poita

Mostly kidding about the last bit.

There are two (or more) ways to approach old movies, watching them as close as possible to the way they were originally presented, warts and all, or updating them to be more acceptable to a modern audience.

Both have their pros and cons, I think both can exist together, but if there could only be one version, I would want it to be as close to the original as possible, it is a part of history, a massively shared experience and deserves to be preserved and watched that way.

A cleaned up, re-graded version that remove some of the more glaring glitches is also a great thing to have.

Up until now, the first one has eluded us, no-one could sit down and see just how Star Wars looked in 1977, we finally will be able to rectify that.

Other versions with different timings and adjustments are also being made by multiple people here , each with their own personal view of how the film could look its best, and putting them out there for everyone to enjoy...that is also very cool.

vbangle said:

I don't get it. Why do you guys want to watch Star Wars as an old faded film print?

Let the flames begin. They always do when I post my opinion on here...

Keep the old settings, much nicer.

 The TechIB prints aren't faded, the colour and contrast will be (for all intents and purposes) exactly the same as the day they were shown in the cinema.

So it isn't about wanting to watch an old faded print, it is about wanting to watch a piece of cinema the way it was originally presented, and in most cases originally intended. Star Wars has a muted pallete, which is inkeeping with the 'used' universe it was set in.

Tastes change over the years, so if one was to release Star Wars today, one would give it the 'Blockbuster Pallete', i.e. push blue into the shadows and orange into the midtones/highlights. Crush the blacks and apply heavy sharpening. Then it will look a lot more like Ironman, The Avengers, Transformers etc. etc. i.e. it would look more like a current film.

You could also update the effects as they will still look all 70s and maybe replace some shots with better CGI ones to make the film better.

Oh wait...

Ha Ha. That would actually be clearer on the BD I think, as it has come from the Negative.

kk650 said:

Those screencaps were taken using the old settings that has a higher contrast setting and look more saturated than they should because they were taken directly from the preview of the program I use to regrade, that always has more saturated colours than the resulting encodes. You'll be able to judge more accurately the image dynamics from the videos themselves.

 Cool, the downloads are slowly making their way to my computer.

Nope, the prints don't have really lush colour, (but the GOUT colour pallete is way off in places) it is the camera taking the photos that is punching up the vibrancy at the Senator screening etc. I have a technicolour print in front of me right now, and the colour is nowhere near as vibrant. I have seen another Tech print, and prints taken from the french negative, and in all cases, the images aren't washed out, but aren't 'punchy' either.

Also, if you read interviews with the DOPs and others that worked on the film, they were going for a softer, more gauzy look, which fits in with how the prints look.

below is an example, Aussie Tech-IB on the top, grab from your front page on the bottom.

As I said, I like the look you are creating, but it is much more in line with a late 90s to early 2000s look, rather than how the originals looked in the 1970s.

Film just doesn't do those deep deep blacks, (negatives do of course, but the prints we saw in the cinema didn't).

The push towards deep (crushed sometimes) blacks and pushed whites is a more contemporary taste, it wasn't popular in 70s cinema.

Just going back to the screengrabs on page one, I like the look, but it is more like how Star Wars would look if graded for today's audience, and is way more contrasty and way more saturated than any of the prints.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing, people expect and prefer that look now, but the 70s prints are much less saturated, which was common in films of that era. If you want to recreate the original look, then you would need to change the grade a lot. But if you want a pleasing, more lush look, then this is great, it is really rich.

Downloading now, but the downloads are painfully slow here, might take a while.

If I take a photo of the image projected, it comes out similar to the senator print, on my Nikon anyway, it is what the Camera's internal white balance does to the image. Unfortunately any source that is a camera taking an image of a screen will be somewhat useless as a reference. Far too many variables.

The images look nothing like any of those straight out of the scanner, the images I posted are after I have matched the scan to the print.

You may want to post those images on a lighter more neutral background to give a better idea (by eye) of how they look on a TV. The background on OT.COM is blue, (R:72, G:78, B:94) which skews colour perception a lot. The background on these images below is neutral grey (190,190,190), but many will probably think it looks a bit green against the OT.COM background, it should help with seeing the colours correctly though.

The other problem is that these images look completely different on a standard computer screen compared to on a Television of home cinema projector.

That is why my reference monitor and LUTs are for REC.709 or REC.601 depending on the desired target. On that monitor (and on a good TV) the contrast is a little greater and the sky a little more purpley-pink than it looks on the computer screen.

