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Post #717309

Author
Ronster
Parent topic
Empire Strikes Back Soundtrack Restored and Rescored Demo project
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/717309/action/topic#717309
Date created
21-Jul-2014, 7:39 AM

So a little more detective work and I have known about this for some time this is the other awkward audio cut in Empire strikes Back.

What's more amusing is many people will slag the special edition off for ruining the music when actually the music has been ruined from the original thetrical release with about 5 seconds cut from it.

I am talking about Lukes Rescue from the underside of cloud city of course. I do agree the special edition totally ruined the music and the pacing the way it was cut and edited but the this piece has always never been complete.

Here is a rough streaming audio clip that shows where the missing 5 seconds occur.

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/ujwk3a5b84kodn2/cloud+city+rescue+rough+timimng.wav

Now the thing about this particular cut is that the footage has never been released and it would be very difficult to restore this small section of music of about 5 seconds to the film. But judging by script entries vs the music it seems that the film had been streamlined down and because of this the music cut happened. But I think that we are talking about 2 missing shots in those 5 seconds. one of Lando clambouring to get luke in the flacon and a shot of chewie growling and the falcon rocking due to a nearby explosion / flak blast. They seem to have changed the tempo of the music throughout the sequence to accomodate the footage and smooth out the cut's to footage. It would be really interesting to see how this sequence played before the cuts I hope one day we get to see this missing 5 seconds. It starts with a slightly extended shot of Lando looking around which we see in the Empire Strikes Back trailer...

Wether this scene could be recreated with small stop motion figures of Lando and Luke on the top side of the falcon. A shot of Chewie could be perhaps re-used when the blast occurs and then cut to Leia for her concern. 5 seconds is not much footage. But even I have to wonder if this is also possible or not.

I also want to refer to the 8mm mono track that has Leia saying "Hurry we've got company" now this is placed after she says "Lando?" I am going to say that this line was delivered prior to this before the BOOM! that rocks the falcon then we would see Lando struggle with Luke cut back to Leia then saying "Lando?" But this audio line further backs up that the scene was only a small part Lando ontop of the falcon The majority of the sequence was in cockpit of those 5 seconds. Again I am guessing but The music backs it up by there being no flourish with the explosion mentioned in the script.

Just found the missing cockpit shot... First time I have ever seen it so my hunch was right. "Hurry, we've got company"...Bang!

This brings me to the end of the cut score for this demo project and I can't help but want to see the version we not only never heard but also never saw. I looked through the Original trilogy story boards book yesterday and neither Lando rescuing Luke on top of the falcon or the probe droid at dawn are in the the book. Strange that... Perhaps they were never story boarded but if they have the probe droid going into to hibernation during the blizzard why did they not story board the probe droid emerging and continuing it's search... It's in the script so this just seems like a weird thing to leave out. They have alternative scenes of Luke being rescued being scooped up by the falcon which I don't think ever got made into film they obviously were going with Lando pulling him inside on top of the falcon but it never has seen the light of day. Hibernating probe droid is not something I feel that needs to be seen in the film but a shot of the probe droid at dawn and perhaps becoming alerted to the Snowspeeders is though and that to me makes perfect sense in terms of a worthy edit to make not only because Mcquarrie did art for it but it helps as a reminder to the threat the probe droid poses and put 1 and 1 together to explain what happened (Snowspeeders rescuing Han and Luke Gave away the location of Echo Base).

Unless anyone can point anything else out about cut score then I think I will draw my part to a close on this and welcome anyone to pitch up any ideas or what ever they think.

Anyway I'll just leave this here.....

So now for some more radical edits....