Preserving the...cringe...Star Wars Holiday Special (Released) — Page 15

Nice, but also DAMN!  I literally as I type this am putting the finishing touches on a hybrid of my own that I've been working on.  Oh well the more the merrier...

Well, if you're using those high quality versions of the commercials, you've already got an edge over mine. I didn't even notice those were posted on Usenet until I started uploading this.

Yeah I used those but with mine I added them to KCCI, they're nice but still not perfect.  My thing was I didn't want to re-encode the special itself and I was able to do all editing without changing quality.

I wish we knew each other was doing this, perhaps two heads would've been better.  Maybe after we see each others.  I'm trying to clean up the audio right now without making it too flat, damn vhs.  I'm kind of just ready to leave the audio original since I didn't touch the video.

Mine's actually been finished for several months. I just never got around to posting it. I was supposed to give SKot a copy at Celebration V but we couldn't manage to hook up. When I realized that today was Life Day, I had to upload it.

Looking forward to seeing yours. :)

Happy Life Day, everyone!

Still unfortunate that we missed each other, Zion...would have been fun to talk shop.  Hopefully I can snag that hybrid, though I haven't had access to a.b.sw for a long time.

What's the story on the high-quality commercials?

Oh, and BTW to anyone: I just updated starwarsholidayspecial.com last night with images from an early story treatment for the Holiday Special that debuted at the Ralph McQuarrie exhibit at Celebration V, and more info to come hopefully tonight.  The treatment dates back to March 1978, and offers an amusing look at what the Holiday Special might have been...for better or for worse!

--SKot

SKot said:

What's the story on the high-quality commercials?

They are mkvs of the WMAR commercials.  Generally decent video and sound, not earth shattering though.  In the end I'd say a couple of notches below KCCI's quality.  I had to re-encode them into mpeg2s in order to be able to edit them into KCCI without re-encoding the special.  Overall with what I'm doing with the sound I think I've got them to match and flow pretty good.  The only thing I'm wondering now is what's the best way to get this out there when I'm done.  I kind of can only do rapidshare right now, but I know everyone has their preference whether it be groups, torrents, etc.

Looks like I'll have to go back to your site Skot to check out the new McQuarrie stuff.  It seems like the "might have been" was something a lot better.  From the info on your site I decided to track down a copy of Filmfax 69/70 with that great article in it.  Reading it there definitely was a lot more potential in the the earlier stages, before the TV people just took things over.  Looking at it in its 2 hour bloated state now you can almost squint your eyes and see the leaner/better 1 hour long story that it was supposed to be.  Well almost :)

Any idea who the source was for those commercials balsho?

Nice updates SKot! Very interesting to read about the original story ideas. Sounds like they might have made some of the changes due to budget constraints.

Zion said:

Any idea who the source was for those commercials balsho?

If they're the ones from a.b.sw from quite a while ago, they're just the extracted commercials from WMAR. If I remember rightly (no guarantee there), the commercials were even separate VOBs within the WMAR disc structure.

Nice. Is the full DVD still floating around anywhere?

Yeah that's why I asked earlier if there's a full WMAR dvd still out there.  I'd like to compare the commercials to the ones off groups, because these while pretty damn good do seem to have been re-encoded after being taken off the dvd.

I haven't read the new McQuarrie stuff yet, but from the big article in Filmfax the main issue that seems to have been the kiss of death for the special was not too much a money thing but time.  GL's original story and most of the initial planning was for the thing to be 1 hour, but to get more time for more commercials the TV producers painfully padded it with crap to make it 2 hours.

From what I understand, and if we're talking about the same files, then they are re-encoded straight from the DVD. Back then I was told that the mkvs had been ripped, encoded, and posted. I'm also told that it was child's play splitting the vobs to extract the commercials.

Well if anyone has the commercials in their raw VOB form then please maybe upload them somewhere if you can.  But it looks like I'll just continue and finish with my version as is.

Thank you Skot, i just got to read the treatment on your site.  I'm betting that its probably Lucas', or at least more in the direction of his, original plan for the thing.  Then the TV production team shoehorned in their variety television stuff.  In that filmfax article you can just see how once Lucas wasn't involved it just all fell apart.  Hmm lets put Carney, Korman, and Bea Arthur to get some "name recognition".  Lets put Diahann Carroll somewhere because, I'm quoting:"the network wants black people".  The original director wanted to keep it fresh and more obscure like it should have been, but they wouldn't let him so he quit.  The original story there sounded like it would've been pretty great if they could have stuck to it.

