I will leave the Virtualdub stuff to people that know how to do that. I just wanted to demonstrate that it's actually possible to do this just by playing around with settings.
Okay, so since I started this a couple months ago I haven't given this another go, so I thought I'd take another crack. This one looks really good, I think. It's not quite as saturated as I would like, but if you go any further you get all sorts of artifacts and weird things happening, but the sort of "essence" I was talking about comes through.
These were the settings I used in VLC:
Lessening the bad skintones wasn't quite as difficult as I thought, compared to last time I basically just went more towards cyan in the hue and held back on the saturation. I gave the contrast a decent kick as well, which looks nice IMO (I think I could have gone further though), and brightened the image a bit.
I used a sharpening filter as well, which I think looks really nice, but you can't tell in the caps. Anyway, this is what I ended up with.
You can still see a bit of popping in the reds, but it's pretty tolerable IMO. If there was a way of desaturating the reds only just by a bit, which would give skintones a further help, I would say this is a pretty decent "theatrical look", even if it lacks a little bit of the vividness I would like.
bkev said:
While the Han shot looks pretty gray, the shot of Ben and Luke on the Death Star is lookin' blue in csd79's shots. I think at that point it becomes a case of applying his settings to the entire movie and then color-correcting by scene, if anyone has the patience for so.
While the shots have some colour returning to the walls, they still have that drab GOUT look when you see the way a theatrical print looks.
This:
is an excellent "enhanced GOUT", the best I have seen so far, but it doesn't resemble this very much:
Obviously, that isn't exactly what that shot should look like either. But I think you get a sense of the saturation and tonality, and then you look at the shot above it and it's not really the same.
This was my first attempt at it, which is too red, has bad skintones and hasn't had any contrast or gamma tweaking, but it better captures the sense of colour I think. You can see that the walls are clearly blue, not just having a hint of blue in them. I don't think this is how the shot should look, obviously, but probably in between the two is a good place to be.
Csd79 is close, but not quite there, the basic essence in terms of colour is still somewhat elusive. There is a vividness that is still lacking. But he said that was just a first attempt--I would be very interested in what he could do if he spent more time at it. His skintones certainly blows away the lobster-Ben in my test shot above.
edit: this process might be a good place to start.
That's an interesting thought, convert the 2004 master to the 1993 colours and then basically do what we have been doing here. I wonder if screwing around with the colour that much would make things start to look weird though.
You have to colour-shift it away from the red as well. But as has been stated, there are a lot of problems still. You have a lot of artifacts because of the saturation (noise mainly--but this is on the master too, it just becomes more noticeable), and the red needs to be controlled somehow because it saturates so strongly that it bleeds and pops. It makes hard to get good skintones sometimes as well. You'd have to figure out how to control the reds without losing the vividness of the red hues. That seems to be the biggest issue so far. There have been a lot of attempts which have gotten rid of the popping and given decent-looking skintones (see csd79 the previous page, for example), but every one of them has done so at the expense of the saturation, which sort of puts you back at square one. I like csd79's settings for an "optimized GOUT", but it doesn't resemble the theatrical colouring, for example the Death Star interior in his Obi Wan shot is still greyish when it should be a fairly rich shade of dark blue. I'm not sure if you could get the GOUT to have the theatrical colouring and still be pleasureable for viewing because of all the technical issues. Hairy_hen's idea of starting with the 2004 master is an interesting one...
Here is a good example of how some of the colour only becomes apparent when you saturate it:
From the ESB trailer:
Raw GOUT:
They look pretty close together. But the saturation-corrected GOUT looks much different.
But before someone speculates that maybe such saturation isn't accurate, here is what the 1980 bootleg of a theatrical print looks like. Pink-shift, of course, but its obviously closer to the oversaturated GOUT, both in terms of saturation and also in terms of the blue cast.
Another good example:
Raw, uncorrected GOUT:
Here is the corrected GOUT, with the saturation pumped up.
