Will this thread take into account 35mm film scan sources as well?
At the moment the scans are as variable, if not more so, than the VHS/LD captures. The others are consistent sources. We would have to take each film scan project as a separate resource.
The master tapes are just that: the final mixed sound and outputted to audio tape.
On a production back in the days, you had your on set sound recorded on a nagra and all of this was edited and put to stems which is multi tracked tape. One track was dialogue, another was music and another was sound effects. These stems are then mixed and mastered to stereo, mono, surround sound master tapes.
I understand that but didn’t all the played audio in the film prints come from the film (on the side)? Or where else someone could get these master tapes unless working for LFL? Just wondering is this a similar case to “I wish we had the o-neg to scan it for OT.com members” or are these tapes actually around somewhere like film prints?
From my understanding, the O-neg does not have the original soundtrack. They were mated during the making of the interpositives. The 35mm interprositives either had the mono soundtrack or the stereo soundtrack (Dolby Stereo matrix encoded 4.0 channel surround sound - L, R, C, Surround) and the 70mm had the 4.1 or 4.2 surround (basically the same sound mix as stereo, but with a specific LFE channel). During the work for the Blu-ray release, they archived all three of these. The 1985 and 1993 audio mixes appear to also be Dolby Stereo matrix encoded, but I don’t know if they are 4.0 or 5.1 (I’m awaiting a new external hard drive so I can start working on converting the matrixed stereo into discreet multi-track audio. Several of the early LD releases have the original theatrical matrixed stereo track. The mono is only available from a UK video recording and a film print - and neither one appears to be the level of quality we would want. The discreet 4.1/4.2 audio from the 70mm prints is not available but has been recreated by some enterprising OT members. Any higher than LD quality would have to come from LFL directly.
I figured out from watching it why people think that look through twice. If you watch the scene in the Middle where he could have thrown and missed Luke is pulling the cord out again after you already pulled the cord out while the Stormtroopers are trying to break through the door. So if you’d already read the book which came out in six months before the movie did and read about the double throw and we’re watching the movie and your mind might have tricked you into thinking that you saw him throw when in fact you didn’t. He looks up and sees where to throw and then he throws. So I think it’s that error in editing where they used a second bit of Luke suddenly pulling the cord out of his belt again that made a lot of people who read the book think that he threw twice in the movie. I’m not sure exactly where my memory comes from but I was 7 I’m and I think my mom read the book to me because it was a little advanced for a 7 year old and then we saw the movie much later. I saw the original cut 10 times, but I have no idea how often I read the book. My memory still says I saw it, but the facts say it was never there.
The Doctor Who restoration team has used ultra-sonic cleaning on the recovered film reels of missing episodes. These are B&W prints from the mid 60’s so a bit older than than film prints being used here and definitely with vinegar syndrome. It is safe and very effective. The results have been amazing. Definitely worth the time and effort for the OT prints.
I forgot to add that those of us who would like to use this in a project can DNR if needed. There isn’t much reason to have two versions (though finding a complete 81 crawl would be an awesome supplement - the one with SSE was missing the final frame). And if you have a Technicolor print, you have something that is as close to the Negative in terms of grain as we can get without accessing the Lucasfilm archives. That level of grain is exactly what I want to see.
And Mike’s Legacy version is only the one film and I hope this project has two sequels to it for the complete OT. That will make this project far superior to Legacy.
I have one question. You may have covered this already, but aren’t the prints you are using missing some frames? I know the SSE was. Are you going to just use the frames you have or add them back so this will sync with the GOUT soundtracks. And if you add them back what source are you going to use?
Also, my 2 cents on the DNR is don’t worry about it. I think you should stick with making this as faithful to the original negative as possible, warts and all. Give us grain, give us the yellow spots in the Tatooine shots, give us the badly grained speeder shot in Mos Eisley. Give us what Mike Verta isn’t. He has taken it back beyond the original negative to what came through the camera lens. I prefer something more faithful to what was released in 1977.
TESB blu-ray has 3 scenes that differ from the DVD. The red on the Wampa’s arm is removed. A reflection added to the exterior shot of Leia in the tower in Cloud City. And Some lighting changes when Chewy finds C-3PO. The first one is a nice fix and is well done. The second two are clumsy and I can see the tell tale signs of what they did so they go. Neither really take you out of the film. I might reconsider that shot of Leia in the tower, but that would involve editing to remove a section of reflection that is outside the window area.
I’m really only trying to fix the flaws in the SE the have crept in since it was released. Some of the DVD and blu-ray changes fix things and some outright change things. The fixes I like to keep, the changes not so much. The only thing I want to keep is the link to the soundtrack which means going with any changes that impact the soundtrack. In ANH that includes the edit to the Han/Greedo scene. They extended it 4 frames and cut 4 frames from the end of reel 1 so the movie runs the same time in DVD and Blu-ray, but from the start of reel 1 until Greedo is shot everything is 4 frames off. Easier to leave the better cut of the Han/Greedo scene alone. Like I said, this is a hybrid restoraton. Kind of a DVD/Blu-ray intermediate. I can also turn on all the changes to the DVD and change the soundtrack and make this a pure restored DVD edition if I wanted. I’d rather make the hybrid - the best of both. I have some rendering to do in the next week and hopefully after that I can make an OT demo video.
