Han ANH hero - site and antenna

[lonepigeon]

Originally posted by Prop Runner@Jan 6 2006, 07:56 PM
But since Chris, Gav, and a few others are having trouble seeing the manipulation in Jason's pic, I'll help a little more:

[snapback]1152416[/snapback]​

Gabe, now you're worrying me since you're sounding like one of the Lone Gunmen.
Funny how you say they did this pastejob but the knurling on the suppressor is perfectly fine.
Again I'll address your callouts:
1. "Same Color" - Hardly, would you like me to post the exact RGB mix of both areas?
2. "If this was a rod it would be broken" - Have you been reading my posts? As I said the fin/ridge or the T-track is broken at that line, the rod is the one from the scope side antenna piece.
The remainder of the T-track ridge is covering the head of the antenna piece. This same break line shows up in the Chronicles side view as well.

With all you've described that would be one heck of a retouching job for that time period.
State of the art at the time was airbrush and paint and that's not what you're describing. You're trying to tell us that someone spent hours to retouch a VERY tiny area for no apparent reason?
For ANH publicity stills they had Ralph McQuarrie himself painting lightsaber blades and holograms. He even painted a lightsaber into Darth Vaders empty hand for one still, but what you're describing is light years beyond mid 70's work. Even if you look at 80's ESB photos retouched for packinging art its pretty obvious hand retouched work.

 

[RKW]

As convincing as Prop Runners explanation of photo tampering is what I can't fatham is why anyone would go to so much trouble to add/remove something as insignificant as some rod(s) whether it be a published/unpublished photo?

Who would notice/care? Considering the continuity faults that are allowed to slip through into the film who in the production would notice such a difference?

 

[RKW]

I'm assuming the image on the right is modern day trickery done by the likes of Kenner/Hasbro?

 

[Prop Runner]

Originally posted by gavidoc@Jan 6 2006, 12:26 PM
I don't see how you are getting the T-track running into the suppressor Gabe. What you are viewing as the T-track on the suppressor is the scallop in the suppressor.

I never said it's running INTO the suppressor, only that the line Chris and you believe is its bottom edge runs straight over the shamfered edge of the suppressor and over one of the scalloped cuts. DUDE, YOU CAN SEE THE LINE CONTINUING THROUGH THE CUT. And you ask what I'VE been smokin?

Also, this is an UNPUBLISHED PHOTO. Again, UNPUBLISHED PHOTO. There is no need to "airbrush" an UNPUBLISHED PHOTO.

Are you not realizing that you are saying that an Unpublished photo has been retouched.

What I think is, is that after trying to retouch the tilted suppressor to make it look centered again (because Harrison looks so dashing in this action shot and they wanted to salvage the photo), Lucas saw the reprint and said "you gotta be kidding me, look at that mess. This one goes straight to the archives." You just helped me win that argument, Gav. :lol

With respect to your red-blue-green overlays, how about addressing what I wrote and diagramed? Better yet, please account for the step in the rod toward the rear and the sudden blurry blackness next to the switch. And please don't tell me it's residual black paint.

Chris: no insults were intended - you know I tend to be passionate about my research, and I tried to keep it entertaining, is all.

You responded:

You're right it doesn't. Your CAD just proved that the left side antenna could not possibly be there which I stated in my post.
I believe the rotation on your CAD is slightly off and that the scope would easily hide the ridge of the T-track in that photo. Your CAD is probably more perfect than the prop was so aligning it might be difficult

I agree with you there - I already said I centered the t-track. However, if this was indeed a resin casting, why oh why didn't the property master replace it when it broke, not to mention glue it on centered?

Again I agree the CAD actually looks very good. Your rotation is off again though - look at the large gap between the scope and gun barrel in the CAD vs. the photo.

Thanks for the compliment. What you're referring to is the forced perspective in the CAD, which makes the scope appear closer to the viewer, thus increasing the gap, but the location of the scope is irellevant to this debate.

Maybe you're assuming that the cap screw is perfectly centered to the bottom of the Mauser to guide your rotation. It is definitely NOT centered which you prove later in this post.

