Here are some comparisons from Return of the Jedi, the original screencap being from the official blu-ray, the mouse over changing it to the regraded version:
Hey guys, i'm glad that you're liking what you're seeing!
@Darf Muffy: Yeah, its great to be able to see these films without that awful blue filter. I'm still surprised at how much of a difference it makes!
@Cobra: Mos Eisley is staying exactly the same as on the blu-ray release apart from four changes: 1) Removing the robot knocking the floating droid to the ground when they enter Mos Eisley 2) Removing the Jawas being knocked off their seats and swinging from side to side. These are both silly CG prequel slapstick moments that have no place in the original trilogy IMHO. 3) Han shoots first and ONLY Han 4) Removing awful Jabba scene making him into a clown.
As for format, I am planning to release these at the highest bitrate possible to maintain the highest image quality (in the case of at least one of the six star wars films, even improving considerably IMHO on the image quality of the official blu-ray:D ). The plan is to write each film onto a single bd-50.
If there is any interest though, I suppose I could create avchd versions of these films that could fit on a dual layer dvd and play off dvd players for those that don't have blu-ray writers.
Here are some comparisons of Empire Strikes Back, the original image being the official blu-ray, the mouse over changing it to the regraded version:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/106422
Harmy said:
Actually, the blacks on the BD are far better than on the DVD. I recently had a chance to see screens from a professionally scanned 77 print of STAR WARS and the contrast was surprisingly high, especially in darker shots.
So Harmy, you're saying that Star Wars has always had this high contrast/low shadow detail look in many of its shots, especially the darker ones? Very interesting.
Thanks Harmy! You're right, it is very subtle in certain shots. The filters seems to have a more noticable effect on the higher contrast shots. Overall it does give the film a noticably warmer/more vintage feel that kind of works for this film, making it more appealing to watch, like you always said it would. You were right on the money there.
What I find really annoying though is how I can tell that the Star Wars blu-ray has lost so much shadow detail from the baked in black crush in the 2004 lowry masters. I'm absolutely certain that there should be much more shadow detail there in the original film, so the blu-ray lacks that 'film' feel to it, it feels very digital and artificial.
By comparison, working on the Fellowship of the Ring EE blu-ray transfer based off a totally new 2k master has been such a pleasure in certain ways because its so rich in shadow detail, it really feels like 'film', unlike the Star Wars blu-ray with its baked in black crush, so one has so much more options when regrading it with regards to contrast and brightness IMHO.
Hey DoomBot, thanks for the interest!
Where or how they will be uploaded I don't know yet to be honest. The whole business with megaupload has changed the internet landscape a fair bit so i'll have to carefully consider that exact question.
Here are some comparisons between the official blu-ray and the regraded version from the second half of star wars:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/106291
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/106297
Hey Darf, it's great to hear that you're still looking forward to these. I really hope that these releases live up to your expectations! I've been having technical problems getting my new connection up and running but it should be good to go very soon, fingers crossed.
As for the three Lord of the Rings films, while all three have been regraded (both The Two Towers and The Return of the King have green tints as well, but to a far lesser extent that Fellowship of the Ring), only Return of the King has been edited, and that's only slightly. I made three small changes.
Firstly I removed the scene at the start of the second disc with the corsairs and Peter Jackson being hit and killed my Legolas's arrow for two reasons: 1) It's very silly in a geeky sort of way, killing PJ and Gimli's 'oops' reaction (all the pirates on the deck are actually important crew members getting cameos like PJ so it draws you out of the film as well IMO) and adds nothing to the film and 2) It steals most of the thunder away from the climax of the Minas Tirith battle when Aragorn arrives at the last moment with his army of undead on the ships if we've already seen Aragorn and the undead army getting on the ships beforehand.
Secondly I edited the confrontation between the Witch King and Gandalf so that Gandalf doesn't get his staff broken and knocked off his horse, the Witch King is about to swing his sword at Gandalf when he gets interrupted by the Rohirrim horns and flies off. The reason I changed this was because I always felt it was too over the top to have Gandalf's staff broken and falling over in a heap in the movie. It makes Gandalf seem much weaker than the Witch King when in the books Gandalf and the Witch King seem evenly matched and it ends in a stalemate.
Lastly I edited the scene with the Mouth of Sauron to remove the bit where Aragorn beheads him because it totally goes against the nobility of Aragorn's character in the films. The Aragorn from the books would never kill an enemy ambassador that has come to parley with him, however evil he may be, it is simply not done. If I remember correctly, the Mouth of Sauron is allowed to leave unharmed in the book. The same thing should have happened in the film, so I edited it so it seems that he's been allowed to leave unharmed.
Harmy said:
It's a definite improvement, well done!
Glad you like it! :)
I've regraded the other two films in the original trilogy in a similar vein. I've made the yellow tint stronger on tattoine though so the rest of the film when they're off tattoine is not so yellow.
