NeverarGreat

Gravity.

My favorite movie of all time is Sunshine, so hearing all of the hype for this one made me think that perhaps Gravity would steal that honor.

It almost did.

Gravity and Sunshine are very different movies. Sunshine takes its time and allows for long moments of introspection. Gravity has pauses, but for the most part it is an intense race for survival. As such, it never allowed me to sink into the movie the way Sunshine did, so Sunshine for me is still the best. But Gravity has the most realistic CGI that I have ever seen, and I still don't know how they did some of the floating effects. It also usurps Revenge of the Sith as making the most dramatic use of a certain spaceship situation which I will not state here as it may be construed as spoilers. Gravity also genuinely surprised me in several places, something that gets harder and harder to do.

I saw Gravity in 2D. It looks like one of the few movies that would be better in 3D, but 2D was absolutely wonderful for me.

I would not change a thing about this movie. Perfect ten out of ten.

Bingowings said:

But Leia as the bad guy...it has to happen...right?

Oh Bingo, that's like saying "Anakin as a truly heroic character in the prequels...it has to happen...right?"

Yeah, I think that I missed something. Was there an invitation, or was it just a few people already in the know that were able to attend?

Mrebo said:

Bingowings said:

The video essay is too simplistic.

Agreed with much in your post. I do think the extensive CGI is the issue being complained about when people talk about too much cleanliness. It's more an abundance of fake stuff that looked fake. And Padme's ship was silly! Didn't have the iconic status they must have intended.

Yeah, the queen's starship from TPM actually looked cool. In fact, all of the totally chrome ships looked nice, I just don't know why they didn't stick with just the one. It was even said that only the queen was allowed a fully chromed starship. Would have been special. I don't mind clean lines and good design when it's supposed to look that way, instead of being due to CGI laziness.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World Trade Center

Too soon?

FanFiltration said:

Why not get another hard drive and install two operating systems (duel boot)?

 

Or, you can install Windows 7 (Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise) and use the Windows XP Mode add-on.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-xp-mode

I have three hard drives already hooked up, and I'm thinking everything draws too much power right now as it is. But I may do XP Mode. Thanks!

I've been thinking of upgrading my XP machine to Windows 7 or 8 to run newer software like Vegas 10 and DaVinci Resolve, but there's a lot of old software and games that may not work on the newer systems. Part of me wants to keep XP and get a Windows 7 or 8 machine as well. But both machines would have to be at least midrange to run the video editing software. What to do?

TK-949 said:

 

Turisu said:

I never noticed before how the Sebastian Shaw ghost is only partially transparent. It looks like he's got this big opaque area in the middle of his body. Weirdly the Hayden ghost has this too. Did they just swap the head or something??

Yes, the did, but the also resized the body. Here is my own "Despecialized Edition" of that scene I made a few years ago, using the HDTV version with old Anakin's Head from G'Kar's Special Edition DVD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL9Dupq14Ck

 

Why did you have to go and mention that? That red opaque area appears before the body appears, and now it's all I can focus on. It also goes to show how little effort they took in correcting these errors for the Special Editions.

xhonzi said:

And TV Shows... that's a paddlin'.

I wanted to use Bill & Ted's Bogus ourney, but that key is broken.

Bruce Almighty Thor The Dark World Trade Center Stage Turn it Up in the Air Force One Day on Earth Girls are Easy A Good Day to Die Hard to Kill Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Time Bandits in Rome: The Other Side of Violence 4 Fun & Fancy Free Willy 3: The Rescue Dawn of the Dead Space Warriors...

I guess it's cheating to use IMDB for this isn't it?

imperialscum said:

Hmm what about ROTJ's final battle and ending. There are actually some fans who "want" realism and originality while at the same time would prefer to see a final rebel assault on imperial capital, ending with Emperor's destruction. That is one of the biggest contradictions I have ever heard. Poor rebels attacking the imperial capital and wining is the most unrealistic ending possible, as well as the most unoriginal and banal. Every other trilogy has a dumb ending like that (LOTR, Matrix etc).

ROTJ ending is original and unique. Taking place in some remote region (unlike the usual centre of bad guys' power) and the unique, simplistic and "crude" death of the main villain are just perfect. His most trusted agent picks him up and throws him into the shaft. Again, perfect.

Well the battle is still a bit unrealistic but that is as far as we can really go with it (considering it is a fantasy trilogy). The only more realistic thing would be Emperor dying of a heart attack and the empire collapsing as a result of in-fighting.

