zombie84

None, I'm a bit confused at some of your arguments here. Some are unclear, but it seems like you also haven't considered some things.

none said:

Baronlando wrote:

This is why these guys are all such pissers, they don't care.

I think they do care (in a different way), but care enough to spend 10 million on clean up work, and 10 million for production fees, so that the public who has already bought several versions in the last 5 years can have a slightly upgraded copy, you can believe that's not caring.

I'm not sure what you are arguing here--that their (in)action is actually understanable? As Baronlando said, doing to Star Wars what gets done to every other film in the world is not a big deal. Yeah, a couple million in work, another few million in production fees. You know how much it costs to move a new LEGO set, or a Jar Jar Binks underwear package? Similar logistical costs. This is because it is a product that will be consumed by hundreds of thousands, if not million, of consumers. We are dealing with big numbers. Let's put this into perspective. The 2004 set sold $100 million in sales...in its first day of release. It's first day. Not its first week, or first year. This is the kind of return you get. So, the numbers are big, and the sales are proportional. Thats what any Star Wars product is like, because there are 100,000 moms in the world buying their four-year-old a pack of Jar Jar underwear. Its routine for the people organizing this stuff. That's what running the merchandising sector of a huge corporate conglomerate for the biggest franchise in history is like.

This is a company that's in Fortune 500, if I am not mistaken. It runs itself to a large degree because of the bureacracy and organization, and it brings in billions of dollars of income annually, most of it from the Star Wars brand name.

Also, case in point: Troll 2 is on Blu Ray. Troll 2. On Blu Ray. Digital Bits said it was the biggest waste of technology and resources they've seen. But its there, it was done.

But this is all a bit of a misnomer. Lucasfilm would love to release the films. This is a fact, that they've been trying to do this for years. The reasons why are obvious. One, probably some of the LFL corporate guys actually want to see the films themselves. But two, its the biggest property they have. It will sell the most amount of copies. Far from being "not worth it"--from a business perspective it's actually the biggest, most lucrative thing they have.

But what it comes down to is this. Lucas actually isn't involved with the day-to-day operations of LFL. It sort of runs itself without him. But when it comes to this issue, he is the gatekeeper. And he said no up until the GOUT. Now, some people say Lucas let the GOUT out for $$, so that people bought the shit version and then they would buy the good version later. Maybe that's right, but whatever the case it's irrelevant. The point is that Lucas has the ultimate say in when, if and how the OOT is released, so the discussion here ultimately doesn't involve Lucasfilm as a corporate entity. Which is why I won't lynch Steve Sansweet on this aspect--its ultimately out of his hands. I take issue with his promotion and other things he has expressed with it, but ultimately this is not really about Lucasfilm but Lucas himself.

 

Plus also realize that GL and some of the people at LFL have been there since the beginning. There was no 'awakening' for them. No magical spark, no 'Wow that was life altering.' SW has always been an undergoing process which is continuing to this day. Each development funds the next advancement.

This is not true as far as I can tell.

Most of Lucasfilm have not been there from the beginning. In fact, I don't believe anyone deeply involved in the company remains from the early days, save for Lucy Wilson and Bunny Alsup, whom I believe are Lucas' personal assistants now and do some other work like editing books. The architects of Lucasfilm were people like Charles Lippincott, Charles Webber and other associates like Gary Kurtz and Marcia Lucas, but I don't think anyone from the 80s is still there except Ben Burtt, and even a lot of the 80s regime wasn't there when it started in the mid and late 70s (such as president Webber).

The people who run Lucasfilm are corporate guys. They were hired by Lucasfilm, probably not that long ago, because of their experience in big business. Upper management at these places is pretty revolving door. This is not a mom and pop shop, this is a gigantic worldwide corporate conglomerate, with tons of subsidiaries. The people that run it and are deeply involved have to be the best business dealers in the world, because the company is so big it kind of demands it. It's exactly like Disney. What makes--or maybe made--Disney so great was that it was this huge corporate machine, but through marketing and propaganda, I guess you could say, they gave the impression that this was ol' Uncle Walts tiny home business where he painted the toys himself. But it was a huge, massive, pretty impersonal business that he had very little part of when it got so big at the end of his life.

