zombie84

He sounds like that whenever he speaks. He had such passion and energy for life. I knew he had been seriously sick for a year or so now and was basically unable to give interviews, and I know he was getting close to 90, but you know I guess part of me sort of expected that he would pull through because he seems like one of the most indefatiguable people I've ever seen. I guess it was just his time.

Sad news indeed. This just killed my day. What an underappreciated artist he was. I was actually in the middle of putting together a book about him which I had been researching the last two years, but it kind of centred around doing new interviews with him. His health was so poor the last 9 months that I never got the chance to meet him. I wish I had tried to do this a couple years earlier.

RIP Kersh.

The softening effect isn't too bad here, but it's for sure noticeable when you do before-and-after. It looks to me like its on par with the latest version of G-Force's script, and most people seem to be okay with that. Personally, I would apply it more selectively, since I don't think all the shots need it. I can't really see any significant improvement in the DS caps, for instance, while I can definitely notice the softness side-effect. But on the other hand, the shot of R2 definitely shows a big improvement even if it gets softened a bit. The other ones, I guess it's a judgement call when you see them in motion; the softening isn't too bad on the 3P0 shots, but from still caps the jaggies don't look so awful either, but I know it looks worse when in motion, so the end result with the filter is a pretty good compromise. My advice is to always just ask yourself, "is it really that necessary in this shot?", because the conference room scene there looks like mush with the filter and was never that bad to begin with.

Uh, she could have just flown to wherever and transfered to a different ship. Or better yet, removed the frickin homing beacon, since she knew the Falcon was being tracked. But whatever, even Citizen Kane has a fundamental plot hole.

The Lobot one sounds like its from that shot where his headset lights up after Lando communicates to him using his 1980s casio watch.

Yeah the new roar is pretty hard to believe. In fact, part of me still thinks it's a mistake, that they put a work-in-progress test file on there by accident or something. It's also strange how they don't mention that the roar was changed for 2004 and then again for 2010, which also puts some doubt in my mind as to what is actually going on. But this is just typical Star Wars fan denial. A lot of the SE is hard-to-believe levels of badness, from the editing and CG changes to the colouring to the picture resolution to the sound mix, so this is pretty typical I suppose.

Actually, I've been developing a lot of schaudenfreude towards the SE. I hope they continue to fuck things up so that more people will see how better things were in the first place. Let's put Jar Jar in A New Hope and redo Yoda in CG flipping around!

The audio has been confirmed to have been remixed. Probably because they wanted to do some sort of 7.1 HD audio version, so they decided to just start over. The picture I am sure will be pretty much the same; I can imagine them fixing some of the lightsaber issues, but I would say there is an equal chance that everything will be left exactly as they are.

As for whether the picture will be better than the broadcast versions enough to justify plunking down what will be probably $70-90...well, that all depends on how much you enjoy the SE. For some, there's no price that justifies it, for others they might be willing to if it was priced right. But as to whether the picture will be significantly improved period, I would say yes. The difference will not be extreme or anything, because some of the HD broadcast versions are quite good. But it definitely will look and sound much better on Blu Ray (well--in theory, anyway, you never know with LFL these days). And of course the set will have other value-added material, including some new docs but more importantly deleted scenes that I have a suspicion will be in HD. The deleted scenes will probably be put on Youtube (and yanked, and then put back on, etc.). In any case, if you really just wanted to see this stuff you can always rent the set; if I had a BD player that's what I would do, just to satisfy my curiosity of seeing the films in HD and also checking out the new supplementary stuff.

"I think when the Blu-rays come out owning the DVD's are no longer grey area enough for downloading HDTV rips. And so those will essentially become obsolete."

They will  become obsolete, but only because the BD will be of higher quality so there would be no point in holding on to lesser transfers. Unless the films are changed again, but I personally doubt there will be any changes.

If Kershner was directing the film, there would be proper pre-production and long shooting time. Look at ESB. They gave him something like 4 months and he took 9 months to film it, because that's what he discovered he needed.

