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zombie84

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21-Nov-2005
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12-Jan-2024
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Post
#301562
Topic
Info: 16mm ESB and ROTJ films on ebay
Time
Originally posted by: Puggo - Jar Jar's "Yoda"
In case any of you folks forgot, I have a 16mm telecine Moviestuff Workprinter, in addition to the 8mm unit I used for the Puggo Edition.


Thats actually tempting but i fear that anything less than a laser film scanner will not give us anything better than the Laserdisks already available.

Just out of curiosity how much did you pay for that and what reason did you originally buy it for?
Post
#301561
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Originally posted by: Z6PO
Originally posted by: zombie84
they got a 70mm print and cut it up into a million individual frames
2 hours of film is more like 180000 frames.

So the only thing we have to do is collect them all, scan them and and put them in the correct order.


LOL! Nice, there's a commercially available 70mm OOT out there!


I own about 100 of those 70mm cels (they were made by Willitts Designs in the 1990s) and they are just as wonderful as you'd expect them to be. You can still find them on eBay. I'll try to post a few scans later.


Mielr, that would be just awesome if you could do that.
Post
#301548
Topic
Why, oh, why do they cancel shows this good???
Time
Originally posted by: bigbaddaddyvader
Firefly was awesome.Serenity was very good but was souped-up a bit.Here's one for you Firefly fans from Objects in Space:

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/5250/norm4731b9d979d53fireflag2.jpg

This is my screenused Jubal Early stunt pistol.One of the key props from the episode which (three were made-a hero and two stunts),along with Jaynestown,is my favourite episode of the series.


That is awesome! Objects in Space is definitely the best episode in the whole show. Was such a shame--each episode got better and better and that one was just so unique and well-written. To think of how many of episodes of this caliber that might have been made...
Post
#301547
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Originally posted by: zombie84
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
What do you mean by video noise? Is there a difference between video noise and grain? I think they are scanned pretty well. You think the scans don't show the full quality of the original 70mm frames?


Video noise is very different from grain. Film grain is what the actual film is composed of, video noise is basically interference caused by the imaging sensors and is those tiny tiny red blue and green dots you see mixed in the image. Thats not part of the film, thats created by the digital capture and its quite heavy on these scans.

OK. I got mixed up because of this videonoise on film idea. But I understand what you mean. Isn't it possible it's on the 70mm frames like that?


Yes, a lot of the grain on the 70mm print happens to look like video noise as well. Its not all, but theres some there.

I looked at my old SW Insiders last night and it seems as though these are all from a single print made--each frame sold is unique, so it looks like they got a 70mm print and cut it up into a million individual frames and sold those for $25 each on a mounted piece of plastic with a window cut out to view the actual film with.

I also got a 35mm strip of Episode I--it came from the limited edition widesceen VHS boxset. Even though its the only prequel shot on film the weird thing is that the strip I got is a wideshot of the podrace so I have a 35mm piece of film of an all-digital image that was created entirely in a computer. I was always really dissapointed by that. Its like cheating.

Post
#301539
Topic
The Vault
Time
Originally posted by: sunday256
I bought it on Friday. I got it for $30 at a Books Are Fun fair. Very nice for the money. This version doesnt come with the CDs though.


One thing I have to ask is whats the deal with the ESB treatment from 1977? I had heard there was an excerpt of it or something.

Post
#301538
Topic
Why, oh, why do they cancel shows this good???
Time
Yeah--I saw it for 20 bucks in a store two months ago and thought "why not, I had heard its good". And fuck was it good! I could not believe how a smart, compelling and witty show like that was cancelled. The show obviously owes a lot to Star Wars. Wait to you get around to Serenity--its basically the last planned three seasons of the show wrapped into a film.

Indeed, Firefly is one of the great tragedy's of our time. Attack of the Clones was passing the $300 million mark in the US box office and this thing was being canned. Not right.
Post
#301511
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
What do you mean by video noise? Is there a difference between video noise and grain? I think they are scanned pretty well. You think the scans don't show the full quality of the original 70mm frames?


