Backround:
Shot on the beautiful yet mysterious settings of the Pompeii ampitheater ruins (along with a studio in Paris) this film directed by Adrian Maben combines extremely beautiful cinematography with the haunting music of Pink Floyd. In between the performances is interviews of the band as they were recording the now legendary “The Dark Side Of The Moon” at Abbey Road Studio.

However in 2003 on the official DVD release he decided to do a new directors cut incorporating a number of new shots along with some new interview footage that was not used in the original cut. Along with that he also took the film from its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio to a matted 1.78:1 Widescreen presentation which losses 33% of the image at the top and bottom. This becomes very apparent at times with some of the closeups. The biggest and most noticeable one is during the first half of “Echoes” when we see the closeup of David Gilmour’s guitar solo. On the 1.33:1 you can the picture within the picture of Nick Mason drumming clearly. The 1.78:1 matted presentation has Nick almost completely missing.

Now while the DVD also contains the original concert footage itself in its OAR of 1.33:1 there has been a number of releases both on VHS, CED, Laserdisc, and even VCD that has had the original concert footage with most of the interview material contained between the performances.

The Goal Of This Edit:

The goal is quite simple. To bring back the true original version of Pompeii in its OAR of 1.33:1 with the interviews reinserted to it. I will be using the original concert footage version from the 2003 DVD alongside a Laserdisc edition (note: I’m awaiting for it to arrive in the mail as I just bought one via Half.com) for the source material for the interviews. I am also going to fix another jarring glitch with Pompeii - the audio issue of the pitch being a semitone too high. So finally yes you will be able to watch Pompeii for the first time with Pink Floyd actually sounding like Pink Floyd… and not the Pink Floyd Chipmunks Hybrid Band.

A Few Things I Am Considering For This Edit:

Potentially adding in the few new interview segments from the 2003 Directors Cut. However these segments will be letterboxed as cropping the sides would lead to a simular effect to what we have seen with the “Let It Be” film for many years (in other words matted for theaters then it was pan and scanned from that matted Widescreen edition). I could also just have the few bits stretched out but that would look aweful and even more out of place than leaving it letterboxed. The only thing I remember being added was a few Richard Wright bits but I’ll have to do an A-B comparison from the Laserdisc to the Directors Cut to confirm what else got added to the interview segments.
Adding a second audio track with the PCM Stereo track from the Laserdisc ripped along with it being pitch adjusted.

I’ll update as more comes along. Thanks so far to Moth3r for helping out with the pitch adjustment issue.