But on the other hand, history would not repeat. ESB could only happen once, it had a specific time and place and neither people are the same as they were in 1979. Kershner is too old to fight for the film the way he did 30 years earlier. Lucas is too much of a dick to let Kershner get away it, the way he did back then (he learned his lesson)--and he's also experienced enough to know better. So Kershner would never in any realistic sense be hired by Lucas. Alternate history is never so simple as subbing in one guy for another--the entire context is different.

I think the notion that Spielberg was going to direct Jedi is a bit overstated. I am sure Lucas considered it for a time, but clearly he didn't feel too strongly about it considering he let something as silly as a grudge against the DGA dissuade him from choosing him. I mean, it wasn't because Lucas had some sort of social crusade to root out corruption from unions, he was simply just sticking it to them because they fined him a couple thousand bucks (imagine: a multi-billionaire tycoon upset over a couple thousand bucks for genuinely breaking established union rules for the protection of its members' credibility which all directors and filmmakers also follow).

So, considering this is the freaking director of the film, the guy that will be on set doing most the work and basically controlling large parts of the film, who is supposed to lend his artistic hand in the most important role a movie production can have, this is an extremely petty, stupid, ultimately unrealistic reason to bypass someone. If you truely say, "this is the guy, the film needs and deserves his talent" you will fight for him.

Personally, I think it's all just a convenient excuse. Lucas didn't want Spielberg on it for the same reason he didn't want Spielberg to direct the prequels: Lucas wanted to control it, and he knew he couldn't control Spielberg the way he could control someone like  Marquand. Indy, fine, Lucas was slightly removed from that since it was a joint project, but Star Wars by then was viewed by him as his, and he wanted to be sure that he could do what he wanted and not have the professional--and personal--tension of having to fight a respected co-worker whom he was about to work with again on two more Indy sequels (as per the contract of that other franchise). This is the exact same thing as in the prequels, which Lucas openly admitted to as CO pointed out. So when some bullshit about union grudges made things not so straightforward, it allowed him a convenient out, even though part of him did want Spielberg because Spielberg was a fucking great director. "Yeah, sorry buddy, you know I would love to have ya but you know, goddamn unions, blah blah blah. Oh well, we'll see each other on the next Indy in 1983."

In the caps where you can see the dot pattern--you can also see how it creates the optical illusion of horizontal scanlines. Look at the left side of the screen, near Ozzel. Very clearly looks like horizontal lines. But it's just an optical illusion, because in most of the rest of the frame you can see its actually grid-pattern dots.

This does of course make one re-evaluate the shots where its fully scanlines with no trace of dots. It really does look like an alternate version of the shot without dots, but based on the optical illusion seen in the shot with dots, this is in severe doubt.

The Emperor hologram...maybe same thing. It's all a bit difficult to say now. There are other instances of the poor verticle resolution of the GOUT--one that comes to mind is that in Moth3r's transfer of the LD, the final shot of the film you can see extra details on R2's pannelling that in the GOUT is just a solid blob (I think this is on the stickied screenshot page in the forums).

So, it's possible. But what's not possible is the verticle scanlines becoming horizontal. That's not a resolution thing. I might lump the changed graphics colours as well with this. So we are for sure dealing with an alternate print of ESB nonetheless (even if the alt graphics colours are just a video problem). This once again opens the door for a plausible likelihood that some or all of the aformentioned problems aren't verticle resolution or DVNR after all but the genuine absence. And hence we come full circle into a standstill.

As far as 005's page is concerned, my recommendation is to present all the apparent variants as displayed by home video, but with the captioning mentioning the dillemma I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Maybe it's just resolution for (most of) the GOUT examples, but it's plausible that it's not too, but we just don't have any truely reliable way of knowing for sure. In my opinion, anyway. This could change in the future as more stuff becomes available though.

Msycamore said: "...and I suspect that may also be the case with these holograms, if you look at them in motion there seems to be both vertical and horizontal ones in there, maybe Mallwalker's caps will prove it right or wrong."

This is another thing. None of us can really see them in motion. Caps are great, but when you see a video in motion you notice things in the detail that either simply aren't there or in a cap or aren't obvious (or aren't obvious enough to make definitive statements about without lots of doubt).

I guess this will go on. Are there any other transfers that we can check or is that basically all of them? Also: can anyone check the new Making of ESB book and see if the hologram work is ever mentioned? Might be a longshot source of further clarification.