Video noise is very different from grain. Film grain is what the actual film is composed of, video noise is basically interference caused by the imaging sensors and is those tiny tiny red blue and green dots you see mixed in the image. Thats not part of the film, thats created by the digital capture and its quite heavy on these scans.
Post
#301504
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Just a few words about the 70mm scans--they are taken from a commercially-sold line of 70mm frames that was offered in the mid-90's. For like 20 bucks or something you would get a 70mm frame mounted on a piece of glass. I can't remember the source that these were taken from but there was a special print made in 70mm just for the release. They then made series for ESB and ROTJ if I recall. You could order them from the Jawa Trader catalog in the Star Wars Insider, and they were of course very limited. I'm quite certain thats where these stem from. Someone just collected them all and scanned them. The scans by the way are very bad, you can see there is video noise everywhere and it often makes it difficult to judge the detail and grain level when you blow them up; these have been floating around for a while now so maybe they were made with older, cruder scanning hardware. I think there was a page on the net somewhere that explained where these 70mm frames came from and how the print was made.
Post
#301501
Topic
so I finally acquired the '95 boxset
Time
By the time SW enters public domain the non-Lucasfilm-owned 35mm copies would have deteriorated to uselessness. But I'm not worried at all--because Star Wars is bigger than George Lucas. Eventually it will be out again--maybe not the next release, but at some point in the future. Considering Lucas already okayed the OOT last year its not out of the realm that he'll still be around when a remastered version comes out, but once he's dead LFL will be sure to put it out. They already tried but Lucas himself stopped them, so if it is just up to LFL they will give supply to the demand. This whole "SE-only" thing just seems more silly as more time goes on, especially when you have three versions of Close Encounters out this month and four versions of Blade Runner out next month--and I think thats why Lucas has weakened (among other reasons) and re-released it last year, whereas back in 1999-2004 his stance was "over my dead body, those films are no more".

I would say this will happen sometime within the next ten years but no one can really say when--maybe next year or the year after if it comes out on HD disk or the infamous "Saga" boxset on DVD, maybe in five years when they do a big deluxe HD boxset, maybe it will be a whole ten years before the cries of "where is Star Wars?" overwhelmes all other Lucasfilm operations.

The whole thing comes down to Lucas really, and the threshold of "last video release" has already been broken with the 2006 re-issue, so Lucas' philosophy of "SE only" has been nullified, which means it will, at some point, be out again. I think the reason that Lucas said in 1995 that it would be the last release is because he was certain that no one honestly would want the older version, and I think a lot of fans thought they wouldn't want it either. Flash forward to 1997 and the SE is not just a new Jabba scene and more sophisticated FX, and people realised there was still a big place for the original version, especially since the SE had so many changes. Lucas, caught off guard by the negative reactions, says "but this is the version I want people to see, its better". Then the prequels come out, Lucas gets crucified, fans are saying he's a hack and the OT is better and the SE sucks and they only want the original versions--then Lucas says "like hell you will." I think he was just reacting to all the flack he got. This whole issue became especially important a few years later when he made the second special edition with prequel tie-ins--the OOT was now a part of a different series in some sense, and with him genuinely wanting audiences to accept his new PT-based series of "The Tragedy of Darth Vader" he didn't want to give people the option of rejecting this, especially since he honestly believed that this was an artistically superior entity. And thats why he says at this time "this is the only version I want people to see"--it was the only version compatible with his new series, based on the PT storyline.
But then things kind of die down a bit, the prequel flak started to dry up and Lucas might have gotten a bit of objectivity, and with the 30th anniversary coming up Star Wars became increasingly viewed as not some rougher version of the 2004 release but as a real cinema classic that conspiciously was unable to be viewed by students, scholars, fans or just plain viewers curious or preferring this. The whole multi-version home video craze started at this time as well--2 versions of every Alien film, 3 versions of Dawn of the Dead, 2 versions of Apocalypse Now, three versions of Close Encounters and both versions of ET. Lucas' friends all sucked it up and put out the earlier versions of their movies, and I think this might have given Lucas some perspective. Add to this--fans were bootlegging their own LD transfers. The film was out there whether Lucas liked it or not. So when Jim Ward asked Lucas yet again to put out the OOT he said, "fine but I don't want to spend all the money to restore it."

