CT Star Wars: COLOR COMPARISON - Theatrical vs. 2004 DVD

Two shots that show the big difference between the 2004 and theatrical color gradings are these. The first is a shot of Luke, and Chewie as they are waiting to be tossed into the Pit of Carkoon:



The 2004 colors are dark and blue, and quite frankly don't look very natural.

The second shot of Luke talking to the ghost of Obi-Wan shows the drastic changes that were made to certain scenes. The scene originally was much more atmospheric, and contained a lot of blue lighting and the ghost of Obi-Wan used to be blue as well, having a much more fluorescent and ghostly appearance:

 

I'll stand by my opinion that Return of the Jedi has the worst (least good) cinematography of the OT, but it looks so much better with the original colors.

 

I'm sure they wanted to "modernize" the look of the film. Films today have a strong blue/orange tinge; somehow filmmakers have grown accustomed to that contrast.

Though it's not a one size fits all solution, because while the interior shots actually do look convincingly modern, the natural look of the outdoor shots is gone. I won't pretend I know the inner workings of film grading, but I can say that when you try to artificially shift a shot, you're going to end up with some unintentional consequences.

 

For future releases, I feel like they should just "use common sense" and make the colors/brightness/contrast look "normal".

As for the 1997 theatrical colors, I would watch the trailers.

 

I love these threads because to be honest when I watch the films I have no idea in my head of what they used to look like, so I take them for what they are on whatever medium I’m watching. Where does the original theatrical comparison come from on this thread?

I’m assuming that the original theatrical version is different again to the subsequent releases on video too? Wasn’t the 1995 VHS release supposed to be the definitive version back then?

 

The theatrical comparison was created by using a 16mm print as a color reference, and yes the home video releases on VHS are generally quite different from the theatrical colors, but the 1997 SE release for TESB and ROTJ actually are quite faithful to the theatrical presentation, which themselves were color timed to closely match the original theatrical releases in 1977, 1980, and 1983.

 

Here's an example of a bluray frame from ANH:



I happen to have the actual frames of a technicolor print for this shot:



A few things become clear. For one the bluray is very dark. Also the scene has seen on theatrical prints featured blue lighting in the foreground as well as in the background, and the print obviously displays more natural skin tones. What might a color grading more accurate to the theatrical release look like? I decided to have a go at it, and came to the following:



Here's what it looks like in motion:

 

The 2004 restoration was horrible. It was rushed, done cheaply and is was outdated even at the time. The blue tint fetish modern colorists have right now is irritating. Look at AOTC. It makes what was probably the ugliest shot Star Wars film even worse.

 

It takes a considerable amount of ignorance not just about the restoration process but the condition of the negatives to say that the Lowry restoration was done cheaply and was horrible.

 

I don't know what your interpretation of ugliest shot is in terms of colors, cinematography and the like but AOTC (and all 6 of Lucas' movies) look completely glorious compared to anything the new movies have done. They are just classic looking gorgeous movies.

As for the restoration especially ANH it was a massive time consuming undertaking to save the movie from the O-Neg as and other original elements as opposed to going to other means which would have been easier.

 

When 35mm release prints have scenes with more image detail than a restoration done from the original negatives, then there's a flaw with the restoration (too much aggressive DNR). When an entire section of the movie is blurrier than the rest, then there's a flaw in the restoration (I'm referring to how a large chunk of the Endor scenes in ROTJ are blurry...perhaps due to the film scanner being out-of-focus). When the movies end up with magenta tints compared to the original color timing, then there's something wrong with the color correction. When the movies end up having lightsabers with significantly diminished white cores, then there's something wrong with the color correction. Despite a few things being fixed in the 2011 BD release, most of the issues still remain (surprisingly, the 1997 SE seems to be free of these issues).

Thankfully, it seems that a 4k restoration of the original elements was done in 2012 that will hopefully be released one day. We can only hope that more time is devoted into making sure the colors don't look ugly.

 

Are you talking about the 97 restoration? Because, changes aside, the film looked amazing on the big screen. Its only with the 2004 1080p (not even 2k!) scan that the horrible colors popped up and the 2011 blu ray release was based off the DVD master with the most outrageous color errors fixed.

http://fd.noneinc.com/savestarwarscom/savestarwars.com/specialeditionfail.html

AOTC is my personal belief, and that is mostly down to me liking the look of film over digital. Its not the only movie to have its colors blue shifted too much on a modern home video release.

 

Here are a few more shots that show how Star Wars used to look on film:

 

This is true.



As an example, Vader is filmed in a more impressive manner in TESB than ROTJ.