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Transformers the Movie (1986) - Supplemental Disk (* unfinished project *)

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 (Edited)

Hey gang. I’ve been wanting to work on a Transformers the Movie supplemental disk for quite a while. While the Sony disk they just put out was pretty damn awesome, it was lacking a couple things due to rights or other issues.

Things I would like to include:

-Transformers the Movie promotional trailer restored with the actual audio. This trailer is about 4 minutes long and was used to sell the movie to outside investors. It initially floated around on the internet in a really crappy (160xsomething?) size back in the mid '90s. A big chunk of it is video which did not appear in the actual movie, including old colors for Ultra Magnus and other stuff. The video for this appeared on the recent DVD, but the audio was not present for some reason. It was originally narrated by Vince Dicola with a bunch of music and stuff. Instead there was just a bunch of commentary over it. More on this later.
-Scramble City OAV with Japanese Audio + Subtitles. Maybe even mux the fandub in. The official US DVD has probably the best quality version of the video for this, but it has absolutely no audio. All of the audio is replaced with commentary, and there are no subtitles. I have sourced another version of this with decent subtitles and audio.
-Transformers the Movie Theatrical Trailer, encoded as anamorphic instead of with black bars. This is on the official release, though it’s not anamorphic. Oddly enough most of the audio for this was also used on the promotional trailer, and the audio is actually on this one. This should be cake to do.
-The UK scrolling credits opening to the movie, as well as the ending Vince Dicola narration. Currently have no source for this.
-The Touch Music Video by Stan Bush. Currently have no source for this.
-The Japanese Transformers 2010 Intro, which includes movie footage and other original stuff. I have a good copy of this somewhere, but I don’t know where.
-The 5 Part TV version bumpers with the stop motion Powermaster Optimus Prime and Peter Cullen voiceover. No source currently.
-The interview clips on the DVD website which aren’t on the DVD itself.
-Any trailers that are floating around missing from the DVD set. I’ve also toyed with the idea of recreating the longest ones with the DVD footage.
-The really cool intro to the really bad Japanese PS2 game which has the TFTM prime fight recreated in CG.

So far, I’ve done the most work on the promotional trailer:

http://rapidshare.com/files/42697854/tftm-promotional-trailer01.avi.html

This is my currently unfinished work in restoring it. I’ve had to go in and edit some of the footage at the very end, looping some of it, since the audio was longer than the actual video. The audio is sourced from the best copy of this video I could find; I believe it’s from a Japanese Laserdisk. Pretty much every other copy of this video I’ve seen has Japanese titles added to it. In addition, there is some missing audio at the beginning with the scrolling grey text. Every other copy I’ve found starts at the ‘TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE’ part. The missing narration exists on the front of the ‘Theatrical Trailer’ I mention above, however it is backed by some really booming music which doesn’t fit the tone of the trailer. I do not have the technical skill as an audio editor to remove this music, so it is one of the areas where I really need help. In addition, I would like to have someone fluent in Japanese to read over the Japanese titling on the old version of this. If it’s unique, we could add it back in in English via a subtitle track.

The above clip requires the avc/x264 codec, or VLC should chomp right through no matter what…

This is my first ‘project thread’, and I’ve read through the rules and I believe I’m on the right side of everything. I initially wanted to see about fixing the color issues (like Pink Hot Rod) in the 16x9 version of the Sony disk, but I feel that wouldn’t be that different from the released disk. My other thought was to try to do a multilingual disk. Currently I have the movie in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. I’ve been looking for it in Japanese, but I believe the DVD is out of print. A friend of mine did a complete translation of the Japanese movie though, with the dialogue differences, but, again, this is a little too much like a custom disk.

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Great minds think alike?

I had a few of these things as ideas in my head for my Transformers disc project. However, mine was more focused on the stuff leading up to the movie. In any case I will be contributing to this thread. I have to go to work now, but when I get home tonight I'll pop in here and post some info.

By the way, the recently released Transformers Movie Special Edition R4 DVD (and original version actually, both) have the Stan Bush music video, however the quality is horrendous. I've seen a much better version floating around on MySpace and have since captured 4 different uploads of it. One or two of those include the Tommy/PM Prime intro.

The above leads me to my last comment til later; I scoured MySpace and captured a bunch of videos I want to use in my project. Having said that, I am of course looking for better quality versions and trying to get in touch with some of the uploaders but I have a few things you'll want.

Will be back in several hours.

