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Idea & Info: star trek the motion picture - preservation

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Has anyone ever done a preservation of the theatrical or longer television cut of the film for dvd as the official release is the director’s cut and not the original.

The widescreen vhs I have is much longer than the official dvd, and i’m sure someone out there has it on laserdisc.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Hi,

I've been working on a "Widescreen" version of STTMP: The Special Longer Edition for DVD. This has been a kind of off and on again minor side project of mine. The Special Longer Version was never put out in widescreen format for the home video market.

For this project, I'm using the Pan and Scan VHS of the SLE as a video/audio guide track. I only keep the audio from the VHS for sections of audio that need to join original to extended segments. Then I am replacing the Pan and Scan video with the "Widescreen" version of those shots from the DVD and Laserdisc. For this DVD edit, I am not using any of the updated spfx made for the Directors cut DVD.

Another edit I am working on is called "Star Trek: The Motion Sickness". It is a joining of ALL the footage from the Director's Edition DVD (including the updated spfx made for the Directors cut DVD), splicing in the outtakes and fragments from the 1979 and extended T.V. edit that had not been included in the Director's cut.

THX-1138
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Another edit I am working on is called "Star Trek: The Motion Sickness". It is a joining of ALL the footage

...for a second I thought this would go to "It is a joining of all the footage from all the Star Trek films and their deleted scenes into a single film"...
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Originally posted by: SammyTheBull
Another edit I am working on is called "Star Trek: The Motion Sickness". It is a joining of ALL the footage

...for a second I thought this would go to "It is a joining of all the footage from all the Star Trek films and their deleted scenes into a single film"...



Back in 1991, I went to a marathon showing of the first 5 Trek films at some big New York city movie theater. Also included was a preview of the new soon to be released Star Trek VI.

They called the event "Sit Long and Prosper", and I called it "Too much dam Star Trek in one day".

One positive thing about that marathon was that they showed a kind of shortend edit of the Special Longer Edition version of STTMP.
(Does that make sense?)

That was a treat seeing that version on the big screen, as I had seen the original cut that way in 1979.

THX-1138

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Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
Has anyone ever done a preservation of the theatrical or longer television cut of the film for dvd as the official release is the director's cut and not the original.

The widescreen vhs I have is much longer than the official dvd, and i'm sure someone out there has it on laserdisc.


Preservation of the original theatrical cut in widescreen has already been done, and I have it on 2 DVD-Rs. If interested, E-mail me.

“Hear you nothing that I say?”
-Yoda

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Aren't all the original scenes included on disc 2 of the DVD? Along with all the TV edition scenes, all in widescreen?
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Yes they are, but we're talking here about the original theatrical release, presented exactly as was released in 1979.

“Hear you nothing that I say?”
-Yoda

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Originally posted by: THX-1138

Another edit I am working on is called "Star Trek: The Motion Sickness".


Nice title! And cool projects. Is the Director's Cut on DVD significantly different from the long VHS version?
We don't have enough road to get up to 88.
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Originally posted by: booah
Originally posted by: THX-1138

Another edit I am working on is called "Star Trek: The Motion Sickness".


Nice title! And cool projects. Is the Director's Cut on DVD significantly different from the long VHS version?


I would say yes. The Directors cut for the most part trims down a number of scenes from the Original as well as the Longer version to make the film move a bit faster. They made some new spfx for some segments, and that would be the major reason for getting this title IMHO. For me, the new spfx shots add to the enjoyment of the film.

Still, there are a few things about the Director's Cut DVD that bug me. For one, they cut out a small part of the Klingon Battle at the start of the film. WHY? That small trim disrupts the flow of the music cue playing under the battle. Being someone who loves the STTMP score, this jump in music is jolting and unwelcome. It seems to me that they got a bit heavy handed with the razorblade.

Hope this helps.

THX-1138

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Originally posted by: hiphats
Yes they are, but we're talking here about the original theatrical release, presented exactly as was released in 1979.


I'm aware of that. What I meant was, those preserved scenes would make it much easier to do so, no?
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Originally posted by: ChainsawAsh
I'm aware of that. What I meant was, those preserved scenes would make it much easier to do so, no?


To reconstruct the original 1979 version (or the Special longer Version) of STTMP from just what is on the DVD can't be done. If you try to just re-insert the cut footage into the main feature, you run into problems such as the soundtrack music not flowing together. The new DVD edit has lots of new background sounds, and they would have to be replaced with the unmodified soundtrack from the original versions.

Hiphats version from Widescreen Laserdisc would be a true preservation of the 1979 version.

THX-1138
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Maybe somebody could reedit that first Star Trek film as "Star Trek: The Search for Plot"...
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Originally posted by: SammyTheBull
Maybe somebody could reedit that first Star Trek film as "Star Trek: The Search for Plot"...


That's not fair.

STTMP had a plot. Just not a very exciting or well told one.


"When a destructive space entity is spotted approaching Earth, Admiral Kirk resumes command of the Starship Enterprise in order to intercept, examine, and hopefully stop it."


