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The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released) — Page 19

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Originally posted by: OgOggilby
I might be wrong, but I pick up the Miramax R1 DVD at a store just to glance at the specs (hey, maybe it's 16x9) and I put it down after it said fullscreen. However, I do think it has only 3.0 stereo. The credits list only Dolby SR Spectral, which means a 5.1 mix would be a later creation. However, if it's really discrete 3.0, it might help.


It's not the retail version that's in question. That's known to be 2.0. What we're all wondering about is a promo version that came out in Canada in 2001, several years before the U.S. retail release. There have been claims that that version has 5.1 surround.

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I was sent a sample, which consists of nothing but the first few seconds of the Miramax logo theme.


It's 5.1, guys.
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Well, that's just awesome. So now you've got an even better workprint, that's going to be restored by faceman and you have 5.1 to help out with the audio. Sweet.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
It's 5.1, guys.


Okay, I know I'm gonna get tossed out like DJ Jazzy Jeff for this one - but are you going to bother using the 5.1?

While you know how much of a supporter I am of your work over the years, one of my biggest complaints with the Classic Edition Star Wars edits was the sudden jump in audio from stereo to 70s mono.

Is it possible to render forced 5.1 for the parts that do not have it? (I know little to nothing about any process when it comes to this editing stuff)
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When I had the Fruit Loops DVD, I was so annoyed at the pan and scan I didn't even notice it had 5.1! I gave it away after I got the laserdisc.
A soundtrack CD did come out when the movie was released as Arabian Knight. Would that be of any use to you? There are a few up on Ebay right now.

Where were you in '77?

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I think the main reason that ocp wants the 5.1 is for the center channel; the voices. I don't think it'll end up being a 5.1 mix for the movie.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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Sup Justin!


Yeah, I'm not actually using the 5.1 mix itself, it's a horrible horrible sound mix. My goal would be to separate out the center channel and see if I can get a soundtrack without some of Miramax's music and other crap mixed in.


The sound for this edit is going to be pretty basic stereo.


Silverwook - I do have the Arabian Knight soundtrack, I bought it years ago. It came in very handy in this edit, although in my final edit I'm going to try and use less of it. You can get it on Amazon.com for 25 cents ... as I mentioned a few pages back.
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Ah, ok. I have wondered if the music in the workprint is a temp track or not? The one clip I've seen online where Zig Zag goes to see One-Eye and his harem forms a throne had a really nice score.

Where were you in '77?

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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Sup Justin!


Yeah, I'm not actually using the 5.1 mix itself, it's a horrible horrible sound mix. My goal would be to separate out the center channel and see if I can get a soundtrack without some of Miramax's music and other crap mixed in.


And for this post, I'll do the voice of Kirk Douglas. "Save your sorcery, holy man!"

Between work and a seperate "preservation" I've been involved with (Wing Commander: Academy), I haven't had much of a chance to spot "Thief". Also, I am lazy sometimes and would rather spend the entire weekend watching an entire season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And Batman Beyond. And Wonderfalls. And Profit.

Anyway, I found MORE classical music in my stacks that would be great to use but a lot of it is stuff thats pretty "normal" for Warner Brothers (ex: Sabre Dance). Let me know if youre interested





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If it'll help any, I'm going to try to pick up all the Vaughan Williams CD's I can find at the GSU library (except for his 3rd, 5th, and 8th which I own) so I can try to find the opening music. iTunes wasn't a huge help since you only get a 30 second clip... and most of the symphony movements are 12-15 minutes long (the music itself in the film lasts roughly 2 minutes).
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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Thanks Patrick, thanks Justin .... that would be a great help.

Having just the right music in this cut is important. Alex Williams saw parts of my cut and although he loved what he saw, he wasn't that impressed by the Robert Folk score either, so I'm gonna be wantin jusssst the right classic music to use. More Ralph Vaughan Williams other than the opening would actually be quite nice.



Yeah, I spent the evening with Alex Williams. It was great - he's a very nice guy.

He was leaving for the UK ... leaving on thursday to work on a live action talking Underdog. He was packing up as we talked ... but stopped to watch The Thief.

I interviewed him on camera for an hour. We talked a lot, and he was excited to see all this stuff again. He was quite impressed by my cut, and what I was doing. He was interested in watching Raggedy Ann and Andy too, so we watched that - it had scared him as a kid too.

I learned a lot of random information - he kept pointing out who animated each scene as we watched the cut and I wish I'd been recording that, as it was a good commentary. The Thief was only his second ever animated job - he worked on a lot of stuff previously done by Art Babbit and others, and animated most of Tack of course and most of the opening of the film - Tack sleeping, The Thief and Tack being intertwined, the townspeople and henchmen singing, Tack getting caught ...

There's a townsperson who I thought looked like Saddam Hussein. Turns out, it is Saddam Hussein. It was a joke Alex put in.