And here is that shot in the theatrical bootleg:
Obviously, the bootleg does not have pefectly correct colouring, but the one thing we can learn here is that this scene has a blue cast to it. But you can only get that when the colours are deep and rich. That's why I love that outtake shot of Obi Wan on the Falcon, you finally see that rich, saturated look, and then you look at the GOUT and its just this dull blob.
hairy_hen said:
True, they're probably not what the actual movies looked like, but they still have a 'natural' sort of look that my eyes find pleasing, far removed from the harsh manipulation of the destroyed SE images. And since that is what final movies ultimately originated from, there's a certain authenticity involved.
How exactly does analogue colour timing on film prints work, anyway? I don't know much about that sort of thing.
I assume you mean film colour timing? I don't think film would be considered analogue, because it's not electronic. But the way film colour timing works as far as I understand it is when the film is printed there are coloured lights (three I believe--RGB) that shine on it to control contrast, brightness and colour. So, you decide on the printer light settings for each shot, and as the shot comes up the intensity and mixture of the lights change according to the result you want. There is also a "one light" method, where if you can't afford or don't have time to do a shot-by-shot correction you just choose one printer light setting for the whole film; I think this is usually done to control contrast and brightness, rather than colour. So anyway, you run your negative assembly through the printer, and as it's going through the lights that expose it on to the new copy affect how it looks. You then get a new print with all the colour correction--it usually takes multiple tries to determine the precise settings because you can't see the result until it is printed. When a print is approved, this is called the answer print. The negative is then run again using the same settings from the answer print, and this makes the interpositive, which is used as the master for making theatrical prints.
csd79: Those examples are terrific! They have a very natural quality to them. Would make a good example for fan preservations to follow. The only problem is the same one that keeps coming up again: in terms of representing the "look" of the film, they lack that bright saturation.
Plus a theatrical feature-length animated film.
EyeShotFirst said:
rockin said:
I'm surprised there hasn't been more comparisons with the old trailers from the SW Bonus DVD, I think it's interesting how vibrant some of the colours are from those:
Neat to see just how not blue Palpy's throne room is. A little on the warm side actually, but that could be from adding the sabers in.
The trailers on the DVD unfortunately are missing a lot of the colour in some shots. This is likely because they pre-date the final answer print by many months. That might be why on the trailer the Hoth hanger only has some blue, while in other sources, noteably the (enhanced/restored) GOUT and the theatrical bootleg, it is very blue, as some might have been added by colour timing. As far as the above cap goes, in the final film, the throne room is almost as blue as it is on the 2004 DVD. You can see this on the theatrical bootleg, the GOUT, or any past home video releases. I think publicity stills have it fairly restrained though, so maybe it was shot "neutral" like the above cap from the trailer which uses the raw dailies, and then timed blue in post.
EDIT
That outtake from the dailies on the Falcon looks stunning as far as the colour goes. Such a difference.
Lucasfilm is the company that owns the rights to many of the most popular movies of all time, which makes it a home video-oriented company right now; they are currently prepping what will surely be the biggest-selling Blu Ray set in history, in which the copyrights are owned by them exclusively. However, they also produce a very successful and award-winning cartoon series, which they fund and make independently, and are developing another live-action series, as well as having just produced a feature film called Red Tails that will soon be released. They also are producing 3D conversions for some of their past releases (the 6 Star Wars films). There are probably a lot of other day-to-day activities we aren't aware of, and other projects in the pipeline that aren't public knowledge.
So yes, there are many points to their existance, so this seems like a silly question. Also, I believe companies like Lucasbooks and Lucasarts are divisions of Lucasfilm, so there is a lot of managing the dozens of other printed and electronic products they make, plus of course the toys. Lucasfilm is a vast, multi-media entertainment company, and the actual film/television production part of it is as busy as it ever is.
none said:
generalfrevious wrote:
BTW, if someone brings up the LOC prints:
1. Do not have ROTJ as of this posting
2. The ESB print may or may not be the SE/ and is in worse shape than the copy of ANH
1. incorrect. Here's the LOC 'Return of the Jedi' public record:
Under 'Description; you'll read 35mm ref print. and under 'Acquisition Source' the date 6/15/83.
