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8-Dec-2003
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1-Feb-2005
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Post
#81245
Topic
A response to the "They're His Movies" arguement
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/81245/action/topic#81245
Time
I think the premise is correct.

Any criticism over art is a stupid thing.
Opinion and preferance is ok, but there is no objective trouth outside the minds of human beings that
watch these films. If a human watches one of SW films and likes it, then it is good in his mind.
Once all the humans leave the cinema, and the roll of film ends up sitting in a dark place, it
is not a good film or a bad film, it is just a piece of polyester.

Post
#47510
Topic
BOYCOTT (the 2004 OT SE DVD release)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/47510/action/topic#47510
Time
As i said before, i'd like to have both versions, but i think that you should all vorry about even more changes to the films..
Remember the interview with Williams ? (score changes, SFX changes, new scenes etc. )

I am afraid of is more butchering of the image in the so called archival-edition.
I can't imagine someone adding digital video-footage and making it intercut with 30 years old film footage. And more CG, and more
this and more that.

It's just like in south park... these guys know how to laugh out something
Post
#44231
Topic
Okay, what did we LIKE about the Special Editions?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/44231/action/topic#44231
Time
To be honest, i like watching SE versions a lot, they expanded the universe in my mind and i think they released Lucas's imagination a bit more.

But i signed the petition and joyned this site because i have deep respect for preservation of films in their original
forms. I belive that once a film is made it is a part of history and if it ever gets changed,the changes should never
be a replacement for the original. I think Lucasfilm should keep the originals for the future, as an option, so people can
choose what to watch. If people change every historically important movie,then our society is threathened to loose all
records of the culture of our past decades and centuries.

I don't know if i ever mentioned this on the forum,but 20th century fox still has a LOT of original trilogy material from wich
video masters can me made in the future. Lucas owns the original negatives,but Fox has lots of interpositives, duplicate negatives and other materials,
and they are stored in geographically separated locations.
After they release this new DVD, after few years they could prossibly release the originals too because they have the rights,and it would bring them money.
Post
#43597
Topic
Star Wars Pan Scan
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/43597/action/topic#43597
Time
For airing movies it is not a problem to use progressive broadcast.
But if you want standard television programs like news,live shows etc,you need
to use 1080i because all HD cameras shoot 1080i unless they are swiched to the 24P
mode,but that is used for cinematography.
24P is not smooth enough for television programs,but it is good for fictional content (for a number of reasons)

If HD video content becomes progressive (like shows news etc.) it would need 60 fps progressive,and that is a waste of tape for
news or TV shows.

I imagine a future broadcast system that would switch between interlaced and progressive
in real time depending on the natue of the content. Like all 24P HD content,and film content being aired in
progressive and then everything else switched to interlaced.
I suspect future TV sets will accept both interlaced and progressive 1080 image.

Post
#43498
Topic
Star Wars Pan Scan
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/43498/action/topic#43498
Time
Jimbo...

I am talking about full frames,i know you never get to see a full frame,but
those two blend together in youe eye and seem like one frame of larger resolution
than 240 lines. Of course this way of viewing is not perfect and progressive if
a lot better.

And might i add that digital HD television is not progressive in nature it is 60i for
NTSC just like SD, only it's digital. You never get full frames in HD either,
just half frames.
Post
#43312
Topic
Star Wars Pan Scan
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/43312/action/topic#43312
Time
I was talking about HDTV standard in general.

But i didn't know this what you are saying,i have a regular TV set. In fact i don't even
use it much,i watch TV on my computer with a tuner card.

By the way analog television is not 640x240.
First of all there are no pixels in analog television,just lines,and those lines
have continuous signals so you cant really talk about pixels here.
And the number of lines is not 240,it is 625 for PAL and 525 for NTSC.
Post
#43281
Topic
Star Wars Pan Scan
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/43281/action/topic#43281
Time
Hal..

The best thing about HDTV is not really the aspect ratio so much as the resolution is.
The resolution is 1920 pixels by 1080 lines. This is a very nice resolution,and
films are shown with much more detail and clarity.
I think that kind of resolution is worth buying a HDTV TV set.

This is a great thing about movies shot on film. With every new generation of electronic
equipment films just keep looking better and better. On the other hand,
films like episode2 that are shot on HD video will always look the same.
Today's HD television systems have the capability to broadcast episode 2
in full resolution. I think that cinema experience should always be better than
TV experience. Episode 2 will never look better than today no matter what
kind of new TV standard appears.

