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THX on 35mm Tech IB preservation - HELP NEEDED (work in progress) — Page 14

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It was a fair question. Thank you

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<sarcasm on> Thanks for that link and for this pic:
<sarcasm off>

That totally blows apart my hard-worked theory of this shot originally being B&W dailies (and later colorized to use it).

Now excuse me while I slink away . . .
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Ahah, don’t worry. It was a valid theory.

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Are you still interested in donations? I might be able to contribute a small amount.

Also, do you think there will ever be a video showing how this was done? (Like with Harmy’s despecialized edition upload on youtube) I personally find stuff like that so much more interesting than reading text back and forth in an internet forum, I’d especially be interested in some of the color correction tools you use.

But of course by all means, keep priority on getting this done before making behind the scenes stuff.

One last thing, are there any differences between the 2 dvd (one was in a cardboard box and mostly white, the other was in a regular case, both said director’s cut) and blu-ray versions?

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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 (Edited)

Most of the extras are on the second disc of the two DVD set. Single disc is just the movie. The Blu Ray ports everything over, but was so poorly authored many players needed extra memory added, (via an SD card) at the time just so the bloated menus will load. May or may not be an issue with newer players now.

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I would love a making-of but it’s really up to Poita who’s doing the heavy work with the after-scan restoration and I don’t know if he would like to appear on camera like Harmy does (I doubt he would but I’d love something like that)
Personally, I had in mind to do something like that but not having dome the actual work myself, I could only show the before and after and explain what Poita did if he doesn’t wish to appear himself.

Any monetary contribution at this point can be sent to Poita who’s sustaining plenty of expenses in order to fix this film for release. My costs for the scan, the HDDs, the shipping to Poita etc have all been covered.

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thxita said:
I would love a making-of but it’s really up to Poita … and I don’t know if he would like to appear on camera … but I’d love something like that …

Done … the on-camera exclusive interview (with special identity-protection technology)!

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Okay, I think we are now at the point where we can say we have discovered a few things about THX that have been misrepresented in ‘common knowledge’ of THX’s history.

  1. On Home releases, before the film begins, the Director’s Cut shows a trailer from the SF-series “Buck Rogers” episode “Tragedy on Saturn Chapter Two” (1939). According to imdb, the theatrical version had a segment from the S/F-film “Things to Come” (1936).

False: I have now seen 4 separate prints, all from 1971 that have the Buck Rogers intro , not ‘Things to Come’.
It would appear that the story that the 1971 release had ‘Things to Come’ as the intro, and that was later changed to Buck Rogers is incorrect.
Also interesting is that if you listen to the Buck Rogers opening, Lucas changes the audio from “The 25th Century” to “The 20th Century”, to make it more poignant which also supports it not being a ‘last second replacement’.

  1. That WB butchered Lucas’ version of the movie, making him remove ‘X’ minutes from the film, which is why it failed at the box office.

False: Comparing the 1971 release to his 1978 release and the Home Video versions, whilst there are some differences, there are actually very few changes, and there is some extra footage of SEN with the children in the 1971 release. There certainly weren’t enough changes to alter the film in any tangible way, apart from humanising SEN a little. This also fits with Coppola’s claim that Warners barely touched the film for the intial release.

We can confidently now quantify the changes between the 1971 and 1978/Home Video releases, which up until this point were not known/recorded.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!

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That’s interesting, and I doubt we would ever have known the real deal (and these imdb/internet trivia things and LFL interview bits would just keep getting passed around and solidifying into “facts”) if this project hadn’t been done, so thank you for that.

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Don’t you mean 1978 release?

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 (Edited)

poita said:
… a few things about … THX’s history.
According to imdb, the theatrical version had a segment from the S/F-film “Things to Come” (1936). False …

It’s probably my fault, but that is no longer in IMDb, under Alternate Versions, where I challenged the credulity of that entry … effectively. 😄

Here is the present entry:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066434/alternateversions
where there is nothing under the last line – “THX is attacked by new CGI shell dwellers at the end on his way out.

Here was a 2015 entry:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150329074845/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066434/alternateversions
with that wrong information as the last line – “In the original release the movie includes a one minute clip from Things to Come (1936) before the opening credits. When re-released in the late-1970’s this clip was replaced by a clip from the serial Buck Rogers (1939).

(sorry if this steps on anyone’s toes, here, who may have added that entry, there) 😃

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poita said:
We can confidently now quantify the changes between the 1971 and 1978/Home Video releases, which up until this point were not known/recorded.

