silverwheel said:
But I must admit that it is a little strange that R2 displays much more fear at Jabba's, when it knew that Luke wasn't really donating them and that Luke had a plan, than on Dagobah, when R2 really had no idea what to expect.
Maybe R2 was just pretending to be scared to keep up the act?
Rounded corners or not, I'm still looking forward to this release as if it were coming to theaters for the first time. I had the opportunity to watch Harmy's Star Wars Despecialized Edition v.2.5 on an Oculus Rift Devkit 1, and even though the limited resolution of the headset kind of defeats the purpose of watching an HD version of Star Wars, it still let me do something I thought I'd never get to do--watch the original version of Star Wars on a (virtualized) big screen. When I finally receive an Oculus Rift Devkit 2, this version of Empire Strikes Back is the first movie I'm going to watch in it. Thanks, Harmy, for making it possible for me to enjoy Star Wars again! :D
DavidMerrick said:
Tobar said:
If we're going to start altering the film to recreate the original theater going experience why not lose some of the clarity of the picture and add in dirt and scratches to more closely approximate a print of the film that's been running in the theater for a while?
Dude, he's trying to recreate the film as it was shown in theatres in 1980, not some print that's been lying on a shelf for over three decades.
Personally I don't have a problem with having rounded corners or the absence of scratches and dirt. But just for the sake of argument, keep in mind that a given film print can easily go through a projector more than 150 times in its first month of release, and it won't be run through a brand-new projector unboxed specifically for that print. Most of the people who watched a film during its initial theatrical release would have seen noticeable levels of dirt and scratches on the print, especially later in the run.
Tyrphanax said:
It allows for a lot of maneuverability without any extra strain on the pilot, as well. Rolls suddenly become pretty effortless, since most Rebel fighters have artificial gravity.
With the added bonus that a B-Wing on an attack run can roll to evade enemy fighters without having the target of the attack run effectively spinning wildly from their own viewpoint.
SilverWook said:
Has the B Wing been flyable in any of the games?
There's an expansion for X-Wing that lets you fly the B-Wing.
doubleofive said:
As much as I liked the first one, I don't think we're ready for another one. Short of complaining about the Blu-ray changes, we don't have any evidence of "Disney-fication" of the franchise, beyond the announcements of spinoff movies.
I agree. And even if this whole "Disney-fication" ultimately happens, Disney will be the one to blame, not George Lucas.
RachelZ3 said:
Thank you for quick reply Jetrell, OK so it's not "Special Edition" and that is a YAY.
But is it still stepped on? Is it the earliest I could get? What the heck is this? from 35mm? Edited? 2:1? What changes should I expect on this version?
Not sure if I understand what you wrote about getting a seller that isn't as easy to work with (? must be a typo?) but I did, indeed, do a LOT of research.
He's saying that if you're not careful, you may end up purchasing from a seller that may make it difficult or impossible to return an item--even if it is unopened. It's easier to avoid problems like that if
Would it be possible to have any screenshots posted of the scene where Obi-wan disables the tractor beam? I'm really curious to see how the compositing looks in the initial wide view as Obi-wan starts making his way around the tractor beam catwalk.
The Jabba subtitles and the Death Star hologram are particularly interesting to me, since they seem to indicate that the soft focus is in fact deliberate (or at least unavoidable during actual filming), and not a limitation of the transfer process used at the time. If the 35mm theatrical prints were simply low quality, I wouldn't expect the subtitles or the Death Star hologram to show any fine details, but the subtitles are pretty sharp compared to the rest of the image, and the lines of the Death Star holograms reveal some pretty minute gaps between them in places.
TV's Frink said:
porkinsred6 said:
I don't really follow the SE restoration projects but how is this version different (when watching at normal speed) than the other SE hd projects? Aren't there non-upscaled HD sources from hdtv transmissions?
What speed do you usually watch at?
Well, some people like to run at 24 frames per minute.
Have you checked the file sizes of all the .RAR files? I seem to recall having issues where a few of them didn't download completely (probably due to a network hiccup) and I had to re-download them.
