Star Wars Inspiration Reference Project : Video
Introduction : Recreate the Hexology utilizing only video material (television or movies) which inspired or referenced the Star Warses.
Future Space
:F:L:I:M:S:I:P:L:A:S:T: :D:A:T:A:B:A:S:E:
Inspiration Listing:
http://noneinc.com/Archive/FlimsiplastDatabase/FD-SW-Inspiration_Combined.html
Movie Reference Listing:
http://noneinc.com/Archive/FlimsiplastDatabase/FD-SWMov-Refs_Combined.html
Television Reference Listing:
http://noneinc.com/Archive/FlimsiplastDatabase/FD-SWTV-Refs_Combined.html
Please check out the lists and let us know of what's missing.
What i'm looking for are new programs and approximate timecodes. Really need help with the movie timecodes, since you need to watch 2 hrs to find one 2 second clip. Also the Inspiration listings are a little light, so please consider adding comics or books to the category.
In thread Important Posts
Post : Description
007 : Explanation of Process : From Script to Clip & Expanding Search Tip
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/SWIRP-V/post/399523/#TopicPost399523
013 : Subtitle Search Results 001
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/SWIRP-V/post/404460/#TopicPost404460
I don't understand what you are trying to do. Care to ellaborate in an uncomplicated way?
Star Wars Renascent
Inspired by the Godfather Part II and a revamp of Star Wars: Reborn
Just a guess but I imagine none (with his usual flare for the dramatic) intends to plow through all the possible inspirations for the Star Wars films and build up a cinematic (and audio/musical?) collage of them.
For example the droids being at times the Tin Woodman from The Wizard Of Oz or the robots from Silent Running and other times the servants from The Hidden Fortress.
Have I captured the essence of your proposal none?
Care to ellaborate in an uncomplicated way?
This will sound rude, but ce la vie. I don't think I can do that. Unfortunately if you've followed the other project (tBSWM) i try repeatedly to figure out a simple way to explain the ideas but it just doesn't seem to happen. I tried to make it simple, I posted one sentence which I thought condensed what this project was going to be. Your first statement showed an interest but you were confused. I did have the website link which had further explanation, and links to other documents which are the part of the process of this project. Sorry folks but it's going to take some reading, i don't know how to explain it any other way. So with that i'll explain a part of the process.
Process Explanation 1: From Script to Clip
In this case, let's start with the Star Wars script and a quote we're all familiar with:
http://starwarz.com/starkiller/scripts/thestarwars_revised_fourth_draft_jan.htm
DODONNA
Man your ships! And may the Force be with you!
The 'May the Force Be With You' quote is common place now. What we'll do in this project is attempt to show not only where it came from (inspirations) but how it's been incorporated into society (reference). So Task One is to find mentions of these inspirations and references. There have been websites, books, articles which discuss these. I've been pulling them together tp make a database of these ideas. (That's the :F:L:I:M:S:I:P:L:A:S:T: :D:A:T:A:B:A:S:E:)
So for the quote 'May the Force Be With You' where did it come from? There are guesses out there, one of them is from the experimental film by Arthur Lipsett called 21-87. In that film is the quote:
"Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and communication with other living things, that they become aware of some kind of...ah... force or something behind this apparent mask. Which we see in front of us." (i've found this film and the quote takes place at ~03:30)
George Lucas has mentioned seeing this film and the title is also the inspiration for Princess Leia's holding cell number.
Now for the MTFBWY references. These are easier, since Star Wars has had such a huge impact on culture. Again online culture has made finding these pieces of information possible. Early on Star Wars fan websites began collecting the references people saw in television and movies. The major contributor was L. Mangue's Nerfherder Anonymous website. Where people sent in things they found and she added them to her webpages. The idea is to search through a website or page for a certain idea. So with search engine help like so:
site:www.nerf-herders-anonymous.net "may the force be with you"
That will bring up all the pages which have that quote. One example is:
http://www.nerf-herders-anonymous.net/TVKR.html
This is a page for Television References Letters K - R. If you then search the actual page for that quote, you'll see that people have said they've heard that quote in episodes of 'Life on Mars', 'Men Behaving Badly', 'The O.C.' & 'Only Fools and Horses'. (and with closer examination, there's also a 'May the Pork be with you')
So the next task is to figure out where in the episode those phrases actually happen, time code. That means viewing the program. Another way is to find an online subtitle or transcript and find the quote that way. Eventually though the episode will be found and that clip will be pulled out.
