zombie84

I don't know if you can say it was a "prime" influence or that it blueprinted anything. But clearly it was something Lucas had on his mind when he was scripting the ending, just in terms of all those war films that kicking around in his head and all the cliches and plot devices they had. But it was more than just a "subconscious" memory, or whatever, because he was aware of it and used the movie's footage in the rough cut. Clearly it was something specific that he was looking at for shot design and such. Its not that the film is particularly great or anything, I just think when he was writing the space battle and was thinking "it should have a strategic shot, you know like they did in Dam Busters and that 633 Squadron film", he finally got around to checking out the films themselves and said "well, this footage here will be useful for temp shots." It may even be slightly random, because Lucas had a very early VCR of some sort and whenever there was an old war movie on television he would tape them and take notes, and then later cut the taped footage for the rough cut. So it might have just come down to the coincidence that PBS aired 633 Squadron at 2 AM one sunday night and Lucas happened to see it, and so it ended up being in the film.

What the hell is that? Is that a random frame of a starfield in between the Cloud City SE cuts?

Also, I'm still not over that scanline thing. Like, what does that mean? Was there two different versions of the shot, one with scanlines and one without? If so its weird that the earlier video had it, as it seems that they were adding things to the picture as the releases went, rather than subtracting. I don't see why they would deliberately alter that one detail though. Hmm. I wonder now what that 16mm print Puggo was trying to get ahold of looks like.

633 Squad was actually used as temp footage placeholders for the space battles before the ILM comps were done, IIRC. That's where the concrete influence comes from. Of course, the film is just a Dam Busters clone but I think Lucas was mainly interested in it for the conception of flight battle, rather than story and character. But it no doubt further ingrained in him the "one strategic shot will topple the enemy base" thread of the end battle.

Akwat Kbrana said:

Hey, a house can burn down or get drafty or be repossessed. But this poster is historic!

 Aw damn, I thought you said possessed. I've been having a bit of problem lately with some invisible entities....

Haha, well in his defense I am a terrible financial planner. Maybe I'm not investing enough in Star Wars posters that cost half the price of a small house.

Fucking ripoff I'd say.

If it was $420 I would say cool. $4200o?? Fuck off. Its folded to shit and can't even be practically displayed because of its size. No one stupid enough to buy this has that much disposable income.

This continues to be one of the more awesome pieces of work in progress right now.

I don't know how you guys spot this stuff, you must be part hummingbird or something.

It also amazes me at how the GOUT could lose entire bloody scanlines! I mean, that's an enormous amount of picture information! Is it possible that other sources have it while the GOUT simply doesn't? Do the 1993/5 fullscreen versions show the scanlines? Or do you think it's because of the DVNR? I am a bit skeptical because that's so much picture info and the GOUT normally has comparable picture information to previous scans except in moving shots where DVNR comes into play, but that shot is stationary. In either case, it's really weird.

I fail to see how someone can say "Star Wars is lost" when some guy has a Technicolor print of Star Wars sitting in his home. But beyond this, the OOT will never literally fade away for good. If Lucas doesn't restore it himself in the next eight or nine years, someone will after he dies. Even if his will says "don't release the OOT," mark my words the second the dust settles from his grave there will be a squad of fans, professionals and corporate executives trying to find a way around it, and eventually they will succeed. It's essentially a waiting game, one way or another.

My copy is pretty much in perfect condition. Pages are yellow, but i think they were sort of printed that way. I'm sure it will outlast my self.

None--cool info!

Yeah. As far back as 1983 even! In Skywalking, Lucas claims he used that title to make the storyline more secretive. And then I think in Annotated Screenplays he says he did it to trick bootleggers but somehow the enormous merchandising empire of Lucasfilm released products with the logo on it for months.

Lucas is a true artist when it comes to making up improbable excuses for things that don't require any.

On a related note, I found the vinyl soundtrack to Neverending Story in a second hand store the other day. Amazingly, the sounds of Limahl attracted my housemates, much like the sounds of Barry White attracts snakes.

Sluggo said:

Ah-aah-ah-ah-aah-aaah.  Ah-aah-ah-ah-aah-aaaaah.

005 said:

Some of these movies aren't being composed for 3D though. There are things directors should be doing to take advantage of the format that they aren't because they don't even know about the conversion till the movie is in post. THAT'S my problem. Movies shot in 3D don't use the camera focus tricks you use in 2D. You're going to compose scenes differently. The problem is that they're not able to because they don't even know the 3D version is coming, especially with movies that were released 30 years ago.

I think zombie is rubbing off on me.  This is of course only some of the movies.  The poor execution of a quickly assembled 3D movie from a 2D movie shouldn't be a total indictment of all 3D movies. 

