Why Does Some Old Film Turn Red?

Hello Star Wars fans. While this film is about restoring Star Wars, it is also about restoring film in general. As you can see, this reel of Star Wars is, well not's beat about the bush, it's pink. And this is a problem with a lot of 1970s film. In this video I am going to show you how to restore the color, but first let's answer the question many of you may be thinking:

Why Does Some Old Film Turn Red?

Really it depends on the process. Technicolor perfected the three-color process that defined early color film in 1932. The technique was expensive, involving three separate black and white film negatives, each capturing one-third of the full color spectrum (for this process the spectrum was divided into red, green, and blue - RGB). Each of the three negatives would be dyed in the complementary third of the spectrum they represented and then pressed into the emulsion for the final release print of the movie.

The Technicolor process was expensive, but provided the lush color that has come to characterize 1940’s blockbusters, and if you are lucky enough to own a Technicolor print of Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz, I bet the colors are just as vibrant today as they were 75 years ago, because the dyes used by Technicolor barely fade at all.

Then Eastman Kodak came along with their Eastmancolor process. This type of film was both cheaper to process and cheaper by the foot, advantaging both cost-cutting studios and smaller releases with more limited print runs. Unlike Technicolor, which had to be shipped to Technicolor facilities, Eastmancolor could be developed in standard photo labs.

Technicolor’s share of the market began to sink, and by 1975 their facilities were being closed, ceding color film processing entirely to Eastmancolor.

But Eastmancolor had a major problem. The dye used in the cyan third of the spectrum (that's blue to those of you who are like me and only see the world in primary colors and look puzzled when our wives talk about colors like fuchsia), where was I? Oh yes, the blue dye used in the Eastmancolor process would fade to red and eventually clear while in storage. This has since been a nightmare for film preservation efforts for obvious reasons. And while color fade is a problem with poorly preserved film in general, the first 20 years of Eastmancolor prints are in particular danger. Eastmancolor film can fade to pink in as few as five years if not properly stored.

Eastman Kodak introduced low fade film in 1979, which improved the durability of the cyan dye, and by about 1982, most of the films sent to your local cinema were being printed on the new Low fade (LPP) stock.

It is worth noting that Low fade does not mean "no fade" but it is certainly a heck of a lot better.

so anyway, this reel of Star Wars was printed on the old Eastman stock and is now pink. This particular reel, by the way, is owned by -1 (of Team Negative One) and it was one of the first sets of reels that he acquired for his "Silver Screen Edition" pre-Special Edition version of Star Wars. He was kind enough to dig up the original 10-bit color, 1080p, scan made back in 2010? Something like that. At that time, the team could not find a way to digitally restore enough color to make the film watchable, at least not without a bunch of weird color artifacts. In the end, of course, he found a low fade print of the film and never looked back.

About a year ago, somebody calling himself Dr. Dre created an algorithm to almost perfectly match the colors of one image to another. I already demonstrated how his free tool was able to restore some other faded Eastman footage of Greedo and Han Solo with very impressive results (although there were still some obvious artifacts in the window behind them). Then a few weeks ago, I was trying to free up some Hard Disk space and I came across an 8-bit color, h264 compressed scan of this faded Eastman Reel. On a whim, I decided to run it through Dre's tools (I have been beta testing a new color balance/restoration algorithm he developed too) and the results were just astounding.

So I contacted -1, and requested the lossless, 10-bit color scan of the same reel, and he was kind enough to send it to me. So that is what you are looking at here...

The first thing we need to do is to is to find a good color reference. Since we all know the color timing on the 2004 DVD and the 2011 blu-ray is horrible, this leaves us with the 2006 Bonus DVD or a fan made project. In this case I'm using the "Star Wars 77" GOUT upscale by Team Blu. This is a 720p upscale of the 2006 Bonus DVD, with Color Corrections by YouToo. I like the colors in this version more so than Harmy's Despecialized Edition 2.5, but an unfortunate byproduct of the upscale is that there is a layer of almost static grain sitting on top of the action like a blanket, which was so annoying I couldn't watch it. But for our purpose here, which is just to copy the colors, it should work well.

Before starting this tutorial, I already ran through all the steps once with another color source, again by Team Blu, in this case their "V3" Edition, which was a GOUT sourced DVD, and this is how it turned out...

It's not perfect, the skin tones in particular are too red, at least on my screen, but this is probably the result of applying only one set of LUTs to the entire reel. Fixing it on a shot by shot basis will probably produce much better results, so that is what I am going to try now.

The first thing I need to do is select a shot to fix. Let's try this one with Han, Chewie, Luke and Leia heading back to the Falcon after emerging from the Trash compactor. (frames 6827-7205)

So if we trim the working area to just that shot... OK. Now we need to find the same shot in our color reference... And trim that one.

And crop off the black bars.

Now we'll import the faded footage and try to register the two as closely as possible. First let's shrink it down to match the 720p footage. Then set the mode to "Difference" and just try to manually line them up...

Close enough. OK. Before I go any further, let's test out a few commercial tools and see what they can do for us. First let's try the Auto Color effect in After Effects. Nope, that's not going to work. How about playing with the curves? Well, even if I knew what I was doing, it might take hours to get what is still going to look like a very washed out and faded color film.

So let's try RevisionFX RE:Match which retails for $89 ($329 for the Pro version). So if we apply that effect, set the color source to SW77. hmm. better. Let's try some different modes. Ok, histogram 2 does a pretty nice job actually. But we can do better.

Now to be fair, Re:Match was designed to address the problems of multi camera shoots - in other words matching the footage from camera one with that of camera two, and in my experience, if you have two sources that are already very similar it does do a pretty good job of matching them up.

Let's see what else do I have here? Boris Continum includes a "Color Match" effect. Despite the name, I think it is more of a Luma Match tool, designed to match the lighting conditions between two sets of footage of the same shot but from different cameras, but let's give it a try because the name of the effect implies that it can do what we want it to do....

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I don't think you can buy just the Color Match Effect on it's own from Boris FX, it only comes bundled with other Effects, but these bundles start at $49.95 which isn't bad at all.

But let's back on track here and see what we can do using Dre's tools. First we are going to need some sample frames from both the faded version and our color reference. Rather than manually grabbing frames, let's create a new composition, based on this one, resize it to an SD resolution, and... How many frames do we have here? 378. 378 / 16 = about 23. So let's Enable Time Remapping, alt + click on the stopwatch and type in the following expression:  

n = 23;
n*time

What that will do, is give us only every 23rd frame, for a total of 16 frames. Instead of basing our color calculations on a single frame, we're going to create a montage of 16 frames. Let's trim this composition to 16 frames... And render it as a Tiff sequence. Now let's go back and switch the underlying source back to the color version. And render it again - but changing the destination. ok.

Now let's switch to Photoshop. Open the first image, increase the canvas size 400% from the top left corner. grab all the remaining images and drag them onto our canvas. If you have an earlier version of Photoshop you may find they all just open in their own windows. If that happens, you'll just have to use Ctrl + A to select all and Ctrl + C to copy and then switch back to the canvas and paste in each image, one at a time, but newer versions of Photoshop allow you to place each image on the canvas one at a time, which is exactly what we need here.

Ok, so there is our "Test" Image. Let's save that. Now let's do the same thing with the color images to create our "reference" image.

OK. Now comes the fun part. If we open up Dre's new Color Balance Tool (which is currently still in Beta and not available for download yet) and import our faded samples. And click "Build Color Balancing Model" in just a few seconds it balances the image, reducing the red and generally making it look much better. It is still very faded looking, which is to be expected, and this is about as good as you could get playing with the curves or color wheels in After Effects or Resolve. But this is only the first part of the process. First we Balance, then we Match. Let's save that LUT. And we should save the output image to use when matching.

