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Idea & Info: the IMAX film 'Special Effects'

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Has anyone here seen or have a copy of the IMAX film Special Effects? For the film they recreated the opening space battle of A New Hope. Maybe this footage could be used to replace the original footage? I don’t know if the scale of the movie would be a problem…I know that someone was auctioning the IMAX cut of episode II on ebay a while back and it occurred to me that it must not be a huge dela to resize the movie to something you can watch on a DVD.

Any thoughts?

If someone does have a copy could you post screenshot comparisons of the 2004 OT and the IMAX Special Effects recreation?

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Actually I would love to have that whole IMAX-film in some way or another. It appears as if it hasn't been released on DVD yet, and ever since I've read about it, I wanted to see it. Unfortunately it didn't run in our local IMAXs.
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I saw "Special Effects" at our local IMAX theater back in 1996 or something like that. The opening sequence from Star Wars was amazingly cool.

IMAX film is square, not rectangular, so I don't think it would work well with any OT restoration projects in the widescreen format. The footage would be great to have though.

The sequence was reframed, with different effects, for the IMAX version. From
http://www.dga.org/news/mag_archives/v21-3/efx.html:
"Actually, the special effects sequence during the Star Wars segment of the film was created by Industrial Light & Magic, part of George Lucas' family, especially for the IMAX movie."

Here's a site with some small screenshots from "Special Effects" :http://www.agraphafx.com/StarNet/Newstuff/imax.html

I can't find any bigger images, but I bet they would make great desktop wallpaper.

Edit: Fixed first link.

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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The first link you posted doesn't work.

Okay, so the IMAX version would be more like a 4:3 instead of a 16:9, but what if we took the footage, assuming that someone has it, and overlayed the IMAX footage over the widescreen footage from the '04 dvds or that of say the X0 project? As long as we could mask out any seams, we should be able to have the best of both worlds.

Any thoughts?
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I fixed my first link above.

I see the reframing of the sequence as presenting a big problem. It looks like the angle of the passover is much more severe in the IMAX version:

http://www.erikstormtrooper.com/dvdimaxcompare.jpg

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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Actually, if you stretched the IMAX pic horizontally, it might work pretty well.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Thanks for fixing the link.

As far as the reframing goes, I swould still like to give it a shot. After Effects give you a lot of options when it comes to messing with the orientation of the video and I think something could be done to make it mesh with the dvd. It might be best to use parts from the '04 NTSC dvd, '04 PAL dvd, and something like the X0 project since the both the PAL and the Laserdisk footage are cropped a bit differently than the '04 dvds.
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Image redone, with the IMAX portion stretched to 2.35:1

http://www.erikstormtrooper.com/dvdimaxcompare2.jpg

Looks pretty darn close, if not exact (except for the moon). Looks like ILM cheated when they reframed the shot for IMAX by simply shrinking the width.

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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That comparison shot is great. Imagine what we could do with that if it was available. The moon could simply be painted in or masked in over the IMAX footage. The only other thing is that it looks like the IMAX footage we need to be color corrected.

Anyone else have pics or, better yet, a source of footage?
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wow, it makes you wonder what the hell they were doing with this incredible so called - supercomputer project for the 2004 DVD. That difference is huge. Although until we go to HD format there is limitations with the resolution. The color, brightness and detail is stark. I wish you could get rips off the digital version for ATOC, Batman Begins from IMAX and the new digital projector version (already 2.35:1) of ROTS that I saw a few weeks ago. Seriously the difference to the regular theater and the digital one I saw in Greenville, SC was at least the difference of above, no joke. Oh and the THX sound blew me away. I saw it twice and thought it was cool, but the third time in the Camelot theater my jaw was wide open for 2.5 hrs.
16 years I wait and this is what I get???
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"Looks like ILM cheated when they reframed the shot for IMAX by simply shrinking the width."

Agreed, but then again, the only alternative to getting the whole SD into the shot would be to zoom out, and that would cause even more loss of fine details.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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It would be a cool extra for some future release, but why would you want to replace the original shot?

Where were you in '77?

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Thanks for posting that! That was the first time I've ever seen any of that footage. It seems that the angle of the Star Destroyer engines are off as goes over the camera, but I don't think it would be impossible to make it work. The hardest part would seem to be the next shot of the Blockade Runner coming towards us when the shot fades into one big explosion. If memory serves correctly, I think shot in Special Effects is shorter than the one in the movie.
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Originally posted by: Erikstormtrooper
I found a site where you can view a small version of the the IMAX opening battle:

http://www.bigmoviezone.com/filmsearch/clips/clip.html?uniq=159&x=39&y=13

Anyone know how I can save this puppy to my harddrive?


Here you go, I found the direct link for you, right click and save as (1.9MB).

http://www.kineticpast.com/starwars/thecheatlaserdisc.gif
Ooh, a laserdisc. The Cheat's playin' something on a laserdisc.
Everything is better on a laserdisc. Whatever happened to the laserdisc? Laserdisc!

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Thank you. That was cool to watch.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Thanks Gillean!

On a side note, I think this footage uses one of the Star Destroyer models from ESB, not ANH. Some of the bottom details look a little different.

I just compared this IMAX footage to the 2004 DVD, and the IMAX shot is longer (in time), in both the flyover and the second angle.

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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At the very least, it would be nice to have a high quality capture of that footage. It is a Star Wars gem and it needs to be preserved! J/K. It would make a nice extra on a bonus disk though. Hopefully someone will be able to find some way to get their hands on this.
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I know one of the old Star Wars Insider mags had a few pics. I got 'em at home and I can post 'em later if someone doesn't beat me to it.
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This looks cool (and better than the DVD version). I too would like to see a high quality version of this .
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http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=imaxintro2wd.png

http://img237.imageshack.us/my.php?image=imaxintro2wd.png
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Sluggo,

Great pic. Is there any way you could upload this as a JPG, or better yet a BMP? The PNG format seems to be reducing the number of colors. It's most noticable in the starfield.

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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Wow! Why didn't they update the scene for the dvd so that it looks this way? This looks so amazing while the DVD version still looks so boring :/. I want this film in high-res!