As the Death Star was supposed to be the "ultimate power in the universe", I assumed that the Emperor was going to use it as his new mobile capital, complete with a tower of Barad-dur. So really, the "[p]oor rebels attacking the imperial capital and winning" is exactly what happened. I wouldn't say that it was unoriginal. Sure, LOTR did it, but the Matrix Revolutions came out two decades after ROTJ, so it's Revolutions that fails to be revolutionary, not ROTJ.

As for the end being perfect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAOX_CHU0JY

I haven't rendered a test since applying the blue removal technique, so I'm definitely going to be rendering something soon. I'm kind of putting it off because I need the computer for other things right now, and the project has something like six or seven video layers all doing different things, so will probably take forever to render.

So I may have to learn Avisynth.

In the meantime, I was gunning for matching a color seen on several Senator photos:

The green in Luke's hair and Ben's robe is probably not exact, but the reddish hue of the DVD is not correct either in my opinion. So I decided to get it as close as I could to the photo while keeping the rest of the movie's colors close:

It's still a bit red, but it's the closest this shot has ever come to looking right to me. The rest of the movie looks pretty good as well IMO:

This is where a scene by scene correction would be helpful. Luke could stand to use more red skintones here, but colors fall where they are.

Just wanted to share another step along the correction path.

AntcuFaalb said:

timdiggerm said:

Laserschwert said:

NeverarGreat said:

I scored 0.

Same here :)

Me too!

Same here.

Same here.

Oh wait...

Harmy said:

I just took this interesting color vision test and scored 16 (where 0=Perfect Color Acuity , 99=Low Color Acuity and the worst score ever in my gender and age group is 444445389). Not too bad, I think :-)

I may make the test compulsory for everyone wanting to engage in any future DeEd color correction discussion with me :-D ;-)

I scored 0.

So...about redoing the color...

;)

It is established in the EU that the X-wings were cutting edge, while the Y-wings were older ships. Though I think it would make more sense if they were both older models, it doesn't make much difference either way. The point is made that there are probably more ships than pilots.

In the radio drama, Luke does a bang up job in the flight simulator and Red Leader recognizes this. It's not the best explanation, but it's probably the best retcon that can be made here. In fact the scene where Red Leader questions Luke's ability to fly the X-wing makes this explanation rather awkward, so let's forget about the Special Editions for right now.

DominicCobb said:

Bingowings said:

 

It would also have kept ESB's reveals secret.

I know that's not important to some people but the PT weren't actually sold as 'prequels' but earlier episodes.

 

I've been vocal about my disagreement with this line of thinking. I've been ignoring these types of comments because, honestly, people aren't going to change their minds. But I just don't see how that statement is true.

Granted, I was born only a few years before TPM was released, so I'm not aware of what sort of things were being said about the prequels during that 16 year gap. What I do know is that each PT film was advertised using as much Vader imagery as possible, i.e. they were sold as prequels. I remember that awesome poster of Anakin with Vader as his shadow; and I'm sure you all do too, it's probably the thing that got your excitement up most. What that ad promised was a prequel. A prequel trilogy was promised to us. Call me crazy, but I thought the whole reason we wanted to see those movies was to find out what happened before. I don't know about you guys, but the prospect of finding out how Anakin became Darth Vader was the single most exciting aspect of those upcoming prequels. People have said on here that ROTS was a fan wank because they showed Anakin turn to the dark side and don the suit. In my mind, it would have been a fan wank if we didn't see that happen.

But I digress. Where are we? "ROTJ is the best Star Wars film"? What? You guys are crazy, I'm out of here. 

I didn't care about story when I first saw Episode 1. It was simply a new Star Wars movie, and an expansion of the Star Wars universe. That was the draw for me as a young teen, not the story of Darth Vader. I already knew that he began as Anakin Skywalker, a hero and the greatest pilot in the galaxy. I didn't need to be shown that stuff or his turn to the Dark Side to be interested in the movies. The reason I lost interest after Episode 2 was because the universe and story seemed so poorly constructed that it couldn't exist alongside the originals, or even Episode 1. If they had just told an original non-Anakin story and made the movie with the same effort that Episode 1 was created with, I would have been happy. I think you only do damage when you tread on people's imaginations.

True. But the color shifts shot to shot in Star Wars, though there is a tendency towards one or two colors. Knowing what something is supposed to look like in real life will tell you which color is the correct one, and which still needs correction. Of course it's tricky to change one color while keeping the correct color about the same, but it's not impossible.

Hm. Good to know. I really only know Photoshop and Premiere (and a bit of Vegas) when it comes to video editing.

So is this how the collaboration aspect of projects such as Despecialized work? Someone sends the settings, another person uses these as a base for more scene specific work?

