Agreed. As mentioned before, the TF1 is the best edition so far; it just doesn't have English subtitles. The master does look very detailed and vibrant.
captainsolo said:
It's here:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Apocalypse-Now-OAR/topic/11386/page/3/
Thanks captainsolo. Sorry about being off-topic on the thread. The reason I asked this is because I was trying to understand exactly how vivid Star Wars should be since they both are very saturated Technicolor films.
You're probably right; I suppose Lucas just does what he thinks looks cool. Also, yes, the cyan tint is prevalent these days and it is rather annoying. Whatever happened to bold, rich colors of a diverse palette, as Star Wars is supposed to have.
And, I do have one random off-topic question about color timing, is the Apocalypse Now Blu-Ray faithful to the theatrical colors or does it too suffer from revision of color timing?
Chewtobacca said:
adywan said: George does love his cyan ;)
Yeah, you see the exact same shift from blue to cyan that is shown in that picture in almost every film that has its color timing changed. It's really irritating.
rpvee said:
Well, I hate to say it but there's a black spot there after all. A good awkward few seconds long, too. Right after Vader says "Take her away". Either I closed it RIGHT before it happened the first time, or it only happens sometimes. I don't know. :-/
Just shot you a PM rpvee.
All right, well I saw the whole thing and here are my thoughts. To preface this, I must say that I loved the narrative style of this edit. The Godfather II-style works here: a story of similar fathers and sons. I took notes while watching this so here they are:
This was actually surprisingly good quality for an MP4 considering it's small size and large compression. While I was watching, the video blacked out two times for a few seconds once when Vader was talking to Leia and again when Anakin and Padme arrive on Geonosis. I'm not sure if this was just my computer glitching and I couldn't go back to see if it was because of the nature of this MP4. Also when they arrived on Tattooine, I thought I saw a flash frame but this might just be my imagination. One other technical thing I noticed was that the alien captions varied between ANH and AOTC. The AOTC alien captions were the plain DVD subtitle track captions while the Greedo captions were hardcoded; I don't think this could be helped though unless you created new captions exactly like Adywan's.
While watching, I thought that the AOTC speeder chase looked slightly color corrected to look more real, so it seemed less CGI-like; in any case, I did enjoy it here because of the Classic OT music you inserted at the beginning of it as well as the precise excising of the CGI shennanigans. Speaking of music, all of the added music was utterly fantastic and achieved an alternate mood, which I believe was your intention. Some scenes, in particular that were improved, are R2D2's capture by the Jawas which is now more menacing, the Death Star round table sequence, and absolutely especially all the sequences during Geonosis, which now were filled with excitement and suspense as opposed to before when John William's rather luckluster score was all to be heard. The only music addition which seemed a bit too sudden and a tad rough to me was the Imperial March during Vader's entrance. It seemed very sudden.
The love between Anakin and Padme now seems genuine and there appears to be chemistry between the two actors. I was a bit surprised at the new scene but it worked, and it made the promise not to fall in love mentioned at the end all the more effective. Also, not being distracted by Ewan MacGregor at the cloning facility was a definite plus. When Anakin and Padme leave the ship on Geonosis and are immediately apprehended, it was a very good move to cut the conveyor belt scene, as it's unnecessary action; however, I was surprised to see the tail end of it rather than the alternate negotiations deleted scene presented on the DVD.
The Phantom Menace clips were a bit surprising; I didn't expect them. The green tint was personally a bit much for me, but I found I got more used to it the second time I saw a TPM clip. Anyway, as AOTC and ANH transition, it is very effective and I like it later when they seem to be one narrative and flow more together, as you put it. An early transition I did like was between Anakin killing sandpeople and the Death Star; it seemed to suggest how evil in the past leads to evil in the future, very Godfather II like. The only (IMO) awkward transition was when the AOTC timeline suddenly jumped back to the bar where they were chasing the Zam. Granted it goes well with the Cantina, but it seems odd to go back in one timeline. This did not deter my enjoyment though.
Also, I was surprised that you cut the "I care" scene since it made Luke a little less light-hearted and more grieved. This actually accentuated his likeness to Anakin and was a pretty good change; Luke seems more sullen like his father. Also, forgive me since I was momentarily distracted while watching this; did you cut out Han's "May the force be with you."? If so, it's further effective in altering Luke; I was actually surprised you didn't go as far as to cut out the TIE fighter scene.
