Alrighty guys, here are a few select shots from the Mos Eisley entrance sequence. I tried to choose the shots that are the most difficult shots and that show the color grading best.
#1 Looks a bit on the blue side.
…although Harmy’s looks a bit on the yellow side.
I don’t understand your question. Are you asking me if I would prefer a fanedited Original Trilogy?
If that’s that you’re asking, then no. Star Wars Despecialized is my go to. Warts and all, the original Original Trilogy needs no changes.
Except if it’s made by Adywan. I’ll accept Adywan’s edits as a Special Edition, but they wouldn’t supercede Despecialized as my favorite (plus, Adywan won’t be done in a very very long time, and his Episode IV thus far is not HD, so good luck with that.)
…or are you asking if I’d prefer scenes from the OT to be used in the PT? No. The PT footage was filmed differently than the PT, and as such would stand out. Plus, it would look like obviously recycled stock footage and that’s not the best idea.
Harmy, you said you’re going to at some point make a 1080p 3.0 (and maybe 4.0) using only scanned print footage, but from the comparison photos it looks like scanned prints are your primary source already anyways. How exactly would you be doing it differently than you already are?
Looking over the comparison gallery.
Found the GOUT sourced shot.
😄 cool.
generally v2.5 is definitely brighter and has less crushed blacks.
fewer*
😄
Hal is the only one who properly implements the Palpatine Sith-reveal and also does everything else well. L8wrtr and Stanckpac implement it wrong
I don’t have a copy of L8wrtr’s edits on hand, but as far as I remember, mine and his were pretty close? Maybe?
Pretty close. Very pretty close.
I think the worst edit idea would be if someone replaced Lapti Nek with a goofy 90’s jazz-pop song, sung by badly rendered CGI characters.
chyron8472 said:
Oh, and have I mentioned that the scene of Padme alive on Alderaan with Leia clinches it for me and that it makes me smile every single time I see it? I haven’t?If you had watched the movie this shot comes from, you wouldn’t smile at all…
( 😃 )
(funny fact is The Other Boleyn Girl is kinda a prequel to the Cate Blanchett Elisabeth movies).
It’s not my kind of movie though.
Hal is the only one who properly implements the Palpatine Sith-reveal and also does everything else well. L8wrtr and Stanckpac implement it wrong
I don’t have a copy of L8wrtr’s edits on hand, but as far as I remember, mine and his were pretty close? Maybe?
Pretty close. Very pretty close.
But not close enough. Yours is better. His cut of that scene left me with a WTF moment that was only remedied by listening to his commentary. Yours did not. Plus, there are plenty of devil-in-the-details sorts of dialogue bits throughout the film that his has that don’t sit well with me, but yours fixed.
Oh, and have I mentioned that the scene of Padme alive on Alderaan with Leia clinches it for me and that it makes me smile every single time I see it? I haven’t?
Well, it does. I love that scene. Just thinking about it right now makes me feel good. And since Hal’s ep3 has it, it doesn’t conflict with Q2’s, which also has it. So I can keep a copy of both and treat one as an extended cut of the other.
Yes. No suit. No mention of the name Vader.
Which, as I said, removes the spoiler that Vader is Luke’s father.
Lol at “implement it wrong.”
Well, they do. It’s not a bad idea, they just have this Palpy’s-fine-turn-around-and-now-he’s-wrinkly sort of thing. It comes down to the timing of the cuts for L8wrtr. Stankpac adds this weird heartbeat sound that doesn’t sound right. Kerr does that scene well but the whole of his edit is too fast and too high pitched.
Hal times that scene well and the rest of his Ep3 is also good.
OH! I almost forgot. Hal does keep in the Vader yell at the end of Ep3, but in his v4 he includes an audio track with a Russian Vader yell instead. So instead of this eye-rolling “NO!” he just yells in agony, which works quite well.
…Still, I prefer leaving Anakin left for dead like Q2 does.
Q2’s Fall of the Jedi Trilogy.
He doesn’t have a sudden Sith-reveal by Palpatine like some other editors do. But he tightens up that scene so that it doesn’t seem obvious whether the electricity caused his change in appearance. I like it fine this way, but it’s not an obvious Sith-reveal.
He also removes shots of young Anakin in the Naboo starfighter, in Ep1. And while I like the way Hal and L8wrtr handle it better, is a minor issue in the grand scheme.
Q2’s solution to solving OT Obi-Wan not recognizing the droids as well as fixing droid-related cheesiness and rocket boosters is to remove all dialogue by and references to the droids throughout his trilogy.
He also removes references to the Chosen One and the prophecy.
My personal opinion is that Q2’s are the definitive edition, and Hal’s are like an Extended Cut (“you liked the theatrical cut, now watch it with extra footage”) supplement. Kind of like the Extended LOTR movies.
What, no one mentioned Q2’s Fall of the Jedi Trilogy yet?
According to Fanedit.org, if you sort by popularity then L8wrtr is first, Q2 is second and Hal is third.
L8wrtr and Hal have editor commentaries whereas Q2(aka. thunderclap) does not, but I say Q2’s edits are the best. Stankpac had a decent Ep3 v2 but his v3 isn’t good.
Hal is the only one who properly implements the Palpatine Sith-reveal and also does everything else well. L8wrtr and Stanckpac implement it wrong and Kerr’s edit is obviously sourced from PAL which makes the speed too fast and the voices too high.
Hal’s Ep3 v3 replaced The Death Star with Coruscant, which I loved, but he reverted back in his v4, which is unfortunate because only his v4s have commentary. Q2 avoids the issue of the Death Star altogether by cutting that scene, having left Anakin apparently left for dead on the side of the lava flow.