I can imagine how wonderful episode4 will look on in 40 years when they introduce some
new 4K TV standard (unless of course Lucas scans all his film at 2K and burns the negatives or something).
It is very ironical that Lucas's newest film is worse in image resolution and tonal range,
worse than some film he did 27 years ago.
Here of course i'm not counting episode1 that was butchered with 2K resolution
SFX work.

Post
#42893
Topic
Star Wars Pan Scan
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/42893/action/topic#42893
Time
May i just say that in some cases you get more of the image information on the DVD than you get in
cinema prints.

If you shoot super35 film without any hard matting (masking)
you get dimensions of 24.89mm x 18.67mm
the aspect ratio of that is 1.3333 (a lots of 3's)
This is how a lot of TV material is shot (full frame), and a lot of spherical films.
Spherical films (1.65:1 and 1.85:1) are usually shot in camera with a full
frame of those dimensions i mentioned there.And then when you get to the internegative stage of
the intermediate process they put a hard matte on the image of the internegative
in the film printer.
So on the prints you get 1.85:1 ratio. The images are "letterboxed".But not only
on the up and down sides,but allso on the left of the image.
The image area is reduced from 24mm to about 21mm of width.

And when they make a video transfer they use the interpositive (which is not masked yet)
and they mask the image areas digitally to match the aspect ratio of the prints and put it on
a DVD.

BUT..

Often for the television releases and some DVD releases (like Kubricks's "The shining")
they put it in the television aspect ratio,the original ratio as it was in the motion picture camera.
You get full 24.8x18.7 millimeters of the image on your TV screen. And you see a lot
more image area than it was on the masked prints.
I remember some video releases had problems with microphone booms because of that.

Most of the time when you see a full screen video release it is pan scanned,
but not always,sometimes you see all from the film prinhts plus additional image
area that was cut out of film prints.

With cinemascope films this is not the case. Nothing is masked in the lab on those films.
You get 21.9 mm x 18.7 mm image area on film prints and in widescreen video,unless
it is a pan and scann edition (which really sucks with cinemascope films)

Anyway,my point is,when you see a full screen image of a non-anamorphic film next time,
don't automatically think that you are seeing less that the director intended.
Sometimes you are seeing more than he intended.
Post
#42564
Topic
the SE films are all that are left!!!!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/42564/action/topic#42564
Time
Well thank you,but i didn't really say anything "deep" here that
only filmmakers know about.

I'm a still photographer,so i know a lot about film technology,
which is pretty much the same for both fields.And i am interested in cinematography,
so i like to learn a lot.
And i talk a lot with cinematographers and filmmakers,so i learn a great deal from them.
If you have roots in still photography,and you want to learn about
cinematography,it is just a matter of adjusting your brain to some
minor differences. The problems,chalenges,and technology is the
same in both fields.


Post
#42430
Topic
the SE films are all that are left!!!!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/42430/action/topic#42430
Time
Yup, video is clean and 100% linear in the tone curve and it shows all the contrast, color and grain problems from
prints. And besides telecine devices hate high contrast material like reversal films
and prints. A lot of the dynamic range and suble nuances are lost
when telecining such material. It is possible,but you wouldn't get the best
results.

And as for film scanners,they can't scan prints at all. Their sensors are calibrated for the specific
range of color negative film.And they are made to simulate how print film "sees" negative film.
Imagine how print film would "see" print film if you wanted to copy print film to print film. It would blow up the contrast and give
you ugly unusable images.Same would be with scanning print film.

All in all,you need to use interpositives (or internegatives) for video transfers to get
nice clean colors as you see them on all the new DVD transfers.
Post
#41493
Topic
the SE films are all that are left!!!!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/41493/action/topic#41493
Time
I thouth you said that SFX shots were shot on CRI. They were shot on negative film. I guess i misunderstood you.
But you did say that 5247 was CRI,and this is not true.

As for film grain. I could ask you the same question. Do you know what film grain is?

Color image is formed after silver halide makes a chemical imprint into color couplers.After that
the silver halide is washed away leaving organic dyes with color information.

Anyway the grain you see in the image are not the particles themeselfs.
These particles are miscroscopic. You never get to see them,not on screen,
not on 4K scans or wherever.Only under the miscroscope,even for the fastest films.
What you DO see on screen and in scans are actually large groupations of
these particles.To be more specific,groupations of clusters of these particles.
One visible grain "dot" you see on screen is composed out of hundreds of actual grain particles.

