towne32

It was a good trailer on its own, but I feel like it's harder to judge it having seen so much of the footage in the teasers, etc. Was hoping for a bit more than we haven't seen already, but in the end I'll be glad that they've held so much back.

Yeah, I wouldn't worry. For my theater, they said sold out until they actually started. They showed up on fandango, amc.com, and movietickets.com at the same time. (8:30 eastern US).

Fandango finally came back online for me to get mine. MT and fandango were both slow at listing my theater as for sale. Fortunately, got the perfect middle/center seats 8pm on the 17th.

Fandango has put the ticket page online. Show times for the US are now shown. But sales don't go live until 10pm Eastern.

SilverWook said:

They are greyed out you know.

There are instances where those posts might be needed for legal purposes.

 Yeah, I know. But people respond to the greyed out ones anyway, and the trolls make new accounts to keep the conversation going. It makes sense that you may need a record for some of these people, though, and I don't know how forum software usually handles this (hidden posts as timdiggerm mentions, etc).

Is the new forum software going to actually remove the posts of people who are banned for making new troll accounts? It seems like continuing to show their posts does nothing but encourage them to keep at it. 

Akton said:

I'm also deeply disappointed that Starkiller Base is really nothing at all more than a third Death Star. I mean I knew it kind of was conceptually already, but the disappointment is much more visceral now that I see that even on a visual level it is nothing more than (yet another) copy and paste job. I agree with the analogy to the A-Bomb on the one hand - yes, there's no practical reason why a super-weapon design would be completely jettisoned when it has proven effective in the past. But come on, we're talking about a Space Fantasy saga where creativity and spectacle have trumped practicality in such delightful fashion, giving us such wonderful impractical implements of war as the AT-AT Walker and, well, the lightsaber.

 Aesthetically, yes, it is more like the Death Star than I had hoped. From what I'm reading, though, it sounds like it's actually a hijacked planet? That could allow them to do something fairly different with it, not that they necessarily will.

SilverWook said:

There were many stories of people arranging to get May 25th 1983 off well in advance.

 Sure. And those marathons will sell out this time, I'm sure. But as far as I know, they're one day only events and that's probably not how they would handle a OOT release. Then again, how they would handle it seems to be 'not at all'.

I really doubt this is how they would release the OOT. Just for people who want to suffer through 7 hours of prequels first? (Not to mention, are able to take a day or possibly two off from work to binge on 7 Star Wars movies).

They could probably pull off a wider release of the films separately, at some point in between releases of the new films.

StarChewyWar said:

 

 When will you people understand I do NOT LIKE the Phantom Menace. This movie sucks big time. I didn't even include it as part of the main series when I showed my friends Star Wars for the first time ( Machete Order ). While Attack of the Clones is a failure as a movie on every level, Phantom Menace is a failure as a continuation of the Star Wars saga. It undermines not just the original trilogy, but the other prequels too. There are two good things in this movie: Darth Maul and the score by John Williams.

 StarChewyWar said:

imperialscum said:

I was "MIND BLOWN!" by this thread. Life-changing stuff.

 Man, you people are not gonna leave me alone for that, are you?

 I don't think all the youpeopling is really needed. We're not attacking you personally. Just presenting our views on the topics you're discussing (which you seem to be doing in a devils advocate type way, which is of course fine).

Regarding the Mind Blown thing, it's just a very strong way of presenting the view points you've stated. What's preventing my mind from being blown is that I've tried to look at it that way, or any other way that could give TPM the benefit of the doubt, and the film itself just doesn't support even marginally redemptive viewing strategies.

And regarding your reply to me about the protagonist: I guess it depends what is being discussed. The criticism by the plinkett person is that the film has no protagonist. So I'm not sure the best way to contest that is to scratch our heads, wondering, "so who must the protagonist be, if not x?". There isn't necessarily one by definition, and we don't need to upgrade the closest candidate.

I think plinky is right. However, I also think it's narrow-minded of him to assume every film needs to be structured in such a boring way with a Campbellian Hero. But that doesn't save TPM. It plays out more like an episode of a television show that allows us to follow various characters and plot lines, while lacking any kind of thoughtful overall structure.

unamochilla2 said:

Having Rylo's and Rey's staff parallel to each may be deliberate

 Certainly.

Also, is this our first look at the Starkiller base? Oh, and Maz. Quite different from the concept art, it seems.

As someone who doesn't hate the PTs but is incredibly disappointed in them:

I don't think there's anything wrong with the PT having homages to the OT, but it's absurd to call it poetry. It really shows you how massive the problems are with the PT, when a group needs to grasp at straws to the point where reuse of visual motifs is somehow supposed to save the films.

Yes. Palpatine was manipulating both sides. You could even call him a bit of a phantom menace in that regard. Yes, the Plinkett video was even worse than the PT itself. No, MIND is not BLOWN.

Padme as the protagonist would have been a great idea. It's a shame it wasn't filmed that way whatsoever. 

