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THX on 35mm Tech IB preservation - HELP NEEDED (work in progress) — Page 7

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For its age, it isn’t too bad, but the low resolution and heavy compression of the samples I uploaded hide a lot of the dirt and scratches and other damage. I’ll upload some higher resolution samples so you can see what I mean. However, for all that, the print was an excellent purchase and as good as we are likely to ever find for a 1970s small release film!

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I took Poita’s newest sample and attempted to sync it with the Japanese LD rip that’s floating around. What I did was take the LD video and shrank it until it was a small frame in the bottom corner and then put the 35mm sample underneath in its full resolution. At first I attempted to sync them at the first shot after the credit roll. Unfortunately, the shots don’t match. For instance, the LD starts with a shot of a clock and then the shot of the security camera in THX’s medical cabinet, whereas the 35mm sample goes straight to the security camera. The closest I could get something decent was by linking the beginning of the shot of the oscilloscope. Even then you notice that shots tend to be shorter by a few frames or later shots are out of order and this creates a cascading effect where nothing is in sync anymore further down the timeline.

I wonder how the 1971 16mm print relates to either of these cuts. I’d need to fire up my external HD but I’m stuck babysitting right now…

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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poita said:

For its age, it isn’t too bad, but the low resolution and heavy compression of the samples I uploaded hide a lot of the dirt and scratches and other damage. I’ll upload some higher resolution samples so you can see what I mean. However, for all that, the print was an excellent purchase and as good as we are likely to ever find for a 1970s small release film!

I guess I keep thinking about the Star Wars prints and the Matrix print and how absolutely beat up they are and here we have a film that older than either of those and it seems to be in relatively awesome shape.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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The film was nowhere near as popular, so probably wasn’t run anywhere near as many times. It is plenty beat up though, the hi-rez sample will be up in about an hour (which is how long my internet takes to upload 2 seconds of compressed UHD footage)

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Mavimao said:

Fanstastic! I honestly can’t get over how pristine this print is, especially considering its age. I guess it helps that it wasn’t a popular film so it didn’t get shown over and over again.

Also: I can’t say 100%, but it does look like the US cut, but with no Buck Rodgers. The rabbit hole goes further…

It makes sense that they would remove Buck Rogers for the Italian release, the beginning of the film is already not the easiest thing to understand for a generic audience, Buck Rogers would have been even more confusing considering that in Italy we don’t (or didn’t) know who he was. It’s a pop culture moment that would have made no sense to us. They removed the track 29 joke from the train station sequence in Young Frankenstein for the same reason

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thxita said:

Mavimao said:

Fanstastic! I honestly can’t get over how pristine this print is, especially considering its age. I guess it helps that it wasn’t a popular film so it didn’t get shown over and over again.

Also: I can’t say 100%, but it does look like the US cut, but with no Buck Rodgers. The rabbit hole goes further…

It makes sense that they would remove Buck Rogers for the Italian release, the beginning of the film is already not the easiest thing to understand for a generic audience, Buck Rogers would have been even more confusing considering that in Italy we don’t (or didn’t) know who he was. It’s a pop culture moment that would have made no sense to us. They removed the track 29 joke from the train station sequence in Young Frankenstein for the same reason

I didn’t get that joke either and I’m American!

Right, so I played the LD along with the 16mm b/w sample up until THX leaves work at the beginning and they match up. So the 35mm print is yet another unique cut.

I’m trying to download the Italian TV broadcast to see how it and the 35 compare but there are only two seeders and it’s going to take a couple of days.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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I’ll put the PC on to give you a hand 😉

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Another verison? THX is the ultimate rabbit hole! No bottom in sight!

Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

thxita said:

I’ll put the PC on to give you a hand 😉

3 seeders! Thanks!

Right, so instead of scrubbing through the timeline, I’m actually watching it the whole way through and I know what’s causing everything to go off sync:

  1. Missing clock shot at beginning. Perhaps the other shots are a bit short. The edit is pretty much the same after the multi-block effect with THX on the floor surrounded by the guards.
  2. The Italian intercuts (RADIATION and “Subjecte”) are of different lengths.
  3. There’s a missing shot in the 35 at the 1st reel change. In the LD around the 20 minute mark, you’ve got the men “mall-walking” down the corridor -> Shot of man behind glass marked "Unassigned Space #3) -> A man looking at a sign with a bunch of letters. This last shot of the man looking at the letters in missing in the 35mm. (EDIT: This shot is present in the 1971 16mm version)

ONTO REEL 2!

