Should the TIE Fighters be blue in ESB (revisited)?

[Kurgan]

Though this was decided awhile back, Adywan, creator of A New Hope: Revisited (the coolest SW fan edit ever, see fanedit.org for details), decided he was going to make the TIEs all gray in ESB: Revisited.

So the TIEs are now definitely going to be back to grey. The Bombers will have the original colouring because they are different ships. TIEs were grey in ANH, so i want to keep the consistency there

ANH:R has grey TIEs so suddenly jumping to having all blue TIEs really doesn't fit with continuity with my edit. The whole bollox explanation that the Death Star TIEs were a different squadron so were white/ grey is just more EU bullshit to explain an error. If that's the case then why did ILM add the CG TIEs for the SE as blue/grey ones? That totally screwed up that theory.

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PS: I've already expressed my view in the thread. If enough people respond, he may change his mind. Frankly, I prefer the unique look of the gray TIEs in ANH, and the color that the blue adds to the other two movies.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There is a case- http://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html#catalogue that the original grey TIE fighters in ANH were actually a different model, a different mark of the same general type, from those in TESB.

I'd like to believe that the Empire did learn something from the Yavin fiasco, and new fighters coming off the production line were built to a revised template based on an updated threat assessment; the chief evidence for that is, I understand, the different colour of the things.

Doing the colour correction, I hate telling somebody who's put that much work in that he was wasting his time, but making them all the same would remove colour from the background as well.

[VT-16]

The ANH ones had no visible window slits on top like the ESB and ROTJ ones, that's one difference at least. I assume the other is the single vs. dual reactors.

[Samuel]

There is a case- http://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html#catalogue that the original grey TIE fighters in ANH were actually a different model, a different mark of the same general type, from those in TESB.

I'd like to believe that the Empire did learn something from the Yavin fiasco, and new fighters coming off the production line were built to a revised template based on an updated threat assessment; the chief evidence for that is, I understand, the different colour of the things.

Doing the colour correction, I hate telling somebody who's put that much work in that he was wasting his time, but making them all the same would remove colour from the background as well.

Why would the Empire change their fighters after Yavin? They worked fine.

[NecronLord]

Why would the Empire change their fighters after Yavin? They worked fine.

Why wouldn't they, if a better design came out?

[Crazedwraith]

Not really the right frame of mind for such a project but: Why would I care about the colour of TIE fighters? Frankly its quite easy to justify them being different colours or the same colour depending entirely on personal preference.

If you want them to be the same colour to imply Empire wide conformity? Thats cool. If you think different models (heck, or simply different fighter units) would be denoted with different paint job? That's also cool.

Personally I'd edge just leaving like they are. On the other hand that goes against the whole ethos of re-editing films.

[Dooey Jo]

They are obviously meant to be blue and not accidentally made that way, so he's doing it because he wants them to be grey. It's his project, so I'd say let him do what he wants, however stupid it may be. It's not like the first one didn't have exceedingly silly moments (hello lightsabre syringe and gratuitous Imperial Marching).

Personally, I've would have made them pink, for ironic purposes.

[Samuel]

Why would the Empire change their fighters after Yavin? They worked fine.

Why wouldn't they, if a better design came out?

Because it costs money! It isn't like the Death Stars were cheap. Of course, keeping up constant spending helps make things seem dangerous. Plus, fighters are cheap compared to the rest of their hardware... still, it is money that could have been used for almost anything else.

They are obviously meant to be blue and not accidentally made that way, so he's doing it because he wants them to be grey. It's his project, so I'd say let him do what he wants, however stupid it may be. It's not like the first one didn't have exceedingly silly moments (hello lightsabre syringe and gratuitous Imperial Marching).

Personally, I've would have made them pink, for ironic purposes.

Never! Everything in the Imperial Military must be gray. Regulations you know. Why, if we started painting our ships bright pink and adopted Hello Kitty as the mascot for the fleet... there would be chaos I tell you! Chaos! That and people would begin to learn to fear the color pink

How big are the changes done by fan edits? This honestly just seems to be cleaning up the special effects and modeling mistakes.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

How much it costs- actually, how much extra it costs- depends on how attritional the business of starfighter logistics is.

If TIEs were expected to last many years in service, and the change meant that they had to be pulled and replaced by new fighters, then it would cost- but I'd be very surprised if it was done that way.

What I think happened is that as the new mark started coming off the production lines, the old ones simply got shuffled outwards to less important commands and less active zones- nothing got wasted, nothing got thrown away. Very little cost over and above what would have been spent anyway.