Funny thing is that someone at Paramont must have liked that plot line. It was mostly used again in Star Trek IV with an extra time travel twist, and some big fish.

*grin*

THX-1138

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I think it is a very good cerebral story, very reminiscent of roddenberry trek before the action film took over. Alan Dean Foster wrote the original script for the then star trek phase II t.v. series, called "in thy image". He got the idea from the classic episode with the robot called nomad. roddenberry's idea for the first star trek to be about going back in time to stop the assination of j.f.k., or his script "the man thing" where kirk meets god, never happened. But i think some of the religious overtones of the first movie, and star trek V were liberally borrowed from his ideas for the first film.

Anybody out there who does'nt know who alan dean foster is? he wrote the novelization for the first film of the star wars trilogy.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Originally posted by: hiphats
Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
Has anyone ever done a preservation of the theatrical or longer television cut of the film for dvd as the official release is the director's cut and not the original.

The widescreen vhs I have is much longer than the official dvd, and i'm sure someone out there has it on laserdisc.


Preservation of the original theatrical cut in widescreen has already been done, and I have it on 2 DVD-Rs. If interested, E-mail me.


Do you (or anyone) have the Wrath of Khan LD? I'm wondering if the transfer is any less-faded-looking than the DVD's...

Same question TMP, but from what I remember, it has looked faded in the TV and VHS transfers, from the start...

Anyhow, the HD version of TMP looks like the Theatrical version, to me. It's obviously not the Director's Edition, and it's "missing" just about the right amount of material vs. the Extended VHS. The soundtrack seems to match my recollection of the CD; I didn't do a direct comparison, but I've played the hell out of that CD, over the decades...

One day I found... 10 years had got behind me. Next day was worse.

 

Download  shows from Cable DVR (Updated! Yes, it needs a rewrite, but it's worth slogging through, anyway).

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Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
I think it is a very good cerebral story, very reminiscent of roddenberry trek before the action film took over. Alan Dean Foster wrote the original script for the then star trek phase II t.v. series, called "in thy image". He got the idea from the classic episode with the robot called nomad. roddenberry's idea for the first star trek to be about going back in time to stop the assination of j.f.k., or his script "the man thing" where kirk meets god, never happened. But i think some of the religious overtones of the first movie, and star trek V were liberally borrowed from his ideas for the first film.

Anybody out there who does'nt know who alan dean foster is? he wrote the novelization for the first film of the star wars trilogy.


Yeah, it was a good story. But it was muddy, because everything was rushed. The studio took the attitute that it cost more & took longer than a romantic comedy, already. So why give it any more? Yeesh. Then they applied the cost, of the Phase II series's development, to the movie, fer' chrissakes. Maaaan... I'd better not get started...

They really needed more time to tweak the story. Although I imagine it would've gone faster, and turned out a lot better, if they'd taken Roddenberry's advice to use Alan Dean Foster to be the sole writer of the screenplay.

One day I found... 10 years had got behind me. Next day was worse.

 

Download  shows from Cable DVR (Updated! Yes, it needs a rewrite, but it's worth slogging through, anyway).

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Originally posted by: THX-1138
Originally posted by: SammyTheBull
Another edit I am working on is called "Star Trek: The Motion Sickness". It is a joining of ALL the footage

...for a second I thought this would go to "It is a joining of all the footage from all the Star Trek films and their deleted scenes into a single film"...



Back in 1991, I went to a marathon showing of the first 5 Trek films at some big New York city movie theater. Also included was a preview of the new soon to be released Star Trek VI.

They called the event "Sit Long and Prosper", and I called it "Too much dam Star Trek in one day".

One positive thing about that marathon was that they showed a kind of shortend edit of the Special Longer Edition version of STTMP.
(Does that make sense?)

That was a treat seeing that version on the big screen, as I had seen the original cut that way in 1979.

THX-1138


So, there was a longer version in 1979? I wonder if that's the one I saw, back then. So many versions...
I could swear that the TV version had more than 10 minutes of footage added, too. Seems like there was rejected cloud footage, for one...
Still searching for most of my off-the-air tapes... a large number of them were recorded on an early-model stereo-vhs which apparently recorded the HiFi in a non-standard way. It was always serviced to factory specs, but I've never been able to get any of them to track on *any* other machine, grumble.

Anyhow, a stupid question, if I may. Would Motion Sickness have had repeated scenes, or would it have been everything spliced in sequence?

One day I found... 10 years had got behind me. Next day was worse.

 

Download  shows from Cable DVR (Updated! Yes, it needs a rewrite, but it's worth slogging through, anyway).

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There are 3 versions of Star Trek - The Motion Picture. The 1979 theatrical cut (132 minutes). The 1983 ABC Special Longer Version (144 minutes) and the 2001 Director's Edition (136 minutes). That's it.

Neil

Well at least the reversed surround channels have been addressed.

