All Clear. A shot of R2D2 and C3PO show results of top-to-bottom cleaning by Lowry Digital Images.
©Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All rights reserved.
Posted on 10/10/2004 1:56:08 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Whether you’ve seen “Star Wars” once or a hundred times since its release in 1977, unless your name is George Lucas, or you looked over his shoulder on the set, you’ve never seen it like this — as clean as the day it was shot, digitally scrubbed and re-mastered for DVD, as part of the long-awaited “Star Wars Trilogy” boxed set.
All Clear. A shot of R2D2 and C3PO show results of top-to-bottom cleaning by Lowry Digital Images.
©Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All rights reserved.
Jim Ward, Vice President of Marketing and Distribution for Lucasfilm and Executive Producer of the collection, says that “A New Hope” (the film formerly known as “Star Wars”), “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” each on DVD for the first time, have been so radically enhanced as to be literally “good as new.”
“They look as beautiful as the dailies George saw in 1976,” says Ward.
Track Record
The optimal re-mastering of the trilogy was a keystone project for LucasFilm. “These are absolutely the crown jewels,” says Ward. But polishing the jewels involved epic wrangling of badly degraded master prints by film restoration expert John Lowry of Lowry Digital Images in Burbank, CA.
Ward, who’d watched Lowry work magical reclamations on the “Indiana Jones” DVD trilogy as well as on Lucas’s debut feature “THX 1138,” knew Lowry represented LucasFilm’s best chance of showing fans the films as the directors saw them long ago on production sets far, far away.
“We’d done a lot of work on the films prior to going to John,” he says, “re-mastering them in high-def, down-converting them into standard def, and re-color timing them. We actually took a cleaning pass through Industrial Light and Magic, as well, but then ultimately took them down to John to make them pristine.”
“The films are really not that old, but the real problem is that they’ve been so successful, and success breeds dirt.”
Success Breeds Dirt
Lowry, who’s restored more than a hundred films from every era, was surprised at just how far from pristine the prints looked when they arrived. “The material came in much dirtier and more beat up than we’d ever expected,” he says. “The films are really not that old, but the real problem is that they’ve been so successful, and success breeds dirt.”
The success of the “Star Wars” films was such that even the master originals had worn badly. “If a movie’s a real dog it sits on the shelf, the negative is probably pristine because nobody’s ever touched it,” says Lowry. “But if you keep pulling that original negative off the shelf to make yet another duplicate, it collects dirt. Just by re-winding it you create static electricity, which pulls everything in. So there was dirt, scratching and a bit of flicker due to age.”
In fact, nearly everything about the prints had degraded except expectations for their restoration. “George Lucas is a very fussy guy,” says Lowry. “We like to think that we are very particular, because we’ve done about a hundred movies now, and we strive to make our output pristine. So to work with a guy like Lucas is fabulous because he’s got his head in the same place, pristine.”
Three Months and Six Hundred Macs
©Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All rights reserved.
First and Worst
Of the three films, Lowry says, the oldest was the most degraded. “In ’ÄòNew Hope’ we were getting many hundreds of pieces of dirt per frame. So there were scenes where there were literally a million pieces of dirt’Äîin one reel of film. It was unbelievable.”
Optical matching was the next biggest challenge because optical printing, which creates effects by running film repeatedly through a printer to pick up different elements, was used to create most of the special effects in the earliest “Star Wars” movies.
“Opticals are a little soft, and much grainier, because there are two more generations on film, and there’s a little more contrast,” says Lowry. “We try to match those scenes perfectly so they don’t telegraph that something’s going to happen, a light saber sequence, for example, by showing a change in picture quality. We removed that extra grain, reduced the contrast, and got the sharpness to match the prior and following scenes.”
The Macs Were With Him
To clean the films Lowry pushed high-definition scans of the original negatives provided by LucasFilm through his proprietary software running on 600 dual-processor Power Mac G5 computers, each with Mac OS X, 4 gigs of RAM and connected via gigabit Ethernet to a 378-terabyte storage array.
“We find that Macs hold up incredibly well, much better than PCs,” he says. “We put them in their own room with their own air-conditioning, as they generate a fair bit of heat.”
Lowry soon discovered that the project required fine-tuned programming as well as brute-strength processing. “We had to do some special work on these, actually build some different algorithms to try to deal with the incredible dirt levels and scratches. It was somewhat overwhelming.”
A tight release schedule compounded the problem. “They took about a month each,” says Lowry, “which is all we had.”
“We ended up with something very nice. They look like new movies again.”
Clean Results
But three months, says Lowry, “given the 600 Macs,” was all he needed: “We cleaned it up, matched scene to scene, sharpened it end-to-end, reduced the granularity and got rid of the flicker and all the wear-and-tear things. We ended up with something very nice. They look like new movies again,” says Lowry.