Case in point, Jim Ward left as VP, but he had only been there since the 1990s I believe, so at least one other guy came before him. These are businessmen, not Lucas' buddies from college. Most of them are much younger than Lucas and--actually--they did have a "wow" moment. They ought to have been in school when Star Wars came out and were probably blown away like everyone else. In fact, I'm sure an increasing proportion of Lucasfilm wasn't alive in 1977, because there are plenty of people working for the company who are 33 years old or younger.

 

Puggo wrote:

The way in which he issued the GOUT was a clever ploy to "prove" how poor the original one was. Now, most people walking the street believe Lucas' BS, based on the GOUT, and are thankful that he rescued it with the SE.

Don't have any stats to say one way or the other if the average street walker was the convincing opinion which proved that GOUT was worth the LFL time, (but i'll agree they do fund it) and i'll give a suggestion if you run into one. I'll say it again, besides quality. If you are going to say a movie is poorer because it only exists on laserdisc not DVD or blu-ray, that's fine, but it's not a point to hang your hat on. I can appreciate a piece of media on 240x160 if I have to.

Well, I will give Puggo credit here because what he is referencing is Lucas' comments made at the time of the release, which basically framed it in terms of a competetion to be decided by sales. But with the bad quality of the GOUT, many serious fans who would have bought the release stayed away, so its a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of the argument Lucas used.

However, increasingly people's standards have changed because of HD and DVD. People don't watch VHS anymore. I do, maybe you do, but if I give you two choices, a really good movie on VHS and the same version of the movie on Blu Ray you will choose the Blu Ray and never get around to the VHS. Because to a lot of people, they prefer the OOT, but if the SE is on Blu Ray and the OOT is on VHS, they will take the SE Blu Ray instead, because even though it's not their preferred cut, it's still the same basic movie and the image and sound quality difference is so big that it makes up for any shortcomings. Also, there is a stigma with older technology. People simply won't watch shitty looking old transfers of Laserdisc and VHS. The standards have changed. And it also damages the integrity of the OOT--people who do watch the GOUT can't help noticing how bad the quality is. Either they think its because the movie is simply old and that's how it is supposed to look, or it lessens their enjoyment because they can't see it in the standard that they are used to and one that shows off the film in the best available way. I would think this is a pretty easy point to see.

I have the VHS widescreen in those awesome hard clamshell cases from 1996 or so, but unfortunately it's locked up in a cottage for the winter. Probably they used the same source for the DVD a couple years later though.

I wonder about those starfields if they were on any original versions. Msycamore, you of course know all about this from our discussion in the SE changes thread--I'm thinking of the ESB holograms, which apparently had multiple versions of the FX done in different "original" prints, with later prints and transfers (i.e. the DE/Faces and 1985 IP) somehow being less complete than earlier prints and transfers, and then when the original versions are restored for the SE people think its a change because they were used to the home video transfers based on less complete versions.

What this brings me to is I wonder if the starfields were on original 1979 material and the Alien print they used for the 1999 Saga transfer simply didn't have the fully complete version of these shots, and then when they went back to the negatives/original sources for the DC the shots are now complete as they were in the original "final version". I would be very curious to see various LD transfers of the films and see if there is a difference. But I guess this sort of thing is impossible to know for sure unless there is.

The only reason I bring this up, aside from the surprising finds in the SE-comparison thread that reminds me of this, is that it seems unusual to have done new VFX work for the DC, especially for something so unnecessary and insignificant as this, because as far as I know there was absolutely no work done to enhance or re-do any of the special effects work, they just re-timed the colour which they had to do since they were using the negatives.

He basically sounds like a Lucasfilm employee in that interview, at least as it pertains to us here. One who like most people wouldn't mind a restored original version, but ultimately doesn't care that much, and finds that people passionate about it are a nuissance to his job.

