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Star Wars Week Part 4 : Fans Preservations

A survey of the best and most popular fan preservations of the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Disclaimer : This website in no way supports or encourages the selling of Star Wars preservations. Making profits from those is thievery of Lucasfilm and the copyright holders, plain and simple. This review looks at the fan phenomenon only. Don't ask for where to find the mentioned discs. We don't know.

When the Special Editions supplanted the original cuts in 1997, Laserdisc was about to die in the United States, and when the refurbished films were issued on home video that year it marked the last time the original trilogy was released on Laserdisc. That year was also the debut of DVD. As such, there was no demand for "preservations" of the original trilogy, because everyone was still watching them on VHS and Laserdisc. But things began to change very quickly. By 2000, the new DVD format had really taken off, and many classic films were coming to DVD looking and sounding better than anyone had ever heard or seen them. In 2001, the first Star Wars DVD was officially released (Episode I), and demand for the rest of the series was really starting to build. Lucas was very vocal, however, that only the Special Edition would be released, and furthermore maintained that it would take until after the prequels were complete for it to happen.

Around this time, the first Star Wars DVD bootlegs started to appear. Among the earliest were supposedly those from Asia, which included the release dubbed "LOOK", which was popular on eBay. These usually used the 1995 THX/"Faces" Laserdiscs, and were of poor quality. By 2002 DVD sales had overtaken VHS sales and it became clear that DVD was the wave of the future; eBay had also risen in popularity quite a bit, and would soon take off with the introduction of Paypal. Around this time, several fans began making plans to use the Definitive Edition Laserdiscs for a DVD set, as it was considered the best available source for the original Star Wars films. It's hard to say what was the first fan preservation, but when the famous "Cowclops/TR47" transfer came out in the summer of 2003, based on the 1993 Definitive Edition LD, there wasn't a huge amount of competition. Cowclops described his techniques:

"Hooked up the s-video out on a Pioneer Elite CLD-59 Laserdisc player to a Sony Digital8 camcorder with analog in. Recorded the video to DV format by way of the camcorder, and used firewire to digitally transfer the video into the computer. From there, used several programs to filter out the noise from the laserdisc. Then, encoded the video to DVD format with CinemaCraft Encoder SP. Finally, authored the DVD with DVDit PE and wrote it to a Ritek 2x DVD-R with a Pioneer DVR-104 drive using Nero."

This may sound incredibly crude by todays standards, but the release was of good quality at the time, and with PCM sound was long regarded as having one of the best soundtracks. This version was probably the most illegal popular version on eBay and with street sellers, was the standard "original version of Star Wars on DVD" for a long time, and still circulates to this day. The Special Editions began to appear on DVD as well, and rips of both versions started appearing as CD-ROM burnable files on the file-trading websites and other networks that were relatively new at the time.

In 2002, originaltrilogy.com had gone online, consisting of a petition where one could add your name "to bring the unaltered Star Wars trilogy to DVD in 2005," and by the end of 2003 had garned almost 50,000 names. By then it also opened a forum, which slowly built a small community of experts, seeking to see the original trilogy preserved. The release of the further-altered Special Editions in 2004 only added to their cause, and provided further impetus for members and outsiders to transfer the Laserdiscs to DVD, such as the popular "Isomix" release, which also preserved the vintage documentaries that were glaringly absent from the official Lucasfilm set; the "Dr. Gonzo" Laserdisc transfer also surfaced in 2004, which was among the first to introduce anamorphic widescreen. Around this time, torrents and usenet had become popular as high-speed internet had become wide-spread, and DVD burners were finally becoming affordable, cutting out bootleg sellers and making things peer-to-peer. An editor created a release called "Editdroid" for his own use sometime in 2003, using professional editing tools such as AVID, re-creating the original crawl in After Effects, and providing an isolated score as well, with slick menu design; the release laid low on usergroups but surfaced on the internet in 2005 under the name "Mysterious Mysteries," as no one initially claimed credit for it, and was considered one of the premiere preservation efforts for a time. As home editing technology became cheaper, easier to use and more powerful, preservationists continued to push the bar, and community allowed them to share materials and build more and more elaborate releases.

By the end of 2005 there were a slew of Laserdisc transfers trying to outdo each other in quality and supplements : Citizen, Moth3r, Doctor M, Farsight, Rowman, second attempts by Cowclops and Editdroid. As DVD quality kept improving, it nonetheless became clear that these transfers would never look better than just Laserdisc releases, and restoration technology back then was fairly non-existant. This is why the X0 project began: an ambitious attempt to use the best Laserdisc player ever built (the Pioneer X0), as well as professional grade post-production hardware and software to make a release better than the Laserdiscs on their own could offer. The mastermind behind this project, Laserman, suffered serious health problems, stalling the project and it was never completed, despite significant financial investment from themselves and public supporters. Another project that attempted to overcome Laserdisc limitations was OCP's "Classic Edition" releases, which used the 2004 SE DVD and edited in portions of Laserdisc, to not very convincing results. All of these projects mentioned thusfar have now become obsolete; Moth3r's PAL versions and the Editdroid series were considered among the best, but by todays standards they are soft and suffer from a number of defects. Some of these still circulate simply due to their established history.

The official DVD announcement of the original, unaltered trilogy in 2006 provided a brief moment of elation and then a firestorm of controversy as it was soon confirmed the discs would be using the 1993 Definitive Edition masters ! However, as they were a direct port from the masters, they offered by far the sharpest and most detailed transfers of the films. They have since become the standard source for further work.

George's Original Unalterated Trilogy

Of course, the 2006 official DVD release had many problems. On originaltrilogy.com, the release was coined as the GOUT--George's Original, Unaltered Trilogy--as a jab that Lucas had intentionally released it in poor quality so that it would have a handicap in competing against his Special Edition. The official release was plagued by a number of problems: 1) The 1993 master had DNR applied to it which smeared away detail in any moving shot and sometimes left trailing artifacts. 2) It was not anamorphic. 3) It suffered from aliasing or "jaggies". 4) It was not up to modern standards of detail. All of these were a result of the era in which it was made, which was over a decade out of date. 5) It was excessively grainy, especially in early scenes. 6) The audio mix was not the original. 7) It was plagued by frame jitter, or gate weave. 8) It lacked the original subtitles. Most of these could be solved. The easiest to do was convert it to anamorphic widescreen, and by the end of 2006 viewers were already doing this themselves. The other ones required some creativity.

Here we come to the modern era of original trilogy preservation. Releases such as Dark_Jedi (v3)  offers stablization, anamorphic enhancement and the proper subtitles for all the films, but the real clincher is the audio: basically, every single original mixes of the films : theatrical stereo, mono and six-tracks!  Adywan Empire Strikes Back is a miracle of fan restoration work. Until Lucasfilm releases Empire Theatrical Cut in a transfer from the negative, it will probably not be topped. Adywan had previously used the HD master of the 2004 transfer to recreate the 1997 SE, reinstating the original Emperor from a rare HD broadcast of the 1997 version, and cutting out the Kiwi-Fett audio, while colour correcting the tinting to 1997 levels and re-colouring the lightsabers to their proper hues. From here, he intercut GOUT material over the 1997 material. How did he do this, when others failed to do so? Empire is very light on the changes. The GOUT wampa footage has been heavily filtered to match the clean levels of the 2004 transfer, and only the one shot of the cave wall with a shadow moving across it stands out as less-than-stellar. The restored Cloud City is a real marvel--Adywan basically treated the shots as visual effect composites. In order to preserve detail, Adywan scanned the original matte paintings from art books and composited them over the 2004 footage, to have a seamless original image with all of the quality of the 2004 transfer. For shots of the hallways, Adywan took the 2004 footage as a plate and then composited GOUT portions over the windows only. Some of the shots required intricate rotoscoping, and morphing between GOUT and 2004 sources within the same shot. It's all entirely seamless--even the shot of Lando's original announcement, which begins as the 2004 master and blends into the GOUT within the same shot, looks good. And to top it off, the original audio is in 5.1 surround sound, based off a modified 1997 Laserdisc audio capture. In short, this a marvellous effort, and for many fans the only way to watch Empire Strikes Back as it once was. The film has practically been restored to its original state from the camera negative, at least in standard def.

