Modern SE Revisionism

I'm starting this thread to compile how recently Special Editon images are creeping their way into the media and people are either ignorant or ignoring the fact that they aren't the originals. I'm going through the Making of Star Wars right now, marking notes of what "final" frames are sourced from.

Feel free to post other examples (radio, television, websites) that seem to be confusing SE with originals.

Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks none. If we get enough, zombie will add a page on savestarwars on it. I like the idea of not only pointing out the errors, but fixing them.

About two years ago, I was listening to the Mike O'Meara show (a rather bawdy radio talk show).  The hosts had just conducted their own Star Wars marathon, and were comparing the special effects of the six movies.  They were describing how the special effects techniques in 1977 were so primitive, and the example they used was the jabba scene and how fake jabba looked.

Perfect.

I've been flipping through the Making of Star Wars, there are a surprising number of SE shots in there. Even in the matte section (pp260-263), where most of the shots in the book are obviously not from the SE because they were replaced, a few snuck in there like this one:



I'm going to put together a rough draft of what I'm thinking using pictures from my cell phone, then I'll go through and scan the questionable pages.

Remember guys, that when you need a license and footage from the films, LFL will give you only the newest edits of the film. So it's not the makers' fault they have to deal with SE crap even if they do know it. Also there's a difference when the others are available in HD and originals in LD quality.

I'm not sure images not trying to pass as period images should count. I'm finding that with MoSW when the changes are obvious they go back to the original (big explosions, Mos Eisley, most of the mattes). But when it something more subtle (tiny ships in background, etc), they seem to have picked from the best source they had either hoping no one would notice, or not noticing the difference themselves. I doubt Rinzler himself chose the images, so I'm imagining some overworked LFL archivalist just putting whatever fit the description in there.

Remember, a lot of these changes haven't really been pointed out except for us recently. Ignorance runs high, even in the archives.

Alright, here is the best example I've found from MoSW, and the one that hurts my head the most:


Page 287 of Making of Star Wars by JW Rinzler

On top, we have an obviously SE image:


Bluescreened people, CGI Dewback, CGI building behind Dewback, CGI shuttle in sky.

But on bottom we have an original image:


White blob instead of brown blob.

This is one of the few examples of an image that is actually from the originals.

Another one I happened to already have the exact comp frame for:


Page 180 of Making of Star Wars by JW Rinzler

I'm not sure how to present it yet. I'm thinking a scan (not a cell phone picture) of the picture from the book and relevant captions. Then having the regular splitscreen, then maybe having another copy pointing to all of the SE elements. I'm open to suggestions.

On his blog, J.W. Rinzler acknowledges Special Edition screen grabs in the Making of ESB book :

P.S. Errata

Unfortunately, The Making of ESB went out with a few mistakes. We hope to fix all of these by the fourth printing. The biggest one-and if it's any consolation to fans, the one that has kept me up at night-is that a double-page matte-painting spread of the Falcon in the book is actually from Return of the Jedi, not Empire; and not painted by McQuarrie but by Michael Pangrazio. A host of strange circumstances went into that error, but I take the blame. Another series of small errors occurred when the publisher replaced my screen grabs from the original ESB version on DVD with screen grabs from the Special Edition DVD; Del Rey regrets the error, too. 

 

We try and minimize all errors by having expert readers go through each of our nonfiction and fiction books, but mistakes happen. It's some sort of cosmic law against perfection.

OMG, I wonder if my message got to him. Did I just save future editions of MoESB?

Is it too late for MoSW? I'll message him again!

EDIT:

Get this: I can't comment on his blog without being a Hyperspace member. However, any person on the site can log in and send a message to the blogger. I was wondering if he even got those messages until I got an out of office message from his LFL email address. That doesn't seem very secure at all.

Are we sure this was not purposelessly done to pretend the cgi was  Lucas original vision.

I am none too trusting of LFL and Del Rey these days.

I think it's more that they probably figured that Rinzler didn't mean for the quality of his images to be so crappy (as he was using the GOUT) so they found "better" footage. Most of the changes are admittedly subtle ones, and the first example I posted had one image that they didn't replace.

I believe DelRay wanted to make the highest quality book they could, and the copy editor didn't figure that LFL would actually not have high quality versions of the originals that the man with unlimited acess to the Archives could use.

Put some more shots from MoSW up on

https://picasaweb.google.com/doubleofive/StarWarsRevisionism

This isn't all of them, and I only took note of the shots that were obviously changed in the SE. There are more images from the SE that are just color changes. An interesting variety of shots DelRay tried to slip in there. Most of the mattes have the original image as they were replaced completely in the SE, but those that were just recomped or subtly changed were switched.

The picture of the hologram on page 257, is just a 1977 promo still.

great thread!

thanks for pointing these out.

i'm sure there are more.

later

-1

It's been a long time, but I had to share Profiles in History using two shots of CGI models to sell a physical model:

Ha ha.

Yeah, buy this screen used model it was totally in the movie!... well it's on laserdisc.

The next page does have pictures of a physical model. Not this one, as it says in the description for this "screen-used" model that was actually pieced together from exploded ships, if I read it right.

doubleofive said:

The next page does have pictures of a physical model. Not this one, as it says in the description for this "screen-used" model that was actually pieced together from exploded ships, if I read it right.

Did they blow up Luke's ship?

Fang Zei said:

Every summer, the AFI Silver here in DC has a "Totally Awesome" 80's series. The other week, they showed a '97 SE print of ROTJ (they showed all three SE's back in '05 to coincide with ROTS being in theaters):

http://afi.com/silver/films/2013/p62/greatfilmsofthe80s.aspx#starw

They make no mention in the description of this being the 1997 version, with cgi that wasn't even possible back in '83. They do at least say 1983/1997 for the year, the correct 135-minute SE running time, and list McCallum as one of the producers alongside Kazanjian.

When asked on twitter which version, they did confirm that it was the Special Edition.