OK. So now we open the Color Matching tool, which some of you may have seen before in my other tutorials, and which can be downloaded from the thread on OriginalTrilogy.com, or from here at TheStarWarsTrilogy.com. So we open up the balanced image as our "Test" Image, and crop off the white border. Then we open up our "Reference" image, no cropping required, and click "Build Color Matching Model", and wait for that to complete. Wow. Looks pretty good doesn't it? So let's save that LUT as "Match".

Let's also save the output image, because you may be wondering what happens if we skip the balancing step and jump straight to the Match. Well, let's try it... Still looks pretty good, and you may not even be able to see much of a difference, but in my experience balancing and then matching provides a much smoother image. There are often many artifacts that appear when you skip the balancing step.

Anyway, now we have our two LUT files, we can switch back to After Effects and apply them. And there you have it.

Now if we apply those LUTs to the whole reel, most of it still looks pretty great, but obviously repeating these steps for each scene will produce slightly better results.

So. There you have it. Hopefully you will find this video either helpful or entertaining, or perhaps even both; and the next time you see a faded 35mm trailer being sold dirt cheap on eBay because it is pink, you'll remember this video and buy it knowing that it can be restored.

Oh, and if you happen to work in Hollywood, restoring film, you know where to find me...

Testing Digital Noise Reduction Plugins for After Effects, on the Star Wars SSE

Hello Star Wars fans!

Today I'm going to take a look at some of the commercial noise reduction plugins for After Effects, and show you how you might use them to improve the quality of Team Negative One's Silver Screen Edition.

One of the most common complaints I hear about the SSE is about how grainy it is, and I think that is because of scenes like this one. This is probably the second worst shot in terms of how grimy it looks, in the whole film. (we'll tackle the worst shot shortly.)

However, the fact is that if you saw this film in Theaters in 1977 or in any of the cinema re-releases in the 1980s, you'll know that this is how it actually looked. I have access to 4 or 5 different 35mm prints of Star Wars on various film stocks, including two Technicolor prints, the LPP used for the SSE, and the red faded Eastman print we were looking at last time, and they all look like this. If you look at this scene on the 16mm and 8mm prints, it's there too, and even on the laserdiscs and VHS copies, despite the low resolution, you can still see traces of these brown blobs, so there is no doubt in my mind that this is how it looked in 1977.

Is it supposed to look like this? Did George Lucas want it to look like this? I seriously doubt it, but by the time he got the film back from the lab he was out of time and money so that's how it looks. This is how it was for two decades so we didn't want to fix it for the Silver Screen Edition. If we had done so, we would have been accused by many of the same sort of revisionism that Lucas himself is guilty of.

But now that the original is out there, there is no reason why you can't fix it and make it the way YOU want to see it. So I'm here to show you how you can have your cake and eat it too. A lot of the footage used by Harmy to "despecialize" the official blu-ray actually came from the 2006 Bonus DVD, affectionatly known as the "GOUT" (George's Original Unaltered Trilogy), and he did some truly remarkable things to make that work seamlessly, but now that the Silver Screen Edition is out there, anyone with a little know how can go in and Despecialize the blu-ray or swap out shots from Harmy's masterpiece with real 1080p Star Wars.

Of course, just dropping this shot back in would be extremely jarring! Clearly it needs to be cleaned up some more.

So with that in mind, let's jump right in and try to fix up two of the grungiest shots of the SSE and make them ready for their Despecialized closeup.

We'll start with the Sandcrawler shot (a shot that was completely replaced in the Special Edition), which comes right after the "Look, Sir, Droids!" line when the stormtroopers check out the escape pod. The first thing I did was stabilize the shot using the VFX Warp Stabilizer effect in After Effects, because it was still a bit wobbly in the Silver Screen Edition and that affected the cleanup.

So here it is before we add any noise reduction effects. If we zoom in a little you can see it doesn't really look like film grain - it's just weird floating brown blobs, and this sort of color noise is present in a lot of scenes, particularly in the desert, but also on the Falcon. Perhaps it's the film stock used in the camera or maybe there was a stocking or some kind of weird filter on the camera. Whatever it is, let's see if we can reduce it to a more tolerable level.

RevisionFX offers two different Noise Reduction plugins for After Effects. The first one, called DE:Noise works pretty well here with just the default settings. The Sandcrawler moves so slowly that this scene is almost static, and because there isn't a lot of motion we can crank up the noise reduction a little without seeing any of the smearing or other problems that happen in high motion shots. With this effect, on this shot, though I don't see a lot of difference as I play with the settings. I don't know how much of it will come through on the screen capture, especially after YouTube recompresses it, but I'm not seeing a lot of changes here.

The second effect is called DE:Noise Frame Average. The default settings aren't nearly so impressive but if I tweak the threshold to about 40 and increase the frames Before and After to 2, it looks much better. Comparing it to the basic DE:Noise I think it is slightly better here, there are certainly fewer brown blobs.

The third effect by RevisionFX that I want to show you is their Deflicker Effect. For some reason this effect does a fantastic job of removing the noise while preserving detail, however if there is any kind of significant movement there is horrible smearing. Here though, it works pretty well using noise clean method #1 or #2.

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Red Giant's Denoiser II does a nice job here too, the only change to the default settings I made here was to change the "Footage Source" to "film". Since most of the noise is in the blue channel, increasing the "Blue Offset" by 100% under "fine tuning" further improves the image. Overall, it looks smoother and cleaner than any of the RevisionFX.

BorisFX Noise Reduction Effect has a lot of tweakable settings, but I certainly didn't bother to read the manual to find out what they all do! But adjusting the sliders under Temporal and Spacial smoothing produces pretty nice results.

Finally, there is NeatVideo (which is also available for Virtualdub). I have been a customer of theirs since version 2.0, and of all the effects we have tried so far, I think this is the best one out there, and it is the one I use the most. It is able to almost completely remove all the those blobs from this shot, while retaining all the detail. You're probably thinking, that we're done - that this cleaned footage could now be dropped right into the blu-ray footage, though you might have to crank up the saturation and add a blue/magenta tint to it if you want it to match the blu-ray colors, but I mean it looks great, right?

But wait. Watch whap happens when you play it back. Look at the clouds. It's almost as if there is a heat haze up there. None of the other effeccts are having this problem. They don't get it so clean, but the clouds aren't changing shape either. The best solution here might be to use one of the other filters, and then apply Neat Video on top of that. I don't really like the idea of filtering it twice, but that might be the best solution here.

Let's move on to the next shot which is the Land Speeder entering Mos Eisley. This is without a doubt, the grungiest shot in the whole movie. So right off the bat let's show you the before and After, and then we'll take a look at how well the various plugins did. So here's the before - plenty of brown blobs. And here is after, again using the Neat Video 4 plugin. You'll notice that I added some color and a little film grain too. Now I think that looks really good given the source.

If you've watched Mike Verta's video on this shot, you'll notice that he managed to recover more detail, but then he was working with a 4k scan of the Technicolor print, while this is from a 2k scan of the LPP, which was itself a duplicate made from another 35mm print. So unfortunately the power lines visible in the blu-ray (and somewhat recovered in Legacy Edition) could not be recovered here.

I think it looks really good - until you look at the blu-ray. While there are obviously a ton of issues with the Blu-ray version - CGI dinosaurs, the speeder has had the bottom completely shaved off, and the colors are just hideous - but there is no denying that the level of detail and sharpness is a huge step up here. But again, the Blu-ray was able to recomposite many of the original elements directly from the camera negatives, so that is to be expected. I ran this shot through Dr Dre's Color Balance tool to create a LUT. Applying it, makes the colors a little more natural.

It looks like they also worked very hard to remove that smear of vasaline on the camera lens (you can see it moves with the camera) which was there to help obscure the wheels on the Speeder. But anyway, when compared to the Blu-ray it does seem like a bit of a let down, until of course you see all the CGI crap and you turn that layer off. From Before to After is still quite impressive, right?

