rchdggr

REPORT-ROTJ-WP-2.0
00:12:35:21

Loss of detail and color in the blown-out highlights on the two dancers in the Lapti Nek scene. The bright spot on the floor in this scene is also much bigger in the workprint due to being so blown out. Han’s face may also suffer a bit from the blown-out highlights during the song/scene.
Comparison to ROTJ 720p final AVCHD, workprint above:
http://imgur.com/j35VK0b

Also I noticed that the wipe from Jabba’s palace to the first shot of the sail barge is very different, I guess the one in the workprint is the correct one?

00:29:36:15
Overall better color than in the previous version (that looks like it has too much magenta in comparison) but maybe a bit too much green or blue? There is a lot of hair on display in this shot and it looks a bit dull/lifeless. Maybe these close up shots of Han and Luke never looked very natural due to the bluescreen effect?

generalfrevious said:

SilverWook said:

Can't you wait until the movie is actually out before unleashing the gloom and doom?

Only ten more weeks to go...

 Corporate art does not apply in this case. I don't need to see the film to know it won't be good, because TFA is not an artistic vision, it was designed as a product to make money for a corporation that already has too much money. Even the PT, misguided as it was, could be considered an artistic vision, albeit a terrible one.

One could say the same about Toy Story 3, The Avengers, Lego Movie, Finding Nemo etc. I enjoyed them all.

sunglassesatnite said:

This is a vague feeling and it is hard to explain, but there are micro-moments in Abrams’s various  films where I get sucked straight out of the movie, out of the fantasy--and into a realm where “this doesn’t quite make sense.” Or, “that seems odd why that character would do [or say] that.” 

There are several of these “micro-moments” from J.J.’s films that I could get into (but won’t).  There is, though, one in the latest behind-the-scenes TFA footage (presumably from San Diego, but I’m not certain about that) which, at least for me, demonstrates what I am talking about.  For a few seconds, a guy appearing  to be Oscar Isaacs is being hustled down a very Death Star-looking starship passageway by a Stormtrooper.

 I will get accused of being overly anal about this, but something  about the composition of that shot and the body language of the characters was just wrong.  It immediately made me think of similar shots in the OOT where our captive heroes are being made to walk places they don’t necessarily want to go (think of Han Solo at the Carbonite chamber, or the surrendered starship troopers at the beginning of A New Hope).  Not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but in the TFA footage it just looked “off.”  For one thing, in J.J.’s footage the Stormtrooper has his gun on Oscar Isaacs with one hand, while attempting to briskly shuffle him down the passageway with the other; presumably to take him to some kind of “detention block.”  The thing is, why does the Stormtrooper have his gun on Isaacs when they are presumably on the Stormtrooper’s own ship to begin with?   Why the hell is the Stormtrooper in such a hurry when, again, they are on the Stormtrooper’s own ship?  Why aren’t there two Stormtroopers handling Isaacs?  Why am I being so completely anal about two seconds of footage, the completed version of which I haven’t yet seen?

The reason is because it just looks “wrong.”  It doesn’t look like Star Wars (or at least the only Star Wars that exists to me—namely the OOT).  In the OOT, a shot like this would have had two Stormtroopers walking behind our hero, weapons at port arms, with a pace and body language that suggested power and control…thereby infusing the scene with a sense of gravity and foreboding.  This scene, by contrast, just doesn’t come off well.  It just looks like a Stormtrooper hustling some dude down a hallway, and doesn’t really communicate anything beyond that.  Worse, it kind of makes the Stormtrooper look like--in the words of late-great TV series the Wire—“a graspy little bitch” who can’t handle his business somehow. 

Am I making  my prediction of TFA’s lack of quality based on this one scene?  Hardly.  I am merely attempting to give an example of how J.J. Abrams’s style, for me, doesn’t completely work.  

The lone stormtrooper does look off. He seems nervous and agitated. Not typical stormtrooper behavior. He doesn't seem to be just like every other stormtrooper. It's as if he has more personality and emotion to him.. See where i'm going with this?

I think the cloud cars fit nicely in with the overall design of Cloud City. They would not work at all as outer space fighter ships. More like early-to-mid 20th century automobiles/police cars/ambulances combined with the Mustang posted above. In between an art deco car and a fighter jet. Cloud City seems like a peaceful place with mostly civilians but obviously those Cloud cars are flown by some kind of officials [edit: Bespin Wing Guards].

The PT went a bit too far with these types of old-timey civilian-ish designs, though.

While I am at it, here's my best guess for why some people seem to remember the grappling hook being thrown twice in ANH:

It takes a long time for Luke to get the hook/rope ready for throwing. We see him distressed and struggling with the rope, pulling it out of from his belt.

From the first shot of the hook being introduced, it takes ~23 seconds (!) until the hook is actually thrown.

