zombie84

You are probably thinking of Lucasfilm former-VP Jim Ward.

I'm not quite an audio expert but I would be willing to give it a listen, but not at 600MB. It would be helpful to just post a small clip, you only need 5 or 10 minutes to get a sense of the quality control issues.

In some ways, there needs to be redress to give Marquand back his due. Most sources, including the official ones sort of put Lucas up front and then Marquand either beside him or behind him, but everyone was more interested in Lucas. And of course, subsequent to this, it's become the sort of standard POV that Lucas directed the film through Marquand. I'm guilty of propogating this myself. While its mainly true, it also de-emphasizes the very real contributions and controls Marquand had.

That he died in 1987 surely contributes to this. I wonder how Kershner would be regarded if he had passed in 1987? No voice to continue to speak about the film with. Because after the films came and went, no one took interest in either of them until the mid-90s, when all of a sudden people were looking back at their contributions differently.

That's one thing I absolutely loved about the documentary made here, Returning to Jedi. It really put Marquand up front and it was really bizarre to hear so many of his thoughts on his own film, it's the only real time I actually got a sense of him as a director.

The significance of this is that Sansweet is the middle man between the public and Lucasfilm. So to get to Lucasfilm and its higher ups you often have to go through him. He's also been involved with many Lucasfilm projects, from DVDs and the new BD and has written numerous books. He's pretty much a mainstay of the convention circuit as well.

So, it's not exactly huge that he's leaving but it will change fan relation dynamics. He was, after all, the "fan ambassador."

I havent seen it yet. What does it say?

Yeah pretty much all home video telecines from the 1990s and especially the 1980s were deliberately brightened artificially. This was done because it was felt that you could not see the image properly if you watched it during the daytime, due to reflection and glare. They usually are not reliable for colour and level referencing. It was only in the last ten years or so with DVD and finally now Blu Ray that proper black levels started appearing. That's not to say that no LDs had properly levels, and because some of them were coloured in collaboration with directors and DPs while some DVDs were not sometimes these older transfers have more accurate colouring, but usually as far as levels and midrange go they aren't quite as true, simply because LDs could not possibly display true levels even if they wanted to.

I would assume 1977. Also, the ANH crawl was 1981, not 79.

The frequency pics are only useful if you have something to compare them against. Otherwise, they simply exist in a vaccum.

I do have to agree though--audio-wise, LDs have value. Yes, HD audio is lossless and in theory should be the same. But sometimes its not. Its re-mixed, and I find often that modern re-mixes simply aren't as good as the original mixes. But there's also the problem of digital audio. As an ardent vinyl collector, I will never listen to a CD if I have a well-preserved LP of the same recording. Even if its the same mix, in theory the digital version should identical or superior, but in practice there is a certain unmeasureable quality than an LP has. People describe it as a "warmth", but its something more complex than that, there is a harshness and crudeness to a lot of digital audio that you simply don't get in analog, aside from the often inferior mixing jobs. Maybe people will argue its just psychological, maybe they are partly right, and certainly many digital audio files are better than the best LP pressings for various reasons, but I do think there is a bit of truth in what JediTray is saying. I'll admit I've not heard very many BDs, though.

On the other hand, I would think its a bit exaggerated to say LD is better than BR. LD looks like shit. Yeah, it sound better--a little bit--but there is no way in the world anyone anywhere could say the soft, noisy picture of a Laserdisc compares to the rich, velvety quality of a high-def image. I mean, sometimes its better than what you saw in the theatre. A movie is not audio, and even though Lucas says "sound is 50% of the experience", this is just a philosophical expression, as the brain processes visual information at a much higher rate so its really only like 20% of the experience, and the difference between an LD and a BD in terms of audio, even though I would say in some cases there may be a difference, is not exactly huge.

I'm still looking for this $42,000 rooster that was spoken of.

Interesting. Have to say, didn't see this one coming. I'm genuinely curious what the real story is. Maybe he wants to devote more time to collecting 30 year old cereal boxes.

As to whether his towing the party line was just because Lucasfilm was paying him big bucks--from what I can gather, he'll probably be lurking the TFN prequel forums. No one who truely had any dignity would wear an adult-sized ewok costume. It reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Smithers dresses up as Burns' teddy bear Bobo. Yeah. Sansweet is the Mr. Smithers to George Lucas' Mr. Burns.

The compositing was so good in ROTJ that there were only a handful of shots that needed to be re-comped, I suppose. I think Lucasfilm also was feeling the strains of both time and money--ROTJ was in fact delayed a week and had the least amount of money put into it, but there are other factors at play there (it's usually claimed that its delay was because ANH and ESB were still doing strong business).

I wonder how "clean" the film actually looked with all the dozens of layers of composites, and the possibly-not-re-printed-wipes. The 2004 version got rid of all the grain and smoothed out the density fluxuations, and all the home video versions of the 1997 version are too soft to see that sort of detail. I only saw it once in 1997 so I don't remember how well it compared to the previous films in terms of that kind of picture detail.

