Star Wars coming to Blu-ray!

For the Star Wars series, I think you meant acetate or polyester base. All Nitrate based film was discontinued by Kodak by 1952.

Derek

 

I would love that! Can you post a link EG to Amazon? Thanks

-S1m0n-

 

Thanks! I thought I was loosing my mind....John M.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Tri...71DG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294771219&sr=8-1

 

Too frightened to!

The movies go all over the place. I don't think there's any one look for the first three Episodes. They did use the same colorist and facility, so my guess is you're seeing "intentional creative intent."

My opinion: It's not so much "shame" as Lucas seeing all of what he believes are flaws, and wanting to fix them. He's said many times that in his own mind, the films aren't finished until he says they are. I get that.

If it were up to me, I would include the original "classic" theatrical editions, but I don't own the films. I think George feels his only responsibility is to make the best films he can for himself. It's kind of like that old Rick Nelson: "If you can't please everyone, you gotta please yourself." If Lucas is happy with the way the film finally came out, that's all that's necessary.

 

Film-making is collaborative and even the first Star Wars would not have been without Gary Kurtz, whose role in the early films need to be remembered, not to mention Kirshner, Kasdan, etc. Lucas managed to legally get all rights to these films so these people and all the work that went into those films don't matter anymore, just Lucas and his "vision"

 

The whole thing of wanting to continue working on it and of his having the right to do so, that I find easy to understand. While he has done many other things before and since, the first Star Wars film was the production which "made" him, producing the profile and access to resources that he has enjoyed ever since. I would have thought that he would want that "original hit" film to be preserved as his personal and professional cornerstone, exactly as it was. The first Star Wars film at least, if not all three. Future work would have been struck from that material or referencing it but not literally cutting it up, letting parts of it go to pot, etc. And I would have thought that if folks wanted to see that "original hit version" and if he could safely make it available, as home video has made possible, he would do so proudly, for himself and on behalf of everyone else who worked with him on it.

If there are "alternate universes" produced at the conceptualization of the human mind, then without my having conceived it there exists a time and place where an Academy of top filmmakers and such have gathered with George and the conversation turns to one of the great miracles of movies: the virtual time travel they offer us. The group decides in their enthusiasm to avail themselves of that gift of filmmaking and one idea is to relive the excitement of the original Star Wars - such as it was, just as it was, in 1977. "Fortunately George owns it all free and clear," it is said and the group turns to him. "Let's see it. Where is that film, George?"

 

Well I agree when it comes to preserving the detail in film media. But I suggest we should bear in mind that in terms of video releases we are discussing a process which involves a transfer to a different technology. Because video can only contain a fraction of available information on the film, this always involves compromises to the image. A factor of our video technology, be it Blu-Ray, broadcast, streaming or DVD, involves digital compression processes. As I understand it, our video formats cannot preserve all the grain accurately. Where digital compression is involved, what is captured can further reduce the fidelity to other aspects of the picture. That's one reason some "grain management" can be desired. The process also allows for evening up shots. So there is a juggling act to be done. The goal of course is to have the video reflect the desired image.

Grain in video transfer isn't quite the same prospect as tape hiss on a CD for instance, where leaving it doesn't hurt anything and digitally processing it out compromises the sound.* Overzealous or sloppy "grain management" is a bad thing for sure, but none may not be the best approach.

* - and boy do they go nuts processing the sound of old films. With all the capacity on Blu-Rays, I wish there was an alternate sound track that offered the original sound "warts and all."

 

Thank you both!

 

Some do. I recently rented Gone With the Wind and the Godfather on Blu-Ray and they both had the original MONO soundtrack as an option. From what I understand, the one on GWTW definitely has some warts, but it's there, for the purists.

 

Here's the deal with the special editions:

Millions of people loved the first three movies in their original form. If George Lucas had never decided to alter them, there would be very few people (if any) saying the films need to be revisited and updated. We would all be celebrating each release on a new format, because each time it gets us closer to the cinematic experience. Instead, Lucas decided to try to alter history, and now the discussion with every release inevitably devolves into how horrible the special editions are. Is this really what he wanted, or is he so disconnected with reality that he thinks we all just accept it and aren't bothered?

