doubleofive said:
Really can see the empty hanger they filmed it in front of now:
http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/Star-Wars-Harrison-Ford-Carrie-Fisher-Luke-Hamill-space-38-years-filming-Cardington-Sheds/story-21725256-detail/story.html
Looks like the rock is there to cover the VW Bus!
"Luke Hamill". Lol! Bet he gets that a lot. :D
That looks great. In the restored clip there seems to be a little white fleck in the bottom right of the frame that looks like it escaped the clean-up.
I remember the big brown blobs of grain were also in the shot of the Falcon fleeing Mos Eisley and are present in Harmy's Despecialized Edition of that shot. Are these two scenes related somehow as in when/how they were shot?
Sad news to hear you're going with the TV cut for your project instead of the original theatrical Aliens. I can appreciate the appeal of wanting to recreate an "interesting" alternate cut of the movie but are you abandoning the idea of a theatrical preservation altogether?
What makes it all the more tragic for me is that your restoration of the Bishop scene looks wonderful. So kudos for an excellent job there.
Well after all these ringing endorsements from people that clearly know this movie a lot better than I do, I've decided to crack and swap my BD for the wowow version.
I'm guessing rutracker is the place to go for this, but there are several versions on there and I haven't a clue which is the version being discussed.
Any and all help much appreciated. :)
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Great to know that this preservation is clearly in the best of hands. :)
While the 35mm trailer shots may or may not be an excellent source, do you not think it might make more sense to grade to a known source such as LD or DVD rather than trying to guess the look of a theatrical print?
In my view, as soon as one starts going with what 'feels' right or trying to strike a balance between sources, it's starting on the slippery slope towards just another revisionist version rather than an attempt at a preservation.
Any thoughts on this?
PDB said:
Funny you mentioned that. I am no Harmy by any stretch of the imagination (no way I can do rotoscoping) but I do have a few old HDTV Aliens masters that I was going to try and substitute the frames back into the film. That way I can put the hole back in and the scratches on the window.
It's widely considered that the BD transfer of Aliens had fake grain applied to enhance the perception of detail. So with the proper color correction and a similar fake grain plate, I'll bet the HDTV frames would blend almost seamlessly with the BD source. :)
Thanks for those comparison pics. So interesting how they differ.
I agree that the 35mm shots look best. It's amazing how close the BD comes to them in a couple of those pics, apart from the general lack of saturation and the blues being more pushed towards green. I really thought the tealified BD would be a radical departure from how the original print looked but, going by these 35mm sources, perhaps it's not as far out as people assume.
PDB said:
The problem with Aliens is that I still haven't decide what to grade it against: the Pan and Scan LD, the THX LD, the DVD, the old HDTV master, the 35mm frames I found, etc
I had no idea that all the different home video releases of Aliens had significantly different colour timing. It would be great to see some comparisons if you have time.
Also, have you had any thoughts about maybe restoring the hole under Bishop in the loading bay floor Harmy-style? ;)
Message the seller and explain the irrefutable harm this kind of distribution for profit could potentially cause the project. As a SW fan and (hopefully) somebody who appreciates Harmy's work, he may voluntarily remove the BDs from the auction.
First response should always be a polite request before other options are considered.
Seems the colour changes on AOTC are occasionally quite striking. Notice in the first screenshot comparison on the page Harmy linked to how the alien girl in the bottom left corner's skin changes from blue to green. I'd guess that the DVD is more theatrically accurate and that the actual make-up used was blue.
guiser said:
Harmy said:
OK, so I finally got around to trying out the 1080p to 720p script AntcuFaalb sent me a couple of days ago. It took me a while to figure it out, because I was getting some errors and then I had to figure out how to use VirtualDub, but that was pretty easy and it was well worth it, because the results are nothing short of amazing! Seriously, can you f*cking believe this?:
To my eyes the image on the right looks brighter and has more chroma noise. I might also call it slightly over-sharpened as well. The main question to me (which I learned from these forums incidentally) is how things look in motion, which can be quite a bit different from the individual still frames.
Still, amazing!
The shot on the right looks slightly over-sharpened to my eyes as well. Could you possibly add a third image to the comparison which shows a basic upscale of the 720p to 1080p without the custom script?