So when a film manufacturer says that some film is "fine grain" he refers to the size
of those microscopic particles,not the grain dots you see,although there is a strong connection between these two things.
The thing is that small grain particles form smaller clusters,and therefore these
clusters and groupations are less visible on screen.
Large grain particles form large groups,and those groups are more visible on screen.

And as for scanning and grain reduction,
imagine it like this:
you watch a large crowd of people from an airplane. They do not stand equaly dense everywhere.
On some places there are more people,and on some there are less people.
So what you see is actually an equivalent of film grain.
But only because people are grouped in groups,that doesn't mean that those
groups are the limit of what you can see from the plane,those groups are not the building blocks of your image (like pixels in digital).
You can still see every human separatly.
This is only an illustration,in film emulsion the actual resolution limit does not go that far beyond
the grain size,but still, film emulsion captures image details beyond the size of the image grain you see because that grain is just a groupation of smaller particles,not the actual particles.

The limit of resolution in film is determined by light dispersion in the emulsion
and is limited by the grain particle size,but not at that level that you think.
At a smaller level than the size of visible image grain.

Here is a great example of this.
As you know eastman EXR 5245 has been a synonime for best resolution and fine grain.
Now Kodak has introduced vision2 100T (5212) film stock that
surpassed the resolution of 5245. And yet 5245 still has finer grain.
So basicly,this proves my point. 5212 has fine grain,but not as fine as
5245,but it has more resolution than 5245.

You would see what i mean if you took your negatives and have them scanned
on a drum scanner or on Imacon 8000dpi scanner.
Or at least read some literature about photographic technology.

As for 4K scanning and cinema.

IF someone was to scan star wars at 4K he would most certainly recomposite all the
effects digitally.Nobody scans old dupe negatives of SFX's
When digital restoration is at hand,original negative elements are
usually used.

Most organisations (not equipment manufacturers,the would sell their own mother as the new cinema standard if it brought them enough money)
that discuss what is to be the future standard of digital cinema
agree that it should be 2K minimum and that they should strive for 4K.
Kodak digital cinema system is currently 2K (true 2K) ,and they plan to make the
next system 4K. Yes,it wont be in the near future,it will probably be like
10 years untill someone makes a working 4K cinema system at a resonable price.
but it will be some day.

In 100 years from now there will be electronic systems that will surpas the qualitty
of every photographic material recorded in 20th century,and then,who is going
to explain to spectators of that time that 2K (a small fraction of film resolution)
was "good enough" today,and that we preserved films in that resolution.
Post
#40390
Topic
the SE films are all that are left!!!!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/40390/action/topic#40390
Time
Gundark

First of all i was not commenting you,i was commenting the first man.I know who said what.

Secondly 2K resolution is good enough today.What about tomorow? In the future there will
be 4K digital cinema standards.
4K or 6K will give you all the details in the negative you need. Don't be deceved by the grain.
Grain is not the resolution limit. It is just a phenomenon of grouping of molecules,but film can
capture more details,beyond the grain limit.that is why even in still photography sometimes 8000dpi is
used.This gives you about 11K per frame of 35mm still film (or vistavision in motion pictures)
Grain can be digitally reduced without affecting the fine details beneath it.
For archiving there is no excuse for not capturing all the detail you had in your negative film.

And secondly a technical correction.
Star Wars was not SHOT on CRI's . CRI is a special form of intermediate film stock
made for speciall effects (of course not manufactured anymore)
It is a reversal film stock,not negative film.
All of the star wars was shot on negative film stock.
But the composites were printed on CRI's which fade in about 10 years or so.
In Star Wars SE you never saw any of the CRI footage because they used the camera negatives
and recomposited them onto new film stock.
The problem was that the actual color negative stock had faded.
CRI's have faded beyond use so they never used them anyway.The actual camera negatives
had faded about 10%
The color negative film that Star Wars was shot on was eastman II 5247
It was a color negative film stock (only one at the time) of ISO 100 speed tungsten balanced.
And all of the Star Wars was shot on it.
You cant shoot on CRI film stock. CRI filmstocks are used in optical printers (had been used)


Post
#40175
Topic
the SE films are all that are left!!!!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/40175/action/topic#40175
Time
Master sipho-dias...
WHy do you think DVD is suited of archiving?
Do you know how bad the image qualitty is compared to a film original negative?
Would you ever want to take your photo negatives,scan them and put them
on a computer disk in form of small 720 pixel wide compressed files?

If you want to capture all the image data from a motion picture negative negative
you have to scann it at at least 4500dpi resolution which would give you
files of some 4000x3000 pixels (anamorphic format) and they would have to be uncompressed
unless you want fake skin tones in your prints.
That given,on a single DVD medium you could store maybe 30 frames or so.
This is a bit more than a second of film.