No assumptions, Chris. I'm not sure what the cap screw has to do with anything, but it's not driving the suppressor's orientation, if that's what you mean - it's purely cosmetic in the CAD. Besides, the rotation angle of the suppressor is irellevant to this topic - unless you're conceding that the t-track is jammed in there to compensate for the off-centered and tilted suppressor, and somehow got rotated along with it? That would make more sense: use the resin Merr-Sonn greeblie cast to realign the suppressor. That would make it a FUNCTIONAL mechanism, not a cosmetic one, as I've been asserting all along.

If you rotate it correctly and then puch the suppressor down as you said it needs to be I think you'll find the CAD will even better match this photo

Not necessary for this debate - I've already conceded before your response that I idealized it.

I still can't believe that you think this pic was heavily retouched. The "evidence" was weak at best, but really doesn't disprove anything about the detail parts anyway. We have SEVERAL pics of this blaster showing these details on the barrel. Are you saying they added the details in this pic? You seem to be saying there is nothing there which there obviously is. I'll debate what it is, but debating whether there's something there or not is foolish

and

I count at least 3 pics that show some proof that the details are the same bits as used on the Merr Sonns. No, we don't have solid proof, but we have enough to believe that the parts are what was most likely used and that they were consistantly present on the blaster

"These details?" Chris, even for you, that's quite a stretch. In Sergio's interior Falcon shot, maybe 6-7 pixels betray "something" on top of the barrel. In the OfficialPix shot, we see a black glob with no rod - where IS that rod, Chris? Gav? It should obsure part of the ejection port area or be seen between the barrel and the scope. But it's not there. 2 pics down. That leaves the Chronicles top view, which is open to several interpretations because it's so dark and detail-poor, and finally Jason's shot, which my diagram clarifies even further to be a blatant manipulation.

Would you rather have a broken T-track and one antenna? Granted we have no photos of the assembly complete so it would involve some conjecture. It's different than trying to make a case for the Imperial disc on the side though. In that case I believe that's what was there at some point pre-filming buts thats only my best guess based on other props

Ah, now we're finally getting to the crux of the debate: "To Be.... Or Not To Be... That Is The Question." I never contended that there was nothing there, Chris, only you won't find any evidence of these greeblies on the blaster when the suppressor was centered. When it WAS off-center, I assert that something - perhaps a beaten-up Merr-Sonn greeblie casting - was used to partially realign the suppressor. But if you're going to reconstruct something and idealize it based on WHAT YOU SEE ON A DIFFERENT PROP, then I say you're misguided at best. If you're going to do that, logic demands that you return the imperial disc as well. You don't know at what point it fell off, and using your own arguments, just because there's no compelling or conclusive photo evidence to prove it, doesn't mean it wasn't there. The fact that we know a pre-production Han exists with no mystery disc and then it appears in the film with one should be all the evidence you need to restore it, for the exact same reasons you want to restore a Merr-Sonn feature on a different prop.

That statement was based on an eyeball guess. Note how the white highlight on the lower one's barrel seems to extend back further than it should. I never measured/compared the things real close. You can match up the lumps though so I believe they are from the same mold, but maybe the muzzle was a seperate mold. That might explain how the muzzle has interior detail not on the actual suppressor, how it was turned 90 degrees, and how a seperate muzzle shows up on the Jawa/Greedo gun. I'll have to go back and look at some of my other pics and see if the ESB/ROTJ stunt came from the same mold as these 2

Chris, that's a non-concession-concession if I ever read one. If they made a mold with a 90-degree rotated suppressor, makes more sense that they made a second mold without it. Just a few posts ago you were arguing that they molded the suppressor farther out on the barrel. Now you're saying maybe they made a seperate mold just for the muzzle, which would mean that the one we see rotated 90 degrees was glued on. You have no proof, yet you put out the possibility, and you make factual statements based on belief before due diligence research. At least when I've stated something as a fact and later was proven wrong, I took responsibility and backed it up with evidence. Which reminds me: why on your site do you still define the MG81 suppressor as a fire-extinguisher nozzle and use a discredited photo? Perhaps you should update it before staking out any new hypotheses... :unsure

By the way: the Jawa & Greedo guns used entirely different muzzles and gun bases, so why even bring this up?