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Originally posted by: Neil S. Bulk
There are 3 versions of Star Trek - The Motion Picture. The 1979 theatrical cut (132 minutes). The 1983 ABC Special Longer Version (144 minutes) and the 2001 Director's Edition (136 minutes). That's it.

Neil



That may not be 100% true (but it most likely is). There is / was strong rumor of yet another edit of the film, but it may be lost forever. The version I speak of is the one shown on airlines back in 79/80. In my youth, I would get myself involved with large numbers of fellow fans at conventions and spend days just talking Trek. It was there that I was told quite a few times by a number of hard core fans about the international airline version of STTMP, and how it contained a much different edit of the film, and "HAD DIFFERENT SPECIAL EFFECTS" in some places. It was suspected at that time that those effects had been done by the company hired to work on the film before John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull became involved. Now in the "making of" on the new DVD, It is said that none of those early effects could be used and had just been in the testing phase when aborted. Now is that true or not? It would not be the first misinformation given on one of those types of programs. Could the alternate effects have been test footage, or footage done by Dykstra and Trumbull that has just been left out of other versions? I believe it is very possible for the airlines (or more likely one airline) to have been given a work print of the movie by mistake by someone at Paramount or who ever handles that stuff for them.

Anyone other then myself hear about this version?

THX-1138

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I have the longer laserdisc version. In fact I just got it ;-)

Remember, Highlander, you’ve both still got your full measure of life. Use it well, and your future will be glorious.

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hi folks. I have been checking out the forum for the last few weeks. You're doing some good work here. I have always wanted to get both versions of TMP on dvd. I think the version they released is an improvement over either version on vhs, but there is something to be said for having the version you remember("Star Trek--Classic Editions" sound good). I think though that it may be hard to do. Like others have said, the cuts will cause probelms with the soundtrack, so you may have a hell of a time getting everything back to the way it used to be. But I say go for it. For me, that is the only real problem I have with dvd's. The movie hits the theatre one way and then it the "unrated", or "uncut", or "special, extended because the theatre version didn't sell so we re-cut it and are going to try again" version gets released and the original cut is lost. I never saw the original version of ST6 in the theatre so an original cut of that would be nice, just to see how it actually was shown to the masses. not that i am saying you should do it, just that it would be nice to see. live long and prosper:
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I'd love Trek 6 without that extra stuff. I think the aspect ratio on the dvd is weird too?
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The aspect ratio on the original DVD was weird. The 2-disc edition has it fixed.

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The aspect ratios look weird because the matte has been opened partway, on both ST6 DVD's. They aren't the theatrical ~2.35:1.
But it has been said that Meyer supervised the opening of the matte, and the framing for the 2nd dvd (it is different).

The (letterboxed) 1st DVD is shifted upwards, for Klingon subtitles. Which looks *really* weird. And it plays as horizontally squished, for me (slightly). IMDB says they're both 2.35:1, but that's horsepiles - compare them to the movies that are...

ST VI and X were the only ones shot in Super 35 - which is matted off for theatrical, and leaves a *lot* more vertical, for home-video/dvd/HD.
Super 35 is non-anamorphic - the optical soundtrack is left off, so that there is more room for picture width. I would imagine, then, that its significantly wider than fullscreen. It's useful for extensive CGI, for some reason. The drawbacks are that it has no sound in the dailies, progress screenings for big wigs require a soundtrack be added, it demands a very fine-grain film and meticulous quality-control.

One day I found... 10 years had got behind me. Next day was worse.

 

Download  shows from Cable DVR (Updated! Yes, it needs a rewrite, but it's worth slogging through, anyway).

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Back to Star Trek: The Motion Picture,

There is a way to preserve the 1979 version and the 1983 T.V. version using the Directors Cut DVD, 1979 widescreen Laserdisc, and the 1983 pan & scan laserdisc version.

Using a NLE software, import the 1979 footage and soundtrack from the 79-widescreen laser. Then take the video only from the Directors Cut DVD and overlay it on top of the 79-laserdisc footage where possible. Parts of the Klingon battle are missing from the DVD, so you will need to mix footage. Use filters to balance the look where you mix laserdisc and DVD footage. For the Vulcan and San Francisco tram station shots, just use the cut footage in the DVD extras section. For the lounge scene, I just use the laserdisc for the shots we see the window. If you just use the laserdisc soundtrack and as much footage as you can from the DVD without the added effects, you should have a kewl looking Star Trek The Motion Picture Preservation.

Now for another version (The Longer Extended Cut),

Using a NLE software (such as Abobe Premiere), import the 1983 pan & scan laserdisc version with Soundtrack. Then take the video only from the Directors Cut DVD and overlay it on top of the 1983 pan & scan laserdisc footage. Use all the cut shots from the DVD's extras, and use shots from the 79-widescreen laserdisc where you need to. If you do this, you should have the extended version of the film in WIDESCREEN format. That is something that has never been available.

Now I am returning to my work on a re-edit of the film (much like my DUNE re-edit), so I'll leave the preservation to other fans.


FanFiltration
(THX-1138)

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