I got to see some rare art from the film - he has a poster for The Thief Who Never Gave Up on his wall, and a great cel of the witch in her basket. On his walls were beautiful paintings by Errol LeCain and his own grandmother (I think, Dick's mother, I think) - also a brilliant artist. Clearly it runs in the family. Dick had tried to get her to work on the Thief, but she was doing her own thing.

He showed me the storyboards for Zigzag's entrance into town ... except that it's an early version of the scene. It's "Anwar the Grand Vizier" at this point, with lots of extra dialogue. His character design is different - he looks just like a character in the Nasrudin book I have who was a jerk grand vizier type who Nasrudin played a nasty trick on. It's clear that Zigzag was created by combining the character of Anwar with the character design of Nasrudin.

He pointed out who did shots, and noted who did a lot of the work on King Nod - and damned but I can't remember his name now. He said Richard did the pullback shot of King Nod shouting "The balls are gone!" ...

He signed my VHS of The Thief and my DVD of The Princess ... signing next to Tack.


It was raining, and I didn't have a ride, so he actually took me home. Yep. And then we got lost ... it was very embarrassing. I lost all track of where we were and felt like an idiot. It took ages to get home, and boy was my face red.


Such a nice guy. I couldn't stop thinking - here I am, trapped and lost in a car with a guy who did Tack in the Thief and Scar in The Lion King. Making a fool of myself cos I don't know where we are.

....



I had my video camera with me and got some footage of the rare artwork as well. It's quite bad quality but I'll try to work with it and Photoshop the hell out of it so you can see Anwar and the poster for The Thief Who Never Gave Up, which Gary Kurtz was going to produce.



And yes ... Alex was really wary about showing the cut to his dad, and said that he would probably take it the wrong way, think that someone was stealing his film again. But he liked what he was seeing so much that he is definitely considering it .... he might send the final cut to Richard, with a note explaining what it is.






EXTRA: In the original, Anwar slips on a banana peel thrown by a townsperson. Not stepping on a Tack.

Alex didn't mind some Calvert shots, but was annoyed by one of Tack tapping on the wall to the witch's cave. Of course - he did so much of Tack.

Alex didn't do the staircase scene and doesn't recall who did.

He remembers Jerry Verschoor well, laughing - Jerry was his assistant and was "completely mad," a really "weird person" who "couldn't do anything right." He "wanted to strangle him" most days. Heh.

Roy Naisbitt - "Nicest man on the planet."

Andreas Wessel-Therhorn - did nice work on the henchmen.


The copy I gave him of the Recobbled cut ... well I gave him four copies ... but the main one I gave him had my cover artwork on it. He liked it, saying it was "mostly on model."

http://images.cafepress.com/product/49995736v2_240x240_F.jpg

=D

He looked at the back, at Zigzag and the witch as retraced by me ... "That's one of dad's drawings (zigzag) ... So's that actually (witch)."

I knew that about Zigzag, but not the witch. So, the more you know.
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Maybe you could write up a note to go with the Recobbled Cut that's in Zig-Zag type rhyme.
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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I hope you've saved this forum thread as html files on your computer. It would be a good idea just to keep the development of this project as made known to the forum.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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Have no fear, have no fear, The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled is here.




More infobits off the top of my head -

Roy Naisbitt: The Nasrudin film took place in Persia (in The Golden City), which was about to be invaded by the Indian army. Nasrudin, being the wise fool, was called in to advise.


Alex Williams: Richard has saved many chunks of the Thief film in 35mm - in his own collection.



I've captured the audio of the Alex Williams interview and video of the artwork in his house and I'll post it tomorrow probably.




I think I will save this thread as HTML when it's all done. There's two threads at Somethingawful too.
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I've been away for a while and have just read the last few pages of the thread. The developments since I have been away are simply amazing.

War does not make one great.

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Yeah - I was all like, hey, Matt's away from this thread, let's have REALLY AMAZING THINGS OCCUR.

=D


Apologies Patrick - I'm gonna use your webspace for a second here. Mine is still down til the end of the month.


http://www.ctufilms.completelyfreehosting.com/cobbler/alexwilliams.jpg

Alex Williams, videotaped badly in bad light, for an hour. Oh, my cheapass video camera.

http://www.ctufilms.completelyfreehosting.com/cobbler/witchcelsm.jpg

A familiar face - a cel hanging on his wall.

http://www.ctufilms.completelyfreehosting.com/cobbler/nevergaveupsm.jpg

Also hanging - a poster for a version that never was.

(There's a huge version of this image which I patched together in Photoshop from a lot of horrible screen grabs taken with my camera.)


http://www.ctufilms.completelyfreehosting.com/cobbler/anwar.jpg

Anwar the Grand Vizier - the Nasrudin film's early version of Zigzag. Might look familiar if you saw my Nasrudin scans - this guy lets Nasrudin see the king only on the condition that he get half of whatever reward Nasrudin gets ... so Nasrudin asks to be whipped as his reward.

