gizzy2000

Klasodeth said:

It's not possible to alter a frame of developed negative. To alter a scene on a negative, the original frames need to be cut out and replaced with frames of new footage.

 So this would mean that (assuming Fox restored all of the OUT before the SE was created) the original negatives, or at least the unaltered parts that were cut, aren't in as bad of shape as Lucas claimed

Baronlando said:

gizzy2000 said:

did they plan out the whole SE thing and only restore the parts that George wanted them to and then leave the other parts to rot? 

Dennis Muren said they kept adding shots as it went on and the whole thing snowballed into the shitshow it became, so I would assume everything got cleaned first. Because you want to have a nice pristine restored shot so you can stick a cartoon dinosaur in it.

 Interesting, I'd never heard that before. It doesn't surprise me since the SE's have always just come across as Lucas being obsessive and just changing things for the sake of changing things, and then claiming it was something he'd planned for decades. 

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to ask, do we know if they cut the parts that were going to be altered and put them in storage, or did they actually destroy the original film by adding the SE changes directly to the film in the negative (is that possible?)

DuracellEnergizer said:

gizzy2000 said:

I hope the new minor characters have cool names again, like Biggs Darklighter or Boba Fett or Max Rebo. I feel like as time went on all the background characters started getting completely stupid sounding names, like how they changed Walrus Man's name to "Ponda Baba".

"Walrus man" is more of a descriptor than an in-universe name, so I don't really think they "changed" it, but whatever.

 Well, back in the early days of Star Wars toys, they sold his figure at toy stores, and the box said "Walrus Man". I'm not sure when they gave him a name, but my point is that pretty much all the characters who didn't have a name when the OT came out (regardless of whether it's said on screen or not) ended up getting completely weird names, and I do think it was the prequels that started this. It's almost like george randomly mixed up letters and took whatever word he got and made it a name. Like Gloomu Poognu, Ghorbon Moogufu, Lumon Klagnon...

I hope the new minor characters have cool names again, like Biggs Darklighter or Boba Fett or Max Rebo. I feel like as time went on all the background characters started getting completely stupid sounding names, like how they changed Walrus Man's name to "Ponda Baba". Here's a few from wookieepedia:

Even Piell, Kit Fisto, Yarael Poof... Who the f#ck came up with these names? Anyway, I hope the characters in the ST have less hilarious sounding names that don't make me cringe with embarrassment every time I see someone write them in a comment.


Also, I have to get these names from Wikipedia because I'm a Star Wars fan in a sense that I love the OT movies, and I like the history of how the films were made, but I have almost no knowledge of the EU, which means if they didn't say the character's name in the movie, I probably don't know it. I know a few of the OT character's names just because I grew up with the movies and some of my friends told me. There's also the characters like Wolfman and Walrus Man who everyone knows by those names.

well, it'd be worth a shot

Ok, so I've literally hurt my head thinking about this. Why didn't Dooku tall Anakin Palpatine was evil when Palpy betrayed him? Or was Palpatine controlling his mind to make him not blow his cover... that's always the classic prequel fan defense of characters being too stupid to see that Palpatine is evil. Did Dooku not know that the Palpatine was the Emperor? It seems like he should because he met him on Coruscant. Whatever, I'm starting to get used to this prequel stuff not making sense.

Here's something I've been a bit confused about when it comes to this restoration, and I'm not sure if anyone knows for sure, but did Fox restore the entire negative along with all the original elements and completely restore that BEFORE Lucas took a dump on it and made the SE? Or did they plan out the whole SE thing and only restore the parts that George wanted them to and then leave the other parts to rot? I don't think George would've destroyed the original elements or the cut pieces of film that were replaced in the SE because he apparently hung on to everything (that's why the original elements were still around for the SE)

I don't necessarily care about the colors of lightsabers themselves, but I'm tired of all bad guys having red lightsabers, and especially tired of them all being named "Darth", I don't know what the EU says, but in Star Wars Darth just seemed like Vader's first name, but now it's an official bad guy title. I'm just glad the prequels never directly commented on the red lightsaber, because i remember in a behind the scenes interview for Ep. II Sam Jackson was chatting with Lucas about lightsaber colors and George said, "Well, good guys are green and blue, and bad guys are red..." 