Especially when compared to the next best official release: This is the same shot from the 2006 Bonus DVD. Now you remember when I talked about how we didn't need to worry about "temporal smearing" when working on the Sandcrawler shot, because there was no fast motion, well in this shot there is plenty of motion. Not only are the people moving, and the speeder is whizzing by, but the camera is panning too.

There are two basic kinds of cleanup techniques. Spacial Cleaning recruits nearby pixels from the same frame, and Temporal cleaning uses the pixels from the previous / next frame. As I scroll through the GOUT version here, what do you notice? See the guy's leg? It vanishes! Then the whole Guy just gets blurred out completely - He's the invisible man! This is what happens when using any kind of automated cleanup tools - though today the side effects are not nearly so bad. But it's why the Silver Screen Edition was cleaned manually, frame by frame whenever possible. The 2006 Bonus DVD uses a master created for the 1993 Definitive Edition Laserdiscs, and their automated cleanup process leaves a lot to be desired. And the fact that Neat Video was able to prevent this problem is really very impressive.

Let me show you how well that RevisionFX Deflicker tool worked here. As you can see, the static areas look fantastic, but the areas with motion are all smeary, with echos of past and future frames. Even the regular DE:Noise effect shows some smearing - look at the guys leg - and this is with the default settings. The Frame Average one, doesn't do much here on the default setting - just sort of blurs the brown blobs. Upping the threshold helps, but if we go as high as 40, which is what we used on the Sandcrawler shot, there is all kinds of smearing.

 Using the Red Giant Denoiser II with the same settings here as we used on the Sandcrawler just isn't good enough, and increasing the sensitivity creates some weird, wavy artifacts, similar to those we saw on the DVD, while washing out details, particularly on the ground.
 
 Here is the BorisFX plugin with the same settings we used on the Sandcrawler. Watch as I turn it on and off. See all that pixelation? And look at the tower - it is being blended into the sky.
 
 Which brings up back to the Neat Video plugin. all the brown blobs are just about gone, there is no smearing, and most of the detail is still there. It doesn't look quite so sharp, but that is an illusion.
 
 But anyway, that's about it for today, I look forward to seeing new projects featuring re-purposed Silver Screen Edition footage.

Sources

Hello Star Wars fans!

We've had a few questions about the 35mm sources we are using, so I figured I would just show you what they are. 

Most of project 4K77 will be either Eastman or Technicolor, supplemented by an upscaled Silver Screen Edition when needed, most notably at the reel changes. We are still waiting on a complete 4k scan of the Spanish LPP on which the Silver Screen Edition was based, but we do still have access to those reels, so if it became absolutely necessary we could make our own 4k scan of any given shot. But since both the Eastman and the Technicolor prints are sharper and less grainy, the LPP is really only being used as a repair layer and we can move ahead without that new scan.

Some of you may be wondering, "but are you using THAT Technicolor print, the one Mike Verta used for his Legacy Edition and that caused so much trouble earlier this year?" Well, we are using it as a color reference for sure, and it may be called upon to provide some frames if they are missing from other prints, occasionally even entire shots. As you may recall, Mike Verta himself sent us the entire Greedo Sequence from this print in 4k for us to use in the Silver Screen Edition and that's exactly what we did. But the fact is that we actually have access to another 35mm Technicolor print of Star Wars that has far less damage. And this is one that Mike Verta does not even have. Let me show you.

So this is the Tech that Mike used as the backbone of his Legacy Edition. As you can see, there is lots of damage, but the colors are really good. Still, it's a lot of work to clean that up.

Now this is our scan of the other Technicolor print. The colors are not so good, but that really doesn't matter because we have Dr. Dre and his wonderful algorithms that can almost perfectly match our scan to the other one. But just look at how much less damage there is! So, rest assured, when it comes to the Technicolor footage, we will be using our own scan over Mike's most of the time.

As you know we also have several Eastman Reels. Reel 1 is in pretty good shape despite the fading, but not all of the reels are so good. Here is the same sequence we were just looking at but on the Eastman stock:

Yikes, clearly our Technicolor scan is the best choice for this sequence. As you saw in our Techniques video, every shot is really a combination of prints, so really it would be our Tech laid on top of the Silver Screen Edition.

So there you have it. We pick the best source we have for each shot.

Star Wars Action Figure Galaxy

Some of the aliens in the Star Wars Universe had adventures that were just as interesting as those of Luke and Han!

Had I known about the hidden agenda of Tessek or the exile of Momaw Nadon, I would of gotten many more hours of play out of my action figures. But then again, I still have a bunch of figures lying around....

This article focuses not only on action figures lines but on the role the characters play in the Star Wars Universe. So, each figure is listed in order of release with an explanation of who the figure is, in reference to the Star Wars Universe, followed by a description of the figure itself.

Star Wars

In order to cash in on the Christmas rush, Kenner released an “Early Bird Figure Set” in December of 1977. This set included a cardboard stand for the first twelve action figures in 1978 and a mail in certificate to receive the first four action figures of the series. It is estimated that around 600,000 sets were shipped to stores. In 1978, Kenner offered its 33/r Star Wars action figures to toy stores. In the first year, Kenner sold an estimated 26,106,500 pieces!

The first alien that Kenner released was in its Early Bird package. This alien is from the enslaved planet Kashyyyk. This alien, better known as Chewbacca, is the friend of Han Solo and co-pilot of the famed Millennium Flacon. Chewie owed a life debt to Han Solo, because Solo released the Wookie from an Empire prison.

In the Early Bird package Chewbacca had a green bowcaster, a blaster rifle that hooked over his right arm. Every subsequent release has contained a black bowcaster.

The only two aliens released in the original twelve action figures were Chewbacca and a Jawa. The Jawas are small creatures native to the planet Tatooine. These creatures roam the wastelands in vehicles called Sand Crawlers.

The Jawa figure, one of the smallest in the line, went through some early production changes. The Jawa was first released with a reddish plastic cape that was worn like a coat. It was quickly changed to a dark brown pullover cloth cape. Both versions were released with a small blaster that was never reissued.

In 1979, Kenner released twelve new action figures. The four aliens included are from the cantina scene in Star Wars; Greedo, Hammerhead, Snaggletooth, and Walrus Man.

The green skinned Rodian, Greedo, worked for Jabba the Hutt.. Greedo had been banished from his planet, Rodia, for being an unscrupulous bounty hunter. Greedo was well known on the planet Tatooine for being greedy and ruthless.

Greedo is a simple figure. This green-skinned alien has a mouth slightly extended outward from his head and two head antennae. Greedo, for some reason, wears an all green flight suit and was released with a Han Solo blaster.

The next figure was the Hammerhead in the cantina in Star Wars. The Hammerhead’s, or Ithorian’s, real name is Momaw Nadon. Momaw had also been exiled from his homeworld. Momaw chose to trade Ithorian secrets with the Empire in exchange for the planet Ithor’s freedom. Exiled from his beloved world, Momaw began to aid the rebels in any way he could.

The figure crafted of Momaw Nadon portrays the Ithorian’s “T” shaped head which extends outward from the neck and then curves upwards, with eyes on the left and right side of the end. The figure is brown, with a blue jumpsuit, and equipped*with a Stormtrooper blaster.

The next figure is a biped of an unidentified species. Snaggletooth was so named because of a small fang-like tooth protruding from the left side of his mouth. Nothing is known about Snaggletooth; his life seems to be as much of a mystery as his species.

Snaggletooth was shown only briefly in the cantina scene in Star Wars, but gained popularity from a production error that resulted in two versions. The version that was sold on card was the accurate portrayal of Snaggletooth, in reference to the movie. This version was a gray-furred dwarf figure wearing a red

flightsuit and no shoes.

The second version of Snaggletooth was included in the Sears Exclusive Cantina Set. This version was a regular sized gray-furred biped wearing a blue flightsuit and gray boots. (Apparently the only photograph Sears received was a black and white picture cut off at the waist.) Although Snaggletooth was pictured as having been released with a Stormtrooper blaster, both versions actually came with a Han Solo blaster!

