Here are some grabs straight from the scanner, including the LAD slide.
No correction done to them at all, just resized down and converted to .jpg
I will be interested to see if anyone wants to have a crack at correcting the LAD slide, then applying the same correction values to the other images and see if that works well, okay, badly or not at all :)
Oh, for anyone wondering what a LAD is, this is Kodak's blurb...
Laboratory Aim Density (LAD)
To maintain optimum quality and consistency in the final prints, the
laboratory must carefully control the color timing, printing, and
processing. Kodak's Laboratory Aim Density (LAD) control method
assists laboratories in setting up and controlling the electronic
color analyzer used for color timing, and the printing and duplicating
procedures. The use of the LAD control method is described in the
paper "A Simplified Motion-Picture Laboratory Control Method for
Improved Color Duplication" by John P. Pytlak and Alfred W. Fleischer,
published in the October 1976 SMPTE Journal. A simplified description
of the LAD method is outlined in KODAK Publication No.H-61A, "Using
LAD to Set Up an Electronic Color Analyzer and Control Duplicating".
To aid in color timing and curve placement, negative originals should
be timed relative to the Laboratory Aim Density (LAD) Control Film
supplied by Kodak. The electronic color analyzer used for color timing
is set-up with the LAD Control Film to produce a gray video display of
the LAD patch, corresponding to a 1.0 neutral density (gray) on the
print. The negative is then scene-to-scene timed to determine the
printer lights ("TAPE" values) for each scene, relative to the
printer/analyzer setup lights (usually TAPE 25-25-25).
There are specific LAD values for each type of print or duplicating
film that the original may be printed onto. For duplicating films,
(e.g. to make a master positive), the specified aim densities are at
the center of the usable straight-line portion of the sensitometric
curve of the film. For print film, the LAD patch is printed to obtain
a neutral gray of 1.00 visual density (1.00 Equivalent Neutral
Density) on the processed print at the setup lights (e.g. TAPE
25-25-25).
For prints intended for projection with xenon arc projectors, the
Laboratory Aim Densities for KODAK VISION Color Print Film / 2383/3383
corresponding to a 1.00 density visual gray... etc.
For anyone intending to work with the Super8 films, for what it is worth, the leader has a LAD 35 sequence in it, on each reel from memory, so you could use that as a starting point for colour grading.
Similar to this:
Keep in mind that the above image isn't colour-accurate, I just pulled it off the web as an example, you will need to track down the correct values of the squares on the LAD 35 image from Kodak.
.exr
Actually, it is over 250GB *per reel* and there are 4 reels, making about 1.2TB in .avi format.
In openexr format it comes down to around 700GB for the whole shebang.
You will need something like Nuke or Davinci to utilise .exr files.
They are 16bit linear raw scans, so will look nothing much like the print itself, the full gamut is in the scan so that any prospective editor can correct it to their tastes.
kk650 said:
Of course I would never use a shot like that to judge correct fleshtones because they are too many unknown factors in play like lighting and the grading GL and co chose to apply to that scene. That said, to my eyes the second shot, that uses my current settings, look fairly accurate to me. C3PO looks gold, R2D2 looks blue, the sky looks the correct shade of blue, so it would follow that the fleshtones should be fairly accurate as well.
It was these shots between leia and darth vader on tantive IV though where I really decided what settings I would most likely use for overall fleshtones. These screencaps below are using my current settings, just like the second screencap you posted above:
\
To me R2 is far too blue, 3PO too yellowy-gold, and too much yellow in the entire scene. (The method is also bit backwards, if you get the skintone right, then the other colours usually fall into place, but, if the other colours are in place, it often doesn't automatically equate that the skintones are okay. See youtube link at the end for a demo).
The colour looks too saturated in the leia scene on the Blurays, we shouldn't be able to make out her rouge so clearly. Working on films from that time, we used to have to overdo the makeup as it was done *knowing* that the saturation would be lost by the time you went from Negative to IP to print and projection. The idea was that by the time a print was struck, the clownish makeup would tone down to a natural look. The official BD hasn't taken that into account.
But anyway, that is the thing really, everyone has their own opinion.
Just as a general thing (not specific to this project), when I was a wee lad being schooled by the senior colourist, the rule of thumb, regardless of the scene, is to get the skintones right, unless they are specifically lit not to be (under-water, standing under a red light etc.). It will rarely be the director's or colourist's intent to have the skintones not look right, without a pretty clear reason (sickness, zombie etc.) . Skintones always lie in pretty much the same point on the scopes, whether you are black, white, yellow or anything inbetween, there is only a small amount of variation. So the I-Bar on the scope is a good guide when in doubt.