The Future

Despite what may be considered bleak odds, the future of fan preservations is looking better than ever. However, the biggest issues have been, and will continue to be, in picture restoration. Until someone scans a 35mm print, fans will still be working from the GOUT. The most exciting premise might be following in the footsteps of Adywan's restoration work. Adywan basically fully restored Empire Strikes Back, short of a few minor details that could be easily cleaned up. The main blockage right now is that Star Wars is very difficult to tackle the same way, and would require someone of at least Adywan's level of skill to do it correctly. One answer might be the X0 project. Before Laserman went to the hospital, he demonstrated his "Black Magic" process, which used professional post-production hardware and software to take multiple transfers of different Laserdiscs and combine the detail from all the layers while excluding dirt and noise, using Shake compositing software and a custom script. The result was stunning, and looked far superior than the GOUT. If a cleaned up GOUT was added to this process, it would be all the better, but even before the GOUT was released the results were extremely high quality. Below is an example.

The first image is from the Official Star Wars Theatrical Cut DVD released by Fox. The second is a Xo Project composite. Given the above example, it seems that this is the most effective fan  methodology; one could intercut it with the 2004 masters (now available on High Definition) almost seamlessly.

For some information on various Star Wars preservations, there are a few links to start with. One is originaltrilogy.com's preservation board, which also has a stickied thread on various projects. Another is the long-standing Galactic Trade Federation, which is a little out of date now. OT.com started a sister site called fanedit.com, which has a database of some preservations and fan edits, though its currently a bit lacking on the subject of Star Wars. This website took a look mainly at bootlegs and fan preservationis of the trilogy, but has not been keeping up with post-GOUT developments. 

Michael Kaminski

Read more on www.savestarwars.com

Remember, virtually every fan DVD of Star Wars has been made out of the passion and enthusiasm for the franchise and is intended for personal use, not for profit. If you find someone selling a Theatrical version of any Star Wars film on DVD-R, they are making money off Lucasfilm and Fox, not to mention the fans hard restoration work. Please report them to Lucasfilm, Fox, or your country main anti-piracy office.

Star Wars Week Part 3 : Raiders of the Lost Trilogy

The story of George Lucas' crusade to erase his most popular, successful and critically-hailed work, looking at the issue in broad terms.

On May 25^th, 1977, a film opened in 32 theaters in the United States and changed not only the movie business itself, but the popular culture unto which it was released. Star Wars not only quickly became a pop fad of the summer of '77, it endured as a monumental and historical achievement in cinema, not just as an entertainment piece of great cultural value, but as a "blockbuster" or "popcorn" film, as a special effects extravaganza, as a sci-fi fantasy picture, as a franchise, as a cinematic epic, and as a classic of American film. By the end of the year, it was the most financially successful motion picture of all time, and at the Oscars it saw nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, among an additional seven which it won.

Simply put, Star Wars is one of the most influential films ever made and quite possibly it is the most popular singular film of all time.

When it was re-released in an altered form in 1997, it knocked JERRY MAGUIRE out of the box office and stayed at number one for four weeks in a row, earning an additional $138 million--not bad for a twenty year old film. It currently stands on AFI's Top 100 Films list at number thirteen, beating 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, PSYCHO, SUNSET BULLEVARD, THE MALTESE FALCON, KING KONG, TAXI DRIVER, and HIGH NOON.

However, nobody has seen this original film theatrically for over twenty-five years, and its most recent dedicated release on home video was a VHS and Laserdisc--back in 1995. How could such a travesty of cinema history happen? How could one of the most important and popular films of all time remain essentially lost? 

STAR WARS was the first VHS to make a million dollars in rentals when it came out in 1982--although technically, this was not the original version either, for in 1981 the subtitle "Episode IV: A New Hope" was added to the title crawl; but, barring this single, rather insignificant change, it was the same film. STAR WARS and its two sequels, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RETURN OF THE JEDI, were not only three of the most popular films in history--until the late 1990's, they all occupied the top ten box office list--but the most impactful, and even in 1987 Mel Brooks had paid tribute to the films in his parody SPACEBALLS.

In 1989, the Library of Congress added a print of STAR WARS to its archive, the National Film Registry, representing a preservation of films with great artistic and cultural value. Printed in a 1993 video boxset release, Lucas wrote a letter to fans, saying "Star Wars was my elaborate fantasy, but its popularity has gone beyond anything ever I had imagined...I hope that you, your children, and your children's children will enjoy experiencing this saga as much as I have."

That same year, Lucasfilm and Fox began discussing the upcoming twentieth anniversary of the original film. "One of the reasons I chose to reissue the films rather than do a convention or one of the other things that was suggested for the twentieth anniversary was at the time we thought about all of this I had a two-year-old son," Lucas would later explain. "And I thought, 'I'm not going to show him the film on video, I'm going to wait and let him see it on the big screen the way it was meant to be, and let him really be overwhelmed by the whole thing.' Lucas remembers in 1997: "This was supposed to be a nice little twentieth anniversary for the fans." Lucas had also long complained about a compromising 1976 shoot, and surmised that perhaps a few special effects could be added or cleaned up, similar to the way Steven Spielberg had done a slightly spiffier CLOSE ENCOUNTERS "Special Edition" in 1980.

"[Fox said], 'we should celebrate the fact that we've been here for twenty years.' I said, 'If you're going to put that much money into reissuing the movie, I want to get it right this time.' " Lucas' main idea was to expand the Mos Eisley space-port sequence and restore a deleted scene with Jabba the Hutt. "The initial scope of it involved just two dozen shots," ILM animator Tom Kennedy says. FX wiz Dennis Muren then suggested that the release offered the opportunity to correct a list of fifteen to twenty shots that had always bothered him. "I suggested to George that we expand the vision and he was open to it," Muren says. "Motion issues, particularly in the space battle scenes, were my concerns. Then Tom Kennedy and the others contributed their own ideas for redoing shots."

The "Special Edition" was slowly growing in scale. Lucas was eager to use new CG technology--he had just announced he was making the prequels, and the Special Edition of STAR WARS was free research and development since Fox was paying the bill. "We called it an experiment in learning new technology," Lucas says, "and hoped that the theatrical release would pay for the work we had done." Many new insertions were decided upon the basis of their usefulness as learning tools--how to do crowd replication, how to handle extreme close-ups on CG characters, etc.

By the time this "Special Edition" was complete in 1997, the original camera negative had been restored, the sound remixed in 5.1 channel surround, many special effects were re-composited digitally, and the film had been enhanced with CGI in approximately 35 shots, and with an additional 30 brand new shots, offering a markedly different viewing experience.

Fox had spent close to $20 million for this enhancement, twice the budget of the original production. Many fans felt nonplussed by most of these additions--Greedo inexplicably shot (and missed, from two feet away) before Han did in order to "soften" Han's character, "kiddie" humor was abound in slapstick CG droids, and even the long-awaited Jabba scene disrupted the pace, gave redundant information, showcased a lacklustre CG model and had Boba Fett posing for the lens.