Bootlegs I think were the primary reason why it was put out at all, but if it was just that I don't think he would have done it if he hated this version as much as people surmise he does--after all, The Holiday Special has been bootlegged since the 80's, and we don't have that being released. I think Lucas realised how silly he was being. And if you listen to Lucas interviews from this time period on why he only allowed the pre-existing video master to be used and not a new one created--he says because he believes that it would cost millions of dollars to restore and reconstruct the OOT. He's weakened to the point where he is willing to acknowledge the film for a release but he can't yet bring himself to commit so many funds to it, perhaps simply because he believes there isn't enough audiences to justify it. But he's simply mis-informed--it doesn't cost millions of dollars, simply scanning a release print, an IP or better yet that wonderful Technicolor print that was used as the basis for the SE restoration, doing anything like that would give us a high-res HD image, even if it still grainy like the GOUT (but modern mastering technology would yield a much cleaner image).

So here I think its inevitable that a new transfer is made for HD or a DVD release, and maybe that Lucas will come around to actually restoring it or going back to the O-neg and spending more substantial funds. If not he himself, once he is gone I am sure this will be the first priority of LFL, since it already has been while Lucas is still alive.
Post
#301489
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Originally posted by: pittrek
Arnie, "you're a wonderfull human being" I would be for example interested in it
And BTW why do you think it has changed colors ? To be honest the colors look very good, very natural. At least the screenshots you posted


They change color for the same reason your parent's photographs look faded and old newpaper clippings look yellow. Film is chemical, and when the chemicals age they change composition and hence colours.

The scans of course still look wonderful--one of the reasons is that you are seeing a direct image of a backlit piece of celluloid, the same as it would be when illuminated by a projector in a theater, so it has that great three-dimensional luminance with all the detail and color (faded and changed as it may be).

Post
#301477
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Yeah, they are not reference quality--you can see the sandcrawler one is pink, and a lot of the ones on the death star have faded to green. Also, the exposure is different from 35mm>>70mm>>scan, especially with all the fading that has gone on, and theres tons of video noise in there as well that is quite ugly and distracting. But damn they look nice, and because its an actual piece of celluloid being illuminated you get that authentic 3-d glow that gives it that life that video doesn't have, and the detail is great.

That reminds me, outside of usenet has anyone posted this cd? Would make a great torrent.
Post
#301452
Topic
The Vault
Time
So, anyone get this thing? Looks like a lot of useless junk like stickers and patches but theres also a good assortment of interesting stuff in there like rare photos, script excepts, historical info and rare interviews. I would like to get this thing but the hefty price tag has scared me away; even at the $60 price at Amazon it still looks a bit expensive. Seeing it in stores though it certainly is impressive looking on the shelf. Its sealed in plastic naturally so impossible to browse through.

Anyone here plunked down the money for this?
Post
#301395
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
Wasn't it mentioned here earlier that for one of the widescreen releases, they had to search for a print before subtitles were burned in? And I'm sure the X0 team would be able to tell if any grain was added for the dvd release. I think it was just on the master tape that was used for the laserdiscs. I'm sure someone would have noticed if the X0 screens looked drastically cleaner.


The X0 doesn't neccessarily have to look the same. Different format and different physical copies--ie sharpness enhancement could have been added just for the DVD, especially since it looks like the image has been visually tweaked.

I had forgotten that its sans-subtitles. Were the previous releases burnt-in? Was the 1995 LD burnt-in? I ask because the VHS of the THX release has burnt-in subs that I always assumed were from the print itself and not overlayed by video. The subtitle issue raises a number of questions, firstly where the hell would you get a print. One possibility is that there was a "blank" IP made with foreign distribution in mind, as foreign versions have their own subtitles and thus would need one without the english--so you would create this master blank IP and then from that each country would generate its own IP for its respective version.

