TomArrow

Thank you sebkarlbjork! Noted.

@FilmD00d Thanks man. Hard to say at this point. I should be able to handle it all, however in case something unexpected happens (like me ending up having no time to do a release), I’ll ask around for help for sure.

@trillary dump Thanks! Noted.

That’s amazing, Gryfun! I’ve already said it, but thank you very much! I’ll pay for the final difference myself. Will start asking people to send their pledges once I figure out the payment details.

Thanks SpacemanDoug! Almost halfway there.

@tomi @kchrules
Thanks guys! Noted.

Moiisty said:

Didnt an imax preservation get released in the last few years? how would this one compare to that?

Different thing. The IMAX preservation reintegrated some IMAX scenes into the movie in the normal aspect ratio instead of cropped in the top and bottom like in the official release. Those were sourced from Blu Ray extras and a fullscreen DVD.

This here would be a scan of a 35mm print as it was seen in cinemas back then, so you would get all the theatrical colors, grain etc.

Avatar_Emil_Borg said:

I’m willing to give $10 to this project.

Thanks, noted!

@FunkySi
@3Maters

Awesome, thanks guys! Will note in OP.

freedomland said:

$30 in

Thanks! Noted. =)

FilmD00d said:

If this goes through, I’ll pledge $10. Not much but times aren’t great for most, I imagine!

Thanks, noted in OP!

3Maters said:

I am in!

Cool! How much would you give? Just so I can keep track of the total number and add the pledges to the main post.

An opportunity has arisen to scan and preserve The Dark Knight (2008) by Christopher Nolan. It’s a 7 reel scope print.

The total cost of the project - if funding succeeds - will be between $800 and $950, depending on circumstances that are hard to predict at this time.

For now I will only be collecting pledges to see if enough money can be raised. Only if and when enough pledges are made, the money will be collected and the project will commence.

The final preservation will/would be shared with donators.

Current pledge status: $770 / $800-$950
Current pledge status: $1160 / $1085-$1160
Current pledge status: $1110 / $1110

Pledges (Thanks!):
$500 - Gryfun - DONATION RECEIVED
$10 - FilmD00d - DONATION RECEIVED
$50 - Soupdrinker0 - DONATION RECEIVED
$30 - freedomland - DONATION RECEIVED
$30 - FunkySi - DONATION RECEIVED
$30 - 3Maters - DONATION RECEIVED
$10 - Avatar_Emil_Borg - DONATION RECEIVED
$10 - tomi - DONATION RECEIVED
$20 - kchrules - DONATION RECEIVED
$35 - Aluminium Falcon - DONATION RECEIVED
$35 - SpacemanDoug - DONATION RECEIVED
$20 - trillary dump - DONATION RECEIVED
$20 - sebkarlbjork - DONATION RECEIVED
$30 - Aphroticus - DONATION RECEIVED
-$30 - myself - DONATION SENT
$100 - TheEvilMayor - DONATION RECEIVED
$50 - shiftyeyes - DONATION RECEIVED
$20 - alleycat - DONATION RECEIVED
$15 - SpookyDollhouse - DONATION RECEIVED
$20 - Anonymous
$15 - craigbillet - DONATION RECEIVED
25 EUR - CMMAP - DONATION RECEIVED
AU$10 - Bobson Dugnutt - DONATION RECEIVED
$10 - desertfox - DONATION RECEIVED
$30 - salle
$15 - exile91

Update 15.05.2020:
I’m sorry, I made a mistake when calculating the costs. The scanning will cost more than I thought after all. However, when the funding was at $710 and the estimated cost was at a maximum of 950, I said I would pay the difference. Hence, I added a $240 pledge by myself, which means we only have about $150 more to raise and then the project can finally commence!

Edit: Since we’re really close now, I will start collecting the donations very soon to also see if everyone is still on board. Should we absolutely fail to raise those extra $150 in the end, I will somehow make it work, I promise it. However it would put quite a strain on me, so I hope we can manage to do it.