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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Mavimao said:

thxita said:

Mavimao said:

Fanstastic! I honestly can’t get over how pristine this print is, especially considering its age. I guess it helps that it wasn’t a popular film so it didn’t get shown over and over again.

Also: I can’t say 100%, but it does look like the US cut, but with no Buck Rodgers. The rabbit hole goes further…

It makes sense that they would remove Buck Rogers for the Italian release, the beginning of the film is already not the easiest thing to understand for a generic audience, Buck Rogers would have been even more confusing considering that in Italy we don’t (or didn’t) know who he was. It’s a pop culture moment that would have made no sense to us. They removed the track 29 joke from the train station sequence in Young Frankenstein for the same reason

I didn’t get that joke either and I’m American!

Right, so I played the LD along with the 16mm b/w sample up until THX leaves work at the beginning and they match up. So the 35mm print is yet another unique cut.

I’m trying to download the Italian TV broadcast to see how it and the 35 compare but there are only two seeders and it’s going to take a couple of days.

Well, if I’m not mistaken any home video release was altered in some way from the theatrical release (which until now was more or less a mystery open to speculation). Your head will explode once you see the Italian TV broadcast.

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Here is a beginning of reel sample @ UHD resolution so you can see all of the damage detail. The heads and tails tend to be the worst areas of a film.
https://we.tl/ClDZjBS7sd

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
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Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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 (Edited)

Right, found a major change in reel two:

After the “mind block” scene, when THX is taken away, we see him on the floor with a bloodied back and the guards are tying his hands… The two differ after this:

  • On the LD, it cuts to his trial and then in the white room surrounded by guards with sticks. Then he’s on the operating table getting his “surgery”. Then cuts to him on the floor convulsing and there are two men talking over a TV image of him convulsing. He wakes up, LUH runs to him, they make love. They are then surrounded by guards.

  • On the 35mm sample, it cuts to him in the big white room on the floor and LUH runs to him. They make love and are surrounded by the guards. Then there’s THX getting his “surgery”. Then the trial scene. Then THX is sitting on the floor in the white room and is surrounded by guards with sticks.

Unless it’s on another reel, the scene with THX in convulsions while the two men talk is missing from this 35mm cut.

EDIT: Just watched the 1971 16mm clip at this point and it’s exactly in the same order as this 35mm sample. So, this Italian cut is pretty much the 1971 cut with inserted Italian computer information screens and credits and a missing shot after the credits and at the end of reel 1.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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You’ll see from Italian broadcast that the order of scenes is different in our version. Trial, arrest, testing etc are not in the same order as seen on LD. We listed differences back then in the 1000+ pages thread about THX but it has become too difficult to go through it… that’s why you have just been given the role of “differences checker”. May OMM be with you 😉

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thxita said:

You’ll see from Italian broadcast that the order of scenes is different in our version. Trial, arrest, testing etc are not in the same order as seen on LD. We listed differences back then in the 1000+ pages thread about THX but it has become too difficult to go through it… that’s why you have just been given the role of “differences checker”. May OMM be with you 😉

Hahaha! Do I get a red foam cube for being good?

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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thxita said:

Dendrites coming your way

Dendrite! I was way off…

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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poita said:

Here is a beginning of reel sample @ UHD resolution so you can see all of the damage detail. The heads and tails tend to be the worst areas of a film.
https://we.tl/ClDZjBS7sd

Ah, indeed there is a good amount of damage. How are you going to go about fixing this damage? Will you be using an automated approach or entirely manual? I suppose you have an IR matte?

This is a really wonderful final project you’re working on. Thank you again for everything you’re doing.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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 (Edited)

poita said:
Here is the segment for Spaced Ranger:
https://we.tl/QqRu36MOrd

Thanks!! (Sorry for the delay … I just had to try some tests immediately!)