Hey guys, I haven't posted for a while so I thought I'd give you a mini update on this project for all those still interested. After carefully considering what Harmy has said about the Star Wars original trilogy being more yellow tinted than one would expect, I think i've pretty much decided on the overall colour grading of all six star wars films. I've brightened the three original trilogy films a little but have been careful to maintain the black levels and not let them become too grey.
I still haven't got my new connection yet for so for the time being, I thought i'd put up some comparisons to give you an idea of how i've regraded these films relative to the official blu-rays. I'll start with Star Wars and over the next few days will try to post comparisons of the other films as well.
Starting with the first half of Star Wars (haven't encoded the second part yet) Each of these links has multiple comparisons:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/105271
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/105275
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/105277
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/105280
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/105287
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/105289
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/105292
Though I'm pretty happy now with how it looks overall, let me know what you think. All opinions, whether positive or negative, are very much welcome.
Hi delusions_of_grandeur, this project is going great, I just got a little burned out with everything Star Wars related coming up to christmas so I took a little break.
In the past i've found that it helps to take a few steps back and leave a project like this for a bit otherwise its easy to start going overboard with the brightness/contrast/colour adjustments and the films start to look unrecognisable.
After a little break its always a lot easier to see when you've gone too far changing things IMHO. Been working on the LOTR EEs since the new year and just finished ROTK the day before yesterday so I'm back to Star Wars all refreshed and ready to go! :)
CatBus said:
From what I've seen of some 35mm film scans of ESB, the starfields in the film are both brighter and seem much more populated than what is apparent in the GOUT. I imagine it's also the case with the other films. Harmy often uses film scans and theatrical photos as references, which is why his versions often deviate from the GOUT. Certainly there's also a lot of guesswork, but the goal is to re-create the theatrical version, not the GOUT.
I haven't seen all those sources so i can't make a judgement on that but even if the starfield was that bright and numerous, the fact remains that a continuety problem is created which is very noticable in the clip. If Harmy were to brighten the stars in the background when the Tantive IV passes to match the stars in the scroll background, there would be no problem whatsoever and everything would be seemless. As it is, the difference in star brightness between the two backgrounds is very noticable and IMHO very distracting.
Troyig88 said:
I can't speak for him but I think he is doing the theatrical version which he has said many times.
Yeah Troyig88 I know, which is why I find a change like this a little strange to say the least, not to mention introducing problems with continuety.
At face value it seems very unlike Harmy, that has always put the utmost importance in reproducing the theatrical release as accurately as possible. Were the stars that bright during the scroll in the theatrical release? Is there a source that suggests that they were? I'm not old enough to have seen the theatrical release in the cinemas so I have no idea whatsoever. I'm pretty sure they're not that bright in the GOUT and they're definately not in the blu-ray either. It'd be nice to hear from Harmy why he decided that the stars needed to be brightened so much.
You_Too, nice grading here! This latest change is a great improvement imho. I think you're pretty close here, whites look fairly accurate but the flesh tones are still a little too orange, at least on my monitor. Star Wars looks the best with these settings but ESB suffers more. Vader's lightsaber shot in ESB looks a little too orangy red to me so i'm sure reducing the yellow and red slightly should help all three films imho. Apart from that single change, you're pretty much spot on colour grading from where i'm standing. Hope this helps.
Well, looks like once again i'm the voice of dissent... Harmy, the stars in the crawl looks nice and bright in your clip but i don't see why you would change it from the way it was in the original release (unless some theatrical reference shows the stars being that bright?), you are trying to recreate the the theatrical release, not change the films according to your own preferences right? Or has this project changed at some point into something more similar to what adywan is doing, creating your own version of the films?
Another thing, the brighter stars during the crawl create a starfield brightness continuety error, when the crawl ends and the shot pans down, the brightness of the stars in the crawl background are clearly much brighter than the stars in the background when the Tantive IV fly by and the division between those two starfield backgrounds with totally different brightness levels is very obvious and noticable, at least to me.
Thanks for the well wishes Darf, I hope you're enjoying your xmas as well! :D
I'm glad to hear that you like the colours. If you think that the colours look nice and natural in that ewok clip, I think you're going to really enjoy checking these out when I finally get them online. :)
These are very close to completion, the overall colour grading and editing for the three films is pretty much done. These should be pretty much ready to go after New Years as soon as I get my new connection. i'm just finishing off the final touches like lightsaber continuety and a few other things.
