mverta

That actually is the word for Star Wars' cinematography: beautiful.  Far moreso than it is given credit for, or thought as.  The lighting is pretty flat, overall, and yet there's really such interest in the color scheme and tonality.  It's also got this really distinct '70's vibe to it, especially in the flesh tones, which read far differently than what we get today.  They're sort of stylized, but in a really romantic way.

_Mike

Legacy's audio is the shit.  Trust me.

_Mike

One of my early iterations of Legacy was largely based on the 2004 DVD. It's more trouble than it's worth, and mostly, the best stuff simply isn't in the data anymore to pull out.  You can improve it on its own, but you can't use it as a proper source.

I think Harmy's Despecialized is a nice offering which could've gone to much greater lengths to improve upon the sources it draws from.  Adywan's tasteless, amateurish hackjobs represent the antithesis of everything my project stands for.  Half of what keeps me going in the dark times is just knowing that that his shit is out there making things worse.  So I guess they're not total wastes. I'm convinced he gave Lucas the idea for those godawful blinking Ewoks with all of his After Effects 101 dicking around.

_Mike

TServo: yes, 100% in the original Star Wars it was blue throughout.  It's true that the color varied just a touch - I mean, even "blue" is actually a sort of light blue, but not cyan, for sure.  And though the saturation dipped a touch during the training remote sequence, it's absolutely fringed blue, no doubt.

About the '97:  I have, over the years, seen several '97 prints in varying stages of quality; however, they all exhibited the same base color characteristics.  In every print I've seen, everything from the washed-out color palette to the green lightsaber was present.  Now, is it possible that every '97 I saw just happened to be defective in the same way; just happened to match each other, but that there were '97 prints which looked like Tech prints do?  Geez, I guess?  But... 

In my opinion, the one advantage a '97 would have over a Tech print would be that it has slightly less inherent contrast, which can kill mid-shadow details and mid-high details.  So, my theoretical "perfect source" would actually be a combination of both.

...and you have to remember that no print stock has the range that negative stock does.  Technically speaking, it isn't possible to truly capture the negative on print.  It's always a compromise in one way or another, biased however the stock itself is biased.  That's the "downside" of photochemical processes.  I mean, no two prints on the same stock even look 100% identical. 

So the REAL goal would be a sort of "reclaim the negative" approach, which digital tools allow us to do.  To do this, you'd want to scan a variety of prints at a couple exposures, allowing for the first time the subtlest of details in highs and lows to both be present in the image for the first time since the negative.  Any definitive restoration would need multiple prints as sources in the first place, so why not go that extra level?  One print might be good for color fidelity, but be uncharacteristically grainy.  Another one might be super sharp and low-grain but have horrible color.  Digital tools allow us to take the best of all worlds and rebuild an ideal image.  Then, if you had a truly trustworthy color source to keep everything referenced to, you could produce a truly definitive Star Wars, which was arguably what was always intended - what was on the negative - but never previously possible to realize. 

_Mike

Luke's saber is consistently blue in the original Star Wars.  And no, I have no plans to restore the other two films, "The Soap Opera" and "The Muppet Show."  :)  Best leave those to somebody who cares as much about them as I do Star Wars.

By the way, a note about how dark the Blu-Ray is:  film contains an awful lot of information; a lot of density and latitude in the image.  When scanning, you never want to lose information in the darks or in the highlights, so you make sure to preserve the full range of information (or as far as is possible on the scanner - most film scanners capture a very limited range of film density compared to the best drum scanners, for example).  In any case, what happened was that they took data which was properly scanned, and made sure to preserve the top end highlights and deepest blacks, but it's the distribution of all the mid-tones that's wrong.  Why?  I dunno; didn't look at any reference images?  There's no "absolute" setting when dealing with either linear or logarithmically scanned images, though Cineon specifications are fairly consistent.  Nonethless, the data is in there, it just wasn't handled properly.  That said, what ISN'T in there is the color fidelity.  That limited color palette was not a choice; it's in 1997 prints.  Or should I say, the range is already limited in 1997 prints. 

_Mike

That's just a preliminary grading.  I have much work to do, recovering details and getting all the subtleties and such, but even at this early stage, you can "feel" a film you'd long since forgotten the look of - if you ever saw it in theaters that summer, anyway.

_Mike

About those colors you see when you boost up Hue/Sat on the 2004 DVD or Blu-Ray:  I don't know what those are about.  There was some color variation in the plastic used for the set, yes, but those colors are different than the hues of the actual variance, and oddly distributed.  That's simply not what the color variance on the set looked like.  Bizarre.