In any case though one need only look at that great film scan that Arnie provided--and see how grainy it is. Now the image is faded and scratched and all the color layers have eroded but you can clearly see that there is substantial grain throughout. Now you will also notice that the grain is different from the GOUT. That is because it is 70mm--the chemical structure of 70mm release prints are different from 35mm, the grain structure is different. 70mm has a very fine grain structure, which is why 70mm looks so crisp and clean and why Bryan Singer originally wanted to shoot Superman Returns in this format before opting for HD. Thats why the 70mm frame has more or less the same amount of grain as the GOUT, but why the 70mm frame has very fine grain (smaller, less intrusive in other words) while the 35mm GOUT has very coarse grain (bigger, more noticeable in other words).
They both have an extra mask of grain on top of the native image, but the GOUT is sourced from a 35mm stock which gives us the coarser grain seen in the GOUT. I don't think there ever was any doubt that the GOUT had more grain than was inherant in the O-neg, but to say "grain is added" is about as correct as it would be to say that Arnie's 70mm scan has grain added--the grain is "added" because its from a nth-generation duplicate stock, its a photograph of a photograph, so you have the grain from the actual photograph and then the grain from the photograph of the photograph overtop of that (and in the case of optical composite shots this process is doubled).

So yeah, the GOUT looks rough--but you guys ever seen Taxi Driver? It looks like shit. Its made from the same filmstock that Star Wars was shot on. Seen the new Taxi Driver DVD from a month or two ago? They went back to the O-neg for the first time; the movie suddenly looks clean and nice. In fact most people consider this robbing the film of its identity, since the gritty, shitty, grainy look was a part of the texture and style of the film.

I think its purely a matter of the GOUT being from a less-than-perfect source. It just looks like a release print of a film from the 1970's without any modern mastering technology applied to it, and thats exactly what it is.
Post
#301382
Topic
Why Anakin should have been 20 years old in TPM.
Time
I like this idea CO. I don't think he needed to be 20--just of an adult mind-set. Personally the age of 17-18 is when this type of personal discovery is most potent, and the sort of ego development is most potent at this age as well.
Actually, this idea reminds me of the ending of Rocky. The original ending for that film was to continue after the fight, showing Rocky and Adrian in the empty arena, all the audience gone, some janitor sweeping up, and they would walk out the door back into anonyminity after this one night in the spotlight. But the most important change came in ending the film just before this, at the pinnacle of Rocky's victory--the idea being that we are freeze-framing on this one moment of his life when he will never be happier, that everything in his life had been building to that moment of happiness and everything after it is downhill, so we freeze-frame on him in absolute bliss and immortalise that moment in time.

That was the thing the prequels never really go--having an actual fall. I mean yeah Anakin is sort of a good guy that became evil, but its so much more tragic if he's actually a hero, the way we were told he was supposed to be. Theres nothing really heroic about Anakin in TPM or AOTC--he saves the day as a kid by complete fluke, then rescues his mom because he's obsessed with her, tries to rescue Padme but he's got an even bigger obsession with her, and tries to rescue Obi Wan but after all the arguing and ordering in the film theres not much emotion there and he fails to do this anyway.
Post
#301380
Topic
Ian McDiarmid's performance in the PT (also the OT) is memorable and absolutely enthralling
Time
Originally posted by: Mielr
So, why was the make-up job so bad? The original prosthetic pieces for the Emperor's make-up in ROTJ were up for sale on eBay a while back- maybe GL should have bought them!


I think those were the ESB ones. That was my favourite Emperor of them all! It just looked so unnerving, so creepy, but not in the obvious "evil sorceror" way of ROTJ, and the voice--my god the voice, it was soothing and ageless and yet something was not right about it, it didn't fit the face (since it was, literally, re-dubbed). The original ESB Emperor scene gave me chills. Kershner really knew how to tap in to the sort of dark side of the unconscious because the film is just filled with these sort of dark, unsettling dream-like elements.
Post
#301379
Topic
Help needed - using one of the Star wars Characters in my own story?
Time
It depends on the nature of the story. If its satirical, etc., then thats considered fair game to use copyrighted material, if its just a little drop-in cameo for amusement's sake you might be able to get away with it as far as copyright goes due to certain justifications you might be able to use--but as far as writing an entire story around a Star Wars character, or having them prominently involved in it, in a straightforward dramatic fiction sense, then sorry you are out of luck because LFL doesn't licence out its material this way, unless you write it in co-operation with them and they don't really take unsolicited proposals from private authors who likely don't have agents or publishers.

