TServo2049

Man, these look great!

And BTW, the sky is red in that one shot because it was filmed at a different time. In the days before digital color grading, you could only shoot sunset scenes at sunset, and thus the lighting is constantly changing. Compound that with the fact that there's multiple takes, coverage, and the scenes weren't necessarily filmed in chronological order. Thus, in the final cut, we may hypothetically go from a shot filmed at 6 PM to a shot filmed at 6:30 to a shot filmed at 5:45, and the lighting will thus be inconsistent, even with the tweaks that could be made with photochemical color timing.

Actually, the reason the 35mm looks "too smooth" to you compared to the GOUT is because the GOUT came from an interpositive. Even with the low resolution, the excessive grain, the clipped whites, the DVNR and the other problems with the GOUT, there is still some visible detail in it that was not in evidence on actual projection prints, due to the fact that there are at least two additional generations of duping between an IP and a print.

EDIT: What I just said is incorrect - listen to Harmy, not me.

Isn't the original negative A/B roll? If I had to guess, the '82 IP was probably printed as A/B roll and given a quick-and-dirty glue job. Since it was intended for pan-and-scan video, and the edges of the frame would fall outside of the "safe area" of most early-80s TVs, it must not have been judged to be that big of an issue...

As I said before, that source is an enigma.

- It looks low-contrast; aren't IPs low-contrast? I will note that the home video transfers have low contrast, but the version seen on ITV has higher contrast; I have a theory that ITV got an actual *print* and transferred it themselves, as it has the blue-green cast and blown-out highlights I associate with film chain;

- It comes from a source that lacks the burn marks and the Greedo subtitles (meaning either that these weren't on the O-neg, or that earlier-generation sources were cut in);

- There's those weird blobs that msycamore seems to say are on much of reel 3. I find it hard to believe that those were on the actual negative - perhaps there was a lab mishap during duping and they let it slide because it was only intended for the relatively small and mid-size TVs of the era?

Oh, and by the way, danny_boy said his screenshot was from the "PAL UK 1982 VHS premiere broadcast (mono optical audio track)". The screenshot looks very similar to the ITV broadcast screenshot from Russ - might it just be another ITV recording? He did say "premiere broadcast" and "mono optical audio track", and he put it side-by-side with the PAL rental VHS, which has a pinkish tone similar to the U.S. VHS/Beta transfer.

As to the Technidisc/GOUT source - it seems from the Technidisc transfer that it was already yellowing in '92. Who knows what it looks like 20 years later? Even if it hasn't faded or yellowed any further, there's still the potential issue of vinegar syndrome...

That's interesting - it looks like the other P&S video releases in terms of subtitles and lack of burn marks, but Russ' flyover comparison page shows that it has the '77 flyover and not the '81...

Hey Russ, when you check again for the burn marks, can you also check and see how the Greedo subtitles were handled?

Can you make screenshots for the Tantive shake and the Greedo subtitles and put them here?

The orange marks in the binary sunset scene on the Technidisc don't show up on any other version, including the various 35mm and 16mm telecines and preservations. They seem to be unique to that print.

The Tantive shake is so grainy because it was an optical effect. Various frames were optically smeared and repositioned to make it look like the camera was shaking more than it was in the production footage. (I have a theory that the less severe shake we see in the SE is the original on-set shake effect - they had to go back to the production footage, likely not because of any burn marks, but rather because the optically-enhanced version was either too grainy, or had CRI fading problems like some of the other opticals.)

I don't think the orange marks were burned in during the optical process, because the 80s video releases don't have them. Either these marks were not on the scene in the original negative, or if they were, then Lucas/ILM/whoever must have gone back and found the original master footage of the shake optical and cut that in to replace the "burned" dupe version.

The interpositive used for the 80s video transfers is really a mystery to me - it doesn't have the '77 color timing, so it could must come from the O-neg or some element earlier than the timed answer print, yet it has its own weird damage (like the strange blobs when Luke turns on his saber after putting on the helmet). If that damage was actually on the original negative by '82, then it's no wonder that they had to go back and recomposite these scenes in '97...

Now, I just have to wait for Russ Dawson to confirm whether or not the burn marks are on the 80s ITV broadcast. That version is interesting in its own right - it has the mono mix, it has the '77 flyover (but apparently the crawl itself is the EpIV version), and it may have been transferred to video using film chain rather than telecine. A Christmas 1984 ITV promo shows the same Tantive chase shot -1 posted, and it has a similar bluish tone to the first capture of his 35mm print. The other clips in the promo don't - though the color balance reminds me more of the Moth3r and Catnap telecines than any official video release. There's also a brief clip from a 1987 airing elsewhere on YouTube; it has a blue-greenish tint and no panning-and-scanning (i.e., the cropping seems to sit right in the center - perhaps ITV used a widescreen print, and the cropping was done by the film chain operator). I'm almost wondering if it was sourced from a print similar to -1's.

