Star Wars ORIGINAL UNALTERED trilogy possibility(?) in HD!

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

The SEs are all that matter.

[crumbs 14,287]

Got excited when I saw the thread title, was disappointed when I saw the content.

 

Extrapolating from that article, this was just a pristine 40 year old print of the 2.0 version of Star Wars (with Episode IV in the crawl). Have never understood why no one has scanned one of these immaculate prints and distributed them online? It would just need a pass or two of dust removal/digital noise reduction and it would come up a treat. Don't the owners of these prints want to future proof them? They will eventually disintegrate...

 

Maybe this indicates a slight softening from Lucas though. The further divorced he becomes from Lucasfilm, the less strict he might be around releasing the UOT?

[Chen G. 3,942]

You wouldn't want to scan the film for release off of an answer print, no matter the size of it. You need the original camera negative.

 

Besides, a Star Wars film carrying the name "Episode IV: A New Hope" is anything but unaltered.

[crumbs 14,287]

11 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

You wouldn't want to scan the film for release off of an answer print, no matter the size of it. You need the original camera negative.

 

Besides, a Star Wars film carrying the name "Episode IV: A New Hope" is anything but unaltered.

 

True, but it's just one change -- and it's gone after the first minute.

 

And a second generation scan done with modern telecine couldn't look any worse than the existing HD masters Lowry worked on. Processed and colour graded to within an inch of their lives; they looked OK for standard definition but they were not fit for high definition formats. The amateur grading reveals itself on the Blurays.

 

If nothing else, the answer prints (especially the technicolour ones) would be fantastic references for accurate colour reproduction for a future OCN scan (because presumably the OCN has been mishandled so badly that colours have faded into disrepair... but the sharpness won't have disappeared).

[Holko 9,491]

From people who were there: the print was torn at the DS explosion the first time it was viewed, therefore it has never been projected or submitted to light since. It wasn't faded, not very dirty, and colour-wise it was really damn close to 4K77. It was said it was shown with special permission from George Lucas.

[crumbs 14,287]

It can't be long before Disney release whatever 4K master they've been sitting on. It's been finished for years, since at least Rogue One. We even had clips from the showreel of whichever company worked on the restoration. Seems inevitable they'll release a 9-film 4K set of the entire saga next year.

 

Apparently it's a hybrid version of the film though -- the DVD and Bluray changes have been ditched (as they were made to the existing digital master of the SE), but the SE changes remain (because apparently those changes were edited into the OCN itself).

[Jay 37,267]

25 minutes ago, crumbs said:

Have never understood why no one has scanned one of these immaculate prints and distributed them online?

 

But they have

 

http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/page/Project-4k77

 

http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/post/2016/06/13/Star-Wars-Silver-Screen-Edition-Bluray

 

http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/post/2016/01/15/Team-Negative-One-completes-35mm-Restoration-of-Star-Wars

 

etc

 

[Holko 9,491]

Sample shots:

 

[crumbs 14,287]

Wow!

 

 

Makes the Blurays look like shit by comparison. I'll take this glorious film grain any day over that waxy, processed garbage on the BR.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

9 minutes ago, crumbs said:

(because apparently those changes were edited into the OCN itself).

 

How does that even work? I alway presumed duplicates would be used for SFX editing and compositing work. Like I doubt the 1997 cartoon Mos Eisley would have been made into a camera negative.

[Holko 9,491]

The blurays look shit even without comparison.

 

 

Reportedly, for the SE, they made digital scans of the master copy they had, printed the new shots on the same kind of stock, took the old shots out of the master copy and spliced the new ones in. There was no colour grading fuckups in that batch until the DVD (and the bluray which further bastardises the DVD master), so it was possible.

[crumbs 14,287]

9 minutes ago, Holko said:

The blurays look shit even without comparison.

 

Good point.

 

9 minutes ago, The Original said:

How does that even work? I alway presumed duplicates would be used for SFX editing and compositing work. Like I doubt the 1997 cartoon Mos Eisley would have been made into a camera negative.

 

Fragments of the camera negative would have been scanned for VFX shots (then printed back out once ready) but my understanding is that these new shots were then cut into the OCN master, essentially sabotaging the original cut of the film from existence.

 

All SE answer prints were then struck from this newly minted version of the OCN (after meticulous cleaning). This was all pre-AVID and digital editing; they couldn't just insert new scenes into a digital master back then.

[Faleel 5,326]

1 hour ago, Holko said:

The blurays look shit even without comparison.

 

 

Reportedly, for the SE, they made digital scans of the master copy they had, printed the new shots on the same kind of stock, took the old shots out of the master copy and spliced the new ones in. There was no colour grading fuckups in that batch until the DVD (and the bluray which further bastardises the DVD master), so it was possible.

What about the Pink tint?