Hey Valeyard. Just wondering if you ever managed to get your script(s) worked out?

1. I never really noticed a problem with sharpening. Looking at it side-by-side with other projects, maybe it's  bit sharp or maybe it's the contrast, but it looks good. The scene you're talking about has really awful color and contrast on the blu-ray and is tough to get looking good.

2. The color has been discussed a million times since the new versions came out. I don't think I've seen it described as too natural, yet, though. I do think that your opinion is probably biased by the more recent home video releases. In Harmy's, it generally looks quite good but there are some shots/scenes that aren't perfect, as the 35mm scans they were based on were not corrected to the print yet. I like the attempt to get it to match the IB tech, but I realize it's not there yet. I also really, really like the moderate color correction of v1.0, and kind of wish we had a version of 2.5 with that color. :)

3. I've read this a few times and can't tell what you're actually suggesting. A way of making the sources blend together better? With some kind of filter or what? I think if you had seen the sources going into it, you'd be pretty surprised at how well they match. One thing that I think could use a little color tweak to bring the sources closer together is where Luke, Obiwan, and  the droids are getting out of the speeder at the cantina. But it looks good enough.

CatBus said:

You could render ROTJ PAL, render the one extra ROTJ NTSC frame, then assemble them as you like as a best-of-breed.

 Just add 3 months of solid rendering time to this colossal rendering project, then. :D

yotsuya said:

I had heard they were from the same master tape, but the NTSC disc that I ripped has black bars on the left and right sides and the PAL disc does not. Also, the PAL letterbox crops the image slightly smaller top and bottom. 

 From what I recall, the PAL discs were actually created from NTSC masters (except for RoTJ?). There seems to be a consensus that the NTSC SW and ESB are superior, hence their use here. RoTJ is either debatable or if anyone ever settled it I don't remember the outcome. Or both are too terrible to even be worth discussing? :)

edit: Nevermind. Fake/fanmade poster.

rmm2 said:

Harmy said:

As to Palapatine, v1.0 of ROTJ is based on HDTV, which had this, so it definitelly hasn't been removed in Despecialized.

 Concerning those weird black blobs, what reason did they serve added to the sides of Mr. Mcdiarmid's face in Jedi? Personally I would like those unsubtle distractions diminished in 2.0. 

 While it's certainly one of the better decisions of the SE (and perhaps the sole good decision of the 2011?), that's really not in line with the goal of the project as I understand it. Maybe the distractions can be minimized with the right luma curve, but I imagine they'll still be visible.

As for their original purpose, I believe there was makeup that smeared onto the hood. They just blacked it out in post.

Technical question: Does this mean that they did not go back to the original elements for the SE in this shot? I'm not too knowledgeable on how most of the SE shots were created. But by the looks of things, the light sabers were all recomposited in ANH and through Dagobah in ESB. The end ESB battle and all of RoTJ have clearly had their colors screwed with, but the elements themselves look the same. 

You could try contacting them. They're nice and reasonable people and made up a deal with me based on personal needs, and also did troubleshooting for a glitch I came across. 

Maybe just mention that it's a one time project and not for profit.

In case anyone considers a more nefarious and unofficial type of 'group buy', it's not going to work based on how their license works (and probably will be noticed due to the scale of their operation). Plus, you know, it's wrong.

yotsuya said:

So here is a question that comes to mind. What is the source? What has been done to get to the file that we are using super resolution on. Has it been cropped from the DVD rip? Is it the NTSC or PAL DVD? Has any noise reduction or smoothing been done to it, color correction, or other cleanup? In order for multiple people to render this and for it to come out matching, the source file should be the same.

 Dre has done most of his work on a raw rip of the NTSC GOUT, I believe. He was encoding one version from a version of the GOUT that I did, with some manually cleaned up dirt/scratches.

Using the RAW GOUT would be a better idea if this is going to be divided up among many people, because folks already have it or can get it. The cleaned up version version (if anyone even wanted to use it) is huge (as it needs to be exported losslessly) and impractical for the approach being discussed. 

Happy to test with a few software packages if you need. 

So no changes in the model building for 1.3?

Do you think the correction models saved in 1.2 will be able to be opened and saved as LUTs in 1.3 or will the corrections need to be repeated?

digitalfreaknyc said:

I tried to use some of the programs that you guys suggested but, unfortunately, because Disney makes you sign in to view the videos, it doesn't let you grab them from the typical programs. Any other suggestions?

 You tried the app I mentioned? From what I recall, it grabbed things from Chrome. I know I used it with Youtube videos that I paid for (that had several extra layers of security compared to the standard free youtube videos).

thorr said:

On a side note, I know we are all waiting and hoping for a perfect restoration of the original trilogy.  If we ever actually got it, the whole point of this site would sort of go away.  No more journey.  Although again, it would be nice to finally get it someday.

 Hah! You're suggesting that the members of this site would ever be satisfied with the film. :P

yotsuya said:

It gets everywhere. 

 Well played.