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The Academy Award winning editing of Episode IV — Page 2

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Originally posted by: Mielr

I wonder what the Spielberg edit was like. Better, probably. LOL
I don't doubt that for a second, even given some of the mixed offerings from Spielberg's camp lately (A.I., Minority Report, & War of the Worlds all three needed editing help, IMO. Color me easily confused, but I'm still not 100% sure I understand all the angles on the 'missing child' plot elements in MR. I only saw it once so I don't know if better editing would've prevented my thickness or not; perhaps I should watch it again, but I'm just not feeling it...)

I come a lot closer in the long run to admiring Spielberg's sense of pacing. I thought 'Always', though missing the boat occasionally, had a very nice flow, and I watched it several times.

Originally posted by: Sluggo
Originally posted by: zombie84
Originally posted by: THX
From an editing standpoint, SW & ESB are far superior to ROTJ, which suggests Paul Hirsch is the secret weapon.


I think its a matter of the material he had to work with. I think even if I edited it i could still make ANH and ESB better-edited films than ROTJ simply because of the way they were shot.


I don't think I'd agree with that. The 12/76 edit of "The Star Wars" by John Jympson was a trainwreck. It's not as if the film was made of pre-cut puzzle pieces.


Yipes! From the small examples I've seen of Jympson's cut, I'm surprised Lucas didn't have a stroke while watching it. Thank God for good editors, and for GL's determination to see it through to the form released theatrically.

"Charlie don't surf!" -- Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore
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Are any of these examples available? I've always wanted to see this myself.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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There may be more extensive clips elsewhere, but check out the shot of Ben Kenobi at the tractor beam from The Lost Cut.
"Charlie don't surf!" -- Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore
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Empire of Dreams contains some clips. You can also see the original cantina edit on Behind the Magic.

As for Jympson, i think its simply a matter of him being completely wrong for the material. The script to ROTJ was weak, as was the acting and photography, and the editing reflects this weakness.
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Sometimes it is indeed very hard to separate out the editing skill from the quality of the material.

Star Wars, in particular, seems to have such good editing (which it genuinely does) because of its tight, quite linear, story construction. The sequels, being more all over the map by necessity, and often being episodic rather than linear ... suffer from seeming to be less well edited. But is it the editing or the story construction?

Individual sequences may be well edited, shot to shot, in any of the O.T. films. But there's also the matter of how a film is edited together as a whole ... and that's where intangibles like the story, script, principle photography, etc. get jumbled together with the editing to make it difficult to separate out the skills.

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Originally posted by: Obi JeewhyenBut is it the editing or the story construction?

It's probably more story construction. In working on my Ep. 3 re-edit (I know, not an OT film like you were talking about), it seemed that, in parts, things may have been planned to cut together differently, but their order was changed in the edit room to make the story seem more complex than it actually was.
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This may not be directly related to the topic, so forgive me.

I thought everyone was of the consensus that "the Academy Awards didn't mean shit"? Or was that different in 1977?

Just curious because I sometimes (well only once) mention the Academy Awards and then when I did, my opinion is suddenly became invalid....hmmmm.

Your thoughts?
http://img416.imageshack.us/img416/7823/starwarssuppersmallerxx5.jpg
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garethxxgod, I think the concensus is that the Academy Awards don't necessarily mean that much nowadays. Maybe it's always been a big joke, but that a sci-fi film back in the '70s, when sci-fi was a dead genre, received 6 Oscars, I think that actually carries some weight, especially since the film had such a globally cross-cultural appeal and changed the entire art and craft of filmmaking.