The Empire Strikes Back - Expanded Edition (Work in Progress) — Page 5

So, I just sat through this and had a blast. I’m glad you went with my suggestion of going full grindhouse with it. It’s all so seamless that I don’t think it would have worked this good otherwise.

Issues I noticed were what Slavicuss already pointed with the spliced frames and audio desync during the “Chewie don’t lose your temper” scene; and also the R2 scream over the Destroyer Bridge/deleted Medical Bay wipe (26’23").

Outside of that, I think the audio in the extended Falcon repair with Han and Leia (55’) is a bit too loud; and the coloring on the restored saber training at 67’ looks a tad too contrasty/vibrant compared to the rest of the presentation.

Oh, and any reason for the Han-Leia exchange “Well Your Highness I guess this is it” before “don’t get all mushy on me” got cut? Also, the Wampa clawing the wall during the hallway argument feels a bit out of place. I guess it’s necessary to cut back to Han returning to Leia?

On a personal note I’m on the fence over scraping original sequences to salvage the restored scenes, as in the case with the Wampa attack on Echo Base and General Veers’ demise. I might be wrong on how well it would glue with the rest of the film, but I’d rather conserve the restored scenes, janky as they are, as much as possible without rearranging theatrical footage.

Fantastic job, anyway. I was looking forward to this for a while now, and it’s great to finally see it. Thanks!

Just finished watching another half hour chunk.

The colourised b/w footage (Veers’ death, Yoda with the metal bar, and the extended Leia / Han kiss) was impressively done. The matching colour grading was almost seamless in some instances.

The rearranged scenes felt odd, but that’s from viewing the 1980 film so many times, so was to be expected.

The film’s poor video helps the integration of the cut material enormously.

The audio levels for the deleted scenes was a little high for the surrounding material (Luke / Leia medical bay, etc).

I watched the first hour and I agree with the comments above. I like it very much except for the deletion of some original shots for inserting new scenes (the AT-AT falling) and the jarring deletion of “Well Your Highness I guess this is it”. Sound volume should be adjusted in my opinion, some scenes sound quite louder than others. And I’m not sure I like the use of the Special Edition Wampa for the missing Wampa shot being fired at by the rebel soldier. Love the coloring and the music/sound editing in some new scenes, for example in the extended Wampa attack to Luke at the beginning.

Just finished watching the whole thing.

Impressive - but I’d leave out any of the SE changes (Hoth Wampa, etc). I’m glad you didn’t include that alternate Cloud City scene between Han and Leia.

My favourite additions are, the extended Wampa attack on Luke at the very beginning, the brief shot of Boba Fett in the carbon chamber, and the deleted scene with Leia tending to Luke’s injuries in the Falcon - this deleted scene looked a little cleaner than the surrounding material, and should be ‘dirtied up’ to match the rest of the film’s video quality.

The audio levels for the deleted scenes are all over the place and need to be fixed.

Otherwise, a decent job!

Slavicuss said:

Some observations:

At the 5:16 mark, there’s a random frame or two that slipped past, during the deleted, extended dialogue between Han and Chewie (“dont lose your temper.”) that needs removal.

Fixed!

Slavicuss said:
At the 23:20 mark, Artoo’s scream (from the Hoth Wampa scene?) carried over Piett’s face and the start of the deleted scene between Luke and Leia (recovering after the bacta tank).

Scenes were originally in a different order and I must’ve left it in ther by mistake, now fixed!

Slavicuss said:
At the 28:04 mark, the deleted scene with Han and Leia could use some work on its geometry - the scene looks vertically stretched (Leia, looks like a conehead).

All of the footage from the Empire at 40 videos, for some reason is all vertically stretched. I’m assuming the footage had a narrower frame and was stretched to 2.35, somehow. But this is now noted and fixed!

merculix said:

I have now seen you edit Bobson Dugnutt and I must say I’m impressed how you could manage to keep the old school vibe even though I’m a fan of newer versions of Star Wars movies (Adywan etc).

