ireactions

pitpawten said:

ireactions said:

I’m wondering, are the galleries that show how Harmy drew on different sources to make Despecialized still available? The pictures.google.com links don’t seem to work for Empire or Star Wars.

I believe this is what you’re looking for which I archived a while back, hope this is it:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AowuMCRBTqsugdEa_kMz9CY3KsWXDw?e=hpRFhh

I ask for the comparisons for Empire and you send me the ones for A New Hope.

Why?

I’m wondering, are the galleries that show how Harmy drew on different sources to make Despecialized still available? The pictures.google.com links don’t seem to work for Empire or Star Wars.

4K77 is beautiful. I am looking at version 1.4 and the more lifelike, subdued colours are such a wonderful rebuff of the oversaturated look of the post-2004 releases.

I am running 4K77 through Topaz AI which clears away grain and sharpens details without creating blurriness. It can also apply an additional level of grain afterwards so the end result has consistent grain levels across all shots. I am astonished at how crisp the previews are looking while having just enough noise to avoid the wax dummy look.

I had to downscale the file to 1080p for my hardware limitations and the job will take five days, but 4K77 did so much wonderful cleanup and colour correction that a plug-and-play solution like Topaz can add a final polish to their stunning work.

dlvh said:

 

Now I know previously that Harmy wanted these type of "problems/errors" or whatever you want to call them, be reported to him in a PM, which I did, and he gave me his permission to post this to the the forum. 

Harmy has (rightly) lifted that request on the grounds that he doesn't want to censor people's criticisms and discussions.

Personally, I would be *very* interested to see people talk about areas of the Despecialization where the process is flawed. The only places where I've felt the seams showed were the shot of the speeder in Mos Eisley and in RETURN OF THE JEDI where the added smoke to the GOUT-frames of Jabba fades away in a very unnatural manner, losing density, then staying consistent for a bit, then losing density again, then staying consistent, then disappearing entirely. But my interest isn't in criticizing Harmy, but rather in better understanding the process and the work and maybe what solutions could be used, if any exist.

If the shot of the speeder in Mos Eisley was a grainy, blurry mess in the original version because they didn't have enough time to do the composite as well as they could have and that's how it'd be no matter where the shot was taken (unless it's a new HD transfer) -- well, I just learned something I didn't know before! Thanks! :-D

I do love the Despecializations, but one moment always really jumps out at me:

We get the "You don't need to see his identification scene in HD" -- 

But then we get this extremely grainy, low-res shot:

I know that no HD version of this shot exists and it's been altered so much in the Special Edition with new elements in the foreground that it's impossible to simply replace the background. But does anyone have any ideas for what could possibly be done to make this one shot fit in better? Noise reduction? A new matte background that's been rebuilt to resemble the original but in higher resolution? A new 3D model built to resemble the speeder and its occupants?

Just curious. The restoration/despecialization process is fascinating.

Harmy said:

OMG, that would be so terrible if an eventual official release was a despecialized edition! It would make me so unbelievably angry, if they just replaced the obvious changes and kept the rest from the SE. They should scan an original print - or several and combine them - so that there isn't even a hint of anything Special Edition.

Hmm. That would be preferable. It's certainly possible!

From http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html :

[For the Special Editions,] ILM was working on many dozens of new shots. When these were completed, they apparently were printed onto film and re-cut into the negative, replacing the original negs, which were undoubtedly put back into storage. As a result, the negative for Star Wars is filled with CGI-laden modern alterations. 

Of course, it would be very easy to simply put the original pieces back and conform it to the original version, or use the separation masters and IPs, or simply scan the old pieces for a digital restoration. But this is problematic due to handling issues (and losing more frames). When Robert Harris restored Godfather last year, he had to do it entirely digitally, saying that if any pin-registered mechanism were to touch the negative it would crumble. In Star Wars' case, using scans of the separation masters is perfectly viable, and though IPs and Technicolor prints are not ideal for masters they could be usable if cleaned up digitally. 

Perhaps the easiest option would be to simply follow the 1997 restoration pattern but in the digital realm: scan the negative in 8K, then scan the stored pre-SE shots or re-comp them, and fill in any damaged areas with IPs or separation masters, reconstructing the original cut, then digitally remove dirt and damage, and finally use a Technicolor print as a color reference for the Digital Intermediate created. Such a product would be theatrically viable, as pristine as when it had been shot, and 100% faithful in image and color to the original release.

The pricetag of doing a project like this would likely be under a million dollars. One day, I predict this process will happen, but that day does not seem to be anywhere in the near future. 

It will remain to be seen if the negative to Star Wars is in a salvageable state by the time this happens or if it has become a brittle relic, faded to black and white.

- Michael Kaminski

BuddhaMaster said:

 I usually spot microscopic color deviations, others wouldn't even realize at all. Here are a few things that need to be adjusted, those differences are pretty obvious, so please change them: The color of the party-ship is grey in the original (you reverted R2D2 back to gray), in your DeSpe it's as red as in the SE! Please return to grey. Or reduce the artificial looking shimmer that makes it look too much like plastic. The Falcon is just as green in your DeSpe as it is in the SE. Please, please return it to a neutral grey (warm grey) as in GOUT. Also the planet needs to a bit more red. It almost seems as if there is a bit of green tint all over the picture. Just reduce green a notch and shit a bit towards blue/purple on the Falcon. [Further demands from BuddhaMaster edited out]

Wrong. Wrong on all counts. Astonishingly wrong. A magnificent achievement of wrongness that will live on in infamy. Harmy does not need to adjust the colours or reduce artificial shimmer or return anything to gray or add in a bit of red or remove the green tint -- he doesn't need to do any of the things you say because he doesn't work for you.

You are not the customer. You are not the client. You are not the employer. Harmy does the fan-edits out of personal enthusiasm and chooses to share his efforts. If you don't like something, you certainly have the right to comment on whether or not something worked for you personally, but not to tell him what he has to do.

He doesn't have to do anything!

Originally, Harmy asked that people not criticize his work outside of personal messages, saying that many of the flaws went unnoticed and pointing them out would distract from the viewing experience and ruin it for people who hadn't seen mismatches of footage or colouring errors or video encoding problems. He's changed his mind as he doesn't want to censor criticism and reactions -- but I suppose that also opened him up to receiving demands from people who've no business providing anything but criticism and reactions.

I really like Harmy's work on RETURN OF THE JEDI. However, he's mentioned a few future changes that I'm not too enthusiastic about, personally -- he says that he'd like to restore the visible matte lines to the rancor, matte lines that were removed for the DVD edition. Personally, I think that the matte lines were bad in the standard definition picture. In a high-definition release, the matte lines would be even more distracting. I agree that they're part of the original theatrical cut, and if that's what Harmy wants to rebuild, then the matte lines are something to be included. But they would be a massive distraction from the viewing experience. What Harmy's done with his Despecialization is to remove distractions that alter the tone and atmosphere and visual appeal of the original films. The matte lines have never appealed and the clean-up job for DVD was one of the few post-post-release changes that have improved rather than detracted.

Any HD version of the original cuts of the trilogy in the future would likely keep the cleaned-up version of the rancor. The simplest route to producing an HD version of the films would be to take the current editions and re-edit them into reconstructed theatrical cuts, with only missing shots re-transferred from the original elements. They'd probably avoid replacing the shot of the rancor on the grounds that the new version is simply the old version, but cleaned up.

Harmy has released his first RETURN OF THE JEDI with the cleaned up rancor scene, and even if his later versions put the old effects back in, I'll still have his first version. He can do what he likes. This is just my opinion.