That makes your work all that much more incredible.
Moving on to Empire and Jedi. Basic color correction done (so much easier than ANH) and now the restoration begins. TESB needs work on the lightsabers and the super stardestroyer engine glow. Perhaps other things might show up as I work on it. ROTJ needs the stupid overside door removed (almost, but not quite, as bad as the rock in front of R2. Looking at removing the other BR changes as well. It will depend on the sound mix. For ROTJ I might just make a new soundmix (removing certain objectionable things). But I definitely need to look at the light sabers and the explosions and Vader’s pyre. Fortunately the running time and scene alignment of the DVD and BR versions is identical (at least so far, I’m only 2/3 of the way through.
I still need to create a video, but I want to get some things edited first and I haven’t had time recently. A lot of the work I can do as a few minutes here or there, but some things require some extended time and that hasn’t been easy to find. I might be able to do some renders that would make that easier in the next week. I’ll have to see how things go.
Yes, this is one of two main fixes that I implemented in my version. Because later, when the Stormtroopers find it, the door is still blue. Typical of Lucas, he made changes and didn’t bother to check the continuity. So in my restoration of the home video SE (I think HVSE sounds good instead of Lowry, DVD, or blue-ray) I have restored the blue door and removed the rock. I have also restored the explosions, the Falcon blue engine glow, restored the yellow flowers, normalized the lightsaber color, and removed as much of the magenta tint as I could. And all that before getting down to picking out the shots that didn’t match my global color correction because of over saturation, under saturation, contrast issues, or completely separate color issues. The Lars homestead scenes and the attack on the Death Star have some of the oddest color issues. I’ve been using both the GOUT and the broadcast 97 SE as guides and I’ve tried to leave issues alone that stem from the original production, but there was one I couldn’t leave. I’ll deal with the rest when I finally get around to my fan edit (a semispecialized version that mainly is to fix all the continuity issues and remove some of the unnecessary changes).
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…
The latter seems to be an artifact from the settings of the color matching algorithm, as the corrected Tech scans that I use as a reference, and have a lower resolution don’t show this anomaly.
Well, first off, I think you may have nailed the colors. I’ll have to reserve final judgement until I see the sample video and more reels of the film. But I also think that matching the saturation of the Technicolor print is a mistake unless you are after that technicolor look. I think if you dial down the saturation a bit to reach a less technicolor result but still with rich and full colors, that you would achieve an accurate representation of a non-Technicolor print. Technicolor is known for the intense colors it produces and taming that and the green tint that seems to plague the Star Wars Tech IB prints seems an ideal strategy to me.
That said, I do love old Technicolor movies so if you choose to follow the more saturated path, that works as well.
The question I keep asking is how much Lowry is shifting the blame and how much truth is in what they say. They also did the bond movie digitization and some of the films from the same time period as A New Hope share the same transfer flaws. I’m sure some of it is GL and staff, but I think some of it is Lowry. They at least take full credit for the clean up, even if they don’t for the color flaws. I just find it strange that Most of the bond films, TESB and ROTJ are mostly free of the magenta issue and yet ANH and several of the bond films from around the same time share that magenta flaw. Not saying they are lying, just that it is suspicious.
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.
The Tantive IV in ROTS, like the rest of the film, has a yellow tint and that segment in particular is over contrasted. Also, in the OT, C-3PO is usually covered with some sort of grime that dulls down his finish to prevent the film crew from showing in the reflection. They removed it in post production on ROTS so he is even more gleaming than usual, but even with that major change in appearance, you can tell the shot has major lighting differences than in 77. He also looks more brassy than gold, but that seems to be just that shot, maybe to emulate the distorted version we see on Blu-ray. Some of the PT seems to match that flawed color pallet. But they seem to have used the original colors when creating the sets and costumes.
I like the color of the walls, but I find Treepio a bit too uniform and orangy gold for my tastes. That is how he is in the JSC, but not the GOUT. He’s also not so uniform in the Technicolor sample, but your general grading seem to follow that example even though it has been frequently pointed out that the uncorrected Technicolor prints have some known color issues. I think the cleanup and image quality are fabulous, but I that you need to find some key frames and correct the entire reel as a unit. The best settings will come when the same settings make the blockade runner, Tatooine exteriors, and the droid auction all look right.