Thank you! I tried to make this feel like an early cut of the film before cuts were made, and hopefully I was successful!

merculix said:

• The overall sound must be fixed in several places and the sound is out of sync here and there but I’m sure you are aware of this as this is version 1.0 of the movie. 😃

Any particular areas or scenes that drop in and out? Is it specifically the deleted scenes or the untouched film?

merculix said:

• Some of the hue of the video is almost green instead of white (don’t know if this is intentional as the original was this way? It was very long time ago I saw the originals). One example is the planet Hoth.

The source was a very early scan of ESB done in maybe 2014 or 2015, the Renegade Grindhouse version. The colour-timing is all over the place and I haven’t touched it. Cloud City is very red too. I’m happy to revisit the colours and make it a little more balanced and familiar.

merculix said:

• I believe you have inserted the deleted TIE Bomber scene too early as the original scene when they first bomb the asteroid field comes much further down the line.

Good catch! I’ll move the TIE Bomber scene backwards, so it plays in front of the deleted scene with Han and Leia and their dialogue matches up!

• The still shot of the Bounty Hunter looked odd. See if it can be solved in any other way? I know that one second is missing in the original clip but this unfortunately didn’t work for me.

Is this the shot?

With there being a slug in the middle of the shot, I can’t imagine any other way around it, other than cutting to this shot. I can give it a crack trying to add some movement to the characters in the back. Personally it doesn’t bother me, but I can see how it could be somewhat odd.

merculix said:
Overall I dig you edit Bobson but personally I dig the newer versions more. But it’s a personal taste. 😃

Thank you 😃)

theprion said:

So, I just sat through this and had a blast. I’m glad you went with my suggestion of going full grindhouse with it. It’s all so seamless that I don’t think it would have worked this good otherwise.

Going grindhouse was absolutely the best option! The deleted scenes were never ever going to line up with a Blu-Ray copy of the film, and doing a filthy, dirt stained version of the film was the best move.

theprion said:
Outside of that, I think the audio in the extended Falcon repair with Han and Leia (55’) is a bit too loud; and the coloring on the restored saber training at 67’ looks a tad too contrasty/vibrant compared to the rest of the presentation.

I’ll crank down the Falcon repair, and see if it lines up better, and looking at it now, absolutely the saber training scene is a tad too saturated, so I may of overdone it. I’ll see what I can do!

theprion said:
Oh, and any reason for the Han-Leia exchange “Well Your Highness I guess this is it” before “don’t get all mushy on me” got cut?

I actually have no idea what happened there or how that line got cut, but it was completely accidental somehow. Reinstated!

theprion said:
Also, the Wampa clawing the wall during the hallway argument feels a bit out of place. I guess it’s necessary to cut back to Han returning to Leia?

The deleted scene on the BR, for whatever reason, uses a clip from the film to segue into the scene, but then changes to a completely different take for whatever reason, it makes it very hard to cut it into the film, and much like the bounty hunter shot, cutting away to the Wampa is the only idea I had. Maybe having a fake extra walk past the camera to hide the cut? But I don’t think spacially it would make sense, if anyone has any other ideas, I’m happy to give it a crack.

theprion said:
On a personal note I’m on the fence over scraping original sequences to salvage the restored scenes, as in the case with the Wampa attack on Echo Base and General Veers’ demise. I might be wrong on how well it would glue with the rest of the film, but I’d rather conserve the restored scenes, janky as they are, as much as possible without rearranging theatrical footage.

Little confused about what this part means, but I’m assuming you’re referring to repurposing the walker falling over into the General Veers death. The walker shot was originally intended for this scene, so I didn’t have much of a problem with putting it back. I suppose the Luke bombing scene does feel more anti-climactic too, unless there is some other walker footage from somewhere to pull from. What are you referring to with the Wampa attack?