He should pay the price for his lack of vision.

Harmy, are you planning on doing anything more with the scene where Jabba says, "at last we have the mighty Chewbacca."? If I remember right there was a bit of added smoke to cover up the GOUT Jabba right before he called for 3PO. I personally think it looks fine, but I remember there was some debate as to whether or not to cut to Chewy early or use the GOUT (and then debate as to whether or not to add the smoke). I haven't seen the 97 SE in close to fifteen years now but I do remember the awkward addition where Boba Fett flirted with the new dancer. I know that's the change that had to be worked around, but how exactly did they cut to that addition in the SE? Did they delete frames of Jabba before C-3PO came over to him, and that's why the GOUT had to be used? Anyway, I was just curious if there are any new plans for that scene.

Octorox said:

Harmy said:

yoda-sama said:

I guess my post couldn't be last forever...  AntuFaalb, I'm impressed you actually haven't seen any of the SE versions this whole time.  Still, the '97 SE isn't as consistently irksome as watching what they did from '04 and on.

Harmy, if you don't get the scenes you wanted from that iTunes book, are 35mm scans of Jedi becoming available instead?  I have no idea how far along -1 is.

As of now, I have no 35mm footage for Jedi and the way it looks, I don't expect to for the near future, so it seems that v2.0 will be using the same sources as v1.0 and the improvement will mostly be only in the over-all picture quality.

 :( That's unfortunate. Has Team Blu provided you with anything? I just hope that the lapti nek scene doesn't stick out like a sore thumb in the next version.

 or the eyebrows

Great, thanks a lot!

Hey, I'm currently getting the MKV  V2.5, and I noticed it says it has the mono mix. Is that the original one with the different voice for Aunt Beru? Also, the mkv file is 17.9 gb, this may be a question that was answered earlier but there's almost 500 pages so I don't think I could effectively search for it, but is there a way to decrease the size of the file by getting rid of the different language audio tracks, if so, how? The answer may be a bit obvious, but I'm not very knowledgeable about such things :)

darklordoftech said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Canon should be for religion*, not for fictional franchises.

 

*And even that's questionable.

Correct. Fictional canon is the worst thing to ever happen to fiction.

 I agree 100%. I personally don't care what they retcon because I only consider things I don't find ridiculous to be canon, so it's a lot different than what is officially considered canon. For example, I had all kinds of ideas in my head about what happened to Anakin before he was Darth Vader etc. etc. and then I saw the prequels... Basically, I don't consider the prequels canon, no matter what Disney says about them being the "immovable pillars of the saga" or whatever. Also, Scream 3 had a really terrible ending that I felt ruined the ending of the first movie if you consider them both canon, so I don't consider that part of Scream 3 canon. Something I've noticed about TF.N and Wookiepedia people is that they almost seem obsessed with what is and isn't canon, almost like they think they aren't allowed to like things that aren't canon, it's kind of depressing really that people feel like they can't enjoy something that isn't officially recognized as part of the "saga". I personally don't blame Disney for not wanting to be beholden to all the expanded universe material, they did the retcon just to cover their tracks because they know their future movies are going to be much different.

To be fair, I've never read a Star Wars book before (except for the 1976 "Star Wars" book based on Lucas's script, but that doesn't really count) so maybe if I was actually interested in the EU I'd feel differently about all this.

I found the Star Wars Despecialized Edition making of video on youtube very fascinating. Are there going to be videos explaining the sources for Empire and Jedi too, or was it just a thing made for the Star Wars Depescialied Edition?

Warbler said:

Goldeneye can't really be considered a reboot.   Yes, it takes place after the cold war, but the intro makes it clear Bond was a spy during the cold war.   Yes, M was female, but the movie makes clear she is the new M and refers to her predecessor who we can assume was the original M.    Finally Q is the same guy. 