But, in spite of some mixed opinions about the changes, the real reason for the release was a chance to see STAR WARS on the big screen, and to that end it was a remarkable experience that brought in more money than all but the top six films that year (TITANIC, MEN IN BLACK, LIAR LIAR, THE LOST WORLD, AIR FORCE ONE and AS GOOD AS IT GETS). The public--not just "fanboys"--loved the chance to see the film again on the big screen.

However, most did not realize that Lucas had other plans. This version--a "Special Edition": an enhanced, "nice little twentieth anniversary for the fans" and "an experiment in learning new technology"--would soon enough replace the historical, groundbreaking original, which would never, ever be seen again.

Lucas furthermore told American Cinematographer in 1997: "There will only be one. And it won't be what I would call the 'rought cut', it'll be the 'final cut.' The other one will be some sort of interesting artifact that people will look at and say, 'There was an earlier draft of this.'...What ends up being important in my mind is what the DVD version is going to look like, because that's what everybody is going to remember. The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won't last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition]...I think it's the director's prerogative, not the studio's, to go back and reinvent a movie."

Lucas had just purchased the copyright to STAR WARS from Fox--most likely in exchange for letting them distribute the prequels--and now had true dictatorial control over the title. When the films were re-issued on VHS in 2000 the boxes had now removed the label of "Special Edition"--but not the content; and the film still claimed 1977 as its release date. Critics and audiences asked Lucas if the original would be released--for many, this was the film of their adolescence, and an edit of the movie deemed superior by just about everyone, aside from its historic value. But Lucas refused--for him, he felt that the original was now a half-complete embarrassment. Moreover, he hoped that the Special Edition would better integrate with the prequels he was releasing, so that the six film cycle could be seen as a more singular entity, and with all the criticism the prequels received, he was all the more stubborn and defensive that this happen in spite of what the rest of the world thought.

By 2001, VHS had been replaced by DVD and as landmarks like GONE WITH THE WIND, GODFATHER and ALIEN were released, many wondered why STAR WARS was mysteriously absent. Equally near-sighted was Lucas' plan to not release the films on DVD until after 2005. When DVD officially overtook VHS in sales in 2003, Lucas came to his senses--but the original version of STAR WARS was in more dire straits than ever. A second Special Edition was quickly put through--this time, plagued with so many audio glitches, color errors and timing issues that even the most ardently stubborn devotees of Lucas have a hard time appreciating this as a "Special Edition" (unless you think Darth Vader's pink lightsaber is a superior artistic choice).

This version added more prequel references, such as Jar Jar Binks and Hayden Christensen, replaced more many visual effects, and tossed aside the color palette of the original photography.

The original version, of course, was once again suppressed when the films arrived on DVD shelves in 2004. But Lucas went even further--embarking on a sort of crusade to eliminate the original from existence. Prints from the original version were recalled from circulation, and Lucasfilm only lent out 35mm prints of the Special Edition. There has been at least one documented instance where a theatre tried to screen a print sourced from collectors, as Lucasfilm refused, only to have official reps waiting to confiscate the print and shut down the screening. When American Cinemateque screened the film with a Q&A with model-maker Lorne Peterson as part of their tribute to ILM's pioneering FX in the mid-2000s, they were forced to screen a version of the film that only contained roughly 30% of that original groundbreaking work!

The Associated Press asked Lucas in 2004 why he didn't just release the original alongside the Special Edition, the way many movies had been done at that point. "The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there," Lucas replied. "The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it...to me, it doesn't really exist anymore. It's like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be." Revealing a rather confused decision-making mindset that undoubtedly was influenced by the crushing criticism that 1999's PHANTOM MENACE and 2002's ATTACK OF THE CLONES received, Lucas defended his actions as: "I'm the one who has to take responsibility for it. I'm the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they're going to throw rocks at me, they're going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished." Apparently unaware that no one ever would throw rocks at him for releasing the original versions of the films. In fact, many fans would take back anything bad they ever said about him!

By this time, fans were so outraged that they had actually formally organized themselves. Originaltrilogy.com was formed, offering a petition of signatures to Lucasfilm asking for the original versions of the trilogy to be released due their treasured status with fans and historical significance in the medium. By 2006, originaltrilogy.com's petition had astoundingly garnered over 70,000 signatures--a remarkable sign of how beloved the films were.

Due to this outcry, Lucasfilm VP Jim Ward begged Lucas to release the original versions. There finally was a small compromise--as a "bonus feature", a master tape of the transfer done in 1993 for Laserdisc was pulled out of a dust bin from the Lucasfilm archives and included as a bonus feature in a 2006 DVD re-release of the Special Edition, in non-anamorphic letterbox. This blatant disregard and disrespect for the film angered not just fans but film buffs around the world, naturally. After a massive letter-writing campaign, Lucasfilm finally responded to the criticism, saying that the 1993 tape represented "the best source of the originals". Renowned film restorationist Robert Harris--the man who had hand-restored LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, SPARTACUS, THE SEARCHERS and GODFATHER--went on record saying he knew for a fact that there were pristine master 35mm elements available and that he would fully restore the original films ! Lucasfilm did not respond to his offer.

Will the original STAR WARS ever be treated properly--at the very least, a modern transfer from 35mm elements? It's difficult to say right now. In the time since the 2006 "bonus feature" fiasco, Lucas friend Steven Spielberg restored all three versions of his CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, including his Director's Cut and the theatrical cut, his mentor Francis Coppola released both versions of APOCLAYPSE NOW in high quality, while three versions of George Romero's landmark DAWN OF THE DEAD are available in an attractive collection, and Ridley Scott's 2007 "Final Cut" of BLADE RUNNER was accompanied on video by full-out remastering of all four earlier versions, even a rare workprint copy. In a letter included in the collector's set, Scott writes: "I have included the four previously seen versions of the film in newly transferred anamorphic widescreen with original, unaltered 5.1 sound taken from the archival six tracks. My goal was to give you the film in whatever form you prefer, with the best picture and sound quality possible."

Lucas' refusal versus the demand of audiences has also sparked some debate about artistic merit and respect for the intentions of the artist. Indeed, it is not a comfortable answer to say that the artist should be forced to display a version of their work which they feel does not represent their wishes. However, most of this argument is based on revisionist fallacies. No filmmaker is ever totally satisfied with their finished work, which is part of the drive to work on a next one--Alfred Hitchcock is famous for having remarked when asked what his favorite film of his was: "the next one." The fact is that, regardless of whether Lucas likes it or not, STAR WARS was released as a finished product in 1977. It is 100% faithful to the shooting script, and on a technical level was the most advanced display of graphics ever made at that time. It was not "unfinished" in this sense, rather it simply was a product of the era that produced it.

Furthermore, the Special Edition has gone far beyond "completing" anything--his insertion of Jar Jar Binks and Hayden Christensen was obviously not in his mind when he made RETURN OF THE JEDI in 1983. Moreover, EMPIRE and JEDI were not even directed by him--while he is undoubtedly a primary creative force behind the franchise, these films are not "his" in this kind of direct sense. EMPIRE director Irvin Kershner, for example, maintained when he was hired in 1977 that he must be able to have artistic control over the production: "It'll be your film," Lucas told him. Lucas states to Rolling Stone on June 12, 1980: "It's truely Kershner's movie." Furthermore, JEDI director Richard Marquand has been dead for over twenty years [ed: Kershner is no longer with us either]. Lucas today represents a totally different person than the skinny 30-year old of 1977, and many of the changes are simply revisions, not completions.

But these are rather petty, technical arguments. The fact is that, if so many people enjoy the originals and would like to see them, wouldn't that please a filmmaker? One of the reasons no other director has refused to release a version of their film when there has been so much demand and love for it is precisely because of this. Ridley Scott hates the theatrical cut of BLADE RUNNER, and as one of the most powerful directors in the world he would have the ability to maintain it not be released--but many people either enjoy it or would like to see it simply for posterity, and that is not anything to be bothered by.

