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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Could Star Wars??

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purefilm

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If George Lucas had the Redone in 1977, could Star wars been shot on the Red. Would Red been able to create the emotion Aesthetic qualities that made the first movies?

I am confident that Red could be a great camera for low budget features, but without anything to reference I wonder what about a huge epic scifi features?

I would love to see one of the Top Directors tackle a huge sci-fi epic with the red and a unlimited budget.

What do you guys think?
 
"Wanted" looks great. It is not Si-Fi but I think it works with Red !
you can match evereything in postproduction !
 
I think Geroge Lucas would still choose the F23 over the RED one....FOR NOW....Once RED is fully ready and no longer in "beta" then it could be a different story....
 
purefilm said:
I would love to see one of the Top Directors tackle a huge sci-fi epic with the red and a unlimited budget.
Click to expand...
Well, if the report is accurate, you may get your with with "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."
 
On IMDB is says it is shooting with arricam 35mm. Might being used for effect, but now mention of the RED.
 
It's somewhat of an odd question, like asking if Napoleon had Cruise Missiles with nuclear warheads, would he have won the Battle of Waterloo... though I get the gist of the question, which is really just whether RED matches the 35mm quality and feeling that the original "Star Wars" had.

Obviously Lucas already thinks that the digital look is fine for the "Star Wars" universe.

It's hard to answer because even modern 35mm film stocks don't match the look of what was used in 1976 when they shot the movie; the stocks are now better, the lenses are better, there is digital intermediate post as an option, etc. So it really depends on what you personally think the look of the original "Star Wars" was.
 
3xm said:
I think Geroge Lucas would still choose the F23 over the RED one....FOR NOW....Once RED is fully ready and no longer in "beta" then it could be a different story....
Click to expand...

Difficult to predict George Lucas as he is a revolutionary, however, if "Hollywood accounting" (Google it) is to be believed, it would be easier to hide actual costs in a relatively more distributed and on paper more expensive setup.
 
Problem with you guys is that you do not realize that aestethics is only 10-20% of the problem. The real question is: Is my script good enough? Do I have a story? And am I good enough to direct it in an interesting way. Cause if you don't, everything else is academic. Wonderful films have been shot on dv. Terrible ones on 65 mm. And yes, I think Star Wars would have been a hit even on Beta SP

My 2 cents

Still love my Reds though. Once I do have a story, it will shine:-)
p
 
Lucas is interested in shooting with any digital format that plays nice with their post production workflow for doing effects, etc. I believe I read somewhere they had looked at doing Indy 4 in digital but Spielberg was opposed. Red will probably make its way into Lucas's world once the workflow is solid, which at the high end is getting there.

As to Star Wars, I love the original films. But there is a lot to consider. I was 2 when Star Wars was released. The other two came out when I was old enough to enjoy them. They hold a special place in my heart because they were some of my earliest memories of seeing movies. And even as I got older, Star Wars was still popular, so as an 8,9,10 year old I was enamored by that world that Lucas created.

With the new films, they don't seem to have the same effect on me, but that could be for a number of reasons. Not a kid anymore, too slick, not as much fun, too digital, bad directing. Who knows. I do have this observation. The last one, I finally just sat in the theater, didn't have any expectations, didn't care what format is was shot on, or how the film was mixed. I just watched it as a film, as if I had never heard of Star Wars before, and I have to say I thought it was pretty good. So all of these factors can play a role of your perception of films. I like the look, the world that was created in the first three, whether it's because of where I was in my life at the time or maybe there's something more to it. But that's my feeling.
 
David I like you answer.

Even with all the advances I like some of the older looks from the 80s a lot better. I feel it had a warmer storybook feel over the glossy slick look of film today.
 
I don't think it's a percentage where if you devote more mental effort to aesthetics, you must be devoting less mental effort to the script. You can have your cake and eat it too, have a good script and tell that story in a visually compelling manner.

I also think in the case of "Star Wars" that the story alone wouldn't have been enough to make it a popular film. Just looking at the rough cuts in the Star Wars Making of docs will show you how much the final visual efx and music and sound efx added to the experience. Story is important because it is the foundation of everything that follows, but you can ruin the audience's experience with poor casting and poor acting, bad editing and bad sound, etc.

Some stories are driven by visual style than others, and I think a sci-fi action movie like "Star Wars" did need a visual style to make it a successful moviegoing experience. Genre films in general often have rather primal, simple plots and archetypal characters, so how that story is told contributes a lot to how it should be interpreted.

But whether "Star Wars" benefitted from the grainier stocks of the time and the older lenses, plus the optical printer technology of the day, I'd say that those things now add to the nostalgia and charm for some people, but at the time, that was state-of-the-art filmmaking you were seeing, so the modern equivalent of "Star Wars" would probably use the best modern tools available to excite a modern audience in a similar manner.

If the recent prequels have seemed kinda of plasticy and shiny in that slick digital manner, that was really not due to technology limitations and more to do with aesthetic choices made by Lucas. After all, look at Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" remake, which was quite gritty yet had high-tech effects. But Lucas was partly driven by the idea that the past in this Star Wars universe, the years of the Republic, were much slicker, more ornate, more "designed".
 
Grug said:
If only they'd actually 'shot' more and 'rendered' less.
Click to expand...

I agree! I have a BG in VFX and I think it can be over used.

I understand that there are a lot of elements that make a great movie. Have you ever watching a movie without sound? Unless you are studying the visual choices it can be a little boring. I just wonder if these new Digital cameras namely the red could create the same Aesthetics image of the original Star wars, or would it have a totally unique look?
 
I saw some RED footage today that made me think of Terminator 2 and Matrix. Star Wars doesn't come to mind with the RED, that's not to say that it couldn't be done mind.
 
I don't know about that. Isn't star wars about the amazing possibilities of technology. I know every starfigter in the rebel and imperial fleet by heart,but couldn't care less about Luke.:ohmy:
The whole Jedi thing is cool though.
 
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