THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 12

Just to let you guys know, I've sent a message to the fellow on cult movie forum, hopefully we can get some answers on this.

I think this can be the pre-cert tape he is talking about http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/THX-1138-DUVALL-PRE-CODE-VIDEO-VERY-SCARCE-BIG-BOX-/400168142210

Unfortunately, that one ended a month ago.

SilverWook said:

Warners slapped the late 70's logo on it, rats! However, there was another surprise! The opening credits are green! It seems a tad brighter than the green of the DC, but this is quite a revelation. Could the print used for later versions have faded, or did someone simply screw it up? 

I'll be damned! It confirms what I suspected could be the case, will you be able to post a pic of the titles? Would love to see it. Sorry to hear about the logo, I'll get the DC-logo to match your transfer, I must! ;)

Nice to hear that you will maybe get a hold of an Italian VHS, erri_wan. :)

I got an answer from Mark Y at Cult Movie Forum. He still have both tapes but he never actually compared them (or checking them against the DVD) and he didn't want to get our hopes up that the UK pre-cert maybe feature any additional material (although the run time appears to match the BBFC record) but he will try and find that out for us when he has time.

SilverWook said:

Someone has outbid me on the 16mm print. It's going to be a long sleepless night!

Damn! sorry to hear that. :(

Mark Y got back to me:

Thanks for the additional info, but I do have some bad news - that 92m running time on the sleeve of the Warners tape is erroneous. Both it and the other tape (Tartan/Blue Dolphin) run about the same length of 82m, so with correction for PAL speed-up the original length is about 85-86m each.

This also means the BBFC running time must be wrong - I know that older running times for films were calculated approximately by them, so there may have been an error there; I'm not sure where Warners got their running time from either. I think I have the original Monthly Film Bulletin from 1971 that includes the THX review so may try and find that and see if it sheds any light on the matter.

The Warners tape opens with the 1970s red Warner logo, followed by the original Kinney logo. The titles are bright green like the DVD version, whereas on the other tape they are white (or very light green?). Both logos are missing from the other tape which just opens with the Zoetrope logo.

Neither tape has the Buck Rogers sequence at the start, though I do remember that the 1978 TV showing I mentioned did have this - do you know when this was first included with the film?

Sorry to bring you this disappointing news, but the prospect of a longer version of such a well-known film was probably too good to be true. Let me know if you think the Warner tape may be any different to any other versions (even if only slightly) and I will investigate further.

Leonard Maltin's movie guide lists the running time as 88m, and has done for years for some reason?

Regards

Well, there you have it. It's a little bit strange that both his tapes are missing the Buck Rogers segment, it is there on my UK '95 Widescreen collectors edition VHS. Anyway, it's great that we've found out that the opening titles were in fact green, at least on the restored original cut, I guess it became a Lucas trademark, the restored cut of American Graffiti have the Lucasfilm/Coppola title in green and of course the Star Wars films.

SilverWook said:

Is it possible the Buck Rogers clip couldn't be cleared for video release in the UK?

I've seen a lot of public domain releases of the serial in recent years, but there may have still been copyright issues in play at the time.

Yeah, copyright issues is probably it, didn't think about that.

Nice! :) Never seen that before, similar to the earlier video cover you posted.

I've started to fiddle with the DC DVD-opening again, I noticed that the Buck Rogers footage is much more zoomed in on the Laserdisc transfer compared to how it appear on the DC DVD. How does the betamax tape compare?

Laserdisc

DVD - degraded & resized to 4:3 Letterbox, I removed the ugly blue tint to restore the original Black & White photography.

Even though Buck Rogers was shot in black & white, I thought that maybe the clip was presented in a sepia-like tone on the THX-print as the LD suggests, but if you look at the Laserdisc AZ-logo you can actually see the same tint, or am I wrong? How does the betamax tape compare, is it in plain black & White?

