So what you’re doing is taking a 35mm scan you found with French audio, synced some English audio to it, and uploading it to Youtube, cut into 3 minute chunks?
It might take another 20 or 30 years like SW77, but eventually we’ll know more.
Maybe. I don’t expect the level open-ness from Disney ever the way we eventually got with LFL & Rinzler.
Rinzler did actually write and edit an entire Making of TFA book, that was cancelled.
https://www.slashfilm.com/546017/j-w-rinzler-the-making-of-star-wars-the-force-awakens/
He started work even before Abraams was brought on board, and interviewed nearly everyone involved. He compared it to his ROTS book, so it wasn’t going to be as open as the 30-years of hindsight for the OT books, but it was still to be a very comprehensive 368-page epic.
I hope that one day it’ll come out, but with Rinzler’s passing, it seems unlikely.
Anyway here’s a brief bit of info about that whole ‘extra hour’ thing:
https://www.businessinsider.com/star-wars-force-awakens-unused-footage-2016-4?r=US&IR=T
Of course the guy who worked with all the puppets would want more of his work seen. Everyone who works in production design always does.
Editors Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey have stated that the first pass was 2:30
[Mary Jo Markey said:]
It wasn’t too bad. I think it was about two and a half hours, right Maryann?
[Maryann Brandon said:]
Two and a half. And JJ really wanted it to be two hours.
Lot’s of great info in their Art of the Cut article here;
https://www.provideocoalition.com/art-of-the-cut-with-the-editors-of-star-wars-the-force-awakens/
With TFA, there’s a lot that we don’t know the exact specifics of, like we do with the OT or PT. The first cut was definitely 2:30-ish though, and not 3.
Zuvio was a character with an odd amount of marketing and merchandising, yet ended up in 7 frames of the final cut, and yet still we don’t know the specifics beyond that he was some kind of antagonist on Jakku for Rey.
We know that the film cut back and forth to Leia before her arrival at Maz’s, but outside of that one scene released, we don’t know how often or what her material was like. There’s glimpses of this footage reused in TROS, but nothing concrete. Same with Maz at the rebel base, she went there on the Falcon and stuck around, giving Leia the lightsaber but other than that, her role is unknown. Much of her in the castle was reshot as they were still figuring out what her character was as production progressed. Her design wasn’t finalised until post, which is why she is a CG character and not practical.
Rey’s force vision thing may or may not of had Luke and Vader’s duel on Bespin, we still don’t know for sure if it was filmed.
There was supposed to be more with Kylo Ren after the duel on Starkiller Base, but we also don’t know how much or what he did. More with Poe after his “death” on Jakku and before arriving at Maz’s castle too, but also unknown.
Basically, there is just a lot of uncertainity with TFA. There’s no un-revised drafts to go off, no extensive BTS book or documentary released, no substantial deleted scenes. It’s impossible to tell what was in early cuts, and what wasn’t The stuff we know the best about is reshot material, but even then not entirely. It might take another 20 or 30 years like SW77, but eventually we’ll know more.
6 hours of uncut interviews, 3:12 of Marcia Lucas especially!
We lost the auction and didn’t end up getting the print.
Here’s to hoping one shows up again some day.
Found a good looking print of the first MIB film on eBay from a reputable seller. It’s open matte, of which the film is usually presented in 1.85, and P&S for the VHS/DVD.
The current bid is at $685 with shipping, and less than a day left on the auction.
I’ve got someone who is willing to put up to $650 of his own money into it, but it would be great to be able to pledge more towards it. I’d certainly pitch in as much is needed.
We haven’t calculated scanning fees or anything, just looked at buying and shipping so far.
Please either post in the thread or message me if you’d like to pledge money towards purchasing the print!
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325970612091
Wait, did I miss something? Is this project no longer being done?
Last activity: 11-May-2022
You guys should be set now. For anybody else, PM me if he isn’t responding after a reasonable amount of time.
Thanks JJB, I get too many PMs and never enough time to respond to them. Currently up to date with them for the first time in years.
Please do not post in this thread asking for links, likely that I will ignore them as I don’t get pinged unlike getting a PM.
I don’t think there is any release, besides the 2006 GOUT disc, without the Episode IV title. The rollup was changed in 81, and has been stuck that way ever since.
Would love to have this and the Empire book, but currently exorbitant on Amazon Australia. Hopefully the price comes down some day!
Joe Johnston confirms that a 2nd season is forthcoming, and that he just finished shooting his interviews at 32Ten Studios, the now-former Kerner building, where the ILM Model Shop from ESB and onwards has been.