You are mixing up the general Library of Congress with the LOC's Nation Film Archive. Two separate organizations, under one roof. Almost all works published at least one or two copies are send to the LOC for archiving and copyright verification. The LOC-NFA is a recent body created to preserve currently considered 'culturally valuable' works. The public votes, so submit your vote for the Holiday Special today. http://www.loc.gov/film/
2. there are multiple SW and ESB's in the archives. the LOC has at least one, and the LOC-NFA has a different one. The ESB LOC-NFA print hasn't even arrived yet.
Unfortunately, the copies submitted to LOC for copyright won't be useful when the films become public domain. I doubt they even have proper film storage procedures for those (i.e. temperature, humidity control), they probably just put the cans in a box in a room. In fact, they probably are completely red right now and will never be useful for anything, even today. ROTJ might have been printed on LPP low-fade since it was introduced in 1982, but even if it was those are still not as reliable as people say, and they were only ever said to last for 75 years or so, which is less than a full copyright term anyway. Other than the Technicolor print and a handful of LPP prints, release prints of at least SW and ESB aren't archival and probably ceased being viewable or salvageable some time in the 1990s.
Well, when it comes to the reds, I'm not sure I would agree with that solution. I do get what you are saying in that the red tends to pop more than other colours, but because the GOUT is washed out in general, leaving the reds alone produces an imbalance and gives the image an "improper" look (even if the reds are technically too high by measurement). Something about it just looks dull and "incorrect", I guess, if you can see what I am saying. I'm not sure what the solution to the problem can be, but leaving them alone IMO doesn't quite work. You need the bright reds. You are right though, the reds are already bleeding a bit just in the raw GOUT, but they don't have the vibrancy that pushing them gives them, which matches the rest of the image. It's a weird problem.
Having just seen the fantastically well-preserved ESB Theatre bootleg, I am amazed at how close the GOUT seems match to it when you crank up its saturation to (or very close to) the levels I have suggested. It's pretty much the exact same thing for most of it, minus the colour-shifting due to print and tape fluxatuation and the occasional exposure wash-out or crush-down. But for example, the blueness of the Hoth and Bespin scenes is pretty much 100% the same as the caps I posted. There is one shot that was compared earlier to the SE trailer, an establishing shot of the Hoth hanger (when Solo first enters), where the SE trailer has much less blue, but in fact the theatrical bootleg has the exact same amount as the enhanced-GOUT I posted. Same with all the Luke-wampa scenes. It seemed pretty consistent that the GOUT enhanced in this way matched close to the bootleg.
This only highlights the dilemma I mentioned earlier: in order to have theatrically-accurate colour/saturation with the GOUT, you have to live with popping and noise and all those artifacts. It looks ugly sometimes, but that's the actual accurate colour level.
Wow, excellent picture quality from the print. The Chewbacca shot looks properly focused and you see how much detail there is.
I'm curious though, if the print doesn't have a leader on it from France, do you know what info was on the leader?
This is a good topic for a thread.
My opinion is that both are dubs. My initial instinct is that neither is her real voice, but maybe it is.
My reason is this: she is the only actress dubbed in her scenes. Contrary to what you wrote, production audio is not 100% useless. Back in the 70s there was very little dubbing, and you used as much on-set as you could. This is why older films sound "rougher" than today, because today much of the dialogue--whether in studio or on location--is dubbed.
Very little of the Tunisian dialogue is ADR'd from what I can tell. However, a lot of the studio dialogue is. The entire control room conversation between Han and Luke ("she's rich...") is almost 100% dubbed, probably because the stormtrooper costumes clattered so much.
In the case of Beru, all the scenes she is in have production audio for at least most of the scenes. Owen is on-set recordings. Luke is on-set recordings. But Beru is dubbed. Always. There is absolutely no reason why her closeups at the dinner conversation should be dubbed. So that tells me that the only logical answer was to give her a different voice. Probably because she had an accent and it seemed out of place since the rest of the family is American sounding.
It's interesting that the book says she recorded ADR though. Maybe the voice(s) is actually two ADR recordings of her putting on an American accent over her original recording. I agree that the mono is the same actress as the stereo--maybe she was re-recorded in mono because the original stereo mix was so obviously dubbed (although you can still tell in the mono). Or, maybe they initially tried to have her dub herself for the same reason, but realising it didn't work or sound right got a different actress for the final mix.
