Star Wars - John Williams rough cut information

Hi!

I was curious if anyone knew more exact details about what was in the March 1977 rough cut of Star Wars that John Williams scored. I’ve been working on making a detailed analysis of the score and I’d like to see the accompanying footage if possible.
I’ve already come up with theories for what some of the footage was but since it’s mostly just my own speculation I’m curious if anyone else has further substantiating evidence.

First, a quick rundown of facts:

The following cues have music edits in the film specifically to accommodate picture edits:
1M3 The War
1M4-2M1 The Escape Hatch
2M3 New The Little People
3M3 Rev. The Sand Speeder
7M1 New Is It A Bird?
10M3-11M1 Stand By

The two cantina cues are also edited quite extensively, though these may not have been written to picture in the first place.

now for a more detailed description of each, and what I think the cut footage might have been:

1M3 The War:
There’s about 2 seconds of music trimmed during Vader’s entrance to the Tantive IV. After careful analysis I believe that this shot itself was not altered, but there was 1 second trimmed before his entrance (if you add 1 second of black screen and play the music uncut, the 3 drum hits sync with his 3 head turns perfectly). I’m not certain what this 1 second was. I believe based on the script that it’s possible the C-3PO “I think I’m melting! This is all your fault!” shot might have still been here during scoring, but the shot from later in the final movie is too long for the gap. I did also consider that possibly the rebel troopers firing shot immediately before Vader’s entrance was added after the C-3PO shot was cut, but if you remove it then the 3PO shot is 1 second too short. I did also find a Topps trading card showing a frame of the C-3PO shot that isn’t in the finished movie, so maybe the shot was also trimmed when it was moved, and that explains the gap?

1M4-2M1 The Escape Hatch:
This one I’m pretty confident on what the cut footage is, but I don’t have any visual evidence of its existence other than the script - there’s 3 seconds of music cut during the scene where Vader talks to the Imperial officer about the escape pod being jettisoned. In the script there’s a lot of Vader dialogue here that was cut. I think it’s highly likely that David Prowse filmed this with the script dialogue and then in editing they trimmed it down, but I’m not sure if James Earl Jones ever recorded the full lines or the cutdown version. In fact I’m not even sure if James Earl Jones had done the dialogue dubbing yet by the time Williams started recording, I know they were both in early March though.

2M3 New The Little People:
This one I actually don’t personally believe scored any deleted footage, the full uncut cue is the exact length of the scene in question, although there has been some speculation online that there may have been some Jawa footage cut. Even Mike Matessino speculated as much in his January 1997 Film Score Monthly article on the 1997 albums. Is there any other supporting evidence of cut Jawa footage during R2’s capture?

3M3 Rev. The Sand Speeder:
This one is a really interesting one because half of the cue scored cut footage, not all of which we have.
The first major edit is the removal of 23 seconds (technically 2 back to back edits, one 22s snip and one 1s snip) when Luke and 3PO are in the landspeeder. Some of this deleted footage was released on the blu-ray, but getting it to sync with the footage in the final film and with the script is a bit difficult. I’ve also heard that there was a landspeeder navigator graphic made, that you can see in a visual dictionary? That’s not on the blu-ray scene, but was that ever finished enough to be put into the cut Williams scored?

The second half of this cue is the more baffling one, there is 10 seconds of music cut when we first see the Tusken Raiders (again, technically this is two back to back snips, one 8s and one 2s). I’m not aware of any source documenting cut footage from this scene. From close analysis it seems that some of the shots might have been swapped around, notably the two shots focused on the Bantha seem to be split in half by the shot of the Raiders running down the hill, which I think was originally meant to precede this shot just because it makes more sense that way. But still, even accounting for a generous 3-5s of trimmed footage of the Tusken climbing the Bantha, there’s still 5-7 seconds remaining unaccounted for. The only other idea I had, unless there really is a substantial amount of undocumented cut Tusken Raider footage, is that the sync of the cue in the final film is wrong, and that bit that plays when the Tuskens look over the cliff was actually meant for seeing R2 on the navigator, and the Tusken cliff scene was meant to start with the drums. This has the added bonus of giving the first half of this cue more space, which it desperately needs due to the volume of cut footage that we have. Again though, I have no real evidence of any of these placements.