Source: https://youtu.be/oBgIyrjON9U?feature=shared&t=65
I wonder where they’ll take it with this one, as the first season did cover everything, albiet rushed towards the end. Maybe they’ll cover more of the work from the 2000s, or maybe just tackle different sides of the whole thing. Always great to see more ILM old-timers talking about their craft
Some observations:
At the 5:16 mark, there’s a random frame or two that slipped past, during the deleted, extended dialogue between Han and Chewie (“dont lose your temper.”) that needs removal.
Fixed!
Slavicuss said:
At the 23:20 mark, Artoo’s scream (from the Hoth Wampa scene?) carried over Piett’s face and the start of the deleted scene between Luke and Leia (recovering after the bacta tank).
Scenes were originally in a different order and I must’ve left it in ther by mistake, now fixed!
Slavicuss said:
At the 28:04 mark, the deleted scene with Han and Leia could use some work on its geometry - the scene looks vertically stretched (Leia, looks like a conehead).
All of the footage from the Empire at 40 videos, for some reason is all vertically stretched. I’m assuming the footage had a narrower frame and was stretched to 2.35, somehow. But this is now noted and fixed!
I have now seen you edit Bobson Dugnutt and I must say I’m impressed how you could manage to keep the old school vibe even though I’m a fan of newer versions of Star Wars movies (Adywan etc).
Thank you! I tried to make this feel like an early cut of the film before cuts were made, and hopefully I was successful!
- The overall sound must be fixed in several places and the sound is out of sync here and there but I’m sure you are aware of this as this is version 1.0 of the movie. 😃
Any particular areas or scenes that drop in and out? Is it specifically the deleted scenes or the untouched film?
- Some of the hue of the video is almost green instead of white (don’t know if this is intentional as the original was this way? It was very long time ago I saw the originals). One example is the planet Hoth.
The source was a very early scan of ESB done in maybe 2014 or 2015, the Renegade Grindhouse version. The colour-timing is all over the place and I haven’t touched it. Cloud City is very red too. I’m happy to revisit the colours and make it a little more balanced and familiar.
- I believe you have inserted the deleted TIE Bomber scene too early as the original scene when they first bomb the asteroid field comes much further down the line.
Good catch! I’ll move the TIE Bomber scene backwards, so it plays in front of the deleted scene with Han and Leia and their dialogue matches up!
- The still shot of the Bounty Hunter looked odd. See if it can be solved in any other way? I know that one second is missing in the original clip but this unfortunately didn’t work for me.
Is this the shot?
With there being a slug in the middle of the shot, I can’t imagine any other way around it, other than cutting to this shot. I can give it a crack trying to add some movement to the characters in the back. Personally it doesn’t bother me, but I can see how it could be somewhat odd.
merculix said:
Overall I dig you edit Bobson but personally I dig the newer versions more. But it’s a personal taste. 😃
Thank you 😃)
So, I just sat through this and had a blast. I’m glad you went with my suggestion of going full grindhouse with it. It’s all so seamless that I don’t think it would have worked this good otherwise.
Going grindhouse was absolutely the best option! The deleted scenes were never ever going to line up with a Blu-Ray copy of the film, and doing a filthy, dirt stained version of the film was the best move.
theprion said:
Outside of that, I think the audio in the extended Falcon repair with Han and Leia (55’) is a bit too loud; and the coloring on the restored saber training at 67’ looks a tad too contrasty/vibrant compared to the rest of the presentation.
I’ll crank down the Falcon repair, and see if it lines up better, and looking at it now, absolutely the saber training scene is a tad too saturated, so I may of overdone it. I’ll see what I can do!
theprion said:
Oh, and any reason for the Han-Leia exchange “Well Your Highness I guess this is it” before “don’t get all mushy on me” got cut?
I actually have no idea what happened there or how that line got cut, but it was completely accidental somehow. Reinstated!
theprion said:
Also, the Wampa clawing the wall during the hallway argument feels a bit out of place. I guess it’s necessary to cut back to Han returning to Leia?
The deleted scene on the BR, for whatever reason, uses a clip from the film to segue into the scene, but then changes to a completely different take for whatever reason, it makes it very hard to cut it into the film, and much like the bounty hunter shot, cutting away to the Wampa is the only idea I had. Maybe having a fake extra walk past the camera to hide the cut? But I don’t think spacially it would make sense, if anyone has any other ideas, I’m happy to give it a crack.
theprion said:
On a personal note I’m on the fence over scraping original sequences to salvage the restored scenes, as in the case with the Wampa attack on Echo Base and General Veers’ demise. I might be wrong on how well it would glue with the rest of the film, but I’d rather conserve the restored scenes, janky as they are, as much as possible without rearranging theatrical footage.
Little confused about what this part means, but I’m assuming you’re referring to repurposing the walker falling over into the General Veers death. The walker shot was originally intended for this scene, so I didn’t have much of a problem with putting it back. I suppose the Luke bombing scene does feel more anti-climactic too, unless there is some other walker footage from somewhere to pull from. What are you referring to with the Wampa attack?
