zombie84

Yup.

JediTrya, did you have anything specific in mind?

I'll have to see if I can find it in the library some time.

Moth3r, can you confirm the details of your LFL Pwnage?

New page up. Needs more images, and probably some corrections, but preview: http://savestarwars.com/filmpreservation.html

I dunno, DVD from 2001 to 2004 was twice as crowded as that, and SW and Indy both managed to do okay.

I'm expecting the annoucements at Celebration V. Normally I would say Comic-con, but they are saving the big guns for their own show, that's why there was no real Lucasfilm presence there.

Erikstormtrooper said:

I'll never forget the time Sansweet stood in front of a convention audience and stated that the GOUT was the best preservation of a film he had ever seen.

 Wow. What a fucking idiot.

It reminds me of this time...I think the show is called G4 or something? Some tech show. They had Bill Hunt from the Digital Bits and some fucking tool from TFN, I think it might be the owner of TFN, and they were there to debate the GOUT release, and he was such a fucking moron it astounded me. Bill would make very reasoned, rational arguments and then this TFN idiot would just grin stupidly and spout marketing cacthphrases that didn't even address the issues Bill raised. And I think finally at one point Bill was like, what are you saying that's not even an argument. He was saying things like "this is the best the films have ever looked" and "this is really about taking a journey back in time and enjoying the originals" or some shit. I couldn't believe it. Then I realized: these guys are really just Lucasfilm implants in the fan community. But they are for real, it's not just because it's their job, they actually have been that brainwashed to think like that. Its bloody weird!

dark_jedi said:

zombie84 said:

(That really bugs you that I poopooed your earlier ones doesn't it? )

Get over yourself dude, you don't mean anything to me, let alone bother me, just can't believe you are following this at all.

Then why bring it up again when I've made it clear at least twice before that I am following it? If the script changes, which it has, then my problems with the previous scripts will have also changed, especially when the audio options expand as well; not too hard to follow.

Jeez dude, at least let me compliment you without you bringing that up. :p

Sansweet is actually a fairly powerful underling at Lucasfilm. He's sort of the fan ambassador. He liasons with the public and cast and crew, he's all over conventions as a Lucasfilm rep and makes public statements on behalf of the company, he's involved in home video releases to some extent it seems, he writes books, I think he has a column or something on the official website, and other stuff. He's basically the ultimate fanboy who happened to get turned in to a real Lucasfilm employee.

dark_jedi said:

I am not sure which will be the default, and there will be a menu for the audio selection anyways, nothing is set in stone yet.

zombie84, I am a bit surprised you are even following this, or did you need these audio options for your ED3?

(That really bugs you that I poopooed your earlier ones doesn't it? )

As I said before this version seems to look like it has sorted out most of the video problems of earlier ones so I hope not.

The Sansweet incident was told to me personally by Alexandre Philipe, the director of PVGL. The new Editdroid guy also got in contact with me, perhaps I should post that in its thread. But yeah, I was thinking of footnoting things, my aim was to make it a bit more casual than that but I guess it can never hurt if people are already wondering where certain info comes from. More pictures will be added to all pages soon.

He's always been. The impression I get is that he's basically like one of the guys from TFN, whos world would shatter if Lucas was shown to be less than a god. Steve Sansweet has his head so far up George Lucas' ass he could probably see Rick McCallum's feet.

Erikstormtrooper said:

Dark Jedi,

I just checked out your V3 sample on my 5.1 system. The picture quality is passable (I know it's just rough, and it is from the GOUT after all). Hairy Hen's 5.1 mix is the star of the bunch though (it shows as 3/2.1 on my player). It sounds very full compared to all the others, even when my receiver tries to upmix them to 5.1.

If I may make a humble suggestion, I would recommend you make Hairy Hen's 5.1 track the first track. I'd hate for someone (who doesn't know how to change audio tracks) to judge this disc by the default mono mix.