7M1 New Is It A Bird?:
This one doesn’t score any cut footage, but there is a 4 second loop at the end of it in the film, I believe some of the footage of the stormtroopers running through the halls was added after scoring and the music was looped to accommodate it. Exactly what footage was inserted I don’t have hard evidence for though, although I’m inclined to believe it might be the footage of the commander and stormtroopers in the random hallway where you don’t see the Falcon, perhaps taken from snipped footage from later in the film.

10M3-11M1 Stand By:
Again, this one doesn’t score any cut footage but it does have a 4 second loop during the approach to the Death Star, right around the time Gold Leader reports in. For this one I really have no idea what the added footage was. The sync before and after the loop seems fine, my only guess is that Gold Leader wasn’t originally in this scene? I really don’t know.

If anyone has any additional information about what this earlier cut looked like I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!

Tack said:

Some notes:

1M3.
You’re right that some stuff was probably cut here, but it was probably awkward extra battle footage (we have some other not so stellar looking shots in the early assembly in the Making of Star Wars book). Worth noting that you can also see a jump cut in the shot you’re describing in the final cut so maybe things did get shuffled around last minute.

1M4.
Like I say below, scoring happened so late in production, and the trim you’re describing so exact, that there very well could have been a trim of what you’re describing.

2M3.
I didn’t even know there was speculation something had been cut. The little woodwind flourishes match up pretty well with Artoo turning his head and the Jawas ducking, and that sync stays even with where the cue starts up in the final film (aside from the bit tracked from the very beginning). Maybe Mattesino was thinking that the cue was meant to start in the same place that it does in the final cut?

3M3 Rev.
We can see from some photography that during scoring that many (maybe most) of the effects were being cut in, as there’s a photograph in the Making of Star Wars of him scoring 10M3-11M1 with visual effects in place. That to say that yes, I think the landspeeder scene probably had full effects. I think the shot we see in the final film is a much longer version of the shot that was in there during this stage of development, replacing that conversation from the rear-projection photography.

7M1.
I think you’re bang on. That footage was most likely shot for the Battle of Yavin and just happened to represent the hustling inside the station very well.

10M3-11M1.
It would make sense Gold Leader’s sign on had been cut at one point right? He’s kind of an incidental pilot. I think it also makes sense that after a screening or two they’d realize they had to establish him better before the battle itself. Notice also the attempts in the theatrical mixes to (unsuccessfully) mute Biggs’ name from some of Luke’s dialogue. I think the question of how to make the battle intelligible to the wider audience was something they mulled over quite a bit.

Awesome thanks!

Regarding the jump cut during 1M3, I actually noticed this during my rewatch with the unedited cue, but I disregarded it because I assumed that only a few frames were cut. I suppose it is possible that it could explain the 1 second gap though. It’s certainly much less invasive than trimming footage to add in the 3PO scene.

As for 3M3 Rev, if I’m to understand what you’re saying, you think that the wide shot was extended after the rear-projection dialogue was cut, hence why the sync is so difficult? I will also say the wide shots from the deleted scene and from the finished film look completely different in terms of camera position, perhaps the final film’s wide shot wasn’t even in the scored cut.

Also that’s an interesting comment about muting Biggs’ name, I never noticed that before. I guess adding Gold Leader is a reasonable explanation. The exchange is in the script, so it’s not like it was made in editing, but perhaps it was removed during scoring and added back later. The script does have associated storyboards for the entire end battle as well, I want to compare the final film against them and see if they reveal anything more about this change.

timdiggerm said:

I don’t think I have anything helpful to add, but my old thread may be of interest: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Info-Wanted-Star-Wars-The-Temp-Track-/id/12014

Sweet thanks! I have a lot of sources for the temp track already (primarily JW Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars, and also Paul Hirsch’s autobiography), but I’d never seen several of the sources mentioned here, I’ll definitely examine them in more detail

Tack said:

enderdrag64 said:

Awesome thanks!