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

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Well, I'm quite busy and have far less for the 1986 film than I thought I did. At the moment I only have FLV files captured off MySpace for the following:
* Stan Bush "The Touch" Music Video (with Powermaster Prime & Tommy intro bumper)
* US 20th Anniversary Special Edition DVD Trailer
* UK Metrodome Ultimate Edition DVD Trailer
* SS2K Fan Trailer for the 1986 film
* "Transformers: Tatakai" Opening FMV
* "Generation 1 on DVD in 2007" Trailer. Metrodome perhaps?

The rest of the stuff I have falls into other categories. Once I get some more time I'll be tracking down good quality copies of stuff for my project and will of course keep an eye out for the above. I am getting in touch (no pun intended) with people who may have good quality versions of the Stan Bush music video (ie. not MySpace-compressed FLVs).

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

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Hi,

I have the UK opening and closing (with voice over). Also have the Scramble City episode. E-mail me if interested:

Invisible.Wolf.Man at gmail.com

Best Regards,

InvisibleWolfMan

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I've seen fan dubs of the "Scramble City" episode, but they only start with the "new material" (the shot of the volcano crater base and Ultra Magnus overseeing the construction of "Scramble City Project" to the end with the stare-down between the two city-bots. Was fan dubbing done for the previous "stock footage" sequences? Was it the same dialog as the original or was it modified?

Anyone who knows, please post here or PM me if it's a secret or something... thanks!
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Hey all, I'm a Gen 1 purist. Heck, I still have all the original toys from 1984. Yes, I'm one of those guys, LOL. Needless to say, the movie didn't make me happy then, and really doesn't now.

Why am I posting then? Cuz I had an idea, and If I had to skill to edit it and do a fan edit I would, but I don't.

Basically, I thought it wanted to edit out some things. Edit out prime and ironhide and all the classic Gen 1 charaters deaths. Just make it seem like they got lost in space or something, doesn't matter...expect for the fact they never made it to the autobot city...so they didn't die...

then I'd edit out Megatron and the others being turned into Galvatron, Cylconus, etc they are just created by Unicron.

That's about it. Megatron and his cronies don't die and become someone diff, prime and his guys don't die. They are all lost on the trip to autobot city (al la the Pilot of the series "More than meets the Eye).

Anyways, if Anyone has the skill to do this, feel free to take my idea and run with it. If you don't like the idea, I understand, as I said, I am a Gen 1 purist, so killing them off was sacreligous. I just thought this would be a neat idea, as most ppl I've talked to over the years agree that killing off prime, megatron and company was a stupid move.

As I said, I don't know if anyone has the skill to do this, but if they do...feel free to take the idea and run with it..

With that, I'll get my Gen 1 Purist self out of this thread...
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OMG I would so watch and seed this like crazy (and do a review for you)!!

Please let the copy you have of Scramble City be a decent one...
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Well, the one the OP is talking about is the "Scramble City" ep as shown on the 20th Anniversary Transformers: the Movie DVD set. It's the best quality currrently
available, it just lacks any audio... it's JUST a commentary track by two fans.

So you'd either have to use the audio track from the Japanese version (which had subtitles in english) or else re-create the audio and dub the dialog yourself from the script or a translation (neither of which I know where to get, but surely somebody does, since fandubs have been made).

One difference I noticed (other than one joke that was inserted when Metroplex runs over those trees, which was hilarious) between the Japanese subtitled version and the english fan dubs is that the Japanese version has the characters often saying "damn!" and calling each other "bastard." I don't know if that's creative interpretation or if that's what they're really saying (it seems out of character for the US series, but maybe they were different).
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Forgot to mention.. the sound effects and stuff can be isolated and I believe there are resources out there used by fan dubbers to re-create those. Probably also true of the music. It would be nice to finally see a full audio sync with the US 20th Anv. DVD that has the whole thing translated. I wouldn't expect somebody to record themselves singing the opening theme song, but maybe that could stay subtitled (or maybe not, depending on if somebody has the talent!).
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Where Demons have Hemroids, there's a Scramble City DVD available. It's actually pretty well done. It has the fan commentary, fan dub, fan sub, plus a few other episodes of some Japanese series.
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This sounds like a damn funky project.

One minor and obvious (to me at least) fan edit would be to move Unicron's attack on the inner moonbase to where it was actually scripted to go, er, just after the bit with the dinobots meeting wheelie IIRC.
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I thought about doing that in my edit.

FE<3OT

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Question on the the fan DVD of Scramble City: Are the subtitles softsubs, or did he just make a DVD out of the various videos hanging around?