yoda-sama

That seems to take it a bit far, it is almost washed out now…

The happy compromise shots look pretty natural yet still have a '70s film feel. I’m liking it.

All right, that deals well with the cheeks (and the lipstick look which I refrained from complaining about earlier, so as to not sound overly negative). Looking great for what it is. Not sure which look I like more, but this is good.

Not that this new grading looks “bad” or anything, but I do feel a preference for where things were going previously, and you’d even managed to almost fully subdue the green edging. Not to mention that the close-up shot of the rebel’s face now looks like his cheeks should be checked by a doctor for a skin condition…

yotsuya said:

In the real worlds, ships get remodeled and renamed all the time. So this one could have two names and two appearances and not derail the universe.

As can be found in that link, they go on to say:
“Early during the Galactic Civil War, Raymus, now a member of the Rebel Alliance, was granted property of the Sundered Heart as a gift for running aid and medical supplies past several Imperial blockades. He took that ship for some of his most dangerous missions instead of the Tantive IV.”

So, it is two different, yet needlessly similar, ships.

And then it goes on to say even sillier stuff about him lending C-3P0 and R2-D2 to Star Tours at spaceport THX1138… (I’m really not an expanded universe fan, be it the fan stuff that got dropped by Disney, or much of the canonical stuff like this…)

And yet they established it has the same Captain Antilles… What, did they do a reverse Star Trek? That is, keep the Captain on the “same” ship, but keep blowing it up and replacing it with a nicer model, though, in Star Wars, that’d be blow it up and replace it with subsequently crappier models.

Also, if they’re going to retcon in different, yet strikingly similar, ships for the same Captain, then people could at least try to not make it obvious it was a retcon between adjoining paragraphs…

"When Bail returned to Alderaan aboard the Sundered Heart, it was in the company of the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, as well as Bail’s newly-adopted child, Leia. To preserve the secret of the girl’s true parentage, Bail ordered Antilles to have C-3PO’s memory wiped, though R2-D2 managed to avoid this fate.

Over the next nineteen years, Raymus Antilles continued to command the Tantive IV, but was separated from C-3PO and R2-D2 until almost immediately before 0 BBY. " – http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Raymus_Antilles/Legends

When considering the colors of the reconstructed Tantive IV set in RotS, even if everyone involved in it was sincere in faithfully recreating it, it, like everything else we see in the PT that is from the OT, would probably have been done under the instruction and mindset that this is when the ship was fairly new. In-universe, the ship has 20 years worth of grime, build up, abuse, and maintenance compromises between then and how it ends up looking by '77 Star Wars. So, really RotS is no reference other than that with the lighting technology used “20 years earlier”, the walls of the fresh and well maintained ship were intended to appear white to start with.

Rick Ole? You’re f**king shitting me, nice addition. And the Spock is nice, too.

I did not realize you would be hardware savvy enough to swap out boards and had a clean enough space in which to open a drive. Freezing is kind of a last ditch effort for those not willing/capable to find the root hardware problem (and yes, it is bad for the drive).

Williarob said:

Let’s hope so! I just went back to the drive with the original ESB scan on it and it just died. One minute it was readable and I was checking out the scans, the next it’s making some mechanical grinding noises and, well that’s that. Can’t run any diagnostics on it because it no longer shows up as a connected drive (tried multiple ways). Probably the control arm is stuck. I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that it was a cheap Seagate drive. Also on there was the original LPP scan, but I had backups of that. I didn’t have backups of the ESB files (though other people do). So, I guess I won’t be testing out Dre’s tools on that scan any time soon. It might not matter though. I don’t actually know which scan was used for the Grindhouse version so it might well have been this one.

One suggestion that can help a bit (though I don’t think it would work long enough to get that amount of data off) is to stick the drive in a freezer for a while. That’ll often bring it back to life for a short while, but generally only good for one shot (doesn’t work over and over). Generally best for generating a list of contents of the drive, so you know exactly what you’re missing. Again, probably won’t do much good in your case, but it is a surprisingly little known trick that’s worth repeating.

Really looking good Dre, I think you’re getting to a point that we couldn’t ask for much more.

DrDre said:

I will add some of it back, as it’s missing some warmth, and looking too neutral. The brightess adjustment would make it look too much like the bluray, which is just not what the 70s prints indicate it should look like.

Yes, this is what I had in mind, missing some warmth and too neutral. Glad to see you agree, as it just felt too cold (as in unfeeling) to me; but that is not to take away from the incredible work you did at eradicating those hues, it is a great accomplishment, even if it is too much in the end, it is amazing to see this source can be adjusted to that point.

It is striking me as almost a little harsher (hard to put my finger on a good descriptive word…). I dunno, maybe there’s too much green/yellow removed now.

Perhaps if the brightness adjustment age described were applied, it might look more inviting.

Might as well be cause for asking for an update, though… Hey, Harmy, any update?