Oh goody, now that you have the ITV recording back, I'd like to ask again - does that version have the burn marks during the Tantive camera shake?

No, the video releases I remember had white subtitles too. (In fact, I believe they were actually optical and not video, unlike Jedi.)

When did anyone ever suggest that the subtitles might have been yellow?

My first reaction was to quote Gus from Psych when some kid said that the prequels were better than the OT:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wn6Et4Fu88

Do I really need to say anything else?

CatBus said:

Certainly this was markedly different than I'd seen Star Wars look recently, and I was also taken by the washed out appearance of Tatooine, which I think reaches its peak as the sand crawler crests the dune after the "Look Sir, droids" scene.  That scene practically looks as blown out as a Hoth scene it's so bright.  But then I watched it again thinking that this was the desert with the sun glaring down all the time.  Suddenly Uncle Owen's squinty eyes fit a lot better, a lot of stuff did.  It's just blindingly bright out there!

According to Mike Verta that scene always looked fuzzy and washed out in original prints, and in fact there are a handful of shots which always looked like grainy dupes - that shot, the infamous "landspeeder blob," and the shot of the Rebel fighters flying towards the camera before "All wings report in."

Did you make the hatch blue in the first zoom-in shot onto the droids? I can't tell if it's gray or blue...

Sorry about bringing up the skin in the Tantive scenes, Harmy. I should have known better.

For the sake of Harmy's sanity, no more complaints about colors, please. Especially skin tones. :)

Speaking of skin, in the WP3.0 preview clip, in some shots the Rebel troopers look too pale. I'm especially thinking of that one closeup near the end - the guy's face has almost no color in it. When I turn up the saturation in VLC, those shots look better - but all the other shots look way too saturated. Perhaps those shots can have their color turned up?

How do the skin tones look in your 35mm source? I've never seen a version where the Rebel troops look that desaturated...

Oh, it's great. There are certain frames that need to be moved more than they are now, but even so, it looks fantastic.

Harmy, I think I'll PM you about the changes I think should be made, rather than drag it out through this thread.

You're right about the blur, it's just that some of it doesn't look "streaky" enough. A couple frames are really really streaked in the original

Actually, even though I did edit them into a post, I still posted those pics *after* you announced that you redid the shake, so I don't fault you.

BTW, the frame numbers I'm giving don't correspond to your preview file, because the first frame appears twice in that. I'm numbering them starting with the first frame where we see the droids.

Before we beat this dead horse anymore, I will change the subject back to the DEED:

I just looked at the new shake, and it looks great! You did exactly what I was talking about, smearing certain frames and moving them off-kilter just like in the original version. Good job!

Still, I will give a little constructive criticism. Not every frame in the shake was blurry. Look at my screengrabs from the Puggo Grande - there are some frames in the shake which don't look to be blurry, smeared or anything. The ones that look to be unsmeared to me are frame 3, frame 6, frame 9, frame 12 (and maybe 11?), frame 15, frames 18-19?; it looks like there's no more optically smeared frames after frame 21.

Frame 7 should be much more smeared than it is now - in fact, I think it's the most smeared frame in the whole shot.

Also, is there any way that the smear frames could be actually smeared, rather than just doubled at partial opacity? Couldn't it be done in Photoshop?

Anyway, take a look at those Puggo Grande frames I posted, and flick through them in order - it's good to have a reference that's not DVNR'ed.

dlvh said:

That would be great for all the fans that originally saw it, and know it was in there, in the summer of '77

I'm sorry, but it's been discussed inside and out on this forum how the scene doesn't exist, and why so many people remember it when it never happened.

dlvh really said:

That would be great for all the fans that read the novelization over and over after the film was no longer in theaters, and thus mistakenly "remembered" the scene being in the actual film.

In a time before video, when the only way to see a movie was when it was in theaters, these kind of false memories happened. (In fact, even after video, people still "remembered" seeing extra scenes in the theater, like the infamous, nonexistent closeup of Anthony Hopkins cutting into Ray Liotta's brain in "Hannibal.")

