^Why is it laughable to exclude certain iconic visuals from the prequels? It makes sense to withhold these visuals to explore new vistas in the Star Wars galaxy. I only wish he’d done more of that, since every other minute he’s pointlessly referencing something from the OT.
Star Trek: The Whale One had the best villain IMO, in the form of the inability to communicate. It’s the perfect distillation of the concept of a villain for the Star Trek universe.
Yeah, that looks more like how it’s supposed to be.
Again, thanks. I’m pretty sure that this is how it would have looked when shot. However, since I’m trying to get back to the look of the actual film, There’s just no way it ever looked this nice back then. There was definitely a warming filter applied to the Tatooine scenes, as evidenced by Poita’s scans
and even these photos from Ebay show:
And after I’ve white balanced the frames:
Notice how similar this is to Poita’s frame!
After applying a single cooling filter, these scenes look a lot more natural, but it’s obvious that this isn’t how they looked on the film since the borders are now blue:
Of course photos can’t be trusted etc etc, but Poita’s scan and others are in agreement on this point. Also, it’s not that this reel is faded, since these shots come from the same reel, sandwitched between yellow Tatooine scenes:
My first grade of these scenes had them looking a lot like this dusty warm filtered film, but upon reviewing it would be a whole lot prettier if it looked like the original photography, and how I’ve graded Mos Eisley in the canyon. So what do you think should be done?
Thanks guys 😃
I never got the impression Sybok was nuts, just deluded and misled.
And yeah, the outfit they went to for the FX should never have been allowed near a Trek movie. Can’t recall if ILM was swamped or Paramount didn’t want to pony up.
Thankfully, TM2YC’s edit is well on it’s way to salvaging the movie. His new FX shots have impressed me.
Where can I find these FX shots, if I may be so bold?
Thanks!
I never got the impression Sybok was nuts, just deluded and misled.
And yeah, the outfit they went to for the FX should never have been allowed near a Trek movie. Can’t recall if ILM was swamped or Paramount didn’t want to pony up.
Thankfully, TM2YC’s edit is well on it’s way to salvaging the movie. His new FX shots have impressed me.
Where can I find these FX shots, if I may be so bold?
The last episode is one of the less interesting ones, at least for me. Among my favorites are The Lost Commanders, Relics of the Old Republic, Legends of the Lasat (for the Star Trek 5 vibes), The Honorable Ones, and The Forgotten Droid. In short, I like my Star Wars with less lightsabers and more exploration of concepts and characters.
The destiny of this shot lies along a different path than Despecialized. Nevertheless, it deserves to look its best:
No milestones, but at this moment I’m giving the Mos Eisley sequence another look based on the discussion in the Silver Screen Edition thread. It’s extra tricky since there are Special Edition shots in my version that weren’t originally graded for the '77 look.
Interestingly, in both Mike’s version and my own, the right side of the image shifts to green. I wonder if this phenomenon appears in more locations or just this one, and if the right side of the image should be corrected independently of the left.
Here’s my attempt:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/185122
JEDIT: The yellows are a bit too saturated when uploaded to the web, so just imagine a slightly less saturated image here.Although Dre’s version is the most balanced and saturated, Tatooine was intended to be a desolate wasteland.
IMO it’s a little bit too desolate. I think this is closer to the mark for me:
Perhaps you are right, and it should be more balanced.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/185234
I’m really reticent about ‘prettying up’ the image for the final product, however, since Mike’s preliminary correction is merely to get back to the color of the negative, not to retain the intentional color shifts of the final film. Every source I’ve seen that features Tatooine has had some sort of yellow-green in the shadows, with the sky tending towards red. An unnatural cast for sure, but I can’t shake that this is what was intended, especially since it seems to be only the Tatooine scenes that are affected.
http://www.forcematerial.com/home/2016/9/17/how-freddy-krueger-shaped-star-wars
That’s shaping up to be a great site.
Here’s my attempt:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/185122
JEDIT: The yellows are a bit too saturated when uploaded to the web, so just imagine a slightly less saturated image here.
Although Dre’s version is the most balanced and saturated, Tatooine was intended to be a desolate wasteland.
He looks like he’s had a bit too much to drink.
And now this is my avatar. Thanks!
Restoring the OOT should be the most important non-political issue right now. But unfortunately, releasing the OOT has become so low in everyone’s priority that should it happen, the laws of physics might fall apart.
^and that his helmet is painted in a way that makes it look like he’s smiling.
So I’ve gotten through both seasons of Rebels, since I’m a hopeless completionist on anything Star Wars, and was going to write a review of the entire show, but I just got through the final two episodes and had to focus on this:
I realize that there is constant pressure to do visually interesting things with lightsabers, and I didn’t even mind the double-bladed spinning design up until now, but the final showdown at the end of season 2 is completely baffling. Apparently the inquisitors use these lightsabers as…helicopters? Like, to fly around? At first I assumed that the Inquisitors merely used the Force to levitate themselves and they thought that the spinning saber thing was a cool thing to do (it isn’t), but one of the sabers is damaged and breaks in mid flight, dropping the Inquisitor out of the air. I am left with the feeling that I have just witnessed the most blatant attempt at physics BS-ery in Star Wars. I don’t care if it is a kid’s show - THAT SHIT DOESN’T FLY.