From your information, what do say about my theory of THX & Evolution (said with a lisp):

version 1 - 1970 (88m?)
the Lucas original & finished cut of THX 1138
(un-released when it was taken away from him by Warner)

version 1.WB - 1971 (86m?)
the Warner Bros.’ re-edit
(released to theaters with 4 min. removed - a flop)
(sequence re-ordering?)

version 1 - 1978 (88m?)
back to Lucas’ original & finished cut
(released to theaters & TV broadcasts [16mm] under Lucas’ terms after Star Wars success - a flop)

version 2 - 1983 (86m)
Lucas’ next edit
(re-edited for TV broadcasts & home video [LD, Beta, VHS, CED] - builds to cult status)
(less some SEN shots; sequence re-ordering?)

version 3 - 2004 (88m)
Lucas’ next edit
(added Computer Graphics & re-coloring, sequence re-ordering, and out-takes for TV broadcasts & home video [DVD] - cult status)

version 4 - 2010 (88m)
Lucas’ next edit
(added tweaks of coloring, etc., for TV broadcasts & home video [Blu-ray] - cult status)

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He fiddled with it again in 2010?

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About the Buck Rogers opening for the restoration, which look would you use?

TOP: early film scan
LEFT: 2000 DVD release (on YouTube)
RIGHT: 2009 (70th Anniv., Restored) DVD release

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The title card has always looked blown out to me on older THX releases, but that may have been baked into whatever source George had available in 1971.

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SilverWook said:
He fiddled with it again in 2010?

Yep … but not as badly (or not as obvious badly).

(I spent way too much time trying to find a post I made [3 1/2 years ago!] that had all the commercial media versions compared [for another reason]. Finally found it back on page 53 of THX 1138 "preservations" (the original thread after a few title changes) only to re-discover all the pictures were originally hosted on ImageShack and were trashed in it’s overhaul. So, sorry, I can’t show the samples.)

The 2010 BR was tinted slightly but noticeably different than the 2004 DVD in that comparison. But I never had a chance to find what else was “touched up” from 2004.

The title card has always looked blown out to me on older THX releases, but that may have been baked into whatever source George had available in 1971.

The YouTube snapshot was clearly from the 2000 DVD (which should’ve been public domain even during GL’s 1st film). I don’t know about earlier Beta/VHS videotape or laserdisc. The film clip GL used must’ve been in the same only-fair shape. Surely Lucas would consider it, in that condition (noticeably old media with an old vision of the future that was a “tragedy”), an appropriate opening to his film.

Earliest commercial media might indicate more B&W spectrum (as in the 2009 Buck Rogers DVD restoration) in the clip Lucas used. If so, a special-adjustments scan might help bring that out for a film restoration. Just a thought.

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I’ve always thought that the 1978 and the 1983 versions are the same… But I don’t really have any proof apart from heresy.

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

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Mavimao said:
I’ve always thought that the 1978 and the 1983 versions are the same.

I once came across “proof” of the opposite (although I didn’t know it at the time) when going through a bunch of old, recorded TV broadcasts on Beta tape. In the space between half-hour sections of the tape, there was one recording partially over-writing the front end of … THX 1138 (full-screen). I didn’t think much of it then (the tapes were full of re-tapings) but wondered when it was. Playing a bit of it found a station commercial for the 1984 Super Bowl (or some other, annual sports event).

More important is that the SEN & children scene was complete, even though GL’s 1983 version (now for TV and commercial videotape & laserdisc) had that scene edited-down. (NOTE: that means George Lucas himself cut it out for the 1983 release, as I once speculated in the original THX 1138 thread.) The 1984 Beta-tape TV broadcast was GL’s 1978 release (only for theaters & TV stations) that was still broadcast into 1983+. Years later recordings on other TV-recording tapes had only the edited-down scene. Clearly, all the stations had the updated (edited-down scene) movie by then and showed nothing else.

I’ll track down that tape again to glean addition details, now that we have more and newer information.

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Is it just me or do they not say where this is?

(They should used this shot of me reading over their inscrutable webpage . .

. . cause it had me looking up & down, and I still I missed it!)

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Is this available in colour yet? I can only find black and white versions.

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Today I saw a car go by that looked a lot like the cars in the movie. If not for the sun in my eyes I would have gotten a better glimpse of it, but I was floored none the less.

And no, it wasn’t being chased by robotic motorcycle cops. 😉

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