Laserschwert

The old crawl was put together from the German 1997-SE crawl (a HD version of it was used for the German 2004-transfer HD broadcast). This one is made completely from scratch (and the logo was made by TK-949).

Since we're basing our German versions on Harmy's Despecialized trilogy, this clip contains just Hairy_Hen's English 5.1 audio track from Harmy's release. For our final German trilogy we're still discussing which sources to use. The German GOUT audio will probably be one of the audio options (although SW goes severely out of sync in some scenes when using the German GOUT audio... TESB and ROTJ seem to be fine though).

Do you think it might be viable to approach Lucasfilm once you've finished the restoration, and just tell them "There you go, release it, make money from it, just put it out there"?

It's so difficult to tell if it's just the pure workload (and its costs) that prevent Lucas from having it released, or just some strange hatred toward it... (although with the recent story regarding the Library of Congress I would assume the latter).

My recreation of the German theatrical SW crawl:

http://www.mediafire.com/?1aa2ta854vzn8pd

It looks like I could get a bit more detail out of this one... but the colors are different, so just switching sources won't be enough ;-)

Awesome!

I'd just like to play with that shot starting at it's original resolution (I guess 720x576?)... the one I've cleaned up for Harmy was already upscaled to 720p, and I'd like to find out if the upscale looks better when I clean it up BEFORE that step...

Arnie.d said:

I don’t know if it’s better quality but I still have an X9 capture of the JSC. If you want to use it for your project you can have it.

 

In what format is this capture? Any chance you could upload that Mos Eisley shot?

doubleofive said:

 

Where'd it come from?

 

It's in "The Making of Star Wars" by J.W. Rinzler.

The caption reads:

Millenium Falcon in hangar: "There is a quick shot when Leia says, 'You came in that thing?' [bottom left] And there is an establishing shot that is a little bit longer at the beginning [top left]. That quick cut was one painting, and the establishing shot was another [right, with details, middle]. There we once again reduced the plate, added onto the sides, put the top of the opening in for the shaft going down the center, all sorts of little goodies, lights and things like that. I used the original plate shot in England, the stormtroopers running up, and then I shot the miniature on regular 5247 film in a still camera, single-lens reflex. That I rear projected and put the miniature together, matched it up size-wise, added some painting so it would match and blend, and put those two things together so it's really the stormtroopers running up to the side of the set, which is connected to the miniature. That one worked well, too." - Harrison Ellenshaw

Note that this is just a crummy photo taken from the book, so it might be skewed or bent a bit. But yeah, the two on the left are the ones in the film, the big one doesn't seem to be used at all...

And Harmy, do you know about these?:

http://makingfx.net/archives/406
http://makingfx.net/archives/835
http://makingfx.net/archives/1200
http://makingfx.net/archives/1241

I guess this is the wrong hangar matte?

(Click for big version)

CWBorne said:

I would think some practical effects would be easier than an abundance of CGI and green screen.  

That's not the point to Lucas... he's stated a few times that he hates shooting and loves editing. If you do everything practical, it has to be done right while shooting the actors. If you shoot the actors in front of the green screen EVERYTHING can be changed during editing. And that's what he does.

"No, there is another."

:D

VERY well done.. the noise and shake really sell the whole thing, plus the quality is fantastic! (yeah, I know, I sound like McCallum :D).

Do you have an overview of which matte paintings you're missing?

Edit: Damn you, multiple tabs!!!

Right now the MU-link doesn't work ("currently not available") ;)

I especially liked Doug Chiang's concept art (especiall for TPM), as it looked and felt a lot like Ralph MacQuarrie's work for the OT.

grisan said:

You claim this project is not about the bragging rights, yet the post about your CGI R2-D2 project seems ver much like bragging to me.

 

There's a difference between bragging and taking pride in your work... I'd say this is the latter ;)

You don't need an "old movie effect" in AfterEffects to make the image look less still. Just use the "wiggle" expression to give it a bit of shake, and some animated grain and you're good.

Funny she brought up using a fucking dictionary, because clearly she didn't:

rape (third-person singular simple present rapes, present participle raping, simple past and past participle raped)

1. To force sexual intercourse or other sexual activity upon another person, without their consent.
2. To abuse an object in an extreme manner.

   The loggers raped the virgin forest

3. (slang) To dominate in a contest.

   My experienced opponent will rape me at chess.

You mean the credits?

Only the first film had German credits actually, but I'm not sure yet, if that will be part of the German version.

Both the 2004 DVDs and the new Blu-rays have all subtitles scenes without subtitles (as they are player-generated).

Right now the German crawls and subtitles are planned to be used in a German version of Harmy's "Despecialized" trilogy, which, ultimately, will be released as well.

I really love your trilogy, JD, and the only thing I might see as an improvement would be to have all on-screen text that's not quoting an interview, to be actual voice-over, so that your eyes can stay on the scene. Content-wise your stuff is of course absolutely fantastic! :-)

I've just noticed: The German audio track has the wrong pitch. It looks like it has been slowed down from 25 fps to 23.976 fps while KEEPING the pitch, and that's not correct.

The German audio tracks were created at 24 fps (for the theatrical versions), and simply sped up to 25 fps for all home video releases (which gave it a higher pitch). That's why simply slowing it back down to 23.976 fps would result in the correct pitch.

The Blu-ray release is - to my knowledge - the first German home video release to have the correct pitch.

They can shove those transfers where it's dark and dense...

Well, in case of George Lucas, everything can be explained by "because of the director's creative intent".

It's highly unlikely that you'll get both images to line up perfectly (especially since most LD transfers were slightly warped and suffer some minor gate weave jitter, whereas the 2004 transfer ist pretty much stable because of the restauration).