The last figure in the 1979 series is the Aqualish Ponda Baba, better known as Walrus Man. (Ponda Baba and his pug-faced friend are the ones who began to bother Luke in the Cantina.) Ponda Baba is currently searching the galaxy for a cheap bionic arm, to replace the arm he lost to Ben Kenobi’s light saber!

The Walrus Man figure has green head and hands, an orange torso and blue arms and legs, and was sold with a Stormtrooper blaster.

One of the accessories released in 1979 was the Death Star Playset. On the lowest level was the trash compactor and a Dianoga. The Dianoga are from the planet Vodran and they have infested the trash compactors of the galaxy. .

The trash compactor monster is a green piece of rubber that has four tentacles, a fin on its back and an open mouth on the bottom. The head snakes forward from the rest of the body and ends with a single eye on the tip.

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

The second movie in the Star Wars trilogy is the Empire Strikes Back. Three series of action figures were released between 1980 and 1982; in these two years only three new alien figures were released.

The first series was released in 1980, and the only alien in this series is the bounty hunter Bossk, of the warlike Trandoshan race. Bossk’s specialty is capturing runaway Wookie slaves, and he has been after Chewbacca for some time.

The Bossk figure is an olive skinned reptilian alien wearing a mustard colored outfit, with bright red eyes and mouth. Bossk was sold with a laser rifle.

In 1981, the Jedi Master Yoda and an Ugnaught were released as part of the second series from Kenner.

When Yoda died, certain mysteries of the Force and the secrets of his species went to the grave with him. Yoda’s last trainee was Luke Skywalker.

The figure of the Jedi Master Yoda is about the size of a Jawa. The figure comes with a walking stick and a snake that you can wrap around Yoda’s neck. Yoda is wearing a beige Jedi Robe, held together by a small plastic belt that has a pouch on it. Underneath the robe Yoda is wearing a brown tunic. The Yoda figure was originally released in a light green version that came with an orange snake. Later, Yoda was released in a dark green version with a brown snake.

The Ugnaughts are small humanoid-porcines that work in Cloud City and on the planet Bespin mining Tibanna gas. The Ugnaughts are usually found doing manual labor in Cloud City.

The Ugnaught figure has a face that resembles the face of a wild boar, with the snout protruding over the fangs. The white haired figure comes with a purplish-blue apron, is wearing a gray work suit and was packaged with a small white tool case.

RETURN OF THE JEDI

George Lucas was never quite satisfied with the outcome of the cantina scene from Star Wars, so when it came time to begin scripting Return of the Jedi he decided to redo that scene. The outcome was Jabba the Hutt’s Palace.

The 1983-84 release of Return of the Jedi figures had the largest selection of aliens. The first release of Return of the Jedi figures in 1983 included; Nien Numb, Ree-Yees, Weequay, Chief Chirpa, Klaatu, Gamorrean “Pig” Guard, Logray, Squid Head, Admiral Ackabar, and Bib Fortuna.

Nien Numb became a hero in the Return of the Jedi as the co-pilot of the Millennium Flacon during the Battle for Endor. Before the battle, the Sullstan Nien Numb had an excellent history of piloting trade runs. When the Empire pushed him out of business, Numb became a smuggler, and eventually joined the Rebellion wholeheartedly.

The figure portrayed the Sullstan accurately, molding gills that began at his nose and extended all the way to his ears. Nien Numb is wearing a red flight suit and a blue vest, and a Bespin cloud car pilot gun was included.

Ree-Yees, a Gran from the planet Kinyen, was a member of Jabba’s Court. He was on the Sail Barge with Jabba, when the Heroes of Yavin blew it to bits. Ree-Yees was wanted on his home world for murder.

Ree-Yees wasn’t one of the most graceful aliens; he was actually kind of repulsive, which made him an interesting figure. Ree-Yees tan head and hands were quite large, he had three eyes snaking from his head, four large ears, and wore a dark brown body suit.

The figure was noteworthy in that his gold rifle was never re-released (there were four guns that were never re-released, the Jawas, Ree-Yees, Bossk, and the first Princess Leia), in the regular Star Wars figure line.

However, in the Droids series, Uncle Gundy was released with a black version of the Ree-Yees rifle.

Jabba the Hutt had many guards, but the Weequays were the fiercest skiff guards and enforcers on Tatooine. The two Weequays were identical, and to make things even more confusing, both were referred to as Weequay!

Weequay is the only Star Wars action figure that had a ponytail. The figures head is still fully moveable. The skiff guard outfit that Weequay is wearing has a dark brown torso with blue arms and tan pants. The weapon, a standard for skiff guards, is a futuristic bayo-, net staff called a force pike.

The first Ewok released in figure form was Chief Chirpa. It was Chief Chirpas’ decision to aid the Rebellion in the fight against the Empire. Chief Chirpa made this decision not only because it was honorable to aid tribe members, but also because the Imperials were destroying the trees. (Trees are sacred to Ewoks.)

Chief Chirpa carries a reptilian staff of office and wears animal pelts. This grayish Ewok came with a brown hood and top.

Klaatu was a skiff guard in Jabba’s Court. Very little is known about Klaatu; all Klaatooinans have olive-colored reptilian skin, and some have small horns on their faces.

The Klaatu figure has a horned face with an attached silver helmet which wraps around the back of the figures head. Klaatu also has a removable kilt made of a plush material. Two versions of this figure were released in 1983, with tan and gray limbs, respectively. Both variations were released with force pike as a weapon.

The Gamorrean (Pig) Guards, are nicknamed for their obvious resemblance to a pig. These fierce aliens are intelligent creatures but violent warring tendencies are deeply imbedded in the males of the species. Their planet Gamorr was enslaved; however, a few males have been able to sell their services on the open market as bounty hunters, soldiers, and guards.

The figure is quite large, fairly round, and has a brown outfit that leaves his limbs bare, except for some armor on his forearms. The Guard came with a short axe as a weapon.

Logray the Ewok Medicine Man, the shaman of the Ewok tribe, was the sole practitioner of all tribal rituals, including the Dark Rituals which involved sacrifices! Few opposed Logray before the Battle for Endor, because he had the authorization of Chief Chirpa to practice any rituals he so desired. However, during that battle Logray was shown to be a cowardly bully. Consequently, Logray was removed from his position and replaced by Paploo.

The Logray figure is easily identified by his tan and white stripped fur and his bird skull hood. The figure also came with a medicine pouch and a black staff.

The next alien figure was molded after one of the smartest members of Jabba’s Court, Squid Head. Squid Head’s real name is Tessek and he is a part of the Quarren race. The Quarren live with the Mon

Calamari on the water world of Calamari. Tessek may have been the only person in Jabba’s Palace who realized that the rebel prisoners were dangerous. Because of this realization, Tessek was able to escape Jabba’s Sail Barge before it blew up.

His head is in the shape of a squid, complete with four tentacles hanging from his chin. He also has a light beige kilt that is held up with an inch wide silver plastic belt, both of which are removable. Squid Head was packaged with a Bespin Gaurd blaster.

The next alien released in this series is Admiral Ackabar, a Mon Calamari. Currently, Admiral Ackabar has had some tough times in the New Republic, as detailed in the books of Timothy Zahn and Kevin J. Anderson.

Admiral Ackabar is a relatively simplistic figure. Most of the figures body is covered by his white and brown Admiral’s uniform, exposing only his red forearms and his red fish-shaped head. Ackabar came with a ringed black baton.

The last figure released in the 1983 Return of the Jedi series was the Twi’lek Bib Fortuna. Fortuna began as a spice smuggler on his home planet Ryloth and ascended in Jabba’s organization. Fortuna is currently fighting off small factions that are trying to gain control of pieces of Jabba’s (now Bib’s) empire.