"Your complaints have been noted, but sorry no, now stop asking because it is clogging up my inbox." That is paraphrasing how the experience of the OOT issue was like from his end of things. Which is essentially the viewpoint of a Lucasfilm lackey. It's a nuissance that people like the original versions so much because his job is ultimately to defend, or at least tolerate and rationalise, their suppression. Which is why I don't believe the man has much integrity. He's a guy like many of the sort you find at a place like TFN--they would like to see the original versions treated properly, but ultimately are just fine watching the SE (and all of its home video glitches) and will find themselves compelled to defend this or rationalise it. Which is why he fit in so well with the role he played at Lucasfilm. He has a good point in that the company runs the way it runs and they are well aware of the demand, etc., but it really does seem like he ultimately doesn't actually care. Being on the company payroll probably made him hold back some criticisms or hype things a little bit more than he otherwise would have, but in the end I do believe that his behaviour at Lucasfilm is a fairly accurate representation of him as a person. Like Baronlando so eloquently put it, this is a man so loony that he had to build a second home to house all the merchandise he was addicted to buying and then he turns around and tells fans to grow up because they want to actually watch the movies.

Shame that the DC got rid of the gold colouring for that scene, was a very interesting design choice, sort of an "ancient Egypt" golden tomb thing going on. It looked quite striking, especially since it contrasted so much with the design of the rest of the film.

As for Aliens, there are only two scenes so far that look like they are significantly different than the previous version, that being parts of the two queen alien sequences where some shots that were only partly blue-lighted are now much more predominantly blue, and slightly darker too. The rest of the film looks like it is simply truer colours compared to the washed out, red-shifted, poorer transfers of the past. I'm not sure whether to call the new blue shots revisionism though--in some ways they do match continuity-wise better with surrounding footage. Maybe the footage was always meant to be timed that way even if it wasn't photographed that way, so previous versions left the footage as it was and thus presented it wrong. Or maybe they decided to "correct" it now when it was always uncorrected mixed lighting in the original release. I guess you'd have to take a look at a print to know for sure. I usually see an original 35mm copy once a year so I'll be sure to note how it looks next time I get the chance, since that is pretty much the only way to know.

With the de-graining and the new FX fix though, I'm not sure how much one should care about "purism", since this is not completely accurate to its original version any way you cut it. If its a change, it's very minor like the others. But, as I said, from the examples posted it doesn't look like the photography is obviously different except in a couple instances, whereas though many other caps look slightly different from previous versions this is probably just due to better accuracy in the transfer (previous versions are fairly pink, and slightly dull).

Those definitely match the GOUT. There is some distortion and scanlining because the way they filmed the holograms was by playing them on a CRT monitor and re-photographing them. So there is some very, very mild scanline-like things burnt into the image just because of the way they were created. You can't really see it in still images but in motion you can see a bit of that "television distortion" that looks like scanlines. This is what the GOUT has and this is also what is pretty clearly on display in the 8mm caps above.

Amazing to find all these little details! I'm very surprised how much more there is to uncover in these films.

dark_jedi said:

doubleofive said:

Lets start with the Here Jonsey scene.

Please refresh my memory on this scene, what am I looking for? it has been a very long time since I have watched any of these movies, and I will check what it is you want to know.

In the original version, when Brett is calling for Jones and enters a large room with some kind of vehicle in it and finds the alien skin shedding, the scene had a "rusty" sort of look to it, and it was darker. In the DC, it was tinted to be a fairly bright goldeny colour. One of the most obvious examples are some of the early establishing shots where he first enters the room.

Chewtobacca said:

zombie84 said: Well, as I said:

"The DC timing may not be 100% perfect, because no transfer ever can be for an older film simply because the colours will no longer exist in any reliable way, and perhaps the DC is a bit punchier than it should be, but its closer to watching something from the original negative than any previous version of the film, including original prints"

You also said to Imperial Fighter:

 I understood what you are saying. But you are mistaken.