 I'm of the belief that you don't need to compose for 3D, you just compose for what looks good.

Look at Avatar--what about it was "composed for 3D"? In 2D films there is always stuff flying at the camera and giving us POVs to create a virtual illusion of space. Avatar has a bit of that, but if you had seen it in 2D you would never know it was filmed with a 3D camera in my opinion.

But when you see it in 3D, there is this amazing feeling of depth to the image. To me, thats what 3D cinema is. It's just another element to the picture. You can have it jump out at you from time to time, just like you have music stings and popular soundtrack use, but mostly its just there in the film. Its like people say Godfather would never benefit from 3D. I disagree. It's like saying Godfather would never benefit from being made in colour. But if 3D catches on and Godfather were made in 20 years, it would definitely be made in 3D and no one would question it, just like how because it was made in 1972 it was therefore filmed in colour. I'm not suggesting Godfather be converted, but if it was and it was done well and it had Coppola's blessing it would be interesting to see. 3D conversions are a bit different from dubbing sound to silent films and adding colour to black and white--the structure and style of the narrative and the performance (as with sound) isn't changed, and unlike black and white the composition and cinematography isn't altered, because one needn't shoot "for 3D" anymore than one shoots "for 2D."

Much like Avatar, in uses like this, you aren't really aware of the 3D, it's just another element to the image. After the first 15 minutes, you get used to it and just accept it, and you only really become conscious of it again when there is an effect that draws attention to the technique, much the same as when done with sound, music or cinematography. Sadly, there are no other live-action examples I have seen other than Avatar that use 3D is such a casual way. And I think that is the problem--everyone thinks 3D=must draw attention to it. But Cameron just wanted his film to have an extra illusion of depth, which is what all cinematographer's have been struggling to achieve with optical tricks from the birth of cinema. I hope eventually others start following his lead. I am hoping, given what has been said, that the Titanic and Star Wars releases lead by example.

Yeah, my girlfriend HATES Star Wars. I thought maybe she would enjoy Empire more, but she thought it was worse. Needless to say, I didn't show her Jedi. Which is weird because Wizard of Oz is her favourite film, and she loves Harry Potter and LOTR and that sort of thing. She likes classic cinema, but she says she could never invest in vintage special effects films because she could never suspend her disbelief, except for Oz but that was a childhood thing. But hey, whatever. Part of me is glad, because if I was with someone who was into the films as much as me it would be waaay too much Star Wars in my life.

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Bingowings said:

it had a nice editorial comparing the 3Dising of classic 2D films to Ted Turner scribbling pastel shades over monochrome classics

That's good.  That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

 That's not the same. Ted Turner bought the films and changed them against the wishes of their owners. This is totally different--the owners are changing them on their own will.

Yeah, but I don't really care.  It wasn't shot that way, so I refuse to see it that way.  Even if a director chooses to colorize his own movie, as in your example, I'll never watch the colorized version, and I'll continue to wish it didn't exist, despite what the director says. 

The same thing applies to 3D.

 This seems to me to be a rather rigid mode of thinking.

For example, editing. Often the craftiness of editing is to make things that weren't shot one way seem like they were in fact shot a certain way. You can manipulate a performance, create a camera move, or disrupt a camera move, you can even move around scenes and create a whole new story line.

You misunderstand me.  By your logic, I shouldn't like any film, since they're all edited, and thus not presented the way they were shot.

I equate the conversion of 2D films into fake-3D to the cropping of widescreen movies, or the colorization of black-and-white films.

Look, I don't hate 3D.  3D is fine when it was shot with stereoscopic lenses, like Avatar, or Tron Legacy.

In fact, I just thought of a much better comparison: turning mono into fake stereo.  It never sounds right, and it destroys the original intent of the mix, regardless of whether the artist chose to make it that way or not.  I'm not talking about going back to the stems and making a new, true stereo mix - I'm talking about taking the mono mix, and running it through EQ and such to make it sound like it's in stereo.

Turning a 2D image into a 3D image is the same thing.  You're right about Toy Story and Toy Story 2 - Pixar was, in effect, able to go back to the "stems" and make a true "stereo mix," in that, since they had all the original files, they could just add a second camera to make a true 3D image.

You simply can't do this for something that was shot with a single lens.  It's trying to add something to the image that was never there to begin with.  Kind of like those 120/240Hz displays that add in fake frames to try to make things look "smoother," when really it just gives everything a very artificial, speed-up-then-slow-down effect.