Gogogadget said:

That Senator cap looks terrible, there is barely any detail on the buildings in the background, the whites are far too blown out.

The Senator photos are almost certainly too bright most of the time. However I'd say they are far closer in luminosity to the original than the DVD/Blu-ray, and even the GOUT. My purpose was to show that some of the shots in Despecialized are still too dark, with highlights that are still too green. Take a look at the cup in the foreground - in other shots, that cup is white and even blue, as well as in the Senator photo. But as far as anyone knows, the cup is supposed to be white:

As long as it's green, the correction isn't entirely correct. And it is a small detail, but color correction demands attention to such details, for they often lead to uncovering systemic issues, such as the green highlights or the blue and pink tones throughout the movie. I believe that addressing these on a global basis is the best way to deal with the problem, for they are often global changes and aren't limited to a single shot or scene.

I've never worked with Avisynth before, but shouldn't that program have all the functionality of Premiere?

A few Google searches pulled up this:

http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/avisynth-premiere.html

So if I understand it correctly, you could use Premiere as the editing program, and output in Avisynth. I think?

Well this is an active thread, three posts while I wrote mine.

I agree that racing through the exploding Death Star was probably the most exhilarating thing in any Star Wars movie hands down. The effects in this movie are what every Star Wars movie is judged by in my book.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Okay here are some unarguable facts about ROTJ...

- It has the best freaky alien creatures: Jabba, Bib, Ackbar, Salicious, Nunb etc. Nothing in the Cantina comes close and the Wampa was so bad it couldn't even be shown. The best ESB could muster is a blatant sock puppet in a hole.

- It's got the best use of the Falcon. Without the Falcon kickin' ass as the Rebel lead fighter in the battle of Endor it wouldn't be half as iconic. The camera work on the Falcon in ESB pales next to Jedi and the Falcon in ANH barely moves.

- It's got the most 'scale' of the three. Epic locations, epic battles and a huge cast of diverse background characters.

There are other points I'd be tempted to make, such as it has the best pacing but I'll admit that that could be argued against. F*ck it! It does! The opening to ANH is painfully slow and ESB is very static in the middle (Asteroid interlude while Luke is jogging round a swamp). Jedi's pace never lets up! xD

As I said (Apart from the last one) the above points are unarguable facts but let the argueing commence anyway...

I'll argue with these points...

-ESB has Yoda. This is one of the best characters in Star Wars, and he's a freaky alien creature. This is far better than the "blatant sock puppet in a hole".

-The Falcon flies around in ROTJ quite a bit, but we never see the interior like we did before, and when we do it looks more lifeless than it did in ESB. I remember hearing somewhere (perhaps here!) that the scene where the Falcon escapes from Hoth makes this ship into a real character, and this scene has two of my favorite aspects of this ship in it: the hidden machine gun, and its propensity to power failure unless given a well-aimed punch. In ROTJ it's relegated to merely a spaceship again instead of a character.

-It's been addressed, but ROTJ doesn't have the best locations. It just doesn't. Battles and characters perhaps, but not new locations.

-Yeah, not going to get into this one.

You_Too said:

I do still have that script but it's way outdated. I mean, if I were to re-do it today I might have tried to find some kind of better solution to the oversaturated magenta parts. (like laser flashes)

And I also remember I did two versions for Harmy, one for the whole film and one for only the Death Star battle where I removed the dark blue in the shadow detail.

I'm thinking that there should be a new version of Despecialized at some point, because some scenes could definitely stand another attempt. I've figured out how to neutralize most of the pink flashes and dark blue bleeding with a single set of global settings, and I'm pretty sure it will work with the Blu-ray as well.

Compared to the Senator technicolor print, Despecialized has a ways to go in my opinion.

See my thread on correcting the DVD for more info about my ideas about solving these issues.

But Despecialized 2.5 overall is so much better than the Blu-ray, it needs to be seen in whatever case.

I've been fiddling with the settings yet again, and I've gotten substantial amounts of blue into the highlights while keeping it out of the shadows, so the above screenshots are not much changed.

I don't think that I can make a greater global change to this red without killing the skin tones, so I'm happy with this level of red. At least most of the purple is gone.

The red bleed is practically gone. (look up at the screen from a low angle to see what I mean)

Note in particular the blue in the lower right corner on the wall, and the greenish highlights on the armor.

There is now some blue bleed in the highlights of this frame, something which appeared to a greater extent on the Senator photo. I've tried to go for a more subdued effect here.

Again, the entire movie uses the same settings. I'm tempted to correct scene by scene, but where's the challenge in that?