It seems to me that that is too strong a statement to make when you concede in the same post that it is impossible to be 100% perfect and therefore 100% sure.  I agree with everything you said about the Blu-rays, and I am sure that they are fantastic, but if the color timing does differ I can understand how he feels if he prefers the old transfers, inaccurate though they are in some respects.  I just think that one can see both sides -- that's all.

Well, what I said is that he is mistaken in insisting that the previous transfers are how the film should look and the yardstick by which to measure the film. This is still a fault. It doesn't matter if the DC is not 100%, it's still a mistake to take it to task for deviating from the previous transfers since the previous transfers were not accurate either, nor are theatrical prints (and ones memory of theatrical prints). Whether the DC is perfectly faithful or not, my point is that it's in my opinion a better representation of the look and image quality of the film.

dark_jedi said:

zombie84 said:

It's not that the BD is necessarily perfect in every way. But its closer to the film than any other version you will see.

Now that is all I need to know, but if anyone wants a few screens from somewhere just let me know.

Of course, I'm assuming the BD looks about the same as the film did in theatres and DVD in 2003, with the exception of the reverted timing for the Jones scene in the theatrical version. I haven't actually seen the BD. But there's no reason why it should be any different.

Chewtobacca said:

I think that there is room for an intermediate position between Zombie84's and ImperialFighter's.  On one hand the old DVD and LD home video releases were often red shifted and washed out.  They also frequently had their contrast boosted. 

On the other hand, remastered Blu-ray transfers (by which I mean true remasters, not DNR scrubbing of old ones) that attempt to recreate the way that prints originally looked often appear strikingly different in terms of colors, because the old transfers were inaccurate; however, as Zombie84 stated, recreating the original appearance of films is never completely accurate.  It is possible that, even with the best intentions, those who restore films sometimes overcompensate in their attempts to restore how films originally looked.  The blue-cyan shift that is increasingly seen on many Blu-rays can be excessive, in my opinion.

The tendency of certain directors to revise how their films look also has to be taken into account.  I am not prepared to accept  that every time a Blu-ray looks different from previous releases it is all down to ENR emulation or an attempt to restore the theatrical look.  The Blu-ray-is-always-right attitude is just as extreme as the attitude of those who cannot accept that a look to which they have become accustomed is the only way to present a film.

EDIT: Like dark_jedi, I have not yet opened my set.  From screenshots, I agree with mysycamore that the Blu-rays look better than the last DVD releases in terms of color.  I am concerned about the cropping too though.  ImperialFighter, I will try to let you know about the colors on the theatrical cut of Alien after I watch my copy.

 Well, as I said:

"The DC timing may not be 100% perfect, because no transfer ever can be for an older film simply because the colours will no longer exist in any reliable way, and perhaps the DC is a bit punchier than it should be, but its closer to watching something from the original negative than any previous version of the film, including original prints"

It's not that the BD is necessarily perfect in every way. But its closer to the film than any other version you will see. And probably more so than 1979 prints. Those prints are washed out and have contrast and black level issues, because the processes of printing different generation degrades them that way. The DC, on the other hand, went back to the negatives and struck prints directly from a new Digital Intermediate. That's why, if you've ever seen the DC in theatres (I saw it two weeks ago, as it happens, at the Bloor Cinema here in Toronto) it has all that nice, inky black levels and not washed out grey, with all the colour saturation, proper contrast and detail level that a new scan from the negatives would have given you. It's a stunning way to see the films and far, far better than anything you could have seen in a 1979 theatre (being a limited release also helps preserve DC prints from the wear and tear of the 1979 wide-release).