Then with the inspiration and reference for the General Dodonna quote, the final presentation will use the clips for (inspiration) 21-87 and (references) 'Life on Mars', 'Men Behaving Badly', 'The O.C.', 'Only Fools and Horses', etc.
The End Goal is to see how much of the movie can be found and replaced with Inspirations and References.
I'll explain more of the processes i've been going through to find inspirations and references. But please feel free to suggest some or ideas of places to look to find more. The :F:L:I:M:S:I:P:L:A:S:T: :D:A:T:A:B:A:S:E: is the 'known' quantity at this time. The ones with timecode have been found and nailed down, the others are TBD.
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[added in edit]
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Here's an example of how one type of search can be expanded into finding more material. As mentioned above, the quote 'May the Force be with you' can be parodied or changed by replacing 'force' with something else. On the Nerfherder Anonymous site there was a 'Pork' one.
So how do you find more of these type of Modified References?
Just realized that IMDb.com has a Quote data/search. but using the IMDb search won't allow me to do partial search. So with google, I can search:
site:imdb.com "may the" +"be with you"
And now I've got a bunch of pages to comb through. (14,400) Lots of these tend to be episode titles, i've found that that is a common occurance. The writers parody the episode title but don't have any SW reference in the actual episode. But right now just looking around for searchable ideas.
But the key is IMDb.com uses certain phrases on every page. In this case the 'Quote' page for every television program or movie starts with the phrase "Memorable quotes" So with the new search:
site:imdb.com "may the" +"be with you" +"memorable quotes"
I've dropped the returns to 5,550 which is much easier to wade through. In this case Google stopped at page 12, when it says it's removed repeated items. With these big sites there tend to be high volume of duplicates. In all, there might have been maybe 30-40 actual items. about 5-8 new ones which I didn't already know about.
Can also then sort these returns by date to see what's new, if I repeat this same search a year or two later. Have done this with tv.com where i throw the phrase "star wars" into their database and see what returns, since people are constantly adding new references to their pages.
Have attempted to learn data scraping but wasn't able to learn the software. Anyone out there know website data scraping?
So even more complicated than I thought, brilliant! :-D
May I suggest Michael Kaminski's "The Secret History of Star Wars" and Jonathan Rinzler's "The Making of Star Wars" (hardcover edition) as useful sources?
Good luck.
Yes those are both solid resources, which are on the adgenda to do an appendix and footnote peruse. (can see the picture of Robin Hood in my mind from the Rinzler book which I don't think is in the :F:L:I:M:S:I:P:L:A:S:T: :D:A:T:A:B:A:S:E:) Sucks that the Empire book has been pushed back till late summer. Have a shelf of books and magazines to look through. Would love to be able to search through old magazines, since they would be the places this kind of information would have been circulated, prior to the internets. If only collections like: http://starwarsmagazines.online.fr/ would be more then just the covers...
That's the thing with this project, the initial push which people have done by posting their favorites online, for the last 10-20 years, has happened. Now it's finding the less obvious more obscure. Which might be posted somewhere out there, it's about filtering archives to make them stand out.
Identified timecode for about 350 programs in the last couple weeks. Many thanks to VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) so things can be watched at 2x - 8x time speed. Interesting now they talk faster in cartoons then in most prime time programs. Trying to figure out how to watch the movies, have a bunch of MST3Ks which i'll be experimenting with. Luckily DAP (http://www.dapcentral.org/) has some of the timecodes but most require watching. Also finding the free subtitle sites to be helpful. Just wish the subs weren't all .zip'd so they'd be searchable online. Might have to urltoys one of the sites... would be helpful to throw terms and phrases into the subs to see what returns.
After watching/seeking through many television programs of late, going to relax and watch some of the Inspiration movies which have influenced the Star Warses. Currently watching 'Hidden Fortress' in the queue are: Battle in Outer Space, Flash Gordon (Space Soldiers and Trip to Mars), Forbidden Planet, Kairyu Daikessen, Sanjuro, Seven Samurai, Silent Running, Space 1999, Dam Busters, The Searchers, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Triumph of the Wills, Yojimbo, 633 Squadron, Bridges at Toko-Ri & Twelve O'Clock High. Anyone out there seen any of these films and can remember anything particular which they thought was reminicent of some scene, dialog or other element of Star Wars?
Found an interesting inspiration in the Gene Roddenberry pilot "Planet Earth" (1974). Many of the women characters wear the same Leia ANH buns, and at one point a character is at an auction and one of the purchasers says "How about that one instead" very similar to Luke's choosing of R2 from the Jawas.