On the subject of cost, I have to admit, I've always been slightly confused by pronouncements like 'The Empire can afford it, DS1 didnt even show up in the budget.' The truth of the statement, I accept, there's more than enough evidence for it.

The logic of it boggles me, because I don't see how the galaxy got to have an economy that size by being that sloppy with cost control. I'm sure a full set of accounts existed for the Death Star project, millimetrically precise- and extremely heavily classified.


And pink? Some things were just not made to be pink. The Imperial Starfleet already has three colours, black, white and grey. Although if Palpatine slipped a little further into senility- well, pretended to, to indulge what must be an elegantly sadistic sense of humour- and ordered it, what would the reaction be?

Or if someone faked the order as part of an elaborate practical joke- just picture Piett's face when that message comes through. Damn, I have to write faster in Fanfic so I can use that one.

[Samuel]

You WILL fear him!



Yeah, that will be how they pull it off- as part of a kindler, gentler, friendlier Imperial Navy

[JME2]

Argh, my eyes; I'd forgotten that photo existed...

[VX-145]

Hello Vader !

Anyway, I was under the impression that the TIEs we saw in ESB wereTIE/gt or TIE/fc variants, which (According to Wookiepedia again) are actually blue.

[Kurgan]

So Saxton's page refers to them as "white" and "grey" while we call them "gray" and "blue."

And the Empire uses more than those three (black/gray/white)... let's not forget the giant dark blue Executor!


The toys, models and comics interpret the latter as blue, and there are several shots where the TIEs appear blue (the majority, I'd say) in ROTJ and ESB, even before the screw ups of the 2004 editions. Looking at the models themselves, yes, it is true there are models that appear more of a light blue color, vs. those that appear much more clearly gray.

It gets a bit confusing, because the toys, custom models, etc. don't always match up to the movie props. However I was trying to argue based on the movie props and how they appear in the 1980 film, as to their "true" color.

Double Edit! (see next post)

[Kurgan]

Since he can't register here to defend himself, here's his latest explanation:

This is what i actually said:

ANH:R has grey TIEs so suddenly jumping to having all blue TIEs really doesn't fit with continuity with my edit. The whole bollox explanation that the Death Star TIEs were a different squadron so were white/ grey is just more EU bullshit to explain an error. If that's the case then why did ILM add the CG TIEs for the SE as blue/grey ones? That totally screwed up that theory.

As you can see, i was talking about the CG TIEs added to ANH for the SE. They used a blue/grey CG model which threw the theory of the fact they were white/grey as being that they were the Death Star Squadron.

Now the main reason, apart from that i just don't like the TIEs such an over saturated blue is this: They have all been recoloured in post production. Being an artist this is something i just cannot stand. An object should ahve many degrees of light and shade and highlighting. When recolouring an object you lose the light tones of highlights and it becomes a block colour. This existed ever since ESB was released in 1980 and nothing to do with the latest 2004 screw up. Even the black panels have become blue, which is down to the colour enhancement. Something like this jumps out to me and i just can't overlook it. It pulls me right out of the movie. You can tell the ones that haven't had any sort of colour filter added and they are grey and have white highlights when next to them is a blue one and the highlights which should be almost colourless is blue. For the AVCHD restoration it was easy to restore the colour to blue because of the techniques used originally. If i were to try and keep the blue to a degree that i would be happy with i would have to mask every single area for highlights, panels, cockpit etc. Here's a quick diagram to show what i mean:



Now the yellow areas are the mask for the black panels. Each section has to be done separately with a separate mask. The red areas are the highlights. Again each area is a separate mask. The green is the cockpit window to turn it back to grey. Now after i done the masks and applied the correct colouring/ highlighting to them each point then has to be matched, frame by frame, to the motion of the TIE fighter. All this has to be done by hand. Now when you have one TIE this can take days to do one split second shot. That photo has about 18 separate masks. Each point of that mask has to be moved to match the next frame. Thats could be anything in the region of 100+ points that have to be keyframed and moved to match the origin point for every frame. For one TIE alone thats insanity. Now add the other TIEs and every shot in the film and it becomes even more of a nightmare, and something i am not willing to do. It would take me so long just restoring these colours could take me the next year alone. I know i am too much of a perfectionist, which can sometimes be my downfall, but that's just the way i am. If they had stuck to the original colouring when doing ESB then i wouldn't have any problem whatsoever with the TIES being blue, but the fake colouring i just cannot stand, and never will. Now the TIE bombers are a different matter. They didn't have anything done to their colouring . Now strange enough they didn't mess with the colouring for ROTJ and the TIEs are a light blue/grey. Highlighting is intact and the panels are black.