This brings us to the final, ultimately bottom-line, point. Lucas' preference and some sort of "auteur" argument is not even really what the issue is about; it's a strawman defense. No one ever has suggested that the Special Edition--Lucas' "Director's Version"--be suppressed, or replaced. That a filmmaker gets to re-shape their film the way they want is a great privilege that every director should enjoy, and no one should deny Lucas this. The issue is: releasing the original does not nullify the director's cut. Everyone would have treated the Special Edition as the final artistic statement of the director. They can both exist. In the current era of home video, there is no relevance in any argument that relies on only one version existing.

Much like how no one ignores the Final Cut of BLADE RUNNER just because the theatrical cut is on video, and no one feels that the director's cut of BRAZIL is nullified by the existence of the shortened "Love Conquer's All" version--when the films are sold, both cuts are included in the same package. When Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL came out in a deluxe edition in 2008 it contained both the reconstructed director's cut that Welles had prepared as well as the important theatrical release. Historical posterity is important--it is important that students of film and audiences interested in history be able to see what films were like at the time they were actually made, and for audiences to continue to enjoy and watch them. Even if Leonardo DaVince's zombie corpse came back to life and wanted to repaint the Mona Lisa, the original culture-defining original work should not be blacked out of history, like some kind of Stalinist regime.

STAR WARS--and its two sequels--are important classics of cinema.

While the "Special Editions" are the same basic films, they do not in any way represent the look or experience of their original groundbreaking releases. This is an important issue in contemporary cinema, especially because, unlike any other films of historical significance that have not been restored (I actually can't think of any: DVD and Blu-ray have offered remarkable historic preservation of all the major classics), they are not being withheld due to neglect by the studio but due to a crusade of deliberate revisionism. And that is dangerous. This suppression of some of the cinema's classics represents one of the most heinous crimes against the medium, and one that people should take very seriously. Cinema is our cultural heritage, a reflection of our society, our technology and our values. As custodian of national treasures, there is an ethical mandate to preserve, protect, and display these works for the public good.

Lucas in the late 1980s spoke out against companies altering old films and colorizing black and white features; he claimed that, as a proponent of history, viewers should be able to appreciate a film as it was originally released. Nevermind any argument about artists versus companies altering films--Lucas is talking about history, and our shared heritage. "I am very concerned about our national heritage, and I am very concerned that the films that I watched when I was young and the films that I watched throughout my life are preserved, so that my children can see them," he said. He furthermore once remarked in 1988: "In the future it will become easier for old negatives to become lost and be 'replaced' by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten."

Perhaps he should re-examine his beliefs.

Michael Kaminski

Read more on www.savestarwars.com

Star Wars Week Part 2 : Lost in Space

The original theatrical audio multi-tracks mixes of Star Wars Episode IV which were awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, have never ever been released on either VHS, LD, DVD or Blu-ray ! Here we take a look at what happened...

The Star Wars trilogy has had a lot of mixes over the years. In 1985, Ben Burtt supervised a stereo remix for home video, taking into account the acoustics of television audio (as this was the pre-home theatre days it has the least dynamic range of any mix). In 1993, the sound was remixed in stereo again, this time "sweetening" the audio with added effects in Star Wars. In 1997, the films were remixed in 5.1 surround and released on Laserdisc in Dolby Digital (and VHS in stereo). In 2004, the sound was remixed and released in Dolby Digital yet again for DVD release.

However--the history-making original audio has never been officially released by Lucasfilm, excepting the two-decades-out-of-print stereo mix. These are the audio mixes that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would have heard when they awarded the films for sound design and mixing, and they are also the audio mixes that everyone was blown away by during the original theatrical experience.

On May 25th, 1977, Star Wars was released in two audio formats: stereo for regular 35mm and a six-track surround for 70mm. The six-track 70mm mix in particular was memorable because of the surround channels, wide dynamic range, and special low-frequency "baby booms" (equivalent to sub-woofers today) that made this a very special experience; people today still talk of hearing the roar of the star destroyer first flying overhead. The stereo and six-track mixes were both sourced from the same stems, although they are not entirely identical. In June, the film expanded onto more screens and now it was accompanied by a mono mix, which is what most people would have heard in theatres. Since Lucas had more time to work on this mix, he could add many more sounds and fixed things he was unhappy with in the initial mixes. At the time, Lucas put the most amount of effort into this release, and considered it definitive (ironic, as it was never released on home video).

If you compare the stereo/six-track to the mono, you can hear that this contains additional foley and ADR work (listen to the trash compactor sequence, for example). It also contains more obvious ADR, such as C3P0's tractor beam explanation and "close the blast doors", both of which were restored for 1997 (many thought they were new additions since they had never heard the mono mix), and many of the stormtrooper voices are different as well. But there are more obvious examples, probably the most noteable of which is that Aunt Beru is voiced by a completely different person (neither the stereo nor mono version is actress Shelah Fraser), and the battle of Yavin radio chatter is undistorted. There are more mundane differences as well, such as different sound effects used in the background--for instance the alarm that sounds on the blockade runner, or the squeaks emitted by the 3D chess board. The levels are, of course, mixed a bit differently as well. In fact, each of the three original mixes had to be done seperately, so each mix was it's own "performance." Starkiller's excellent mono mix comparison page catalogs all the differences with audio samples of each.

The original stereo mix showed up on the few pre-1985 home video releases. The fidelity is not as good as a modern transfer, but the Laserdisc releases from this time are very listenable. Moreover, the 1993 remix used the same stem that the original stereo and six-track mixes were derived from. The actual stereo mix off of a 1985 pan and scan Laserdisc (catalog number 1130-84), contained the analogue theatrical mix. Although the film's sound was remixed in 1985, this only appeared on VHS that year, and the first Laserdisc to use it was in 1989, (catalog number 1130-85).

The mono and six-track mixes were never released on home video. The mono mix, containing many alternate recordings, was heard on European television broadcasts from the 1980s (UK and Denmark specifically).

Which brings us to the 70mm six-track. The 1993 stereo mix Laserdisc PCM track was created from the original 1977 stems that were used to make the initial stereo and six-track mixes. This mix has the greatest dynamic range and is therefore most similar to the range of the six-track release. It remains for now the closest way to experience the original 70mm six-track sound release.

Those wishing to know more detail on the original sound mix will find a definitive article written on the subject by website in70mm.com. It has since been reposted in an expanded form.

Michael Kaminski

Read more on www.savestarwars.com

 

Star Wars Week part 1 : What's wrong with this picture ?

HDvision celebrates the recent release of Star Wars on Blu-ray with a series of exclusive features, bought to you in partnership with www.savestarwars.com website. In this first part, we take a look at the inconsistencies of the Special Editions DVDs of the original trilogy, and explains why a definitive HD version is yet to come. 

In August of 1997, the Special Edition of the Star Wars trilogy was released on video, in VHS and Laserdisc. The Special Edition looked and sounded pretty good in theatres, even if some complained it wasn't as vibrant as their memories of it from 1977 are (print vibrancy also depends on projector bulb intensity, and some theatre owners turn it down to extend the bulb lifespan). On video, it looked okay for its time, although the home video telecine of A New Hope has a very noticeable pink shift. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on the Laserdisc is still one of the best ways possible to hear the original film. Then, in early 2003, Lucas began readying the films for DVD, where he wanted to re-treat them. Picture sharpening and grain and dirt removal were accomplished courtesy of Lowry Digital Imaging, plus completely new colour timing was provided along with a bevy of additional picture and audio changes. However, the 2004 releases are probably among the worst digital masters ever seen on titles as big-ticket as these. Not only that, these new editions introduced problems and glitches that were never there previously. 