Lord Haseo said:
...Plus how it was done in the OUT is fucking retarded. They spend a few minutes looking for each other and then they magically find each other and Vader has his lightsabre whipped out. That makes no fucking sense...
It makes no sense to you that Darth Vader found Obi-Wan by waiting near the getaway ship? Even if Darth Vader knew Obi-Wan had no plans to escape himself, surely it's not unreasonable to expect that he may try to help the others escape. Sure enough, Obi-Wan is walking down the final corridor that leads to the Millennium Falcon, and there's Darth Vader standing in his way.
Lord Haseo said:
...I know what ILM had to go through to give use these amazing effects, but updating is never a bad thing.
Well, without an updated version of the original films, it complicates efforts to update various fanedits.
DuracellEnergizer said:
Am I the only one who finds these women creepy? Seriously, it's like The Stepford Wives meets The Shadow over Innsmouth with these girls.
In their defense, they're probably facing the women wearing the prequel trilogy dresses.
DuracellEnergizer said:
Tyrphanax said:
DuracellEnergizer said:
HigHurtenflurst said:
When the Death Star fires at the MonCalamari ship, it always bothered me that the beam didn't just punch right through like it was made of paper and keep going. It can destroy a whole planet, so a ship shouldn't have stopped it... Maybe it could even take out another ship(s) in the background.
This is a good one. I've always thought the same, myself.
I believe the official explanation is that the second Death Star had a variable energy output so they could dial it down to destroy a ship, or dial it up to destroy a planet.
Something about that explanation just never sat right with me.
Why not? It doesn't make sense to use the full power of the superlaser just to blow up something as tiny as a capital ship. Reducing the power level in exchange for a faster rate of fire not only makes sense, but would also help explain why the Death Star in Star Wars spent 30 minutes traveling around Yavin to to get in range of the Rebel base instead of blowing up Yavin and then blowing up the Rebel base two minutes later.
poita said:
Feallan said:
jdryyz said:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/could-disney-finally-give-us-the-remastered-unedited-star-wars-we-want/
Could Disney, in theory, clean up OT negatives, scan them in 4K, 8K or whatever and then just put it in storage for foreseeable future?
They have already been scanned. Look at the changed scenes in the SE. Most of them are based on a scan of the OT, with SE crap *added*.
So Lucas was being a bit misleading, at the very least, the elements had been scanned prior to the real restoration work happening.
But have they been scanned at 4K or better? I thought George Lucas settled for a much lower resolution when scanning the films.
Harmy, if you ever need to reset your BIOS settings in the future, there should be a pair of jumper pins on your motherboard labeled "CLR_CMOS". Putting a jumper on those two pins or simultaneously touching the two pins for a few seconds with a metal object should reset your BIOS settings. The manual for your motherboard (available online from the manufacturer if you don't have the copy that came with the board) should show you where the jumper location is.
CatBus said:
At the risk of invoking "oh not this shit again", it always bugged me how that Tarkin 720p/1080p comparison wasn't exactly apples-to-apples, with the colors not matching and I believe some image sharpening effects in there too.
So I made a gallery of a couple of other BD screencaps (fullscreen) at 1080p/720p/480p/240p so people could better visualize the loss of detail at each resolution, without getting distracted by changes not introduced by the scaling or re-encoding processes. I thought the results were interesting enough to share, although I think the Tarkin shot is still adequate for most purposes.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxypVa35j2XsRHp4Z1hKcU04MWs/edit?usp=sharing
EDIT: To be clear, these results are very specific to the 2011 Star Wars Blu-rays. Different sources would show a different amount of detail, and would produce different results.
I think your comparisons do a better job of illustrating the difference (or lack thereof) between 720p and 1080p. Have you thought about hosting those pictures at a site that allows rollover comparison?
TV's Frink said:
whatwouldhando
Is Hando Han and Lando's adopted baby?
Of course not--don't be ridiculous! It's their biological child.
pablumatic said:
Original Trilogy purist here.