I have a question about the colors for the Respecialized Edition(s). I understand that the colors for Star Wars Respecialized were kept the same as the Despecialized Edition as the 97SE was supposedly timed based on an IB Tech print.
However the colors in Respecialized have a "70's film" quality to them which is beautiful for a 1977 theatrical reconstruction but I'm certain the colors were not this way in the theatrical 97SE. I recall upon seeing it in the theater how amazed I was at what they had done to make it look like a more 'modern' movie. I'm sure the IB print was used as a starting point, but since the objective of the 97SE trilogy was to update Star Wars for a modern audience, it seems doubtful that they would seek to so closely replicate the original 1977 look in the way that the Despecialized Edition (and Respecialized Edition) has.
My question is; do we have any reliable sources for the color timing of the theatrical 97SE other than the statement that the IB print was somehow a reference? And, if such a source came to light, would you consider the Respecialized Editions worth the time of re-coloring to match the 97 theatrical look?
Has anyone considered that maybe Team Negative1 wish to stress that they are a team to avoid the issue of legal or cease-and-desist action against any one person?
Doing things this way creates a greater degree of anonymity and protects the project. So maybe we should all just keep quiet about it and enjoy the updates.
Joel said:
What about Leia's hair? It's light brown/veering into red during this whole scene, but not during the rest of the film. I understand that people have different preferences, but I have a hard time believing I'm the only one that sees this.
I sort of see what you mean about Leia's hair being a much lighter brown. But isn't that more to do with lighting than colour? This is a very bright shot compared to her scenes in the rest of the movie.
Agreed that the WP looks far better than the DVD to me.
Personally, I wouldn't be concerned with losing the 2 frames. Losing frames at reel changes is like cropping the edges of the 35mm frame - an acceptable and often inevitable consequence of the film medium.
Option C, please. :)
The Griff said:
Beber said:
So you're planning to keep it that way in the final release?
Harmy said:
Yes, definitely. Not only because I like it - and I do - but also because the despecialized shots have already been rendered with the matte in place.
Even if one were to convince Harmy otherwise, the "damage" is already done. Let's move on.
So you're saying that the original source has been permanently altered and therefore there's no chance of a release of the unaltered version??! :o
I understand people speaking up for Harmy's right to do whatever he wants with his own project. I also understand people saying this is too small a change to be bothersome.
But, out of interest, is there anyone here besides Harmy who can honestly say that they believe the rounded corners are an improvement?
Zer0Squared said:
Laserschwert said:
Kinda defies the point of a feedback thread ;)
Hehe. Feedback is fine. I'm sure that's what Harmy wants to see. It's one thing for people to 'mention' that they personally don't like the rounded corners. It's another thing for people to go off on some diatribe and start lecturing Harmy about the semantics of a couple of pixels. :)
One man's feedback is another man's lecture. I haven't seen any diatribes or anything other than reasonably expressed points of view on both sides. This is the purpose of a discussion thread. And I'm certain there are many other topics here that discuss at length things that to most people would amount to nothing more than "a couple of pixels".
That's why we're all here; because it's the little things that matter to us. ;)
About the corners I'll just weigh in on the side that says I don't like it, but I can live with it. It seems like an odd personal choice that doesn't really fit with what I understood the spirit of this project to be, but it's Harmy's project at the end of the day so who am I to say?
The detail you've managed to get out of the 35mm scans is amazing! Makes me even more excited at the future possibility of Despecialized Editions v3.0 using entirely 35mm sources. :)
Harmy said:
Yeah, I realize that but it's more about the feeling you get from it - just like this whole thing isn't really about restoring the true original, because that just not possible using those means, but to make the viewer feel like they're watching the original as much as possible. Plus it is hardly adding them in the middle of the 35mm frame, more like 1% from where they were originally. Also, another thing I noticed is that cinema screens very often have rounded corners, so this is also meant to kind of simulate that.
If it's about simulating the cinema experience of the original then what are your feelings on adding some grain to compensate for the DNR'd look of the BD source footage?
Yes, we all know that adding fake grain technically destroys detail but not only can it trick the eye into perceiving a more detailed image, would it not be a closer simulation of the 1980 cinema experience than the BD footage as it stands?