- Gabe

 

[Prop Runner]

Gabe, now you're worrying me since you're sounding like one of the Lone Gunmen.
Funny how you say they did this pastejob but the knurling on the suppressor is perfectly fine

Is it really? Seems to be that everything above that paste line is blurry and misaligned. The color gradients change too - why don't you do an RGB check on that?

1. "Same Color" - Hardly, would you like me to post the exact RGB mix of both areas?

Everything in that upper portion of the barrel and suppressor has been retouched, so why would I expect the same RGB results? It probably changes from pixel to pixel in the untouched regions, due to lighting and surface discoloration.

2. "If this was a rod it would be broken" - Have you been reading my posts? As I said the fin/ridge or the T-track is broken at that line, the rod is the one from the scope side antenna piece.
The remainder of the T-track ridge is covering the head of the antenna piece. This same break line shows up in the Chronicles side view as well.

What I meant was that you should be able to see the rod's edge from beginning to end, but it's got a step and then becomes a black blob before meeting the "switch." In the Chronicles top view you don't see anything extending that far back... These are your ONLY two photo references with ANY detail in them, Chris - hardly enough to build a credible theory on, sorry.

With all you've described that would be one heck of a retouching job for that time period.
State of the art at the time was airbrush and paint and that's not what you're describing. You're trying to tell us that someone spent hours to retouch a VERY tiny area for no apparent reason?

Chris, have you forgotten that we're talking about Star Wars, the movie that revolutionized filming techniques, digital effects, and image perception? :lol And yes, graphic artists (Gav, tell him), photographers, and advertising companies spend millions of hours a year retouching and manipulating photos to get their desired results. Just because they didn't have Photoshop back then doesn't mean it wasn't done on a massive scale in any number of industries. Hell, it's that very market for which Photoshop was developed.

For ANH publicity stills they had Ralph McQuarrie himself painting lightsaber blades and holograms. He even painted a lightsaber into Darth Vaders empty hand for one still, but what you're describing is light years beyond mid 70's work. Even if you look at 80's ESB photos retouched for packinging art its pretty obvious hand retouched work.

No doubt about it. And we see goofs and shoddy continuity all throughout the OT. But you're proving my point: not only did they manipulate photos, but they did a piss-poor job in many cases, and this is just one more of them.

Chris, I have to admit, I'm tiring of chasing your "maybes" and "it's possibles" and "it might explains" and "I believes," because they conclude nothing and only distract from the original topic, and that was discussing the photo Jason posted. On that photo seem to hinge all your other claims and interpretations of "humps," 6-pixel black blobs, and scratchy dark details in other photos. We seem to be too entrenched to consider that the other is right, but at least I'm content with the knowledge that I *know* this blaster, the art of photography & old-school darkroom techniques since 1979, and trust my eyes well enough to conclude that my analysis is credible and empirical.

Hope you all have a restful and fun weekend - I know I need the sleep. :lol

- Gabe

 

[spinner 44]

Gabe,

I do have to disagree in this one with you. I do not think the pic was retouched to add this "greeblies". I honestly cannot see the paste lines and retouches, and I think a better resolution pix, without the pixelation due to zooming would help a great deal. Digital picture artifacts can sometimes be deceiving. I do see the suppression being all the same angle and I can't see but parallel lines were it should be parallel and perpendicular where it should be perpendicular.

I'm becoming more convinced that the broken t-track and the button w/antenna were are added sometime during production (as I cannot see them in the "Stop that ship." scene or the cantina pic you posted) maybe to make it look more interesting (BAD IDEA it looks too ugly.) maybe because they needed to make a base to make the Merr-Son stunts... BTW I think the suppressor may have been casted separately form the rest of the gun, as it has no screw head and is rotated 45 degrees from its common position. Also if you see the Merr-Son stunt with the flash suppressor, the suppression is not tilted upwards like in the hero gun.