What's Wrong With This Picture?

1) Crushed black levels

Today, digital technology has resulted in a trend towards high-contrast imagery. In order to get really dark blacks, the black levels are "crushed" while the contrast is greatly increased to get a "snappier" image which "pops" and looks crisp. The result is that when taken too far you eliminate all the mid-range detail and erase all the low-level detail. Things are either very dark or very white, instead of having a full tonal range of in-between grey shades.  To illustrate this, below is a comparison of the 1993 master and the 2004 master. Notice the shadow levels in Vader's helmet, and the shadow cast on his cape, which do not display information in the 2004 master, as well as the dimmed down background.

Now, that's a example that not everyone has an eye to catch, because it's a bright scene to begin with. Here's what happens when you have an environment that is already dark:

Notice how the black levels have become so deep that they've swalled up all the picture information in the shadows. In fact, most of Darth Vader's face does not have discernable detail left in it. There simply isn't picture information in the darks to recover--it has been "crushed" to non-existance. The new "look" here is attractive in theory, to have Vader's face be half-buried in shadow, but the levels have been pushed way too far. Another typical example of this can be seen below. Notice how the set detailing in the centre is no longer visible, especially the fur chair covering behind Kenobi. There simply isn't picture information left in the black levels, which have been brought down far too hard.

Below, notice how the officer's shirt has become a nearly formless black blob, and detail throughout the room is reduced by the black levels. The original levels, as seen by the 1993 master, are much more natural:

Along similar lines, what happens to the fine details on an otherwise all-black surface? Those details get bled over by the contrast and black levels. An example would be...

2) Erased Starfields

The starfields. The films are called "Star Wars", but the 2004 release might be re-titled "Dark Matter Wars". The stars have often either been dialed out in brightness or erased completely in the worst instances. Some have even theorized that Lowry's dirt-removal program erased some of the stars, thinking they were dirt, but it's probably just because of the black levels; they wanted to have the blackness of space be total, crushed black, and it took the stars with it. Here's some before and after shots:

3) Image dimness

Despite having greatly increased contrast compared to the original photography, the 2004 image still looks dim in many shots. In addition to crushing the blacks, the whites have been dialed down too, and the image overall has a milky, dim quality that lacks the luminance a modern transfer should provide. You can see this in the lightsaber cores, but we'll get to that issue in a bit. Let's take that opening stardestroyer shot, for example. Here it is in the 1993 master:

Now, here it is on the 2004 DVD.

Look at the white levels, on the planet atmosphere, in the stars, in the engines, in the lazer core. Things that should have luminance to them are dim and grey-toned. It looks like someone put dulling spray on the screen. 

4) Weird Colour Casts

The films have really weird color casts to them, and not just the intentional ones. Yes, Hoth is supposed to be blue-toned. But here is what the white Blockade Runner looks like in the 1993 and 2004 masters. Notice anything?

Image dimness, plus the crushed black levels (check out Vader and the guy beside him), plus what was supposed to be Kubrickesque-white now has blue in it, which makes the skintones look pink (see: lobsterman, coming in a minute). Think maybe it was intentional? Well, here is how Lucas coloured the exact same ship in Revenge of the Sith, released the year afterwards, and which he had already filmed the year before the 2004 release:

Unsurprisingly, it looks exactly like it has in every single release except for the 2004 master. Such errors affect other scenes as well. What caused this? Poor judgement on the colourist, one can suppose, but a lot of it has to do with the crushed black levels--the colour casts you see above were already there to some degree, but when the black levels are brought down that hard, the colouring begins to take on different characteristics. But this is simply compounded by....

5) Oversaturation

In an attempt to get the films to look vibrant, the saturation has been jacked way up. As a result, any mild casts that were there originally get exaggerated to the point where they are a distraction. The original Falcon shot might very well have had some green in it, but when the saturation is increased, the scene becomes coloured in a way that it never would have been naturally. This oversaturation affects skin tones as well. Here is an example:

Notice anything wrong? Take a look at lobster man in the background. Instead of a normal skin tone, the colour-shifting and exaggerated saturation have turned him into the worlds worst rosacea victim. Pumping up the saturation so unnaturally also makes things "pop" distractingly, like the coloured lights above, which are bleeding slightly.

6) Colourless engines and lasers

This brings us to one of the most confounding examples. Given the previous point, you would think that brightly coloured things like engine glows and laser blasts would be overpoweringly vibrant, right? Well, as we already saw, here's how the opening shot looks on the 2004 master. Notice the lasers and the Blockade Runner engine.

This clearly was not an intentional artistic choice, as it seem to vary from shot to shot depending on how it was recoloured. It affects the blue engine glow of the Falcon sometimes, and the X-wings too. It only happens in certain shots. The blue of the star destroyer engine in that opening shot clearly wasn't affected. In fact, because of the oversaturation when it flares the lens the whole screen goes blue.

7) Really badly done lightsabers (partly, but not totally corrected on the Blu-ray edition, HDvision note)

Finally, the thing that is most noticeable: the lightsabers have accidentally been recoloured in some shots. First, the white cores have been dimmed down. In the example below, it reveals some of the compositing flaws that you were never supposed to be seeing in the first place (look at the point where they cross) because that centre point ought to be brilliant white:

In fact, in that example, the white cores aren't just diminished, they don't even have cores at all.

But secondly, of course, they are not the correct colours. In the shot above the lightsaber isn't red. It's a form of pink. The Vader duel in A New Hope is not that bad but you still have shots like this.

Maybe Vader is trying to show more of his feminine side, but probably this isn't supposed to look like that. It's extra distracting because one shot is screwed up, then the next shot is fine, then the next shot is not, and the variation fluxuates between being really noticeable and being a bit forgiveable, but even in the best cases you still notice that it is there. The lightsaber colouring problem is found throughout the films, with Empire Strikes Back being the worst offender. It only seems apparent in the first section of the duel, in the freezing chamber, but it's enough to deflate the serious epicness of the scene. As a reminder, here is how the scene is roughly supposed to look, taken from the 1993 master:

Here are some choice examples from the "improved" picture on the 2004 release. Aside from the deliberately exaggerated blue tint, pay attention to the dimmed lightsaber cores (it might not look obvious--but when you compare against the cap above you really see the difference), as well as crushed blacks plus of course Vader's candy coloured blade:

How did this happen? Part of it might be because the saber colours were always inconsistent. Vader's saber changes from true red to a light red to an orangy-red from shot to shot, but you never noticed it because it was very mild. With the colour exaggeration and the dimness issues and all the other image manipulation that went on, these went from mild variation to outright total recolouring, despite the fact that the lightsabers were equally vibrant in earlier versions. 

Also, in A New Hope, there is a moment where it seems as if Obi Wan's sabre is shorting out. It looks like they tried to fill it back in:

Now, one realize that in the original version, there wouldn't be anything on the sabre at all. But when you have ILM at your disposal to fix this would it really have killed them to put an actual lightsaber there, the way twelve-year-olds do in their fan-films?

Does This Sound Right To You?

As bad as all of this is, it doesn't stop with the visuals. The sound mix to Star Wars is pretty glaring too.

1) Too much bass, sloppy fading and really loud surrounds.

Simply put, the mix is the equivalent of the crushed black levels and oversaturation in the picture: to get it to sound "punchy", the bass has been upped to the point where it sounds unnatural and distracting in some instances, and the surrounds are unusualy loud too. You can also hear the dialogue levels being faded up and down. Listen to the dinner conversation between Luke and his aunt and uncle, for example. As a result of all these factors, the mix simply doesn't sound as good as it should--unlike, say, the 1997 5.1, which sounds even better once you have heard this one.

