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The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released) — Page 50

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+ The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut
The definitive unofficial presentation of this classic film. Painstakingly restored.
Features:
- Recobbled Cut Trailer
- Arabian Knight Trailer
- Allied Filmmakers Trailer - New for Mark II!
- Nine Image Galleries - 3 New for Mark II!
"Deleted Characters" section featuring:
- Enchanted Prince Bubba: Witch sequence
- Princess Meemee - Bath sequence
- Mullah Nasruddin: Bread sequence - new for Mark II!
- Animated menus featuring pencil tests from the original film
- About the Film
- Restoration commentary by Garrett Gilchrist and Patrick McCart


More discs:
RICHARD WILLIAMS COLLECTION:
+ The Thief and the Cobbler workprint and DVD-ROM extras
+ The Thief Who Never Gave Up Documentary/Charge of the Light Brigade/Return of the Pink Panther
+ Making of Nasrudin - A Creative Man (1966), Clapperboard 1&2 (1972), Liquidator titles, Panther ads
+ NEW! Richard Williams Studio Animated Commercials (50 min), Animating Art, Nasruddin "Bread Scene" clip, Roger Rabbit Trailer, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum end titles, Thief Warner Bros. Licensing Trailer, Allied Filmmakers Trailer, Arabian Knight Trailer
+ Rare Thief and the Cobbler pencil-camera tests/The Pink Panther Strikes Again titles/I Drew Roger Rabbit (better version)/A Christmas Carol/Arabian Knight Trailer
+ Ziggy's Gift/Ziggy Cartoons/Fred Calvert's Princess and the Cobbler: Work In Progress Version
+ Raggedy Ann & Andy/A Christmas Carol (Raggedy Ann is also available in "fake widescreen" 24p remastered)
+ Arabian Knight (Miramax Cut) Japanese widescreen DVD (Arabian Knight is also available in pan & scan)
+ The Princess and the Cobbler (Calvert Cut) Australian Pan & Scan DVD (PAL)
+ The Princess and the Cobbler (Calvert Cut) Timecoded Widescreen from rare VHS (good quality, timecoded with trailer)
+ NEW! Roger Rabbit and the Secrets of Toontown/Roger Rabbit TV spots (Diet Coke, McDonald's)
+ NEW! Roger Rabbit Reviews (Siskel & Ebert etc., with CBS "Pig Head" version)
+ The Thief Scrapbook - Huge collection of articles, artwork and more on a data DVD. Being added to all the time.
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Thanks for posting that ocp - nice to keep up to date.

I have ordered the poster. The guy said it was in very good condition. Only thing is I'm not sure whether it will arrive before I go away (two weeks, starting Friday night). If it does, I'll do what I can to scan it and send it to you before I go - if not, that will have to wait a couple of weeks.

Interestingly, there was one difference between the two. The one I ordered has a tagline on it (something about unlikely heroes I think it was), and the other one doesn't.
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Thanks ocp! That list will help me decide what I want to get. Thanks.

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

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Many, many thanks Macronencer. Really appreciate it. Email me, let me know your address and what discs you want.
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Yes, that material is in the galleries as of Mark II.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Many, many thanks Macronencer. Really appreciate it. Email me, let me know your address and what discs you want.


Many thanks, ocp - you have email
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I'll let you in on a secret.

I WAS planning on doing a Thief and the Cobbler "Mark III", including the shots found in the Warner Bros. trailer .... if the shots were significant enough to make it at all worthwhile.

I care THAT much about this project.


But I checked it out tonight. I tried to include the trailer material in the edit.


And I've come to the same conclusion once again .... the short shots found in the Warners trailer are NOT significant enough, or higher quality enough, to make a new cut worthwhile at this time.

I tried to use them, and most of them weren't even higher quality enough to USE in my edit, even to put it in for use in the future. A few were an improvement, but a couple shots does not an edit make.


So, no Mark III right now. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference in the least.


I'll burn more copies of Mark II, this time with the Nasruddin bread scene in there, and send 'em out.