And I will have no direct issue with modern films being converted from 2D to 3D in post, so long as the 2D version is released alongside the 3D version (like the next Harry Potter films).  I wish they wouldn't make the fake-3D versions, but that's their prerogative.  I have the option of not seeing them, and I take that option.

You will never get me to watch a 2D-to-3D conversion, just as you'll never get me to watch a colorized film or listen to a fake-stereo audio recording.

 The thing about this is:

Natively 3D filming (i.e. Avatar) in theory can be exactly the same as 2D-3D conversions. It's all an illusion anyway, it's all two-dimensional images projected in such a way as to trick the optics of your eye. The imaging technology is exactly the same as conversions however, 3D cameras film in two dimensions and project in two dimensions. With conversions, the only difference is if the makers take the time to put the layering details into the 2D conversion, and make it sophisticated enough. That's the clincher--3D lenses put all this dimensionalizing data into the image as it's captured, so it's free work. With 2D conversions you have to sit there and do the same thing manually that the 3D camera does automatically, and it takes a lot of work to do it convincingly "by hand", as it were.

That is essentially the only difference. In effect, there basically is no difference between a "native 3D" (which is a misnomer: its 2D, converted) and "converted 3D" (which is also a misnomer: in "native", the camera converts, in "conversions", VFX artists do it with computer software).

Which is why when you have 2D films that are decided to be converted to 3D at the last minute, like Clash of the Titans, it looks bad--they never had close to the amount of time that was necessary to convert the 2D image manually. A couple months. But to do it in a way that rivals the automated processes involved with a 3D camera and lens set takes years. Which is why James Cameron and George Lucas have been prepping their conversions for so long.

Which, again, is why I don't understand the hostility. 3D films are just 2D conversions captured with a camera and lens system rather than manually composited by VFX people. But in theory, a manually converted film could basically rival a native 3D capture, provided there is enough time and resources.

Yeah, my problem with that film was that it often looked like 2D cut outs pasted on various layers. You are right that it does have a surrealistic effect that I found appropriate for the film, my main problem was that it had this blurry, messy quality to it that just was unappealing, it felt sort of unfinished or something.

ChainsawAsh said:

zombie84 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Bingowings said:

it had a nice editorial comparing the 3Dising of classic 2D films to Ted Turner scribbling pastel shades over monochrome classics

That's good.  That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

 That's not the same. Ted Turner bought the films and changed them against the wishes of their owners. This is totally different--the owners are changing them on their own will.

Yeah, but I don't really care.  It wasn't shot that way, so I refuse to see it that way.  Even if a director chooses to colorize his own movie, as in your example, I'll never watch the colorized version, and I'll continue to wish it didn't exist, despite what the director says.

The same thing applies to 3D.

 This seems to me to be a rather rigid mode of thinking.

For example, editing. Often the craftiness of editing is to make things that weren't shot one way seem like they were in fact shot a certain way. You can manipulate a performance, create a camera move, or disrupt a camera move, you can even move around scenes and create a whole new story line.

The fact is, a film can be successfully re-shaped to take on characteristics it wasn't intended to have at the outset. Scoring brings the same thing. Maybe a director never intended a scene to have music, but the composer made music for it and suddenly the scene took on a quality and life that was completely different from what he was going for but liked it so much he used it.

This whole knee-jerk reaction against 3D perplexes me. It's a tool, just like editing, sound, music, colour and everything else in a movie. You can use these tools after the fact to enhance a movie very satisfyingly to achieve effects that you didn't have in mind at the time of shooting, or you can use them to screw up a movie that would have otherwise been fine. But its not the use of 3D itself, any more than the use of certain editing tricks to artificially manipulate the film can be blamed on the art of editing, or that films should be edited faithfully to the way they were written and shot. Bad 3D films ruin films, like Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans, but good 3D is incredibly effective, like Avatar. I think it is a bit simplistic to write off 3D wholesale on the grounds of some "purist" argument.

The Alderaan thing is kinda unforgiveable.

I've seen this question raised before, and it's a very interesting one. The Empire really isn't quite as bad as it seems. And then someone brings up Alderaan and there's nothing more to be said.

Okay, here's my suggestion: pretend the whole "Alderaan incident" didn't happen. Now, without that example, what made the Empire so evil?

Alexrd said:

Anchorhead said:

and then lying about it.

I'm not sure where he lied...

 It's the whole "I wanted them to be like in 1977 but didn't have the time or money to do it." Or the whole "I'm completing the films, because they were incomplete previously." For instance he says he always wanted Greedo to fire first, but anyone knows thats a load of bullshit, he just changed his mind in 1997 and wanted to soften Han's character.