I thought to try a Technicolorize™ (proportionally enriching evermore alone primaries) to get it stronger. Funny thing was, aside from it emphasizing the mis-registered edges, the interior color didn’t change much. It was almost like processing equal R-G-B . . . as in a B&W picture. Hmmm. So next was to align the registration (it looked like a simple horizontal stretch/squeeze) before trying again. And guess what happened . .

[old incorrect picture (wrong recombine produced “B&W”) replaced by corrected one (proper recombine)]

. . the picture went to B&W (mostly B&W, as I’m probably off by half-pixels or smeared resizing)!
. . nothing. The skin color, such as it is, was still there. (Pardon my previous test mess – I must’ve made a recombine with channel duplicated. Oh, well.)

It is interesting supposition that the early shot may have actually been B&W, by mistake (lost/damaged negative with only B&W dailies remaining) or deliberately (for a “monitor shot”). In the editing it was either lose the B&W shot (no time/budget for a monitor effect nor a re-shoot in color) or use it as is because it was such a good shot. Later (one of the GL re-releases) they tried to fix it up as best they could. Did they “invent” what we just found out? That making a deliberate mis-registration, and/or altering the brightness/contrast of the R-G-B channels, with hiding all the rough edges in the size reduction to consumer-grade releases, would result in a “passable color” shot?
Still … Look at every other shot of children in the movie – strong and saturated photography. But this shot stands alone in it’s oddly weak and unnatural color/tinting. … It still bothers me. Must work up a new theory . . .

That’s my working theory at this point.

ADDED:

BTW, even without RGB alignment of this shot (the same if it was aligned and then deliberately misaligned), I resized it (consumer video size), set black (black leather) & white (lights) points, and added a touch more of saturation – all to the laserdisc snapshot values from early in this thread.
At least this shows it’s been the same over several releases … more or less. Hmmm.

film:

laserdisc:

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So I’ve watched the Italian broadcast and here’s my personal opinion of this particular version: it’s a fullframe 16mm print that’s been cut up, rearranged and shortened. All of the changes have tape splices and judging by the size they appear on the image, they’ve been done to a 16mm print. All of this points to an unofficial version done by perhaps the TV studio.

Here are the changes I’ve noticed compared to the 35mm print (after the obvious changes to the beginning):

At around the 11:30 mark, LUH says ‘THX is that you?’ and she appears from around the corner and then, it cuts to her info text screen. In the 35mm version, it goes from this shot of her coming around the corner to the medicinal cabinet security shot to a shot of a man at a surveillance station and then her text info.

At around 14:52; they cut out a shot of LUH with her face to a wall that cross fades into the nuns walking. In the broadcast version, it goes from a shot of LUH watching the hologram to the nuns halfway through the corridor. Again, there is that tape splice.

At around 15:40, there’s a splice after THX’s second ‘confession’. It’s missing a longer shot of him throwing up.

At around 19:15: Splice! Goes from the men jogging to the malfunctioning guard. Missing two shots: the man looking out the window and the man staring at numbers.

At around 20:46: There’s a minute and 20 seconds spliced out after THX and LUH have their talk in the crowd. It’s missing a surveillance shot and shots of THX at home before deciding to investigate over at SEN’s place. Again, tape splice.

At 23:12: Another tape splice. Missing shots: LUH asking for THX (“Tex??”) and then shots of them praying to the Jedi-monk hologram.

At 24:33. Tape Splice. Weird shower shot is cut.

(subtitle spelling mistake: ‘You’re loosing it’ should be: You’re losing it)

After THX’s arrest, the shot order of this section in the Italian Broadcast matches that of the 35mm and the 16mm.

I stopped here since we don’t have the rest of the film.

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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I chose wisely when I put you in charge of checking the differences.
I’ll make more hypothesis once I have the audio too. If what you said is true it will just add more questions! Ahah
Unfortunately we’ll have to wait utill the second part is scanned to have more clues, from the audio in particular.

Sorry for the typo on the subtitles. They were triple checked but some stuff still escapes.

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 (Edited)

If it was done by the Italian TV station, why does it match with Lucas’ claim that the WB execs insisted he recut it to “put the freaks up front”? Coincidence?

Has Lucas really been exaggerating the level of studio interference with THX’s final cut, or did they really call for changes that didn’t end up being made on the theatrical cut (a la the “Love Conquers All” cut of Brazil not ending up being what was released to theaters), but this cut was used for the Italian TV version (again, similar to the “Love Conquers All” cut of Brazil only showing up on TV)?

