it at 1AM. Glad YTP has continued strong as an art form.

That’s where I’d go to get them myself.

none said:

Anyone notice any 2004-2011 changes which did not make this 2019 version?

The disappearing Y-Wings, for one.

To settle whether things were redone from the original or the 1997 SE, someone could check the redone saber-bolt flashes as Luke trains with the seeker. There’s one shot in the 1997 SE and onward which incorrectly treated part of the background as part of the flash. If that is the case, it’s gotta be from the 1997 SE restoration. If not, it’s either not, or they fixed that SE error.

I wonder what it’d be like to blend the color grades of the GOUT, 1997 SE laserdiscs, 2011 BluRays, 4K77/(80/)83, and the 19SE into one version. Just average them all out.

I still regard anything other than films containing the word ‘Episode’ to be part of the ever-Expanding Universe, and have held such material to that standard across the dividing line of the Legends reboot.

As such, Rogue One and Solo have been EU novels in movie form. Same for this new show. It’s not Star Wars at its essence, as plenty of EU material takes a rather different tone or subject matter afield of Luke’s hero’s journey. This show is like a comic put to film, and an older styled one at that. Within that lens I don’t feel it makes sense for me to be very critical of it.

It seems like the prequels were sourced from the BluRay master but altered a bit from there, and the originals remastered from what the 2004 masters were sourced from but redone from there. 1997 changed are once again carried over, with anything subsequent being redone. A. couple of 2004 fixes seem to have been accidentally omitted, a few more have been done, and the previous 2004/2011 changes have been recreated (some more successfully than others). The originals have a far better color grade but have been processed to a greater degree that may not be desirable.

Add a subtitle to the shot.

“I am about to shoot without warning.”