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The OTHER Sept. 21 release :)

DieStarWarsGeek

By DieStarWarsGeek
in The Sliced TaunTaun

Are you going to buy the Trilogy as well?  

25 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you going to buy the Trilogy as well?

    • Yes, make it a national StarWars holiday
      16
    • No, I am going to buy it later.
      7
    • Not buying Battlefront, just the trilogy
      2
    • Not buying either
      0

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reltes Newbie

reltes

Posted
Posted

of course!

 

that's why it's released on the same day and there's a demo on one of the disks!

 

it's called marketing!

 

Here are some quotes from the Star Wars Magazine article entitled The Force Restored, about the DVD transfer process by Lowry Digital Images. There's more about it in the magazine, it's a great read

 

"There were sandstorms of dirt on the film", says John Lowry, CEO and founder of the Burbank, California-based company. "In the desert scenes alone, we probably removed more than a million pieces of dirt. That means each frame literally had hundreds of pieces of dirt".

 

"In many ways, the films of the Star Wars Trilogy were victims of their own success. Generally, the more successful a film, the worse condition it's in. When a movie starts out, there are some expectations for what's going to happen with it, how many times prints will need to be made and so forth, then the studio makes a certain number of protection masters for printing. But if they go through them all, they have to go back to the negatives again because the protection masters are just plain worn out. Of course, every time you go back to the originals, you're beating them up again. So, the big movies, the really successful ones, are usually pretty rough".

 

"The dirt was the biggest single challenge. It was just incredible", he says. "We use automated systems here, which can remove hundreds of pieces of dirt in a scene, but in this case the automated systems just couldn't cope. Last year, Lowry Digital Images performed a digital restoration of the three Indiana Jones films, each of which had about 100,000 pieces of dirt. In the Star Wars films, we removed up to one million pieces of dirt in a single scene".

 

"Prior to the event of digital technology, colour timing was a hit-or-miss proposition done in a laboratory setting. It was really hard to get right", Blanchard (Lucasfilm Post-Production Supervisor) says. "But in the digital environment, there's a lot more control. You have the ability to fine-tune things exactly the way you want them to be and bring out subtleties in the film you couldn't get by the traditional method of colour timing. On the Star Wars Trilogy, we were able to retime the movie to make it look the way George originally wanted it to be".

 

Simply put, Lowry says, the Trilogy was the most difficult project his company has ever had. "We've cleaned up more dirt on these three movies than we have on any movie we've ever worked on, including Citizen Kane and that was almost impossible", he says, trying to give some idea of the challenges his technicians faced. The end result.

 

These films are absolutely stunning.

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reltes Newbie

reltes

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here are some reviews...

 

The Digital Bits has posted their exhaustive review of the SW DVDs coming in a few weeks from Lucasfilm and Fox. Here's a clip of their research:

 

Simply put, the Star Wars films have never (and I mean EVER) looked this good before. The films presented on these discs absolutely sparkle, in all their anamorphic widescreen glory. The folks at THX and Lowry Digital worked for months to create new high-definition digital masters of these films, transferred directly from the original negatives. Once the films were transferred, painstaking efforts were made to clean the digital masters of dust, dirt, scratches and excessive grain. To give you an idea of just how much work was involved, more than 100 bits of debris were digitally removed from EACH FRAME - ultimately entailing the removal of over 10 million such blemishes in all over the three films combined. As a result, you will not find a single speck ANYWHERE on any of these films. The snow-white slopes of Hoth and the sand-baked dunes of Tatooine have never looked so pure.

 

Because the transfers were done from the original negatives, you're going to see detail in these films that you've never seen before. You'll notice this right from the opening shot of A New Hope, when the Star Destroyer chases its quarry over the surface of Tatooine. Just look at the subtle swirl of cloud patterns on the planet below - astonishing. Best of all, not a lick of added edge enhancement was required to bring out this detail. What else is good? The color palette here is more lush and accurate than ever before. You're going to be blown away by everything from subtle flesh tones to the vibrant gold plating on C-3PO's chest to the bright orange flightsuits of the Rebel pilots. Contrast is also spectacular, with deep detailed blacks and clear, accurate whites. All three films in this set are just going to absolutely blow you away, and the bigger your screen the better it gets. The Star Wars Trilogy on DVD is the best excuse you're ever going to have to go out and buy yourself a good anamorphic widescreen display. Until true high-definition arrives, it just doesn't get better than this.

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Justin points out Time Magazine for more on the SW DVDs:

 

In the documentary Lucas speaks of perfecting "things that I had to give up on because I just didn't have the time or money or the power." The DVDs have even newer shots that tie elements of Lucas' first trilogy and his more recent one — you may be able to spot a cameo by a current star who was in diapers when Jedi was made — to make the grand story line flow more coherently.

This kind of coherence begets controversy among the caretakers of movie tradition. For them, New is never Improved, and Lucas' decision to release the updated films without the cherished originals is sacrilege. (Steven Spielberg, who updated his E.T. in 2002, issued a DVD with both versions.) "Sure, the effects work isn't up to today's standards, but it's the effects work that we saw," says Harry Knowles, geek in chief of the movie website AintItCoolNews. "It's about the preservation of the original art."

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Old-school fans will definitely remember Red5, right? The webmaster of that classic website which has long since been laid to rest resurfaced today, posting his review of the SW DVDs on DVD.Net.au. Nice work, Steve!

 

This time around the changes a minor in scope yet major in impact. In Star Wars we have a better rendered speeder enter into Mos Eisley and a new model for Jabba the Hutt used in the restored scene with han now casting more obvious shadows onto the slug. Han and Greedo now shoot almost simultaneously with Han saying "Yes, I bet you have" as in the original. Leias gunshots are proper laser shots now and Obiwan and Vaders lightsabers have more color in them yet still suffer from strobing issues. Empire now has Ian McDiarmid playing the holographic Emperor and the voice of Boba Fett is now that of Temuera Morrisson, Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones. Jedi rounds off the changes with a shot of Naboo in the final celebrations as well as Hayden Christensens head replacing that of Sebastian Shaw in the final group shot of the departed Jedi. Decide amongst yourselves the merits of these changes.

 

As for this DVD boxset release itself, the long wait has certainly been worth it and the jewel in the crown of what DVD was originally intended for has finally arrived. Enclosed in this beautifully crafted box are the three original movies in their Special Edition formats with yet further special(er) edition tweaks.

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