The rearranged scenes felt odd, but that’s from viewing the 1980 film so many times, so was to be expected.
I’ve rearranged a lot on Hoth, especially around when Luke gets back, to accomodate all the new material in there. It’s all in accordance with the Fourth Draft shooting script. This means that Luke spends a lot more time in recover compared to the final film, so it absolutely feels odd to a film that is so familiar.
The audio levels for the deleted scenes was a little high for the surrounding material (Luke / Leia medical bay, etc).
I’ll make sure to lower things, and get it all balanced, I think that’s the biggest technical issue for this.
rortiz77 said:
And I’m not sure I like the use of the Special Edition Wampa for the missing Wampa shot being fired at by the rebel soldier.
I needed an extra Wampa shot, so I pulled from there, but I can try cutting out that one shot and see how it works, my worry is that the scene by go by too fast without something there.
Impressive - but I’d leave out any of the SE changes (Hoth Wampa, etc).
I’d rather be shot than use the entire SE Wampa scene. Cool idea, bad excecution, Jaws shark is better when unseen, etc.
Slavicuss said:
I’m glad you didn’t include that alternate Cloud City scene between Han and Leia.
If there was more footage of that scene included, then I would of absolutely used it, but sadly it’s only 3 chunks of it, or else it would of slotted in.
Thanks everyone for the feedback! Massively helpful, and I always appreciate any and all critiques! I’d be nothing without the opinions of others!
My free account with Mega.nz would only allow me to view the first 36 mins of your expanded cut.
That’s as far as I got before the “Transfer Quota Exceeded” message popped up to ruin my pleasant viewing experience. Lol. Bummer. Would like to see the rest - if possible?
Same here. Can’t stream or download very far without a paid plan. MEGA should nerver be used because of this. Better of with something else like Google Drive or Dropbox.
If you download it using the MEGA app, it should automatically resume when the wait time runs out. I’ve also had some success messing around with VPN’s to get around the wait.
The Mega app or jDownloader2 usually works for me, and somehow never really asked me to stop, then again, I never streamed through Mega and always download. jDownloader always has been, and always will be my choice to scoot around it since most of the time it just forgets or something. I ended up shelling out for premium though because they tend to never remove files like GoogleDrive, and I download and store enough stuff from there to justify it.
Finally some good news!
I’ve rendered out what is probably a close to final cut. I’ve got all the footage I wanted in there, and the sound mixing is alright to my ears.
I’m happy for anyone to watch this and give any feedback before an official release.
New changelist:
Theatrical - 02:04:46
Expanded - 02:13:04
Very gorgeous poster, thank you!
I think he thinks that if he crowdsources re-creating individual scenes from the movie and then stitches them back together into a fan-made re-creation of the entire film, this will be legally free for anyone to view.
There’s been a few films done like this, Star Wars, Robocop, Shrek, Spider-Man. The Robocop one especially was fantastic, largely in part due to one particular scene that I’m sure people have seen tenfold like I have.
I think Lost World wouldn’t really garner a lot of enthusiasm as much as the first film would if done.
For $4,500, and the damage that is on the preview photos, it’s not worth it.
There have already been upwards of 10 prints scanned anyway, so while there’s no harm in getting another, for that price, it’s not worth it.
Gonna be on the lookout for that. I had started mixing Rekindled with the Dugnutt extended one before my computer crapped out.
What happened?
Not a bad idea, but Dark Empire comic book series was better with Papa Palpatine returning as a clone compared to this mess of an unintradesting take of this movie.
Thanks for the insight, valuable as always
This was released on the 2011 Blu-Ray, it’s not exactly new by any stretch.
One of my favourite things I’ve done in this whole TPM thing, which is just talking about Doug Chiang and his process with George and with design. It’s so fun combining so many different sources and intercutting everything to tell one story. It’s great, and I’m enjoying it.
I’ve watched through my 2nd rough cut, and am now making adjustments, both technical and story-wise to get everything feeling smooth and cohesive, which means cutting and rearranging materials. Right now I’ve locked Part 1-4, which leaves 5-14. Hopefully it’s done soon-ish.
I think the critisism and breakdown of the films are still really rock solid. The whole “describe a character” section is absolutely great, and shows why the film doesn’t work. Largely TPM has no protagonist and that’s one of its biggest flaws. Plinkett/Mike was able to articulate why he didn’t like it, and it largely resonated with people beacuse it put in to words how they felt about it.
After a lot more editing and consolidating footage and material, I’ve arrived at a rough cut, running at 6hr 21mins. I’ll be watching this over the course of the next week or so, and hopefully that number comes down.
If any crazy son of a bitch wants to watch the rough cut and provide feedback, let me know and I’ll hook you up, but this is hopefully too long and I can cut it right down while finessing the audio/video.