Star Wars Trilogy

Mike Panczenko · September 30, 2004

I'm surprised no one has brought this up yet. The original trilogy just came out on DVD, and I think it would be nice to discuss its photography. The first one, in my opinion, is nicely photographed- somewhat grainy and it has a kind of 1970s tv lighting in certain areas, but I think it is well done. Empre Strikes Back, I think, is near perfection. It is crystal clear, which serves the story, and the lighting is epic, and dramatized- I mean that it is a romanticized and idealized lighting, which I think, most of the time, a film of this nature should be. Cloud City is very heavenly and done pretty perfectly, and the bold colors of the interiors motivated by the instrument panels, the lightsabers, and lighting of the freezing chamber, really makes the movie come together. Return of the Jedi, on the other hand, has some particularly nasty looking sequences. I'm sure a large part of it is the 1980s stocks, which I think are pretty ugly looking. Jabba's Palace has a super grainy, dirty brown look which is distracting. The forest on Endor looks very plain, also, and in some shots is very flat. But, on the other hand, the Death Star interiors are very ominous and heavy, which I think is great. Sometimes it is not as good looking as the Imperial rooms in Empire, but it is different, and necessarily so, so it is a somewhat unfair comparison. So, Return of the Jedi is a mixed bag, with some scenes looking very plain or even bad, and with others looking great. I'd love to hear other opinions!

J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR · September 30, 2004

I scored the widescreen set as a birthday gift. Just finished watching them all. I think 'The Empire Strikes Back" is just so much better than the others. It has great compositions and lighting.

The problem with all of them though is the damn digital characters/beings they stuck in. Didn't anyone say "Wait a minute, those digital characters look like shitty cartoons!" The best thing they do is make the puppetry and stop motion characters look real. I just can't believe they think that looks good.

David Mullen ASC · September 30, 2004

"Star Wars" and "Empire" were both shot on 5247, but "Empire" is lit so much more naturally, with large soft sources but also a lot of contrast and mood when necessary. "Star Wars" represents an earlier generation in terms of lighting style, although all of that hard lighting certainly makes the image look nice and snappy, great for those 70mm blow-ups. Nothing really wrong with the "Star Wars" photography; it's just that it suffers next to "Empire", which I think is truly one of the best photographed films of the decade.

It probably helped that it wasn't shot with a lot of static multiple cameras but has a more fluid camera style.

"Return" is real uneven, technically and every other way. I like some of the moodiness of some scenes, but the big shifts in black levels and grain always bugged me -- the new high-speed 5293 wasn't the best stock for duping with efx.

"Empire" and "Attack of the Clones" are the only two Star Wars films to use colored light expressively; the rest sort of settled for pastels and monotones.

September 30, 2004

I have to disagree strongly with the "ugly" claims regaring Alan Hume's photography of ROTJ- I prefer the lighting and exposure much more so than either of the other movies- I LOVE the look of Jabba's palace and the pools of low light used to photograph a giant puppet- The Endor night exteriors shot on soundstage at Elstree are as equally source motivated and bring Norman Reynold's sets to life.

The James Glennon Redwood Endor photography has it's flat moments but if you consider the shedule and the waiting around that unit had on the movie you begin to see what an impossible job it would have been to make everything magic hour consistent below the trees. These sequences contain the only use of steadicam in the original trilogy too.

I think the amount of contrast in the throne room sequences are some of the finest photographed sci-fi moments of all time- the reactive lighting for the lightsbares is also much more dominant in this film than in the other two- the cockpits of the spaceships never looked better either- I think Hume has a real knack for making the designers and VFX people look good- see Supergirl and Lifeforce too.

I also don't consider Gil Taylors Star Wars ANH to have any of the so called 70s TV lighting- I think the low key portaiture in Moff Tarkin's planning room particularly goes against this (rim lighting on Peter Cushing's hair), and I think Taylor was a master of covering medium long shots. The desert stuff with the nets is a little idiosyncratic, but it's definitely unique and EVERYONE remembers these sequences.

Peter Suschitzsky's ESB is obviously goodlooking but it's also quite monotone and from that easily consistent. I think Hume and Taylors work took in more lighting range ad more original appraoches to classic sci-fi settings that prove you don't have to be chocolate box to create a memorable image.

Just Initials · October 11, 2004

I like ESB alot, I'm a nut when it comes to color, I thought cloud city worked out beautifully!