@DJ, thanks very much for the offer! I arrived here today to find my PM box already had a couple of links for me, so no need to worry but thanks anyway.

I also did not realize there is a ROTS workprint. Is it actually just a pre-release telecine of the final film or is it actually a workprint from a rough cut of the film? I can't seem to find a clear answer, though I seem to be getting the impression its the former.

What is the Mot3r 1977 xvid? Is it just the widescreen DVD/VHS converted to the xvid file format?

Also, is the 1977 bootleg available in any non-newsgroup source? I deleted mine a few years back and I've been kicking myself ever since.

Relative to market penetration, it probably will come within striking distance in my opinion.

I wouldn't put too much stock into it. The cover for the main holding box, plus the cover for the 1961-1985 volume, plus one of 15 promotional posters for the release, promotes 1977's Star Wars with a picture of Vader from the ROTS publicity shoot.

Although I will admit, it is unusual that in the trailer they seem to have selected the shot as it appears in the material seen on the 1997 SW doc. Surely it would have been easier to simply use the 2004 DVD itself if that is what the set contains? But that video also shows a clip from Alien 3--which isn't even on the set! So I wouldn't put too much stock into it until someone can confirm it. I doubt this contains any new material or transfers. It looks like they just used clips from 1997 promotional ads. There are other scenes from films like ROTJ--which, again, isn't even on the set--and not only does the colouring correspond to promotional material from 1997 (to my eyes at least), but you can also see videotape artifacts that the other clips from the films don't have (watch the hyperspace shot, with its rainbow moire), so they probably just used some sort of 1997 promotional materials master tape rather than the DVDs themselves. That's how I would explain it, anyway. Why, I don't know. Maybe they don't have the 2004 DVDs on hand because Fox has been relegated to a mere distributor today whereas in 1997 they were the main agent behind the release and not Lucasfilm and hence have all of that material on-site.

Wow, I've been in europe the last week, but this thread keeps the surprises coming that's for sure. I'm amazed at the level of obsessiveness we all have for these details! :D

RE: Why the original starfield in the SE and not the 1981, since it is the 1981 crawl: They went back to the original starfield because they re-comped the elements for the SE to get rid of dupe grain and matte lines. It's hard to say if they intentionally bypassed the 1981 starfield, or if they even knew about it since it might not have even been saved. They probably found a box of BG plates, one said it was for the opening flyover, and that's the one they used when they re-composited it.

So, trying to keep up here but it seems like in order of completeness it goes like this:

-70mm via 8mm commercial

-1993 GOUT (/1995 US LD/ 2006 DVD) -->Edited according to 35mm version with fading-in Emperor

-1985 US LD -->adds Emperor scanlines

-1986 JSC(/1992 US LD) -->adds (and in some cases replaces) horizontal scanlines to all screens and holograms

-1997 SE (/2004 DVD) --> adds further elements plus the original pre-1986 dot screen

So, it looks like "chronologically", the GOUT is just a bit less completed than the 1985 LD. Now I am really curious about how "early" it is, and whether there is a transfer from 1984 that is more complete than the GOUT. Because it seems to be the "earliest" or least completed version available on home video. What is interesting is that until the GOUT comes along it also seems like the transfers are progressively being "completed" on home video in 1985 and then 1986. It could just be coincidence, of course, and if it is it makes it all the more bewildering how many different 35mm print masters with varying levels of work seem to exist for the film.

The American DVD is the same as the 35mm prints, judging from the one I saw two years ago.

The 1981 matte isn't just re-composited, it is stretched and distorted compared to the 1977 version as well (or rather I should say that one is stretched and distorted). It also looks like they recomposited the moon individually, since I couldn't figure out how they got it to where it is, but maybe I need to take a another look at it. But the entire matte was squished in the 1977 version, which is why the moon is slightly eliptical, whereas in 1981 they just scanned it as it was.

doubleofive said:

And I thought my brain hurt before. This is becoming less "Special Edition changes" and more "where did they find that copy of ESB in 1993?"

BTW, can anyone break down what they think I should add to the listing RE holograms. Which shots, which versions I should stack up, etc.