Regarding the jump cut during 1M3, I actually noticed this during my rewatch with the unedited cue, but I disregarded it because I assumed that only a few frames were cut. I suppose it is possible that it could explain the 1 second gap though. It’s certainly much less invasive than trimming footage to add in the 3PO scene.

As for 3M3 Rev, if I’m to understand what you’re saying, you think that the wide shot was extended after the rear-projection dialogue was cut, hence why the sync is so difficult? I will also say the wide shots from the deleted scene and from the finished film look completely different in terms of camera position, perhaps the final film’s wide shot wasn’t even in the scored cut.

Also that’s an interesting comment about muting Biggs’ name, I never noticed that before. I guess adding Gold Leader is a reasonable explanation. The exchange is in the script, so it’s not like it was made in editing, but perhaps it was removed during scoring and added back later. The script does have associated storyboards for the entire end battle as well, I want to compare the final film against them and see if they reveal anything more about this change.

In regards to the Landspeeder scene, the blu-ray version is some strange creation taken from I think? the cut that Lucas presented to his friends. It ends exactly where there would be the cut scanner display graphic would be, and I think the rest of the conversation would have originally taken place inside rear-projection filming environment and only THEN cut to the Tusken Raiders watching the speeder going through the canyon. All this to say I think it’s fallacious to take the blu-ray deleted scenes totally at face value, as in many cases they seem to have been taken from random post-production sources (sometimes not even for the scenes taken from out and out dailies) and cut in a way to actively discourage attempted fanedits. That does not accurately represent the scene in the scoring/preview cuts, I’m sure, but a much earlier stage in editing. The effects shot of the speeder from the final film seems to me like it was made to be the opening shot of the scene, and just extended with some of the ADR from the rear-projection version (which they would have had to do) overlaid to make up for the missing scene. Effects shots for these big-budget films can often get made with lots of extra slack so that they can be manipulated like any other coverage, just for situations like this (just look at the supplemental material for Blade Runer and Alien).

I just think it’s rare for these late post-production cuts to get preserved (after all, the Ghostbusters sneak preview had to be referenced from a VHS dub), and we’re extremely lucky to have the opening ROTJ scene in such a complete form as we do.

Also, the Tusken Raiders getting set up to ride out is (to me) a very obvious case where footage was just wholesale removed at the last minute with little to no regard for the music. Is there any shuffling of music after the obvious jump cut? Because to me even the visuals seem like a hard cut.

Woah that’s a great point, I didn’t even consider that the deleted scene footage may not represent what was in the rough cut at all. I’d love to know exactly what source was used for every scene on the Blu-ray.

I also hadn’t considered the scanner footage, but you’re right I suppose there must be some space for that as well. Perhaps the music swell right before the drums start was meant to cover that shot.

As for the rest of the Tusken scene there are two hard jump cuts in the music, one 8 second trim and one 2 second trim

timdiggerm said:

Tack said:

All this to say I think it’s fallacious to take the blu-ray deleted scenes totally at face value, as in many cases they seem to have been taken from random post-production sources (sometimes not even for the scenes taken from out and out dailies) and cut in a way to actively discourage attempted fanedits. That does not accurately represent the scene in the scoring/preview cuts, I’m sure, but a much earlier stage in editing.

Different film, may not apply here, etc - but I do like the theory that, at least with ROTJ, the material on the Blu-rays is actually the footage that didn’t make it into any rough cut. Thus, when one of the Lost Rebels has a cut in their footage, that’s because they took out that particular line and put it into a rough cut.

Wow this actually makes a lot of sense; there are tons and tons of scored deleted shots from ROTJ for which we don’t have the footage, stuff I’ve never heard people talk about.

For example, the opening cue right after the title crawl, 1M3 Approaching the Death Star, has tons of trims totaling almost 40 seconds, and I have no idea what footage it was supposed to play under. When people think of the opening of ROTJ being cut, they think of the Luke lightsaber scene, but that had a different cue recorded for it, 1M4 Vader Contacts Luke.