No matter who you are, as a creator of something, whether it's a film, a song, a work of art, a piece of software, a house, etc., at some point you have to realize that your creation becomes the property of the consumer and is out of your hands. Most artists can get past the fact that while there may be mistakes or shortcomings in their work, they judge it much more critically as their own creation and that the people who love it do so because of what it already is, not because of what it could be if you just kept tweaking it. A film is especially sensitive to tweaks over time because of how the evolution of fashion, technology, societal values, etc. all play a part in any changes made to what was originally a point-in-time cohesive work. Films at some point should just be left alone and allowed to age gracefully; otherwise you end up with the cinematic equivalent of Michael Jackson's face.

 

Ha, that's a good one! It's like each new release is another nose job!

 

Right. Nothing matches or looks natural, and at some point it just makes you feel sick looking at it.

 

That's good of the folks at Warner to include it. But is that mono soundtrack the original sound on the optical track direct or "restored" or even "recreated" with noise reduction processing, sent through all kinds of electronics etc...? It's the dulled, hollow, colorless plastic-wrapped low-res sound of overprocessed audio that bugs me, worse than the original flaws. I'm all for fixing pops and other cuts / damage type artifacts understand, that's fantastic. But not removal at any cost of artifacts one could just tune out.

 

There's a lot of misconceptions here. First, grain is the result of the silver halide particles that make up a camera emulsion; nitrate was only the backing of the film stocks. Grain is inconsistent due to differences in exposure, processing, optical effects, and a dozen other problems. Viewers are generally more aware of the differences in grain shot-to-shot, compared to the average amount of grain that goes on all the time (similar to analog tape hiss).

Grain reduction can be done on an extraordinarily sophisticated level, provided it's done in non-real-time. The old methods of the 1990s and early 2000s used temporal grain reduction that tried to digitally filter out the grain, creating motion smearing, fixed pattern noise, and other artifacts. This doesn't have to happen anymore.

The only way to do grain management properly is to take out all the grain from the entire film, then digitally sample the actual grain and add a consistent amount back to the feature. Once you do that, the grain level never changes, plus it looks completely natural -- since it represents actual grain from the movie's specific film stock.

This kind of restoration work was done to Star Wars by Lowry Digital Imaging back in 2004, and I think they did a very good job with it. They also had to remove thousands of scratches and hundreds of thousands of pieces of dirt, as they've also done with many classic Disney and Fox films, plus all the classic Bond films.

If you don't do any grain management, three things happen: 1) viewers complain, because HD sets reproduce grain very well (sometimes over-sharpening it); 2) the compression people dislike it, because now more bits have to be allocated for the grain as well as the image; 3) you'll see very inconsistent grain shot-to-shot.

Note that grain management has to be religiously handled with today's blockbusters, because some shots in current movies are completely created digitally, so they start off with zero grain. If you were to watch a movie shot on film with occasional all-digital shots, the absence of noise on a big screen would knock you out of your seat.

 

A good question to ask. A number of the new Disney restorations contain a mono soundtrack that's actually a brand new mix. Disney wasn't forthcoming with that info, but because they made mistakes (such as missing effects and a whole line of Pinocchio's dialog) we know what they did. I don't mind Disney's home theater mixes, but if they're going to include a mono mix, I'd sure prefer they use the ORIGINAL soundtrack.

Derek

 

What offends people is not so much that Lucas changed the films but that the changes display such appaling taste. The impossibly fake looking brontosaurus creatures at Mos Eisley, the ridiculous cartoonish CGI additions at Cloud City, inserting Hayden Christensen into Return of the Jedi? Only a **** would do that.

 

What he said.

 

That's the amazing thing about taste: no two people agree on it.

I'm not an apologist for Lucas, but I understand why he feels the way he does. At the same time, to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The rich are different than you and me."

 

Yes that's what I'm getting at. Original sound that isn't, isn't.

This also of course applies to Star Wars. A tricky application since mixes were evidently being made and reworked at least up to general distribution. For release of an original version, folks would probably be happy with any relevant original mix that George choses as his favorite. Instead who knows what one is apt to get, except that even if there were a release of "the original Star Wars" the odds it actually sounds just like you would have heard in 1977 from any master has to be steeper than the odds Ringo will record and release an all-solo-drum album.

 

Although I agree with at least two people above that the "taste" involved in some of it is appalling!

 

I wish I'd see the face of Toshiro Mifune as the "naked" Darth Vader at the end of episode VI.

 

And Greedo shooting first...

 

...and that annoying and pointless scene with Han and Jabba.

 

...and the new pre-schooler-approved musical number in "Return of the Jedi"....