zombie84

Bingowings said:

It has all become a bit of a religion hasn't it?

You have the Old Testament and the New Testament and all that Non Koranical stuff and all the passion plays and Gnostic gospels pushed by fan-films and fan edits.

I do hate to think of people having Star Wars Wars a thousand years from now based on who shot first and if Threepio was gold or metallic green.

I guess that makes us Orthodox Jews!

You know whats sad? The fact that there was a perceived need for this page. It's not "why we like Star Wars", or "what we like about Star Wars the last decade" or something. Because there are some successful SW things in that time, like the Clone War series and Force Unleashed. But no, this is specifically the prequels for people to show for Lucasfilm that in spite of the bad press there are some people on the internet that liked them. You never would have something like this for the OT, unless it was specifically for some anniversary celebration or something.

As they say, failure has a thousand excuses, success doesn't need one.

Its the same guy mixing it that mixed the 2004 version though. If he called that "a labor of love" why would he suddenly turn 180 degrees? I mean, it's not like he just screwed up one or two things, like the music channels in the end battle of SW, the mix is just a mess wholesale. They needed a new mixer, not the same guy doing it twice. It's like Ben Burtt editing the prequels--"maybe he'll get it right this time." And maybe Ben Burtt just can't edit.

I don't know about Matthew Wood's background, I know he's been working with Burtt for a while now in various ways, but mixing is its own art and some "sound guys" just can't mix. I know Wood didn't mix any Star Wars audio before 2004, and in general Star Wars mixes have been pretty high quality in the past. But whatever, I don't really give two shits about the Special Edition with more audio changes, the 1997 5.1 was very good and has less intrusions than any version since. Personally, I'm too jaded by the 2004 release to give anyone involved the benefit of the doubt.

Problem is, the Lucasfilm definition of "fixed" is our definition of "fucked." And I'm sure Lucas isn't nearly done fixing up the films.

adywan said:

So they have changed Obi-Wan's roar again. I'm dreading to think what it sounds like this time especially when they said it will sound more human and that it will sound like someone. OH god. It's probably going to be a sample of Anakin shouting "I Hate You!!". Or maybe the human bit is to lead us off the scent when it is in fact jar Jar. That would actually explain why the Sand people ran off like that.

The old (original)sound effect was perfect. some things just don't need changing

Here is my guess: they changed it in 2004 to sound as if Obi Wan was imitating the call of the Boga lizard from Revenge of the Sith. But ROTS was still in early post production at that time, and they ended up altering what the final Boga sounded like, so that once ROTS was out the ANH call didn't sound like anything recognizable anymore.

So maybe they will be updating it to sound more like the way the Boga lizard actually sounded like in ROTS, rather than the bizarre and random creature effect in the 2004 version.

This would be stupid in the first place though, since Tusken Raider's shouldn't know the wildlife calls of a species that lives on a completely different planet.

generalfrevious said:

Were still not getting the originals, so why bother about the BD release?

 Harvesting for donor parts.

They have said that they are doing a new mix for the Blu Ray. It'll probably be a 7.1 from scratch. But for sure they said they are working on a new mix.

I actually just spoke to director Alexandre Phillipe on the phone today as he was leaving for Germany to start another project. He did mention that he was excited for some of the distribution deals he had in place for PVGL. So, I guess there are plans that are as yet unannounced. I know when I went to the after party with the guys after the Toronto premiere there were two different distributor reps with us. So, I guess be patient....

005: Excellent job on getting those wipes. I hadn't realized they basically just covered over the pre-existing wipes. On some it seems like they went back to the original pieces and did new ones, but the timing is never the same. Will you eventually be adding the other shots that Msycamore found?

DoubleOO5: The wipes were also redone. This is maybe not "altering" the film, but like the re-comps it does constitute changing the original negative. For instance, in the wipe from the sandcrawler to the stormtroopers, there was a change in colour grading once the wipe began, because it was prepared before the final grading was done, so it never totally matched and you could see the colour jump if you looked closely. This has been corrected so that now the wipes have the same grading as the material around it.

The new crawl appeared in the script in The Art of Star Wars in 1979. But it wasn't in the film until 1981.

ChainsawAsh said:

What Director's Cut footage creeped into the theatrical Alien on the Quadrilogy disc?  I hadn't heard that!

 The biggest one is that the scene where Brett is finding Jones, the part where he is entering that cavernous room with some kind of vehicle where he finds the alien skin. It was always a bit gold-tinted, but in the DC it looks like the whole room is made out of solid gold, whereas in the original it was a brown-red-gold that looked a bit more like rust. I think Scott even acknowledges the new coloring of that scene. The whole film has had the contrast and such tweaked but that one section of the film stood out in particular as being tweaked to the point where it no longer resembled the original photography, at least as represented by all previous material. The levels throughout the rest of film probably are more accurate representations of the original answer print, for instance, the white levels of the awakening chamber were dialed down in some telecines because the primitive video couldn't handle whites like that (some early video telecines had the levels of the DC, which just blew out detail, which is why it was diaed back for the subsequent DVDs; the DC didn't have to adjust to such variables since video display was better).

I saw the caps of this today was astoundingly relieved. It's not as de-grained as nearly as I feared. It looks like a normal negative emulsion from 1985. Unfortunately, the purist in me would like to have the original. I know it was grainier than they wanted but why the hell are people so afraid of grain now that HD is in style? Like fuck. It's film. And I always felt is sort of suited Aliens, it gave it that sort of Vietnam-documentary type of look, with all the handheld camerawork. I wonder if in the future people will object to handheld camera work and want everything to be smooth steadicam work if people won't go back and image-stabilize all those handheld shots.