One would then remember that there was SOME problem with the rope (namely the fact that it took a long time to prepare for throwing given the very bad situation Luke and Leia were in). Then someone reads the novelization or is told about it and goes: "Yea, I remember there being some problem with the hook.." and his/her mind fills the blank with the info from the novelization and what was actually seen. We see the hook being thrown so it is not a big stretch to remember it being thrown twice because most of that visual info is definitely seen.

The crashing snowspeeder scene seems like another "ANH grappling hook"-type false memory.

If that is the case then this could explain it:

a) There is a shot of a snowspeeder coming towards the AT-AT almost head-on, seen from inside the cockpit

b) There is a shot of another AT-AT's head exploding

c) There are shots of damaged speeders flying uncontrollably

d) We do not see what happens to the last AT-AT

With the fate of the last AT-AT unexplained, I would imagine it is quite possible that one's mind fills in that gap with elements that were seen.

Morjens. I'll go and see Starcrash, that's for sure.

I call BS.

The recent preview looked great for the most part.

Fantastic preview! Such eye candy.

Sorry about the following rant about colors and "brown grain", I know the colors aren't final but I did not know where else to post it:

I'm relieved to find that the "brown blotchy grain" (the stuff I wondered about earlier regarding the Falcon escaping Mos Eisley in the SW-thread) evident also in some outdoor VFX shots in ESB may just be a coloring "thing".

I took a screenshot to GIMP and used the color balance sliders on the mid tones. I moved away from red towards cyan and away from yellow to blue and it looks a LOT less obtrusive to my eyes. Moving the lever towards yellow made the brown grain VERY prominent and dirty looking.

So maybe it's really just down to some yellow shift in the elements. The brownness of the grain is there inherently but I think it is over-pronounced by the yellow shift and the way it contrasts with the background (sky, snow).

I'm glad to know I can easily tweak those shots further to my preference if I still find the brown grain too in-my-face after the Team has released their final version. I think I'll try the same trick on SW's "Luke driving his speeder"- and "The Falcon flying away from Mos Eisley"-shots etc. when the time comes.

I understand if the Team will not venture very far from yellow towards blue since yellow is probably crucial for the 70s-80s film look and "is Hoth blue?/how blue is Hoth?" is a touchy subject but it is something I'll experiment with later on.

But the question remains: Did they use pantyhose on Hoth?

He is using hair grease (hey, it was the disco-era) in the old picture and he is fresh out of the shower in the new one.

This was the "last time" VHS release (at least here in northern Europe) in the mid-nineties. Here are the covers without text: http://s30.postimg.org/a8fv1dv4h/Star_Wars_by_John_Alvin.jpg

I just had to buy this bittersweet piece of SW promo stuff.

TV's Frink said:

rchdggr said:

In b4 a joke by Frink.

 l'll wager you weren't expecting a Mr. Mom joke.

 I can't say I was!

In b4 a joke by Frink.

Yea Robot Chicken sucks.

Could the problem stem from me having an European PS3 and TV? Now trying multiAVCHD with the PAL 24p setting..

Edit: nope, that is not it.

I'll just drop my messy questions here:

I'm at my wits end trying to get the Team Negative ESB to play on my PS3. I tried muxing with both tsMuxer and multiAVCHD and I put the end result on a USB stick (formatted FAT32). I used split at 4GB so it would play on PS3 and I tried with and without a "CERTIFICATE"-folder. It still won't play. If I navigate to the "STREAM"-folder it plays with audio only. I also used AVCHDme to fix the structure issues and it says everything is as should be. What might I possibly be doing wrong?

I think AVCHDme changed the index.bdmv to index.bdm so that probably isn't reason for not working.

I think tsMuxer only made BDMV and CERTIFICATE-folders, multiAVCHD made a bunch of other folders too. Should the BDMV-folder be at the root of the USB or should there be an AVCHD-folder at the root and the BDMV inside that one? I think I've only tried the latter way.

Another option for me would be resizing the .mkv down a bit so that it would fit a DVD+R DL as AVCHD like Harmy's version (that worked fine). How would one go about doing this?

I tried converting the 720p .mkv with multiAVCHD but the end result was a bit too big to fit on a DVD+R DL Verbatim.

Wouldn't he use a plural if he was talking about the OOT?

rchdggr said:

The .mkv plays on my crappy laptop but it's too choppy to enjoy.

 Because of this. Even if it did play smoothly I hate watching films on a laptop.

Edit: streaming via PS3 Media Server seems to work OK so far, hooray!

Edit 2:  Aaaand now it starts to get all choppy. NOW I give up.

I tried to make an AVCHD out of the 720p version but the end result is slightly too large to burn on to a DL DVD. I give up.

rchdggr said:

Hmmm, seems that converting .mkv to AVCHD is easy enough even for a doofus like me so I just might be watching this tonight after all!

 I take that back, the process fails for some reason just when it is about to be completed (using GOTsent). Damn.