The figure for Bib Fortuna has two head tails winding off a grayish head, common to Twi’leks. Because of these head tails, the figures head movement is seriously restricted. Bib Fortuna came with a removable brown robe made of a flimsy felt material, and a removable brown piece of plastic armor that encompassed the torso. The figure included a cork-screwed brown staff with a loop at the top.

Along with the Return of the Jedi figures was a Jabba the Hutt Playset. This playset included a move-able Jabba the Hutt and a Salicous Crumb.

The Hutts are large sentient slugs from the planet Varl. Jabba started out with a small smuggling operation based on Tatooine, and despite the fact that he became too fat to move around much, ended up with a huge crime empire.

The Jabba the Hutt figure.

When you move his head, his tail will move also.

Both arms are removable, for some unknown reason. -

No Jabba playset would be complete without a Salicous Crumb figure, a Kowakian Lizard Monkey.

When this race was first discovered, xenobiologists tried to determine if the Lizard Monkeys were sentient. They decided against this because no animal could be so obnoxious on purpose.

The Salicous Crumb figure has a grin on his gremlin-like face and is permanently fixed in a sitting position. However, the curled tail can be rotated.

The second release of Return of the Jedi figures, in 1984„ had more aliens in it than humans or droids. The second series included; Klaatu (skiff outfit), Nikto, Prune Face, Teebo, Wicket W. Warrick, Paploo, Lumat, and Sy Snootles and the Max Reebo Band.

This version of Klaatu is dressed in white and different shades of brown. There is an attached brown wrap-around helmet with a loose piece of plastic hanging off the back of Klaatu’s head. This Klaatu was sold with a long laser rifle that looks like a staff.

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The Klaatu skiff guards were probably commanded by the humanoid species called the Nikto. These aliens have multiple nostrils and four smaH horns along the forehead of their rusty brown faces.

The action figure Nikto’s helmet has a separate plastic extension coming off the head of the figure. Although limited, you can still move the figures head. He has a blue torso with white arms and gray pants. Nikto came with a laser staff.

Most people familiar with Star Wars toys will tell you that not every toy in the accessory line was in the movies, and that most of the aliens were only shown on the screen for a few seconds. To my knowledge, the next figure was never in any of the movies.

Despite the lack of identity, Prune Face is an interesting figure. He has one beady yellow eye, a black eye patch, and came with a tan snap-together cloak, white shirt and green1 pants. The gun included resembled an M-16.

Teebo is a gray stripped Ewok with a removable halfhood that looks like the head of a wild boar. Teebo also came with a removable shoulder harness that has a pouch and a horn. Teebo’s weapon is a stone hatchet.

Wicket W. Warrick was always wandering the forest of Endor. After the war, Wicket, now the center of attention, was promoted to a warrior. Wicket is rumored to be next in line for chief.

Wicket is one of the cutest Star Wars figures. No bigger than the Yoda figure, Wicket is all brown except for his face and stomach, which are cream colored. He came with a removable brown hood and a spear.

Another daring Ewok was Paploo. Paploo was responsible for leading the biker scouts away from the Imperial bunker by stealing a speeder bike. Paploo has since replaced Logray as the Tribe Medicine Man.

This all-red Ewok came with a removable white tan hood that has a red feather and a spear that is notched in the shape of a V at the top.

The last Ewok that was released in the Return of the Jedi series was Lumat. He was a gray colored Ewok that is not only a warrior but a woodcutter as well. Lumat came with a bow and a removable shoulder quiver filled with arrows.

The last three figures that were released in the second series of Return of the Jedi in 1984 were Sy Snootles and the Max Reebo Band (these were packaged together).

Sy Snootles is the vocalist for the Max Reebo Band. This biped alien is yellow with blue splotches. Her red lipped mouth is at the end of a long protrusion from her face. This figure has a brown plastic removable skirt and a long plastic feather sticking out of her head. Included with the figure was a microphone.

Max Reebo is the leader of the band, and is an Ortolan organ player. The Max Reebo figure looks like a blue elephant with long ears that hang past his shoulders, a trunk for a nose, and black eyes. The figure came with a circular organ that Max can be placed in.

The last member of the Max Reebo Band is the Kitonak, Droopy McCool.

The Droopy figure is a cream colored pot-bellied alien with two fingers and two toes.

Oddly, Droopy appears to have no eyes. All there is on his face are puffy cheeks and a long snout nose. The only clothes that Droopy is wearing are gray pants. He came with a silver wind instrument and a microphone.

As an accessory to the series, Kenner released the Rancor figure in 1984.

The Rancor was a large beast that Jabba kept in a dungeon. The Rancor accessory is almost 10" tall.

This brown figure has large claws that are able to grip the 33A inch Star Wars figures. There is a lever that will open the Rancors fanged mouth so that you can stick a Star Wars figure inside.

In 1985, Kenner introduced the Power of the Force line. The Power of the Force line has become the most popular of all the figure lines because it includes coins, which gives a little biography about the character, and also features a brand new logo. This line, which ended up being the last to date, includes 17 figures.

The aliens included in the Power of the Force line are; Yak Face, Warok, Romba, Barada, PaploOj, Amanaman, and Lumat.

Both Paploo and Lumat are reprints from the Return of the Jedi series.

The first alien figure, Yak Face is a biped that is characterized by his long snout. To my knowledge, Yak Face was never released in the United States, only in parts of Europe and Australia. The figure, seen briefly in Return of the Jedi, is a hot collectible because of its scarcity. Yak Face is tan and blue, with a face that looks like Joe Camel!

The Ewoks Warok and Romba are Ewok warriors that fought gallantly alongside the rebels in the Battle for Endor. Fortunately, these two Ewoks survived the battle.

The figure for Warok is a gray Ewok that has a dark red removable hood. Warok also came with a removable shoulder quiver full of arrows and a bow.

• The figure for Romba is a deep red. Romba came with a dark brown hood and a light colored spear.

Yet another Klatooinan working for Jabba the Hutt was Barada. The Barada figure is a muscular alien. He is wearing a yellow vest with a white shirt and red pants, with a red bandanna on his head. The figure included a laser staff.

The last alien to be released in this line was the bounty hunter Amanaman. Amanaman is a serpentine creature that appeared briefly in Return of the Jedi as a member of Jabba’s Court. The Amanaman has long arms and a small tail that curls up between the figures legs. The yellow and green figure has a cobrashaped head. The figure was packaged with a brown staff with three shrunken heads.

As you can see, the alien action figures add a certain diversity to the Star Wars Universe; the movies would have hardly been believable without them. The faces of these aliens added a whole different level to the massive line of Star Wars toys. This difference, among others, makes the Star Wars line one of the most impressive figure lines to date.

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Star Wars Ceramics

As the doors opened, stunned moviegoers exited theaters, forever touched by the phenomenon of Star Wars. George Lucas introduced us to the adventures of a villain named Darth Vader and a young farm boy, Luke Skywalker.

Kenner, a toy company from Cincinnati, presented us with a large selection of plastic figurines and toys based on the Star Wars movie. Both children and adults collected anything they could get their hands on. But fans were not satisfied; they moved ahead to collect other articles from Star Wars.

In 1977, the demand for Star Wars collectibles was better than expected. This forced companies to view this phenomenon as a definite money-maker. The expanded view of manufacturers brings us to the world of Star Wars ceramics.

At the time, many people passed ceramics by, but they are now widely collected. The Roman Ceramics Company was one of the first to manufacture a line of ceramic banks. Each bank was hand painted and came in a white box. Darth Vader was the smallest of the three banks; it was only 7" tall. The R2-D2 and C3-PO were both approximately 12" tall. All banks are currently priced at about $125.00 or more when mint in the box. Roman also made a series of hand painted cookie jars, including C3-PO, painted gold and white, and a blue R2-D2. Each of these are highly collectible. The value of these two pieces is about $300.00 when mint in the box, and $185.00 when loose.