Only The Cutter, Hal and Q2 have Padme live at the end of Ep3. Only Q2 completely retains OT surprises by removing spoilers.
I don’t like how L8wrtr shrinks the universe by putting in the deleted Greedo fight scene in Ep1 or Yoda talking to Chewie in Ep3, and I don’t like how he cuts Yoda escaping the stormtroopers so we don’t see how he got away. His Ep2 is good, but it doesn’t properly match other editors’ work well enough to be included in a mixed trilogy.
I said Technicolor. I stand corrected.
JEDIT: Truth be told, I’m much happier with the v2+ versions of Empire and Jedi than with Star Wars. There’s just something about the bright yellow of outdoor Tatooine that irks me slightly in Star Wars.
Hey Harmy, first of all thanks for all the work you have done to preserve these films. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.
I watched most of Return of the Jedi last night and I couldn’t help but noticing an issue with the blacks. They look severely crushed in 2.5. I thought this might be due to the source material with the BluRay, but then I looked at version 1.0 and the blacks didn’t look as crushed there. In some scenes it’s more obvious than others, but this is a glaring issue to me and I surprised no one else has brought it up. I also felt as though the brightness level is set a little too low. Again, comparing it to 1.0 where the brightness level felt right. Fleshtones and overall colors are a bit too red for me personally, especially on the Endor scenes. Han looks like he’s spent three years on a tanning bed, not frozen in carbonite. I saw a print of Jedi about 4 years ago and I don’t remember it looking like this. Just wanted to share my thoughts.
First, 1.0 wasn’t sourced from the Blurays.
Second, this is a Technicolor remaster. Technicolor is well known for having higher contrast levels than, for example, Eastman does.
Third, human memory is not a reliable color reference.
and Fourth, if you’re interested in a straight up print scan get the Silver Screen Edition.
That would only work if Han snuck in dressed as an officer of the First Order, trying to recover part of the map. Then he accidentally bumped into Snoke, who autographed it.
I’m definitely taking a break but not a long one - my optimistic estimate is that ESB v2.5 could be done in like a month.
Crap. My plumber’s accountant’s nephew’s birthday is in two weeks, and I wanted to give him a complete set of V2.5s. Maybe you could at least make a cake?
Touche. :\
Were you the original dad’s birthday guy? How did it go?
It went great. I still need to give him Jedi v2.5 and a disc with .m4v’s of everything I included (for his new iTunes media server), but he liked it a lot.
LOE is certainly a bolder edit than the other two, and mixing and matching my cuts of I and II with L8wrtr’s III is totally legit.
While L8wrtr’s 2 was my early favorite when researching prequel fanedits, I really don’t agree with several of the choices he made for Ep3.
And, quite frankly, The Cutter’s idea to have Padme live at the end of 3 is such a wonderful idea in my opinion, I don’t consider keeping other edits anymore that don’t employ it.
Hmm… I notice that the 2.5 burned subtitles look… chunkier than the 1.0 do.
I guess I just got used to the 1.0 subtitles being cleaner. 😛
Oh, I see! Thought perhaps the 2004(97?) was just color matched differently, but it does look like a recomp. And in 2011, I’ll bet the main goal was to completely remove that seam, and of course George was just like, ‘well why not make the damn thing 10x bigger as well’.
10x bigger on the outside. Not the inside. Apparently Special Edition Jabba’s palace is the exact opposite of the TARDIS, in that it is smaller on the inside than on the outside.
Can anyone provide a torrent link for the newest version of Star Wars Despecialized ROTJ? (V2.5)
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=torrent+harmy+"return+of+the+jedi"+v2.5
I’m definitely taking a break but not a long one - my optimistic estimate is that ESB v2.5 could be done in like a month.
Crap. My plumber’s accountant’s nephew’s birthday is in two weeks, and I wanted to give him a complete set of V2.5s. Maybe you could at least make a cake?
Touche. :\
Well you done good though. Good job.
…Killing me on that revert back to the Death Star. I’m just saying.
JEDIT:
The prequels are like aggravating family members. Someone doing what I’ve done has to see the good in them. A conflict.
Okay, wait. I watched v4 first with the editor commentary, and when I got to the Vader scream I was totally looking forward to hearing the Russian scream. But I heard a NOOO!! instead… Wait, what?!? Okay, so I rewound and switched audio tracks. Yeah, it’s there in track 1. So why is there a 2nd non-commentary track? Oh, because Russian is in track 1 but English is in track 2. Hmm. I must not have been paying attention in the thread or something. I didn’t know you’d include both versions. That’s not a complaint, though.
But then… you took out Coruscant at the end. Poop.
Anyway, my only real qualm is that in the editor commentary for LOE you complain and poke fun at the story, in a way that suggests you don’t enjoy the film that much but instead sort of begrudgingly tolerate it. It detracts somewhat from the fun of watching, I feel, when meanwhile you’re hearing someone frequently complaining about it.
Fantastic edit(s) though. Very good indeed.
Anyone have plans to put together an NTSC DVD-5 version in the near future? I gave a couple partial DE sets as Christmas gifts and I’m hoping to provide the recipients with their final discs now that this is out. If this isn’t on anyone’s radar I can fool around with it myself over the weekend, but I don’t want to do anything redundant. I also suspect that those of you who know more about encoding than I do are capable of producing a much nicer product.
Not to belittle anyone, but who uses standard DVD players anymore? One can purchase a nice, Sony Bluray player from Best Buy for 50 bucks.
If it was a question of not having a Bluray burner then I would assume AVCHDs on DVD9s would solve that.