Also, it was asked why the random re-comping? i.e. a sequence will start off original, then in the middle there is one or two re-comps, then back to original.

The answer is because they never really intended to do so much re-comping in the first place. But then ILMers would point out the odd shot that was noticeable worse than the rest around it, or that needed something smoothed out or moved. But the project was never supposed to be so in-depth or expensive, so they couldn't re-do every shot, nor did they want to, so they just picked and chose the ones they thought were the worst off. One side effect of this was that when the re-comped one shot and fixed it, suddenly it made another shot that didn't look bad before seem worse because everything around it was perfect, so they usually ended up re-doing two or three other shots in a sequence. In fact, ESB and ROTJ were never supposed to get the SE treatment, and the decision wasn't made until sometime in late 1995 or early 1996. This shows why so little work was done to those films, the 35mm negatives were in relatively good shape and the effects still held up pretty well and weren't in dire need of restoring and enhancing.

Now that's very interesting. I would say either possibility is equally likely.

generalfrevious said:

I definitely think that Lucas is repressing history and that he should be opposed. The problem here is that no else here realizes that we as a whole are nothing more than a fringe group, thrown into the dustbin of history. Few people are willing to side with us because we are perceived as radicals, and most people consider it insanity to side with us. I don't like what GL is doing to SW as much as anyone on this site. But it is like fighting an atom bomb with a slingshot. We have more in common with Cuban exiles than with mainstream society.

 Dude, this is utterly ridiculous. Maybe people think you are a radical because of your use of comical hyperbole. I certainly do, and I run bloody savestarwars.com. But actually most people would like to see the originals and don't like that they've been suppressed. Most people actually are on the side represented by normal, reasonable and informed people like many of us here. That's why the site in question here has been designed in a very level-headed way to simply inform and educate further on the matter, rather than some radical, fanboy bitching and whining and freakish threats against a respected public figure.

In the end our voices will be silenced and no one will give a fuck. So if you are angry at what I am saying, deal with it. 

The fact is that you've silenced your own voice by laying down and accepting things. If everyone was like this, nothing would ever change and thats a bona fide fact that you have to deal with. I don't have to "deal with" your attitude because you are forecasting a future that doesn't yet exist, and is privy to change depending on the attitudes and efforts of public opinion to a degree.  On the contrary, I would say you have to "deal with" the people who are trying to change things. If you don't think things can change then fine, shut the fuck up, take your anti-depressants and be sure to thank people like us when the original versions of the films eventually do get properly released.

That was slightly uncomfortable to watch. But I do have to give him a bizarre sort of credit for his conviction in believing in DTS so much.

generalfrevious said:

I would love to see the OOT saved, but no one has suggested any practical reason fight against GL.

 What? I thought I made it clear in my previous post. If you are willing to just lay down and let Lucasfilm do what it wants, then they'll never release it, except maybe if Lucas dies and he doesn't specificy in his will that it not be released, and to be honest I believe there's a moderate possibility he might yet be crazy enough to at least consider doing that if he thinks he can get away with it.

Basically, if there's no public manifestation of the desire to see the OOT treated right, then there's no way it will ever happen. Luckily, people do complain about it, and the purpose of my site is magnify this complaint and make it more publically visible.

I don't understand this defeatist attitude. What does that accomplish except letting Lucasfilm walk over you? If everyone was like you nothing in the world would ever improve.

If you don't keep the fight up, then it will die. Saying "oh don't worry, the OOT will not go away, just wait it out" is essentially passive, and it's a circular catch-22 that if you do take that attitude it will actually create a situation where Lucas won't have to release the OOT, because no one cares enough to raise a stink. So you have to create a reality--you have to protest it all. The situation is dire, in that the OOT will go away unless you care enough. But then there's the catch-22: by the sheer existance of our protest, the OOT will never go away.

Like I said, it's all circular. It's inevitable that it will survive, but only if people continue to care. If people lay down and let Lucasfilm do its thing, then it'll just go away. People say Lucas is doing this to milk money but that's entire bullshit. He's not in it for the money at all, and he's sacrificed hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost profit; if his plan worked and people just sort of accepted the SE and forgot about the originals, I truely believe that he would never even speak of the originals again, let alone release them.

I don't know why he thought this would work though. I imagined he's been surprised and dismayed at his failure to control people's memories and opinions. And that's the only reason he's slowly stepping back on his scheme. The world isn't letting it.

You see, generalgrievous, we aren't losing the fight, but the fight will be lost if you don't keep it up. That's the danger--the OOT could be lost, and it currently is in a state of semi-lostness. I don't think it will remain this way, but the point of activism is to protest the danger and create the reality that you would like to see.

