asterisk8

darth_scourge said:

Yep, Chips are definitely things you have with Fish, and Crisps are best found in a noisy bag!

So if crisps are chips, and chips are fries, then what are fries?

I've always been tickled by how the American word "fanny pack" is interpreted in the UK as well.

Ripplin said:

"Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps."

Might want to skip the crisps, though.

I've always preferred the word "crisps" to "chips." Even though I'm from the U.S., for some reason crisps sound so much tastier. One of those weird word preferences, I guess.

ben_danger said:

its like correcting perfection, so much so the dvd will actually glow with some sort of holy aura...

 

The first sound I made this morning was a snort of laughter. Thanks!

Thanks, Bobocop and ImperialFighter. I had the easy part; it's one screenshot. I'll let adywan figure out how to achieve the same in motion!

I just can't believe that artists working for ILM would make a person's reflection transparent. That's basic stuff. Did they have high school interns doing this SE work? Is that how Vader ended up with a pink light saber and Yoda's skin turned the color of Hi-C Ecto Cooler? Was there an intern directing Hayden Christensen to leer like a sexual predator for his force ghost?

Or is what really happened that they did all of this SE work in a weekend?

ImperialFighter said:

What 'reflection shots'?  I think these must have been in the 8 posts that I can't see....  What were they concerning?

 

ImperialFighter, I think you're talking about a post of mine. I did a comparison of the Cloud City "balcony" and a rough mock-up I made of how it might be fixed.

asterisk8 said:

I was looking at the 2004 CG Cloud City balcony shot. I think it really looks terrible.

a. The balcony is too low. It comes up to about thigh-height. That is just not safe.

b. The reflection is way too clear. Especially of the balcony walls and the sky. The left side of the floor has an almost mirror finish.

c. The biggest errors are the gang's reflections. In the reflection, the three are translucent. You can see the balcony behind them! Take a look:

That's not how reflections work, and it's one of the best examples of the lazy CG work done for these special editions. A professional CG artist should know that you can't see through a person's reflection.

The truth is, I'd rather see the wall put back in place (maybe a window) in adywan's edit, but if he wants to keep this shot, it needs some work.

So here's my quick-n-dirty mock-up of how I think the shot would look better. It's not the best Photshopping, but it gets the point across. Open both up in two tabs and flip back and forth to get the full effect.

 

I'd like to second negative1's positive affirmation!

There is A New Hope, that when an Empire Strikes Back, it heralds the Return of the Jedi!

That hope is adywan!

The Griff said:

A quick question about Blu Ray file structure: Is the main feature (ie. the movie) usually incoporated whole into a single .m2ts file?

I ask because my Popcorn Hour played back the .m2ts sample files (networked from my PC) just fine and, as long as the entire movie is contained within a single file, I think I'd prefer to watch these releases this way, as opposed to burning them to DVD and playing them back in my BD player.

TIA.

Love my A-100. That's how I plan to play these movies.

Thank you ThrowgnCpr and Ripplin. That's exactly what the problem was. Redownloaded part3, and it unpacked perfectly. About to watch it now!

Enough of the grammar school. :p

I was looking at the 2004 CG Cloud City balcony shot. I think it really looks terrible.

a. The balcony is too low. It comes up to about thigh-height. That is just not safe.

b. The reflection is way too clear. Especially of the balcony walls and the sky. The left side of the floor has an almost mirror finish.

c. The biggest errors are the gang's reflections. In the reflection, the three are translucent. You can see the balcony behind them! Take a look:

That's not how reflections work, and it's one of the best examples of the lazy CG work done for these special editions. A professional CG artist should know that you can't see through a person's reflection.

The truth is, I'd rather see the wall put back in place (maybe a window) in adywan's edit, but if he wants to keep this shot, it needs some work.

So here's my quick-n-dirty mock-up of how I think the shot would look better. It's not the best Photshopping, but it gets the point across. Open both up in two tabs and flip back and forth to get the full effect.

Hey guys!

I just downloaded InfoDroid's Unholy edit off fanedit.org, but the files aren't unpacking properly. When WinRAR or 7-Zip gets to VTS_01_1.VOB, I get a CRC error that the password is wrong.

I tried "Keep broken files" and that didn't work either.

Any help here?

adywan,

A couple issues regarding the Cloud City processing vane. You say, " As for the vane it is a bit of a design flaw. I think that Luke was supposed to have reached there through the long tunnel but they put the support pole in the wrong position on the matte which caused confusion."

I knew I'd seen a cutaway in a book somewhere, so I did some looking around and found this:

You can see that the long tunnel is actually a tram-tunnel probably intended to carry cargo back and forth from the city to the processing plant in the vane. The carbonite chamber is at the very top, and it seems to me that the lighted tube Luke walks through is all within the upper part of that vane, and not in the support arm. That should save you some trouble repainting the matte.

