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Help Wanted: Holiday Special Resources and Dreams

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It’s fascinating to see so many people interested in the Star Wars Holiday Special.

I’m reminded of my drive home this evening, and seeing the flashing lights in the darkness ahead: I moved to the left lane of highway 167, trying to give space to the situation on the right, and was amazed to find that, even there, everyone was slowing down to see what sort of damage there might be.

Not that I’m all that different. I can tell you that there was no visible carnage, just a police car and an unladen tow truck, and I admit that I did spend the summer trying to create an SE disc of the SWHS. At some point I hope to be able to finish that disc.

In light of that hope, and also because of others’ interest (two fanedits of the Special are currently underway, and I think I read about a third), I decided to begin this thread on Holiday Special RESOURCES and DREAMS.

The SWHS web site that SKot runs has some good-quality video of the Fox News and TVLand mentions of the Special, and both play well when converted to DVD. However, is there better available?

Conan O’Brien surprised Harrison Ford when he was shilling for “Firewall”: I’ve only found a terrible copy of that, overcompressed and all but unwatchable, and would dearly love to find it in better condition.

It would be great to have an archival disc, a “final word” in special editions. My own dream would be to have a dual-layer disc with both the KCCI (great video quality) and WMAR (I think that’s the one with the commercials included) transfers playable, the commercials playable separately, the four “musical moments” bookmarked, and (as an Easter egg) the Bill Murray musical moment from Saturday Night Live. [The Bill Murray moment, BTW, was played as part of the AFI salute to George Lucas for Life Achievement.]

Of course, only the truly obsessed would take the script and subtitle the program. [Hands, those of us who’d do it in a heartbeat!]

And the frightfully manic could create a featurette on the evolution of Kashyyyk: initial concepts in the pre-ANH screenplays and treatments, the SWHS, The Wookiee Storybook, various comic strips and comic books, the Tyrant’s Test novels, and finally RotS.

While I’d love to create this disc, right now it’s not a possibility. Perhaps someone will, or perhaps it’ll be a team effort. Who’s interested?

“Before the Dark Times. Before the Prequels.”

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You would also want to include the Star Wars Holiday Special RiffTrax Commentary for the WMAR version that has commercials.
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Originally posted by: scallenger
You would also want to include the Star Wars Holiday Special RiffTrax Commentary for the WMAR version that has commercials.

No, you wouldn't, seeing as how the RiffTrax is a product that is currently a product available for (very cheap and reasonable) purchase and should not be distributed unless the person on the other end of the deal purchased the track.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Well, you could provide instructions on how to sync the track yourself to the DVD?

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

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Yeah, it's really not hard to do that, provided you have DVD Decrypter, Goldwave and some kind of DVD authoring software.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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It will never sync up correctly with the KCCI version (too bad, since that's the best one) because of the commercials and the bizarre opening crawl*. To sync it up with the Google mp4 is very easy though. The movie commentary begins 2 minutes and 36 seconds into the RiffTrax file. Just use Womble to offset the beginning of the video and export it. Hell, I watched the movie with the commentary in Womble's preview window. No burning required! Not that you could ever put it up here, of course.

*Well, I suppose you could edit out the commercial portions of the RiffTrax files (and any references to them) and try to line it up with the KCCI version, but editing out just the right number of frames with the fade-ins and fade-outs to keep it perfectly in sync will be a bitch. On a side note, where the Hell did that Godawful title crawl come from? Please tell me it was fan made.
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The crawl was fan-made. None of the comments they made during the crawl were really funny or necessary, so I have the DVD I authored of it set to skip to right after the crawl after pressing "Play".

There is a guy on the RiffTrax board that's editing together a disc that will use the KCCI footage for the special, the WMAR footage for the commercials, with the stupid opening crawl, that will sync up to the RiffTrax. I'm eagerly awaiting that disc.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Great to see that we're all talking about the holiday special again - I got MattMahdi's disc in the mail a few weeks ago of the KCCI broadcast from AngrySun and as he said the quality is excellent

Here's the thing - I'm almost done with my edit, but the problem I'm running into is rendering

I'm cutting in Vegas Video 8 pro, using a rip of the video from the angrysun dvd, and after i render to mpeg i get shit quality video

I'll post more detail later about the problem, but I'd love for some other people to see this 30 min edit of the special, maybe Matt can include it on his preservation whenever he starts on it again

- adrian
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Has anyone seen Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" music video? There's a great scene near the end where he casually exchanges money with some shady person in a back alley for an unmarked paper bag. Inside is not drugs but rather something only a real nerd would want.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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Who else was saddened by the news?

I was driving home last night and heard a brief eulogy for Harvey Korman. I am reminded of occasional roll-calls on the passing of "Doctor Who" and "Star Trek" actors.

“Before the Dark Times. Before the Prequels.”

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Yes, I was sad to hear about his passing. He always cracked me up in the Mel Brooks films.

Getting back to one of the items in MattMahdi's original post, The skit with Bill Murray singing "Star Wars! Nothing but Star Wars...! is on the SNL Season 3 DVD that's out now. The song ought to be the official anthem for this site! ;)

Carrie Fisher hosting SNL, (in full Leia dress and hairdo) will be in the season 4 set.
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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

The skit with Bill Murray singing "Star Wars! Nothing but Star Wars...! is on the SNL Season 3 DVD that's out now. The song ought to be the official anthem for this site! ;)

Tres cool! I only saw it in any quality when I finally watched BabyHum's preservation of the AFI honoring George Lucas.

Carrie Fisher hosting SNL, (in full Leia dress and hairdo) will be in the season 4 set.

Didn't even know. Will watch for it, though! [Didn't have much of a life back when SNL was big....which isn't to say that I've much of one now either.]

“Before the Dark Times. Before the Prequels.”