Maybe this:

track 1 - '77 DD 5.1 upmix
track 2 - '77 Theatrical
track 3 - '77 Mono
track 4 - '85 Stereo remix (taken for Japanese Special Collection)
track 5 - '93 Stereo mix

That is actually the order in which the tracks were released.

 I agree. The default should definitely be the 5.1. The order of the rest matters less, release order seems to make the most sense but its not so important as having them, but I think the 5.1 as default is the smartest bet (perhaps with the theatrical stereo as number 2, for the people who dont have 5.1 and hit the change-audio button).

Besides which, an accent isn't genetic, it's sociological. Especially if you are a child, accents are picked up from the environment you are in, but adults will have accent changes if they are outside of their native environments long enough too--Mel Gibson threatening to kill his wife doesn't anything like the Mel Gibson in Road Warrior. Boba Fett shouldn't sound like his father unless he was living in the Star Wars equivalent of New Zealand in between Attack of the Clones and Empire Strikes Back.

Its the perfect example of someone perceiving a hole that doesn't exist and then creating a problem in the films through the "fix" when nothing needed to be changed in the first place.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Anchorhead, looks good, might try it out. What font is on the title there?

For now though I need a bit of fact-checking here since this one is basically a history of OT.com.

http://savestarwars.com/fanpreservations.html

I'm sure there's misreported info in there, was a lot of stuff to touch upon and juggle; the page is also still unfinished. Also, Dark_Jedi's new release I have not yet seen, but I felt confident enough to include it; I'll make any needed modifications upon release.

I also put up another editorial (http://savestarwars.com/dontrocktheboat.html) Again, it's not the final form, and I need to confirm a couple things, but you can see where I am going. Feel free to comment.

Its weird, because Episode I has a pretty good sound mix, and Young Indy always had pretty good accolades. Of course its been a long time since I saw Episode I, and longer with Young Indy.

The low music levels definitely trace to Burtt, either because he trained Wood or because he was supervising. Theres a really interesting moment in the Episode III DVD doc, where they are sound mixing. Burtt has the music turned down low and the sound mixer, an older experienced guy, chews him out and says theres no point in having music if its that low. Its the only moment I've ever seen in the prequel footage where a guy stands up to Lucas and says, this is crap. And in the end, he makes Burtt turn the music back up so its louder than the sound effects, and Burtt sort of slinks back in his chair.

I think the Marvel reprints started around 1995, under the banner "Classic Star Wars", which the Splinter paperback reprint and trilogy novelisations that year also carried. I remember seeing them on Newsstands, but the new Dark Horse material was pretty good at that time so I don't think I read any of them until much later. I had flipped through a few but I think I remember not liking how they were a bit "un-Star-Warsey" compared to the state of the franchise in 1995, although now thats why I like them.

The SE comic was a whole new 1990s adaptation from scratch. It was okay, but the balance was weird since they made close to an entire issue out of the "here they come" sequence IIRC.

The Marvel series was great though, and along with Splinter of the Minds Eye was really the only thing that built upon the universe of Star Wars, rather than the trilogy. As soon as Empire came out, the story changed very radically and it just wasn't quite the same. But those first few years, where there was no additional films or other media to offer constraints, showed the potential directions of Lucas film.

Tobar said:

adywan said:

skyjedi2005 said:

Who cares about the blu ray since it will not have either theatrical versions, the 1977, or 1997 .

It will be total crap.  The new mix being created will suck too since Ben burtt does no longer work for Luca$film. Matthew wood is doing the mix, it will be garbage.

But wasn't it Ben Burtt that did the 2004 mix and look how good that turned out. Ben Burtt was just the sound FX guy and should have stuck to that. When he got his hands on the mix he dialled down the music so low it was inaudible in some sections and the sound effects just drowned everything out

He's credited for it but he mostly just supervised. I was listening to an interview recently with Matt Wood and he was talking about how he and his partner were the ones that actually created the '04 mix.

 Can you link to this? I'd be interested in hearing more about the nuts and bolts of the 2004 mix and how it ended up the way it is.

