Original/Unaltered "Star Wars" Trilogy on Blu-Ray in 2017

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Bowie Fett, Feb 23, 2017.

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  1. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Dumb guy here. I thought 4k77 was a 4k scan of an original Star Wars 1977 Release print. Since we already have that with 4K77 then what is the point of Harmy version?
     
  2. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    From the 4k77 people:
    Project 4K77 | The Star Wars Trilogy

    So, there's still more that can be done; it appears their goal is to present their scan in the best possible quality without making any major changes to color/grain/etc.
     
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  3. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    I don't understand. There is big demand for the original 1977 version. Even if the negative was toast they have the sources that were used for 4K77 which are anywhere from 2.5 - 3k. And apparently there is this newfound print in New Mexico. Even without the negative Disney could turn out a great 2k and 4k disk release. Surely Disnsy likes to make money. Their actions make no sense. It must be some legal issue.

    If Disney brought out a real 4k version of Episodes 4, 5 and 6 they would MAKE A MINT.
     
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  4. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    From the video below Harmy has let DrDre do the color correcting from importing into Premiere which is really screwing up the color to begin with because it looks nothing like my BluRay viewed on my Samsung HDtv. The color has neutral whites looking green...



    What a color nightmare it's got to be working on this.
     
  5. greg_t

    greg_t Senior Member

    Location:
    St. Louis, MO

    I think Disney is focused on the future of star wars and not on the past. We have already seen how many series they have in line for Disney plus. They will make far more money selling the Disney plus service monthly to millions of subscribers eager to see new content like the Mandalorian than they would make on another original trilogy release. There have been so many releases now of the original trilogy I personally don't feel it would be worth their investment. The vast majority of people don't care about getting the original versions anymore and most under a certain age don't even know what they see isn't the original version. Combine with the fact that physical disk sales are far lower than they were several years ago, I don't feel they would make as much as we think. Again, just my opinion, but they redid the "special edition" trilogy recently in 4k for disk and Disney plus release and I imagine they are done with it for some time. The focus is on the future of star wars now and reaching new age groups. The Mandalorian is a perfect example of that. I have lots of family who don't care so much for the star wars movies, but they loved the Mandalorian .
     
  6. indigovic

    indigovic (Taylor’s Version)

    Location:
    North Bend, WA
    No, not really. They would probably sell a number of box sets in the low 5 digits, because that’s about as good as physical media gets these days. Let’s say they add some nice extras and fancy packaging to manage a price point of $100–keep in mind we’re talking about 3 movies here, so that’s pretty high—and manage to move 30,000 copies—that’s a retail sales value of $3 million. Assuming they take home about 40% of MSRP—which is also a bit high—that nets them about $1.2 million for the project. Manufacturing and distro costs for a set like that should be at least 10% of retail, eating up $300k of that. I have no clue about their costs to actually generate the content, but regardless, I’m thinking their profit wouldn’t top low-to-mid six digits at best. Let’s say I’m wrong by 100%, though, and double my best estimate to just over $1 million.

    Sure, it’s not nothing, but for a company that had revenues of $12 billion in just their latest reported quarter—a period during which things like theme park operations and movie theaters contributed far less than usual—it’s just not that significant. (They would also likely pick up a small number of holdouts for Disney+, but that’s also relatively insignificant.)

    Mind you, I still think it’s worth doing if they can work through whatever issues J. J. Abrams was hinting are in the way, but it’s not like it’s going to make a blip in their stock price either way.
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2021
  7. indigovic

    indigovic (Taylor’s Version)

    Location:
    North Bend, WA
    Did you know that—not counting fan-made “restorations”—the three non-Special Edition soundtracks have never had sound mixes made with stereo surrounds?

    The most sophisticated mixes done for all 3 original soundtracks were the Dolby 70mm 6-track versions, which had left, center, and right channels in front plus a single mono surround channel and two low-frequency (<250 Hz) “baby boom” tracks (typically routed to woofers at front left and right).

    For many movies using this format, the two baby boom tracks were actually identical—I’m unsure if that’s the case for the Star Wars films, though I do know that, by Empire at least, the people behind the mixing desk were well aware that sound equipment didn’t always work properly in all theaters, so they made efforts to ensure that their mixes still “worked” even if the surround speakers or subwoofers weren’t running—they wouldn’t want you to not hear the Death Star blowing up if one sub happened to be out. So if the two baby boom tracks weren’t completely identical, they were probably very similar.

    So in modern parlance, these were “4.2”—or maybe even “4.1”—mixes.
     
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  8. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    I have been following their 2.0 edition of Star Wars and there is some interesting stuff going on there. For example creating a matte for the grain so that they can clean up the image and then reintroduce the grain to the image. And with 4k80 I've noticed that people are constantly revising the Color grading, my current favourite version is 1.4 which is based on the Color on the print, it has also had minimal noise reduction done on it and it all looks incredibly tasteful.
    I am interested to see how Despecialized 3.0 turns out since he has much better sources to work with.
     