Anyway, as far as filtering the film for BR, this release is a model example, to Cameron's credit. It does indeed look beautiful. But it needn't be filtered in the first place. Luckily there is already HD captures of this. Cameron says it was the extended cut only, which I would be fine with, but my understanding was that the theatrical version would be branched. Well, at least there IS some debat about whether unwanted grain is to be equated with dirt and scratches, rather than any outright revisionism like adding new CG.

It's actually only been like 7 months since it premiered in the festival circuit. Sometimes indie films take years after they debut. Paranormal Activity was shown in festivals in 2007, but it wasn't until late 2009 that most people saw it because thats when it got wide distribution.

I don't think there was that big a shift in technology between 1977 and 1980. Most people probably still saw ESB in mono. ROTJ is a bit more understandable.

So, the mono screenings of ESB and ROTJ were just the same 35mm stereo print with the theatres sound equipment playing it back through a single channel? That seems a bit odd, at least for ESB. Mono was so common back then, you'd think they would want to make sure it had been mixed specially for that format to make sure the levels were better suited to a single channel.

If the kid has vitiligo, its for sure his. The odds of that happening by fluke are pretty astronomical.

True. I like to host all my files on my own server though, just for protection's sake against third-party servers going down, deleting things, etc., being slow, etc. In this case it just seems unnecessary to have a HD upscale of the GOUT for the point of comparison when a standard-def cap for both would suffice. These pics are for the point of illustration, and need not be of reference quality since both A and B videos are available to all. Though at the same time, it would be kind of cool to do a definitive thing.

Maybe what we can do is host the full-res files offsite and I'll just keep the downconverts on my own space.

I think once we have the full catalogued version here, I'm going to go through and do a full running time measurement of the total changes, including re-comps, redone opticals and audio alterations. Might be useful. I alway thought one could plot that on a horizontal line graph against the running time, with indications of when a change occurs and whether it entered in 1997 or 2004. Would make the staggering amount of changes more tangible.

Awesome. I might be reducing them to save a bit of server space if they are that large. As I said, I will be tackling the SE changes section last, so any work done in the meantime will help things along.

One thing that did occur to me that might make things quicker is just using the existing before/after images you had posted, and editing out the text (or putting in new text). That way, one would only need to capture the ones they missed. Of course, if the WG screens are like that they won't match as-is in terms of size and resolution. But it might make life easier.

doubleofive said:

Adywan used the GOUT when he had to, but actually reinserted high res scans of the original matte paintings when possible.

Or so I've heard.

He did this for the Falcon Cloud City landing pad BGs, the Leia's waiting room matte, and possibly for some of the other Cloud City establishers, IIRC. He also filtered the GOUT portions, and used blending/morphing techniques to segue in and out of GOUT footage at times.

I was wondering about that too. Moth3r's PAL capture has more verticle resolution than the GOUT in some shots, would love to see what this bad boy could do with it.

I'm REALLY looking forward to this. It's like the X0 project, but for real now. Hoping to see that JSC capture the most.

You mean the actual audio mix in the 1997 films? Or the way the music levels in particular have been mixed? That's actually a good question, do the audio mixers recieve a pre-mixed music track, or do they receive the raw recordings and can actually mix all the various instrument levels to create a custom music mix for the film.

Double005: Thanks a lot for any work there!

Good catch on the typos. I actually haven't run most of the pages through spellcheck, maybe I should finally do that... :S

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

zombie84 said:

Puggo you magnificent bastard, I finally got around to downloading this a few days ago and its so much fun! An amazing, unique project. Part of me wishes this was done in HD because I'm sure there is more quality to squeeze out than a DVD can make apparent. Anyway, very cool. Made me nostalgic for the Star Wars 1977 midnight screening I never had, LOL.

Thanks for the high praise, Zombie.  Had you actually seen a midnight screening in 1977, the quality would have been considerably better - pristine in fact (I know, because I had one).  However, it does indeed remind me of that mid-80s screening (was it 1984? 1985?) of the entire trilogy at the local theater, which lasted well past midnight... that was grunge city but a heck of a lot of fun. Although I remember being a bit sad that the film looked so beat up.

Speaking of film getting beat up... about 10 years ago I saw the newly-restored "2001" in 70mm at the Castro Theater, must have been one of the first stops on a tour that lasted several years.  What I saw was razor sharp, and not a speck in sight - the most beautiful image I'd ever seen on screen.  Five years later, a friend of mine saw it in Minnesota (I'm guessing the same 70mm print), and said it didn't look that great. That's what life on the road will do to you.

I saw 2001 about 4 months ago, and it looked the best I have ever seen it, even compared to the Blu Ray. Not a speck of dirt, and sharp as a tack. Obviously not an original release print, and in 35mm, but I was aghast at how prestine it looked. Guess that re-issue varied across the continent. The Bloor cinema in Toronto seems to screen that print about twice a year, one of their regular rotations the last while. Sadly, I suppose it will get a tiny bit worse each time they play it.

Interesting. I've only ever heard MJs music from the 1 or 2 original vinyls I have (other than the radio singles), so never realized the music had been re-arranged so much.