Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by shane01

I'm a huge Star Wars fan. My Attack of the Clones DVD was stuck in my player in 2002/2003. But the BD release is shockingly bad. The caps on that site show an uptick in clarity, but not much. And the bigger issue is color timing. What the hell happened?

It's just not a great looking film. Shot on early digital cameras at a relatively low resolution and with tons of digital tinkering done at a time when that was relatively new as well. It's never going to look any better, it is what it is. This is the reason why many film mags and sites at the time criticized the idea of shooting it that way, but Lucas had to trailblaze because that's what he loved to do. 15 years later digital movies look much better, though still worse than film IMO, so he doomed us all.

Also Phantom Menace is BY FAR the worst looking transfer in that collection due to DNR-a-go-go.

[Arch Stanton]

Originally Posted by shane01

I'm sure this has been discussed many times in this thread, but I don't understand why Attack of the Clones looks like complete garbage. Is it the video source? The final color timing? The redone color timing? It was shot in 1080p, yet it looks significantly worse than Zodiac or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. What gives? As a fan, I'd love to know wtf happened and who made the choices that led to the 2011 Blu-ray.

Shot on a pretty terrible early video camera from the 2000/2001 era (Zodiac was probably shot on a Viper right? Which in itself isn't very filmic imo but is much better in terms of image than the Sony used on Star Wars).

I think Clones is actually sub 1080p, btw. Didn't it go to 1440 x 1080 tape?

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by shane01

I'm a huge Star Wars fan. My Attack of the Clones DVD was stuck in my player in 2002/2003. But the BD release is shockingly bad. The caps on that site show an uptick in clarity, but not much. And the bigger issue is color timing. What the hell happened?

What's wrong with the color timing? Looks fine to me...

[rainbowbattlekid]

the griffin & david podcast episode "digital filmmaking" goes into it quite a bit.

https://soundcloud.com/griffin-and-d...ing-w-jd-amato

(this is probably my favorite podcast, and definitely benefits from starting at the beginning. they do like 10 episodes for EACH of the prequels lol)

[Donl1282]

They really need to make a movie or TV series that tells what happens between Episode 6 and 7.

[Arch Stanton]

Originally Posted by rainbowbattlekid

the griffin & david podcast episode "digital filmmaking" goes into it quite a bit.

https://soundcloud.com/griffin-and-d...ing-w-jd-amato

(this is probably my favorite podcast, and definitely benefits from starting at the beginning. they do like 10 episodes for EACH of the prequels lol)

Thanks for this, will listen tonight.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by shane01

I'm a huge Star Wars fan. My Attack of the Clones DVD was stuck in my player in 2002/2003. But the BD release is shockingly bad. The caps on that site show an uptick in clarity, but not much. And the bigger issue is color timing. What the hell happened?

The Blu-ray blows away the DVD. The color grading looks better - more stylized for the type of movie it is, the AVC compression is superior to the MPEG-2 of DVD, and the detail improvement is notable. The disc holds up fine at 124" all things considered. As mentioned before, it is softer and I would say the image lacks some range, but it's all source related. My bigger issue with "how it looks" is the CG which has not aged well in a lot of places and is overdone throughout the movie.

[BluProofie]

The Blu-rays look fantastic, IMO. The only one that could use improvement is TPM, but that'll never happen because Lucas wants to erase the film grain and make it look digital, which is why it's a DNR'd mess.

[JohnCarpenterFan]

The Original Trilogy could look miles better than what we've got, but as always with these flawed Blu-rays you'll get people saying that it'll never look better only and that there won't be a big improvement, only to turn around and say that nobody would have suspected there would be such a difference when a properly remastered edition is released down the road.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

The Original Trilogy could look miles better than what we've got, but as always with these flawed Blu-rays you'll get people saying that it'll never look better only and that there won't be a big improvement, only to turn around and say that nobody would have suspected there would be such a difference when a properly remastered edition is released down the road.

I still chuckle at comments about the original Terminator on Blu; so many said the movie could/would never look better as it was soft due to crappy 80s film stock, etc.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

The Blu-rays look fantastic, IMO. The only one that could use improvement is TPM, but that'll never happen because Lucas wants to erase the film grain and make it look digital, which is why it's a DNR'd mess.

The originals look poor for today's standards when you look at movies that have been remastered from that era. But we're talking about nearly 13-year-old transfers at this point.