 Well, I always thought the reason Bond was being evaluated at the beginning of Goldeneye was because he went rogue in Licence to Kill, and they were making sure he was fit for duty again. I agree, Goldeneye definitely didn't come across as a reboot of the franchise.

adywan said:

moviefreakedmind said:

I saw someone post this on hometheaterforums.com today. Not sure if this is completely accurate but I thought i'd post this here since it sounded interesting and has to do with the 4K restoration. I personally don't know what to believe because Wielage said that they wouldn't do a 4K release, but RMW did have on their website (not anymore) that they worked on 4K, so there's no way RMW would lie about that, which begs the question of when Mr. Wielage actually wrote this.

"I thought I would pass this information along.
 
Marc Wielage, who worked on the 2004 Star Wars masters, and has 35 years of video mastering experience within the industry (also having worked for Technicolor and Kodak), recently commented on AVS to my question of whether he had any knowledge of any 4K Star Wars work.  I won't post the link as I am not sure if that is allowed here, but he replied to me.
 
To my knowledge, no -- it was all 2K. Note that Episodes 2 and 3 were all shot on HD with 2K visual effects, and none of the VFX in any of the Star Wars films were more than 2K. Some of the early digital stuff in the 1990s wasn't even HD.
It's an interesting thought as to whether they'd consider rescanning 100% of the live-action film footage in Star Wars and recomping all the VFX in 4K. That would be a monstrous expense -- I'm guessing as much as $20M -- so my gut feeling is it's not gonna happen. 
People get very wrapped up in 4K, but I'm not convinced it's the be-all / end-all. I think 4K can look great, and I'm all for people shooting in this format, but the post process for 4K is so torturous and expensive, I'm not sure if the world is ready for it yet. I think it can work, but when you're looking at a project with upwards of 1200 visual effects, and each one takes 2 or 3 days to bounce around to different facilities (in 2K)... multiply that times 4 and tell me what it does to the schedule. 
Having said that: there are more and more TV shows shooting in 4K. Sony showed some 4K demos of The Blacklistback in April at NAB, and I thought it looked fantastic. But that's not a show with 200 effects per episode."

 I guess he was forgetting that all the FX work on the originals was done using film and only the special editions effects were done @ 2k or below. The originals could easily be scanned @4k

 Yes, so would that mean that if Disney wanted to do a 4K restoration, they'd have to scan mos eisley, cloud city, etc. etc. in their unaltered form, and add the CGI sh#t later? Meaning that they'd be able to restore the OUT and simultaneously recreate the SE if they choose?

I guess GL wasn't planning ahead for technological advances. Funny, I thought he patiently waited 20 years so he could add a bunch of modern technology to his movies :-) He really screwed up there didn't he

So its only the second 2 prequels that are stuck forever in 2K

Baronlando said:

That guy is making a huge leap about recomping all the shots again. Of course they aren't doing that. They'd just scan the neg at 4K like they did with JAWS and we either get the 97 version or the 97 version with a side of extra crap dumped on it at the later digital level.

 Can they scan the SE CGI at 4K?

Mike O said:

moviefreakedmind said:

I saw someone post this on hometheaterforums.com today. Not sure if this is completely accurate but I thought i'd post this here since it sounded interesting and has to do with the 4K restoration. I personally don't know what to believe because Wielage said that they wouldn't do a 4K release, but RMW did have on their website (not anymore) that they worked on 4K, so there's no way RMW would lie about that, which begs the question of when Mr. Wielage actually wrote this.

"I thought I would pass this information along.
 
Marc Wielage, who worked on the 2004 Star Wars masters, and has 35 years of video mastering experience within the industry (also having worked for Technicolor and Kodak), recently commented on AVS to my question of whether he had any knowledge of any 4K Star Wars work.  I won't post the link as I am not sure if that is allowed here, but he replied to me.
 