Now what i am going to do is this: All the TIE fighters will be grey. TIE bombers will be their original light blue/ grey and the TIE interceptors will be their original colouring also. This will keep the consistency with the colours of the TIEs throughout the saga and also give the newer models of the bombers and interceptors their own colouring. the interceptors are a newer and more advanced TIE fighter so having a different colour , i have no problem with. If ILM had done the same to the bombers and the interceptors as they did with the TIEs in ESB then they would probably be grey also.

Its just something, that to my eyes, that i spot straight away and hate it. Its the same with recolouring old black and white movies. It always looks fake to me and i just can never watch anything recoloured. Some movies, however, use recolouring for style and this can work. But not when you are trying to recolour an object because its just a new technique you can do, which is what happened with ESB

[nightmare]

Revisited is already full of such tiny-detail edits which have no purpose whatsoever to the storyline and wouldn't be picked up by a casual viewer anyway. Personally I call it silly to be so anal-retentive, but it's his life to throw away.

[Kurgan]

Oh well, I figure somebody can just tint the TIEs blue again after he releases it late next year.

Woo!

[NecronLord]

Personally, I like the blue look of the Excecutor and TIEs. But it's his masterpiece improvement project...

[Kurgan]

So do most people, but it just so happens that the guy in charge of the edit hates the way they look, and doesn't want to spend the time to properly color them blue. The average viewer won't be able to tell the difference between blue tinted TIE Fighters and TIE Fighters that have been "properly" colored, since people don't watch the movie in slow mo, zoomed in.

He's keeping the Executor blue, but changing all the TIEs to gray... well, sorta.

The TIE Fighters are changing to colorless, the bombers are staying put , and the Interceptors in ROTJ are staying their current color, according to his most recent statements.


Re-tinting the TIEs blue couldn't be that much work... hardly worse than what was done with the "Dune: Third Stage" edit, which re-colored the missing Fremen eyes.

[Magister Militum]

So do most people, but it just so happens that the guy in charge of the edit hates the way they look, and doesn't want to spend the time to properly color them blue. The average viewer won't be able to tell the difference between blue tinted TIE Fighters and TIE Fighters that have been "properly" colored, since people don't watch the movie in slow mo, zoomed in.

He's keeping the Executor blue, but changing all the TIEs to gray... well, sorta.

The TIE Fighters are changing to colorless, the bombers are staying put , and the Interceptors in ROTJ are staying their current color, according to his most recent statements.


Re-tinting the TIEs blue couldn't be that much work... hardly worse than what was done with the "Dune: Third Stage" edit, which re-colored the missing Fremen eyes.

As mentioned earlier, people that are very anal retentive regarding small details such as color (his explanation regarding his choice to recolor the TIE's is a perfect example) won't really be open to modifying their viewpoints. Personally, I find it silly that he would consider something as minor as the colors of a TIE fighter to be so jarring in terms of continuity that he must recolor them, but it's his project, so, whatever.

[Kurgan]

Fair enough, but he's changed his mind about other stuff in the past, so I thought it was worth a shot!

[Galvatron]

I'll reserve judgment until I see the result. Honestly, I never noticed the TIEs were different colors from film to film.

[Kurgan]

Really? Amazing...

I always knew about it, since not only did the trailers always show those flybys in the asteroid field or past the SSD, in which they were brilliantly blue, but some of the toys back in the day were blue, so I knew all the TIEs weren't the same color.

When I was a child/teen I had seen ANH the least of the movies, and it always struck me as "odd" and "primitive looking" to suddenly see white or gray TIE fighters.

Of course by my high school years, when I had gotten into the video games, I started to "forget" because all the games always gave you the gray ships as if that's all there ever was, most of the time. Seeing the Special Editions on the big screen reminded me of the blue TIEs.

Until Adywan's thread on it, I had no idea that anyone didn't like the fact that the TIEs weren't all the same color!

To me, it just looks boring without the color. It's not that I don't like black and white movies, it's just that Star Wars, ESB, etc are not FRICKIN' black and white movies!

[Stark]

Detail-obsessed nerds trying to develop 'ownership' of the subject of their obsession? IMPOSSIBLE.

[Kurgan]

I much prefer "pwnership" myself.

[Elfdart]

I'll reserve judgment until I see the result. Honestly, I never noticed the TIEs were different colors from film to film.

I watched TESB on my brother's laserdisc player the other night (we were checking to see if it still worked since it was in the garage for so long) and it appeared to me that the TIE fighters were blue because like so many other things in TESB, they were bathed in a bluish light either from Hoth, the Executor or the lightning effect when one spins out of control in the asteroid field. The TIEs chasing the Falcon from Bespin were not blue, but grey -like the ones in ANH.