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  9. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    Yeah, which unfortunately speaks to Vidiot's frequent point that most of these fans aren't pros and can't give you a "real" version of the film (there's a 2.7 version of the Harmy editions with altered color, even). Of course, at a certain point, there's only so many different ways these things can be tweaked. If Disney can't be bothered (though aside from the alterations, the D+ versions are very well received), somebody else clearly can.
     
  10. budwhite

    budwhite Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

    Location:
    Götaland, Sverige
    I agree. But then again, who the hell does get it right?
    Vidiot worked on the 2004 dvd masters, overseen by Lucas.
    Not many people liked that color grading.

    They are very different from the latest official release.
    The official story changes from every release, just like the fan versions.
     
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  11. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    Personally I don't see it as an indictment of the work, genuine releases are revised all the time for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes the filmmakers are involved and sometimes they aren't. Someone has done a flowchart to explain all the different releases of Seven and the latest version of the Lord of the Rings appears to be a total revision of the look of the films.
    We're talking about cleaning up film prints during people's spare time so I think there will always be a way to improve on them, a slightly better noise reduction technique may be found. Or perhaps someone wants to try their own color grade. Perhaps a print is rescanned to slightly better results or a new print is found and shared.
    You do the best work you can and then move onto the next piece because you want something in a watchable state and you can always continue working on it later. Even Mike Verta reportedly hasn't finished working on his version of Star Wars, I think he has a watchable 4k version which he describes as the best version of Star Wars you can watch but he's still tweaking it here and there.
    I don't think anyone has ever claimed these fan projects to be official releases of the films but they are the best releases of the films and even though Vidiot and Mike Verta are confident that the theatrical versions will get an official release I am not so confident in that possibility myself. If my career had gone more successfully I might be going down the route Mike Verta has gone down and started collecting prints for myself to contribute to my own restoration project.
     
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  12. AlmanacZinger

    AlmanacZinger Zingin'

    Location:
    The Land of Zaat
    Forget it, Jake. It's Hollywood.
     
  13. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
    What many people don't know, is that the walls of the Tantive IV are not white. This is what they roughly look like:

    [​IMG]

    The walls themselves are greenish, while the panels are beige. Unfaded print sources show these colors, and a friend has seen the actual panels themselves, which confirmed it isn't some balancing issue on the prints.
     
  14. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
    I've obtained unfaded pre-special edition print by Derann, which I will have professionally scanned and restored, which I will use as a color reference. I've done a preliminary color grade for a number of scenes. It's still very much a work in progress, but this is what I've done thusfar:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  15. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
  16. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
  17. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Sad..........Maybe......One day......Sad (sniff sniff!)
    I do prefer the 1997 versions but I still want to see what I saw in my childhood. Why is this an issue?
     
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  18. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    All true.
     
  19. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    Cool but these look white to me.
    He has seen the original panels? Really?
    How did that happen? I guess a lot of this stuff had been thrown out. Did he see them in person or a pic of the panels? Just curious....
     
  20. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    I have been saying this for years.
     
  21. john morris

    john morris Everybody's Favorite Quadron

    Location:
    Toronto, Ontario
    You could be right. But why a box set? Just the 1977 Episode 4 would sell like hot cakes.

    Who said billions? Do you know how much the Beatles stereo and mono box set sold? The stereo box set on CD is the biggest selling box set of all time. Even if they make 300 million it is still 300 million sales.

    I do (used to ) a lot of 5.1 mixes for albums.
    If a 5.1 mix of an album sells 10 000 it is considered to have done well. My point is IT WOULD SELL WELL.
     
  22. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
    Looks can decieve. Here's the same pic with a boosted color saturation:

    [​IMG]

    He's seen the real panels. He works in film restoration, and got lucky, I guess.
     
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  23. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
    It's interesting to note, that the 2004 master doesn't resolve the subtle color differences in the Tantive IV walls, whereas the 2019 master does.

    2004:

    [​IMG]

    2019 master with my preliminary grade:

    [​IMG]

    Here are the same two images with a boosted saturation:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  24. indigovic

    indigovic (Taylor’s Version)

    Location:
    North Bend, WA
    Assuming you’re correct about that (and I’m not doubting you—I’m just saying I made no attempt to confirm it), arguing that the pinnacle of CD box set sales was 11 years ago isn’t an indication of a strong physical media market today—it’s evidence that the opposite is true!

    The best selling home video title in the past year is Frozen II, with an estimated $80m in home video sales. The second-best seller is Episode IX, with a bit less than $67m. The best-selling reissue title is the Harry Potter 7-movie set, which pulled $65m (with a lot fewer units but a much higher price point). $300m is quite simply not going to happen here, no matter how you configure it. (Also keep in mind we’re talking retail dollars—the studio’s net on these is likely around 40% of that, at best.)

    Can they make some money on it? Sure. But my point is that the numbers involved amount to a rounding error on their balance sheet. So when people are wondering why Disney execs aren’t losing sleep in their rush to market these, the simple answer is that it just really isn’t that big a deal for them.
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2021
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  25. Exotiki

    Exotiki The Future Ain’t What It Use To Be

    Location:
    Canada
    Beautiful, just beautiful.
     
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