Harmy

PM sent :-)

OK, here goes, I darkened the technicolour picture to more reasonable levels (only brightness and contrast, nothing else) and tried to approximate the colours of that:

Yeah, the original elements were shot on 70mm exactly for that reason.

That's what I'm trying to do but the technicolour pictures are closer to the SE than to any other transfer out there, I don't know how you don't see that.

@ S_Matt: Man, I seriously cringe whenever I read one of your posts in this topic. 

We want the live action cinematographer's work to be seen unimpeded by dirt or other artifacts.

Yeah, dirt and other artefacts that weren't originally present - that's what restoration means, to get it as close to the way it originally looked as possible and that includes the special effects. A reasonable and careful digital clean-up (such as the one Richard Harris did on the Godfather) and digital recompositing ain't the same f*cking ball park. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same f*cking sport.

Yeah, sure, I'm glad you did, I think an interesting discussion sprang up and it got me to experiment with that scene a bit more, which I'm doing right now. I'll post some more caps when it's done.

But I'm not trying to replicate the reds of the SE. Not to mention that the GOUT is far more red-shifted than the SE, it's just not as obvious because of the low saturation.

Thanks DJ, I see how Empire is a bit oversaturated perhaps, it really depends on the calibration of the TV/monitor your're watching on and like I said before, there's no need for re-authoring, just pull the saturation down on your TV when watching it. I definitely don't think what I'm doing with STAR WARS is over-saturated though, I pulled the saturation down a lot compared to the SE. Actually, when I tried pulling it down even more, everyone started to have a sickly greyish colour, which just can't be right.

And the thing is that you say you still feel like watching the SE, but I'm pretty sure that's because you've been watching the original versions in the desaturated transfers done for VHS and LD for 30 years, so that's how the OOT looks in your mind and anything more saturated seems like the SE, which had more rich and saturated colours even in the 97 transfer.

The SE transfers were both more modern transfers than any transfer of the OOT and as such are far more likely to be closer to the original in this sense. There are of course some major colour-timing screw-ups, (which I am trying to fix) but the rich vibrant colours don't seem to be one of them.

And don't get me wrong, I do agree, that the 04SE did go over the top with it's saturation and that why I AM desaturating it, but not to anywhere near the sometimes almost B&W levels of the GOUT.

You didn't see the boxes in 77, because with proper levels, they wouldn't be visible and them being visible is a side product of the telecine. But those are garbage mattes, not matte lines, that's something completely different. So when you say you want to be transported back to 77, you're effectively saying you'd like to see the film restored to as close to the way it looked in theatres in 1977 and the original optical composites are a part of that. And the film would have to be cleaned up to account for the ageing but not a step further.

It seriously frustrates me, that even here so many people would like to see the recomposited FX in an OOT restoration, because the original FX are a huge part of the film's historical value, they were a great achievement at the time and redoing them in a computer totally takes that away, the matte lines and extra grain are just a natural part of the special effects technology of the time.

Today, it would be possible to recreate the FX shots with CG, to make them look exactly the same but in higher quality, which would effectively be the same kind of thing as recompositing them.

^That!

I agree with Zombie on this issue. And mainly, I trust the guy, he did a lot of research and wrote a fucking 600pg (or so) book about STAR WARS:

Sorry, guys, but I must strongly disagree, the way I see it, Luke is way more orange in the Technicolour photo than in any of the other pictures and he's downright purple in the GOUT (which most definitely is undersaturated, which was proved by those technicolour photos.) And I just maintain that it is less saturated than the Technicolour pic, the only thing I'm considering with that shot, is brightening it up a bit.

Anyway, here are some more pictures:

I don't know but it seems like we're not looking at the same pictures. The GOUT is grossly undersaturated, there's no question about that and the only picture in which you can see skin tones is the one with Luke, which is over-all redder than either the SE or the GOUT (both very blue cast), because I colour timed it to resemble the technicolour photo (while compensating for its overexposure). And the red skin is very natural in that shot, because he's looking at a red sunset and is illuminated by it. And as to the saturation, it's already considerably lowered and I'm not going any lower with it, because that way I'd soon get to the GOUT levels.

Let me just repeat here, that I only keep the recomposited shots, because there is no higher quality version of the original available. If I could restore every single matte line, while keeping the high quality, I would do so without a second's hesitation.

I HATE digital recompositing, because it's sneaky, it creates an illusion of it being the original shot, while it's actually not what was achieved back then. The special FX are one of the most historically important parts of STAR WARS and with every matte line removed, the film loses some of it's historical value.

Nine-year-olds can do digital compositing on their computers today, there's nothing special about it but doing a good optical composite is a very difficult and time consuming process, so whenever a shot is recomposited digitally, it loses some of it's value and specialness and it is a disgrace to the people who spent hundreds of hours working on the original composites.

EDIT: Sorry, wrong thread...

Thanks again, guys, I'm really happy about all the positive responses :-)

I'm full on in the cutting and colouring process now. Just now, I'm reviewing a workprint of the 1st 45 minutes and am generally really happy with it.

I considered compositing in the original Leia hologram from GOUT but after I tested it out, I decided to just try and colour correct the SE one to make it look closer to the original.

With the colour problematic scenes such as the capture of R2 and the sunset, I'm going with a sort of a middle ground approach for now, here are a few screenshots, please let me know what you think:

@vbangle: Care to explain?

That is AMAZING!!!

Yeah, these are double layer DVDs, which is an absolute necessity with all the sound-mixes included.

Hey, guys. Did anyone ever come up with an answer to what the sunset should look like then? I'm working on the colour correction now and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

Nice :-)

Hey, how's this coming along?

So any news on this guys? How does it look, is there anything that could be of use? I was hoping someone would review it when they download it.

Well, that's exactly the same shot as in the 2004 DVD. And it's such an easy fix too. So if they didn't fix it for the trailer, I just can't imagine them acknowledging it as a mistake and fixing it for the BD.

Well, Blade Runner was also only available on DVD in the DC version for like 10 years. I remember that I bought it on DVD and I wanted to see the original (which I prefer) a could only find it as LD rip (and a shitty one at that, nothing like the quality of LD transfers we're used to here).

But then of course they released a reference quality release of all versions, which may be one of the best home video releases to date.

Yeah, I even already posted a video some time ago, where the ships were removed :-)