THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 71

SilverWook said:

... I'm finally ready to share that 1970 Sunday newspaper magazine supplement about George and the movie.

 Whoa, those are excellent! You're a THX 1138 treasure trove!

I wonder if George has a copy?

 If not, he's got one now.  :)

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msycamore said:

"See-through car" - that is one ugly hippie car.  :)

"The see-through fashions in women's clothing have finally spilled over into the automotive world."

Wait. Wait! What'd I miss?  :O

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AntcuFaalb said:

SilverWook said:

The albino lizard shot.

Any shot of a video screen.

The white void when THX and SEN meet SRT. ...

I wish I knew this film better. Can you give some rough time estimates for those shots?

From the 2004 "director's cut" (ha, ha ... pardon me); these times may not exactly match the pre-"director's cut" (giggle):

albino lizard @ 11:15 (between tape recorder & THX and OM in booth)
a video screen @ 25:17 (between THX and LUH station talking & THX corridor walking)
white void THX and SEN meet SRT @ 57:54 (first meeting in white void)

... oh, and did I mention I'm dying to see those awesome new screenshots?

That's a good question!

Did anyone ever compare any screenshots to the original (1971 or 1978) 16/35mm film to check for subsequently released media (Beta, VHS, LD, or more likely DVD and BD) mis-proportions? Here are some full-sized 16mm frames (just ignore the demonstrated restoration) with which to compare:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/THX-1138-preservations-Italian-Cut-available-see-1st-post/post/666433/#TopicPost666433
Those captures are from the SEN-talking-to-the-children sequence, just before THX & SRT hopping into jet-cars for their escape, at the last 15-20 minutes of the movie.

Vacation ... ?

"Please come back! ... You have nowhere to go! You cannot survive outside the city shell! We only want to help you!"

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SilverWook said:

... I saw this on Ebay. ... Do you think it's worth getting to see if there are any variations?

If my previously mentioned theory on THX 1138 releases is correct (and I think it is), there are no previous versions to the laserdisc release. The same-version videotapes were in standard format, with one U.K. in widescreen. Any variations would be like the Italian broadcast (not a commercial videotape) and that by their editing.

The Italian broadcast was the same as we have on Italian VHS, not a different version.

Thanks for that clarification, thxita. I thought I remembered reading here (years ago - LOL) someone buying a videotape for the Italian preservation. I only found the O.P. description "Source: Italian TV - broadcast". So it was a legal, WB commercial tape and not a bootleg / blackmarket one from the broadcast?

In that case, SilverWook's eBay "Spanish subtitles" find also could be a localized variant. I don't see how these would get a WB "greenlight" for publication. Maybe they didn't want the expense to do international ones? After all, who was that wet-behind-the-ears Lucas guy who's movie they hated anyway ...  :)

About the laserdisc ...

AntcuFaalb said:

How much vertical stretch is there? I'm able to register to the BD pretty well after vertically compressing the 278 active lines to 270.

I took my own advise and did a compare of the 16mm to the 2004 DVD (mostly-the-same as the 2010 Blu-ray). A TV-to-PC resize (720x480 to 640x480) for the 16mm and a TV-to-PC (720x480 to 640x480) & anamorphic (640x480 to 853x480 [*edit note: rounding 16:9 from 1.777... to 1.78 would produce 854x480, an even value better for digital video manipulation*]) resize for the DVD was transparently overlayed. It showed a similar vertical mis-proportion as AntcuFaalb discovered between the laserdisc and Blu-ray:

When a vertical squash was applied to the 16mm (done that way only to maintain the DVD framing), it then lined up with the DVD:

In reality, it is the 16mm (and the LucasFilm-unmolested laserdisc) that is the optically trusted source. The later DVD and Blu-ray are the ones requiring vertical stretch to properly line up with original photography of the 16mm and laserdisc. That is because THX 1138 was originally filmed in Techniscope, which uses a spherical-lens camera (no optical squashing, on which to blame loss of exact aspect-ratio, as could be with other widescreen techniques):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techniscope

Interesting that the difference here is 8 lines and AntcuFaalb's difference is also 8 lines. Of course, this information doesn't affect the laserdisc preservation. It does show that GL revisionism altered THX 1138 in yet another way.  :O

 Pray he doesn't alter it any further ...

Spaced Ranger said:

Thanks for that clarification, thxita. I thought I remembered reading here (years ago - LOL) someone buying a videotape for the Italian preservation. I only found the O.P. description "Source: Italian TV - broadcast". So it was a legal, WB commercial tape and not a bootleg / blackmarket one from the broadcast?

 Msycamore bought the Italian tape, I can't remember if he managed to ever watch it. You are indeed referring to years old "moments" lol.

We started with me providing the recording from the Italian Tv broadcast. Months later we figured it out that the same version was also on the (now relatively rare) WB official VHS, the only version of the film ever released in Italy before the DVD.

this is more or less the recap of our spaghetti adventures with this film. A higher quality preservation of the Italian edition taken from the VHS tape would be great but I think Msycamore has had enough alright LOL, plus the tape won't be really much better than what we have already.

on the other hand I really wish the original version could be completed so that my fellow Italians could see the film as it was released in the US, subtitled.

Right. From our similar results (with one source being film), I'd say not only is this a laserdisc preservation ... it's also a THX 1138 artistic preservation.

"People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, ... There is nothing to stop American films, records, books, and paintings from being sold to a foreign entity or egotistical gangsters and having them change our cultural heritage to suit their personal taste." - George Lucas, before the U.S. Congress (1988)
(http://savestarwars.com/lucasspeechagainstspecialedition.html)

Still, it's always cool to see previously unseen screen area.
(Apparently the LucasFilm crew grabbed every bit of image real estate they could for yet another GL "director's cut" and just disproportionately resized the finished framing to keep it all in.)   <--the squash smiley

Those studio guys who didn't like the movie never saw a draw for such merchandise. If we haven't seen much to this date (even with "cosplay" events), maybe they were right. There's no want for princess Leia slave girls, that's for sure.  :)

THX 1138 did a good job with it's robot police ... except for that one awkward moment when one robot, searching for THX & SRT, turns to the other robot to point them out. The movement is like the actor's head is turning inside the mask while the mask stuck still. It takes me out of the movie every time.

That robot could have been beginning to malfunction though.

Wardrobe malfunction.  :D

SilverWook said:

Don't give George an excuse to redo his Director's Cut. ;)

CG malfunction.  :O

@ AntcuFaalb

Some time back, you were looking into 2D/3D comb filtering. What is the status of the "phase-inversion trick" and a capture card that properly implements both 2D and 3D comb filtering without AGC problems? Are you using both these in the THX 1138 laserdisc captures? (If so, would you post some pictures & descriptions of the work's application & improved captures?)

BTW, how goes the development of the 3D motion-adaptive comb filter?

Ditto - glad it's not just me! :)