I've seen the DC in theatres 4 times now and the 1979 version once, and even though the 1979 print was all red and scratched up, it was still pretty obvious that the milkier black levels and, from what I could discern through the fading, weaker colours and contrast was simply due to being a Kodak Eastman release print, in a time when Kodak was skimping on its print quality. If the DC timing is a bit too punchy than it ought to be the difference is not very significant. It's true that there is a bit of a modern trend to punch up the contrast and black levels on older movies, but its also true that peoples experiences of older movies are through home video where the brightness was increased and saturation decreased. Many films of the 70s, when you go back to the negatives, have really vibrant colours, very fine grain, and very inky, nice black levels, it's just that no one has seen them for so long, and even when you saw release prints you were never truely seeing them. That's why when Taxi Driver was restored back from its negative a few years ago everyone cried foul--wheres all that dirt and grain, and the murky lighting and bad contrast and desaturated colours? But the negative didn't originally look like that. Ironically, by showing the film as it actually was instead of the way it looked through low quality intermediates, it robbed the film of a significant part of its character.

Again, it's sort of impossible to know exactly how wrong or right it is. But IMO it is definitely the best representative of what the film actually looked like on the original answer print, excepting the changes made for the scene of Brett's search for Jones (which I believe also has some shots tightened up in the cutting as well, or at least that is how I remembered it...I think Scott says something to this effect in the commentary).

ImperialFighter said:

zombie84 said:

The colour timing on the DC is pretty much the same as on the theatrical edition, Imperial Fighter. Its only the Brett scene that was significantly altered. Which is why they ought to have branched it.

Not sure if there's a misunderstanding here, but I'll try again -  the 'Theatrical' cut of ALIEN on the 'Quadrilogy' dvd set is identically colour-timed throughout to match the 'darkened'/'stylized' look of the newly colour-timed 'Director's Cut'...compared to the 'Theatrical' cut of ALIEN in it's previous releases. 

Whether due to 'branching' or being deliberately done to match the new look of the 'Director's Cut or not, I don't know, but either way, this new colourization is very different to how the 'Theatrical' cut always used to look.

 I understood what you are saying. But you are mistaken.

What I am saying is that the way the DC is timed is actually accurate to the original cinematography. Except the Brett scene, and that's it as far as I know. I don't recall any other intentional/radical re-colouring. So the theatrical cut ought to be using the DC footage and not the previous transfers because the way the film should look is basically the way the DC looks, not necessarily the way it looked on TV and in video from the 1980s and 1990s.

Again, one shouldn't judge based off the previous releases, which were derived from Laserdisc. That's been the entire problem here. The DC timing may not be 100% perfect, because no transfer ever can be for an older film simply because the colours will no longer exist in any reliable way, and perhaps the DC is a bit punchier than it should be, but its closer to watching something from the original negative than any previous version of the film, including original prints. Previous home video versions were washed out, red shifted, and had artificial midrange saturation in accordance with home video telecine trends before the 2000s.

Its kind of how everyone was complaining that the Death Star interiors were blue in the 2004 DVD release. "It should be grey like the previous versions!" But the previous versions were actually wrong. You can see this in the new Apocalypse Now BD that comes out, which is coloured more accurately to the original release but looks quite a bit different from previous versions (which were also supposedly supervised with the DP).

http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/Rumor_Alert_Indy_Headed_To_3D_Too_134648.asp

http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/Rumor_Alert_Indy_Headed_To_3D_Too_134648.asp

Lucasfilm already confirmed it as untrue.

Don't belief half the stuff you read concerning Lucasfilm.

I'm not sure if he has them yet, but I know he was planning on doing a telecine. There are a few pages of really good photos from the reels, but none of them are the scanline shots.

I'm curious to see what the 16mm reels look like. They are taken from the 70mm version, no?

The colour timing on the DC is pretty much the same as on the theatrical edition, Imperial Fighter. Its only the Brett scene that was significantly altered. Which is why they ought to have branched it.

Aha. So the scanlines are definitely entirely different elements between the GOUT and JSC. Its not a DVNR thing, these are two separate versions of the composites.

