They ARE great (no doubt about that) but while the original stereo and mono mixes are authentic, the surround sound mixes are just educated guesses on Hairy_hen’s part. It would be fantastic to have the authentic mixes even if it’s just for educational purposes.
That plus the original 6 track mixes for all three films!
I personally don’t think it’s worth it as inserts (except maybe the couple of shots that are different), but an entire 70mm release would be interesting.
Yes, it’s really great that they are two types of projects that are in no real way competing with one another. And obviously the benefits from collaboration are enormous.
Very well put. Back in the day, I had the Cowclops LD rips, and checked in on the X0 Project daily. I never dreamed I’d have two awesome HD versions to choose from!
Haha! Indeed! We have come a long way since those days!
I would definitely help pitch in a few Empirial credits. Poita has done so much for this forum, it’s nuts!
Oh no! That’s terrible, Poita! Glad to hear that the data is safe but all of that hardware… I am sending you a hug.
First of all, a huge thank you to everyone involved in restoring these classics.
Can anyone explain to me why some scenes in the Grindhouse ESB are so dirty (wide landscapes on Hoth for example) and then the following close up shot is relatively clean. One would think there wouldn’t be much difference in how the film was handled or stored between shots. Just curious.
Well if it’s a composite shot (a sfx shot) it will look dirtier because of all the different pieces of film you’re combining. It’s quite difficult to keep all of them crystal clean.
The landscape shots, for instance might have an animated tauntaun so there’s a composite shot right there. So you got the shot of the landscape, the shot of the hard matte (which are multiple b/w copies of the taun taun shot) and finally the taun taun shot itself. There are plenty of steps for dirt to get introduced since this is all created manually.
Compare that to the close up of Luke, which is straight from the camera.
Harmy, this new version looks awesome! Just one thing stood out and it’s perhaps more faithful to your film sources, but during the Rancor scenes the creature has a brown tint to it when the BD source is used and then a blueish/greenish one with the 35mm source. Is this discrepancy normal?
FYI, there are no technicolor prints of Jedi (just the original Star Wars is so lucky). A kodak low fade print was scanned and referenced.
HALELUJAH
Edit: There, it aint a link anymore
You’re not funny, wise-ass. Take that fake link down now.
The 70 would have been better like its superior rendering of the sound mix, but not quite as good as a perfectly projected IB print.
I think an IB would have blown the 70mm away in terms of picture quality… But the larger format does have an advantage in terms of lumens and screen size. The larger screen you have, the more light you need to push through the film to get it to light up the screen. There’s only so much light you can squeeze through a 35mm frame before you end up melting the film. 70mm is able to ‘dissipate’ the heat so to speak, and uses a larger surface area, so you can get a brighter image on a larger screen.
I found this in a forum talking about ET in 70mm. It’s all I’ve found so far for how these blow ups were created:
Regarding the image quality of the blow-ups, keep in mind that there may have been two grades of 70mm prints for “E.T.” The film’s cinematographer, Allen Daviau, ASC, informed me a few years ago when I was pestering him for some info that he believes they struck a few 70mm “show prints” off the original negative, with the balance of the print run (more than 30) utilizing the commonly-used procedure (i.e. 35mm O-Neg --> 35mm Inter-Positive --> 65mm Inter-Negative --> 70mm Release Print).
OK, I’ve done a little research and here’s what I’ve found:
Many viewers, thinking in terms of the fuzzy blow-ups usually obtained in enlarging from 16mm to 35mm, are amazed at the sharpness of the result in print-up from 35mm to 70mm. However, the physical equations involved are vastly different. The Panavision 35mm negative encompasses, with the exception of the sound track strip, the total area of the frame (as opposed to the much smaller “Academy aperture” frame). This means that in anamorphic 35mm photography the negative area used is 63% greater than for normal 1.85 aspect ratio photography, but when enlarged 2 1/4 times in the unsqueezing and enlargement phases during print-up - the final result is projected onto a screen only 25% larger than that which the 35mm print is meant to fill. This, of course, results in a much sharper screen image in proportion to the area of the positive frame - and infinitely greater resolution than is possible in blow-ups from 16mm to 35mm.
A comparison of technical data indicates why any picture shot in Panavision 35 can be successfully printed up, even though such print-up was not considered during filming. The full aspect ratio of Panavision 35 is 2.35, whereas the full aspect ratio of the 70mm print-up is 2.2. The height which is always the critical dimension -is the same, but there is a difference in width of 1.5 over all. Divided by two, with half on one side and half on the other. there is a cut-off on each side of .075 - a loss so infinitesimal that it cannot be noticed by the average viewer. This means that the director, during shooting, need not worry about losing part of his composition in the conversion.
The producer need not decide in advance whether or not he will want a print-up to 70mm at a later date. He simply shoots in Panavision 35, then, after the picture is completed and he has looked at his 35mm answer print, he may find that he has turned out something rather special and that it warrants roadshowing in 70mm-in which case, he calls the laboratory and orders the 70mm prints he needs. This is exactly what happened in the case of M-G-M’s new musical, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” which was filmed in Panavision 35 with no thought of a 70mm release, but which turned out so well that print-ups have been ordered for its premiere engagements.