Laserdisc

DVD - degraded & resized to 4:3 Letterbox

Laserdisc

DVD - degraded & resized to 4:3 Letterbox, so how is the green color on this, am I even close?

I'll post a 4:3 and 16:9 clip for you when I have tinkered with it a little more and we'll see if we can make it work. I'm not sure if we want to reproduce the same edge enhancement, it would be nice if we could try to reduce that a little on the LD-capture.

I've also noticed something weird, the aspect ratio on the LD transfer seems to be vertically stretched when compared to the DVD-footage or perhaps vice versa. You can see this throughout the film, not only on the screen-caps above but also on the site which compared the transfers side by side posted earlier in this thread. Any thoughts on this?

Laserdisc

Are there many instances of this bad type of cropping, SilverWook?

DVD

And damn what I hate this guy! ;)

If there only wasn't altered footage where it appears...

SilverWook said:

msycamore, I noticed when comparing to the ITA version that there was some cropping on the right hand of the frame. When the ITA pans to the right of frame, more picture info was there. I think some amount of cropping occurs in a lot of Laserdisc era letterbox transfers.

Yeah, I actually don't think the cropping on the LD looks that bad at all, it was just that particular one I thought was a little odd as it have much more picture information to the left than the DVD and I was just a little curious if you had noticed the same thing happen on other places as well. I think I'll check my tape.

SilverWook said:

I think the Beta was cropped on all sides, actually. The color on the titles is pretty close to what I saw. The AZ logo looks good too.

Ok, thanks. So should the Buck Rogers clip be in black & white or sepia, or should we even consider using the whole opening from the DVD? I think we should, we now know the opening titles should be green and it could also be less jarring instead of going from LD footage to DVD back and forth more than once. So I think I'll wait till I have your files until I do anything more on this, we need this to be perfect.

erri_wan, could you perhaps compare my English subtitle stream for the restored original cut with your Italian audio, and make corrections where the Italian dubbers was a little creative? It could be a little tiresome for you if they changed many lines instead of just translating them, but it's the only way if we want a true translation of the Italian audio instead of the original lines. Let me know, and I'll send the file to you.

And also let me know if this is actually how you all want it, we could go both ways in the subtitling.

erri_wan said:

haha, you raised a very interesting problem. Wether to keep the slightly creative translation or dump it?

ALL things considered, I would say we dump the creative translations and be faithful to the original English script.

This also means less work for me because if you want a "correct" translation then we can simply take the Italian subtitles from the DVD because (wait till you hear this) the subtitles on Italian DVDs are proper translation of the English language and not a transcription of the Italian dubbing (this means that in DVDs we've got Italian language that does not match exactly the Italian subtitles).

No we can't, the DVD is to no use for us as they are for the "Director's Cut" with its many dialogue differences, that's why I've made a new English sub-stream for the restored original cut in the first place. At first I had planned to just fill in the blanks with the few audio differences you and SilverWook had pointed out, but when I found out that they had taken such liberties in the dubbing, it altered that plan. So, I'll need your help if I'm gonna do this.

SilverWook said:

I want to see how those things look on the 16mm print before going any further with colors and tints. Taking the whole DVD sequence logos and all would save us some headaches if it's our only good source.

What 16mm print, have you found a new seller? if so, that is great. :)

SilverWook said:

Given how unique the ITA recording is, I think it ought to be presented in it's entirety on "Disc 2" with any potential extras. (Possibly add a text introduction explaining what we think it is?) And the Italian dialog should be subbed verbatim. (It's also not that hard to have two subtitle tracks?) Even if it's not the "Freaks Up Front" version, it ought to be preserved much like how Criterion presented both cuts of Brazil on LD and DVD.

Yes, the entire Italian cut should be preserved on its own of course, and two English subtitle tracks is no problem if that is desirable, but then I must get some help, either from erri_wan or Leonardo.

At this point we can just assume it is the regular Italian cut until erri_wan find out what the Italian video releases was like before the DVD release came along.