After making the molds, the LHS button was lost (holster friction) or simply removed.

I strongly believe the broken t-track and the RHS button and antenna are present from the "smugglers compartment" scene until the end of production (the famous photo session and the Chronicles pics). The only pic and funny one of the most famous and clear does not show that detail because the scope covers it (the close up of Harrison turned left holding the gun upwards while looking at camera)

On the silver disc I think is depressed, why? because in the pic below there is a light reflection that can only be produced by the lip of the depression. There is no other logical explanation to that reflexion.

Someone mentioned before Gabe and others I think including me) the one in the photo up could be a stunt cast. I have to said I have looked more into the pic and I don't any more. The black color of the gun may be due to stage light or film type, the dirt around the grill parts could be glue residue. The metal exposed parts (front of magazine cover and disk) look
true metal, and all the stunt casts we know of ANH guns were painted plain black, plus the trigger is separate from the gun.

PS: IMO we are constantly dealing with "ifs", "I think", "I see" in this forum. I mean the whole RPF. I remember clearly the Deckard Blaster thread, my baptism in this fantastic forum. It was funny to see how come some people, using the same photo reference, saw and swear thing were one way while others saw the opposite, how come you could see one thing so clearly one day only to realise you were wrong the next. Above all that is the true spirit of defining a prop doing our very best. I love this place guys.

 

[Lordsandy]

Slightly OT but.............

Has it been known that the front grill is two ridges shorter on the bottom front than both sides?

I dont recall any replicas having that detail.

Jim

 

[DL 44 Blaster]

With all of the "evidence" being provided I'm lost in the discussion of who is trying to prove what??? :confused

Being blunt here,but what are we trying to prove or disprove with this thread???

Sometimes it seems as the same people are proving AND disproving the same theory of the bull barrel having the T-Track & antenna's on it.

Steve :$

 

[Prop Runner]

Originally posted by Lordsandy@Jan 6 2006, 03:57 PM
Slightly OT but.............

Has it been known that the front grill is two ridges shorter on the bottom front than both sides?

I dont recall any replicas having that detail.

Jim

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Actually, it's just one fin short, because they had to snap it off in order to fit around the step where the magazine floor plate is screwed into. Most of the replicas till now simply ignored it. The grill is composed of 3 6-fin sections glued together. The bottom two are identical with a large diameter cylinder behind the fins and the top section features a smaller diameter cylinder with staggered fins (that is, each in has a smaller diameter than the one below it).

Maybe Chris can chime in with his knowledge about the original parts (no I won't contest you. ), because I'm hearing two conflicting origins: vintage WWI radial airplane engine cylinder halves (like on the Merr-Sonns and stormtrooper comlink) and a vintage British pipe fitting or junction. While I personally like the airplane engine theory, the staggered fins on the Merr-Sonn parts taper at a larger angle than the one on the Han front grill. The taper angle on the top grill section can't be more than 5 degrees, but on the Merr-Sonns it's more like 10.

Hope this helps.

- Gabe

 

[Prop Runner]

Originally posted by DL 44 Blaster@Jan 6 2006, 04:29 PM
With all of the "evidence" being provided I'm lost in the discussion of who is trying to prove what??? :confused

Being blunt here,but what are we trying to prove or disprove with this thread???

Sometimes it seems as the same people are proving AND disproving the same theory of the bull barrel having the T-Track & antenna's on it.

Steve :$

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You're right, to a degree. But I think the unspoken agenda here is whether or not an idealized "antennae" & t-track feature should be used to upgrade the current blaster design or to add it as gospel to any quasi-official definition of this blaster model. Aesthetically it looks awful, and practically, there's not even remote evidence suggesting that the complete greeblie ever made it into filming, just as we can't answer if the imperial disc made it into filming before breaking off.

Chris contends that the partial greeblie was there (in cast resin form) the entire time, while I argue that wherever we see the suppressor centered (as it was meant to be), we see nothing of the sort, only when the suppressor is off center and tilted upward. I *DO* see something along the lines that Chris, Gav, and Sergio see, but I don't agree that it was decorative - only functional: a sloppy attempt to realign the suppressor (which may very well account for why it's off-center in the Chronicles top view).

