Sorry - work has totally consumed me this semester. As they say in my line of work, the last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time 😃
I think the latest trailer looks truly fantastic. And contrary to what some people said, I thought it looked very Star-Wars-y.
Luke has to face Vader to make the movie exciting. Yoda knew this.
As for the plan to rescue Han, it was a masterpiece of subterfuge, akin to Inspector Clouseau's ruse of being an idiot, all the while brilliantly hiding his cunning genius and luring Jabba out into the open. Yoda's training made it all possible... he used the Jedi mind trick to get Jabba to take them to the Sarlacc pit. Isn't this obvious?
That's easy... The best part of the prequels, and coincidently the main character of the Phantom Menace, is CPY.
Phil Woods, legendary jazz saxophonist.
Fang Zei said:
Didn't Star Wars ('77) also have a whole bunch of picture edit differences in its 70mm version or am I remembering wrong?
I think it's the 70mm version of ESB that had some picture differences. At least one can be seen in the very first Puggo Edition 8mm digest films, if memory serves.
It was fun! I managed to score a pile of pre-screening tickets for the computer club on campus. We had about 30-40 students at the show.
The good: I enjoyed the effects, Matt Damon was very good. 3D was well done and didn't seem gratuitous. It really felt like I was on Mars. Seemed like some decent science and reasonably believable. Good story and good climax, fairly nail-biting. Some truly beautiful panoramas - they managed to strike a nice balance between Mars being bleak, deadly, and unforgiving, but also spectacularly beautiful at the same time. Best character - Benedict Wong is the lead rocket scientist; it's a bit part (and not even credited in IMDB!) but he steals every scene he's in.
The bad: A bit formulaic/predictable. A few really terrible casting decisions. Every woman in the movie looked like a supermodel, whereas the men were more diverse/normal-looking. Script was at times a bit juvenile - the humor was fine, it's just that overall language was more like high school, rather than NASA - more thought could have been put into crafting the dialogue. I don't remember there being a memorable musical theme - most of the music was older pop hits. Some missed opportunities for character development. Rushed, didn't get the sense - at all - that several months had passed.
Overall, I enjoyed it and would happily see it again.
FanFiltration said:
Ok, that's just about the cleverest thing I've seen in a while.
Just a quick note to say that I haven't forgotten.... bogged down in a major project that I want to get done before school starts.
Yes the very first "Puggo Edition" was the Ken Films digests for SW and ESB (the larger editions).
After reviewing my encode, I wasn't happy with reel 1. Am going through it now and trying a few things...
Someone here has access to Doctor Who kinescopes?
How about a Borg pug?
Ok, just watched the entire encoded film.
Reels 2 and 3 look great.
Reel 1 has two glitches that I need to fix. And the jabba scenes are SO dark I'm considering doing something about it.
Wait.... I thought they already were 70mm?
Sorry, I meant the three reels.
I contacted TMPGEnc - they confirmed that their newer versions can't do the setting I want. So they sold me a license for the older version, and everything is working fine now on my new computer.
Finished encoding all three films. Now to start on the doc...
I think the suggestion to forego the extras relates to the video quality.
Yes I'm planning to be conservative in this regard...
A toy??? It was a profound discovery!!
Seriously, I never started a thread for it. I have the remaining cartridges, and my plan is to telecine all of them and make a DVD of all of them. Still soliciting ideas for a name (best I could come up with was "Puggo's Puppies", but I'm not entirely satisfied with it). Once that project bubbles to the top of the queue, I'll start a thread.
Still tinkering with the encode... apparently this movie is a bit longer than SW and ESB (?)
TOS for certain. My reasons are specific:
First, most TOS episodes presented a moral dilemma where the "right" thing to do is not at all clear. Part of the episode is trying to discern right from wrong. In some cases, that's not even clear at the end of the episode. Building each episode around a tricky moral dilemma, to me is what made it a highly intelligent series and deeply thoughtful writing. How many times did we see Kirk not so much struggling to win, but agonizing over what is the "right" thing to do! By contrast, most of the episodes in the "modern" series (and the TOS movies for that matter) were built around simply defeating enemies or solving problems.
Second, no ST character has yet come remotely close to Nimoy's Spock. One never tires of watching Nimoy in that role.
You've left off 16mm, 8mm, and super8mm film, that were also used as consumer formats for popular movies.
team_negative1 said:
Good to hear your progress. We look forward to seeing it. And if we have time, we will enhance it, with clips, and cleanup.
You folks should have no trouble generating a considerably better replacement :)
Consciously, I was in denial until the love scenes in AOTC. That was the first time I outright thought "ok, this sucks". However, I think that unconsciously, it was the moment that LFL announced that the original (non-SE) films wouldn't be released anymore. Because looking back, that was when I bought up the available VHS and LD versions of the OUT trilogy (that I could find at the time). I didn't even have a laserdisc player, but somehow I must have thought I needed to get the discs. Strange how the mind works.
I still haven't solved the encode timing problem on my new computer, but I did an encode using TMPGEnc on my old computer and it worked fine. So I'll go ahead and encode the remaining two reels on the old computer and proceed that way.
Ultimately I will need to solve this problem going forward, but for ROTP I should have the three reels encoded by tomorrow. Then I can start putting together a "making of" clip, building the menu, and deciding what extra(s) to include. It's going to be tough to top "The Maniac" (that's still my favorite part of SK) :)
As for the quality, as always, I hope that everyone will keep their expectations modest. Although this print has very good color, it is also more scratched than the PSB print. Also, because of the nature of ROTJ, finding an exposure setting that works on both the ultra-bright sand dune scenes, and the ultra-dark Jabba scenes, was virtually impossible. As a result, there are more blown whites and crushed blacks in this film than in either PSB or PG. I have always considered these preservations' role to be mainly to make them available for research, and I am happy that they have proven useful therein. That some of you actually enjoy watching them still puzzles me a bit, but hey that's cool.
Hard to believe this project started 4 years ago.