Second update, also 15.05.2020:
Well that was quick. Barely 2 hours have passed and we are now fully funded and the project is a go! Assuming all pledges come through of course. Any further donations at this point will otherwise just reduce my own pledge of currently $240.

A major Thank You to everyone who has pledged, no matter the amount! But specifically I also want to express a giant Thank You to Gryfun without whom this would not have been possible, or not have been possible anywhere as fast as it now is commencing.

Update 28.05.2020:
Final cost is now known, it’s gonna be $1110 in total. The counter has thusly been updated.

Update 29.07.2020:
Scanning is on its way. As it often happens, we had some technical difficulties, most of which have been solved. But there’s still one imperfection in the scanning process we’re working on. It’s not catastrophic, but worth eliminating if it can be done.
I’ve also received a few further donations, thanks a lot! With those we are now “overfunded”, meaning the original goal is exceeded, effectively putting my own contribution to -$15. I had however spendings related to this project that I didn’t include in the funding total, in particular a color target for color calibrating the scan which cost me around 80 EUR with shipping included, so any further donations will just go towards that.
If anything more should come in beyond that, we could get a hard drive for shipping the data. These are all non-essentiall things, hence not included in the total cost. The project’s success does not critically depend on them, but they make things a little smoother.

Cool stuff, didn’t know this existed.

I might be wrong, but afaik shakycam isn’t actually handheld but rather a steadicam adjusted to get a specific type of shakiness. Since pure handheld footage would have much more high frequency shaking (hand tremor and such) that isn’t the same as the kind of “head moves around” harmonious shaking that you want for a shaky cam scene.

Though it probably depends from project to project.

bromeo said:

Speaking of reduntant dialogue… any idea what Finn wanted to tell Rey before “dying” by the way? It was even brought up a minute later in the tunnels, but he never actually said anything in the end?

Probably some kind of love confession is my guess. Anything else doesn’t really make sense.

JawsTDS said:

Can J.J. please quit stealing music from other films. He’s not just reusing motifs, he’s just straight up lifting the audio file and dropping it into his film.

The ending motif from TFA is pasted lazily into the final moments of TROS. I haaaaaaaaate that.

Thanks for reminding me. I swear there was a moment where they pasted music from iRobot or Minority Report iirc, not sure which one of them, and then some others too. Not 100% the same maybe, but very similar nonetheless.

My guess is they had placeholder music and then they had John williams remake it, so I expect to find it in the score, if it’s complete enough for that.

Just saw it.

My overall impression: It’s technically the best sequel, but realistically it’s merely better than TFA and TLJ.

In other words, it’s garbage, but it’s the most entertaining garbage out of the sequels. It’s like JJ still tried to pretend to be serious about it in TFA and for this movie he just decided “fuck it” and rolled with the punches and the result is oaky doaky cringe comedy. This movie may as well be a parody and still be funny, but the fact that this is advertised as a real film makes it pretty hilarious.

TFA is bad in a pretty boring way.
TLJ is extremely bad in an even more boringest way.
TROS is extremely bad in a somewhat fun way.

The constant action also distracts from all the obvious issues the movie has, which kinda makes it better than the first two from a mere “having to sit through it” perspective. Not that I feel like rewatching it, but at least it wasn’t too painful to watch.

Also, Rey was kinda dominated by Kylo in the main fight, which is a slight step up from the Mary Sueness of her character in the past movies. She still won for the most awkwardly edited Deus Ex Machina reasons, but hey, it’s something. Little, but something.

If I may chip in my two cents, that seems like a mighty steep price to me for an incomplete fading print of a movie that doesn’t seem to have much going for it aside from being an obscure meme with 370 ratings on imdb that average out at 4.6/10. I might be wrong, but I doubt this would go away for more than 100 bucks on ebay.