And besides film is still the best way to archive something,you never have to vory
about file conversion,new equipment etc.

The best way you can archive color negative film images is to make color separations.
Print the negative to 3 separate black and white films using color filters to
extract basic RGB chanels.
This is what most hollywood studios do these days. I'd say that about 90% of films
have these color separations made for archiving.
the sicret is in the fact that black and white film doesn't fade like color film.
And those separation film stocks are made from a polyester base that does not
decompose that fast.

A film printed on black and white color separations can last up to
500 years if stored at recomended temperatures of about 7 degree celsious
and 25% humidity.

Lucas made color separations of Star Wars in 70's but they were made on
old film stocks that had acetate base (can deteriorate and shrink).
Shrinking is a nightmare for such aplication,you have 3 roles
of the same scenes,and if the films don't match you get color problems.
New polyester films do not shring like that.
If Lucas made new color separations today the films would be preserved
for 100's of years.


By the way. It is not celluite or whatever.
It celluloid .
And you make it sound as if celluloid film base has anything to do with fading.
No. Old emulsions from the 70's have fading problems.
SW was shot on an very early version of eastman 5247. If Lucas waited
just for one or two years he would have minimum fading problems because
a newer version was introduced then (Alien,Empire strikes back,Blade runner)
which did not fade that fast.

And by the way.What do you mean that is all he had??
This was the best choice. No other imaging format could give such
qualitty. Not even today. THere is nothing today that can match film qualitty
in motion picture world. Episode 2 was shot on HD video,and that is why
it ended up looking like crap cinematographically. The resolution was
good enough for film prints,but if you could get a hold of a direct
answer print of any of the films from the old trilogy (or a 70mm print)
you would see that the qualitty is much better than that of episode2.
Post
#27505
Topic
Some facts about the restoration...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/27505/action/topic#27505
Time
I am new here and i noticed the big thread about the original material of star wars trilogy..
and i allso noticed that many people mentioned lot of different things but everybody was just speculating
so i'd thought i might help you with that,i know some facts,i have read lot of articles and talked to some people from the industry (not ILM or anything,just some DP's that know a lot about it) that know
the facts in more detail.

I opened a new topic because this post would probably get lost in that old thread.
so here i go:

First of all the restoration of the trilogy was NOT digital at all...
there are NO restoration disks,or whatever.
Only scenes which needed additional effects or opticals recompositing
were scanned at 2K resolution.

The restoration job was done by YCM labs,as you can read in the credits of SE
and most of the job they did was just plain old cleaning of film tapes
with a sponge...then the film went through a high temperature bath in wich the emulsion was
softened and all the dirt came out...plus the scrashes were minimized
since the emulsion blended over the gaps.
this is all that they have done,nothing more.
the colors have faded about 10% in ANH and that was not that bad.
Actually nothing has been done to repair the color fading since nothing CAN
be done with chemical restoration.
the prints looked good since the intermediate stock that the interpositives and
internegatives were printed on usually has the habit of increasing color saturation a bit.
That is why the colors looked ok in cinema.
But the films stayed faded.

And as for the video releases,and TV releases:
It is an usual procedure to correct the colors ,contrast and brightness
on ALL films,even if they are not faded,since the scanned image
is not really suitable for waching on TV,it has to be corrected.
So all the wonderfull color comes from little color tweaking.

Anyway...in 1997 george did NOT have digital copies of the films.

And one more thing...you all mention prints.
For SE they went back to the original negatives,they didnt use any kind of prints.

Allthough some scenes were lost and the original negatives could not be found,
so they used black and white separation copyes and printed them with filters
onto a new film stock to recreate the missing scenes.

After the restoration has been done,the new SE negative was placed in the
Pro-tek vault which is where it is right now (unless Lucasfilm used it in sicret in meantime)
Pro-tek is a company of Kodak which are the manufacturers of all films stock,
including the Eastman 5247 100T film stock that All star wars films were shot on
(ROTJ used another new film stock for forest shots) so they know how to keep the negatives
in good shape.
These were the facts.

And what does that mean?Since only a chemical restoration has been done
and film was not remastered to a new film stock,the original negatives are cut together with
new negatives of altered scenes.In other words the film exists in SE form right now.

But here is our hope:
Lucas probably left all the other original negatives of the scenes which were altered.
So all it takes is a little video editing...id doesnt matter that the original negative is cut today in the
SE form...if the original elements are left in the vault too they can recut it on video to be
the way it was.