Things to look forward to this week:

I'm expecting some more DVD material from someone ... a reel of pencil tests and some RW interviews.

I'm expecting some material from Raul Garcia (Roger Rabbit animator), more on which later.

I'm expecting the original screenplay for the Nasruddin film from John Dyson (Masteranimator.com).


As always, there's a lot to look forward to, so stay tuned to this channel.
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I'm expecting the original screenplay for the Nasruddin film from John Dyson (Masteranimator.com).


This sounds very interesting. The frustrating thing is, they pretty much finished this film, right? Seems strange that it's not scurrying around somewhere...
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Yes .... since the Nasruddin project was cancelled back in 1972, long before bootlegging, I'm not surprised it never escaped into the hands of collectors.

Have to wonder if Dick himself kept a copy of what was done for the film.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
I'm expecting the original screenplay for the Nasruddin film from John Dyson (Masteranimator.com)


It will be interesting to see what (if any) parts of the screenplay turned up in "Thief and The Cobbler".

Any chance you'll be transcribing it for online viewing?
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Yep, I intend to scan and OCR the "Majestic Fool" Nasrudin screenplay for online viewing. I've requested that Mr. Dyson send it to me as an unbound stack of paper, so I can feed it into my document scanner - the same scanner I use for scanning the animation drawings for my Dance With Grandpa pilot.

Thief "did you notice" fact of the day .... in the scene where Zigzag discovers One Eye's camp, Phido blinks and his eyes blink literally sideways.

Ed Roberts has sent in big photos of a rare piece of promotional merchandise for "The Thief Who Never Gave Up" .... it's one of those little handheld games where you roll little ball bearings into small holes. In this case, the image is the Thief walking a tightrope to get the golden balls - and the ball bearings are three different sizes and represent the golden balls! Lovely ... the back is the Thief Who Never Gave Up logo.


I have some good news today, in that two more DVDs have been added to the collection .... hell, I should start calling it an archive at this point; this is historic stuff.

Both discs are from someone who's been nice and provided stuff before.

Here's a rundown of the rarities he's found for us this time round.

Well, the biggest news is that he saved many pencil tests from The Thief .... some 50 minutes worth of video. More on this in a moment.

We also have a whole bunch of interviews with Richard Williams on British TV from when Roger Rabbit came out. He talks briefly about his work on the film. Russell Hall shows up in one segment ... the great Williams Studio veteran animator who gave us Jessica Rabbit. Robert Zemeckis and Charles Fleischer also appear.

One interview from a year after Roger Rabbit is all about The Thief. We see Dick drawing the Thief character, and he discusses how he intends the film to be a masterpiece in the traditional sense of the word .... how when you feel you've mastered an art, you create a polished piece to show what you've learned.

We have Dick accepting his award at the British Film Awards .... a special achievement award from the Evening Standard. It's presented by Jeremy Irons and a member of the royal family, and a bearded Bob Hoskins is in the audience.

There's a lovely Air Canada commercial in there, and a series of introductions Dick gave to two nights where films by Canadian animators were shown. Dick's enthusiasm for filmmakers like Norman MacLaren is evident.

There's a much better print of Oscar Grillo's wonderful short Seaside Woman (music by Linda McCartney and Wings) ... This short has nothing to do with Richard apart from that Oscar used to work at Williams studio, but it keeps showing up on these DVDs, and it's welcome there. =)

He has also provided a decent print of I Drew Roger Rabbit .... nothing to write home about but better than my old one.

There's the start of the German titles to The Liquidator, but it quickly cuts off.


Anyway, let's talk about this 50 minutes of pencil tests, because there are some interesting oddities in there. The material is mostly Thief scenes, and we see the same shot over and over and over as it develops and timing is changed.

So I won't get into that, but there are some interesting things that make you go ... hmmm.

As always we get some extra footage that's not in the movie. I can verify that there's a lot of extra stuff in that Warner Bros. trailer, and we get one of their extra shots in pencil test here - the Thief falling down away from camera. We see more as he hits himself in the groin, and we see more as he's pulling up his robes before trying to run for the umpteenth time.

