I don’t think the final look will deviate too much from the v5 LUT, and the most significant alterations would be to the darker scenes to brighten them and maybe compensate for the loss of luminance due to removing the blue cast.
Nice work! Personally I prefer the look without your extra curves adjustments, a little more subtle. I’m working on a new grade for my edit as well, inspired by your efforts here. I’ll try out your LUT too, thanks for sharing!
I agree that the original brightness is quite adequate in most places, and no global LUT is going to fix it. The extra contrast in the last screenshots was just to see how bad the brightest shots fared.
I’m inclined not to add grain but I could see how it looks overlaid with your LUT.
The comparisons above with the LUT + Curves + Grain have ruined me on the ungrained version - now the skin tones look way too plastic-y without it, at least to me.
One more upload before I go to bed, this time giving the entire movie the curves adjustment from the first test, and adding some film grain for that authentic look:
Part 1
https://diff.pics/WS1D8LcxX_K3/1
Part 2
https://diff.pics/VukQUk0usBH-/1
Surprisingly, most of the exterior shots work well, though they could all use some fine tuning. Similarly, the very dark shots lose some detail. Any curves adjustment beyond the LUT would have to be on a scene-by-scene basis.
Hal, have you considered adding film grain to v3? 😉
i’m a bit confused as to which version is which but even though the newest ones look incredible, i prefer the more radical ones from a few days ago.
Yes, I think the more aggressive curves adjustment on the first attempt was better in the dark scenes (which comprised most of my comparisons), but I had to dial it down because it was overexposing the exterior shots. As the latest comparison shows however, the two grades are pretty similar colorwise and only need slight brightness adjustments based on the scene to work as well.
I just did a little test and I am not encountering the bizarre issue I had when trying to apply DrDre’s LUT to TLJ. I’m thinking this LUT of yours will be a nice addition to V3 of my own TFA project. 😄
Excellent! It probably won’t be the last version of course, but I’m fairly happy with it right now.
The red lightsaber angle is quite interesting. Does the saber stay forever tainted? I assume not, since you say that it will happen several times in Episode 3. But what if it was a permanent change? This would be a really interesting dynamic from a storytelling perspective, as Anakin would have to get rid of the saber before any more Jedi see him using a tainted blade (and he does). It’s potentially even more interesting in Episode 3 since that saber in ANH is blue. I imagine an effect where the blade starts flickering between its original color and red when a person is on the edge of the Dark Side, and it could do this several times in Episode 3. But it is never permanently tainted, implying that Padme is telling the truth and Anakin hasn’t turned fully evil at any point.
Finally, how interesting would it be to have Luke’s green saber turn red in his final fight with Vader, and have this be part of his realization that he must turn away from it now and throw away this symbol of violence?
Someone has free-climbed El Capitan with the method Kirk was trying to emulate in The Final Frontier, so in the Star Trek universe Kirk probably read all about this guy:
In the past few days I’ve tried out Davinci Resolve for LUTs, and though I’m not comfortable enough with making a full Technicolor print emulation LUT, here is a more modest one that removes some of the more modern gradients from TFA and adds in some print characteristics:
https://mega.nz/#!6Q0EGAqB!u1Gdl4KD4k-qKKOUhcGMRoc5-6XCtXFQmxAyYZuVRZY
https://diff.pics/Pm7_wcYYABAA/5
JEDIT: Modified and improved v5:
https://mega.nz/#!TNsBlLYL!oWeLEJCIlCyVanDqavLVqplsiP2Lk07dMuOMTRqYhlk
https://diff.pics/TzSAOV8WnXmq/1
The differences between this grade and the original Photoshop version can be more clearly seen with this curves adjustment applied to the latest Resolve version:
https://diff.pics/i54MpC7VYKsz/1
I rather like the Resolve version, but let me know what you think.
So she goes from dying of a broken heart to dying because her heart…broke?
I actually dislike how blasters used by troops are sometimes not red after the OT. Rebel fighters using red makes them feel like a weaker military force, which is more appropriate than just any colour. The Empire using green turbo lasers made them feel like the top of the line.
Color is very complicated. Green = evil and powerful when used with blasters, but it is not evil when used in lightsabers. Red = weak when used in blasters, but not when used in lightsabers, where it is strong and evil. Perhaps it comes down to the Sci-fi versus the fantasy elements of the universe, and the differing color meanings in these different paradigms.
I’m actually a bit of a fan of the addition of the Aurabesh language in Star Wars (1977). As originally you would see plain English. Also it seems that the original Aurabesh was just random letters splashed around. In the Special edition they were fixed and the original Aurabesh was fixed to actually stay things. Also all English was replaced with their Aurabesh equivalents.
You just have to understand that the ‘English’ is just an alien language that happens to coincide exactly with what English looks like.
I really like this idea in theory. I’d have to revisit ROTS to see if the scenes would work there, but it sounds plausible.