Relating to lightsaber continuety though, could you and others here please check out these very short clips of luke being presented by ben with his father's lightsaber. The first clip is the scene with the overall colour regrading applied but the lightsaber left untouched. I thought the lightsaber looked a bit dull for being made of pure energy with a yellow core so I experimented a bit with the lightsaber and came up with slightly different looks in the second and third clip. Let me know which clips you prefer:
First clip with overall regrading only :http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5B9IV0D6
Second clip with overall regrading + lightsaber regrading: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A2GIJ2R1
Third clip with overall regrading + lightsaber regrading: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YEJRF3KH
And the same thing with these two clips from when Ben draws his lightsaber in the cantina, the first clip being with overall colour regrading but the lightsaber left unchanged and the second clip with Ben's lightsaber also regraded so the lightsaber's less dull and there is colour continuety between the different shots. Please let me know which clip you prefer:
First clip with overall regrading only : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4046IVMQ
Second clip with overall regrading + lightsaber regrading: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V3HBF4C6
And in case I don't post back here until after the 25th, Merry Christmas everyone! :D
Harmy said:
Thanks, yeah, that's exactly it. I mean I can see that there's a bit of green in his skintone but so there is in that Senator screening picture and the walls are quite green there and you need to find a ballance where everything looks at least pretty much the way it should.
And I'm really happy with how this particular scene turned out, except for the skintones being too orange in the shots before Tarkin and Vader come in, which I've already fixed now.
Harmy, yeah I'm only now starting to appreciate now how this is such a delicate balancing act for you, recreating the theatrical colours. I'd never seen that picture of the screening you posted just now that has a green tint in this scene with Tarkin. You've clearly seen more theatrical sources than I have so you know that much more about what the colours should be like than I do. I don't envy you having to balance the few theatrical sources there are out there and decide what colour grading to go with, that's for sure. What i'm doing with my project is so much easier by comparison.
As You_Too says, you're doing a fantastic job here balancing the sources, recreating how it looked in the theatre and everybody here, myself included, really appreciate it. I'll try to keep my nitpicking to a minimum from now on. :)
You_Too said:
Harmy said:
Yeah, sure, it looks a bit green when you compare it to that but now the walls are a bit too purple.
I loosely based my colour timing of that scene on this picture:
I know it may not be entirely correct but it seems to be the best reference we've got right now.
Yeah, when one thing is right the others look wrong and vice versa. I think you're doing a great job on balancing it anyway. I just posted that pic to show people that his skin had too much green, not too much yellow in it.
Point taken, You_Too. I stand corrected. :) I often mix up the effects of too much green and too much yellow on an image to be honest. I should really use photoshop more to get an indicator of how to balance the colours/find out what colours there's too much of like you did here.
You_Too said:
Actually, the color that needs to be just slightly reduced to make Tarkin closer to natural would be green.
Look here, I used curves in photoshop and put a point in the green curve at 127/135 and here's what came out:
Yeah you're right about reducing the green! That definately does look more natural IMHO.
Fair enough guys. Seems i'm the only one that thinks he looks a little yellow there.
Cobra Kai said:
OMEN!-_-! said:
Cobra Kai said:
It looks to me like Harmy has done his homework and is simply trying to preserve the original colors as they appeared in the theater. From different sources that I have seen, the theatrical version appears to have had somewhat of a warm look anyway, and obviously was much much warmer than the 2004 and later versions. (There's a great reference shot of Leia on Tantive IV over on mverta's site that illustrates the difference between the gout, 2004, and the corrected legacy preservation).
Obviously it won't be 100% accurate until a better reference source becomes available, but I am happy for the most part from looking at the wp.
I don't doubt for one second that Harmy hasn't done his homework Cobra, I just have my doubts about the colour grading accuracy of sources like the saturated GOUT and the Star Wars frames on jedi1.net that have predominantly strong yellow fade. Only these few frames from Star Wars look fairly accurate to me (based on flesh tones) Of course, they have issues as well, just not as much as the others IMHO:
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Ben_Kenobi-05919-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Stormtrooper-02011-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Rebel_Alliance-04406-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Rebel_Alliance-03102-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-C-3PO-03272-1600.jpg
The first film is meant to be warm, no question, I agree 100%. The question is how warm though. I just think that the yellow is a little too overwhelming in the workprint sometimes, like watching the theatrical release through yellow sunglasses. The scene with Tarkin and his boys having a meeting on the Death Star is one such scene, their flesh tones are so yellow that they all look like they're suffering from yellow fever. Just my two cents. I'll shut up now.
No, I hear what you're saying. Certainly the saturated gout isn't a reliable source by itself. I wish I could look at that Tarkin scene again to see if we're seeing the same thing, but for some reason I already dumped the workprint off my computer. (dang it!) It also probably doesn't help that we're all viewing this on completely different monitors.
