Which Star Wars Complete Saga BR to buy?

Thanks for the clarification, Vidiot! Glad to know there's nothing missing that cannot be fixed, which is what I guess Shawn was trying to tell the Star Wars crowd...

Derek

 

Yes, that part of the story is 100% right: it can all be fixed if and when they throw enough time, money, and expertise at it.

 

If it were to cost a million to do the job does it make sense financially? Would they sell enough of the original versions on blu or 4K to make money?

 

If Lowry Digital did such a good job (and I don't doubt they did) then why do the Blu ray editions of the OT look so "average", not to say mediocre looking? Maybe more tampering was done at Lucasfilm for the BD release from the Lowry masters.

 

Old HD master from 2004 is one reason

 

I have a feeling that if they spent the money on it they could at least recoup it with actually money returns AND get much more than that in free publicity and public goodwill.

You know the Today show would devote at least an hour to it. So would Entertainment Tonight, Extra, E!, GMA, the late night shows, local news, etc.

They could also get another "making of" documentary out of it which could be shown on any number of channels, including ABC.

 

Really? I highly doubt any mainstream entertainment show would give two hoots about something like this. When was the last time any of these places devoted 2 seconds to a restored Blu-Ray release of anything?

 

What you saw were deliberate creative choices by the filmmakers. (I plan to turn that phrase into a T-shirt.)

 

They should have left the technical decissions to the pros like you (no flattery) and they take care of the marketing, that's what they excell at.

 

Get the original series. I'll put up with matting flaws over Lucas's stupid additions.

 

It makes sense financially, for at least one reason – they have to do it for safety. Film elements will continue their deterioration over time, and digital is now the preferred form of presentation, not just for Blu-ray (regular or UHD), but also for streaming, TV broadcast, theater screenings, etc. 2K won't stay the common standard forever.

Due to a request by Steven Spielberg to the head of the studio, Paramount ultimately decided to restore The Godfather trilogy in 4K in 2011. The elements for the first film were in terrible condition (most likely worse than Star Wars), and it took a lot of work to get a pristine master. But the request also caused other projects to be delayed, as The Godfather wasn't a top priority until then (they would repackage and claim they had remastered it, but they were still using inferior elements before the Blu-ray) and they had a limited budget for restoring catalog titles. Warner, on the other hand, has spent a lot on restoring some of their classic titles, even if none of them carries the commercial value of Star Wars today.
Besides, Disney spent $4b to buy Lucasfilm, and the box office for the new films combined to the revenues of merchandising may have already resulted in a profit (for them, as we'll see). So, spending $1m on preserving elements from Star Wars in 4K or 8K would be small change for them.

And they also have a financial incentive, which is that any expense will be deferred on the film losses, thus preventing it of turning a profit. This is the kind of "creative bookkeeping" that's prevalent at Hollywood, it prevents people whose contract grants them a cut of the (net) profit from seeing any dime. Lucas may have been generous about granting a few key players a cut of the revenue (gross profits) (Guinness, Hamill, Fisher, Spielberg, presumably Tarak Ben Ammar as his Tunisian studios were used for Tattooine, but weirdly not Ford at this point). But, if he had, for instance, a lecture to give at Singapore in 2008 tangentially related to Star Wars, there was an accountant who regarded the expenses for the entire trip as promo for Star Wars or its sequels, cutting them from the net profits, and preventing many people to get residuals from these profits.
That's why David Prowse just got his fee as Darth Vader, but didn't directly earn anything else from Return of the Jedi, as it hadn't made a (net) profit 26 years after its release.

LucasFilm Tells Darth Vader that Return of the Jedi Hasn't Made a Profit!? – /Film

Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are also some franchises which are still in the red...

So, spending $1m or $10m on Star Wars, especially for a justifiable reason is a godsend for the bookkeepers at Lucasfilm.

 

There's a lot of cooks in kitchen on projects like these -- many executives discuss this stuff at length as the project gets organized. The last person they want to talk to are the technicians that do the actual work.

 

Then those executives are narrow minded, I want to get the highest quality for my money and this can only be achieved by trained and experienced technicians. Let's figure out we both are in Spain and looking for a great lunch experience. I'd take you to a highly regarded restaurant (there are maaaany here) run by a highly regarded chef where we can enjoy delicious dishes cooked under this (and some times others) highly regarded chef's recipes, with him at the command in the kitchen of a team of highly trained and professional chefs, then you're in for a great or outstanding culinary experience. I wouldn't pay for a lunch or a dinner at a top restaurant where accountants make the recipies and cook the dishes, the experience would be disastrous for sure.

 

That's why if any OT theatrical remastering eventually takes place (sourced from the OCN's), it's important they get someone trustworthy and knowledgeable about film restorations (like Robert A. Harris, for example) to oversee the project, and stick to the films as originally released... no 'cleaning up' the optical effects, 'fixing' mistakes/inconsistencies, or anything like that... if any new color timing is done correctly (hopefully using the original non-fade Technicolor prints of each film as a guide), then most of the optical effect artifacts will be barely noticeable - and even if they are, so what? - plus the films themselves will inevitably look stellar AND preserved for posterity to future generations... despite Lucas' attempts to erase those original versions from the face of history!

The current 2K transfers of the Back to the Future trilogy (scanned from the original negatives, I believe) are the textbook example of how to do it right; just the films as they were released, beautifully remastered, and no funny business...

 

I bought the Star Wars The Complete Saga blu ray box set a few days ago, when I also bought a new TV. And I must say, I am really happy I did, I thought the movies looked really great. Earlier I only had the movies on DVD. So these blu rays was a big upgrade! The reason the movies looked so great maybe was because of the new TV, because the TV I first had was really old. But I think the blu rays it self also was a big upgrade! The colors and everything just looked great!

 

Just as an update that might be pertinent to this point; on the Star Wars Blu ray thread, there was a link to an anonymous insider who worked at Lowry Digital (which subsequently became Reliance MediaWorks), and who said that he worked on 4K masters of the OT back in 2013... basically that Lowry was tasked with and created immaculate new 4K masters of the OT, but he said that they did no additional color correction on those films during that process.

The footage of the OT on the Reliance MediaWorks showreel may be from that process, and it would also explain why the shot Mike Verta analyzed in the above video didn't look quite there yet; because Lowry didn't do any new color timing on their end.

Gareth Edwards, the director of Rogue One, was shown a 4K print of the 1977 film while at Skywalker Ranch in 2014 that was newly-prepared by ILM, so I'm wondering if Lowry did the initial 4K transfers and ILM finished the color timing.

Just a thought...