The reaction at LucasFilm was unanimous. “We’re extremely happy with everything Lowry Digital did on the Star Wars trilogy. John’s bank of G5s, his process, his proprietary software created great results.”
Lowry expects that the next three episodes of the Star Wars saga, all shot digitally, and with hypothetically pristine digital masters, will require many fewer cleaning cycles, if any, for future releases.
Ward agrees to a point, but suspects he might be calling on Lowry again. “As the technology evolves and we get into a high-definition platform that is easily consumable by our customers, the situation is much better, but there will always be work to be done.”
Darth Vader before restoration
Darth Vader after restoration.
See a rendering farm of 600 Macintosh dual processor G5s. Quicktime site.
Spin Cycles. Drag across the image to look around Lowry’s lab, with 600 Power Mac G5 computers.
QuickTime VR courtesy of Axis Images.
is this the edition with the redone special effects?
“We find that Macs hold up incredibly well, much better than PCs,” he says. “We put them in their own room with their own air-conditioning, as they generate a fair bit of heat.”
As always if you want to be included or excluded from the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Tweaks and Shrieks As with many restorations made with the cooperation of living directors, the “Star Wars Trilogy”introduced content changes, mandated by Lucas, to conform narrative and look and feel in the original trilogy with characters and visuals introduced in the later films. Some were controversial with fans.Jim Ward deflates the issue by scaling the controversy: “At the end of the day an artist has a right to do what he wants to do to his work. For many years, George has worked to achieve the original vision he couldn’Äôt achieve in 1977 or in 1997 (Special Edition).
So it makes maybe a good headline, but it’Äôs hardly a controversy. We sold over $100 million in one day of this DVD around the world, so I don’Äôt think anybody’Äôs too upset about it. And any changes that George made, they might be controversial to about 5 people.”
Who cares! I saw it once and that was enough. It was OK but not worth multiple viewings.
I'd buy it if the macs would scrub the "redone" scenes and effects.
This, of course, is a BIGTIME DISTORTION since NONE, ZERO, NADA of the advertising or packaging mentions the DVD release includes even further alterations from the much slandered 1997 "Special Editions." Instead EVERY piece of advertising focused on the RESTORATION and sound mix aspects.
Lucas is doing a SIX DVD box set and there will be alterations to "The Phantom Menace" including replacing that Yoda puppet with a digital version.
He's done NOTHING to improve the 1977 original film by ignoring the OSCAR-WINNING editing, by inserting ridiculous cartoons. He's betrayed the classic film, a cultural icon, and the man that he was.
Oh, and to demonstrate he's the John "Flip-Floppin'" Kerry of film-making: Greedo & Han now shoot at the same time, rather than Greedo shooting first in 1997 or Han shooting first in 1977.
This edition is even FURTHER redone from the 1997 "Special Edition" re-releases. Save your money; go to an online auction site and find the Laser Disc releases of the classic film as we all remember it.
When the first movie came out in 1977 they were giving iron on designs to people with tickets.
I got two of the designs and put them in a brief case where they sit to this day, still flat and in the bag. I wonder if they're worth anything.
George W. Bush will win reelection by a margin of at least ten per cent.
The Greedo shooting thing was the only part that annoyed me - other than that the changes were minor, and had no real impact on the films.
Has anyone noticed how much John Kerry resembles Governor Tarkin? Same boney, pointy fingers and the same gaunt, spooky cheekbone thingy's.
Movie film is funny. I've got some Super 8 film from the 1970's where the emulsion is badly crazed, and I've got 200' of 8mm from 1944 where the colors are gorgeous.
I hated James Carville in "The Hills Have Eyes".
I'd have a hard time saying what "extended edition" I liked best, but I can probably name the one I liked least: Cinema Paradiso. Ironically, from what I've read the "extended edition" is actually closer to the original foreign release than was the original U.S. release, but the version originally released here was a much better movie than the "extended version". Anyone else agree the shorter version was better?
How well is your G4 running 10.3? I assume its part of the gigabit ethernet line like I have. How's the speed changed from 10.1 -> 10.2 -> 10.3?Have you put in a new video card? My 500DP G4 came with the now ancient ATI Rage 128 Pro. I'd like to put in a Radeon 9000. I also think I would need to get a better card to get the full effect of quartz rendering.
Ever thought about putting in a processor upgrade card? Would you choose a dual or single processor upgrade?
To clean the films Lowry pushed high-definition scans of the original negatives provided by LucasFilm through his proprietary software...
Out of curiosity, what movies have people liked "director's cuts" or "extended editions" of, and of what movies have people hated such things?
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