The Empire Strikes Back - Expanded Edition (Work in Progress) — Page 3

theprion said:

Personally I’m in favor of keeping the Cloud City establishing shots to theatrical, just so it doesn’t look too slick or modern in contrast to the grindhouse flair.

Me too. I don’t think you should use not even a single shot from the Special Edition. Your project seems to me like an attempt to archieve a complete “workprint” of the movie before trims were made. If you add SE material, it will be another hybrid cut and I think it will lose a lot of its uniqueness. My opinion only, of course.

A full first pass on the Bacta scene has been done.

https://vimeo.com/697872522

Nice!

that rocks bobson.
will you do this with anh scenes too and upgrade your anh edit??
thanks

This is looking transformative.

This is looking transformative.

This is really cool - there’s some stuff here I’d never seen and the work you’re doing to merge it in fairly seamlessly is very neat.

benduwan said:

that rocks bobson.
will you do this with anh scenes too and upgrade your anh edit??
thanks

My current SW77 edit is only the Biggs scenes, and I’m still really happy with that cut I did back in 2018. If anything, I’ll go back and do both an expanded cut based on the TC, and then a “”“”“”““Lost Cut””“”“”“”" that restructures it based on the Fourth Draft. Due to the sheer amount of B/W footage in the extended Cantina scene, I’d have to consider what to use and what not to use ultimately. Jenny is an absolute yes though.

Tack said:

This is just amazing. There’s the same kind of giddiness involved as when the deleted scenes were first unveiled. The idea that the films you enjoyed could be given a totally new but old look. And I think in some ways, the deleted scenes of ESB are even more mysterious than the ones from SW77, just because of the glimpses the trailers and tie-in media give.

Thank you! I wasn’t too familiar with how much was cut before I started digging in. As for the first SW, we basically know exactly how much was cut and about 90% of the most remarkable footage has shown up. As for ESB and ROTJ, not so much.

Tack said:

If only we had access to some other remarkable trims, like the cut Cloud City bluescreen footage or the complete Wampa attack footage (which, apparently according to Star Wars Aficionado and JW Rinzler, was filmed). Special editions be damned! This should be the alternative!

All the Wampa stuff was absolutely filmed, as bad as it all looks. Damn shame they didn’t put all of it out.

I haven’t heard of the bluescreen stuff actually being shot, I’m assuming you mean the balcony scene, which was dropped due to VFX limitations and filming scheduling problems. But there is a lot of bits and pieces missing entirely.

Here’s a before and after of the new lightsaber training. There’s no soundmix yet, the music is just temporary. I’m very happy with how the colourisation came out.

https://vimeo.com/698967441

The color is beautiful in that Luke shot! I wasn’t sure if you would or be able to colorize that shot, but I’m so happy it worked out! Excellent work.

RogueLeader said:

The color is beautiful in that Luke shot! I wasn’t sure if you would or be able to colorize that shot, but I’m so happy it worked out! Excellent work.

I really didn’t think it would work, but I saw the shot done in TMBTM’s War of the Stars II, and he did it pretty amazingly to match the GOUT.

The current cut of the film is at 2:16:01 (theatrical is 2:04:54), and does not yet include the Wampa Attack or Lobot Capture. I’m still working on the Wampa scene, and trying to wrap my head around the Lobot one.
A lot of the visuals are locked or close to being locked. Most visual work is purely transitions, or grading. The Wampa scene is going to be a lot of work with blaster bolts, Wampa arms and other small bits of work. Should be fun.

Bobson Dugnutt said:

The Wampa scene is going to be a lot of work with blaster bolts, Wampa arms and other small bits of work. Should be fun.

Oh I’m sure. You can understand why they didn’t use these scenes, even beyond them narratively unnecessary, but it is a fun subplot! It would be nice if you could obscure the Wampa in more shadow and smoke, but I suppose you wouldn’t want to alter how the scene is presented too much from how it is.

It would be great if the blasters shots matched the look of original vfx. And what work are you referring to regarding the Wampa arms?

That guy with no name said:

Bobson Dugnutt,

Looking at the clips you have, They seem to need very thorough cleaning. If you’d like, I can do a pretty good job cleaning these clips. If you’re up for it.

I appreciate the offer, but I have aimed to go for a little bit of a retro look to it. I still think the most recent 2019 BR, and even D+ project look far too clean and sterile.

I did do a pass on the raw deleted scenes off the 2011 disc, and doing an upscale and DNR pass to get rid of the digital noise and artifacts introduced by the modern encoding. Then introduced a new grain layer, using real 35mm film.

RogueLeader said:

It would be great if the blasters shots matched the look of original vfx. And what work are you referring to regarding the Wampa arms?

I’m using the original WOTS2 scene as a reference, with hopes to redo the effects.

Here’s the newest cut of the scene, of which I’m very happy with.

https://vimeo.com/700143930

Good stuff!

So, what’s the rest of the unreleased Wampa footage consist of? Anybody know what exactly was filmed and what wasn’t?

Any footage of the beasts in their makeshift holding pens? Or the scene with the two droids, passing by a cell, and Threepio noting that Artoo’s beeps attract their attention?

Slavicuss said:

So, what’s the rest of the unreleased Wampa footage consist of? Anybody know what exactly was filmed and what wasn’t?

Pretty much everything with the Wampa subplot was filmed, Kersh has talked about regretably filming it all

“Ït’s better not to shoot something than to shoot it and cut it out”

Here are the rest of the odds and ends, with no footage to accompany it

There’s a longer scene with Han talking to some of the Rebel officers, they mention the Tauntauns being attacked.

More footage of the attack of both the Wampa and Rebels

3PO telling R2 that the Wampa trap is in this room

And lastly, a scene with Han/Leia talking about it to Riekeen

LEIA
Have they analyzed the one that was killed?

RIEEKAN
Not yet. They’re working on it now.

Another alarm goes off at a console behind them and the SENSOR CONTROLLER at that spot calls across the room.

SENSOR CONTROLLER
General!

Rieekan leaves the group as they continue …

HEAD CONTROLLER
It won’t be long before our sensors will be able to track them.

THREEPIO
It figures Artoo would be in the middle of this.

HAN
It’s going to be a little tricky around here until we know where they’re coming form.

Very interesting. Thanks!

Bob, you should check this:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0xuV1Y-3tARlKASNRTu-L0sQkjxMRIPY
There are an interesting stuff.

Hey, Bobson, how is this coming along?

DarthTzetzo said:

Bob, you should check this:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0xuV1Y-3tARlKASNRTu-L0sQkjxMRIPY
There are an interesting stuff.

Some interesting edits, but I do have the majority of this stuff already.

theprion said:

Hey, Bobson, how is this coming along?

It’s mostly sound related stuff that needs work. The whole Wampa attack and Yoda’s test scenes are silent right now so they’ll need ground up work.
The Lobot scene hasn’t yet been integrated, but that’s on the list.
I think I may leave out Veer’s death, as it’s hard to work with.

Current runtime is 02:12:10 vs theatrical 2:04:54

Here’s a scene that has been finalised, the Hiding in the Asteroid scene, with audio work done by RogueLeader.

https://vimeo.com/708486598

No new updates with this project really, still chipping away at things. Here’s a rough cut of a section from Hoth. A lot of new stuff is in here, but be warned that a lot of audio and video work needs to be done.

https://vimeo.com/734771572