There is a lot of rainbowing even on the X0 and X9, it is part of the transfer I think.

Oh and if anyone wants to buy me FSI's beautiful CM250 OLED Monitor, just drop me a line ;^)

This is fairly close to the print.

Also, anyone looking at these, make sure your monitor is calibrated, I am using a Flanders Scientific calibrated monitor using an SDI output, so it will look different if your monitor isn't calibrated, your graphics card etc. etc.

The vader duel picture I posted isn't exactly matched to the print yet, so I would have to take a look on the Steeny later tonight and check that sequence.

A lot of the light flashes in the trilogy are reddish pink on all of the various prints, including the IB ones.

Might want to go to the first post, hit advanced edit and change the thread title now that you have a better idea of what it is.

You didn't have a cellar....until now.

Maybe it is cursed, and the creatures have left the celluloid and have taken up residence under your bed, and in your cellar.....

NeverarGreat said:

That's good news poita, the community owes you a debt of gratitude for all you continually do!

I've a request, if you have the shot in question: The final shot of the burning homestead scene has given me no end of trouble this last week. Actually, any scenes of Tatooine would be very good, as the color seems to fluctuate so dramatically between releases.

 The scenes on Tatooine on the original release prints are all over the place as far as grading goes. Remember ANH was a fairly low budget film, and grading was a chemical (expensive) process, so it isn't all that consistent on this movie.

If someone could tell me how many minutes.seconds into the film that a requested shot is, it would make it faster for me, and thumbnail of the required frame.

Wrangling through 100MB per frame is a slow process even on a fast machine.

For example which frame at the homestead do you mean, the last frame of the pan, the last frame of Luke, or the last frame before the change to a totally different scene?

The sky is quite pink in that sequence on the prints.

It looks less pink on this forum page due to the dark grey/blue background. Pop that image on a white background or neutral grey and you will see how pink the sky is.

Ah, itty bitty reels.

Rough guide for 35mm

Reel Diameter   Footage Length   Running Time 
       4 in                   100 ft             1 min
    6.5 in                   400 ft             4 min
   10.5 in                 1000 ft           11 min
   11.5 in                 1200 ft           13 min
      13 in                 1600 ft           17 min
   14.5 in                 2000 ft           22 min
      16 in                 3000 ft           33 min

15 full sized reels? Most two hour films are 6 reels, most horror flicks are 5 or less.

Interesting, I wonder if it is some kind of workprint where they were testing out different audio options?

This gets more intriguing by the minute.

The good news is I can get a new board for 235 GBP + another 40 quid for the courier.

Not as cheap as I'd hoped but way less expensive than I had feared.

Once I am working again, I will order the board and be back underway again.

I'll upload a full size image later this week, any requests for a particular shot?

Brooks said:

poita said:

Yep, film is grainy. You can see how much detail the noise removal, well, removed, in the GOUT image. Look at Obi-Wan's face.

 I was just about to say that!  It's surprising to see how blurry his face looks in that gout shot.  Did you do this with your new scanner?  Can you post a pic in full resolution somewhere?

 I can post a full resolution scan, it will be about 100MB, what is the best place to host the image?

TServo2049 said:

The shot is also grainy because the lightsaber scenes were shot in regular 4-perf 'scope, and 35mm gets noticeably grainier with each extra generation (exactly the reason why ILM chose to use VistaVision for the effects).

 That is correct, this is one of the grainiest sections in the film.

Other shots have nowhere near as much grain.

In other news, unfortunately the light controller board blew in the scanner this morning, I am awaiting a reply from the UK (oddly my closest service agent!) to see how much a replacement will be and how long it will take them to get one to me.

I'll be temporarily out of action until a replacement gets here.

Yep, film is grainy. You can see how much detail the noise removal, well, removed, in the GOUT image. Look at Obi-Wan's face.

Derann never released ESB on Super8, no-one did.

The condition is pretty good, not quite as good as a derann release but it has really good colour on the first couple of reels and great colour on the last reels.

Considerably better than the Cineavision of Star Wars for example.

It used to only be available on slightly yellowing film stock, but is now available on brand new poly stock so should have better colour. It is taken from a foreign negative, so the crawl is not in English, but the audio is English or German depending on the print. Both are from the same source.

ESB on super 8 is available for just under a grand.

You might get some rainbow reduction without detail loss if you average a few captures.