Well, it has taken a year of experimentation to find the right settings to color correct A New Hope. I can’t say that I am 100% finished, no project like this ever is, but I think I can say that I am at the point of endless tweaking and the major work is done. The conclusion I have come to is that when they scanned A New Hope for the DVD release (and HD broadcasts and later blu-ray release) that they pretty much ignored the 1977 and 1997 color timing. They seem to have just scanned the negative and then taken a guess at color timing. The majority of the scenes are within a small tweak of each other, but some scenes are way off. Way way way off. Lots of mistakes were made and a lot of my work is trying to fix them. Along the way this has gone from being a pure preservation and color correction to a restoration. At the moment I have stopped with fixing the film to the point of the 1997 SE (the content is a mix of mostly blu-ray with some HD broadcast of the DVD version). Lucas seemed to have skipped having a continuity editor for the SE and subsequent versions. This film is a royal mess, probably because the negative is a total mess. Not only is it a mix of 1977 original elements, but the 1997 recompositions and changes and the later DVD and BR changes. There is little consistency. And that has been my goal, to bring this film (and all the others but this one mainly) to a watchable state from the total mess found on the blu-ray. For the first time I watched what I had done and found it quite acceptable. Samples to follow when I figure out the best way to show it.
I can’t say I’m privy to the reason, but from my work in image editing I can tell you that anytime you are merging images you need a clean join line for the most seamless edits. What using the set and just adding the rest would end up doing is creating a join line down the middle of the ship. What they did was to make the join line in a place that leaves the largest section of the upper surface as a single image. It leads to be best quality end product. Also, I don’t know if they spent much time detailing the top of the live action set so it might have been far less detailed and the may have done it for that reason as well.
I’ll definitely include that on my list of things to fix in my fan edit. But such fixes are the realm of the fan edit, not preservation. I suppose some of them could be considered part of a restoration as fixing them doesn’t actually change the story in any way and most people probably wouldn’t notice if they weren’t told about it. That is what Lucas was supposed to do in 97. A restoration. Clean up the effects edits. Most of them have gone unnoticed and you have to do a side by side comparison. But the SE additions are very noticeable. Some of the things that Mike has done in his demo videos are more restoration than preservation so by that logic this fix to the back of the Falcon could be included if he left the other things as well. But that would be his call.
This is my color correction of the blu-ray. It is a little more saturated and has less red and green than DrDre’s technicolor frame.
That one above is too red and yours has a very slight but still noticeable blue to it. Making the storm troopers outfits for example not look as white as the image above
I had noticed that it looks a bit blue in comparison, but it doesn’t when I watch the video render. I just posted it as an alternative. But mainly I am pleased at how the brightness and contrast are nearly identical to what DrDre posted. It is considerably brighter and less blue than the blu-ray source. Also, from a technical point of view, the two images are a simple rbg adjustment from each other, (I changed red down 15% and green down 8% on DrDre’s image to match my image and found the best whites if I changed his image by red down 5% and green down 3%).
Mike also mentioned that the paint was applied directly to the aluminum model, creating a highly variable ‘anodized’ look. So in certain light, R2’s panels could appear almost black, whereas other lighting would have sections of the metal appear vibrantly blue. In any case, it’s a good bet that the color is somewhat on the reddish side of blue under even lighting.
I’ve noticed that in the slightly overcast shots filmed in Tunesia the blue panels are more electric blue than cobalt blue like they look the rest of the time.
Here’s an update of the color grading to more accurately represent the blue panels of R2-D2, which were too purple in the previous iteration:
From what I’ve seen of the behind the scenes stuff, photos of the R2 props, and from the R2 builders club, R2 is supposed to be the slightly purple blue that you have just removed. Everything I’ve found says that the panels had a more purple tint in the original movie than they did in the later movies.
http://www.robotbuilders.net/r2/FAQ/r2_compleat_faq_v12.htm#_Toc11840561
I’m finding it a tad yellow for my liking, but you know, if the entire movie is like that, it will be a truly enjoyable experience to watch. I’ll have to settle for a 1080p version of it.
This is my color correction of the blu-ray. It is a little more saturated and has less red and green than DrDre’s technicolor frame.
I’m on my second pass on the first half of the film. I just finished fixing the flowers. Not easy since the yellow was missing, but other sources let me recreate the colors and some editing let me layer it over the image. Not quite finished, but it looks much better.
The entire movie has saturation and contrast issues that were created by the 2004 transfer. Fortunately only the flowers in 4 clips and a couple frames of the lightsaber duel are all the I’ve found that require actual editing of the image to fix. All the others I’ve been able to use tools within Sony Vegas to enhance all or part of the image to bring it back to what my sources indicate it should look like. They more I work on the the worse job I think they did. ANH deseverd better treatment than this. Even the SE version.
I think the resolution of the screen and the media you show on it are two separate issues. The screen should be high enough resolution so you can’t see pixels. The content doesn’t need to be as high quality if you have good upscaling build in to your system. I have a lot of old Television at 480p that I doubt will ever get converted and it looks pretty good upscaled to 1080p. Go the next step, and all the 1080p copies of Star Wars will look pretty awesome on a 4k screen. And most probably won’t notice that it isn’t 4k.