There is live action reference footage at several points. An Indian actress from a Bollywood film is used as reference for Princess Yumyum, who has not yet been designed. A shot of this Indian actress walking away matches the first test shot of Yumyum, which we get to see in pencil test form. There is also a shot of the Indian actress dancing. The actress looks Indian whereas Yumyum has more caucasian features.

There is live action reference footage for some shots of the war machine ... a tower falling down, and a tank going into the city. This all seems to be from D.W. Griffith's silent film Intolerance. The live action reference was not really followed but you can see the influence.

There is also live action reference of the camera falling down a "castle" into the moat ... apparently the Thief's perspective as he falls down into the water. Dick may have shot this himself - you don't see anything like this in the film. Crazy POV stuff.

In the final film, in Tack's first appearance, there is a very distant shot of him sleeping which pans over to The Thief. You get a very close look at these cels in this reel, and it's clear that this animation was a very early design of Tack. He still has his "Hawaiian Punch guy" look about him.

An early design of Tack is also evident in a test shot of the nurse walking by Tack. (Actually it's the same drawing of an early Tack I found in Andreas Wessel-Therhorn's collection.) Apparently one idea was to introduce Tack with the nurse walking by him with her bananas. She walks around him a bit.

There's also a "test" design of Tack in a sketch watching the Thief pole vault over the minaret.

The final designs of Tack and Yumyum aren't present in this reel.

But I'll tell you what IS present .... pencil tests of a few shots I REALLY wish I'd had when I was putting my Recobbled Edit together.

Pencil tests of a few shots I thought were never animated because they're only storyboards in the workprint.

The introduction of Yumyum ... the flower ballet.

Okay, so, Dick intended the introduction of Yumyum to start with the beautiful shot that's in the final cut of fully-rendered flowers dancing out over the city, then we see Yumyum's hands holding them, see her put the flowers into a little garden of flowers by her window, and then see her at the window peeking mysteriously through the flowers.

(I had to suggest this in my edit using still images.)

I thought that apart from the flower ballet this was never animated. But there are plenty of beautiful pencil tests here for these couple of shots. Nothing that's quite finished, but it's lovely to see.

You see many developing pencil tests for the flower ballet itself, and what's surprising here is that the flowers appear with stems, suggesting that Yumyum is holding them - in the workprint you can't really see stems on the flowers, giving it a more magical appearance.

Then there is a longer shot of Yumyum's hands holding the flowers (from her POV), which is beautifully animated as she continues the flower ballet, and there is a shot of her putting the flowers back into the box carefully and then peeking out ... this material is in early "test" mode ... her hand movements are graceful and properly animated but the background and her appearance is just being roughly tested.

So, very nice to see. If there's a Mark III, I'll have to do something with this material.

At one point, there is a strange moment where they seem to be doing camera tests for titles for another film entirely.

This is what the titles say:

A Film by John Patrick Shanley

Once there was a guy named Joe
Who had a really crappy job

And they lived happily ever after

The End

--- Very strange. I wonder what film this was .... John Patrick Shanley was at one point asked to help write the Thief script, but apparently little became of his involvement.

You can spot an odd alternate logo for The Thief and the Cobbler at several points.

I was surprised to see Richard Williams' OLD pencil drawings of a brigand laughing (which we know were finished as early as 1972) show up in this reel ... but this was a test because the animator was redrawing the shot to give the brigand much wider shoulders. So we see the tests for the bigger brigand too.


Then I saw a sequence which surprised me quite a bit.

Okay, we've got tests from the first scene with Phido and Zigzag. Most of this seems to be old footage being looked at again.

There's a closeup shot of Phido crashing into the table - different from what's in the movie - he crashes right toward us and we see that his design is the more baby like, small beaked, round headed design we've seen in some footage.

Then we get what I'm going to call the "Robin Hood Phido" scene. This scene is OLD, I'm going to guess late seventies. I believe it to be the work of Art Babbit.

We get the scene of Phido sliding down the table (screen left), stumbling and knocking over all kinds of stuff before dipping his burning self into liquid and dousing the fire.