 I would list all known versions, but not try to answer whether they added for the theatrical or video, because we really don't know. Just use the examples on video. But include the SE as well, because it's noteable that the pattern in order of release on video is: 1)complete (1986/1992) 2) incomplete (1993/1995) 3) complete again (1997/2004). It's not that they necessarily removed it in 1993 and then re-instated it in 1997 or 2004, but this is the order of (home video) public appearance from the information currently available. So I would use all three screens of the video releases. And the 8mm version to represent the 70mm.

Yes, that is the thing now--at least with Empire, it's unknown how many of these little things were in the "final version" shown in 1980, like some of these minute re-comps.

Here is one way to check: take a source that has the final holograms, like the JSC, and re-check suspects.

Here's another thing to consider: whether the versions with the "final composites" are actually true 1980 screened sources. I've brought this up before, but isn't it possible that the GOUT is the version shown theatrically, but they had actually finished some re-comps that never had time to be put in but then inserted for later releases on home video and re-releases? I know the last two weeks of Empire were chaotic with last minute composites being printed, some of which weren't ready in time for the 70mm version. Maybe the 35mm initial released missed the boat on a couple too. Or maybe they made multiple 35mm release versions, one wave which went out opening day (the GOUT print, which had only part of the holograms completed) and then one that went out a couple weeks later (or perhaps not until the re-issue?).

I guess who the hell knows. Could be based off the 70mm version, but if so why no unfading Emperor? So its not the 70mm version as we know it.

This is why it is so weird. It's in between the 70mm version and the "final" 35mm version seen in the 1992 release for example. It has the Emperor fading in like the 35mm, but there are no artificial scanlines like the 35mm.

So I guess these are the choices:

-It's a May 21, 1980 IP, with the later additions being done either in later weeks and included in later prints, or they were never in 1980 prints but were added for the 1981 re-release, or they were never in any print but were added for home video.

-It was a "revised" 70mm version that was prepped after the initial 70mm printing but before the final 35mm release was shipped. This might have been done because the 70mm was full-out edited differently, aside from having earlier composites. So, seeing that they had edited the impending 35mm differently, they started prepping a new 70mm print for release. This is the GOUT. However, since the 35mm requires less advance prep, they still had a day or two in which they decided to re-do/add some minor composites like the holograms. So even a "revised 70mm" was slightly different from the 35mm version seen. This is convoluted, but possible.

-It's just a work-in-progress IP that had been stored. It's more completed than the 70mm, but not as completed as the final 35mm release. Perhaps they had readied this to be used as the IP, but then pulled it at the last second when they had re-done some composites.

I can't think of any more here. I would say the first and last explanation is most likely, and I am leaning towards the first. As to when the changes entered--that's a matter of pure speculation I guess. The 16mm version may help determine if it was or wasn't added for home video. It still doesn't tell us if it was 1981, or when specifically in 1980, or if this was work-in-progress (if a video can be derived from this, no reason a 16mm commercial print can't be).

I am assuming that this mysterious situation is unique to ESB. But now I wonder, if they had all these early-version IPs sitting around and decided to use them for video not realising the differences, maybe it's not.

Going by the I.B. prints, it was a bit brighter and oranger.

"Could you elaborate on this, zombie? I don't think I understand exactly what you mean here. I understand the process behind the effect but why are the scanlines only present on some transfers if it isn't differently done composites? or are you talking about the rolling bars?"

What I meant was that even on the GOUT (and 8mm) images that have "no scanlines" if you look closely you can see there sort of is, because its on the monitor itself that is being photographed. I guess they wanted this to be much more obvious so they threw giant scanlines on top of this raw image.

What's weird is how the GOUT seems to have 3 stages of holograms:

-Clean holograms, without artificial scanlines.

-Holograms with verticle scanlines, which doesn't really make sense. They were corrected to be horizontal in the final version, so maybe these can be thought of "test composites" or "first tries".

-Holograms with proper horizontal scanlines, as per the final versions.

So it seems to have all three stages of completedness in one single print! You have ones that haven't had any added, ones that have had them added in a way that isn't final, and ones that are totally finished.

My question is: just what is this print? As if the source of the GOUT needed any more mystery. Its clearly something abnormal. I kind of wonder now if the grain levels are related in any way.