There is a great talk on this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX45Yi1spY4 for anyone interested. Now I'll stop clogging up this thread and get back to work.
(skintone section of talk starts at 23:40, and is worth watching, the rest is too, but that part is invaluable. Plus Larry Jordan looks a bit like Obi-Wan). Also good chapters in Hurkman's books on this.
kk650 said:
Cheers for the prompt replies! I once again agree with you two that in the second screencap R2D2 looks more 'natural' to me so that's the one to go with.
One last question. Taking into account the fleshtones of luke and uncle owen, getting the colour of C3P0 and R2D2 right and everything else, which of these two screencaps do you prefer, the first or the second?
The fleshtones look really off to me in both shots, and looking on the scopes they are well off the skintone line.
It can be useful to isolate the faces from the scene to look for colour-cast.
It looks too greenish-yellow to me.
Quick quiz for everyone out there, which of the two screenshots is the image above from?
This is Luke on Tatooine with the skintone right on the line on the scopes.
But of course one can make the faces pinkish or greenish or bright blue, it is upto the colourist what direction they want to go in with any given scene.
So, in the end, just do the grade that you like the best, if you ask 20 people for opinion on colour, you will get 20 different answers.
If they really did have the other 2 PTs completely finished, then there might be a 3D BD release at some point, the cost of mastering and distribution isn't all that high, and it would recoup some of the costs.
I'd be surprised if they were completely finished though, usually you use the money from the first project to fund the next one.
You should give PFDepth a try, there is a two week free trial, you can knock over a lot of frames in two weeks :)
http://latino-review.com/2014/01/pixar-joining-star-wars-universe/
I mostly like it, but the skintones look too yellow to me. Have you checked them against the fleshline on your vectorscopes?
emanswfan said:
Well, it's nice to know my chromatic aberration is backed up, as you can see subtleties of it in the OT. Also, I've actually blurred the image slightly now, not sharpened it. I also made the blur slightly more vertical to add a somewhat anamorphic look.
However, all the miniature style blur I am adding to the big CGI shots will be anamorphic. And pretty much every big CGI shot will have blur of some sorts, all via depth maps I have been making.
I already have created detailed depth maps for each outside CGI shot in the ROTS opening, so you will see a much shallower depth of field.
Hopefully I can show the new ROTS opening shot very soon!
What are you using for depth map creation?
I do too, but if I have been staring at blue-grey for a while, it affects my colour perception even if I open them in a new window. I have to stare at a grey panel for a bit to recalibrate.
ilovewaterslides said:
stretch009 said:
ilovewaterslides said:
Yeah poita, the second one is the BD.
What we have is not the fully uncompressed DCP file but a ~40mbps x264 compressed file which is still impressive compared to the BD.
How does it compare to the WOWWOW version? I have the WOWOW and it's superior to the BD of course. I just want to know if it's worth the trouble getting the DCP too.
1 Wow http://someimage.com/r8TVO93
1 DCP http://someimage.com/JB263mS
2 Wow http://someimage.com/rtprMP0
2 DCP http://someimage.com/xae4R53
3 Wow http://someimage.com/KK56sK0
3 DCP http://someimage.com/hTaqLdW
4 Wow http://someimage.com/fd61vy4
4 DCP http://someimage.com/a3y7DzE
5 Wow http://someimage.com/xIkXxrv
5 DCP http://someimage.com/XdzyFnx
6 Wow http://someimage.com/B32RRod
6 DCP http://someimage.com/jls5TDo
I haven't looked at all of these, but doing a mathematicall DIFF on the first two images effectively marks them as identical, which is a but suspicious.
Harmy said:
So, DCP can now be ripped? That's good news for stuff like this, where the DCP is far better than an existing official release but bad news for the film-makers - it means there are probably going to be perfect 1080p or even 4K pirate encodes of perfect quality online as soon as the movies hit theaters and that's bad.
It won't be ripped as soon as it hits theatres, it is doable but still painful to do at the moment, and requires access to the hardware and a working key.
I won't go into any more about that here, but I wouldn't expect to see DCP releases until quite a bit after a theatrical run, which is a good thing IMO.
kk650 said:
poita said:
The grade is all over the place on the original film, I agree. As you said though, the saturation is a bit off in your sample, turning him into Lemon Solo.
lol, you posting this made me imagine han solo advertising this drink in a commercial, a missed opportunity for the holiday special. That would have been kinda funny, itchy switching on the tv and Han Solo's ad appearing advertising his drink to keep you ice cool like him hehe
True, many missed marketing opportunities:
Product placement opportunities were missed also
But it's not too late, Disney have released some preview images from the upcoming 4K 2017 anniversary Special Super Duper edition.
ilovewaterslides said:
I love how we now have a version that actually looks faaar better than the official Blu-ray... it's kinda sad at the same time.
