Star Wars Custom Blu Ray Saga Set (a WIP)

ORIGINAL FIRST POST:

"Hello all!

I’ve been planning on authoring a custom blu ray set for star wars which I will begin as soon as I get my hard drive fixed.  The plan is to include every version of the films (minus 2011 for the original trilogy), as well as the best bonus material I can get my hands on.  Each film (apart from maybe AOTC and ROTS) will have three discs: Theatrical version, special edition, and bonus material.  I just personally prefer each film to have its own bonus material disc than have a separate box for bonus material from all the films.  I’ve only really started getting a list of bonus material done for ANH, but will move on to the others soon.  I  would appreciate any help suggesting and finding bonus material, so please let me know if there is something you think just has to be on the special features disc of any particular movie.  At a certain point I will design blu ray box art for each film.  The idea is to create a kind of “ultimate edition” set of these movies."  
 

CONTENT LIST (will be updated as project develops):
 

THE PHANTOM MENACE

DISC ONE:

• The film - Theatrical (1999)

DISC TWO:

• The film - The Saga Edition (2011)

DISC THREE:

• The Beginning: Making Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace
• Trailers
• (various bonus features)
   

ATTACK OF THE CLONES

DISC ONE:

• The film

DISC TWO:

• Trailers
• (various bonus features)
   

REVENGE OF THE SITH

DISC ONE:

• The film

DISC TWO:

• Trailers
• (various bonus features)
   

A NEW HOPE

DISC ONE:

• The film - Theatrical (1977)
• The film - Re-release (1981)

DISC TWO:

• The film - Special Edition (1997)
• The film - Special Edition Re-Release (2004)

DISC THREE:

• The film - The Saga Edition (2011)

DISC FOUR:

• Trailers
• Empire of Dreams: Part 1
• The Making of Star Wars… as told by C3PO and R2D2 (1977)
• Star Wars: The Making of the Myth
• Star Wars Begins
• The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)
• Leonard Maltin Interviews George Lucas: Part 1 (1995)
• The Force is With Them: The Legacy of Star Wars (2004)
• Anatomy of a Dewback (1997)
• 1978 Academy Awards
• Workprint Extended Edition
   

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

DISC ONE:

• The film - Theatrical (1980)

DISC TWO:

• The film - Special Edition (1997)
• The film - Special Edition Re-Release (2004)

DISC THREE:

• The film - The Saga Edition (2011)

DISC FOUR:

• Trailers
• Empire of Dreams: Part 2
• Leonard Maltin Interviews George Lucas: Part 2 (1995)
• Ben Burtt Interviews from the Lucasfilm Archives
• Building Empire
• The Birth of the Lightsaber (2004)
• The Empire Strikes Back: SPFX (1980)
• A Conversation with the Masters: The Empire Strikes Back 30 Years Later
• Workprint Extended Edition
   

RETURN OF THE JEDI

DISC ONE:

• The film - Theatrical (1983)

DISC TWO:

• The film - Special Edition (1997)
• The film - Special Edition Re-Release (2004)

DISC THREE:

• The film - The Saga Edition (2011)

DISC FOUR

• Trailers
• Empire of Dreams: Part 3
• Leonard Maltin Interviews George Lucas: Part 3 (1995)
• From Star Wars to Jedi
• Returning to Jedi
• The Characters of Star Wars (2004)
• Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi (1983)
• Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (1984)
• Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985)
• Workprint Extended Edition

 
Once again, any suggestions for bonus material to add is greatly appreciated.  I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.

For SW, ESB, and ROTJ I will probably use Harmy's versions simply due to it being the best theatrical presentation so far just in my opinion (so long as he has no problem with it + he will be credited + hopefully ROTJ 2.0 will be out by the time I get to it) However, I might be open to the idea of redoing the BDs when better new restorations come out of the woodwork.  I will probably have to recreate the '81 crawl for SW in After Effects myself based on a laserdisc rip.

For TPM I honestly am not sure yet and I may just have to use an HDTV copy of the DVD version as a "close approximation" to the theatrical version.

You've got some strange choices with what editions are included. I would honestly recommend the theatrical, 97, and 2011 versions of the OT. I would also include the DVD version of AOTC since it is somewhat different than the BD version.

Darth Lucas said:

For TPM I honestly am not sure yet and I may just have to use an HDTV copy of the DVD version as a "close approximation" to the theatrical version.

 There are actually a couple of decent theatrical versions of TPM floating around out there. There's a laserdisc capture that's not too bad, an SD TV broadcast version that's okay, and a DVD quality reconstructions done by Adywan. There's also a project currently underway creating a 1080p reconstruction of the theatrical version.

Why did you decide to use SOME different cuts and not all of them? I mean there are many more versions of each movie

Considering so many SW editions have to be re-edited into theatrical cuts, I do wonder if an Attack of the Clones IMAX theatrical cut will be done by a fan and included in your set?

pittrek said:

Why did you decide to use SOME different cuts and not all of them? I mean there are many more versions of each movie

 Because most different cuts hafe such small changes in comparison to another cut that I found it really not worth the space on the disc. I wanted to include the different cuts that provided a noticeably different viewing experience. My thinking is this:

for sw: 1977 & 1981 so you have the option of with or without "ANH"

1997&2004 because there are noticeable, big differences between them i.e Jabba. 

For ESB and ROTJ I only plan on having 1997 because the differences between those and 2004 are so minuscule. 

To answer another question, I suppose I can include the 2011 versions of all the films of there is that much call for them to be included. My thinking was just that most people have these versions on blu Ray already and unlike TPM, the changes for the OT versions are pretty much universally hated. 

Darth Lucas said:

For ESB and ROTJ I only plan on having 1997 because the differences between those and 2004 are so minuscule. 