2) The surround levels have been swapped (corrected on the Blu-ray edition, HDvision note)

While the above may have simply been misguided preference, here we come to the main complaints. In certain areas of the film, the left and right channels have been accidentally reversed in a few shots, which can be very disorienting at times. This is a flagarant error. So, you'll have violins coming at you from the left-rear and right-front, with dialogue and explosions on the right-rear and left-front. I imagine this must be how it would sound while listened to in the spatial warp of a black hole. Well, sound doesn't exist in space, but you get the idea.

3) The music is gone

The music is also frequently dialed down so as to be buried under the sound effects; this is less apparent in the stereo mix but it's noticeable in the 5.1 version. In the worst instances, it is totally gone. Particularly noticeable is the memorable swell during the very first dive towards the Death Star, which now simply isn't there, whether in stereo or Dolby Digital. Like the swapped channels, it looks like they accidentally dropped the music track here.

Empire and Jedi fare better, but they too suffer from louder surrounds and bass-heaviness. The 1997 Laserdisc mixes of all the films remain as the best 5.1 version available.

Concluding notes

George Lucas personally supervised the colour timing himself from Skywalker Ranch, where it was performed in-house by ILM. The finished color-timing was screened for him for his ultimate approval. From here, the colour-corrected version was given to Lowry Digital Imaging for their dirt-removal, where Lucas again supervised, gave input and then approved of the total, finished product. See this article for further detail. Lucas was very involved in overseeing the picture treatment. The press release by Lucasfilm even extolls the virtues of colour correcting it in-house at ILM with George's involvement to get it exactly the way he wanted.

So what the hell happened? Lucas  screened the final master of the films with Rick McCallum as well, and he's also screened them since, such as at his AFI tribute a few years ago. The simple truth may be that Lucas just didn't notice. During this time he had, after all, figured out how to put Hayden Christensen and Jar Jar Binks into Return of the Jedi. 

Why didn't anyone say anything? Surely anyone that saw the new films and saw Vader holding a pink lightsaber or the cool blue Blockade Runner hallways knew that serious technical errors had been made. 

The DVD set was released in 2004 and viewers started complaining immediately. Lucasfilm then issued a press release saying they were "deliberate artistic choices,". To look at an alternate scenario, when Back to the Future came out on DVD in 2003, Universal cropped it's aspect ratio incorrectly, and so they set up a recall; earlier in the year, Gladiator came to Blu-ray, riddled with DNR, and so an exchange program for a new transfer with all the detail and correct colouring was set up by Sony after enthusiasts complained. The Star Wars trilogy, on the other hand was re-released in 2005 in another boxset that used the exact same transfers. The same transfer then began to appear on TV in a hugely-hyped Spike-TV network deal. Then the exact same transfer began making the rounds on TV in high-definition. Then it was re-released on DVD in 2006, again in the same transfer. It has since been screened at numerous big-ticket venues, including Celebration IV and an AFI screening. Lucas must be very proud of it.

As a result, it's hard to even appreciate the merits that the Special Edition might have. And with the original theatrical versions available only as Laserdisc versions, this really means that there is no good quality official transfer of any of the films, which is pretty sad. 

What is more, the Special Edition version here was only scanned from the film negatives at 1080p. This is to be the new digital master for the films, and all of the new ILM work was done from this scan. So, if you ever see the films in theatres again, it will be from 1080 lines of resolution, never mind a 2K scan. But seeing as Lucas shot his second two prequel films in this same resolution, I guess he really doesn't mind, or notice, the quality difference. I would believe that.

Epilogue: Blu-Ray Release

In September 2011, the Blu-ray version of the Special Edition was finally released. Although many fans hoped this would be a chance to do a fresh scan in a higher resolution and solve a lot of the problems from the previous release, such was not the case. The 2011 master is just the 2004 master, with additional content changes layered over top. The colours and black levels have not been adjusted at all. They look the same. So, unless noted, everything noted so far applies to the Blu-rays. The 2004 master was always intended to be used as the primary master for the films from here on out--it was, as noted, approved by Lucas.

However, Lucasfilm did thankfully fix a handful of issues. The main one was the lightsaber issues. In this promotional piece for the official site ILM Associate Visual Effects Supervisor tries to pass off the "deliberate artistic choices" as problems caused by technology. "Some of the issues come from these movies being finished for film and projected for film, and that's how people saw them. A lot of things that look a little different on HD or DVD are really the nature of how video treats color space," he says in regards to the saber problems. Of course, this is patently absurd, and totally untrue. Besides which, the 1997 home video of the Special Edition had no such issues--nor did the 1995, 1993, 1992 and on and on home video versions. 

The problem is that they listened to the loudest complaints but didn't really get at the root cause of it all, and they haven't applied a critical or even a consistent eye. The shot of Luke's green saber in the wide-angle on the Falcon is corrected, because everyone uses that as an example. But it affects the whole scene, because the whole scene has been manipulated so much that it gets darkened and takes on a green hue. Here is a downsized shot from the 2011 Blu-ray in which Luke still has a green saber.

There were a few shots in Vader's duel with Kenobi where they did fix the core problem. His saber still looks a bit on the pink side, and Kenobi's weird shorting-out is still present.

In Empire Strikes Back they fixed a wampa shot in which the puppeteer arm was visible in the corner. However, it is strange that in the area they painted the arm out, they left a weird, curved frame line. Why ? 

The strange thing is, they obsess over detail like that, but other equally noticeable goofs like Luke's head poking back into frame after he jumps off the carbon freezing chamber are still there. Beyond that, this is what the 2011 Blu-ray carbon freezing duel looks like:

Exactly the same as 2004. The consistency here is baffling.

In Jedi, they fixed that saber shot across the Emperor close-up, and also fixed his "slugs" (composites of black blogs put over his head to hide light spilling under his hood). They also fixed a number of other shots, particularly with Darth Vader, where there were colour and core issues in the saber. Again, though, it is done slightly inconsistently. But thankfully, about half of the saber issues in Star Wars and Jedi look to be improved.

Unfortunately, almost all of the problems of the 2004 set remain. Other than those handful of inconsistent lightsaber fixes, the Blu-ray does nothing to improve the 2004 master (unless you also count Darth Vader wailing "NOOoo!!"...). In the promotional piece linked a few paragraphs back, Lucasfilm boasts of the three quality-control phases the release went through. "It went through three phases of QC (quality control) processes," describes Diane Caliva, Production Manager for Media Operations at ILM. "In addition to Lucasfilm reviewing, there were outside companies hired as well. The first was Blu-focus/THX QCing our masters. Then it went through Deluxe and their QC process. And at last was the emulation phase, by the Deluxe team. We would get 'kickback notes', and then Dorne and our team we would assess the shots, and go in and clean up the files."

One might suppose the problem is that there was only limited freedom in what to "fix"--Lucas had supervised and okay the colouring already. The black crushes weren't errors in need of fixing, they were a deliberate aesthetic made by the boss. This doesn't explain why they would fix errors like the wampa arm, and add a reflection to a cloud city window matte, while leaving in all the miscoloured lightsabers and other goofs like visible wires and the like. Maybe the 3D releases will get some more right ?

A main part of the problem is that Lucasfilm did not do a fresh scan and start over. The black-crush is "baked in", so even if Lucas wanted to bring the blacks to more normal levels there would simply be no detail to recover. They would also lose all the clean-up work Lowry did, as the cleaning was done to the colour-corrected master and not to the raw scan. 

Michael Kaminski

Originally published on www.savestarwars.com

HDvision additional notes : For Episode 4, you can see if you click on some of the comparisons, that the 2004 DVDs sometimes shows a green vertical line on the right of the picture. This green vertical line is still present on the new Blu-rays, thought hidden by most televisions overscans.