The Reference Finding Game - The Subtitle Search Way
Ok here's the game: i've downloaded a subtitle collection (tv episodes and movies (148k subtitles... lots of dupes and mutli-languages)) and fairly easily I can throw terms or sentence fragments or combinations into the collection to find references. For instance, throwing "Star Wars" into the collection returns 261 unique television episodes or movies. "Uncle Owen" & "X-wing" only return one result. Extra credit for the more unique search query. Bonuses for the more words which define a search phrase. "May the Force Be With You" = 10 hits. (if you think you have an idea for a permutation toss it out. for instance "May the" *blank* "be with you")
Also am researching inspirations for Jar-Jar. There were several articles when TPM came out claiming to have ideas for the aspirations of Jar-Jar evolving from classic racially sensitive characters. Stepin Fetchit (AKA Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry), Butterfly McQueen. But in the articles they never mentioned specific films or even a scene. So now it's time to take a stab into their filmographies. Perry's is extensive, so if anyone has a clue how to proceed that would be great. Might just start with one of his early ones like "Hearts in Dixie" 1929. This problem also crosses over into the language of the Neimodians which again was thought to be a lift of old chinese film speak. So going to try out 'Charlie Chan in Egypt' 1929.
Preliminary round of the subtitle repository investigation is complete. Terms thrown in and verified result totals shown below. Along with an example of the results found from one of the search term: "Ackbar"
These results are a reflection of the popularity in generally current Television (5-10 years, plus very popular shows) and popular Movies of any time frame.
Next step is to focus on quotes. See something i've missed, please suggest it.
Here's the results so far:
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:Miscellaneous:
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Search : "Star Wars" = 250
Search : "A New Hope" = 1
Search : "Holiday Special" = 0
Search : "Empire Strikes Back" = 10
Search : "Return of the Jedi" = 7
Search : "The Phantom Menace" = 6
Search : "Attack of the Clones" = 3
Search : "Revenge of the Sith" = 0
Search : "George Lucas" = 30
Search : "Anthony Daniels" = 0
Search : "Carrie Fisher" = 0
Search : "David Prowse" = 1
Search : "Harrison Ford" = 4
Search : "James Earl Jones" = 4
Search : "Mark Hamill" = 3
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:Characters:
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Search : "3po" = 24
Search : "Ackbar" = 4
Search : "Amidala" = 2
Search : "Anakin" = 5
Search : "Beru" = 1
Search : "boba fett" = 16
Search : "Calrissian" = 10
Search : "Chewbacca" = 38
Search : "Darth" = 85
Search : "Greedo" = 4
Search : "Han Solo" = 34
Search : "Jabba" = 39
Search : "Jar-Jar" = 5
Search : "Jawa" = 4
Search : "Kenobi" = 36
Search : "Lando" = 14
Search : "Obi-Wan" = 54
Search : "Padme" = 1
Search : "Mace Windu" = 1
Search : "Palpatine" = 4
Search : "Princess Leia" = 29
Search : "Qui-Gon" = 1
Search : "R2-D2" = 15
Search : "Sidious" = 2
Search : "Skywalker" = 55
Search : "Starkiller" = 3
Search : "Tarkin" = 6
Search : "Threepio" = 2
Search : "Uncle Owen" = 0
Search : "Vader" = 73
Search : "Yoda" = 74
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:Locations:
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Search : "Alderaan" = 7
Search : "Bespin" = 2
Search : "Cloud City" = 2
Search : "Coruscant" = 1
Search : "Dagobah" = 3
Search : "Death Star" = 29
Search : "Endor" = 6
Search : "Hoth" = 10
Search : "Kashyyyk" = 2
Search : "Mos Eisley" = 3
Search : "Naboo" = 0-2
Search : "Tatooine" = 4
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:Terms:
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Search : "501st" = 1
Search : "AT-AT" = 0
Search : "Bantha" = 2
Search : "Clone Wars" = 1
Search : "Dark Side" = 202
Search : "Ewoks" = 14
Search : "Fuzzball" = 3
Search : "Jedi" = 97
Search : "light saber" = 20
Search : "lightsaber" = 13
Search : "Millennium Falcon" = 11
Search : "Original Trilogy" = 1
Search : "Padawan" = 9
Search : "Power Converters" = 3
Search : "Prequel Trilogy" = 0
Search : "Rebel Alliance" = 6
Search : "Sarlac" = 1
Search : "Sith" = 15-34
Search : "Speeder Bike" = 1
Search : "Star Destroyer" = 2
Search : "Tauntaun" = 4
Search : "tie fighter" = 3
Search : "Tusken" = 0
Search : "Wampa" = 5
Search : "x-wing" = 1
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:Quotes:
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Search : "galaxy far, far away" = 12
Search : "long time ago" "far away" = 7
Search : "May the force be with you" = 9
Search : "May the" "be with you" = 17
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Unverified
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Search : "I have a bad feeling about this" = 21
Search : "this is madness" = 85
Search : "It's a Trap" = 171
Search : "I find your lack of faith disturbing" = 2
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And here's an example of the results from one of the searches:
Search Category
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Search : "Ackbar" = 4
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Results :
30 Rock - 1x21 - Hiatus.HDTV.lol.fr.srt
Family Guy - 8x20 - Something Something Something Dark Side.DVDRip.REWARD.en.srt
Pushing Daisies - 2x07 - Robbing Hood.HDTV.lol.en.srt
The Big Bang Theory - 2x19 - The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition.720p HDTV.CTU.en.srt
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30 Rock - 1x21 - Hiatus.HDTV.lol.fr.srt
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00:11:55,795 --> 00:11:58,711
On dirait líAmiral Ackbar.