However- this is definitely worth your time to check out:

Color Fidelity Comparison

_Mike

The other colors there are not representative of what's in the image.  In that actual image, the back walls have a slight blue green cast, the stormtroopers are white(ish), and Leia's robe is slightly cream.  It's beautiful, and far more interesting than the shades-of-white-seen basically forever.

_Mike

I have the entire shooting schedule around someplace...  but I would think that's all online somewhere.

_Mike

This sequence was the last thing shot.  That's the spot of dirt she picked up on the costume during the trash compactor sequence, which didn't entirely come off in cleaning.  Guess they didn't use bleach.

_Mike

I was doing some channel analysis tonight and I remembered something you guys might not have seen before:  Carrie's camisole visible under her robe. And if you look real hard...

The Aluminum Falcon said:

mverta said:

Star Wars was shot on relatively fine-grain stock; what we're used to seeing is not representative of the negative.

Ah, I see. All right. I didn't know that. Thanks for the info, mverta. :-) Out of curiosity, lack of resolution, crushed blacks and color issues aside, is the 2004 master's smoother look closer to how a film print looks than the grainier LD releases or GOUT?

I don't do any noise reduction or grain removal. I do, however, use tools to recover detail from within grain structure.

Thank god. I can't stand noise reduction. I just didn't know that Star Wars had inherently fine grain.

Yes, the 2004/Blu-Ray is closer to what the best prints/negative look like, grain-wise, though even then it's curiously noisy in places - likely from where other sources were used.  I have said many times I think people would be surprised by what Star Wars actually looks like.  Certainly, I didn't remember it being as sexy as it is, or as inconsistent in places. 

_Mike

The site is being archived. For now, go to the forums.  Much more will be posted there!

_Mike

Star Wars was shot on relatively fine-grain stock; what we're used to seeing is not representative of the negative.  Much of it comes from the prints, themselves, and there are fine-grain prints out there.  But moreso, you're looking at a small crop, smaller in resolution, which of course shrinks the grain with it.  But no, I don't do any noise reduction or grain removal.  I do, however, use tools to recover detail from within grain structure.

_Mike

What do you mean, "However"? 

_Mike

A detail comparison between the Blu-Ray and a raw frame of Legacy:

_Mike

You have much to learn, young grasshoppah.  :)   But don't worry; head on over to the legacy forums and we'll get you sorted out in time. :)

_Mike

The highest quality source in the universe is in George's basement - a Technicolor IB print.  And even that is at least three generations from the original negative (Negative>Inter-Positive>Inter-Negative>Print), which has long since degenerated into nothing.  So in the purest sense, Star Wars is already gone forever.  But if one had access to George's - or one of the few remaining other Technicolor IB prints - and was truly, extraordinarily clever and patient, today's tools make it as possible to get back to the look of the negative as has even been possible before.

That is the task to undertake, in case the future sees a reversal of position on the matter.

_Mike

There are varying levels/versions of restoration which are performed. Certainly there is a "warts and all" version with very little touched.  But in general, the grading of Legacy is determined, essentially, by balancing two factors: 1) the original color timing of Technicolor prints and 2) knowing the absolute color values of props, costumes, and set pieces.

If, for example, Darth Vader's helmet appears alternately green-ish, blue-ish, and red-ish during a scene, only one of them is correct (not really, but you get the idea).  Legacy matches them all to each other, and then matches that group to the original Technicolor timing which most closely matches the actual prop, and other items in the scene. Usually, you'll find that is 90% of such shots in the film, which indicates that with some exceptions, no particularly stylized grading was done to Star Wars.  Most things were shot and timed fairly neutrally, plus whatever bias the stock naturally has.

The Death Star coloring is due partly to some of the set pieces actually being different colors, and lots just appearing that way because of inconsistencies in timing, and transfer anomalies over the years.  Fortunately, I know which is which :)  So I'm not making the slightly blue ones and green ones match, but all the blue ones match each other, and all the green ones match each other.

As for your absolute sense of color: don't trust it.  Humans have an absolutely terrible memory for absolute color, and our perception system auto white-balances.  This is why it's so dangerous to go "by eye" though we often have little choice.

_Mike

Indeed I have.  Many times, back in the day...

_Mike

More to the point... if you think anything you do, Star-Wars-related, is worth bragging about, then you need to do more with your life.  Talk about being the tiniest king on the smallest of hills... my God...

At this point, I might recommend you let it drop, inasmuch as you're coming across about as transparent as a window.  But, you know, your call. 

_Mike

None; it's not necessary.  This is the internet.

_Mike

The show's just getting started.  You will see it all, in time, as I do it, if you tune in!

_Mike

Predictable, yes.  But I would think by this point it was clear that I neither fear, nor care. :)

_Mike