Now onto my most favorite parts of this. I liked how the protocol droid in Geonosis is not C-3P0. Your voice modulation clearly pointed this out; you can assume he's just a droid of Padme's and it works since we didn't see him at the Lars Farm. I also liked Obi-Wan's death; it's very powerful how the music overpowers everything and there's no dialogue. It also makes it a bit surprising when Obi-Wan talks to Luke in the X-Wing from beyond the grave. You felt Luke was more sad there and also switching to AOTC seemed to allow Luke to grieve longer and not suddenly be happy when destroying an X-Wing. In short, good music and good version of the scene! I really did love the scene where Ben describes Vader. The tint and the distortion on Vader's face fits perfectly and those who don't know would not suspect it's Anakin. The music works fantastically too.
However, the absolute end-all best part of this edit for me is the Owen and Beru/Shmi deaths which you have successfully blended. The effect on the video was great and showed the emotional turmoil both main characters were suffering. The music was emotionally overwhelming in this one and it was perhaps the greatest parallel of father and son. For me personally, it was just as powerful as the christening/assassination scene in the first Godfather.
So, those are all my thoughts about the edit! I really did love it and can't wait to see the full DVD version... It's a fantastic reimagining and retelling of the Star Wars story in it's own right.
thehdroom said:
As a poke back at Lucas, Matthew said there were times he'd spent a ton of effort making something like it originally did during the theatrical presentation. Then George would come in and want to change it, and all the work would be for naught.
More George Special-Edition-izing things... :-( I do hope the sound and video will sound and look technically decent; it's the least Lucas could do in giving us his Special Editions...
see you auntie said:
As for re-upping them it might be best to wait for Harmy to do it, where else can you upload 2GB files to other than the Czech site?
By re-upping them, do you mean the covers or the actual Despecialized Edition? I ask only because I did re-up the covers to Megaupload so that others may still get it... After all there were only slightly smaller versions posted in this thread. My most extreme humblest apologies to Harmy if this is against his wishes.
Here is how my set looks like. :-)
JohnStewart said:
I never could find a John Alvin set of covers...I could never even find a Hi res ROTJ to have a cover made....
There are high quality versions of the John Alvin artwork in this thread.
Ripplin said:
Seriously, though, I'm sure the PT BDs will be of excellent quality.
Not necessarily. Remember how AOTC and ROTJ were only shot at 1080p. I'm not sure how well the CGI in them would hold up too.
Nice labels and covers John Stewart. Personally I house my Project Blu set in the John Alvin style covers with some nice Blu-Ray cases I got in Best Buy. :-)
46fleetline said:
my hyperdrive may not be big enough.
Yes you are correct. Your hard drive would not be big enough to download and then extract all.
thorr said:
I plan to release this portion as my first video sample. I may try to complete the scene myself and release that instead of the trailer fade version. I haven't decided yet. Should be fun!
Yay! It should prove to be a good first clip.
Um... It's more than 500MB; you may not have downloaded the whole thing. There are three RAR files that you must join to create a 1.3 GB file.
Thanks for the advice. So whenever it is PCM the video suffers a bit? Normally it just records far less video and audio (an hour, as opposed to 2 hours when no PCM), so I assumed that the video rate was constant. Still, I'll keep that in mind.
If anyone's interested, here's an audio capture of the King Kong Criterion Commentary in WAV format. It's very listenable, and the first commentary ever made. I captured this in AC3 though because I didn't think that such an old Criterion would have audio worth capturing in PCM. However, I'll probably try capturing it that way another day. Here's the download link:
captainsolo said:
...that the 04 is in fact a 2K scan directly from the 97SE o-neg restoration...
Oh it was restored at 2K? That's good news. I thought Lucas had limited it to 1080p like Episode II and III.
Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Anyone have the originals that can actually be printed and inserted into a cover?
Someone on the ROTJ thread claimed that the covers Harmy posted to uloz.to were down, so you can download the full versions here from Megaupload: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9304293B.
I've watched part of it so far, and, from what I've seen, it's quite excellent. The new description screens that preface the ANH footage and AOTC footage do seem a bit digital but have a somewhat ancient feel... which fits since this all takes place a long time ago. Your color treatment of AOTC seems nice and helps dull down the obvious CGI backgrounds, etc. The Senate scene actually works pretty well and I'm surprised it's not in more fan edits. ANH looks excellent by the way. I'll put down further thoughts about it later.
Gotcha, Asteroid-Man. I'll be sure to remember that.
TV's Frink said:
How do you know ChainsawAsh didn't feel it? :p
LOL... Frink.
By the way, considering we're on the west side of the States, CA didn't feel it.
The Ghost of Lucas Past- The Lucas that actually cared about film preservation.
Matthew Woodcock- He puts himself in the SW movies... like Hitchcock did.
Warbler said:
ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN IN SOUTH JERSEY!!! THIS AINT CALIFORNIA!!!
Wow. I've never heard of an earthquake happening there. As one living in California, I'm used to them by now. They just come and go every so often. Nothing really to worry about unless it's ultra strong.