Except there's something different this time. First off, Phido has the "tall pointy head" design we've seen in a couple of shots (Animating Art mostly). And his motion is completely different. Phido is walking and stumbling like a human being. He seems to be much more of an anthropomorphic bird, like a character out of Disney's Robin Hood. Obviously Dick's orders were to reanimate him to move like a bird, not a human.

Zigzag's hand then comes into shot - he painfully plucks two feathers from Phido and dips them into ink like quill pens.

Then, we get the most surprising find. A LONG Zigzag monologue, and I wish I knew what he was saying. This shot goes on for ages, unbelievably long. It's all animated in a wide shot, Zigzag has an earlier design to him and his body is drawn mostly as a stick figure, the way Art Babbit was known to draw him. The staging seems to conform to him saying "And with her as my royal bride, I'll rule in public sight" in the final film, but instead the shot goes on for something like a minute, with him doing Shakespearean type acting. He is holding the two feather "pens" throughout, and then throws them like darts at what is either two posters of Yumyum, or posters of Meemee and Yumyum. He throws them directly at their vaginas in fact.

Aaaand finally, we've got something which I think is going to force me to redo my DVD slightly, YET again.

More footage of our favorite deleted character, the enchanted ogre prince Bubba!

And this is a doozy. The pencil test here begins with something we've seen before .... every animated shot I've ever seen on Prince Bubba has actually been the SAME shot .... of the old witch examining the Prince, saying he's been hit by the "double whammy." She opens up his eyes, and sees a movie of a silhouetted dancing girl inside. (This shot appeared in the "Thief Who Never Gave Up" documentary.)

So we've got the full pencil test of that (at first it's just Bubba but then the witch appears partway through).

But then the test KEEPS ON GOING. We get a much longer version of the shot. After examining the prince, the witch looks shocked. She says something (no idea what), and then jumps off of him. And the shot ends.

Neat.



Yep, neat.
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Whoa! Great stuff ocp! The flower ballet is a nice find. I'll be in line for Mk III if it does happen, of course!
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My poster arrived today. Too late for me to get it scanned before I leave for two weeks tonight Still, I've got some photos of the logo so you can see it. ocpmovie, I'll send you a high-res version by email.

The whole thing is in very good condition - I'm very pleased! There are screen-print dots in the logo, and I'm not sure what quality you were after, but let's see what you think.

http://bloodfalls.org/hosting/thief/p3.JPG
http://bloodfalls.org/hosting/thief/p4.JPG

p1 and p2 also exist, just change the URL (I left them out in case it was too much images for the topic)
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You can see details in the poster logo that weren't visible in the version on the "Recobbled Cut" cover.

I'm wondering if the logo was intended to have the added color besides gold, though.
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That is not bad ... not bad at all. I can't quite tell if it's Dick's work or a recreation. I think it's a recreation but a much better one than on the Princess poster. It should be a lot more gold, but I can work with that. It's great to have some sort of logo for The Thief and the Cobbler at hi-res .... I'm really glad.

&&&&&& replies with some info about the pencil tests etc.

>>I'm glad you enjoyed it. For me it's like a time
machine. The tape was started just a little bit before
I was hired and at several points I can remember when
other animators were hired, doing their first scene.
I had totally forgotten about that tape, found it by
coincidence. Too bad it was to late for your cut.

> It's nice to see Russell Hall interviewed, and to
> hear of Dick's enthusiasm for Norman McLaren.

>>What's hilarious is how inbetween the lines he is not
exactly praising the work of the other film makers. I
remember another occasion and I hope to find it some
day where he was asked to introduce some animated
shorts in a similar way where he advised the (absent)
creator not to give up his day job.

> The pencil test from the witch with the Enchanted
> Ogre Prince was amazing to see - the end of that was
> new material to me. Wish I knew what she was saying.
> Do you remember?

>Sorry, no.

>
> There was also that strange, LONG Zigzag
> monologue
> which looked like Art Babbit's work to me.