Man, I saw a 35mm print of Army of Darkness last week with a packed theatre of fans, you want to talk about good times, look no further. :D

ChainsawAsh said:

Bingowings said:

it had a nice editorial comparing the 3Dising of classic 2D films to Ted Turner scribbling pastel shades over monochrome classics

That's good.  That's pretty much exactly how I feel about it.

 That's not the same. Ted Turner bought the films and changed them against the wishes of their owners. This is totally different--the owners are changing them on their own will. The important thing is that the original versions remain available, and in Lucas' case that issue has existed for over a decade and a half before the 3D release came along so there's absolutely no change in philosophy here.

Its like when Ray Harryhausen colourized one of his films recently, I forget which one. Earth Men on the Moon? But he said he always wanted to have filmed it in colour, but they couldn't afford colour film back in 1950-something when it was made. He didn't like the colourization methods of the 1980s because they didn't look good but now digital technology allows it to be done convincingly. The films does indeed look very impressive in colour. The black and white original is preserved on a second disc in a restored version for those that don't want an updated version.

Lucas isn't doing this, but whether the SE was in two dimensions or three, such would be the case, so the dimensionalizing process really is irrelevant to this discussion.

My estimation for the cost of restoring the OOT from the original negatives:

$1-4 million.

Sales for the first day of release of the 2004 boxset:

$100 million

So, let's say the OOT deluxe boxset does about half of that, just to be conservative. And lets upsize the restoration cost of the trilogy to be about $5 million. Then lets add another two million in some disc design and extras, plus all those other miscellaneous cost. Fox pays for the marketing and distribution, as far as I know. But lets highball it again and say that Lucasfilm sinks another $10 million in its own marketing and tie-ins like website features and such.

So, highballing a restored, high-def release from the negatives with a 4K or 8K D.I.: $5 for the restoration +$2 million for DVD and Blu Ray production+$10 million for marketing and tie-ins.

That's a price of about $17 million, highballing everything. But hell, let's push it up some more, just to put us further in Lucasfilm's corner and say it's gonna cost $20 million.

So, assuming the release does half of the 2004 DVD set, and also factoring in the fact that this will be one of the most popular Blu Ray releases at least in its year, let's make a conservative estimate of $300 million in combined sales in its first year of release. It ought to make half a billion by its third year in circulation. Again, being super-duper conservative. Now, part of that goes to Fox--but Lucasfilm's deal with them is extremely lucrative for Lucasfilm. Let's say they give Fox 25% of the sales.

So, for an exaggerated price of $20 million, Lucasfilm stands to right away make just shy of $250 million in the first year of release, and about half a billion in less than five years.

Yeah, poor Lucasfilm. Personally, in a more realstic setting I would cut the cost in half and double the profit margins.

The roadblock to the OOT is psychological, really, not financial. On paper it is the last gold egg from the Star Wars goose. If you were paranoid you could say that they are saving it for when they have no more product, but I think Lucas' last hurrah is the 3D releases, as by the time they are done he will be in his mid-70s and will likely be preparring to break up his empire and retire fully.

Wow, so we are getting a conversion in four dimensions for the price of three! A bargain!

The action figures for the 3D release will be flat, but you can buy special glasses to see them in three dimensions.

Aleksbmw said:

a sample of Toot filter in action can be found here: http://img469.imageshack.us/i/tootsampleannotated3bg.jpg/

This could be implemented if the US version, the Jap version and the Gout could be lined up. Too bad it will be much harder to get the old version (Pre DC) together because of a problem with the Jsc master where Us discs got a shrinking aspect ratio at the end of the movies.

However i will try to do several runs of capturing the Japan made Jsc (to average out any lost detail) before starting the post processing on the DC Since some have asked for the raw capture of that to work on it.

This is really exciting to me. This is exactly what the X0 Project was doing and the results were fabulous.

Chainsaw Ash: The X0 used a process called "Blackmagic", but it is different from the software of the same name, as far as I can tell. Basically, Laserman had professional hardware and then wrote a custom script to run through Shake compositing software to run multiple passes. From the one example posted, it appeared to be the Japanese Special Collection cleaned up with passes from other captures, possibly multiples of the same set and possibly with his further cleanup. Laserman was terminally ill at the time, and on the estimates of his doctors only had a few years to live. He was in and out of the hospital all the time, so he would disappear for like 4 months and then come back to announce he was still with us, but he wasn't exactly in a state of be working on this. No one has heard from him in about 4 years, so it is my belief that he has sadly been dead for a long time now...

No studio does a restoration from a non-anamorphic Laserdisc tape. If they did, there wouldn't be much they could do except make it anamorphic. In fact, if Lucasfilm was working with the same materials we have the end result wouldn't be half as good.