[Holko 9,491]

Were the 97 SEs pink already? I thought that came in with the 04 DVDs along with the crushed blacks to hide matte boxes instead of properly addressing them.

[Faleel 5,326]

Yes.

 

That old "SW the changes" article mentions it as well.

[Holko 9,491]

A quick search found a reference to the home video release version of the SW (ANH) SE being pink tinted. 

I grew up with a VHS recorded TV broadcast of the SEs, but my memory doesn't spread that far. Sebastian Shaw was Sebastian Shaw, that I know.

[Chen G. 3,942]

On 7/15/2019 at 5:05 PM, crumbs said:

It can't be long before Disney release whatever 4K master they've been sitting on. It's been finished for years, since at least Rogue One. We even had clips from the showreel of whichever company worked on the restoration. Seems inevitable they'll release a 9-film 4K set of the entire saga next year.

 

But whether it’ll be native 4K remains to be seen. You can’t pull native 4K off of second-generation film (technically, you can't pull native 4K off a 35mm negative, either, but never mind). And, of course, the later two prequels were shot in 1440p (1.5K), some of which is inevitably lost in the filters of the digital camera.

[crumbs 14,287]

33 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

But whether it’ll be native 4K remains to be seen. You can’t pull native 4K off of second-generation film. And, of course, the later two prequels were shot in 1440p, some of which is inevitably lost in the filters of the digital camera.

 

That's incorrect. Due to the primitive nature of digital photography back in 2000, all live-action photography on II + III was shot at 1080p so those two films are now locked at that resolution (the modern smartphone has a higher resolution!)

 

I don't know whether the effects shots were rendered at 1080p or 2K (1440p), but considering the live-action elements were 1080p...

 

Either way, only the OT can ever exist in "true" 4K -- ironic, considering the so-called 'technological advancements' in the four decades since. Even the sequel trilogy has likely been rendered at only 1440p, barring IMAX sequences.

[Chen G. 3,942]

What I meant was, the HDCAM used on the prequels doesn’t use all of the pixels across: Instead of 1920 (per 1080p or 1.9K resolution), it uses 1440 and the filtering loses mean that you're actually getting even less, plus the digital files were compressed for post-production, which also takes a toll on image quality.

[crumbs 14,287]

Plus they cropped the image after shooting, so basically 1/4 of the vertical resolution was thrown in the bin. I guess the theory was that shooting "open matte" gave them room to move for their VFX shots.

 

As for the awful magenta tint to ANH, I thought that was introduced at the DVD stage. Supposedly Lowry handed the finished restoration to Lucasfilm, then Lucasfilm handled the colour grading internally...

[Faleel 5,326]

53 minutes ago, Faleel J.M. said:

Yes.

 

That old "SW the changes" article mentions it as well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181106110130/https://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-one.html

[JoeinAR 1,949]

So it wasn't really Star Wars but it was 1981 version.

[Chen G. 3,942]

1 hour ago, crumbs said:

Plus they cropped the image after shooting, so basically 1/4 of the vertical resolution was thrown in the bin. I guess the theory was that shooting "open matte" gave them room to move for their VFX shots.

 

For home video, it really doesn’t matter: the image doesn’t become any less sharp or detailed because you crop it’s edges, in much the same way that shot through a door frame isn’t any less sharp than a landscape shot.

 

It does prohibit the size of the screen which can accommodate the film, but that’s the thing about shooting digitally: the lack of grain means that - watching it on a huge screen - you won’t become as acutely aware that you’re watching something which has been magnified.

 

A 1.5K shot from Attack of the Clones would look better in IMAX than a blowup from 35mm, even though the latter has almost twice the detail.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

6 hours ago, crumbs said:

Have never understood why no one has scanned one of these immaculate prints and distributed them online?

Many people have... haven't you heard of 4K77? Or the Silver Screen Edition? They are restorations of the original print, in amazing quality. 4K83 (Return of the Jedi) has also been made, and 4K80 (TESB) is currently being worked on.

[Jay 37,267]

Cremeritis!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Its back!

[mstrox 6,637]

A little amoxicillin should take care of it 

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

I prefer the Special Editions. Star Wars especially has such a slapped together low budget look in the Tatooine scenes. Mos Eisley looks terrible. The SE is how you would imagine it being, not a little ghost town with a blob covering the wheels on the car.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

3 minutes ago, Dieter Stark said:

I prefer the Special Editions. Star Wars especially has such a slapped together low budget look in the Tatooine scenes. Mos Eisley looks terrible. The SE is how you would imagine it being, not a little ghost town with a blob covering the wheels on the car.

 

They should remake it!

[deleted account 108]

In 2002 I attended a Lucasfilm event in Hollywood where Rick McCallum and Fred someone from ILM explained the evolution from 35mm film in 1977 to digital capture on Ep 2 in 2000.

 

One of the things they went into detail about was the evolution of the laser film printer, a machine which could print out new camera negative.