I'm sorry, but it has been proven that this scene was only in the novelization. It wasn't in any version of the film, it was never filmed, and it was never in any version of the script.

You redid it already? Darn, I just grabbed the frames from Puggo Grande and was going to post them up to show which frames were smeared, which were repositioned, etc. :)

I still will, though. http://imageshack.us/g/109/shake001.png/

Go through them in order, and you'll see that some of them were optically smeared and repositioned, while others weren't. There was no blending of one frame with another - each frame is a manipulation of a single frame of the original footage.

No idea why they didn't try to recreate the effect in the SE; judging by the almost perfectly recreated optical wipes, I bet that a similar recreation of the shake could have been done.

Also, I don't think Ben Burtt's anecdote is referring to the burn marks. He said there was a jumpy spot when the Stormtroopers burst through the door. I think I can almost see a jump when the door explodes, but I can't tell if that's what Burtt was talking about, or if it was an intentional jump cut, or if it was just my imagination. (Maybe Mike Verta knows what the "jumpy spot" is Burtt's talking about?)

As for the burn marks, I wonder if they are connected to the optical "camera shake" effect. While going through the scene frame by frame, I notice that the artificial shaking ends right around the time the burns show up. I don't think they were introduced when the effect was done, because the 80s video transfers don't have them, and it doesn't look like the effect was recreated.

And the fact that the '77 shake was an optical effect may be why the scene was replaced in the SE. Since it was an optical, perhaps it was one of the scenes that was on CRI and was so deteriorated as to be unusable?

CatBus said:

bkev said:

I am curious as to why the decision was made to add it at all.

It was shakier in the theatre, but we don't have much in the way of usable references for that.  It's a best effort.  I'm not sure it's good enough either but I trust Harmy to make the call.

It was shakier in all pre-SE versions. The SE version either has a new shake effect, or we're seeing the original in-camera shake. Either way, the much more violent initial shake prior to the SE was done optically. Some frames were smeared (I assume by using a long exposure and moving the image during exposure), and some frames were repositioned off-center (which may be why the whole image was cropped differently in the original; I'm guessing the whole scene was blown up and cropped so that it could be moved around optically, and that for the SE they cropped the original camera footage to roughly match the '77 framing). Either way, it created the illusion that the camera was being jolted around more than it actually was in the original footage.

I think it could be better recreated, though. Rather than blending the frames together, perhaps each frame could be individually manipulated in Photoshop. I'm sure there are ways to smear images in PS, and perhaps if two images were laid on top of each other at 50% opacity, each frame could be positioned relative to the adjacent ones to match the optical shake effect.

I'll post frames from the '77 shake (and not the DVNR'ed GOUT) to show how it didn't look blurry in every frame.

Does it really matter? If Harmy wants to work at 25fps, let him work at 25fps.

As with DEED 1.0, the final version will be at 24fps and in sync with the existing soundtrack preservations.

Everyone else made the arguments I was going to make.

Right now I'm against the burn marks. If you want to put them in an alternate version, that's fine, but they're just too distracting when the rest of the film is free of any dirt, dust, scratches, etc.; and as others have said, if George Lucas still had his marbles and LFL did a true restoration of the '77 version, with the original color timing and everything, the burn marks would not be there.

As with your earlier idea to add little bits of dirt and stuff, I believe that a "theatrical experience" version should be an alternate version.

Oh, and that thing in the TIE explosion is not a rip in the film - notice that it goes behind the explosion. My theory is that it's some kind of wire related to the explosion apparatus.

From what I can gather, the burns were on all prints in '77. The source used to make the video transfers in the 80s was burn-free, but then the source used to make the '93 transfer had them again.

They are part of the '77 theatrical version for sure, but I'm on the fence about whether it's necessary to put them in the DEED. It's kind of jarring seeing them appear on an otherwise clean image, as opposed to on a print that already has other noise...

And looking at the blur that Harmy added to the camera shake, I see what he did. The camera shake effect in the SE looks different than in the original, where the image shakes longer and more violently. Since it's not a different take, I'm guessing that means that the shake was indeed a post-production effect, or that more shaking was added optically and what we're seeing in the SE is the original in-camera version. It looks like Harmy was trying to simulate the shaking effect from the original version. It still doesn't look as "rough" as the original, but unfortunately, there are no high-resolution versions of the true original, so I guess I'm fine with Harmy's new version as a compromise.

Another question - what's with all the smearing in the camera shake? Reminds me of the GOUT DVNR. Watching the widescreen bootleg telecine, I don't see that much blur.

I'm not complaining, just asking.