fmalover

so Vader really did have a pink lightsaber after all ;)

Hey Harmy, I'm having trouble with my connection and 710 is much too heavy. Could you at least break it down into smaller files?

Awesome, keep up the good work!

I forgot to mention in my previous posts, but judging by your  screenshots, Star Wars now looks more photographic than ever.

The first pass of the burning homestead is more accurate IMO, the second pass seems to have inherited the problem of beind too dark on the left side and too light on the right side, plus I see the pink shift reemerging in the second pass. Stick with the first pass.

Even though the second pass is more accurate I must confess I like the first one better, I just like Chewie's fur colour not being drowned out by the surrounding green cast, otherwise I am reminded of the ESB Blu-Ray in which the Hoth scenes have that annoying blue tint that is so intrusive it drowns out colour palette.

WOW, this is very cool Neverar.

I decided to rewatch Harmy's 2.5 so I could compare You_Too's colour correction to yours, and I must say, I think your colour correction is superior to You_Too (no offence meant here), not only because it is a lot closer to the IB print, it pretty much looks like it was scanned directly from the IB print. The colours are so vivid, the contrast has improved exponentially, and even though some minor details have been lost the movie has never looked better and much more alive than ever.

Now just imagine, Harmy's Despecialized Trilogy using this and team_negative1's scans as a source, it would be the ultimate restoration.

Upper right corner - for me personally looks the best as far as details go, its one major flaw being the scene in which Piett approaches Vader while he is in his hyperbaric chamber which is way too sepia-toned.

Upper left corner - too washed out, too wobbly and too much loss of detail.

Lower left corner - too dark, it is however the one with most accurate colour palette in the Vader hypebaric chamber scene as far as I'm concerned.

Lower right corner - too blue.

Winner: Upper right corner, the most detailed of the four, only needs to have the sepia/orange corrected.

WOW, so the opening daylight scenes at Bespin are indeed very white with a slight hint of sky blue, probably amongst the few things the blu-ray got right.

poita said:

team_negative1 said:

Correct. The Hoth scenes are not blue. More from Reel 2:

===========================================

 

Team Negative1

Actually that is incorrect. I have viewed two non-faded 35mm prints of ESB in the past month, and Hoth is blue, and white and grey. The grade on the original 35mm release was all over the place. Some scenes are quite blue.

It would be impossible to know the correct colours from pink-faded prints, you can do a reasonable job restoring them so that they look 'good', but the original colour balance is unknowable without a non-faded print as reference. So it will look great, but may not be original timing.

These images look really good, great work on restoring colour from the lost channles,  but the colour will be somewhat arbitrary and not what it would have been at release.

Not to take anything away from what is great work, just letting any anal archivists know that the colours chosen for this release may not be all that close to the original timing.

hey poita, I'm guessing the owner of that non-faded 35mm film print will not, under any circumstance, loan the print for scanning, right? If so, that's too bad, although to be honest I like the naturalistic colour palette from Team Negative1's restored prints to the very blue version you're talking about. I assume that a subtle blue cast was added later to the prints for the Hoth scenes.

Wow, this is very cool. It seems the movie is  nowhere near as blue as blu-ray suggests, at least as far as the Hoth scenes go.

Nevermind, it was a problem with my browser.

The links are broken, could you please fix that?

Hey there Harmy, Team Negative1 recently posted screenshots from their 35mm film prints of ESB, and I noticed the scene in which Luke is inside the tank has a radically different colour scheme from that of your 2.0 workprint, as there is no hint of blue inside the bacta tank and Luke's flesh tone is readily apparent, the ceiling itself has a decidedly greenish tint. I also noticed the medbay scene has more vivid colours as opposed to the washed out colours from the workprint.

I notice that reel 1 has a noticeable green coloration on the right side. What's up with that?

