Mega Madness: The Ultimate Gremlins Companion (* unfinished project *) — Page 4

UPDATE:

Thanks to The Griff, we now have the clip of the Gremlins ride in Australia from 1995!  Not only that,  Bat Gremlin (as he is known on the YouTube site) has FINALLY completed his personal alternative fan sequence for the scene in GREMLINS 2 where the film breaks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REGCV6z3VkM

This caught national attention in France, as you can see from the news broadcast below (kindly translated by Bat Gremlin himself):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiLxPAjXQY8

Once again, the project moves forward and picks up momentum!

UPDATE:

Boy, time sure has flown since my last post!  Truth be told, life's been kicking my ass around for a bit so it's sidelined me a bit.  ThrowgnCpr has also been quite busy, to say the least.  However, the project moves along and until something convinces us otherwise we still are aiming to release this project on time. 

Now it's time to give some info on what we've got so far:

Baby Hum has managed to get us a copy of the BT Gremlins Ad (short version) in 576i and 1080i transport stream versions.  I believe I had him send it to ThrowgnCpr.  Also, if anyone managed ed to read on page 3, Moth3r also provided us with this ad (I've not been able to compare if there's a difference since ThrowgnCpr should have Baby Hum's version).  Big kudos to the two of you

The Griff has been kind enough to donate us a clip from "Agro's Cartoon Connection" which aired in 1995. Segment reporter is Holly Brisley, reporting from Warner Bros' Movie World on the Gold Goast (Queensland, Australia).

Silverwook struck some gold and came up with two NBC promos for an airing of GREMLINS that took place On New Years Day, 1989.

Not one to be TOTALLY lazy, I managed to find this:

It's an "audio book" read by Tom Baker.  This gives us yet ANOTHER option for the aural senses.

Last but not least, my good friend S-10 from the NOES forums has located a Playback 84 show with a Gremlins segment on it. There is a short interview with Spielberg, and then some clips. It lasts around 90 seconds.  There's also an Indy segment and Ghostbusters segment on it.  There are also music videos (of what I don't know as he didn't say).  ANYONE out there needing either the Indy or the GB segment, please contact me and once I receive the disc I'll gladly pass it on to you.

Uploaded for your viewing pleasure:

GREMLINS SEGMENT ON PLAYBACK '84

Anybody out there have any ideas how to "scrub" away unwanted dialog/FX from the audio channels?  They managed to spread out Goldsmith's score to all 5 main channels (the LFE only comes to life during explosions).  Yeah...I'm ambitious and I obviously won't rest until I've either managed to do this OR cure cancer...whichever comes first.

Thanks to Faneditlover, Uncanny Antman and Frantic Canadian over at the MEGA MADNESS thread at FE, I now have:

Alternative GREMLINS 2 trailer (found by Faneditlover, smartly saved by Uncanny Antman before it's removal)

Fangoria #39 which contains an in depth article about the FX on GREMLINS (Frantic Canadian)

GREMLINS script, 2nd draft (Frantic Canadian)

Thanks for the goodies, guys!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nTrW-V2C_o

ALTERNATIVE GREMLINS 2 trailer now up!

MAJOR UPDATE:

After months of not getting anywhere, I finally managed to get 5 out of the 6 Read-alongs remastered!  ThrowgnCpr has them now and will do his comparison and give me feedback.  I also plan to give a few of those out there who've helped out in some way a chance to weigh in on the work done.  I'll need some time for uploading and such but those random individuals will be contacted....   Until then, in the words of Brain:



Well, it's rather brutal here. Right now we are advising all our clients to put everything they've got into canned food and shotguns.

UPDATE:

After some back and forth with ThrowgnCpr (and a few LARGE .mp3 versions) I've finally discovered the best way to eliminate the sound of the stylus against the vinyl to the barest minimum.  This has done so much that I now don't need to worry that I'm eliminating too many frequencies.  The original way was not only hacking away at the trebles, but also in an effort to make the sound " loud and smooth" I was muffling the rest of what I had enough that I had to boost the frequencies in order NOT to muffle them away.  It lead to some acceptable "loud and smooth" versions but when compared against the original transfers still had a specific amount of frequencies either gone or muffled.

The way I do it now is that while using Audacity 1.3.6 I select about a second and a half of the "quiet area" where there is just the lowest possible level of noise.  Then I select the  "Noise Removal" codec from the EFFECT > NOISE REMOVAL menu.  I press the GET NOISE PROFILE button.  Once that's done, the option disappears.  Press CTRL+A and once you see the entire file is selected the go back to the  "Noise Removal" codec from the EFFECT > NOISE REMOVAL menu.  Hit the OK button and it should clean away most of the noise nicely WHILE not affecting the sound TOO much.  You can then use a vinyl restoration codec to do some moderate crackle and click removal (if there's any). 

I hope this is a small but brief tip that helps someone out there.