Another company, Sigma, released a line of ceramic bisque statues. Each one was about 7" tall and hand painted. The following were available and came individually boxed; Han Solo, Boba Fett, Leia, Luke, C3-PO, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Klattu, Bib Fortuna, Wicket, Gammorean Guard, Lando as a General Pilot, and the Emperor.

The next items released were a collection of miscellaneous office and household items. Each item was molded after a character or vehicle from Star Wars. Character picture frames, a Yoda flower vase, a Snowspeeder toothbrush holder, a Landspeeder soap dish, a R2-D2 string dispenser (with scissors) and a set of Darth Vader/Chewbacca book-ends (which are the better pieces from this collection). Lastly, the prize piece from this collection is the Taun Taun Teapot, which is highly collectible. The top of the teapot resembles Luke Skywalker in Hoth gear, and the bottom piece is the Taun Taun. This is valued around $175.00, and the C3-PO cookie jar is valued at approximately $100.00.

Sigma also produced a line of drinking mugs. Each one featured a character’s facial profile. The mugs included Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, C3-PO, Darth Vader, Lando, Yoda, Gammorean Guard, Klattu, Stormtrooper, Wicket and the Biker Scout. These were also all hand painted. This company also produced a couple of music boxes, which portrayed Ewoks and the Sny Snootles Band. Again, each were hand painted and valued around $100.00.

Along with these two companies, Adam Joseph Industries also released a collection of plastic character banks in 1983. Although they were not ceramic, each was very detailed and ranged from 7-9" tall. Character banks available were the Gammorean Guard, Emperor’s Royal Guard, Darth Vader, R2-D2, Wicket and Kennesa. Each came individually boxed with an open front for viewing.

(I must briefly mention that although they are unlicensed products, there are a lot of white, unpainted copies floating around. So please shop carefully because most of these items are not worth much at all.)

The Hamilton Company released a series of 11 plates. Ten of these plates were geared towards different characters from the Star Wars film. The remaining plate was made to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the movie. Plates included Han Solo, Leia, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Yoda, Wicket, R2-D2, C3-PO, Darth Vader, Ben, a scene of the “Light Saber Battle,” and the Anniversary Plate, which is a group portrait, featuring Luke in the center, surrounded by Leia, Ben, Han, Chewbacca, Darth Vader and the Droids. Each plate is valued at approximately $50.00.

As we reflect upon our personal collections of figures, toys or ceramics from Star Wars, we know that if it wasn’t for George Lucas sharing his vision of “a galaxy far away,” we would not be reminded of a time of innocence.

I would like to give special thanks to my wife, Lori, and those who helped obtain information on ceramics: John DiCicco and Tom Tumbusch (experts on Star Wars field). Anyone interested in receiving a free Star Wars catalog may write to Andrew J. Howard, 5 Cedar Court, Lakewood, NJ 08701.

[Source: Collectible Toys & Values, #35, May 1995.]

Return of the Force

In 1995, with the twentieth anniversary of Star Wars two years away, Lucasfilm announced plans for a trilogy of new Star Wars films which would comprise the first three chapters of Lucas’s unfolding saga. The prequels, set some forty years prior tor the Galactic civil war period of the original films, would be played out against the twilight of the Old Republic, which had benevolently governed for more than a thousand generations before suffering the corrosive rot of political and civic corruption. The new films would essentially be the story of Anakin Skvwalker, the Jedi Knight and father of Luke, who would eventually heed his soul’s sinister stirrings, embrace the dark side of the Force, and transform himself into Darth Vader.

Ushering in the new Star Wars era would be a twentieth-anniversary theatrical rerelease of the film that started it all, to be followed by The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But unlike the typical rerelease, George Lucas would have his ILM team (comprising some 150 persons) to make over Star Wars: A New Hope as a special edition. The ongoing two-year production effort would utilize traditional model work as well as the full arsenal of digital tools, including CG creations, digital matte paintings, and Sabre System image processing. The 100-some shots ILM would prepare for the special edition included CG ships, creatures, and digital stuntmen inserted into the original footage, digital fixes of the old photochemical technology, and some entirely new footage.

Below: The original Star Wars opticals sometimes featured only two or three element layers, typically because the inevitable grain buildup of successive layering would take the image further away from first-generation quality. But working in the digital realm for the film's twentieth-anniversary special edition, ILM could layer multiple elements without any generation-loss problems and enjoy virtually unlimited control over CG creations, such as in this shot of the Rebel fleet lining up in formation for the Death Star attack. The final digital composite, which replaced an old optical composite of the same scene, boasts a CG starfield, Death Star, and X-wings. To create the new fighters, texture maps were taken off the original X-wing motion-control models, with ILM effects artists (led by visual effects supervisor John Knoll) able to exert fine-tuned control over the wing motion and general animation of the final CG models.

The special edition had its roots in the filmmaking realities Lucas had faced back in 1975, the year production on his space saga began in earnest. Back then The Star Wars (as the production was first called) had to contend with a tight budget, deadline pressures, the limits of pre-digital visual effects, and numerous special effects snafus during the tough first-unit shoot in Tunisia and EMI—Elstree Studios in England. Two decades later, Lucas could return to his masterpiece to enhance New Hope in ways not possible in those early rough-and-tumble production days.

“It’s like a virtual director’s cut,” laughed TyRuben Ellingson, New Hope visual effects art director (along with Mark Moore). “Dennis Muren told me that George really wanted this to be the archival version, the one that went down in history. It’s a very romantic notion. In a way, he’s adding some missing pieces to the puzzle. The things that are being changed are not frivolous at all but very specific to what George had originally envisioned for the film but wasn’t able to do because of budget and technology. Now we can do it digitally and retain image quality. It’s interesting that ILM was created to do Star Wars and after all these amazing pictures the company has worked on, the new technology that’s being developed is being folded back into the original picture.”

But while the 1995 rerelease announcement was generating some anticipatory excitement among the moviegoing public, the mood was not celebratory behind the scenes at Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century-Fox. Toward the end of 1994, Fox executives had been hit with a shocker: The original Star Wars negative, the template from which thousands of pristine rerelease theatrical prints would be struck, was discovered to be in such a deteriorated state it would be impossible to release in theaters. The once-vibrant color had faded away (10—15% overall, according to Leon Briggs, a former veteran of the Disney lab who had worked on such restoration projects as Fantasia and Snow White and was called in to help rescue Star Wars), and dirt embedded in the six reels of negatives had produced scratches and pit marks that would appear larger than life when projected onto the big screen. “It was my determination that all the backing didn’t get washed off originally and became stuck onto the negative during the final solution stage [of the developing process],” noted Briggs.

The color-fade problem was particularly troublesome as the original Star Wars negative had been stored, along with thousands of other films from all the major studios, in Kansas, far from the potential earthquake catastrophes in Los Angeles. Out in the heartland the studios had their vaults hundreds of feet underground, in the miles of man-made caverns dug out by long-gone salt miners. Besides its impregnable nature, the subterranean vault had another main advantage: it held a constant 50-53 degrees, the optimum temperature for preventing the irrevocable fading of original color photography. Star Wars, however, had been produced during a decade of increased location shoots, staged in all kinds of lighting and weather conditions, that demanded fast new film stocks to be developed. One of those color stocks, known as Color Reversal Intermediate (CRI) #5249, was so prone to fading that Kodak discontinued making it in the early eighties. Unfortunately, sixty-two different shots in Star Wars had been made utilizing the CRI stock.

In 1994, Ted Gagliano, Twentieth Century-Fox senior vice president for feature post-production, had first seen a print struck off the original negative at DeLuxe Labs in L.A., and had soon thereafter arranged a screening at Fox for Lucasfilm’s Rick McCallum and Tom Christopher. Upon returning to Skywalker Ranch McCallum gave a full report on the original negative problem, but Lucas had already had a premonition about the quality of the film. “Originally the challenge was getting the film back to the glory of what it was,” said McCallum, “but by the summer of ’94 George said, Tm worried about the negative because every print we get is bad.’ That’s when we got really scared about the presentation of this film.”