Plus, I've mailed Universal some months ago to ask if they were going to do a 4K remaster, they said it wasn't planned for the moment.
Which image is from the BD?
dvdmike said:
The DCP was locked, the caps I have come from the trailer.
How did they break the DCP encryption?
Big shame it is compressed too, would love the 200+ gb file if someone has it.
Can anyone DM me a usenet or torrent link as I hate doing the whole chunk thing from TP
Anyone have any HD-Torrents or Beyond HD invites?
DCP has been defeated, though it is still (relatively) non-trivial now to convert a DCP to any other format, it can be done.
Is it on usenet? A 2K file is usually around 160GB, so a 4K one would be huge.
Jetrell Fo said:
I always found the lack of pink on this card to be telling. Thanks to stsw2112 for the pic.
Prints on paper are unfortunatley completely useless as a colour reference. The person responsible for the printing process will colour balance the image themselves to suit their own aesthetic and for technical reasons in the CMYK printing process. It will have no relation at all to what is on the film itself.
Cool image though.
The grade is all over the place on the original film, I agree. As you said though, the saturation is a bit off in your sample, turning him into Lemon Solo.
Moth3r said:
In theory, it would be a new skin selectable in the user preferences.
However, certain people have been asking Jay to put the light blue skin back for years...
A user selectable skin would be great, especially if there was a sticky to say 'if you want to see correct colour in images on this site, select this skin'
When using this site now for more than a few minutes, your brain decides that the blue background is actually grey and shifts your colour perception accordingly.
msycamore said:
poita said:
Absolutely, if anything it is slightly more pink than the images I have shown.
I have seen 9 different prints now all up, as well as countless Super8 prints which were taken from the international negative and all of them are pretty close to the image I posted here. Some are a little lighter, some a little darker, but all have a definite pinkish sky in this shot. (The only ones that don't are the dodgy 16mm dupe prints, most of the colour casts in scenes are washed away in those prints)
Reproductions in magazines and books will nearly always be balanced out by the pagesetter and appear without the colour-cast, they would most likely assume it was an unwanted artefact and adjust it out. Try taklng the image into photoshop and applying autocolor and you will get a nice dull neutral sky, which looks more natural, but is less striking. I have found on set photographs and books to be a useless source for colour, as it doesn't take into account the on-set lighting, any filters used, the final colour grade or the film stock.
The reddish tones appear to be intended, quite possibly to add to the menace and colour temperature to accompany the 'burning' of Luke's family, and adding to the 'hellishness' of the imagery with the skeletal remains.
But for whatever reason, the sky was pinky-red in 1977 when Luke's Aunt and Uncle breathed their last.
Sorry, I should have been more clear, prints was typed print sources, I'm well aware of that printed source material found in magazines, books and such are pretty much useless.
No, I'm surprised because I was lucky enough being able to see a beautiful albeit incomplete LPP projected last summer (reel 4 and 6 was missing unfortunately.) And being the obsessive SW-freak I am, I made sure to take great notice of anything unexpected in terms of the films timing, and this particular shot in that print didn't stand out to me as being graded any differently compared to any other overcast Tatooine daylight sequences. I'd say its look was very consistent with some of the opening desert scenes with the droids as well as those overcast shots in the droid sale at the farm. Warm, yellow, beige or brown with light gray skies is the way I would describe it.
So I'm not entirely convinced that this shot was timed to set a certain mood, if anything it should have been timed colder if that was the case I think, in order to contrast it with the otherwise warm desert scenes. But when you say that you have seen the same thing in nine different prints! I'm sure you know what you're talking about. And of course I trust you, you're sitting with prints right in front of you. :) Anyway, the amounts of pink in that panning shot there doesn't sit right with me but I guess I'll have to unlearn what I have learned. ;) Memories are memories...
In any case, this is awesome, poita! Had succeeded to somehow miss this thread earlier. We need to set up some way to donate.
That -1 print scan looks way too cold, why is that?
If you did an auto colour correct (auto levels etc.) you would end up with something quite like the -1 image shown here. Or if you were correcting by eye without a reference, you would probably attempt to make the sky blue which would make the entire image cold.
Or it could be a technical issue. If they are using a homemade scanner then the most likely reason is that their light source is not spectrally matched to their sensor (camera).
CCDs have certain responses to certain light wavelengths.
Most sensors aren't as even as the one in this graph, and the bayer matrix filter tends to tilt response towards green or blue, both case tend to knock the warmth out of the image.