Avatar : at world's end...

The doors opened by High Definition have provided Cameron and a host of other filmmakers with an opportunity to reformulate the ontological link between film and surrealism. Analysis and review of something closely resembling a collective obsession.

If it could be summed up as just one thing. Avatar would not be a science fiction work. It would not be a marvellous adventure film for children. Nor would it be a western, nor an animist fable influenced by Miyazaki. Nor would it be a great best of Japanese animation imagery, nor a war film, nor an environmental flyer, nor a virtual reality trip, nor a re-writing of the myth of Pocahontas and the American original sin, nor an anti-imperialist speech.

If could be summed up as just one thing, just one, it would be this: a poem on the power of the imagination, a sort of new Peter Ibbetson, a classic by Henry Hathaway hailed in its day (1935) by André Breton as a manifesto for the supremacy of dreams and a « triumph of surrealist thinking. »

The first image of Avatar: one of eyes opening (subjective view) inside a dream of flying up above the skies, beyond the clouds. Its last image: eyes opening (objective view) inside the « other world », in which a man chooses knowingly to wake up and be reincarnated, a parallel world created in detail through the power of film. Open your eyes. Abre los Ojos… A dream inside the dream. Opt for the imaginary world. Break on through to the other side.

Naturally, in the meantime, Cameron organises his story around the idea of travel, travels where Jake and the others project themselves into their Avatars. To go and come back, you need to sleep. Cameron films the hero’s eyes moving under his eyelids several times in close up, in deep "paradoxal sleep", a term which rarely to such an extent so merited its potential double meaning. 

To be or not to be

Cameron tells us: « throughout the interminable film making process, the essential thing for me was to stay connected with my imaginary state, like the surrealist artists who tried to maintain their dream state ». This sentence, describing his method, in reality expresses his ambition: To recall the surrealist vocation of film itself, of this type of film in any case. The type which does not profess to be « real », but surreal. The detailed creation of a planet, an ecosystem, humanoid creatures capable of kissing, the very idea that they can kiss even though they are only an idea, is tantamount to a statement of intention. Film is thus reduced to its mission of creation (or re-creation, but isn’t this strictly the same thing?) of a complete world within the frame, the shot / countershot, the depth.

Much more than revolutionising 3D, HD or virtual reality, the film’s very mission is to define a new ground zero moment for Cinema, by betting on photo-realism – or rather tactile-realism –facilitated by the merging of CGI, HD filming and digital screening. To reproduce the miracle of primitive cinema. In short, its mission is to recreate in general audiences the original amazement faced with moving (in both senses) images. Avatar is first and foremost the arrival of a cargo plane at Pandora airport.

Faced with this challenge, Cameron is not alone. Most of film’s pioneering artists and leading edge technicians are looking with him in the same direction. Public Enemies by Michael Mann is based on a similar reflection on the blurring of reality, imagination and dreams. One can even argue that this is what has bothered the audiences, never sure where to stand in regards of the film. The paradox accompanying the meticulous, attention to detail, the director restraining himself to film in real locations using real accessories from the 1920s while laying bare certain artifices of cinema takes on its full dimension in the final reel. Mann shoots in HD his hero Depp/Dillinger in the process of watching the death of Clark Gable on screen, a premonition of his own end and his shift into eternal legend, when he will be killed a few minutes later in the « digital night » created by the Sony F23 camera. Dillinger, eyes wide open, agrees to switch to « another side », the side of cinema.

The Outer Limits

Beyond even obvious examples such as Alice, Up or other trip films such as Where the Wild Things are by Spike Jonze, which take us to a land of monstrous, non-domesticated emotions, where surrealism and psychoanalysis are one and the same, most films shot in HD for the past year are driven by the same intentions and questionings, as if filmmakers were rediscovering the profound nature of their medium. All David Fincher’s recent work points in this direction, making the texture of the image his subject (recreating a period, at the heart of the Zodiac project), even its theme, (Benjamin Button, another purely surrealistic film which, quite rightly, still contains 35 mm for its « naturalistic » scenes in the hospital). Inception by Christopher Nolan and it's « dreams inside dreams » where the two tragic lovers DiCaprio/Cotillard attempt endlessly to find one other, is another thematic Peter Ibbetson spin-off. Peter Jackson himself is already sharing with Cameron the ambition to « create worlds » and to lose himself in them (Skull Island in King Kong). He has the little heroine of his most recent film the Lovely Bones travel to the frontier of life and death, continuing his own fixation on Hathaway’s unknown classic, present since Heavenly Creatures.

It is this same frontier, or even the one which separates dream from reality, that Gaspar Noé negotiates in Enter the Void as if walking along a tightrope. Can they collide? Even if the answer is negative, the director causes the other world and the here and now to collide in a vertiginous trip under the effect of mind-altering substances. As stated, these preoccupations are not new. They are at the basis, the very foundation of film, an art in 2D (and now 3D) whose principle is precisely to invent another (it's own) dimension. This appear to be back with a vengeance, thanks to recent technological advances, after losing focus for a long time to concentrate on naturalistic temptations, real/fiction dialectic issues, and post modernism.

In Peter Ibbetson, the man hobbled, huddled in his cell, rediscovered his lady-love in his dreams and chose to take refuge there for eternity. In Jack’s eyes in his rebirth at the end of Avatar, in the melancholic gaze of Dillinger in Public Enemies hidden behind his dark gangster rock star shades, in the subjective visions of the falling teenager in Enter the Void or in the ambiguous vortex of Inception’s finale, we find the same idea of mythological transfer via film. The Outer Limits. Literally.

Léonard Haddad

 

Avatar James Cameron Interview

He attempts the impossible with every great leap forward. His secret: set the bar so high, that when he doesn’t quite carry it off, he fails way above the success of all the others. Interview.

HDvision: James Cameron, well… Bravo?

James Cameron: Yes, thank-you, we are still walking on air. Naturally we hoped that the film would be a commercial success, otherwise we would have been idiots to spend so much. But to this extent, it is slightly overwhelming. I was talking about it yesterday over dinner with Jon Landau, my co-producer. I said to him: « Jon, in your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine anything like this? » His answer: « no. »

 

HDvision: The film was released in Blu-ray, while it was still playing in cinemas. It recently has been re-released in special edition form. Having worked on each shot for 5 years, where did you find the strength to supervise these new edits?

James Cameron: It wasn’t a problem. I only watched it all the way through ONCE before the special effects were 100% complete, just a few days before the release.

 

HDvision: No!

James Cameron: Yes… We organised a screening with a few friends, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Spielberg and their wives, plus the cast, and I discovered it for the first time with them. It was miraculous. Usually, I don’t like watching my films once they are done, but in this case, I finally found myself in the audience’s position, watching the images in wonder.

 

HDvision: There is this sequence of impressive shots, right at the beginning, when Jake Sully gets out of the cargo ship that takes him to Pandora. He is in his wheelchair. We follow him with a front travelling shot as he discovers the giant landscape, the enormous wheels of the truck that drives in front of him, the monstrous Mech suit … The film’s entire agenda,  it's over-scaling, seems encapsulated in this scene.

James Cameron: That was always the idea. For people to discover Pandora at the same time as him. To be overcome, overwhelmed by a world that is so different, that one decodes it via the sum of small details.

There are soldiers: it’s a base. There are dents in the lorry bodywork, arrows stuck in its wheels: man is at war with a primitive culture, it is an unevenly matched war between a technological army and another which is still in the Stone Age. You register all this in a single scene.

 

HDvision: We are talking about the images, but the criticism often heard is  « Duh, Cameron didn’t put any effort in the screenplay ! ».

