NeverarGreat

Well, I took a hiatus from this for a month to finish the semester, but I haven't forgotten about you guys, or this project. R&D has completed and the real work has begun.

I haven't been updating this thread because I've encountered no real problems as far as the project is concerned. Setting a release date would be premature, as progress is slow but sure. So hang in there, and it will be done in due time!

Darth Lucas said:

So I just had a thought.  It would be slightly challenging, but if Adywan so wished, he could potentially get some guy dressed up as Vader and another guy dressed up as Ben, shoot against greenscreen to comp them into different death star backdrops, using the actors masked out of the original scene for dialogue and close ups (get a couple screens of ben's face to cover the actor's in wider shots) and expand the Ben/Vader duel to sort of move throughout the death star to make it more exciting, epic, and able to stand alongside the other duels of the saga in terms of excitement and scope.  Ultimately they would move so that they end up with Ben's death in the same place as the original.  It wouldn't be too difficult, just time consuming.

 Honestly I don't think such a change of location would be necessary to give a heightened sense of danger to the scene. In the two or three establishing shots at the beginning of the fight, the view could be zoomed out to show a giant open shaft to the left of Ben (without guardrails of course), with only a five or six foot walkway skirting the side.

Ben realizes that he must make it past Vader to get to the Falcon, and he first tries to cut close to the wall, but Vader blocks his passage. Next he cuts along the edge of the pit, and all that would be needed here would be an added shot of Ben's feet and robes skirting the edge in a closeup. That would go a long way towards making the environment important to the fight.

JEDIT: Adding echoey sound effects which imply open space and perhaps a slight wind ala the Empire catwalk scene would really sell the concept.

Nope, it's the NTSC version. It was probably an importation problem, because I just quickly pulled it into an existing project. I'm getting a duplicated frame at random points in the video, so ignore my previous post.

I found something else which is strange. Mike talked about how the last two frames of the '81 version would have been "lopped off", and so I checked the '97 version against the Team Blu GOUT, and the final frame of the composited Star Destroyer is gone in the '97 version, however the laser blasts are still composited to be in the same place, meaning that the entire Star Destroyer is shifted back one frame in the '97 version compared to the original.

Download both images and flick between them. The Star Destroyer is at precisely the same angle in both, yet this is the second to last frame of the GOUT shot, and the last frame of the '97 shot.

That's awesome. I was just noticing that problem for the first time while watching your timing video just now.

Anyway, I've figured out part of the problem. There's an extra frame on the 2006 DVD somewhere during the pandown in frame 3022 of the GOUT, but not on Team Blu's verson of that DVD, which is GOUT source I assume Harmy is using. So that explains the match.

I've been doing quite a bit of experimentation with other programs such as After Effects, which is why this thread has been silent for a while. I'm able to get good results in both Premiere Pro and AE, but as the scopes in AE are insufficient, I'll probably be sticking with Pro.

They should have placed less emphasis on genetics with regards to Force sensitivity. In the original, more emphasis was placed on the Force being "with" somebody, and I assume this was because the Force is able to aid those willing to fight for peace and justice. Now the primary factor is who your parents are.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Madhouse (1974) - 7.5/10

Starcrash (1978) - 4/10

You clearly haven't seen Starcrash in a theater full of bad movie aficionados. Then it would undoubtedly be a 9/10 at least.

Now I really want to see Black Angel. There was one sequence in Excalibur which had all the same elements of the cave scene in ESB, the snake, the lizard, all that subconscious symbolism, and I thought that one of them clearly took that from the other.

frank678 said:

This is my favourite correction of an old source to date:

https://vimeo.com/89749265

http://we.tl/x0kT5XUMny

Brightness and saturation look really good there. One thing I noticed was the blues look a bit too bright, especially in the shadows. I like the grainy nature of this, no sharpening required IMO.

Sorry to hear that, this is why I have multiple hard drives with important files duplicated.

Well, any project worth doing is worth re-doing. Don't lose hope!

mverta said:

When you degrain an image and do noise reduction, it tends to look very soft - smooth, but soft.  When you add grain back - it's the wildest thing - it suddenly looks sharp again.  It's like your brain has something sharp to focus on, so it just rethinks the image.  I'll show this in action too, before/after.  It'll blow your mind how adding grain suddenly makes a soft image seem sharper.

_Mike

That's so absurd, you'd think that if they didn't like the noise reduction they would just revert back to the original instead of degrading the image twice! It sounds about like what they would do though.

On the subject of color noise, why would this have been consciously added to the blu-ray? Many times I've been unable to salvage certain gradients in the blu-ray because there's more difference in the color noise of a single color than there is in two colors which should be worlds apart!

Excalibur (1981)

I can't believe this movie escaped my attention for so long.

It does a good job of compressing a massive amount of Arthurian legend into a reasonable running time. Though many early scenes seem to end abrubtly, it flows quite well.

I was not expecting to see Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson in it, Neeson in his first major acting role and Stewart very early in his film career. Very cool to see for that alone.

Some of the location shooting is absolutely gorgeous, and though the combat can be clunky and awkward, it just adds to the realism in my opinion.

Merlin (Nicol Williamson) was excellent, serious, cheeky and droll, often at the same time. Clearly the standout to me.

9/10 knights of the Round Table

That sounds awesome.

SilverWook said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

SilverWook said:

Well, we never got a non EU answer for that cave that really wasn't a cave on Dagobah, so J.J. will fit right in. ;)

Are you referring to that artificial-looking archway inside the cave? I don't think the EU's actually addressed that. Wookieepedia's article on the cave doesn't even bring it up.