“When I had first seen the print at DeLuxe, I was shocked,” Gagliano recalled. “I was a Marin [County] high school student when I first saw Star Wars and it had been so spectacular—it was the reason I ultimately went into the movie business. But after seeing the dirt and the problem of fading it didn’t have the same feeling. It looked like an old movie. At the ILM screening I had prepared everybody for what they were going to see, and afterward Lucas said to me: ‘Well, the speech was worse than the viewing.’ I think he was disappointed but slightly relieved. He could tell it was fixable. The challenge was to integrate the new [special edition] footage into a good negative.”

The actual restoration work would be undertaken by a team comprising Lucasfilm (with Tom Christopher as editor-in-charge) and Twentieth Century-Fox, Pacific Title (for recompositing of opticals), YCM Labs (to provide the color timings), and film restoration consultant Leon Briggs (who helped supervise the overall process, including the cleaning of the original negative).

Although a master interpositive (IP; a positive image made from an original negative) had been made in 1985 for the purpose of video releases (including a 1993 THX laser disc release of the Star Wars trilogy and a boxed THX video set released two years later), making prints entirely off IPs wouldn’t provide the highest-generation release print. No pristine prints befitting a grand anniversary release existed either—any available prints had suffered their own scratches and general damage from the wear and tear of shipping and exhibition. Even if an acceptable print was available, a negative from a print would still fail to produce the best possible big-screen visuals. “The original negative is the best, which was Lucas’s whole scheme: to make it look as good as it possibly could,” noted Pacific Title optical supervisor Chris Bushman.

“We could only go back to the original negative,” summed up Rick McCallum. “It’s our source, the only life-force we have.”

Restoring Hew Hope

Although the restoration battle plan would utilize scanning technology to make needed repairs in the digital realm, the prohibitive costs of doing the entire negative that way (many millions of dollars) led to a strategy of utilizing master elements, such as the IP, to restore the original negative. A major part of the restoration process was cleaning off the dirt in a special 100 degree—plus bath solution (although two of the four film stocks that comprised the original negative couldn’t be subjected to those temperatures and had to be addressed separately). “After selectively cleansing the negative they’d remove and send us those sections of the original negative for which we were doing the special edition work,” explained New Hope visual effects producer Tom Kennedy. “We’d scan it and match it to the new print as wc did our work. For parts of the film that were too damaged we went hack to the interpositive struck from the original negative, which was the closest we could get to the original negative.”

Part of the problem with Star Wars, faced by both the restoration and the special edition teams, would be that the film encompassed many different photographic styles, from location and soundstage work to complex motion-control shots and simple opticals, with the four film stocks scattered throughout. While the in-camera, live-action, and special effects work was cut in as original negative, all the opticals, rephotographed using old optical printers, were dupe negatives.

Thankfully, the original negatives that composed the final composite elements had been safely stored at the Lucasfilm archives. In a ironic touch, the old optical printer technology' used to create Star Wars but abandoned years later in ILMs conversion to digital technology' would be utilized again to restore the many wipes, the skip frames, and the rest of what Pacific Title vice president Phillip Feiner called "the bread and butter opticals.” Pacific Title’s work involved taking the original elements from Lucasfilm and recompositing them, utilizing the company’s eleven state-of-the-art optical printers. With modern lenses and the latest, best Kodak film stocks, the old-fashioned printer technology delivered new comps boasting “a boost in resolution and color saturation,” according to Feiner.

Above: This explosion of an X-wing during the fateful battle along the Death Star trench was one of six explosions that underwent a digital fix for the special edition rerelease. Originally the model pyro had been shot against blue screen and the explosion matte had not been completely extracted in the final composite. By scanning in the original negatives, ILM was able to create a digital composite and fully extract the matte for a seamless "explosion fix."

Below: Another special edition explosion fix along the battle zone of the Death Star trench. Here R2-D2, fitted into the exterior shell of Luke Skywalker's X-wing, takes a hit of laserfire from Darth Vader's pursuing TIE fighter.

The restoration team also had recourse to such master elements as the YCM (yellow-cyan-magenta) separation masters, a process that essentially uses primary-color light sources to convert color film into three separate black-and-white film records for each reel. The black-and-white separations, with their metallic silver composition, aren’t prone to the fading fate of original color dyes. “You know the original negative will fade, so you can turn to the separation masters; it’s the record of what it’ll look like and it’ll last forever,” explained Gagliano. “So the negative you make off your YCMs should be just as good as the original negative.”

Also coming to the rescue were two prints done in the vibrant colors of the “three-strip” Technicolor process, which had been introduced in 1932 but had become an almost lost art soon after the making of Star Wars. One of the prints that had used this venerable process had come from George Lucas himself. “George had a private [Technicolor] print in the basement of his home,” Gagliano noted. “For the color timing he told us to go for that look: ‘That’s the Star Wars I made,’ he told us.”

At the end of more than a full year of restoration work, the team had a renewed appreciation for what Gagliano called the “fragile medium” of film. In many ways the mere act of developing exposed film was one of moviemaking’s greatest magic acts. “I could send a film to five or six different labs and it’d come back as totally different images; that’s how bizarre, and magical, this film process is,” McCallum noted. “Film has been proven to be inherently unstable, like any chemical process. It’s alchemy, the temperature of the bath. It comes with intense feelings. The saga of what happened to the Star Wars negative is you’ve got this process that’s so fundamentally incomprehensible for us to deal with—the alchemy of what happened to these stocks.”

Virtual Cuts

In late 1993, before the New Hope original negative problems had been discovered, ILM’s special edition work commenced with a brainstorming session between Dennis Muren (who along with John Knoll, Joseph Letteri, Alex Seiden, and Steve Williams supervised the project) and art director TyRuben Ellingson.

Lucas’s major interests had been in expanding the desert town of Mos Eisley and adding original footage of a Jabba-the-Hutt-confronting-Han-Solo scene that had been dropped from the original film. The special edition was also an opportunity for Star Wars veteran Dennis Muren to address a slate of fifteen to twenty shots that had always troubled him. "I suggested to George that we expand the vision and he was open to it.” Muren recalled. "Motion issues, particularly in the space battle scenes, were my main concerns. Then Tom Kennedy and others contributed their own ideas for redoing shots.”

The initial art direction stage began with Muren. using a Star liars videotape of the film as a guide, describing the proposed shots as Ellingson dashed off a quick succession of storyboards. "Dennis told me 1 had fifteen seconds a board to get down the rough concepts. Ellingson recalled. "He was making a point that Star liars was first done with a young, savvy crew and things had happened really quickly. By the end we had twenty-some numbered storyboards that could start dialogue about how the shots were going to be done.”

Above: Stormtroopers scan the Tatooine sands in this frame from a Yuma sequence. Besides the new stormtroopers (in foreground), the shot was enlivened with a CG Imperial landing craft coasting low on the horizon and a synthetic trooper and dewback moving along the dunes.

Soon after, an available Star Wars print was screened at ILM’s main screening room with Lucas pointing out the special edition changes to Muren, Ellingson. and Ned Gorman (who would share visual effects production credit with Tom Kennedy). "George might say, ‘Mos Eisley wasn’t big enough: 1 want to make it more of an urban center with some spaceships in the sky and more buildings visible.” Ellingson explained. "In certain shots it would be adding a new creature, in others it would be an entirely new shot that would intercut with the existing sequence. I was amazed at how quickly George could articulate what he wanted. W ithin a twenty-minute period I had enough information to do all the artwork that was subsequently approved.