 

It was developed in the 80's and 90's to improve the quality of CGI images on 35mm - in '77 all the CGI (i.e. the Death Star plans) was captured by pointing a film camera at a computer screen and filming it one frame at a time.

 

In 1996 FOX decided to do a 20th anniversary rerelease of Star Wars.  Lucas went into the vaults and struck a new print from the OCN and was shocked at how much the image had degraded.  (They showed the first few minutes of this print at the 2002 event.  It did not have the "Episode IV A New Hope" subtitle in the crawl.)  The print was dark, murky, and pretty much unwatchable.  

 

The decision was made to scan the entire original camera negative (OCN) into a computer, repair the image digitally, and then print out a new negative using the laser printer.  Since they were scanning the whole film in anyways, GL then decided to upgrade shots that he was never happy with, using CGI.  This was how CGI shots were done in Jurassic Park, for example - CGI laid over 35mm images scanned into a computer.

 

Once this decision was made, it was then decided to shoot new elements for the stormtroopers in the desert, and resurrect the lost Jabba the Hutt scene with Harrison Ford.  Searching the vaults revealed that the OCN for the Jabba sequence was gone.  The only thing they could find was a work print of the scene, complete with edits and editorial markings on the film (grease pencil indications of dissolves, etc).  So they scanned the rough cut into the computer, did repair work digitally, then added CGI Jabba over the top of the human stand-in.

 

The point of all this is that the OCN for the 77 version of Star Wars still exists.  The "OCN" of the SE is actually a new negative printed out in '97 from the digitally repaired scan of the OCN  from '77 with CGI additions.  In fact, they made several OCNs of this version of the movie, and struck theatrical prints from them, which essentially made every 35mm print of the SE 2 generations closer to the OCN since they skipped the inter-positive/inter-negative steps.

 

In 2006 when the original versions of the first 3 movies were put on DVD in non-anamorphic widescreen, Lucasfilm's press comments clouded the issue because, in an effort to fend off angry fans, GL told vague half-truths about the original version not existing anymore, when in truth, it's just that the '77 OCN is in terrible shape and would need to be restored all over again for any anamorphic release.  

 

So, in conclusion, the 1977 OCN of Star Wars still exists.  It's just in terrible shape.

 

[Jay 37,267]

Thank you, that was very interesting!

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

The original version is on VHS if anybody wants it.

[toothless 963]

I personally could not care less about what édition is considered the best. I just want the best 4K édition possible of any movie with HDR.

[gkgyver 1,645]

At this point, I really couldn't care less about original original original versions.

These movies are 35-42 years old.

I say take what's available and move on.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

The older films become, the less they matter.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

7 hours ago, gkgyver said:

At this point, I really couldn't care less about original original original versions.

These movies are 35-42 years old.

I say take what's available and move on.

 

Gyver calls for historical revisionism?

 

No surprise!

[Chen G. 3,942]

I mean, I'm at a place where I can take the special editions. But, out of principle, I always think the original cut of any film should be available.

 

But then, no one seems to be losing any sleep about the inavailability of the original theatrical cuts of 2001, The Shining or Lawrence of Arabia.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

The original cut of 2001 was shown only once I believe. Thats not even remotely the same as with the original trilogy.

[Chen G. 3,942]

Fair. 

 

But in both cases, there was a cut of the film which was shown to wide audiences, which we cannot watch today. In both cases, the director went out of his way to ensure that cut will never be seen again.

 

Star Wars was being changed constantly: it didn't start with the Special Editions. The various sound mixes are different, some shots in the film as shown in the limited release were different to the wide release, the re-release was different (namely, in the inclusion of the subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope), etcetra.

 

 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Your point being?

[Chen G. 3,942]

That supplanting a film's original cut didn't start with George Lucas, although his is certainly one of the most egregious cases.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

So as usual you are reiterating a point which is common knowledge?

 

 

[Chen G. 3,942]

Is it?

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

The original versions don't even have 5 channels of sound or any new surprises.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

And your don't even hear a rumble when Vader uses the Force...

[Holko 9,491]

The mono mix of SW is still by far the best. Surround is waaay overrated.

[John 2,032]

Better dynamic range. 

[JoeinAR 1,949]

12 hours ago, Stefancos said:

The original cut of 2001 was shown only once I believe. Thats not even remotely the same as with the original trilogy.

Sadly I have seen 2001 way more than I ever wanted to see that cold film.

[Chen G. 3,942]

I never liked the pacing of that film, but to think it was twenty minutes longer is just mind-boggling. Although maybe something in those twenty minutes would have made the ending a bit less cryptic. As it is, you need the book to really understand what's going on and, in that regard, that film is not a standalone experience.

 

But I do think the original cut of the film should have been made available. Just out of principle.

[Holko 9,491]

What, should every film include the rough cut that was shown to a limited or test audience as a bonus?