I don't know where the adage of 16mm=1800 lines comes from. That's not really correct. Film doesn't really have a fixed resolution anyway. I've worked in 16mm film a lot for various television series, and I would say that a 16mm negative done with modern 35mm lenses and new film stock is roughly equivalent to about HD 1920-x1080 resolution. In terms of the detail level you get, I would say it is roughly comparable, but this is just a ballpark impression on my part.

However, 16mm prints of Star Wars aren't newly shot negative. They are old, and they are so worn that there's nearly no point in working with them because of the severity of the inevitable damage and dirt. However, even if they were clean, the detail level is probably not much better than standard definition. The type of home telecines like Puggo's will benefit from using HD cameras, but only because the camera quality is not good you need HD to get the detail of a professional SD scan. But then you have exposure problems and stuff too.

Anyway, I'm not sure if a 16mm scan would be better than the GOUT. Puggo's stuff is more for the novelty than any practical purpose. I would be interested in seeing what an HD telecine looks like though, because I guess if you processed it enough it could start to look pretty good (look at what Avisynth scripting has done to the GOUT, for example). But in general, 16mm prints don't have much practical value in terms of creating a high quality preservation. The quality simply isn't there to capture. Like I said, 16mm negative from 2010 will give you about HD resolution, 16mm positive reduction prints from 1977 will give you the detail level of a VHS tape, roughly speaking.

35mm, on the other hand, ought to be useful, depending on the quality. You still have stuff like dirt and scratches, and it will be tons of work to get rid of these. But just in terms of resolution, even though 35mm negative will have more resolution than 1080p HD, release prints don't. In studies conducted they have been found to be on average something closer to 800 lines, although in my experience they are closer to the resolution of typical 1920x1080 in terms of detail level. So, 35mm ought to give you pretty good quality picture, not as good as anything you would see on BD or even broadcast HD, but it should be better than a modern DVD and would look quite nice when see in high definition. The biggest problem is fading and scratching though. If you wanted to restore an entire print from top to bottom and get rid of the scratching by hand-painting it all out, it would literally take you years. Computer programs are helpful, but they soften the picture and basically hide the dirt. I'm not aware of anything comparable to professional custom-software that some post houses use like Lowry that actually paints over the dirt--the amount of hardware Lowry has to use is pretty intense, so I'm sure it will be a bit longer before this is available commercially. And then of course you have the fading. I have my own theories on how to treat this, but you can see in Puggo's 16mm that there usually isn't any colour to pull out because it no longer exists. It's a difficult thing to deal with on material this old that likely has not been stored properly.

Well, the difference is not major, but there indeed is a discernable colour shift in the lighting on the spaceship, especially the one of the Nostromo. But to say that it's incorrect, I will always say is a bit rash. There's simply no way of knowing that. No two transfers of Alien have ever been exactly alike because it depends on the colourist's preference for little tweaks like that, so some shots in older ones match the BD and some are slightly different, but those older transfers varied from each other in equal amounts as well, and the PAL and NTSC versions of the same transfers even disagreed with each other. I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that the Blu Ray is more accurate than the Laserdisc/VHS masters of the past (was the 1999 Saga transfers from the 1996 masters? I thought they might be...). Especially considering the pains they have taken to get the original starfield-less shots and keep the original lighting in the Brett scene, etc., plus they are working from the original negatives and not interpositives and print masters like the older ones. It just seems slightly abritrary to hold up a particular transfer from 1999 and say the film must look exactly like this in every single respect. I'm only going by screencaps, but the BD skin tones by far look the most natural, the lighting and colour just looks "right" compared to older versions; in some ways it seems like it is about halfway between the two older theatrical 1999 and 2003 palettes.

In fact, if you look at the 1999 transfer shots posted above, you can see that there is blue in the lighting, it's just very washed out (the shot of landing craft is more apparent). So, it really just seems like the colours have better vibrancy in that respect. I guess you could argue that the BD has nudged them a bit more than they ought to. But I can guarantee that the earlier transfers were toned down a bit more than they ought to be as well, simply because you were dealing with older, fading IPs and much more limited telecine technology without the ability to even display all the colour information there anyway and again subject to preference and eye of the colourist to fiddle around with things to get them to look the way he thought they should look.