That purist depicted on the left isn't entirely pure. Han shooting first implies Greedo shot second. Han shot. Period.
Not true. A whole bunch of Rebels, Stormtroopers, Princess Leia, a Jawa, and an unruly bar patron all shot before Han did, and don't get me started on all the characters involved in the shootouts on the Death Star. To say "Han shot. Period." implies an almost complete absence of gunplay in the movie.
Sadako said:
I agree, the ability to create a perfect 'take 6' digitally is really neat, and would be a great tool for films on shoestring budgets who can't afford to waste film, but I can think of at least three reasons/counterexamples to say that more traditional techniques are better...
Of course, in this era of digital, wasting film is quickly becoming a thing of the past. But even if it were still an issue, turning a character shot into an effects shot might end up costing more than simply reshooting.
Looking at the benefit of traditional techniques from a different angle, the idea of creating a shot that takes the best elements from multiple different takes is appealing, but like any other tool it's not suited for all situations. For instance, if actors have to come into physical contact with each other or they interact with an object in the scene, trying to composite multiple takes may be difficult or impossible. Even in cases where the actors keep enough distance, it may turn out that creating a composite shot from the best takes might yield a flawed result due to differences in timing between the multiple takes. What's worse is that by the time the problem is discovered, a reshoot might be much more difficult/expensive to do.
OBI-WAN37 said:
There are more miniatures and models in each Star Wars prequels than entire OT. The whole "there's too much CGI" is not true. I've seen people comment on TFN saying they prefer the original trilogy but still know there are more models and miniatures in the PT.
You need to stop for a moment and consider why people aren't recognizing the model work in the prequel trilogy. The reason people keep confusing the models for bad CG is because the way the models are presented, they look like bad CG. I remember being rather unimpressed with the obviously CG arena near the end of Episode II. It was only after watching a "making of" bonus feature on the DVD that I found out the arena was a physical model. I was actually shocked that it was a model because it looked so fake at the time that I was convinced it was created in a computer.
The whole point of models in a live-action movie is to have something that looks real when you can't justify building full-scale. If the models are built and integrated into the movie in such a way as to make them match a sea of bad CG elements, then it defeats the purpose of using models. That's probably the big technical triumph of the prequel trilogy; the ability to consistently make real, physical objects look completely fake continues to astound me.
Mavericks said:
Indeed, THIS did tessellate. Well, of course it should have been so obvious earlier. But here one moment of questionable participance of Harrison in ROTJ appears: after they turned Han's body into the piece of Carbonized Ice, Lando squatted down and after a brief revision of life gauges, stated that "he's alive". So, if Han survived wasn't it somehow connected to the fact that Ford was viewed as a member of the cast on ROTJ set?
No, the reason Lando declared that Han was alive still is simply to leave the possibility open of having Harrison Ford return to the role. If Harrison Ford declined to appear in the third movie, he was basically already written out of the picture, and if he did decide to return, they could write him back into the story without having to resort to a retcon.
doubleofive said:
Which is why I asked the question on sources and background. If this guy worked for ILM and has copies of the original negatives, then we'd have thought twice about dismissing him.
Has there ever been any legitimate restoration project around here where the person working on it provided nothing but a single sentence announcement with essentially no information in it? This guy did it twice. If he is a capable film editor--especially one with rare, coveted resources--then he's doing an incredible job of defying the stereotype set by the likes of Harmy, Puggo, poita, and pretty much everyone else here who has made serious efforts to fix the flaws George Lucas introduced to Star Wars.
Do each of those candles represent 50 years?
CatBus said:
It seems every single release of Harmy's Despecialized Editions has involved someone asking for a release date, Harmy providing a release date, and then that release date proving spectacularly wrong (by up to a year) due to unforeseen complications. Predicted release dates are therefore pretty much a joke in this thread. So with his latest answer, Harmy's playing it safe--or so I hope!
You know what this means, right? Harmy's going to run into unforeseen complications (again), so now the Blu-ray is going to be delayed at least until 2026. I sure hope Harmy doesn't wait until the Blu-ray release to start work on EST and ROTJ.