On the creative side there were concerns that ILM s new generation of tech-driven cybersurfers wouldn’t be grounded in the material reality of the Star liars universe. "In the virtual world you don't have to worry about materials, or drilling holes and putting things together, but everything about the first Star liars was very much about putting things together in the real world." Ellingson noted. "For the special edition 1 d done some concept sketches for this low-rider motorcycle that flies through Mos Eislev, and the CG modelers working on it created something that looked soft and interesting, but it didn't feel like it came from the Star liars universe. So l went out and got a box filled with shower heads and threaded pipes and stuff and showed them: ’Look, this is the kind of stuff the Star liars universe was made out of— very mechanical anti real-world. You can t let your CG aesthetic get in the way of that.

Above: Luke jets along the ground in his landspeeder, a scene originally accomplished by driving the craft with a tricycle rig, a mirror attached to the bottom to reflect the sandy ground (providing the illusion of being suspended in midair), and an animated shadow. It was a nice bit of magic in its day, but to sell the shot to modern audiences, ILM digitally freshened it up, erasing any telltale evidence of the suspended mirror and providing a softer edge to the animated shadow effect to better blend it into the plate.

A key to the special edition work would be that the new CG elements not jump off the screen in contrast to the original footage. ILM had to contend with such artifacts of the bygone opticals age as a diffusion look created by pantv hose stretched over camera lenses (for the bright wastes of the Tatooine sand dunes). "The challenge was to seamlessly put our synthetic images into the image space from the original footage—to enhance and not change, explained CG supervisor John Berton. "Not only were we working with twenty-year-old footage, but a lot of the .shots chosen for improvement were not Vista Vision.

There was a lot of work in funky 35mm four-perf with filters and artifacts that required us to write special image-processing software to duplicate the look of the original photography. It was a lot more complicated than just dropping in a CG image.”

A particularly challenging shot in the Mos Eislev portion of the film was a sequence in which the droids observe stormtroopers conducting a search for Obi-Wan and Luke. For the special edition the scene would be augmented with two CG dewbacks, including a synthetic stormtrooper dismounting from one of the creatures. The challenge in integrating the new footage was that the original Mos Eisley street scene filmed in Tunisia had not only been photographed in four-perf but with what Berton recalled as a “very wild” camera move. Although the films original camera notes were available (indicating that the particular shot had been made from a truck platform), the CG crew still hail to figure out whether the actual camera move had been a pan, zoom, or dolly.

"That was a major hurdle, to take a twenty-year-old film and rebuild the camera moves to allow us to put in the CG elements.” Berton said in summing up the match-move challenges. "Computers work well with smooth curves, but real cameras have vibrations and minute adjustments. The new cameras are steadier, and normally we ll take measurements [at background plate shoots]. Sel Eddy and Terrv Chostner, who handled the camera match-moves on the special edition, did a tremendous job allowing our virtual camera to match the real camera.”

Above: On the streets of Mos Eisley, Imperial stormtroopers conduct a search for Obi-Wan and Luke as the worried droids look on. This shot is as it appeared in the initial release, but has been enlivened with the addition of two CG dewbacks and the completely synthetic stormtrooper dismounting at left "This scene was shot in Tunisia in four-perf," explains visual effects producer Tom Kennedy. "It was never imagined that it would be a visual effects shot." Integrating in the new elements required matching the original lighting scheme and the yellow-hued color timing, as well as old and virtual camera moves.

A major shot involving both original footage and new, computer-generated elements was the excised scene of crime lord Jabba the Hutt confronting Han Solo over a botched smuggling operation the cocky pilot had undertaken for Hutt. The scene, set in the Mos Eisley docking bay where Solo’s Millennium Falcon was stored, had been scripted to feature Hutt as “a fat, sluglike creature with eyes on extended feelers and a huge ugly mouth.”

The production couldn’t physically create that fearsome creation, and scenes shot with a human actor proved woefully inadequate to the image of a vicious crime lord. But the missing Jabba scene had alw ays been troublesome. After all. Solo’s run-in with the crime lord would be a major plot point in the trilogy, with bounty hunter Boba Fett taking Solo, encased in a living prison of carbonite by Darth Vader, to the crime lord’s lair at the conclusion of The Empire Strikes Back. By the third film a gargantuan, sluglike Jabba would finally appear, created as a full-scale, foam latex, animatronic creation. With the digital advances available to the special edition team, it wTas finally possible to take the original docking bay footage and replace the actor with a CG Jabba.

“Jabba wasn’t finally designed until the third film, so now you’re seeing the result of that whole period of time retro’d back in,” art director Ellingson noted. “Every attempt was made to make Jabba look like the same character, although a little younger. You see him move faster and under the power of his undulating organs, which is amazing because it takes this kind of computer technology to deliver that kind of freedom.

For many ILMers the restoration and special edition work was an opportunity for a little time traveling back to a vanished optical age. It also had been a more primitive era for animatronics and physical effects.

"Nothing worked was how Rick McCallnm explained the English crew's first-unit work. "It was sort of a missing link period of film history in England, and George entered into that filmmaking landscape at the worst possible time. To be fair, [in England] there wasn't a lot of experience with that kind of science fiction movie. Nobody was doing robots. Just to get R2-D2 to move was like a miracle. The radio controls were constantly failing, so there were cables pulling R2-D2 through the scenes, which had to be painted out later [with garbage mattes or some other optical technique]. ”

"In Star Wars there were a tremendous amount of opticals just to make the practical effects work.” added Tom Kennedy. “Clever techniques like step printing and jump cut-tine—things we take for granted today because of the ease of digital painting and rotoscoping. Rack then the opticals were obviously painful. The first film was more matte paintings and motion control and blue screen in its early days. Then there's this huge, fast step forward in the art of rotoscoping and rig removal on Empire and Jedi.'

Although the restoration and special edition work on A New Hope was initiated to finally accomplish the director's original vision, the project was also approached as "a dress rehearsal for building the Star Wars prequels, ' according to CG supervisor Berton.

"By Return of the Jedi. George had tapped out, in a way, the ability to create a universe with the density he wanted. Berton noted. "Of course, you don't want to fall into the trap of the technology driving your vision. It s easy for people to look at CG dinosaurs and shape changers and virtual reality, but Lucas always has storytelling at the heart of any film he wants to make. Now we have the technology [to accomplish it]. I he special edition work has provided us with information on how to make ourselves more efficient for the next Star Wars films. I know there s a lot of talk for the next trilogy about digital creatures and aliens that can move with total freedom and not have the constraints of puppets or a guy in a suit, and the sweeping grandeur of a total environment. That s possible now. One such special edition shot was a vista-shot of Mos Eisley seen as Luke’s Landspeeder enters the city'. Yusei Uesugi built this entire city in 3-D and painted on top of it, all completely CG. This gives us the digital back lot, an interactive digital set in which you can put real actors. This kind of shot really stretches our muscles. This is a harbinger for the future.”

It’s appropriate that the next Star Wars chapters will not only mark the beginnings of ILM’s third decade but take audiences worldwide into the new' millennium. The creative force of ILM. with both a century’s worth of special effects tradition and a decade of discoveries in the digital realm behind it, will create those mythic visions, will once again transport audiences into the mystery of space and back to that story of “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”

“There’s an anticipation of the new Star Wars trilogy, that we’ll see a whole other evolution and a whole new set of technical changes,” said visual effects supervisor Mark Dippe, who along with ILMer Steve Williams was hailed as among the “shock troops of digital Hollywood” by Premiere magazine (January 1996). Dippe had been living in Los Angeles when Star Wars was unleashed and he recalled a rock concert-like energy crackling through the Westwood area theater where he first saw the film. Star Wars was a visual revelation. It was unbelievable how they achieved that dynamic camera movement. Seeing it was like, ‘Who the hell is this guy George Lucas?’ The film just stood apart. It still does. I think George Lucas’s films had a big influence on changing the process and vocabulary of filmmaking. The legacy of Star Wars is that at ILM we get a chance to work on creating things that haven’t been seen before, and we also create the technology to do it.”

[Source: Industrial Light and Magic - Into the Digital Realm, P.285-295. Copyright © 1996 Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) All rights reserved. Reproduced here for educational purposes only.]