Empire Strikes Back - The 70mm Edition (* unfinished project *)

that looks fantastic ! I am pleased to see you will be using the Story of The Empire Strikes back lp as a source , Waaaay back in 2007 user Movealong was kind enough to send me a dvd of his project that synched the movie to the Lp with stills and transitions and I was able to hear some of those audio differences for the first time , such as when Han is being lowered into the Carbon Freeze and Vader says , “Begin !”

If you want my two cents, this is doable; not simple, but doable.

First of all, there’s very little out there to suggest the differences in optical transitions or compositing have any truth to them. I have a feeling since we were working from word of mouth for so long that some misremembered facts just kept creeping in. So, don’t take everything on the wiki seriously; it’s based on much older info and a lot of it has been disproved in recent years. In my mind, we should only consider the changes that we have definitive proof of (the missing Falcon dish and the static Emperor).

That being said, I do think the alternate edit of the Bacta Tank scene is probably true. The edit would have been very easy to make, since they cut the shot right after the original optical transition ended. And something about how quick that cut is makes me think that it was a last minute decision. A portion of the complete original shot is in color in the 1979 Harrison Ford-narrated trailer, and the full shot is on the BD extras, though unfortunately in black and white.

The sound mix will probably be the comparatively easy part of it, especially with a form of direct reference. The only difficult part would be trying to incorporate the alternate take of ‘Princess, we’ll find Han, I promise’, since to my knowledge the only other place that appears is the Story-Of album.

from years ago in this thread…http://www.wideanglecloseup.com/starwarsaudio.html

yotsuya said:

And don’t forget that one of our OT members made an audio recording of a 70 mm showing. Few of the audio changes claimed are actually from the 70 mm version.

Basically none of the dialogue changes on the Wiki page. Two alternate dialogue takes, a few mixing differences and some changed around sound effects.

From what I can tell from the tape recording;

• Luke’s lightsaber has a very audible deactivation sound as he runs out of the Wampa cave.
• The Battle of Hoth uses a few different sound effects, including TIE laser sounds for the Snowspeeders.
• Threepio’s ‘and’ before ‘Do take good care of yourself’ is clearly audible.
• I might not be right about this, but it seems like there’s a low rumble effect for the space shots of Artoo during his conversations with Luke. I don’t recall other mixes having that.
• Perhaps some extra (or louder) explosions during the Asteroid field chase.
• There’s a neat ambient effect during the Emperor hologram that I’m not sure is quite replicated in other versions.
• Different, louder TIE sound effect in the shot before Needa’s death.
• Probably due to the increased range over the stereo mixes (but maybe betrayed by the nature of the tape), Threepio’s lines throughout a lot of the third act are far more prominent, though still contain the atmospheric effects present in the stereo mix.
• Aside from the length differences, both of Lando’s lines in the final scene are different takes.

Most of the alternative dialogue we know about seems to come from a never-released mono mix.

friedcamera said:

SparkySywer said:

Could the Blu-Ray also be used as a source? Some of the 70mm was used for the Special Editions.

I’m going to try to use the ‘Story of’ lp as much as I can for any alternate audio because it’s easier to isolate and EQ. I’ll probably have to use the SE track for a few things so that’ll require more editing.

Tack said:
First of all, there’s very little out there to suggest the differences in optical transitions or compositing have any truth to them. I have a feeling since we were working from word of mouth for so long that some misremembered facts just kept creeping in. So, don’t take everything on the wiki seriously; it’s based on much older info and a lot of it has been disproved in recent years. In my mind, we should only consider the changes that we have definitive proof of (the missing Falcon dish and the static Emperor).

I plan on using morgands1’s recording as a reference so I’m only going to add/remove things that are confirmed (audio, radar dish, hologram, rebel fleet etc).

looking forward to viewing the finished edit

That is both gorgeous and seamless!

I’m not sure that Fandom list in the OP is reliable. I’m calling bullsh*t on this one:

The Wampa is shown in full form eating the carcass of the Tauntaun and approaching Luke, we see the battle between Luke and the Wampa with his arm getting cut off in full form as well.

I’d take any such online list with a pinch of salt, unless you’d confirmed it for yourself. For example the list of changes for the shorter cut of Heaven’s Gate on Wikipedia is wrong in almost every respect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven’s_Gate_(film)

I don’t know if this has been posted anywhere on the site, but I just found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-hH_E3FDo

It basically disproves the idea that there was an optical wipe from the probe droid shot to the overhead shot of the tauntaun. I wonder if this channel has a source for the whole film like this.