Unrelated to most of that, it is interesting where the live action, matte and model shots line up, as made obvious in Mike’s video https://vimeo.com/120340364 when there’s so much more of the ship/set built than is apparently used in that shot. It is amazing and confusing to me why they’d mostly just use the live action cockpit and fudge the rest of the ship, rather than only overlaying the unbuilt portion (assuming, even, that they didn’t build more of the ship after this picture was taken). And with that gaping hole in the ground, this is obviously destined to be the Death Star hanger… Anyone privy to the reasoning behind what was live and what was not?

There’s apparently no middle ground to be found by you here. No one is bothered by original goofs being pointed out, just the assertion that a “preservation” should go around altering things.

Still not sure why you keep bringing up “Vanishing Point” (which I did buy as they were flying off the shelf for $5 on Blu-ray). Anyway, YES, a good preservation really, really should maintain everything as it existed originally, that’s the whole point. AFTER it is preserved and there is a good, solid, usable common base version of the film for everyone to start from, THEN custom versions can be made as people see fit (or just watch the film as it originally looked, which is not an option without at least a good preservation).

If you don’t think there’s a significant market clamoring for an official release of the proper Original Trilogy, then I just don’t know what to tell you… The only thing more marketable about the Special Editions is that they’re on the market.

We’re trying to be helpful also, we’re telling you that the better and more accurate a preservation is, the better material there is to work with for stuff like custom special editions that suspend your disbelief however it is you’re wanting it suspended; but you can’t argue that the definition of preservation is to change things. There are other projects that your ideas would apply to, we’re just suggesting you go find those and share desired changes there, as they don’t fit with this project.

greedo said:

They should get it back to exactly how it was or as close as humanly possible. Then use that version as a basis for future enhanced versions.

Ronster said:

^ This Greedo.

Then what you want is NOT a preservation, so making suggestions like you have been to THIS project is not the correct outlet for you. You should instead be looking for a thread about a project that covers what you want or starting a thread yourself.

Ronster said:

A Preservative also keeps something to last longer than it would do without it.

Being Marketable is a very important factor also.

Like adding CG in 1996, 2004 and 2011?

Ronster said:

As nice and as amazing as the original unaltered film is… If it’s rotten or showing moldy bit’s on it you won’t want to consume it.

It’s not an argument I get it. But how many people want moldy or rotten bits.

What are you saying? Why would there have been mold or rot on the ORIGINAL final print? If something happened to a print in the intervening years, the point of a preservation would be to take it back to how it looked theatrically before the damage. I don’t understand your point here in the least. Years of accumulated physical damage to a print and original compositing mistakes are completely different things. Fixing damage would be within the scope of a preservation, correcting “mistakes” 40 years later would not.

A preservation is not a fix all for everyone kind of thing, but the results of a preservation CAN be a launching pad for “fixed” versions that people might like to see.

The point is, preserving things exactly as they were is precisely what should be defined as “preservation”. No one means that it is bad to want for what you see as improvements, but when you say people are wrong for using exactly the right wording for what they’re doing, that’s when there’s issue taken. You’re welcome to push for the version you want, just know that it won’t be done in a preservation project. Basically, you’re talking about it in the wrong place.

Preservations don’t turn a blind eye to goofs, rather they’re lauded. “Warts and all” is the nuts and bolts of a good preservation, once you start fixing things it quickly turns revisionist. It isn’t at all that preservation should be redefined, but that you need to find the correct words to describe what you want.

Perhaps yes, there could be a perfect version that could come from fixing things that weren’t intended to end up the way they did, but that’s a moving target which cannot be reached and satisfy all people. Any way you go about it, though, it is outside of the scope of a project like this.

Ronster said:

Mike I have just been looking at some of your videos.

I have a comment on this one for you.

https://vimeo.com/120340364

Dammit, I never needed to know that wasn’t a full shot of the Falcon… how can I unsee the live action and matte painting parts now? Still, impressive job on Mike’s part taking it from the obvious live/matte distinction to his convincing final shot.

Swift S. Lawliet said:

Okay.

But I have an even better idea.

How about an audio commentary by Harmy for each movie, detailing the changes in the Special Edition and how Harmy restored each scene to it’s original state as well as the sources of each scene.

It would be interesting to know how each scene was Despecialized while watching the movie.

Don’t go getting reasonable on us now, we won’t know how to deal with you.

towne32 said:

Having a second person who is knowledgeable kind of moderate and move things along often works well, but not sure if it would help in this case.

I’m thinking a duet with Harmy and George Lucas. It would be interesting to hear a “commentary track” of them bickering for two hours. An audio grudge match. Lucas, of course, would never validate Harmy’s work by participating, but it would be amazing.

I find it interesting that after all of this reasoning with this person about why this won’t and shouldn’t be a thing and that there’s no way there’d ever be any community support behind creating a mono version of ROTJ which would be based on nothing unique, it is still being expressed to us in terms that indicate the person thinks there will be some sort of groundswell of community support for the shot-to-pieces idea…

we should add the mono
maybe we can also add an optional MKA pack
maybe our best bet