I found this just now:

http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/better-than-star-wars-prequels-better-than-lucas/17yackmuu

I don’t know if you all can see this because its from the msnbc Canadian site. I imagine there is an American equivalent link. Its a (video) news story discussing how the storytelling in the new video games such as Force Unleashed II are better and more interesting than Lucas’ attempts in the prequels. Thought it was an interesting examination. Purists may complain that FUII has trendy things like slow-motion/bulletime, and that its too violent and caters to adult audiences looking for something “cool” (whatever that means), and I guess there’s some truth in that, but I have to admit the trailer for FUII is better than anything I’ve seen Lucas write since 1977.

archived working link - http://web.archive.org/web/20101029035124/http://video.ca.msn.com:80/web/20101029000000*/http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/better-than-star-wars-prequels-better-than-lucas/17yackmuu

People camped out in line in 1980 and 1983. In fact, I have a newspaper article from here in Toronto where a couple was married in the line-up to ROTJ...dressed as characters.

In 1983, Star Wars was also looked at as a cheap, merchandise-driven money-making empire. It was seen as diluted and hollow, an excuse to sell toys. And it was considered a cult, nerd-like thing the way ST was seen at the time.

It's really the same arguments. We tend to look at the past as a nostalgic "good ol days" as we age, but Star Wars hasn't actually changed much over the years, except the newer films weren't as good. So, in 1983, merchandising the fuck out of a good movie was perhaps questionable but fun. In 2010, merchandising the fuck out of a bad movie is seen as "reprehensible" or whatever. It all depends on whether you enjoy the stuff that its spun off from, ultimately. Its true that it cheapens the franchise, but the franchise has been cheapened since 1978, the only thing that changed, aside from an increase in output, has been that the films weren't as good.

It was re-timed in the DC to make it look like everything was laquered over with gold. The original scene had gold and brown decor in it, but not so extreme. It was an interesting design choice for the DC, and I'm sad it's been changed back to the darker original colouring. The problem was that there was no branching for the original version of the scene in the theatrical cut, there was only the one version of the scene with the gold colouring regardless of whether you were watching the supposed original cut. I don't know why they just didn't put two versions of the scene, one with the original darker colouring to branch for the theatrical and then one with the golden hue version to branch for the DC.

To be fair though, the Clone Wars series is pretty terrific. I'm glad they made it, and its something that is equally entertaining for both adults and kids. It has brought a lot of quality entertainment to kids, and its something adults can appreciate too. I realize its a bit of a diamond in the rough by most EU standards. But I also realize that 90% of fans out there just ignore all the EU except a select one or two things that they fancy. But its nice to have a pesudo-mass-audience Star Wars thing like Clone Wars, because lets face it, kids today aren't watching BTTF and ANH like we were, it's not as culturally or stylistically relevant, so its always beneficial to have newer things out there.

You can't make it the way it was. The people involved are different now. Case in point, Lucas makes the PT. Case in point, Lucas, Ford and Speilberg make Crystal Skull. I doubt Gary Kurtz would be of any use, since he hasn't worked in three decades, and he wouldn't be the same person he was in 1980 anyway.

I wouldn't want a next trilogy that isn't different than the ones before it, there is nothing worse than repeating oneself for the sake of some "purist" argument which is an illusion anyway. The third trilogy was always designed to be stylistically different, and I think that's one of its strongest assets. Based on the mature, introspective and philosophical tone and subject matter Lucas said it would have explored, I think Nolan would have been a perfect fit for it given his sensibilities, strengths and the subject matter of his past work.

I was about two years old when I first saw Star Wars. Obviously, I have no memory of "first seeing it." I obviously understood little as well, I am told I laughed my head off at the cantina scene though. But it's kind of nice having something always there in your life, since before a time you actually have memories of.

So I don't think there is any "correct" age to show a kid the film. I say show it them as early as possible, worked for me after all.

Frink, I don't think you will be banned or punished the second you make some kind of sarcastic remark or off-topic reference. Everyone does that here and its part of the off-the-cuff charm that makes non-preservation discussion entertaining at OT.com. I think its just a warning about doing this chronically without ever contributing anything worthwhile to a discussion. I have to say you are often guilty of this and sometimes it gets a bit old. But if you got in trouble for any "technical" breach of this new rule then we'd all be in trouble as well, and obviously this is not going to happen. So I would say just be yourself but take it down a few notches in areas where it otherwise might impose upon more "informative" discussion, or whatever.