((Ughh! Is that how far apart my eyes are? I look like Admiral Ackbar.))
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Family Guy - 8x20 - Something Something Something Dark Side.DVDRip.REWARD.en.srt
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00:16:57,816 --> 00:17:01,081
Yeah, I just got laser torpedoed
by an Imperial walker
and I need roadside assistance.
Of course, sir.
Am I speaking with Admiral Ackbar?
Yeah. Yes. Yes, I'm Admiral Ackbar.
(HOARSELY) It's a trap.
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Pushing Daisies - 2x07 - Robbing Hood.HDTV.lol.en.srt
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00:00:36,680 --> 00:00:40,640
For, aside from ned, eugene
had only two other companions --
bilbo, his lethargic indian
python, and ackbar, a bunny.
Eugene was devastated when he lerned that,
upon attempting to eat ackbar the bunny,
bilbo the snake choked,
killing them both.
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The Big Bang Theory - 2x19 - The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition.720p HDTV.CTU.en.srt
----------------------------------------------------
00:07:28,627 --> 00:07:30,739
I'm dressed like a slob today, too.
Oh, mimicry.
I enjoy mimicry.
I've been working on Admiral Ackbar
from <i>Return of the Jedi</i>.
"It's a trap."
You have to imagine me
with a giant squid head.
"It's a trap."
Come.
Congratulations,
So most likely 3 of these will end up in the final presentation. The Ackbar Bunny, until I watch the episode, is most likely out.
The process of finding references is highly annoying. So in Rinzler's "The Making of Star Wars" book, page 303. There are mentions of several films which fall under the banner which might have a reference:
<blockquote>The inevitable slate of imitations was quickly planned by other studios as well. Walt Disney productions began work on two films: Space Station One <edit> and The Cat from Outer Space.<blockquote>
Now I too enjoy pointing out Disney's continuous copying of everything and then contradictory response to other's creativity. But i've just sat through 'The Cat from Outer Space' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077305/) and I find it absolutely astounding that they would bother to mention this film at all. Sure there's a dogfight sequence at the end, and a space ship in the beginning, but to spend time to put this in the definitive book on Star Wars's history, it's laughable.
Here's the things which stuck out in my mind as possible references.
(characters look at the space ship dialog) "There she is" 31:50 (similar to ANH, Han in DS)
(ANH like dogfight between airplane and helicopter dialog) "Turn this thing around." "Hold on." "Here they come." "They're still on our tail." 1:32:00 The first is close to Ben but for the most part they're generic.
But this movie came out in 1978, but there's a bunch of things which sound similar to:
"The scoundrel." 54:00 ok that's just one word, but you've got to pick up verbage from somewhere.
"Why aren't they doing something" (sorta like RotJ where the Empire's fleet is waiting for the Emperors signal before attacking the rebel fleet.) again weak.
"It's a Trap!" 1:28:20 Could this be one of the inspirational clues for Ackbar's famous tirade?!
Anyway it's a conundrum why 'The Cat from Outer Space' is mentioned in the Making of Star Wars book. There seem to be more questionable inspirations then references.
...Luckily for every one of these questionable references, there are some definitive ones. Like Toxic Avenger 4 : Citizen Toxie, where the ending has Toxie (with a mop) fighting i guess his clone who's got a double ended mop, and while they're fighting (a la TPM) two in utero twins are mimicing their moves in their own fight. Now that's a quality Star Wars Reference.