I think Chris will agree with my summation of the nature of the debate, as it stands now, even if we agree to disagree over the nature of Jason's "revelatory" photo and the interpretation of fuzzy details in the Chronicles top view.

Hope this helps.

- Gabe

 

[DL 44 Blaster]

:thumbsup Cool....WHEN I finally get a Han ANH Hero buildup I too want to incorporate all of what has been discovered over the last few month's...

Sorry for the momentary lapse of brainpower :$ I'm tryin' to keep up.

Steve

 

[Prop Runner]

Originally posted by DL 44 Blaster@Jan 6 2006, 04:54 PM
:thumbsup  Cool....WHEN I finally get a Han ANH Hero buildup I too want to incorporate all of what has been discovered over the last few month's...

Sorry for the momentary lapse of brainpower :$  I'm tryin' to keep up.

Steve

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No worries, Steve.

But if I were you I wouldn't wait around for me to offer any "antennae" & t-track greeblie upgrade kits.

- Gabe

 

[DL 44 Blaster]

:lol you so silly....

 

[RKW]

But in the photo that you feel the greeblie has been added by an artist the suppressor is still off centre and not straight. So if the greeblie does exist then it can't be functional. If your saying it's not really there then how would some photo artist have a clue what the prop is supposed to look like. You can't make this greeblie out in any other photo so what would they have used for reference?

 

[gavidoc]

Gabe,

You keep saying that the photo is retouched. I will agree that this one:

[image]http://www.rpf.invisionzone.com/uploads/post-357-1136432244.jpg[/image]

is a retouched version of this one (the one we keep coming back to)

[image]http://www.wackychimp.com/uploads/closeup_han_vertical_1.JPG[/image]

Why do you say the above one is retouched again? What is your "proof" so to say.

IN regards to a separate mold for the suppressor to be used on the Merr Sonns, I always thought this was the way it was done personally.

I've always viewed this Merr Sonn:

[image]http://www.roboterkampf.com/1502a.jpg[/image]

to be the same as the one with the suppressor but on the one without the hider, it broke off. Wasn't cut off but broke. The hiders were glued to the Merr Sonns. The one missing the hider was dropped and the hider and part of the left switch broke off in the process. Reason there is part of the barrel on the bottom of this Merr Sonn is that it wasn't glued there completely. You can see a jagged edge where the other switch is.

 

[Prop Runner]

Originally posted by RKW@Jan 6 2006, 05:05 PM
But in the photo that you feel the greeblie has been added by an artist the suppressor is still off centre and not straight. So if the greeblie does exist then it can't be functional. If your saying it's not really there then how would some photo artist have a clue what the prop is supposed to look like. You can't make this greeblie out in any other photo so what would they have used for reference?

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I actually don't feel the greeblie was added by an artist - at least not intentionally. I feel I've proven that they were trying to recreate the top of the bull barrel and suppressor and the bottom edge of the scope as well by pasting part of a photo from another suppressor shot, possibly the pre-production one, or simply a copy of this one, but slightly rotated so that the suppressor looks parallel to the barrel in that area (see my diagram). Obviously they neglected to realign the bottom of the suppressor too.

If, as I contend, something was jammed in there, possibly overlapping the bottom edge of the scope, the touch-up artist might have tried to clean it up if it was too unattractive. The result doesn't look like anything in particular. Of course Chris, Gav, and Sergio disagree and see what they want, and I respect their right to.

- Gabe

 

[RKW]

So they just happened to have another photo lying around that was at the right scale and exact orientation to be able to cut and paste :eek

It's bad enough now trying to match our own photos to screencaps and that's with the aid of photoshop.

 

[Prop Runner]

Originally posted by RKW@Jan 6 2006, 05:34 PM
So they just happened to have another photo lying around that was at the right scale and exact orientation to be able to cut and paste  :eek

It's bad enough now trying to match our own photos to screencaps and that's with the aid of photoshop.