>Dick got very disentchanted with Art Babbit's work as
>he was starting to get it out of storage. He said at
>the time he was too much in awe of the guy, but was
>very upset when he realized in 90,91 that a lot of the
>work was not usable. Much different with Ken, who
>produced first rate stuff til the end.

> The live action reference that shows up
> occasionally
> was surprising ... D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance,"
> eh?

>There was a lot more. Oliver Hardy footage was used by
>Dick for Zigzag's hopping around after stepping onto
the tack. He used a scene out of a Marx brother's film
for part of the Thief/Cobbler chase, where they run
zigzag down the stairs. For Zigzag entering the Throne
room with the Maiden of Mombasa Dick used a scene with
Conradt Veidt I believe, one of the films where he
plays an officer. He would make video printouts of
every frame and tape them into a corner of his
animation paper. As he was flipping the drawings he
would look for the changes between poses and apply
those to his animation. A much more flexible method
than straight rotoscoping, which is hard to do if the
character he draws has strange proportions.
Another interesting one is the laughing brigand. You
might want to look at Sleeping Beauty when Maleficent
realizes that her men have been searching all these
years for a cradle. Her men join in with her laughing.
Look at one of the guys with a pig face. Milt Kahl's
work.

> "A Film by John Patrick Shanley --
> Once there was a guy named Joe, Who had a really
> crappy job, And they lived happily ever after, The
> End" .... Wonder what that's about?

>John was hired as a screen writer on the Thief to
>rewrite while incorporating all the thief stuff, sort
>of write s.th. around all that had been animated or as
much as possible. he was also preparing to direct his
first film which became Joe Versus the Volcano and
Dick did this title work for him as a personal favour.




--- So there you have it. The tests are for the titles for the Tom Hanks film Joe Versus the Volcano. Hm!
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Here's a clip from Duck Soup with Harpo Marx running down stairs:

http://ctufilms.googlepages.com/ducksoupstairs.avi
"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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Aaand when I posted that I thought "two minutes til Ogg Oggilby weighs in on this" ...


Dick copied that clip exactly .... verrry interesting.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
Aaand when I posted that I thought "two minutes til Ogg Oggilby weighs in on this" ...


Dick copied that clip exactly .... verrry interesting.


Yeah, I was thinking it would only be mildly similar and then I saw how even Harpo sliding on the floor is captured. Note: The Thief is the one exactly modeled on the shot (he frantically looks around unlike Tack).

I have Intolerance on DVD, so I'll have to see if I can spot that shot used for reference.
"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 think the reference footage (in the best possible quality) would make for a great DVD extra.

Even if you just put together a montage of the clips with a screen stating the name and year of each film, followed by the completed "Thief and The Cobbler" shot for each instance.
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There are three shots from Intolerance in the reel. I made a Divx file of some highlights from the reel, but I'm afraid the Divx compression made it unwatchable - it's low quality to begin with! I've been told that much of the Thief material on the reel was animated by Richard ... not sure who animated the rest.


Okay, here's the info on the fifteenth disc in the Richard Willliams DVD collection. It's in PAL.

I am creating the sixteenth disc at the same time. Also in PAL.

There is a lot of material here that you won't have seen before, and there is some you WILL have seen before, but which is being DVDized here for the first time in its original PAL (and sometimes in better quality), which I know some people will appreciate.

I started to create both DVDs, and I was spreading content across both discs - Thief content on one, Roger Rabbit content on the other.

Then I realized .... I don't want everyone to have to get certain shows twice if they don't want to. I should put ALL the "new" content on one disc, and all the "old" content on the other.

Because I like you guys. So that's what I did.

So here's the "new" disc.

Thief and the Cobbler Pencil Tests - 56 minutes worth, accompanied by the audio from the film. (I would have edited a music track like I did for the last pencil test compilation, but I got lazy.)

Roger Rabbit Richard Williams Interviews - five of them, local news stories from British TV (and an appearance on a kid's show). Russell Hall, Robert Zemeckis and Charles Fleischer also feature.