I never got this stuff about forgiving or not forgiving Lucas for the prequels. So he made films that you don't like, accept it and move on. The real stick in the craw is the original versions of the original trilogy, and that's a real instance where Lucas has made enemies.

I think the lunchbox is a joke. The description was pretty funny.

Ah, okay cool, thanks. :)

Question for people that have this, is there bonus content in the hardcover version like there was for The Making of Star Wars? The extra stuff in the first book was well worth the extra bucks but I've not heard about anything extra for this one and don't want to have to pay another 10 or 20 dollars if I have to.

On the contrary, I've thought about it so much that I even wrote an article about it.

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/structuringtheprequels.html

LOL, I like "yeah, you probably just don't understand it" response.

"I have watched 1-2-3-4-5-6, 4-5-6-1-2-3, and 4-5-1-2-3-6 more than once each, and in I have found that 4-5-1-2-3-6 is the best experience. "

Well there you go. It's ultimately preference. Personally, my preference is 4-5-6, and then maybe 3 if I am in the mood. Based on "logic and experience", as you put it, there is no order that includes the prequels that is fully satisfying simply because they are poor films and if you like 4 and 5, which we both agree one should start with, it is very likely that you will dislike some or all of the prequel films.

But in terms of construction, the films have a steady rise linearly as the OT and then PT. The special effects, scale of the films, stylization, etc. has a specific context to era in which they were made, and mixing and cutting back and forth between them doesn't work. That's a main reason why 1-2-3-4-5-6 falls on its ass, there's too huge a disconnect, the only way the prequels make sense as is a seperate trilogy seen afterwards. The disconnect becomes magnified when you have ESB going to Jar Jar Binks and then a film made in 2005 having a sequel to it made in 1983 whose narrative throughline has been dropped since four whole films earlier.

Sorry, not buying it. It may work for you, but not for me, and it's by no means inherantly superior as I mentioned, there are serious, systemic flaws in this scheme.

Yeah, I'll have to disagree with that. Each film builds on the one before it and depends on familiarity with the preceding chapter, both in terms of narrative information and also one-upmanship of new elements and scales added to the films, so any disruption of the linear release order introduces incongruity there. That doesn't mean it's necessarily ruined or anything, but clearly going from ESB to TPM and ROTS to ROTJ is an order with some serious flaws and not inherantly superior.

So, I was fiddling around with that scanline shot in the GOUT. It kinda looked like there was artifacts of scanlines that had been smeared away, watching it on an endless loop there definitely looks like some kind of layer there. But it also really just looked like noise or grain. So, I took the fullscreen pic with the scanlines and played around in photoshop. The first thing you notice is that the exposure and brightness is way different, possibly because the scanlines darken it. But anyway my theory was this: if the GOUT is just that image but filtered and brightened, it should be possible to re-create it using this supposedly original image.

No such luck. I got the brightness/exposure levels to sort of come close, but it still looked very different, and it was really obvious that the scanlines were still there. So, I thought maybe if I soft filtered it, they would go away. Eventually they actually did start becoming less visible, but the image was a soft mess. The GOUT image has pretty good fidelity on the power generators, and the dead giveaway is that the writing and other electronic markings on the side are as pin-sharp as the GOUT gets. I also tried to see if I could make the colours of the electronics change--no such luck. It's simply not possible. You end up with a red power generator.

Conclusion: the GOUT is a totally different image than the 89/92/whatever the fullscreen sample is. The electonic viewer markings are coloured differently, and there's no scanlines overlayed. The scanlines are artificially composited, not "burned in"--for instance, the shot of "We've spotted imperial walkers"; like most scanlines instances, its created by playing the footage back on a television monitor and re-photographing it. Such is not the case with this one from what I can. So the GOUT is an earlier version, or possible the "original" clean version.

How it got there, I don't know. I also can't say if the scanline version is "original", maybe they added this to a later re-release, or had it done in 1980 but it was never ready for any theatrical version but then was able to be seen for the video releases done later. But yeah. I'm calling the GOUT a totally different version of that shot.

No, but it's a pretty solid endorsement of why the films play so well when watched in release order.

Maybe. But when he was in preproduction in England he bought all this expensive video equipment that he used to do tape-to-tape video editing using old war films that he used to show people and ILM guys how the scenes would cut together, for both the "here they come" sequence and the end battle.

Then when he was in Tunisia someone broke into the house he was renting and stole all the video equipment. I don't think the tapes he made have ever been publically seen, its possible that they don't exist anymore for one reason or another. Maybe he did like what I did for Return of the Jedi in 1989 and recorded Super Dave Osbourne over it. :p

But yes, maybe they were able to get 35mm prints to use for the workprint. Also, the workprint is black and white for all footage, including the live action original footage which obviously was filmed in colour. It was all printed to black and white for editorial use because it was cheaper, so probably 633 Squad would have been too.