James Cameron: In order to successfully pull off the challenge of something visually "never seen", it was clear to me that I needed to anchor the film in something « already told », return to an archetypal fable. There is a big difference between cliché and archetype or clarity. It wanted to communicate thematically and emotionally with the public. There were a great many problems to overcome in the film. Discovering a new land with different life forms, assimilating the SF principle of the avatar, recognising the characters in several different incarnations, all added up to a lot of challenges for the audience. Therefore the themes had to be clear, strong, stated. I do not agree with the accusation of the script being « simplistic ». Archetype does not « simplify », it clarifies.

HDvision: Why did you opt to present the film in the 1.78 format, when the large majority of Home Cinema enthusiasts were waiting for a 2.35:1 version?

James Cameron: Cinema is a technical art by definition. However the vocation of technology is to achieve such a degree of sophistication that it ends up disappearing and becomes a sort of magic. That is why we opted for the 1.78 format for the Blu-rays. The most important thing is the characters, therefore the performances. The most important issue was to preserve this, to ensure that the interplay of the actors was not damaged when transferred to the TV screen.

 

HDvision: And it works! When the two heroes kiss, we see a pure movie kiss. And we even « feel » it carnally, without the poetic distance of representation. It looks like painted actors rather than synthetic images...

James Cameron: As a director, it took me quite a long time to achieve this, but I learned not to analyse what I was doing too much. Nor why I was doing it, nor why a particular image appeared to be sufficiently strong or not. A little like the surrealist artists who attempted to remain connected with their dream state, my work involves trying to remain in contact with my imagination, in order to convey it to the viewer. For the story to work, the virtual digital world needs to be more « organic, » more tactile and sensorial than the actual shots. When watching the film, it is hard to tell that it is digital, we are almost convinced that we are watching actors painted blue …

 

HDvision: Blu-ray is truly the best medium today to achieve this. You were one of the hardcore supporters of the laserdisc format. I imagine that you have been equipped for a long time.

James Cameron: I absolutely love the Blu-ray format, for me it is the reference format. Naturally, the relationship between the TV screen and the cinema screen remains different, TV cannot be as immersive, it does not cover your entire field of vision, but all the details, the image sharpness, are there – which has never been the case with previous media. The experience is different from the cinema, but in the absence of film in the cinemas, you have no other choice than to watch it at home and for that, Blu-ray is the ideal format.

 

HDvision: Let’s talk about your back catalogue. You don’t appear to be a fan of 3D conversions. Yet you are in the process of converting Titanic at the moment.

James Cameron: I am not a fan, precisely, of badly executed conversions. And nor am I a fan of conversions of recent films, filmed in 2D, to 3D, such as Clash of the Titans. The problem with the 3D explosion in the wake of the release of Avatar is that the decisions have been taken by the studios rather than by the directors. The studios only see one thing: a 3D conversion is a means of selling more expensive cinema tickets. They don’t care about the quality of these conversions, only money and profit count. You know, if they could, the studios would ensure that all films were shot with DV cameras. They don’t give a s**t about quality. Unfortunately, they are the ones taking the decisions on 3D now, not the directors.

 

HDvision: Why?

James Cameron: The reason is simple: when we were in the process of making Avatar, a large majority of directors did not take us seriously. Nearly everyone said, "That idiot James Cameron is going to hang himself with his own rope! When his film bombs, we are going to have a good laugh! 3D is, and should remain, a thing of the past! ». But surprise, things didn’t turn out quite as they predicted ! And now their reaction is « S**t! Now I’ve got to make my next film in 3D! ». - (very serious) - What they should have said to themselves, is the same thing that Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, or Peter Jackson said to themselves: « We are going to make films in 3D! It looks cool” It’s a new art form! Give us the money! ». However, all but a handful completely missed it. And now, they are paying the price. The studios are forcing them to make the next episode of their successful franchise in 3D and if they don’t want to do it, they are off the project. With the new format the studios have taken the power, that should have been in the hands of the directors. This wasn’t how I had envisaged things!

 

HDvision: Many people online have complained that this first Blu-ray edition of Avatar does not include any bonuses, so they decided not to buy the Blu-ray. Others are not best pleased to see the special edition out in the shops after buying the first theatrical film only edition. What would you like to say to them?

James Cameron: We didn’t have time to design the bonuses that we had in mind as the public already wanted Blu-ray at home!

 

HDvision: Can we presume, in terms of bonuses, that the Blu-ray special edition is the final version?

James Cameron: Completely. The discs are filled up to the hilt. The “making of” is very comprehensive and covers nearly all the aspects of the film. You can see the version released in cinemas, then the recent special edition with 8 minutes of filming added to the edit by seamless branching, and the extended version, a total of 16 minutes longer, including the prologue which takes place on Earth in its entirety – all on a single disc. The extended version of the film is a version for the fans, which allows them to explore the original ideas which led us to the final theatrical edit. We have also included an extra 30 or 35 minutes of deleted scenes, from the rough cut of the film. Certain scenes are not be finished, as we did not have the budget or time to complete 30 or 35 minutes of CGI images. Don’t expect another Blu-ray version of Avatar. Apart from the 3D versions of course!

Interview by Leonard Haddad & Adam Gregorich.

Acknowledgements to Adam Gregorich and the Home-Theater Forum.

 

Blu revolution

This time the war has been won. With the successive release of the three Blu-ray editions of Avatar, the HD format has finally received massive recognition from the public, relegating DVD to ancient history. Status report.

The lights go down in your Home-Cinema room. You slip your blue (!) disc into the drive, slip into the sofa, and the film starts.

A soothing synthetic whir fills the air. The first images of Avatar in Blu-ray 3D move across the screen. It is a historic moment. If you were from another time, you would be watching M or The Wizard of Oz. Two seminal films in the history of cinema through their reinvention of the language of film, sound and colour. A new place in the hall of fame must now be created for Avatar. Because the plasma 3D screen in front of you is no longer a flat screen with moving images but a window into another world. A world in which everything appears real, even though everything is unreal. Ladies and gentlemen, you're not in the 20^th century anymore…

To say that the Blu-ray 3D version of Avatar is a shock, an ultimate experience, is a euphemism. The disc represents a watershed moment. A disc of such perfection, that it touches the very essence of film, reinventing it. The most beautiful Blu-ray in the world effortlessly reproduces the bicephality of the film, one foot in the future, and one in the past, its visual perfection, sublimed by the 3D 1080p definition, and its classicism. Avatar is a film in a league of its own. Summarising 100 years of American and international film, a fusion of classic western, science-fiction, Japanese animation; Ford, Hawks, Delmer Daves, Miyazaki, Oshii and Terence Malick, in a totally new visual envelope, Cameron has reinvented his film and FILM itself into the bargain, in a profoundly stunning work, which makes his old works looks like what they truly are: films from another century. Furthermore, Avatar in Blu-ray 3D is an historic event. An event which enables us to rediscover the feeling that our great grandparents must have had when they discovered the first talking film in the silent era, or the first film in cinemascope, or in colour, or even the first colour televisions sets. This is the same emotion that was felt, in the days of black and white televisions, when Dorothy passed from sepia to colour in The Wizard of Oz.

Sure, the only way to get your hands on this Blu-ray is to buy a Panasonic plasma screen (See Technovision). Much virtual ink has been spilled on  the «flat» Blu-ray releases, arguing that 2D could never claim to reproduce the hypnotic effect of the 3D version in the cinemas. That deprived of this artifice the film would collapse. «They» got it wrong (once again). Whatever the version, theatrical or special edition, 2D or 3D, with or without bonuses, Avatar is THE HD best seller, the must have purchase for all equipped homes. A film that is the future of Cinema. And Home-Cinema.

David Fakrikian