Thief and the Cobbler Richard Williams interview - Another news report as Richard talks about trying to create a "masterpiece."

Richard Williams at the British Film Awards - accepting a special achievement award.

Roger Rabbit test footage - you've seen this on the official Roger Rabbit DVD documentary - here it is in its original form - some guy plays Eddie Valiant, Roger plays himself.

Air Canada Ad 1989 - Rare in that this was done at the studio where Roger Rabbit was animated.

National Film Board of Canada Richard Williams intros - From a desk covered in Thief backgrounds, Richard introduces several films by Canadian animators.

Seaside Woman - short film by Oscar Grillo. Not Richard Williams related.

Nasruddin clip from One Pair of Eyes - in its original PAL and its original edit.

--



So that's disc 15.

Now, for disc 16 ...


Everything old is new again.

This will have a better print of I Drew Roger Rabbit on it, a PAL print of the reel of Williams Studio ads, a PAL print of the Warner Bros. trailer, and something else.

I'm including this material in PAL because it was originally sent to me in PAL. I cleaned this stuff up when I converted it to NTSC, so the NTSC version should actually look better, but it's best to have the original unscrewed with versions too.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
There are three shots from Intolerance in the reel. I made a Divx file of some highlights from the reel, but I'm afraid the Divx compression made it unwatchable - it's low quality to begin with! I've been told that much of the Thief material on the reel was animated by Richard ... not sure who animated the rest.


Okay, here's the info on the fifteenth disc in the Richard Willliams DVD collection. It's in PAL.

I am creating the sixteenth disc at the same time. Also in PAL.

There is a lot of material here that you won't have seen before, and there is some you WILL have seen before, but which is being DVDized here for the first time in its original PAL (and sometimes in better quality), which I know some people will appreciate.

I started to create both DVDs, and I was spreading content across both discs - Thief content on one, Roger Rabbit content on the other.

Then I realized .... I don't want everyone to have to get certain shows twice if they don't want to. I should put ALL the "new" content on one disc, and all the "old" content on the other.

Because I like you guys. So that's what I did.

So here's the "new" disc.

Thief and the Cobbler Pencil Tests - 56 minutes worth, accompanied by the audio from the film. (I would have edited a music track like I did for the last pencil test compilation, but I got lazy.)

Roger Rabbit Richard Williams Interviews - five of them, local news stories from British TV (and an appearance on a kid's show). Russell Hall, Robert Zemeckis and Charles Fleischer also feature.

Thief and the Cobbler Richard Williams interview - Another news report as Richard talks about trying to create a "masterpiece."

Richard Williams at the British Film Awards - accepting a special achievement award.

Roger Rabbit test footage - you've seen this on the official Roger Rabbit DVD documentary - here it is in its original form - some guy plays Eddie Valiant, Roger plays himself.

Air Canada Ad 1989 - Rare in that this was done at the studio where Roger Rabbit was animated.

National Film Board of Canada Richard Williams intros - From a desk covered in Thief backgrounds, Richard introduces several films by Canadian animators.

Seaside Woman - short film by Oscar Grillo. Not Richard Williams related.

Nasruddin clip from One Pair of Eyes - in its original PAL and its original edit.

--



So that's disc 15.

Now, for disc 16 ...


Everything old is new again.

This will have a better print of I Drew Roger Rabbit on it, a PAL print of the reel of Williams Studio ads, a PAL print of the Warner Bros. trailer, and something else.

I'm including this material in PAL because it was originally sent to me in PAL. I cleaned this stuff up when I converted it to NTSC, so the NTSC version should actually look better, but it's best to have the original unscrewed with versions too.


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sorry for that, i press the wrong button. i just wanted to quote a part from you post but any way.... PLEASE I WANT TO SEE SOME OF THAT STUFF! lol. what are your plans on that 15 dvds collection? i would be great of course if you plan to torrent some of those great dvds you are making!!!
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At one point I torrented a lot of the special features stuff as AVIs - torrents which died when The Pirate Bay went down.

You can write me at tygerbug at yahoo.com about any DVDs.