UPDATE:

We're still underway with trying to decide the best method of preserving the read along transfers, and once opinions are weighed in then we can move further forward.  There's also been a test editing of a short read-along section to which we'll reveal more about later on.  There also have been a few items I'm trying to obtain, but not to jynx myself I won't reveal those just yet....

I know, I know.  This is the most secretive yet informative post I've made so far.

MAJOR Update

Without revealing my source....I have a NEARLY PRISTINE, clean copy of Goldsmith's score for GREMLINS.  Can you say "Music Only Audio Track?"

What's the situation with this project? I've been out of touch with these OT forums for a while and this was the project I was looking forward to most. Still am. :)

still gathering material at this point.  We will soon probably layout a more specific timeline and contents for discs for what we already have.

I've been out of the country for a bit, and just got back and chatted with Invisiblewolfman.  We'll try to get the ball rolling on this again soon.

UPDATE:

First off, I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates in quite some time.  ThrowgnCpr has been quite busy with several things on his end (much of it including his current studies) and I have been concentrating quite hard with losing weight and excercising.  As of September of 2008, I weighed 134 kilos (aka 295 lbs / 21 Stone ) and I was NOT feeling the best of health at all.  As a result, I began to eat better and exercise more.  That and a fluxuating work schedule (thanks to the unstable world economy) began to eat into the efforts we were putting into MEGA MADNESS.  As of today, I now weigh 99 kilos (aka 218 lbs / 15.5 Stone) and feel lots better.  Now that ThrowgnCpr's schedule is slowly lightening up, we are aiming to get MEGA MADNESS back on track.

Uncanny Antman did us a great favor and gave us an edit of the single red GREMLINS read-along which was available in every normal department store and included photos from the movie.  Kudos to him and his great effort, because it REALLY captures an energy we were hoping for and makes not only the read-along more interesting, but also breathes new life into seeing GREMLINS presented this way.

A friend of mine sent me this:

Which is early concept art for the original GREMLINS by artist Mike Ploog.  If you don't know Mike, then check out wikipedia's entry for him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Ploog

In the meantime, TrowgnCpr and I are in discussions on how to proceed from here and finish in a more timely fashion.  Again, I'm sorry for the delays but real life got in the way.  However, it doesn't mean this project has to die...it just needed a rest before we continue on the way!

I really want to apologize for the delays, especially to folks like you seniorgrande, who have been so helpful with the project.  I do want to assure you though that we are still going to move forward with the project.  Wolfman and I have both had very busy personal years so far.  Also, I just accepted a new job, so I will be moving in a couple weeks.

That said, I have slowly been trying to chip away at material.  I have a bunch of things scanned that we acquired (some of it needed some mega-restoration work), though there still is a lot of material to get to.  The vinyl audio transfers are probably set, and I think IWM and I are pretty happy with them.  Hopefully after I relocate and get settled in we can move on to the movie editing portion.  I'd like to get a disc out sometime very early next year.

Also, because of the scope of this project, I really wanted to make sure that technically we could pull off a lot of the things we set out to do.  I think we are at that point now.

Thanks, seniorgrande for keeping this alive.  I'll try to post more updates soon.  Hopefully IWM will have something to add :)

If any picture could describe how the events of last year that have continued onto this year has made me feel, then this picture says it ALL.  I could spend a whole long time pouring out heart and soul here but that's unnecessary.  I'd rather get to the point and be direct as I can be.

After a 15 year relationship which included 11 and a half years of marriage, I find myself split with my soon-to-be-ex-wife and believe me when I tell you it's been "survival of the fittest" on my end seeing as it couldn't have happened at a worse time (thank you very much, world economy) and seeing as I am living abroad in a country not my own...I've got bigger hills and challenges than ever before.  And this doesn't even BEGIN to scratch the surface at the level of insanity that began a year ago and although winding down, finds interesting ways to keep me guessing where to avoid the pitfalls of failure.  In short, it sucks to be IWM at the moment...

But I feel fine. :)

The good news is that I retain much of what was my half of the project.  The great news is that ThrowgnCpr has all the scans I could manage and various other bits I sent so if I can't find something he most likely has it.  The disappointing news is that it WILL take time to get the ball rolling again.  I'm using a laptop that 4 years old already so there's no way that I can do editing on my end with video.  I won't abandon this project, as I gave it my all and I want to see it to the end...God willing.  The bad news is that I had to make a choice about a special contest I was going to include as part of the release where I'd send out some GREMLINS related prizes...and that was that there's no way I could afford to mail out the prizes I had.  Plus, with the lack of work...I had to make a choice and sell off a specific amount of those prizes though it really killed me.  Thankfully, it paid a few bills and eased my situation which at the time really reminded me of how Billy must have felt seeing Stripe jumping into the YMCA swimming pool.

I still have the audio transfers for the HARDEE'S record set and I'm going to get in touch with ThrowgnCpr and see what we've still got for materials between the two of us and we'll take it from there.

Kind Regards,

InvisibleWolfMan