Wow, just wow. I've been looking at the ROTJ screenshots and I must say I'm amazed at the image quality and cannot wait to see what Harmy will do with it once his ESB 2.0 and ROTJ 2.0 are done, it's going to look stunning. However, I would also like to see screenshots of ESB, could you please post those ones as well?

well, now that v2.5 of sw is out I can't wait to see the first screenshots of ESB V2.0. Can you give an estimate of when we will see that Harmy?

hey Harmy, I read an article a few years ago about ultra high definition, which is set to replace HD in a few years time. This being the case, i was wondering if you would be willing to go back to the editing room and work on a UHD version of the despecialized editions (versions 3.0, I guess). This would obviously render the GOUT obsolete, as the resolution of those is well below UHD, and the lost footage will have to use the 35mm film prints exclusively as source, and teamnegative1 would have to use 8K scanners. I hope those are affordable by then. I'm not demanding anything, just thinking you should plan ahead and hopefully be ready if the time comes, you can do it.

New member here.

First of all, I would like to start with my history with Star Wars. Throughout my early childhood I was aware of SW and remember every now and then they would broadcast the movies on TV, but I never really paid attention to them, until a fateful day early in 1997 (prior to the release of the special editions) in Mexico, when I saw an announcement in which there would be a Star Wars marathon, all three movies in one sitting, it was a Saturday, around that time I was hooked on the N64 game Shadows Of The Empire game, which drew heavily upon the movies, so i decided to give the trilogy a shot. Suffice to say, when I was done watching all 3 movies, that Saturday night I became a massive SW fan, being completely unaware at the time that it would be the only time i would be able to watch the trilogy in its original unaltered form. When the special editions came out i enjoyed them fondly, thinking to myself that this is what George Lucas had in mind when first making the movies but could not add due to the limitations of the time, also thinking he would leave it at that and have both the original cuts and special editions for everyone to enjoy. Seven years later the original trilogy was finally released on DVD and much to my annoyance I found out Hayden Christensen would be replacing Sebastian Shaw for the final scene in Return Of The Jedi, and with the special editions being the only ones Lucas will authorise for TV broadcast and the only ones I watched frequently, my memories of that saturday afternoon were starting to fade away, and that is the point in which I started to long for the unaltered editions. Finally, the Star Wars saga was announced on blu-ray, and the stupid NOOOOO added to ROTJ transformed my longing into an intense and desperate hunger to watch the first 3 Star Wars movies as they were originally released theatrically, so I decided to get the laser-disc transfers just to remember what I saw on that Saturday 1997 that made me fall in love with Star Wars in the first place, but I was still not satisfied, as the poor quality of the image was evident, since this was transferred from deteriorated film prints and with a screen resolution well below that of current PC monitors, making me wish I had a time machine so I could sneak on the original screenings. About 5 months ago, during one of my web drifts I came across a commentary section that mentioned something called Despecialized editions, that comment piqued my interest so I googled the key words and voila, I find this very forum and follow this very thread and waited patiently until last week. Even though I grew up with the screwed-up color timing of the special editions, something about they way you rearranged the color timing to match the fade-free Technicolor film prints feels right, the greenish-bluish interiors of the Death Star, the sepia toned Tatooine, the warm orange hue of Obi-Wan rescuing Luke from sand people, the Vaseline used to obscure the landspeeder wheels, the matte paintings restored to the best of your ability, everything looks the way it was prior to incessant tampering, Star Wars has been restored to all of its flawed beauty, and honestly I can't wait for TESB and ROTJ. (End of story)

I would like to state the following: If George Lucas wants to transform the original trilogy into a weird CGI cartoon that matches the prequels he has every right to do so, but that doesn't me he should lock away the original movies that everybody fell in love with just because he hates them. Take Ridley Scott, he hates the theatrical cut of Blade Runner but still allows that one to be available for distribution. I also think it is insulting that a channel like TCM is forced to play the special editions instead of the original classics. I just hope Disney and 20th Century Fox reach an agreement and release the original cuts in high quality, but until that day comes, and it probably never will, these will have to do.

From me and a few others here in Venezuela: Thank you very much Harmy, we know it was hair-pulling and frustrating going through every single frame restoring these movies to their original magic. Like I said, if Disney and Fox ever decide to release a remastered version of the original unaltered movies, I suggest you send them a copy of your work, I'm pretty sure they would hire you immediately. 

Sorry for the wall of text, now I will wrap this up with a quote from the 1995 VHS trailer:

"For those who remember, for those who will never forget, and for a whole new generation who will experience it for the first time..."