- Time
- Post link
Well in these interviews from "media/fans"
It comes out that the #1 topic of near angry proportions is why no original trilogy. Suprised? I think not here.
Next, they wanted deleted scenes (this would help us solve the #1 problem at least ourselves), nope, none.
The answer was interesting though in that those are being saved and restored to HD-DVD...so the debate over an Ultimate release is moot. It will happen on HD-DVD/Blu-RAY. Of course we don't know if even at that point we'll get the OT, but its getting rediculous...every review I have read and I've read more than 20 now, all mention it. "Where is the OT?" Maybe its possible we'll get it on this next HD release, if not we'll get deleted scenes (hopefully that'll include scenes he altered - restored to HD so we can fix it, even if he doesn't).
Key paragraph below...
Straight from the horse's mouth
While it was very nice to see the bonus material demonstrated, the real heart of the day's material came from the panelists who fielded questions from the audience.
First off, we got a three-person panel consisting of Rick Dean (the THX technical director), John Lowry (the head film restoration expert), and Van Ling (the DVD producer and menu designer). Jim Ward also contributed some insights. The hottest issue of the day revolved around the ever-controversial "special edition vs. original edition" topic, as the first question to come from the audience had to do with how Lucas could justify releasing an altered version of Star Wars when he'd publicly excoriated the colorization of the original black-and-white Three Stooges films. Jim Ward took up the reply here, pointing out that Lucas felt very strongly in the artist's right to choose the presentation of his own material, and that while the Stooges weren't around to give the OK to colorization, Lucas himself, as the artist, had every right to decide which version of the Star Wars films to release. After several other pointed questions from the audience on the topic of the special editions (clearly everyone in the audience would have preferred the originals), Ward simply stressed that George Lucas had made it very clear that the special editions of the films represent most closely what he really wanted to do with the films, and wasn't able to do on the first pass due to budgetary and technical limitations.
One interesting question raised by an audience member touched on the absence of deleted scenes from the bonus material. Ward commented that with so much material from the Star Wars archives, they simply had to pick and choose what to fit on the disc. He then went on to imply that at least some material from the archives was being saved for later releases of the set on later formats like HD-DVD.
In my mind, the most interesting panelist was film restoration expert John Lowry, who explained that even though the films had theoretically been restored for the 1997 special editions, the prints were in terrible condition, and that it was the most exhaustive (and, I think, exhausting) restoration process that his team had ever attempted. He touched on specific technical issues such as matching up the image quality of special effects shots with the live-action shots (since the former, due to the nature of the effect creation process, were always in worse condition than the latter), and even commented that it's possible to restore "too much" (for instance, if the restored transfer starts to reveal detail like makeup lines that the director never intended to be seen) and that part of the process is knowing when to stop. It was amusingly clear that Lowry is a total perfectionist, as he mentioned that his team had only 30 days to spend on each film, and he would have wanted to spend even more time restoring them. He dryly commented that "We don't usually have to deal with a living director," and added that doing so was "a pain in the ass." But he went on to add that being able to work with Lucas meant that he could find out how far to go with the restoration: for instance, in some scenes he had to touch up the film itself to correct flaws that were revealed once all the dirt and grime had been removed from the transfer, and slight grain had to be added to the newer "special edition" scenes to make them visually compatible with the rest of the film.