I took screen grabs of all 60something storyboards in this sequence.


More here:
http://www.ctufilms.completelyfreehosting.com/cobbler

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This is getting ridiculous...

Well, at least you're pretty well stocked up on extras for this film. We'll see what you have by the time you're finished. One can only imagine. But it's neat to hear how nice these guys are. It really says a lot about the time, effort and love that went into the film. It's a real shame that it was never finished in the way it should have been--these guys deserve to see the film finished, in the right way.
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Interview with Alex Williams - 51 minutes long. Watch it with your Thief DVD running, and it'll play like commentary.

http://www.ctufilms.completelyfreehosting.com/cobbler/alexwilliamsinterview.mp3

A few seconds of quick extra banter, caught on camera as I was flipping through the Anwar storyboards.

http://www.ctufilms.completelyfreehosting.com/cobbler/alexwilliamsextra.mp3


I'll capture the phone conversation with Roy Naisbitt, hopefully tomorrow - it's excellent stuff - Roy knows and remembers everything about this film. I figured I'd post Alex's interview first because it's got better sound quality.
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The part with you describing the Froot Loops release is really ironic. Did you know The Magnificent Ambersons was released as the second feature in a double-feature with "Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost"?

Also, that poster is EXACTLY what I'd think would make a good design if a real theatrical poster was released. I was going to ask about a "simplistic" design, so there it is.

"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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Originally posted by: OgOggilbyAlso, that poster is EXACTLY what I'd think would make a good design if a real theatrical poster was released. I was going to ask about a "simplistic" design, so there it is.


Agreed. I really like that poster. Fun little simplistic design. Ahhh...thanks for uploading the interviews, Garrett. Looking forward to the Naisbitt stuff. Now I just need to get the film itself...

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Well I'm guessing that settles it, doesn't it? If Alex is going (possibly) send it to Williams some time, there's no way you can leave Calvert's fight scene in with a clean conscience. For a man as sensitive as Richard sounds, I don't think he would react well to it (nor should he).
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Ok, I picked up some Vaughan Williams CD's... I haven't found the opening music yet, but I've listened to a little... there's a lot of music that would be PERFECT for the war machine sequence. I also found a piece that would make a good theme for the thief.

So, the opening music is not part of his symphonies 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9. I guess I'll try his first, fourth, and seventh next.
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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Garrett

The word about your restoration is getting out. I have atleast all of my Rare and Uncut Movie Collector contacts as well as my European movie and film collector contacts aware of it. I have shot them all emails and I hope atleast one of them has some material or information or anything.

Just an idea.. I hope it can help.

Mitch - @ Rare and Uncut Movie Collector - since 1986

http://www.geocities.com/cmstevens8/RARE_UNCUTDVDmain.html

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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Wow. I must say, it's amazing how you're being able to contact all of these people who were involved in the making of this film. It's really awesome. It's getting me very excited for the completion of this project! Yeah, next time you get a chance to talk to someone involved--RECORD IT! Multiple commentaries would be awesome--it's cool that you've already got one (sort of) from Alex Williams. Awesome.
Two-Face - A Batman:The Animated Series Movie
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Hey Garrett,

I've been off the forum here for the past week or so -- I've been fighting a flu for nearly two months now,
and just when I thought I finally got rid of it, it kicked in BIG TIME again. *Ugh*

Anyway...

I saw all the questions regarding the Canadian "Froot Loops" Promo Release of THIEF. Since I have a
copy, I pulled it out and checked -- and it 100% positively contains both an English and French
Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.

As I said before, if I can be of any help with this (or any future) projects, just ask. So if you still have
need of the Canadian Promo for the 5.1 track (or anything else), ask and I will be happy to provide.
Just lemme know if you still need it, and I can send/drop off the original, or a copy, or whatever.

Oh, and before I forget, thanks for resending the Rough Cut + the OCP disc -- these new copies
actually worked in all my players this time around! It was terrific to have something fantastic to
watch while hacking my lungs out at home... many many thanks! I can't wait to see the final
cut of THIEF!

(Just as an FYI -- There is a minor problem with the new Rough Cut version you burned for me.
When I first put it in to watch, the aspect ratio was waaay off... around 1.78:1. I knew you were
editing this together at a proper 2.35:1, so obviously something wasn't quite kosher here. Turns
out that the anamorphic bit doesn't seem to be set on the copy you sent me, since it isn't being
recognized by any of my players. Thankfully, I can manually turn "on" the 16:9 compression mode
on my Wega, so viola, a full and properly-rendered 2.35:1 image. Anyway, I just thought you
should be aware of this…

And that is... that...

Talk to you later...