Someone here at the forum just needs to go ahead and find a pristine technicolor print for Harmy to look at. :)
Here's one screencap from the tarkin scene on the workprint to show you what I mean. On my monitor his skin looks too yellow:
Cobra Kai said:
It looks to me like Harmy has done his homework and is simply trying to preserve the original colors as they appeared in the theater. From different sources that I have seen, the theatrical version appears to have had somewhat of a warm look anyway, and obviously was much much warmer than the 2004 and later versions. (There's a great reference shot of Leia on Tantive IV over on mverta's site that illustrates the difference between the gout, 2004, and the corrected legacy preservation).
Obviously it won't be 100% accurate until a better reference source becomes available, but I am happy for the most part from looking at the wp.
I don't doubt for one second that Harmy hasn't done his homework Cobra, I just have my doubts about the colour grading accuracy of sources like the saturated GOUT and the Star Wars frames on jedi1.net that have predominantly strong yellow or green fade. Only these few frames from Star Wars look fairly accurate to me (based on flesh tones) Of course, they have issues as well (second too blue, third, fourth, fifth and sixth too green, seventh too yellow), just not as much as the others IMHO:
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Ben_Kenobi-05919-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Stormtrooper-02011-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Rebel_Alliance-04406-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Rebel_Alliance-03102-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Chewbacca-01325-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-Chewbacca-04385-1600.jpg
http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-C-3PO-03272-1600.jpg
The first film is meant to be warm, no question, I agree 100%. The question is how warm though. I just think that the yellow is a little too overwhelming in the workprint sometimes, like watching the theatrical release through yellow sunglasses. The scene with Tarkin and his boys having a meeting on the Death Star is one such scene, their flesh tones are so yellow that they all look like they're suffering from yellow fever. Just my two cents. I'll shut up now.
Erikstormtrooper said:
Harmy,
I finally finished watching the first part of the workprint. Everything looks good except for the star warping issue I mentioned during the flyover.
About the colors, I see there's been some considerable discussion about that, and you plan to pull back on the reds a bit. The comparison bkev posted is a good example of the monochrome look I'm talking about. The shade of Luke's hair compared to his flesh tone is too similar to my eyes. Add in the slight brightening from recovering the blacks, and the overall result looks "sepia".
Again, remember that I'm no color expert, and I don't remember what this looked like theatrically.
I look forward to the next 40 minutes :D
Pretty much agree with what you're saying here Erikstormtrooper, i'm not particularly fond of the absence of the colour blue in the workprint as well. That said, Harmy likes his colours warmer and desaturated, giving the film an 'older' sepia/monochrome look, its an interesting stylistic choice he's made and this being his project, that's what goes. I'm personally very interested in seeing how ESB and ROTJ are going to look though, whether Harmy will continue with this style or whether he will opt for a more modern balanced look. One thing i'm certain of though is that these versions are going to be totally unique colourwise compared to the blu-rays and hdtv streams, so I'll definately be one of the first in line to get my hands on these when he gets round to uploading them. :)
You_Too said:
Found a subtle color inconsistency which is on the raw blu-ray as well, but I thought I'd post it anyway.
Look at the blue on R2:
Is it like this in the HDTV version too?
Just checked. Yeah, its in the HDTV version as well. These sorts of inconsistencies are everywhere in the first film.
Harmy, You_Too, cheers for the feedback! Yeah, it seems pretty seemless to me as well. The german hdtv stream does require pretty different grading to get it looking like the blu-ray though, its not as simple as just editing the two sources together (I wish), otherwise I wouldn't need to ask your opinion on whether its fairly seemless or not. That said Harmy I see what you're saying, they do indeed come from the same lowry 2004 master so they have very very similar colour grading albeit very different image dynamics.
Looking at that clip and the rest of ROTJ i've regraded, I think that the contrast is too high. I think this is because I increased the overall brightness while maintaining the same black levels but looking at your workprint and the blu-ray itself, I think its probably better to raise the black levels a bit to reveal more details in the shadows, but not enough that the blacks start to look a little grey. Would you two agree with that assessment based on this clip?
As for warmer colours, yeah, from having seen your workprint, you definately have a preference for warm colours, that's for sure. I prefer my colours and flesh tones to to be a little more neutral. Blues are allowed to exist in my star wars universe without being persecuted for being loosely related to the dreaded 'blue tint' hehe. All boils down to ones own preferences I suppose.
Okay, continuing where I left off before (sorry about the delay)...
24423-24424 : inconsistent lighting between the two shots
25031-25032 : inconsistent lighting between the two shots
28617: perhaps too red relative to next shot
32230: perhaps too green
36728: sunset shot perhaps a little too bright relative to preceding and next shot
53048 : flesh tones too yellow in this whole scene on the Death Star IMHO
60760-60761 : inconsistent lighting between the two shots, the later overlooking Mos Eisley being too yellow IHMO
A lot less inconsistencies this time, the bit on Tantive IV at the start is definately tricky to grade, that's where the majority of the noticable inconsistencies were. The rest is great. I may have missed a few inconsistencies due to getting too immersed in the film itself. :)