I misinterpreted this thread as ‘STAR WARS but every shot comes from a random movie’ as in a shot that is similar to one from Star Wars but from a different movie entirely.
This sounds cool as well, just, you know, not as insane.
![Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, the work's genre classifications range from late Romantic to early Symbolist. Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous. Melville began writing Moby-Dick in February 1850, and would eventually take 18 months to write the book, a full year more than he had first anticipated. Writing was interrupted by his making the acquaintance of Nathaniel Hawthorne in August 1850, and by the creation of the "Mosses from an Old Manse" essay as a first result of that friendship. The book is dedicated to Hawthorne, "in token of my admiration for his genius". The basis for the work is Melville's 1841 whaling voyage aboard the Acushnet. The novel also draws on whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The white whale is modeled on the notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides. In October 1851, the chapter "The Town Ho's Story" was published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The same month, the whole book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London, and under its definitive title in a single-volume edition in New York in November. There are hundreds of differences between the two editions, most slight but some important and illuminating. The London publisher, Richard Bentley, censored or changed sensitive passages; Melville made revisions as well, including a last-minute change to the title for the New York edition. The whale, however, appears in the text of both editions as "Moby Dick", without the hyphen.[4] One factor that led British reviewers to scorn the book was that it seemed to be told by a narrator who perished with the ship: the British edition lacked the Epilogue, which recounts Ishmael's survival. About 3,200 copies were sold during the author's life.](https://i.imgur.com/DhJtwow.jpg)
Does the ‘Luke staring at Luke through Vader’s mask in Empire’ count? Because if your brain doesn’t register that face as Luke’s, your brain is going to go into a spasm of uncomprehensive terror, as mine did when I was five.
Was expecting decent advice.
Got none.
How evil.
well , this is an interesting perspective I never thought of , don’t really buy it , but interesting none the less …https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-theory-shows-why-c-3po-is-the-secret-hero-of-star-1829149241
I think there’s evidence for this theory in the original movie, but after that he was written to be much more bumbling and less crafty.
Holy hell, I love those Tech-inspired regrades! Would love to see the movie with a LUT like this applied, even though I really don’t have any issue with the original colors.
And from the screenshots I’ve seen of the BR, Solo is in desperate need of exactly this style of regrade, too.
Definitely agree on Solo. I can appreciate a shadowy Godfather-esque look, but in the theater it was just unpleasant to watch.
i’m inclined to agree with depheros in regard to the original grade. it just looked so modern/digital. the new tech-based grade is incredible.
neverar, do you plan on releasing this separately as a lut?
Definitely!
“STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE” Animotion Trailer
Just about to link that, very cool.
Fair enough, but I think however it plays out it will always be weird that they hug THE FIRST TIME THEY MEET. Like maybe if they had met previously I would get it, but force or no force that scene will always require some good old suspension of disbelief.
Suspending disbelief in a Star Wars movie, unheard of right?!?! Why would anyone ever need to do that in a Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Space Opera about “space wizards with laser swords”?
At first I thought we were still talking about Leia and Chewie and was confused.
But Rey and Leia would make sense even if the Force didn’t come into play. I imagine that even Rey knew what Leia looked like, since she knew so much about Han Solo and Leia was a much more public figure. Leia knows who Rey is, and they both know the other must be in a bad way.
A good thought. My first notion was that they could go into the shot where the Falcon goes to Hyperspace, to differentiate it from the reused shot where it is pulled out of Hyperspace, as well as in the sky in some shots. Maybe when Rey takes BB-8 home? When she has her Reydream as a callback to the Twin Suns?
You certainly have the look down, pretty well executed. Do you have a “technicolor” preset or LUT or something that you’ve created?
Oddly enough it looks more like TLJ now.
I do have a LUT made for correcting the ANH Blu-ray, but this was a new attempt in Photoshop.
These settings actually have more in common with a ROTS regrade I was working on at one point, where the primary difference was a reduction in the purple tones.
There are some things that need further work. It’s overall a bit on the green side, and there’s a process I can best apply in Premiere which deepens the reddish shadows in the skin tones while leaving the bright areas pink and lends a wonderful Technicolor look to the video.
Here’s a Photoshop version of the effect, with some fine tuning for brightness:
https://diff.pics/EKMUxzl1Ag6a/1
Subtle, but noticeable I think.
Vs the originals:
https://diff.pics/mSs9Vzj5NFji/1
I was playing around with the sort of settings that I’ve used for ANH Technicolor, and managed to get a decent global grade for the movie:
https://diff.pics/wU0BdJwG8Naq/1
I also applied a slight greenish vignette to the left and right side of the image to mimic the same phenomenon from the Technicolor prints.
Any sort of description of Vader or his plan would work there, I was leaning into the meditation angle because of his meditation pod and the fact that the entire movie is basically his plan to capture Skywalker.