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Actually, if you look at the scalloped cuts, there are two that are completely out of scale (#3 & #4 from the top) - smaller one above, and a larger one below a line I term the "paste border." Even the color of the suppressor changes abruptly at that line (light at the top, dark on the bottom). Chris can't account for this abrupt size change, except to suggest that it was a machining error, even though such a discrepancy isn't found in any other close-ups of the suppressor (anyone who's German would laugh and feel insulted at the mere thought ). I can also tell you that the cuts on my loaner MG81 booster/hider are exactly identical - all 16 of them.

And yes, in a darkroom you can print to any scale you want - you just have to have an enlarger tall enough and photographic paper large enough to accept the image. Not saying they printed deliberately out of scale, just that they probably had several copies lying around (to test contrast, brightness, color saturation, hue, etc.) and a slight turn on the height knob of the enlarger could have changed the scale between prints. One of them was cut up and pasted on top of the base image, and the edges either airbrushed or obscured during the re-print process after a new negative was made. Obviously they missed a few since they felt the naked eye wouldn't notice. And back in 1977 no-one would have, but today with digital imaging, you can magnify down to the last pixel.

- Gabe

 

[Prop Runner]

Originally posted by gavidoc@Jan 6 2006, 05:15 PM
Why do you say the above one is retouched again? What is your "proof" so to say.

I'll just repaste what I included in my first post and in post #58:

If these and my clarifications to Steve aren't good enough, I'm sorry, but I'd have to add you to the denial club.

IN regards to a separate mold for the suppressor to be used on the Merr Sonns, I always thought this was the way it was done personally.

I've always viewed this Merr Sonn:

[image]http://www.roboterkampf.com/1502a.jpg[/image]

to be the same as the one with the suppressor but on the one without the hider, it broke off.  Wasn't cut off but broke. The hiders were glued to the Merr Sonns. The one missing the hider was dropped and the hider and part of the left switch broke off in the process. Reason there is part of the barrel on the bottom of this Merr Sonn is that it wasn't glued there completely. You can see a jagged edge where the other switch is.

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I respect your attempt to back up your claims, John. But look at the transition between the barrel and suppressor on the Merr-Sonn: it's filled, and there's a nice fillet round between them - they probably used clay to close off the back of the suppressor and break the sharp edge between the two for molding on the pre-production Han blaster. Heck, they could have used the clay to keep the suppressor centered as well as extended past the point it could be secured to the bull barrel with a screw.

Still, I'm not going to get hung up over whether the suppressor casting for the Merr-Sonn was part of the main gun mold or came from a separate mold. Again, because it's irellevant to the original topic, and frankly the Merr-Sonn doesn't light my fire one iota, so I could care less. I only took issue with Chris' belief that the casting with the suppressor had the same barrel length as the one without, and at least where the photo is concerned, I was right.

Cheers,

- Gabe

 

[gavidoc]

Ok. I see what your argument is for the cropped photo is now.

I agree. Not to the way you describe it though. Here is how I view it.

The photo is retouched contradicting what I"ve been saying.

Yet, I think you have the wrong side of the hider Gabe.

To me, the upper half plus the bell of the hider look consistent in regards to the rest of the gun. The lower half of the hider doesn't.

The scallops are of a different size and you have that line you are referring to.

The lower knurling doesn't look right and goes into both the curve before the bell and into the recess between the scallops and the knurling.

[image]http://webpages.charter.net/jrmyers01/images/closeup_han_vertical_1a.jpg[/image]

To show you what I'm talking about.

This image, I copied and pasted the top half of the hider (rear section) over the lower half. It fits and goes together IMO (despite my quick and dirty alignment job).

[image]http://webpages.charter.net/jrmyers01/images/closeup_han_vertical_1b.jpg[/image]

You do that with the lower half and you can see what I'm talking about with the knurling being redone. See how it goes into the curve as well as the recessed flat area?

[image]http://webpages.charter.net/jrmyers01/images/closeup_han_vertical_1c.jpg[/image]