You could just do what some people do--change the names, alter some of the details and make it into your own thing. The line between "heavily inspired from" and "ripoff of" is a fine one when it comes to this. I mean how many Boba Fett clones have we seen, but Boba Fett himself was really just The Man with No Name (In Space).
Post
#301347
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Originally posted by: Moth3r
Originally posted by: zombie84
You can see this in the composite shots--as soon as Luke turns on his lightsaber in Ben's hut the grain level doubles. Thats because there is an optical composite for the saber glow, so the film was exposed twice, once on set and then once in the optical printer. It's worth noting that this multiplication of grain is why ILM developed special effects and optical printers based on VistaVision - the 35mm format "on its side", which gave a larger exposure area. Standard 35mm would have ended up just too grainy with the multitude of elements required for some of the shots.

Still, even using this process, if you have 10 or more separate optical elements you're going to get significant grain. Perhaps the standard 35mm shots were "pushed" to enhance the grain and make them match the optical effects shots?

Well, push-processing would give you more grain but the reasoning you described makes no sense. There would be no need to push process the neg because the opticals themselves are as clean as the original photography, its only when they are combined in the final composite that you get that extra overlay of grain because its now a photograph of a photograph.
The image is of course very grainy, much more than one would expect, and this is what I am talking about--theres an extra layer of grain on top of the grain already inherant from the multiple-exposure composites.

The GOUT looks like it has an extra layer of grain on top of the actual image--this is how the ridiculous "digi-grain conspiracy theory" started. That theory is of course bullshit, not the least because it makes absolutely no sense. I was unfair to mverta to refer to his comment as a conspiracy theory, and it shouldn't be dismissed as bullshit. What he actually said was:
"I'm willing to put some serious money on the fact that grain has been added to ANH, at least."
This is from someone with industry credentials and years of experience in visual effects. I'm not saying I think he's right, I'm more inclined to believe the excessive sharpening theory...

Sorry, I don't believe there is any basis for that theory. Yes, there's more grain than is native to the negative--but digitally added grain?? Come on. First, I have to ask: what would be the point of this? If the image is soft, making it grainey and soft is of no benefit. Digital grain is only added to CGI shots so that it matches the grain already present in the rest of the image, so that it appears as part of the original photography and not as an extra composite on top of that image. The whole digi-grain thing is totally irrational. Additionally, I don't believe that the human eye can distinguish between real grain and digital grain since visually they look identical. What mverta is responding to is the more illusive visual imbalance of an extra layer of grain over the original image--but this does not mean digitally added grain. That, I have to say, is ridiculous to propose if this is all we have to go on. Have you ever watched a bad 35mm print, maybe at a second-run house? How about all those early DVD's from 1998? They are taken not from the O-neg or from IP's but from a normal 35mm print, and you can see theres a subtle layer of grain overlayed on top of the original image--this comes from the duplication stage. Its the actual grain of the emulsion you are watching, which contains an image with grain already photographed in it, so you have 2 layers of noticeable grain. And sometimes, yes--it can look as bad as the GOUT, and when you have sharpening enhancement done as the GOUT seems to then that grain looks even more prominent because it now has artificially enhanced edges.

Thats why it looks so grainy--it looks more like what one might have seen in a theater screen.
Are you saying therefore that the GOUT video is representative of a theatrical presentation? And if so, are you happy watching the GOUT without any grain filtering?


Yes, in some ways the GOUT is representative of what a person would have seen on the screen in 1977, in that it has a lot of grain and has lost some detail. This is not an endorsement of this kind of quality--I would not enjoy it more with sticky floors, chattering audience members and a crying baby as well, as this is closer to the theatrical experience as well.
But at the end of the day, yes, I can live with the grain, maybe its because I like grain myself, maybe because I'm used to watching the film look rough and maybe its because theres a certain charm to watching an old, grainy 1970's print.

... in an effort to make the GOUT look better they sharpened the image
Or, as Laserman suggested, the LD pressing master was sharpened because LD video is notoriously soft, and it was this pressing master that was used as the source for the GOUT.