----

Also, when Luke exits the tunnel, a large gate closes behind him, but when we see the same tunnel entrance from a different angle a few seconds later, the gate is open.

All I want is a booth around those poor superlaser technicians!

Do you mean this?

(from doubleofive's incredible SW Revisited Visual Companion)

I get what you're saying, in the sense that the ships are coming at the camera. I prefer the Revisited shot because it feels as if they are pointing at the Millennium Falcon, which was moving off to the right in the previous shot.

Janskeet said:

I liked the formation of the Star Destroyers in the original shot better, they fit the music better.

I'm curious what you mean by that. Is it because the end of the trumpet part is ascending and the destroyers are pointing up?

Darth Lars said:



    The "mist" that you can see when you exhale into freezing air is light reflected off ice molecules that have just been formed from the previously liquid water of your breath.

    For this effect to occur, the water must have a temperature above freezing to start with.

    This would not occur in Echo base because temperatures are below freezing both inside and outside the base (C-3PO said that it was freezing even in Princess Leia's private chamber, remember ... )

    Also, air humidity decreases with lower temperatures. Cold weather that is below -5 degrees Celsius is always very dry.

That's what I started to suspect as I considered the situation more. Too cold inside or out for water vapor. Thanks for settling the issue.

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ImperialFighter said:

I always liked the juxtaposition, movement, and 'composition' of the 2 adjoining effects shots above,

Me too, IF. Which is why almost wish I hadn't analyzed them. Now it's hard to watch without thinking the second shot is wrong. Let me try another mock-up to better explain what I'm seeing happen here. Not saying this is what's happening, only what it looks like to me.

I've mapped out the "rail" along which the Millennium Falcon flies in that shot. From our position, it appears as if we're looking up at the underside of a dip in a rollercoaster track. If you superimpose the prow of the Star Destroyer, you can see that the path of the MF appears to swoop out from under the SD. Or to put it differently, the initial position of the MF in this shot (the first red cross-bar) appears to be below the horizontal plane of the SD once it enters the screen.



Even if that the first red cross-bar is on the same plane as the SD, the SD is still too close to the MF. In the intervening seconds we spend in the cockpit with Han & Co., the SD would've overtaken it.

ImperialFighter said:

I reckon that visually, a case can be made that the Falcon (and the following TIEs) are just 'dipping down' slightly as they proceed ahead in front of the Stardestroyer at this point (which then fires 2 green laserbolts at the Falcon from underneath), before they then 'dip upwards' slightly again before the end of the shot.

That's not a bad way to look at it. I still think the SD would benefit from entering the shot a second later, but watching the scene, I can definitely see what you're saying about dipping below the SD's plane, and then up again.

ImperialFighter said:

Personally, I dislike the idea of turning the prow upside-down, and having it seem as if it's coming from the bottom of the frame, as I just think it's unneccessary, and doesn't look as good.

I agree. It was just a suggestion. After sleeping on it, I think flipping the prow would ruin the composition of the shot.

Sorry to drag this off into a side-debate about the temperature of Echo Base, but it would have to be warmer inside Echo Base than -32 degrees (-60 at night). Celsius or Farenheit, that's too cold for people to live and work. That's about as cold as Antarctica.

It doesn't look warm and toasty inside Echo Base, probably -12 degrees Celsius. So my question is, at the threshold of the hangar door, would the -32 degree air meeting the -12 degree air produce any kind of visible water vapor, or is it too cold?

doubleofive said:

    Great idea *8.  I'm not sure its necessary because it may be just as cold in the base as it is out, but the effect would be interesting to see.

Thanks 005. I grew curious about this issue (having never thought about it till today :) ), so I bothered Google and he says that StarWars.com says "Hoth's daytime temperature high hovers around -32 degrees standard." Pretty cold to keep the hangar at that temp, don't you think? It has to be warmer in there. Even without heaters, all the ships, the people, and the activity would bring up the temperature enough to cause moisture vapor near the entrance. I'll add a "methinks" to that, because I'm just contemplating.

----------

I want to add something to the discussion about Shadowman99's pictures of the Millennium Falcon evading the Star Destroyer after leaving Hoth. I think he had a point, which I hope I can clear up a bit.