They aren't whole languages, just a bunch of random sounds. But, for instance Huttese all has a similar "sound" to it, it's not an actual language they way Tolkien did. It's just sound designer Ben Burtt playing around. I don't know a whole lot about the sounds of Star Wars, but I do know that some of the "languages" are actually based off human languages, for instance I believe it is the character of Nien Numb the co-pilot to Lando in ROTJ, Ben Burtt had some 90-year-old Indian woman come in and speak some obscure dialect because it sounded "alien". I'm probably misremembering the details, but that is generally how it was done. It's not like Klingon or Elvish.
SilverWook said:
Derann must have had two different sources for their Super 8, because the one I've seen is not from a French print, and shows some wear from the 35mm source material.
Hmm interesting. Adrian Winchester surmises the release would have been retired due to negative wear, since all 250+ were struck right from the same negative, so maybe they replaced the original. In the review I posted, the writer urges people to get copies early so that yours isn't from a beat up negative.
canofhumdingers said:
Holy moly... I had no idea there were full length 8mm scope prints of the original trilogy.... Hello new collection holy grail!
So, does anyone have any idea just how rare or expensive these might be? I'm sure they're currently outside my budget, but it's something to work for! Bluray? Schmuray! Who needs that when I can have my own PRINT!
As mentioned in the article, in terms of rarity they made at least 250 of them "but probably more", so maybe like 350. I'd say that is fairly rare, (though by Super 8 deluxe full-feature standards thats a large amount). But they rarely if ever appear on eBay or on trading lists because the few people that have them want to hold on to them. They cost 300 pounds when they were released in 1989, so I can only imagine what they would cost today. Just based on conversion 300 pounds ca.1989=550 pounds ca. 2009 using the retail price index, which is equivalent to about $900. Of course, these have become much rarer since 1989, because they don't make them anymore and they are few in number, and very hard to find. I don't know anything about Super 8 pricings, but based on this you'd be paying four figures. Although I don't know if it's value has gone down since then--it was expensive because it was the best way to see the film in 1989, while it's perceived value is not the same now. Derann did lots of films and they were all high quality so I would check out their other prices.
New page on the 8mm and 16mm (and a bit about 35mm) is up, though still slightly under construction:
http://www.savestarwars.com/starwarsonfilm.htm
If anyone has corrections or additions, feel free to speak up as always. Especially with 8mm, I am basically deferring to experts.
Thanks d_j, I'm in Canada. The discs have just started to spread in the last week or two so I don't mind waiting for a few more weeks to see if someone puts it up somewhere. If no one does after a while I might take you up on your offer though. :p
So, is the ESB boot posted up anywhere yet? Or is it still just disc trading?
There were a couple people here who had prints and tried to do something with them, but they are long gone as far as I know. I would suggest trying some 35mm collecting forums, and also not advertising that you will be transferring them to video. Any print you will get your hands on will be extremely rough though, so make no illusions about what you are up against. It will take a long time to clean it, unless you have access to proprietary software and hardware like Lowry. If the print is good, be prepared to spend four figures on it also. This sort of thing is probably the "greyest" area of home video collecting, as it is clearly illegal, so I'm not even sure how open you want to be about posting it on this forum.
If you have professional frame-by-frame scanners, or even a regular pro telecine, that will get HD results, you might want to consider a 16mm print. There are a few low-fade LPP prints from the 1980s out there that, when cleaned up, would get you better-than-DVD level of detail in an HD scan. More importantly though, it's much cheaper and easier to find (eBay), and slightly less "illegal" because 16mm isn't seen as a real piracy threat.
Wow, that is quite flattering, haha.
Ah, fair enough. Thanks for the correction!
This reminds me of a very interesting interview with Coppola I read this week.
"How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?
We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.
This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it."
From: http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-On-Risk-Money-Craft-Collaboration
I don't think he is actually proposing making all movies and music for free, because he probably is capable of doing that himself yet he clearly charges money to see his films (actually, it's really the exhibitors and distributors, but that's another issue), but it's a good thought exercise anyway.