Well, either way theres been some enhancement on the original image. My money is on being done for this release--it looks like they bumped the contrast up as well and the saturation too, as most telecines now do to make it "pop" more, so to me it follows that they would run a sharpening filter on it too.

Post
#301302
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Time
Here's my take:

-Star Wars was shot on 1970's film stock. These have far more grain that today's stocks, which some cinematographer's are complaining are actually too fine-grain, they almost look like video. So Star Wars, in its native form, has quite visible grain built in to it. Its part of the texture of the image. You can see this in the composite shots--as soon as Luke turns on his lightsaber in Ben's hut the grain level doubles. Thats because there is an optical composite for the saber glow, so the film was exposed twice, once on set and then once in the optical printer. So the grain is native to the image.

-Star Wars, even though it has grain in its O-neg form, is not nearly as grainy as what is on the GOUT. The GOUT looks like it has an extra layer of grain on top of the actual image--this is how the ridiculous "digi-grain conspiracy theory" started. That theory is of course bullshit, not the least because it makes absolutely no sense. But I'll tell you what I think is going on here.

So, Star Wars, in its O-neg form, has visible grain, but not as much as on the GOUT. Here is what people have overlooked---the GOUT is not the O-neg. It is a duplicate. It is either an interpositive, or maybe even an interpositive based off an earlier interpositive (ie a new print struck from the 1985 IP); I'm not sure exactly what its source is--maybe someone here can clue me in--but its, at best, second or third generation. Thats why it looks so grainy--it looks more like what one might have seen in a theater screen. Why didn't we see the grain before? One, DVD has given us a bit more detail, but I think mainly two, in an effort to make the GOUT look better they sharpened the image (especially because it already had DVNR), thus highlighting the grain. Its the texture of the film emulsion being artificially enhanced, thus you are seeing grain that the actual image is composed of that you would never normally see were the image being treated normally. Especially because the GOUT is based on an nth-generation copy, you have the grain of that physical print itself plus the grain from the O-neg, plus whatever other intermediate stages. I think its just a matter of the 1993 Laserdisk print was never as great as we thought, and when artificially sharpened in the manner that it was all of the print grain that would normally be subdued suddenly was given edges and thus made visible.
Post
#301279
Topic
Ian McDiarmid's performance in the PT (also the OT) is memorable and absolutely enthralling
Time
Its the director's job to guide the actors--to say "Ian, tone down the expressions, just play it straight." Its as much a directors job to weed out what is wrong as it is to include what is right--now, true there are some things you simply cannot control, but alas this is not one of them. Lucas allowed McDiarmid to fuck it up, because he is the director and could have directed the performance differently.
Post
#301278
Topic
The Beginning: Making 'Episode I': A comedy masterpiece
Time
Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
The only two one-liners I actually enjoyed were, "I'm so confused!" and, to a slightly lesser degree, "I'm programmed for etiquette, not destruction!"


Yes, the "I'm programmed for etiquette!" line is the only one that actually comes from 3P0's character and thats why its funny--its simply the character responding to the situation he's in and the result is humorous, and this is how you write humor. 3P0 would be horrified to discover his dissassembled body is used for combat. The other stuff like "what a drag"--that was just thrown in there, out of character, out of universe, and awkward in its arbitrariness. To me those lines weren't as annoying as the Anakin-Padme stuff--I mean those are just throw-away lines, gags that you forget about 2 seconds later. The Anakin-Padme stuff was the core of both the entire characters and the story of the PT, and people were laughing their heads off in the theater--a failure of equal preportion to the success of the original film. I am still struggling to comprehend how such shit ended up being made. I mean this is the heart of the story--and Anakin is pouring his heart out. And we laughed! We laughed not only at the absurdity of the writing but that this was being passed off with sincerity by a supposed professional! I mean it was worse than high school dramas, without hyperbole--the thing feels like it was written and directed by a 12 year old. Yeah, cool scenes of stuff exploding and people fighting with swords, but not that exciting cause theres no dramatic structure--but characters that ring as true as one would expect from a boy who had never had social contact and gotten all his experience from reading third-rate 1950's comics. Theres an emotional immaturity in AOTC thats embarrassing, really, because the characters are not characters, they are just actors reading from a script.
Post
#301271
Topic
Info: 16mm ESB and ROTJ films on ebay
Time
Two problems:

1) 16mm dupe's that have been sitting around for 25 years would barely yield detail any greater than the sources we have now

2) the condition of the film would be so scratched, marked and damaged that it would effectively render them near uselessness.