To my knowledge, no -- it was all 2K. Note that Episodes 2 and 3 were all shot on HD with 2K visual effects, and none of the VFX in any of the Star Wars films were more than 2K. Some of the early digital stuff in the 1990s wasn't even HD.
It's an interesting thought as to whether they'd consider rescanning 100% of the live-action film footage in Star Wars and recomping all the VFX in 4K. That would be a monstrous expense -- I'm guessing as much as $20M -- so my gut feeling is it's not gonna happen. 
People get very wrapped up in 4K, but I'm not convinced it's the be-all / end-all. I think 4K can look great, and I'm all for people shooting in this format, but the post process for 4K is so torturous and expensive, I'm not sure if the world is ready for it yet. I think it can work, but when you're looking at a project with upwards of 1200 visual effects, and each one takes 2 or 3 days to bounce around to different facilities (in 2K)... multiply that times 4 and tell me what it does to the schedule. 
Having said that: there are more and more TV shows shooting in 4K. Sony showed some 4K demos of The Blacklistback in April at NAB, and I thought it looked fantastic. But that's not a show with 200 effects per episode."

 In other words, so not happening. We'll probably get 2K scans of the SEs at best. 

According to him yes, but we have no way of knowing when Marc Wielage said that, it may have been before the RMW news, or he may not have heard about the RMW issue. Remember, that's just his own speculation, albeit he definitely knows more about the subject then most. However, unless RMW were lying (which, let's be real, why would they?) then they definitely are/were doing a 4K restoration of the original trilogy. There's the possibility that Disney cancelled the project but I don't think they would because I'm sure Lucasfilm already paid for it when they started doing it.

Well, we do know for a fact that RMW was or is working on a 4K restoration of the entire trilogy, and that's information straight from their website. The 20 million dollar price tag doesn't sound right, but I'm sure Mr. Wielage knows much more than I do about these things, and even if it is a 20 million dollar project, Star Wars will make much more than that. What I find interesting is that, if I'm understanding this correctly, none of the Special Edition changes are capable of being scanned in 4K, so would that mean they'd have to scan all of the unaltered scenes back in and restore them before sh#tting on them again by re-adding the SE changes? If that's the case then this could potentially be a way for them to simultaneously restore the OOT and recreate and re-release the SE's right? The only exceptions would be the scenes that were reshot like the new wampa, the dance lady in ROTJ, and... I think that might be it, right?

moviefreakedmind said:

skyjedi2005 said:

Its not like Song of the South is it?

We restored the movie in HD and then we sent it to a vault to never be seen again.

I know its an altogether different thing but what are the chances a pristine oot has existed since the 1990's and Lucas just did not want it out there.

They undertook a multi mission dollar restoration yet they have no good prints or elements, i think there is something wrong with this picture.

 I've always wondered that too. Like, Lucas did restore the OOT so it wouldn't be lost forever (or it was restored before the SE ruined the negative), and then he hid it away so no one could ever see it. 

 Well, it depends on the details of the 20 million dollar restoration. Did Fox restore all three movies, and THEN Lucas shat on them for the Special Edition? Or did they remove the parts Lucas didn't like and then only restore the remaining parts of the movie while the cut parts were left to rot?

You know, my favorite duel in the series is the one between Obi-Wan and Vader (and no not the one in Revenge of the Sith). The duel with the "worst" fight choreography is better than any of the duels in the prequels in my opinion because they actually look like they're trying to cut each other. Not to mention the fight is more emotionally involving because by that point in the movie the audience really cares about Obi-Wan, and doesn't want to see him killed. I hope Ep. VII doesn't make the lightsaber fights so pointlessly fancy; I don't have a problem with rehearsed choreography, but in the prequels it really seemed like whoever wrote those scenes thought the goal of a sword fight was to clash sabers with your opponent rather than try to hurt them. The lightsaber choreography should be more like the ones in Jedi and Empire: realistic and believable.

I wouldn't mind seeing a storm trooper without their helmet on, just to prove they aren't clones. The fact that stormtroopers (and ESPECIALLY Boba Fett!!) were clones really pissed me off in the prequels. Also, I don't read any books about Star Wars so I'd rather not hear a comment about how a book explains that stormtroopers aren't clones (see them all the time on Youtube comments), Ep. II made it pretty clear that they were, and I like to just go based on the movies.

Well, yes it is sad that Star Wars wouldn't get a true restoration. But honestly, at this point, I'd find it hard to be disappointed if they just gave it the basic catalog treatment, something I'm sure they'd be willing to do. I'm sure an unaltered Star Wars release would sell well, but I doubt Disney wants to take any risks, so they'd take the most cost efficient route.