Don’t have any HDR hardware myself, but, if you have the raw scan in a form that can be converted back to linear light (for example with only gamma applied), you could probably easily convert this into the Rec2020 PQ HDR color space, simply taking advantage of the naturally high dynamic range of the film. This could be done with AVISynth for example, or with LUTS, I think. Iirc, the brightest spot I’ve seen on the German trailer is that little inserted sunlight in one of the shots of Spiderman swinging.

I know that’s technically not a proper grade (in the sense of having an actual HDR preview and adjusting parameters on-the-fly) but it might be something to try in the meantime until someone can do a proper grade.

If anyone knows where to get the full DVD version of this, a PM would be appreciated. Only could find a DVDRip so far.

Thanks for sharing with me!

I personally think it still needs quite a bit of work to be watchable. Which is perfectly okay if this is your first cut and to be expected.

Here’s my thoughts/suggestions:

• Most of the cuts lack audio transitions. This is the bare minimum you should always do to make it seem more smooth.
• Not all of the cuts properly take the flow of the movie into consideration or aren’t quite timed ideally, resulting for example in a sweeping camera that almost reaches its target and then is cut off, or abrupt music changes that change the mood unorganically and such.
• The WMV Codec isn’t the ideal choice for good quality, I’d go with an x264 encode. The image looks pretty soft at the moment and has lots of compression artifacts and is overall not very enjoyable to look at.
• Possibly related to the codec choice, the black levels and overall contrast and colors don’t seem quite right.

Sounds like a good concept! I def. wanna see this.

yotsuya said:

And a lot of us don’t agree and still can’t understand where you are coming from.

But this is supposed to be about TROS, not rehashing TLJ. I’d be curious to see how opinions change in the next 10 years (or just after TROS is out). For a long time TESB was considered the weakest movie of that trilogy and now it is considered the best. I’m hoping that TROS has a solid ending that die hard and casual fans love. If it goes how the supposed leaks are leaning I think it has a good chance.

Fair. If you enjoy the sequels, I don’t mean to try and convince you otherwise. I just didn’t think anyone would, that’s all. 😃 And now I should really stop derailing this thread.

SilverWook said:

Clearly some of us do, or this site has little reason to exist anymore.

I should have phrased myself better, my mistake. I meant whether anyone still cares for the sequel trilogy. There’s of course no reason to stop caring for the OT.

OutboundFlight said:

I must ask, why do some claim “The Last Jedi is one the worst films ever”? I’m not attacking this opinion by any measure… but I don’t understand it at all. As someone more negative than positive towards TLJ, I must admit it creates a fun, cohesive narrative with masterful visuals. Are you that angry about Luke? Because you might argue the same has happened to Obi-Wan and Yoda, two legends who were reduced to a life of shit. I think some moments are flat-out “bad” (Luke trying to kill Ben, etc) but are those moments really worse than Jar Jar stepping in poop?

I just don’t think it’s a good movie in any way. It ignores everything that TFA set up, deliberately subverts reasonable expectations without being original while doing so, introduces very unlikable characters (imo) out of nowhere who make terrible decisions but are presented as heroes, has no world building or explanation of TFA’s world building, the main villains are turned into a giant goofy joke, highly illogical and boring main plotline, illogical character behavior, an entire illogical side plot that ultimately adds nothing to the story, no character arcs worth caring for … I could go on and on, but I’m sure it’s all been said before. Add to that the arrogant and condescending way in which the media and the filmmaker reacted to criticisms.

Personally, as someone who likes Star Wars, but isn’t really a fan, I could probably forgive a couple of things, like Luke, but it’s just a terrible movie in every other way too imo, even as a standalone. Except, as you said, the visuals. Disney of course has masters of the visual craft at its disposal, and John Williams’ score is naturally also always on point. It’s sure somewhat enjoyable to watch a single time, but that’s it for me.

Not saying it ruined Star Wars for me or anything dramatic like that, just that I find it hard to care about this sequel storyline after it.

About Jar Jar … well, I was a kid when I was watching the movies, so maybe I’m more forgiving out of nostalgia, but even so, that was just one part of mostly decent movies imo.