[JohnCarpenterFan]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

I still chuckle at comments about the original Terminator on Blu; so many said the movie could/would never look better as it was soft due to crappy 80s film stock, etc.

Unfortunately, comments like those still get posted. You'd think that after all these years, those people would have got tired of being wrong all the time.

[shane01]

It seems like (at the time) state of the art digital cameras and endless digital tinkering in post contributed greatly to the look of Attack of the Clones. Is the full resolution 1080p HD? It looks better than Superman Returns. Maybe my main issue is the teal push. Am I just a crazy person? It has an ugly look, in my opinion. The prequels are all wildly different looking.

[DrWally]

Yes, basically AOTC is forever locked at 1080p. The current Blu is as good as it's ever going to look. If you watched it projected on film in 2002 it looked absolutely awful, even then. Even Roger Ebert commented on this in his review of the movie. HD video was not ready for prime time when the movie was in principal photography, one more reason why that movie is aging worse than any of the other movies in the saga. For all it's faults, even TPM has moments of genuine grandeur in it, but AOTC looks more and more cheap and cartoony with each passing year.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by DrWally

Yes, basically AOTC is forever locked at 1080p. The current Blu is as good as it's ever going to look. If you watched it projected on film in 2002 it looked absolutely awful, even then. Even Roger Ebert commented on this in his review of the movie. HD video was not ready for prime time when the movie was in principal photography, one more reason why that movie is aging worse than any of the other movies in the saga. For all it's faults, even TPM has moments of genuine grandeur in it, but AOTC looks more and more cheap and cartoony with each passing year.

Not to mention in 2002 theaters were still using 35mm projectors and Clones being digitally filmed was transferred to prints. It just further muddied the overall look.

[shane01]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Not to mention in 2002 theaters were still using 35mm projectors and Clones being digitally filmed was transferred to prints. It just further muddied the overall look.

An interesting aside, 10 years ago it was a rare, premium thing to see a movie projected digitally, not to mention a movie SHOT digitally, then projected that way. Now it's completely flipped, with catching a 35mm print a premium treat. Thanks George?

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by shane01

An interesting aside, 10 years ago it was a rare, premium thing to see a movie projected digitally, not to mention a movie SHOT digitally, then projected that way. Now it's completely flipped, with catching a 35mm print a premium treat. Thanks George?

He was definitely the pioneer, but it was inevitable at some point.

[shane01]

My favorite parts of the commentary tracks are Rick McCallum's lauding of the "utterly breathtaking" and "finTASTic" shots as they appear. I'd like to have a beer with him. He's such an enabler.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by shane01

My favorite parts of the commentary tracks are Rick McCallum's lauding of the "utterly breathtaking" and "finTASTic" shots as they appear. I'd like to have a beer with him. He's such an enabler.

You can actually detect the exact moment when his head disappears completely up George's arse: when the two Jedi approach Otoh Gunga in TPM he starts going about about "taking the same road to work as George does and yet he comes up with all this stuff".

As for Clones, it is what it is visually and the Blu is fine when keeping the original acquisition in mind (which, resolution aside, used chroma subsampling and was only rec 709 as far as the gamut goes). But you're quite right about how inconsistent all three prequels look on Blu, it's amazing how much better Sith looks even though it was only made three years later than Clones.

[shane01]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

You can actually detect the exact moment when his head disappears completely up George's arse: when the two Jedi approach Otoh Gunga in TPM he starts going about about "taking the same road to work as George does and yet he comes up with all this stuff".

As for Clones, it is what it is visually and the Blu is fine when keeping the original acquisition in mind (which, resolution aside, used chroma subsampling and was only rec 709 as far as the gamut goes). But you're quite right about how inconsistent all three prequels look on Blu, it's amazing how much better Sith looks even though it was only made three years later than Clones.

I am 82% sure I read somewhere--and 70% it was in Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days that John Knoll wrote--that Lucas and co. were so floored by the Sony HDCAM footage, they softened the image because audiences just weren't ready for that level of pure, sharp, digital photography. They didn't soften the CG worlds they ended up creating, though! So the haziness of the image is around the live action elements. Maybe that's why AOTC is so disorienting. I'll check the book when I get home, because it at least includes technical details of the Sony camera used for AOTC and the upgraded one used for ROTS.