 The EU still gave us more than the prequels did. There were fan theories for years about what happened in there to make it saturated in the Dark Side, and an expectation we would see it in the the PT. Yoda initially referred to it as a place, not a cave.

I wonder if there are blueprints for that set somewhere that could give clues?

My brother always thought that the artificial walls of the cave were meant to foreshadow the slanted walls of the passage where Luke and Vader fought later in the film. I agree that this is probably the extent of the thought that went into it, but in some of my prequel outlines the passageway opens up into a giant Sith catacomb. I would be disappointed if they ever explained that cave, much better for it to remain open to interpretation.

Alright, class has begun. Anyone else who arrives is officially late.

DuracellEnergizer said:

As I hate the whole PT-spawned notion that only certain genetic supermen get to have an afterlife, I hope Episode VII -- or any of the sequels, really -- clearly establishes that everyone -- be they Jedi or not, Force-sensitive or not -- gets to survive death as spirits in the Force.

This may be kind of terrible for Leia, as she is constantly barraged with the spirits of everyone who died on Alderaan. Everyone is constantly like "Remember to avenge me, princess" or "we're all counting on you." or God forbid: "Help us Leia, you're our only hope!"

She'd snap within the month.

Warbler said:

NeverarGreat said:

If you have a system which allows every person to vote for the candidate who is most representative of their values, it stands to reason that the person who is elected will (at least appear to) be an average Joe, appearing to conform to the middle of the bell curve in terms of policy opinions, personal taste, intelligence, and charm. These results are skewed when it comes to things like height and professionalism, which many voters favor in their leaders.

Consequently, many leaders are chameleons (figuratively, not literally), able to change their appearance and political opinions to appeal to the majority, and not offend vocal minorities, such as religious people who believe that weather is directly caused by the decisions of a personal deity.

Yeah, I made it work. ;)

 you are arguing against a system where we election our leaders.  If you have better way, please meantion it.   In any case, that is not an argument for staying home on election day.

I'm just pointing out that the system has flaws. I don't see a convincing argument for people to stay home on election day, nor do I think that going the the polls (at least for national elections) has any real effect on the outcome. People will rationalize their decision after the fact anyway, no need for me to induce a guilt trip. Yet I did mention that people do elect leaders who are different than themselves in certain aspects (hair, tallness 'presidentiality'), they just aren't useful aspects for a leader to have. If voters demanded that, instead of BS debates, each candidate undergo a series of ethical trials and tests of knowledge before casting their votes, we would probably have a far better system than the one we have now.

Star Wars Episode VIII: How to Remove a Star War8.

If you have a system which allows every person to vote for the candidate who is most representative of their values, it stands to reason that the person who is elected will (at least appear to) be an average Joe, appearing to conform to the middle of the bell curve in terms of policy opinions, personal taste, intelligence, and charm. These results are skewed when it comes to things like height and professionalism, which many voters favor in their leaders.

Consequently, many leaders are chameleons (figuratively, not literally), able to change their appearance and political opinions to appeal to the majority, and not offend vocal minorities, such as religious people who believe that weather is directly caused by the decisions of a personal deity.

Yeah, I made it work. ;)

Bingowings said:

I hope they don't have a roll call of company logos, Disney..Bad Robot...Lucasfilm etc.

Just kick in with

and put all that stuff in the end credits.

It's funny how we've grown so attached to the Lucasfilm logo and the Fox fanfare, when these elements are arguably against the spirit of the movie. Lucas fought to have the credits at the end of the film, a change that is now the norm for movies, yet the company logos remain at the beginning. It would totally be in keeping with Star Wars to cut right to the movie.

Also, it would be so awesome if the original font and blue color of that card would appear all gate-weavy and the movie was full of old-school miniature shots. Just like they went back to 1983 and continued the saga right where it left off, technology-wise. Puppets, real location shooting, grimy and sparsely populated scenes in god-knows-where corners of the galaxy, and everyone would leave the theater surprised that it's actually 2014.

Of course it's going to be a safe, sanitized Disney flick, but I can dream.

TheBoost said:

I got a lotta hope about the Next Generation. Look at merchandise. I was at Disneyland, and during the entire trips saw two pieces of PT merch. LEGO Star Wars shwag is almost totally OT. Angry Birds Star Wars merch is almost totally OT. Fisher Price Star Wars merch is heavily OT. In all of these cases I'll add "with the notable exeption of Darth Maul."

People complain that Maul should have been the villain throughout the PT, but if he was, Lucas would have totally mishandled him. "Killing" Maul in Episode 1 was the best thing that could have happened to the character.

My reading of the film is that Anakin may have been a famous pilot (best starpilot in the galaxy) but he lost much of his fame when he decided to join the conservative monastic order which was the Jedi. This is just speculation, but I figure that Obi-wan could very well have first noticed Anakin's Force sensitivity by simply watching him fly his ship.

As for the Force, I suspect that it may be terminology used only by Jedi and Sith, and other religious orders have other names for this mystical energy field. Heck, if I was part of the Sith order, I would come up with some other name for it than "The Dark Side of the Force". What a mouthful, as well as implying that it is evil! The Emperor could simply be using that language on Luke because that's what the Jedi call it, and using the Sith names for things would just get confusing.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Reaching Metiya, the near-human woman brings her sword down on him, cleaving him in twain.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXRb6nPcx10

;)

I'll admit that I haven't read through that much of this great undertaking, but your last paragraph seems remarkably violent, even for a post-ROTS Star Wars. I'm guessing you're gunning for the hard "R" with this.