Given the size of the MF compared the SD, I agree with ImperialFighter (#2798), that in this shot,



the Millennium Falcon is ahead of, and above, the Star Destroyer's prow. In fact, I would argue it's about 400 meters in front of, and 100 m above, the SD's prow. Were the Millennium Falcon any closer to the Star Destroyer, and the camera just in front of the MF, the full width of the SD would not fit on the screen. That leads me to believe that the depth of this shot has been flattened somewhat as if it were shot from a distance with a telephoto lens. (See Akira Kurosawa's RAN for beautiful examples of telephoto composition.) Consequently, the MF looks closer to the SD than it actually is, and seems to pass underneath the camera, when it really just moves out of frame. Here's a side-comparison I made which illustrates the my estimated distance:



That would mean that in the next shot,



the Millennium Falcon is far too close to the Super Destroyer when it enters the frame. Here I have to disagree with ImperialFighter and side with Shadowman99, and say that given the speed with which the Star Destroyer closes that distance, the Falcon and the TIEs can only have come from underneath it. I've adjusted the previous screenshot to demonstrate where I think the MF should be:



Obviously, it's not a very exciting shot. Shadowman99's idea of flipping the prow isn't a bad idea, except that it enters the screen too quickly given my distance estimate. It would have to be delayed until just before the shot ends. The two Star Destroyers the MF are heading toward could be added to the shot to spice it up. Here's how I see the last frame of the shot looking:

Everything doesn't have to be lined up, necessarily, because the Star Destroyer seems to be listing to its left a bit in the first shot, and Han is certainly not traveling in a straight line. During the intervening cockpit shot, you can imagine that Han has veered to the left toward the Star Destroyers, and dropped below the fighters before doing his nose dive, planning all along to drive the Destroyers into one another.

Edited many times over the last two hours for coherence and to add the last screenshot. That's it for me for tonight. Thanks for letting me contribute!

Edited again to fix the side-view where I wrote 16,000 m instead of 1,600 m.

new guy here. I really enjoyed ANH:Revisited, which I've watched 3 times in the last week. I want to contribute in some way. I have an idea I'm still fleshing out. Hold for procrastination until such date as I can catch up with myself.

Anyway, I'm still working my way through all 122 pages of this mammoth thread, so apologies for repeating what may have already been dealt with, but I wanted to mention something I just noticed.

The few exterior shots of the Echo Base hangar door in the beginning could use a little fog obscuring the view into the hanger, and maybe some billowing out. Nothing major or obvious. Subtle. It's warmer inside the hanger, right? The interior shot of Han trotting in on his tauntaun has that misty quality of a warmer interior space that's open to the colder exterior. But the exterior shot immediately before it lacks realism because it lacks the high-to-low pressure movement of that water vapor. Even obscured behind adywan's excellent personnel restructuring, that extra bit of environmental effect would really help to sell this shot.

And thanks, adywan! Thanks for putting in all the hard work for those of us without the talent! Instead we can just sit around and catalogue our every whim for you to realize!

(Edit: I realize this would be harder in, for example, the shot of Threepio and R2 waiting for Luke. Or am I wrong in thinking the hanger is warmer than the outside? Or am I wrong in thinking that would create vapor billowing out of the hangar door? Maybe the temp. difference is not large enough.)

Could this technology or something like it be merged with Noah Snavely's photo-tourism to create virtual 3D maps of real places? As HD video cameras continue to trickle down into consumer hands, I can see how tourist videos + tourist photographs could be used to create a seamless, photo-realistic 3D representation of popular tourist destinations, cities, landmarks. It could take Google's concept of street view to the next level. I'm sure those guys can find a way to remove people and cars, clearing up the privacy issue. Imagine getting a virtual fly-through of your route along with turn-by-turn directions? I can see this technology being used in commercial GPS devices, history class, video games, movies. Independent filmmakers on a budget could shoot "on location" without ever leaving their green-walled basement.

Really impressed with this video. You know a concept is good when it inspires other people to conceptualize.

Let me get the obligatory THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER! out of the way. Because seriously, adywan, this cut of A New Hope is revelatory. It made me feel the way I felt when I was 8 years old, watching a VHS copy of Star Wars about 2 feet from the TV. I'm really impressed with your efforts. However, I have one complaint that I can't help but bring up!

Why didn't you do something about the two fellas standing inside the shaft of the death star's beam? I've always found those guys perched on that tiny ledge, shielding their faces, to be the silliest thing in the entire saga. (I think Family Guy or Robot Chicken even did a bit about this.) I mean, this beam destroys PLANETS and they're just standing out there. I hope they at least had good health insurance.

Did you ever consider putting some kind of CG booth around them? Like a two-foot wall and then thick glass to the ceiling. Or what about removing them altogether? I know you probably won't revist ANH Revisted (lol) just to fix this one thing, but I'm curious if it was ever considered.

Anyway, great job altogether, thanks again, and I wait impatiently for Empire Strikes Back!