I agree with the digital characters! Only the droids worked, not the creatures!

Lucas read my mind though when they got rid of the original Emperor hologram and replaced it with a new one. That was great!

BUT, ROTJ... man what were they thinkin'?

At the end with the spirits of ObiWan, Yoda, and Anakin?

(I'm not gonna spoil it for those who haven't seen it)

Did that makes sense to anyone else?

I did like that they cleaned up the film, no boxes around the ships and the model creatures were sharper. The mattes were really improved as well.

But I'm a big music buff, and replacing the songs and end score in ROTJ was a mistake. Other than that, I was pretty impressed...

:huh:

Filip Plesha · October 11, 2004

Here is my opinion.

I like Star Wars, and Empire equally, and not so much ROTJ.

Star Wars looked very pleasing to me, perhapse it is because there are a lot of those brown tones, sand, rocks, rust, and the dusty look of tatooine, I love the pallete, and the old 70's lighting feels very classical and warm to me. It's one of those films I want to wach at a warm home in winter.

Empire is more epical to me, has a big screen epical feel. It just feels bigger

to me. (I'm talking about photography) There are lot of those big screen moments

that you wanna wach in a huge cinema. Like Darth coming into the cave and the camera moves close to his face, or the Boba Fetts ship lifting off.

The lighting feels theatrical and as someone here said "romantical" specially in the cloud city. But still it remains down to earth and rather modern.

My favorite piece of lighting is that ending shot of the two droids standing and looking out the window. It feels very surreal, almost like fashion photography.

ROTJ feels like a documentary to me, I don't feel the textures as much as in SW or Empire.

Jon Allen · October 18, 2004

I was disappointed a lot when the special edition came out. I'll admit some stuff was cool, but there was a lot they could have cleaned up since they were going to all the trouble, especially in Jedi.

In jabba's palace, Luke falls into the rancor's pit. He climbs under a rock (or something) and the Rancor's leg steps in front of him (bluescreened and nastly matte lines)- why couldn't they have done something about this too? It barely looks like the rancor's foot hits the ground, just kind of hovers in air, or like he stepped on a mattress.

Second, the end battle sequences when Luke is in the emperor's room. When the shot goes to the emperor and we see a CU of him in his chair- there's this big nastly blurry blob next to his right temple. It kind of looks like they wanted to cover up something (patch of skin that showed, who knows?) but this always distracted me, at least (yes setup level) match the black shadow with the... well, black of his cloak.

lastly, again in jabba's palace, what's with the new musical number? I mean, the style of that sequence didn't make any sense at all in regard to the rest of the film. What other time do we look directly into the mouth of a singing, dancing creature?

I will admit though, I liked the extended Cloud City sequence and I thought turning some walls into windows made sense with the actual "size" of the city. But the style matching is probably what made a lot of that new stuff just seem really kooky. It was kind of a "Hey we have a program that does motion tracking and cool-looking 3d animation- Let's remake Star Wars!"

This kind of reminds me of when my mom revised the school papers I wrote in Junior High...

October 29, 2004

Yeh.. DVD version is great, they've even mastered the "bump" sound when the Stormtrooper almost knocks himself out on the door frame.... :lol:

Marc_Abernathy · October 31, 2004

i only bought the set for the extras. i have not and may never, watch the actual movies as i dont care to see the added cartoon characters they put in... wish he would have just remastered the originals....

Gary Robinson · November 9, 2004

To me, the most interesting thing about the rereleases is how much better they are than Episode 1 and 2. For me, the acting, dialog, and look and feel of these films is way stronger than the last two. Episode 2 feels very much like a cartoon to me. Comparing Episode 2 to any one of the classic films is the best case around for film vs. hidef.

November 9, 2004

I don?t care to see the added cartoon characters they put in

Eh? You mean the new characters in the "Special Edition" star wars, or have they added new stuff to the DVD editions?

For me, the acting, dialog

It was completely screwed.. The language is so much more different in the new ones. The sort of "Macbeth" or "Lord of the Rings" kind of language.

I also thought the acting was pretty poor. I was quite disappointed with Natalie Portman's performance on Episode 2, when she gets scratched by that tiger thingy, wow, what a scream of pain.. And in episode 2 she didn't have anything to blame it on, like not having any friends around.