The amount of work needed to clean up and restore the print to something that would actually benefit us would be pretty irrational to take up. Add to that the cost of a proper scan--not just a cheap telecine done with a camera, but an actual film scan that would properly translate the detail so needed to be wrung from this sort of source--and you have thousands of dollars of expenses on top of thousanads of man-hours of work. And at the end of the day it would be far less than say, what an X0 version of the film could yield (hypothetical that such a thing exists--but my point is that if you bought an X0 player, used the best LD, and obtained the mastering software this would be a far better--and still-cheaper--way of going about it).

This is purely a quality thing I am talking about, mind you. In terms of personal home viewing--a film print, even a scratchy 16mm one, of a Star Wars film is such a joy to watch. If you have the equipment to play it I would recommend getting them just for your own personal enjoyment, but chances are you don't have a 16mm projector and proper sound recievers.
Post
#301252
Topic
Demonoid Dead...
Time
Well, I think Lordjedi does have a point--its not like their are squads of FBI agents surfing the net full-time looking for teenagers downloading Nickelback illegally. Most the time it is private organisations like the RIAA, who are looking out for their own interests and are the appointed regulators of the music industry, who assign specialists to smoke out illegal downloaders and then alert the FBI, who then investigate and/or take action. Its still a huge waste of national resources but its not always quite as absurd as we like to portray it.
Post
#301218
Topic
How did you envision the prequels?
Time
Originally posted by: xhonzi
I remembered one more:

C-3PO and R2-D2 would be the only characters to appear in all 9 films. (With the six we have, this isn't true because Anakin/Vader & Obi-Wan (if ghosts count) are also in all 6)

Zombie, regarding the mandalorians... I don't know where this came from originally, but I know I've seen it several places.

Bill Slavicsek's Second Edition of the Guide to the Star Wars Universe says:

Mandalore Warriors
The Mandalore Warriors were defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars [ESB]

That must be from the Glut novelization.

Page 88 of "The Star Wars Trilogy Sourcebook" (West End Games) says about Boba Fett:
"...armored suit similar to those favoured by a group of warriors from the Mandalore system who were defeated by the Jedi Knights during the Clone Wars."
Page 140 of the Star Wars Sourcebook 2nd Edition has the same thing word for word.

'The Bpfassh' entry in the Guide mentions some Clone Wars history (involving the Dagobah (the cave, methinks)) but I think that's mostly from Heir to the Empire.

Speaking of which... we need another thread entitled: How did Tim Zahn envision the Prequels/Clone Wars? That had me intrigued reading his books.

xhoznzi

P.S. I know the above references aren't precisely "canon" but they were obviously referring to something that people had been thinking was part of the Clone War history.


Mandlorian is purely EU stuff as far as my research shows. Donald Glut's novelisation states that Boba Fett wore the armor of a group of warriors defeated by the Jedi during the clone wars, or words to that effect, and Bantha Tracks goes into detail about how Fett was a member of the Imperial Shocktroopers who waged war on the galaxy but were defeated by the Jedi.

In the 1990's--I believe it was--EU sort of re-made this plot, by having them be "Mandalorian" warriors, not "Imperial Shocktroopers", who came from the planet Mandalore and waged war on the galaxy. EU sourcebooks are based on this version but the original one is a bit different.
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#301202
Topic
How did you envision the prequels?
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I added some pre-production artwork from the first draft as well.

Obi Wan:

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/obiwan2.jpg http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/obiwan3.jpg

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/obiwan1.jpg

I love these original costumes. Like Luke's in ROTJ. I guess thats why Lucas tells Mark Hamill during his 1982 costume fitting that his new black costume is "Jedi-like." All that stuff about it symbolising Luke going to the darkside is just coincidental--it was actually supposed to show the opposite.