Mavimao

I just spit coffee out of my mouth. Thank you for the laugh (And for the messy table)

Darth Lucas said:

Someone make a meme of Gordon Gekko saying "grain is good" please. haha

 You asked for it. You got it. Toyota. 

TServo2049 said:

Actually, I believe what was located was color silent negative just for the stuff that was cut out for The Menagerie. A couple scenes that were used in The Menagerie had extra lines of dialogue on Roddenberry's print that didn't show up in any of the official releases, so I am assuming they were missing from the negative. (Not sure why they weren't in the hybrid version either; regardless, the only way you can hear these scenes are audio recordings from a sci-fi convention that are on YouTube.)

There was apparently a color print of The Cage, in private hands, that had completely faded to red. It was on eBay once, but I believe the reserve was not met, and now it seems to have been chopped up into individual frames to be sold as collectibles (not by CBS/Paramount, to be absolutely clear). I guess we will never know if it had the missing stuff that was only in the B&W 16mm.

 That is true. The negative was cut to use certain scenes for The Menagerie and the rest was put away. This is the negative that was later discovered for the restoration. 

Interesting about the lines. I looked them up on Youtube. It's not very much, but it bizarre why they would be missing from both the restored versions...? It could be that the first restoration had some missing frames and cut around it and the new color restoration used the previous "edited" restoration as a guide. 

Just to update the information: there are 3 versions of The Cage. One is Rodenberry's personal b/w 16mm copy. Another is a blend of the 16mm and the color negative from The Menagerie and the 3rd is the full restored color version. For the latter, the actual full negative was discovered by a fan and the full version was finally intact. All except the sound... The stems were never found for the scenes that are not part of The Menagerie and the rest had to be ripped from the 16mm print. 

Harmy said:

For an effect shot, the original negative is the first generation copy of the finished shot, which would be in the assembled negative cut, not the individual elements - those are the original negative of the individual elements but not of the shot.

 Unless you're Stanley Kubrick on 2001, in which case, every element is shot on the same piece of film. 

FrankT said:

Yeah. And Legacy is it! Too bad we won't ever get to see it!

 You never know that. No need to be so defeatist. 

Ah! I see what you are trying to say. Well it's definitely something they can do. I've heard rumblings that all of the original sfx shots were recompositied for the SE in the 90s and the cgi additions were created and added later. If this is true, all they'd have to do is scan those snippets of film and splice them in with a scan of the SE 97 negative. 

There are of course many here who feel that this would not be the original film since the original effects and wipes are re-created and is not a true historical restoration. However, there are many people who want the OT but not the mattelines and garbage mattes and generation loss (speeder entering Mos Eisley). We shall see!

John Doom said:

I thought composites were done on a dupe? That's probably why they were able to re-composite the effects for the SE in the first place.

 Huh? I'm a bit confused by your wording here. You can't recomposite a composite... Much less a duplicate of a composite. 

In special effects work, you shoot your individual elements (a TIE fighter is one element, a millenium falcon another, laser blasts another, star fields etc etc) on normal negative film. Then, you run all of those different elements through a special optical printer. So you load up the developed shot of the star field and some low-grain negative stock to reprint the shot onto. You copy the starfield, then rewind the negative. Load in the TIE fighter, copy that on the negative then rewind it again. Load in the millenium falcon, etc. Now all of these elements are copied onto one negative. This is the composite.*

The problem with Star Wars is that they used a highly unstable filmstock to do the original photochemical compositing and these shots are pretty much gone now. The negative that the effects shot elements were shot on should be fine. 

For the SE, they took the individual elements and put them back together on a computer using more modern techniques (no matte lines, garbage mattes etc)

*I've obviously simplified the process. For example the effects makers would have needed to create traveling mattes by recopying the blue screen shots on high contrast B/W film several times to get a pure black and white image. 

This is probably your best preview yet. It's amazing what you've done with this release print. Can't wait for the actually thing!

It'll be like Abel Gance's Napoleon!

It could be the flags were put through the wash with warm water and the white was pinkened by the red dye...

I'd like to think this is real... To the doubters:

Niiiiiiiiiiiice!!!! Looking forward to this!

I'd say that a BD burner isn't worth it.. But if your bluray player accepts MKVs, that could be interesting!

Battleship!? Really? God that was they one movie I wanted to walk out on. The biggest problem I had was that the aliens didn't seem like they wanted to blow up the earth. They felt to me like they were just trying to phone home because they were lost and needed a spare oil filter for their vehicle or something and they only got destructive (I would argue self defensive) when we went all gung ho on them, guns a blazing ('muricah!).  

At least it gave me and my wife a stupid thing to quote to each other: I'm gonna die, you're gonna die. We're all gonna die... But not today!!! 

cranyx said:

Is 2.5 the ultimate version, or are there far off plans on upgrading it further? Say, an upgrade to 1080p way down the line?

 It's as good as it can get with current available sources. Harmy's said that if he ever does another edition, it'll be based on 35mm sources. But that's a long time from now  

TV's Frink said:

Some big movies get released on Wednesday here in the States. Friday is not an ironclad rule.

 I stand corrected. 

As far as to why they waited until October... God knows. Maybe they were trying to emulate the release schedule of the original film? I just know it was a giant mistake because that film was highly pirated.

What Zero said: new releases happen on Wednesdays, not Fridays like in the States. 

Mais oui! Pardon!

Yes!! I'll get to watch the film before all of you!

Definitely a change from episode 1 where it came out the following October. Ahhhh. The wait was painful (as was the final product)

You're 'quite' right. 

Just to piggyback on the Playstation talk, what's the best way to watch Harmy's projects with a PS3? It's my bluray player and I think it only supports FAT hard drive.. Or perhaps I'm wrong. 

Just a quick question: will your master (filmprint) have the Greedo subtitles?

Wow, you did it man! Congratulations. Ive been following this for a while and it's great to see the light at the end of the tunnel.