They have been off because of the fading and low saturation of home releases. Also the earlier transfers, which would have been the least faded (i.e. 1982-1985) were very poor and had their own tinting, aside from Laserdisc being unable to display the full colour information and subject to its own custom colour correction.

If you jack up the GOUT colours to the I.B. colour levels you see the DS walls become pink. Which means there is colour in them, that seemed grey because it was so washed out. If you then shift the pink out until the rest of the image looks normal, much of the time you end up with blue and green walls. Either this is how it was photographed, regardless of the actual paint pigment, or this is how it was colour-timed to get correct skintones. But in either case it looks like a coloured DS was normal for most, but not necessarily all, of the shots, to varying degrees of intensity. My two cents.

Yeah, it certainly looks blue in some of the I.B. caps. The cellblock control shootout is blue-ish, as are certain shots in the control room, just from the caps. A very deep, saturated blue too, not just from the print tint or camera balance.

Well, what you are asking for is basically what was screened here, so...

The SW 70mm frames are not pink though. The probably have faded a bit, but the source is different. Probably some sort of dupe, which therefore has had less time to fade, while the Jedi frames are based on the original-release master of some kind. Prints fade at different rate depending on how tthey are stored, but SW vs Jedi is pretty extreme difference.

Anyway, yeah, they aren't a pristine reference for colour, but they aren't totally useless either.

Bkev: as far as I can tell, the DS interiors are supposed to be a greenish hue much of the time. How else could you explain a "pristine" print that has totally screwed up wall hues while having normal looking skin tones and white balance? And which also happens to correspond with caps of the Technicolor fade-free print, as well as other sources...

The notion that the DS interiors were always neutral grey appears to be highly erroneous.

msycamore said:

zombie84 said:

The 1995 mix has mono elements, while the 1993 DC mix does not, right? Even though its just DC+mono, that still qualifies it as a seperate mix. It's based on the DC mix, but it's not the DC mix.

Sorry, but I honestly don't understand what you mean. The 1993 THX-certified Digitally remastered and remixed audio track that accompanied the Definitive Collection LD set, used elements from the original mono mix as well as entirely new sound-fx, this same mix is the 1995 mix. And this is the same mix that's on the Gout and the one hairy_hen used as a base to do his 70mm recreation. The '93 and '95 audio is not seperate mixes.

 Ah, okay. See, it was my understanding that further mono elements were added to the 1995 mix, beyond what was already added to the 1993 mix. Thanks for the correction!

The above seems correct.

The reason is probably simple: in text documents like scripts, storyboards and other office materials, you can spell it as one long word the way it was meant (stardestroyer) but when designing text layout for maketing it is better to break it into two smaller segments. Stardestroyer wouldn't fit on that toy box with the layout they have there.

Random, unsearched theory of mine that I just made up right now. :p

The 1995 mix has mono elements, while the 1993 DC mix does not, right? Even though its just DC+mono, that still qualifies it as a seperate mix. It's based on the DC mix, but it's not the DC mix.

Yeah, the camera or print definitely shows a minor colour shift. As I mentioned, that is responsible for part of it but it could not possibly explain all of it, there is simply no way you could get colours that deep and that vivid while also having the most natural skintones (and other colours) that I've ever seen in a Star Wars film. It also varies from shot to shot, even though the camera settings were the same, so its the print that has the tinting in the first place, even if the camera nudged the colours a bit. So like 90% of those colours you are seeing are authentic, and they match other sources too. Even your test pic there looks undersaturated compared to the I.B. print, so the subtle green shift would be almost as noticeable as the photo if it were at comparable levels of intensity; you would also see there is still some pink in the image, which means it needs to be counter-shifted further. I don't think its possible to correct the GOUT to same colour levels because of the fading and the transfer, so you can only get a rough approximation. So anyway, while the screening photos may not be 100% exact, they are the closest to the original colouring that anyone has ever seen, and certainly can be used as a reference of about 90% accuracy IMO, at least in most shots.