 I think the difference of Hayden in ROTJ 2004 is something that most of us here would consider "enormous". Certainly on par with changing Jabba's model in ANH.

Empire's changes are smaller in general, but I think the 1997->2004 changes are certainly noticeable: New Emperor, new Boba voice, removal of scream.

But also, this is a Blu-ray set. The 2004 editions can be included at 1080p and fairly high quality. The 1997 editions will never look as good as the rest of your set.

If your goal isn't to release every version (and it doesn't seem to be), then don't sweat it. But you might just want to be consistent and use a set of 1997, or 2004, or 2011 rather than mix it up for each film.

You are completely right. Since I'd only really begun work mapping out ANH, ESB and ROTJ I put in pretty much spur of the moment as placeholders and had a complete brain fart in remembering the differences. I feel like a total idiot. It's pretty early here and I'm writing these posts as I get ready for work so please forgive me for such a gross oversight. 

I will include either the 2004 or 2011 versions of ESB and Jedi, or both 04 abd 11. 

Darth Lucas said:

You are completely right. Since I'd only really begun work mapping out ANH, ESB and ROTJ I put in pretty much spur of the moment as placeholders and had a complete brain fart in remembering the differences. I feel like a total idiot. It's pretty early here and I'm writing these posts as I get ready for work so please forgive me for such a gross oversight. 

I will include either the 2004 or 2011 versions of ESB and Jedi, or both 04 abd 11. 

 Eh, no worries. It's difficult to come up with a good plan without getting absolutely obsessed with including every variation. And despite the better image quality of 2004 and 2011, the color is substantially better in the 1997.

Well actually, since the changes are more important to me than the God-awful colors of 04, the plan is just to color correct those scenes which are different from 97 and then have them play out via a bridging feature. So if you select to watch the 04 version, it will play out the 97 version up until the point where you come to a scene that is different, then it will jump to the 04 version of said scene. Does that make sense? I feel as if I'm not explaining myself well. 

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply play the 2011 version as-is, and maybe have seamless branching to the HDTV 2004 version, since their color profiles match? Note: maybe do this with Schorman's 04 trilogy on myspleen. Great quality.

For the 1997, you could simply use the TB release. I mean, you could do the 2004 and seamlessly branch to an upscaled TB. Color correcting the 04 to that extent would be big project, though.

The idea with the branching was to save as much space on the disc as possible since I want all of the special editions on the same disc. if I decide to include all 3 versions, 97, 04, and 11, I can branch between all 3.  This is all just planning at this point though. Once I get my harddrive fixed I'll do some tests to see if the space saved is worth the bigger effort. I think most of us would agree that having 04 and 11 color corrected would make them far easier to watch though. 

BD25 or BD50? I think you may find yourself surprised at just how many changes there are between 1997 and 2004. A BD50 could fit the 97 separately, and a branching 04/11.

If you did try to do seamless branching between all 3, I think it would be a shame to use '97 as a base and reduce the quality of everything else. If you try to pull this off 2011 as a starting point would make the most sense.

For a quick and decent color correction, the user "age" uploaded some great LUTs that get the Blurays into much better shape. Not enough to fix the magenta laser illuminations and some other problems, though.

I was just about to edit my post as I've just seen your LUT for the first time. :) Looks very nice!

Aand this is why I stattend this thread. Haha. What I'll probably end up doing is branching between 04 and 11 and keeping 97 separate. Keep suggestions coming guys it is really helpful and beneficial to the final product. 

List updated (see first post)

In my own personal taste, I would rather feel like I'm watching a crisp hd transfer of the original whilst knowing they are flawed reconstructions than feel like I'm watching a -SD laserdisc whilst knowing it is 100% original. 

No disrespect intended, I thank you for your input snd help, but for my own personal taste I'll probably be sticking with harmys at least for the time being. TPM is still up in the air. 

RU.08 said:

Harmy's trilogy and Adywan's Ep1 are reconstructions of an approximation to the theatrical cut. They still contain considerable differences (especially the OT films). Branching from Ep1 Theatrical to the DVD version is possible, as there are less differences than in the OT where virtually all opticals were re-done for the 1997 SE.

I can give you an Avisynth script that enhances Althor's LD rip without losing the unique characteristics of the source (contrast, colour, etc). It's watchable and only slightly below DVD quality.

There will also be, at some point, DrDre's SuperResolution scripts. Either way, I definitely see the value of using actual OOT source if compiling BluRays with a goal of representing every real release of the film accurately. But I don't think that's the goal here (despite the fact that it's inching in that direction). In my opinion, though, Dre's script and maybe a little extra editing may result in something of good enough quality for a set like this.

As for episode 1, it seems to me that the best thing for him to do would be to wait for your reconstruction, and then he can cleanly branch from that/schorman04/2011, right?

I've been following DrDre's project and it does look great in terms of detail, however even with his most recent version there is still a ton of work to be done in terms of color and aliasing in order to make it a viable theatrical experience.  

If I use a GOUT sourced project, it would most likely be TeamBlu's, as next to the DeSpecialized Editions, I consider them the most watchable restoration efforts that have come out of here.  That's totally not a slam at other projects, I'm just saying that those two are the ones I can watch and forget that I'm watching a fan restoration.  The experience of watching the films is, to me, just as important if not more important than the accuracy of the restoration.  At its heart, that's what this project is.  It's creating an experience for the viewer from the minute they pull the blu ray off the shelf.

Would there be any interest in a kind of "extended workprint" feature where you can watch the films with deleted scenes (in their rough forms) re-insterted? It would accomplished once again through seamless branching and would only be a kind of special feature, not one of the actual "versions". 

I think it might be an interesting alternative to just including deleted scenes as a bonus feature, since most people watch deleted scenes to wonder what it would be like if they were kept in the film.