Consumer cameras also have an IR cut filter to help get a sharper image, many of these cut into the red end of the spectrum as well, reducing a portion of the visible red wavelength, and again, making the image seem cold.
If making one's own scanner, you need to have an LED array of Red, Green and Blue LEDs that are individually controlled, additionally, you will usually need two different RED LED's to get full coverage of the red in the image.
They Bayer matrix means there is a lot of crossover between channels as well, so it is better to use a mono sensor and expose three or four times to get the full frequency response and full resolution for your captures.
In addition to all of that, consumer cameras have their own internal processing that will affect the colour of the image, just like standard computer monitors have hidden internal processing to make an image look 'better' which makes them difficult to use for colour correction purposes.
As to the print you saw, I would put a reasonable amount of money that the scene was indeed pink tinted, but you would be unlikely to conscioulsy notice it unless you were looking for it directly. It doesn't stand out unless you are looking specifically for it, and it is highly dependant on what your eyes have been seeing just before it (I really wish you could get another look at the print to confirm one way or the other though.)
Subtle colour pushes like that typically only register in the emotional part of your brain unless you are looking for them specifically. I had clients in my suite that didn't notice some radical colour changes because they were looking for something else (like chattering matte lines, or animation glitches) so they didn't notice the other things. Once pointed out though on a second playthrough, they would then ask to see 'the one we just watched' and often wouldn't believe you when you told them it was the exact same footage.
Memory and perception are crazy variable things. I have known people who have seen Jedi over a hundred times, yet still will insist Vader says 'Luke... I am your Father', they remember it clearly, and are quite surprised when you play them the actual line from the film, and seem shocked that it is not what he says.
There could be prints out there that have this scene in more neutral tones, between different prints there are often quite large variations, and 9 prints is a small sample of the total out there, but for now I am going with the sample size I have.
msycamore said:
I'm surprised by the amount of pink in those homestead shots, is that the case on both this low fade print and Tech print of yours, poita? In all the print sources I've seen the sky has always been more light gray, even the smoke is pink in that panning shot. Interesting.
Absolutely, if anything it is slightly more pink than the images I have shown.
I have seen 9 different prints now all up, as well as countless Super8 prints which were taken from the international negative and all of them are pretty close to the image I posted here. Some are a little lighter, some a little darker, but all have a definite pinkish sky in this shot. (The only ones that don't are the dodgy 16mm dupe prints, most of the colour casts in scenes are washed away in those prints)
Reproductions in magazines and books will nearly always be balanced out by the pagesetter and appear without the colour-cast, they would most likely assume it was an unwanted artefact and adjust it out. Try taklng the image into photoshop and applying autocolor and you will get a nice dull neutral sky, which looks more natural, but is less striking. I have found on set photographs and books to be a useless source for colour, as it doesn't take into account the on-set lighting, any filters used, the final colour grade or the film stock.
The reddish tones appear to be intended, quite possibly to add to the menace and colour temperature to accompany the 'burning' of Luke's family, and adding to the 'hellishness' of the imagery with the skeletal remains.
But for whatever reason, the sky was pinky-red in 1977 when Luke's Aunt and Uncle breathed their last.
Moth3r said:
Do we need to get Jay to introduce a neutral D65 grey colour scheme for the forum?
If it was possible to get a truly neutral colour scheme that would be great.
Otherwise posting colour corrected images is kind of pointless unless people are taking them away to look at later.
Trying to assess colour correctly with the strongly blue background that this forum currently uses is akin to trying to do wine tasting straight after having a shot of whisky.
The only way around it otherwise to is post any pictures with a fair sized neutral border, but that only helps a bit.
Of course it will make the forum look incredibly bland :)
Aunt Beru is clearly the one at the back.
kk650 said:
No replies yet? Maybe I should have said 'I'd appreciate it if ANYBODY could check these two clips and let me know whether you think they look overexposed' haha.
Come on guys, please help me out here. Let me know what you think. Did my old settings look better or do the clips look better with my latest settings? Is it the 500mb video files making people reluctant to check these clips out even though the download speed is very quick? I can regrade them at a lower bitrate no problem to make the files smaller if that's the issue.
I think the newer settings are a bit better, but the blacks are a bit too low, (too far under 16,16,16) and the colour saturation seems a bit too high for me. Also there is a bit of inconsistency shot to shot. Han's shirt is almost lemon yellow in that opening sequence and the faces are too orange. The highlights have been clipped, so the faces have gone a little leathery. Contrast it to the next shot from your same clip, where Han's shirt is closer to the correct hue.
BTW, what colour are the walls in the room your are doing the correcting in? If they are not neutral, then hang an off-white sheet on the wall behind your monitor, it helps keep your colour perception accurate.