The new process is expected to be a boon to drive-in theater operators, who have always been plagued by the fact that they must wait until quite late in the evening to begin their showings in order that the picture might show up on the screen. Because 70mm projectors use long focal length lenses with extremely wide apertures, a great deal more light reaches the screen (17 foot lamberts as contrasted to the 2 footlamberts produced by 35mm projectors in the average drive-in theater). This enables the drive-in theater owner to present a picture that is as clear and brilliant as any shown in a “hardtop” theater and to start his shows much earlier in the evening without worrying about whether his audience will be able to see the picture. In economic terms, it simply means that he will be able to present two shows each night instead of only one.
There are a few minor drawbacks to the new process. For one thing, the 70mm prints are considerably more expensive than 35mm prints but this is offset by the fact that the 70mm prints, because of the wider film, new projectors and more careful handling in the large format–last infinitely longer than 35mm prints. It is not unusual for one print to be used in daily showings at the same theater for an entire year, after which it is carefully cleaned and sent on for continuing runs in other situations.
Also, while the new Eastman color negative stock is almost grainless, there is a difference in grain between a print-up and a 70mm print made from a 65mm negative - a difference that would only be apparent to the average viewer if the two were projected side by side on a large screen for comparison.
Because the print-up is an optical, rather than a contact printing process, there is some slight build-up in contrast with a corresponding slight loss in tonal range-but here, again, the difference is one that normally is obvious only to film industry technicians. Gottschalk points out that the print-up process is not meant to replace Super Panavision or Ultra Panavision (slight anamorphic squeeze processes), both of which involve photography on 65mm negative and are considered productive of the absolute ultimate in image sharpness and quality.
Source: http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/35-70mm.htm
Also if people remember their 70mm showing being better, it’s probably true: these types of theaters used top of the line projectors and big screens and an awesome sound system. The experience would have been so much better than a dinky one-room theater with a dying bulb and a mono sound system.
One reason for creating 70mm blowups is sound! Remember that movies were still using the same sound specifications from the 20s! 70mm mag was a way to get high quality sound in a theater. Dolby helped rectify this in the 70s and 80s but digital sound pretty much killed off the biggest advantage of 70mm conversions.
Now I am actually not sure where down the pipeline a 70mm negative was created (my personal guess would be after an IP…) but it involves projecting a correctly de-anamorphized picture onto the 70mm negative. This process is only as good as the equipment used (lenses, lights, etc). The 35mm prints would have been contact printed so the IP is pressed against the unexposed negative and copied over. This results in a much cleaner picture.
This looks amazing - and the extra effort you went to to use the 35mm footage to replace the blurry mess that is the blu-ray in that Endor sequence (criminal that mess got through ‘QC’) makes such a difference and is hugely appreciated. A massive step up from Jedi v.1. I can’t see it getting much better than this to be honest! The only quandary I now have is whether to watch all three over the weekend, or wait until April’s (rumoured) blu-ray release of Force Awakens and watch them all in sequence. Having willpower approximately to the power of zero, I daresay an Original Trilogy marathon awaits this weekend 😉
THANKS HARMY 😃
Why not both? 😃
I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubbles but a 70mm print isn’t necessarily going to be better than a 35mm print. Just remember that it has to go through an ADDITIONAL generation to make (and it involves optical blowup rather than contact printing) and it’s cropped from 2.35 to 2.2 and they’ve all faded to red.
Now what we should be celebrating is getting the multi-channel sound from these prints. That’s the one missing piece we don’t have and one that involves a lot of guess work (ie: Hairy_Hen’s surround sound mixes).
Wow this means we now have 35mm scans of each of the three original films. To think this was just a figment of our wildest dreams so many years ago. Thank you Harmy! And Negative 1, Poita and everyone else I’m forgetting.
I totally remember the candles disappearing in 83 and seeing them NOT do so in 97 made me so angry, I kicked the back of the head of the person in front of me.
He mentioned that the end credits were from a film source and not a recreation and he inserted a shot of Han and Leia on Cloud City from TN1.
Great job! Your releases always look awesome.
BTW, just out of curiosity: is there a significant difference in German between Züruck and Zurück? Or is it just a weird looking typo?
Re 70mm, I have seen two 70mm Star Wars prints, only one was in projectable shape and both were far too faded to red to be useful for restoration of the image, it is extremely likely that they all are far too faded now.
Plus 70mm is cropped at the sides, so I don’t think it will be a lot of use for the visual restoration.Even if it’s too red faded, could it not be used for luminance detail?
It’s cropped on the sides as well.
70mm blow-up prints are cropped on the sides to achieve the full 70mm 2.2:1 aspect ratio. Plus they’ve all probably faded to red by now.
But getting their soundtracks would be godly. We’d finally have the authentic original surround sound mix.
schorman13 said:
As far as the HDTV and Blu Ray versions, the first step is to register the frames, which are not always lined up, even though they hail from the same master.Yes; this the problem. It would be nice if different encodings from the same source lined up perfectly, but they rarely do.
I just learned something new today. You’d think the opposite was true