All we ever get from the movies is that Obi-wan used to be a Jedi Knight, but there’s so little information in the OT about the Jedi hierarchy that we really have no idea if this implies that he ‘ascended’ to the rank of master later on, hence the robe change, or that he is retired from the whole Jedi Knight business. Jedi Knight could have been an actual position in the Old Republic, which ceased to exist with the Republic. Or Jedi Knights are wholly different than Jedi Masters, like the difference between a soldier and a teacher.
I do believe that Knights and Masters had different robes to match their different roles.
Anchorhead said:
To me, Giacchino’s work is generally a little deeper than Williams and a bit more serious.This is a bold statement.
FTFY
The problem with weighted averaging such as how Mike combined multiple prints into one, is that it leaves you with merely the ‘average’ quality of the initial prints. I think this is what is resulting in the plastic look of the people in the speeder shot. Say that we have at our disposal a sharp print and a blurry print. If you were trying to resolve a blurry boundary between two objects in the frame into a sharp line, then (assuming we are only gathering data from the same frame of both prints) averaging the values of a blurry print with the values of a sharp print would result in a less than optimal result, and you would be far better off just sticking with the sharp print.
One way I could see working to improve image quality while only using the same frame from multiple prints, assuming that the prints were struck from different internegatives, is to track the position of all the grains in the image. For each blob of grain, the center of the grain is recorded along with its luminosity and color. This process is repeated for each of the identical frames. Grains in similar positions with similar color/luminosity are grouped together, and an average is taken of their positions (instead of their color). Finally a new image is created from the data, using the best guess of the position of each grain in the image. Compare this with merely averaging the color of each pixel and you could potentially regain the sharpness present in previous generations of the film. After all, the blurriness is only introduced through grain forming in inaccurate positions on the film with each new printing.
The above method would not work for Technicolor film, however, since it is not a grain-forming copy but rather a copy made by imbibing a piece of celluloid with actual dyes. This process introduces some blurriness of its own, but it’s probably still the best source to use for sharpness since Tech prints of Star Wars were made from an earlier generation of print than the Kodak or Eastman prints. Perhaps the Tech prints could be used in the aforementioned grain positioning algorithm to ensure more accurate results.
Speaking of the ILM art show: one of the challenges offered to the artists was designing concept art to fit a series of ersatz “director’s notes” for a supposed SW film. Matt Rhodes of BioWare took this challenge and ran with it, creating a whole alternate history of the OT.
Among other things: instead of the Bothans, it’s a new alien race specified in the challenge prompts (the Danji) who obtain the plans to the second (?) Death Star; the Rebel attack at Endor involves a giant mobile-asteroid base; Oola survives and escapes from Jabba’s palace; and though Leia, Han, Lando, Chewie, and the droids are all present, Luke Skywalker is not.
Instead, Luke’s place is taken by a blonde female Imperial Royal Guard, who seems to have struck up a romance with Biggs Darklighter – since the mustached Rebel pilot apparently survives into ESB and ROTJ.
This is very intriguingly reminiscent of Ralph McQuarrie’s 1975 drawings featuring a female Luke as the protagonist of SW… or fem-Luke’s fantasy equivalent, the redeemed warrior Sorsha in Willow.
If nothing else, the concepts in the art are so much more interesting than TFA.
Taking this in a different direction, I’m interested in what George’s idea was for the uniform of a Jedi Knight. During ROTJ scripting, he discussed how Knights and masters were not in fact different levels of Jedi but rather were different kinds of Jedi entirely. Yoda was always a guru, Obi-wan was always a warrior. To that end, Luke is seen throughout ROTJ wearing what I assume is the uniform of a Jedi Knight, in various levels of undress:
Perhaps there was thematic significance with Luke slowly shedding this Jedi uniform, as if the defense of his Jedi training was slowly stripped away to reveal the man beneath, for good or ill.
This being the ancient Jedi uniform, one could conjecture about why it is so militaristic and dark compared to the robes of Obi-wan and Yoda. It seems to me that GL’s idea of the Jedi Knight circa 1983 was that a Knight was very much a military position within the Republic, and perhaps the uniforms were dark so as to lend an air of mystery and invisibility to them. To me, the costume is more like the common conception of a Ninja rather than the common conception of samurai clad in kimono, and it is a severe break from Obi-wan’s and Yoda’s attire. If Obi-wan was a samurai serving the Republic, then Luke is a Jedi-for-hire, with no master save himself. It’s interesting that only after abandoning violence does his costume reveal a color other than black.
I want it to be set hundreds of years after XI, showing the results of the first nine films on the galaxy. A few references to past films, but not going overboard (I.E. having the main characters be Luke’s great great great great grandson). But if the film could be avoided entirely, I’d like that too (like that’d ever happen).
They should be about the ramifications of Leia feeding a sugary snack to Wicket. Due to this event, Wicket developed a sweet tooth which developed into a major addiction, and the abundance of carbohydrates in his diet, along with a favorable mutation, led to the development of a race of large-brained Ewoks who slowly took over the New Republic government and led to a thousand generations of peace and prosperity. The events and people involved in the galactic civil war are now lost to history, but Ewok history remains.
30 years younger shouldn’t be that noticeable.
30 years older certainly is however:
Oh hai nightmares!