Are his claims that the film was bastardized in the editing room by the studio execs just a result of him having a persecution complex about his treatment by Hollywood? And does this mean the 1978 recut wasn’t about restoring the artistic integrity of the film, but just Lucas being Lucas and tinkering with it? (And where does the claim come from that the home video edit of THX was itself slightly different from the 1978 theatrical reissue edit?)

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 (Edited)

It would be really interesting if Lucas was being dishonest about his edits at that point in time. Rather than just having let his fame and fortune go to his head, it would really paint him to be more the pathological liar. And no one would have really judged him or cared, at the time, if he had made changes to THX. If he was trying to convince anyone, it was himself. Which is interesting to keep in mind when listening to him in cases like the SW blu-ray commentary, where almost every sentence out of him is a justification of some sort. I always assumed those justifications were aimed at the audiences, but perhaps it’s for himself as well.

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 (Edited)

I have been suspicious all along about Lucas’ claims that WB ruined THX, which was why I have been so keen on finding the 1971 prints, as no one , including Lucas has ever stated exactly what the changes were. Having no record of what was changed, when the story has become such a big part of film-making folklore always really bugged me. I often wondered if the changes were small, but Lucas blew them up a bit after the film was not a success, or if the changes really did make the movie different enough that it wrecked the entire narrative.

It looks like they were small after all, maybe the proposed changes were a lot greater, but the theatrical releases look like they were only slightly different to his later Director’s Cut release after Star Wars. I guess we won’t know until I get the other reels, but going on the 16mm and the first two reels of the 35mm it certainly looks that way.

So the scene of THX being messed with by the doctors and convulsing is not in the 35mm but is in the home releases? Supposedly that scene was Lucas expressing his horror at the doctors who treated him after his near-fatal car crash as a youth, so I imagine he would have hated taking that out.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
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Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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 (Edited)

“So the scene of THX being messed with by the doctors and convulsing is not in the 35mm but is in the home releases?”

I’m sure it’s in the second part where he gets “jailed” for good. Check my TV broadcast version, they are probably in the same order. I remember subtitling that scene.

As for Lucas, all his THX story comes from the 2004 DVD. Enough said.

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Mavimao said:

So I’ve watched the Italian broadcast and here’s my personal opinion of this particular version: it’s a fullframe 16mm print that’s been cut up, rearranged and shortened. All of the changes have tape splices and judging by the size they appear on the image, they’ve been done to a 16mm print. All of this points to an unofficial version done by perhaps the TV studio.

Here are the changes I’ve noticed compared to the 35mm print (after the obvious changes to the beginning):

At around the 11:30 mark, LUH says ‘THX is that you?’ and she appears from around the corner and then, it cuts to her info text screen. In the 35mm version, it goes from this shot of her coming around the corner to the medicinal cabinet security shot to a shot of a man at a surveillance station and then her text info.

At around 14:52; they cut out a shot of LUH with her face to a wall that cross fades into the nuns walking. In the broadcast version, it goes from a shot of LUH watching the hologram to the nuns halfway through the corridor. Again, there is that tape splice.

At around 15:40, there’s a splice after THX’s second ‘confession’. It’s missing a longer shot of him throwing up.

At around 19:15: Splice! Goes from the men jogging to the malfunctioning guard. Missing two shots: the man looking out the window and the man staring at numbers.

At around 20:46: There’s a minute and 20 seconds spliced out after THX and LUH have their talk in the crowd. It’s missing a surveillance shot and shots of THX at home before deciding to investigate over at SEN’s place. Again, tape splice.

At 23:12: Another tape splice. Missing shots: LUH asking for THX (“Tex??”) and then shots of them praying to the Jedi-monk hologram.

At 24:33. Tape Splice. Weird shower shot is cut.

(subtitle spelling mistake: ‘You’re loosing it’ should be: You’re losing it)

After THX’s arrest, the shot order of this section in the Italian Broadcast matches that of the 35mm and the 16mm.

I stopped here since we don’t have the rest of the film.

Nice detective work! For additional info on the Italian TV-Broadcast DVD, see my old detective work here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/THX-1138-preservations/post/588049/#TopicPost588049

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com