Interesting.... it almost sounds as if the intent was to make up for the fact that Chewie never got a medal at the end of STAR WARS (by the end, he is the main hero who is rewarded singularly).  It probably would have still been pretty cheezy, but hey... it would have had Raquel Welch in it!

Woah, the French audio is hilarious.

I'm assuming those were original dubs for broadcast? Scary.

In all the search for commentaries I'd never considered foreign languages. Does anyone know if there's a decent source for just the audio?

balsho said:

Well if anyone has the commercials in their raw VOB form then please maybe upload them somewhere if you can.  But it looks like I'll just continue and finish with my version as is.

Thank you Skot, i just got to read the treatment on your site.  I'm betting that its probably Lucas', or at least more in the direction of his, original plan for the thing.  Then the TV production team shoehorned in their variety television stuff.  In that filmfax article you can just see how once Lucas wasn't involved it just all fell apart.  Hmm lets put Carney, Korman, and Bea Arthur to get some "name recognition".  Lets put Diahann Carroll somewhere because, I'm quoting:"the network wants black people".  The original director wanted to keep it fresh and more obscure like it should have been, but they wouldn't let him so he quit.  The original story there sounded like it would've been pretty great if they could have stuck to it.

 When I looked at the story treatment, I saw a lot of things in there that I felt were more "Lucas" than what came later.  But I also saw some things that seemed distinctly non-Lucas...for instance, the "Wookiees enjoy the beat of rock & roll" just didn't seem like it came from George.  And the insistence of including Raquel Welch didn't seem like a Lucas thing either, unless he had some secret yen for her that nobody knew about!

Last night I looked at my timeline, and I noticed that Steve and Mitzi Welch wrote their treatment in March, the same month this treatment is dated.  I'm guessing this is theirs, with a few of Lucas' ideas still intact at this point.

--SKot

Yeah I'd say its feels like the 2nd or 3rd draft after Lucas' original synopsis.  Like 85% definite SW feel with a few of the crap things that eventually tainted the special thrown in.  Its great to finally get a sense of the original intentions of the thing, but also a bit crappy because I really like the direction that that story took.

I'm putting work on my hybrid on hold until I can see if the dvd version of WMAR has better quality commercials than the ones off of groups that I've used.  I should know next week then I'll continue.

I have a fleeting memory of ForceCast doing a commentary for (probably) the KCCI version of the Special. Unfortunately, all I have on my hard drive are the MMM commentary and RiffTrax files.

Anyone remember this or, better still, have a link?

NO WONDER I COULDN'T FIND IT!

Imperial HoloNet Radio. It's another commentary for WMAR: commercials attached, introductory crawl. Not sure if I've ever listened to it all the way through, but it starts interestingly. Now trying to cut out the introductory material so it syncs...

I've sampled both of these commentaries a bit, while definitely not on the level of Rifftrax, they do seem like some fun.  If there's maybe some spare room on the disc, I may just try to throw them on the version I'm working on.  I hope the two groups wouldn't mind.

I meant the other 2 that are free to download, MMM and Holonet Radio.  With Rifftrax I feel bad, and I can only hope that anyone that hasn't paid for it will do the right thing at their donation page.  This one I do consider a little different from their other releases.  The Special isn't commercially available and the video that they used was a not so great youtube version of not the best copy out there.  My main goal is to make it fit with KCCI, what I consider to be the best version.

Come to think of it though no matter how I spin it I still do feel kind of shitty.  I may just keep it to myself, or leave it rifftraxless if I release it.

My take is this, formed when I was considering such a project and thought I might someday have the time and funds to make it work.

I had similar qualms about the RiffTrax commentary.

For the other two I was going to put an attribution: who made it, and the web site logo.

And I'd probably do the same with RiffTrax with the moral imperative that if used (enjoyed? not sure) then a small donation / user's fee was due the crew at RiffTrax.

The track even indicates the likelihood that the track will propagate widely on the Internet. At least this would be a project that encouraged payment where due. Doesn't make it right, of course...