Thanks for the compliment Tasjo, it means a lot. I love 'the Star Wars Holiday Special', both honestly and ironically. Every fan made 'Holiday Special' project is truly something extraordinary from the beginning. I mean, the odds against a source for this thing surviving in any reasonable quality for nearly forty years amazes me. Also, the motivation to preserve something that generally challenges popular opinion shows character in my book.
The material lends itself quite nicely to this type of community, as the very idea of how to preserve something of this nature can be a bit polarizing, leading to many varied attempts to do so in new and unique ways. When I put Gormaanda together, the goal was to bring what I considered to be the best elements from the two most popular releases into one package. I too considered splicing the remastered animation and WHIO Kenner toy ad into the WMAR commercials. However, my personal opinion ultimately fell in line with Feallan's. For better or worse, I wanted the viewing experience to feel as seamless as possible, and personally, I found the varying quality to be a distraction.
Where quality is concerned. What should the 'Holiday Special' look like? Forty years later, any conclusion would be truly subjective, right? Well, maybe not. "Legends of the Super Heroes' was a somewhat similar variety show that was produced for NBC not more than a few weeks after the SWHS. To get an idea of what a near-perfectly preserved picture would look like from this time, one needs only to look at the 'Warner Archive' release of this special. What's amazing is that the WHIO V2 source is by far the closest to this quality, without even being touched. Sure, it's a little softer and the colors aren't quite as vivid, but not really by that much. An interesting side note is that The same actor that played Solomon Grundy in LotSH (Mickey Morton), also played Malla, Chewbacca's wife.
The main area that the WHIO source falls shy of a broadcast master tape is in the audio. This is through no fault of Tasjo or even anyone else involved in it's short journey from it's broadcast recording, to it's DVD transfer. Rather it's a byproduct of the generally consistent fact that audio was a second class citizen in most consumer-based video technologies from the past. In this case, consumer-level magnetic tape recordings are generally plagued with low frequency "humming" and high frequency "hissing". Humming noises are mostly found when using cheap recorders and players. Thanks to Tasjo's impeccable taste in hardware, plus what we can only assume was a high-end recorder for the time, low frequency noise pollution is not a problem. Which only leaves us with the almost universally common high frequency "hiss".
Over the past few months, I've corresponded with several audio enthusiasts and even sat down with an audio engineer who has been working since the late 70s, in an effort to learn everything I could about audio repair. What I have learned is that there are two schools of thought regarding this subject. One is practical and the other is commercial. Commercial audio repair doesn't really account for good taste. Most people want a "hiss" gone at any cost to the overall quality of sound, simply because they claim it to be negligible to their perception. The more practical approach realizes and accepts that there is only so much you can do without destroying valuable audio information. This approach is an exercise in economy. Doing as little as possible to gain maximum effect.
This, of course, is all in preparation for a V2 of the Gormaanda hybrid, and I believe that the results have been well worth the extra effort. Speaking directly in regard to my own contributions, while I believe the Rifftrax sync was close enough to perfection, I was never happy with my mix. Mystery Science Theater 3000 is hands down my favorite show of all time. However, most Rifftrax mixes, be they fan-made or from the actual VOD team at Rifftrax, rely too heavily on auto-ducking for my tastes. MST3K was never mixed like that. Over ducking the background audio loses the natural effect of watching the movie with a group of friends, which to me was always part of the charm.
After much investigation as well as an unholy ammount of trial and error, I discovered that the main difference between a MST3K commentary track and a modern Rifftrack commentary track is simply dynamic range. MST3K CTs were recorded with head-worn microphones that captured all sound in an evenly flat volume range. Rifftrax CTs are recorded with the same high-end, stationary equipment used to record podcasts. As such, these mics pic up a range of high and low volumes from the commentators. This becomes problematic with people like Mike Nelson, who delivers much of his comedy under his breath. So, the solution would seem easy; flatten out the highs and lows of their recording into a nice middle ground. There's only one problem. We know what a Rifftrax is supposed to sound like. Removing those highs and lows would sound just as unnatural as over ducking the background audio in an episode of MST3K.
The solution came in the form of a compromise between techniques found in mixing both types of commentary tracks. Highs and lowes were narrowed ever so slightly in the foreground CT, while the upper volume of the background track was restricted from going too high and lastly, auto-ducking was only used to make the foreground audio "pop" from the background. As it now stands, V2 has a 6dB disparity between the foreground and background, whereas V1 had 14dB. Out of those numbers, auto-ducking accounts for only 3 of those dB in V2, while V1 ducked 8dB in total. I am very pleased with the results, as the mix is now almost indistinguishable from that of MST3K, while retaining almost all of the dynamic range found in a Rifftrax commentary.
Well, I've gone on way too long here, but I've followed this thread for some time without saying anything, so I suppose this can count as one or two entries. Again, every fan-made 'Holiday Special' project has a lot going for it in my opinion, based solely on the fortitude it takes to complete the project without cracking after having watched an Amorphian being build a mini transmitter for the two hundredth time. There's something very wrong with all of us for wanting more of this damned thing, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't wait to see what you guys have in store for the future. You can look for my V2 closer to Life Day on MySpleen.
So it's goodnight friends. Goodnight, but not goodbye.