Slavicuss said:

The rearranged scenes felt odd, but that’s from viewing the 1980 film so many times, so was to be expected.

I’ve rearranged a lot on Hoth, especially around when Luke gets back, to accomodate all the new material in there. It’s all in accordance with the Fourth Draft shooting script. This means that Luke spends a lot more time in recover compared to the final film, so it absolutely feels odd to a film that is so familiar.

Slavicuss said:

The audio levels for the deleted scenes was a little high for the surrounding material (Luke / Leia medical bay, etc).

I’ll make sure to lower things, and get it all balanced, I think that’s the biggest technical issue for this.

rortiz77 said:
And I’m not sure I like the use of the Special Edition Wampa for the missing Wampa shot being fired at by the rebel soldier.

I needed an extra Wampa shot, so I pulled from there, but I can try cutting out that one shot and see how it works, my worry is that the scene by go by too fast without something there.

Slavicuss said:

Impressive - but I’d leave out any of the SE changes (Hoth Wampa, etc).

I’d rather be shot than use the entire SE Wampa scene. Cool idea, bad excecution, Jaws shark is better when unseen, etc.

Slavicuss said:
I’m glad you didn’t include that alternate Cloud City scene between Han and Leia.

If there was more footage of that scene included, then I would of absolutely used it, but sadly it’s only 3 chunks of it, or else it would of slotted in.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! Massively helpful, and I always appreciate any and all critiques! I’d be nothing without the opinions of others!

Finally got to watch. Nice work here. I kind of knew going into it that it would be the more raw Renegade Grindhouse version look, which clearly makes it easy to slice in the deleted scenes.

The extra bacta tank scene colorized seemed to be a half and half of red and blue tint (almost a 3D anaglyph feel) as opposed to your other colorized style. I think that was your first years ago maybe?..not sure at this point if worth it to try and do another pass, but it’s a tough scene too from a colorization standpoint.

Creative use of the General veers death. I decided not to even try that in my extended I am still working on due to the storyboard and cartoon elements, but you edited in what you could from that and it worked. I get now why the falling at-at had black smoke around it head crashing due to that removed scene…thought it worked well.

…The restored first kiss looks good, I decided to exclude out of mine and have first kiss be the deleted bespin scene with them, which was decent quality and no coloring required…but either works to include. Not sure if you can use any of that deleted scene minus the kiss or work with it?..just a thought for an additional.

There are also some additional hoth battle scenes (with the canon tank) etc. that you may want to use…For me, I am still deciding if I want to restore them as they are lower quality, but might be ok for grindhouse look.

My personal taste is the adywan/modern/clean version, but I understand what this is trying to achieve and if you do the same for New hope and jedi it will be interesting and very retro and nostalgic way to do a viewing.

Again nice job so far.

Bobson Dugnutt said:

What are you referring to with the Wampa attack?

I meant the way you restored the Wampa attack on Echo Base doesn’t feel quite right. Specifically, the almost identical Wampa lunge from earlier in the cave with Luke. And then the chopped Wampa arm moved forward, which seems a bit strange to be chopped off by blaster fire. Also, using SE material in the scene feels like it’s taking away a bit of its authenticity. It’s cut very fast anyway, and I’m not sure the SE with added FX is doing it any favors. Maybe we don’t need to see the Wampa being hit? Would it work to cut from the rebel soldier firing his blaster directly to the tunnel tumbling and him saying “I got it”? What do you think?

I also just noticed some snippets from your Leftovers compilation weren’t used in your EE. For example, the brief shot in the cave from behind the Wampa’s claws. Isn’t it possible to fit it in, maybe a bit slowed down? Just like Luke’s healing mask later in the medical bay, an iconic shot that only ever made it into the classic comics.

And the brief sequence of Han lifting Leia out of the way during their hallway argument. Looks a bit tricky to include because of the dialogue, but it would be one charming addition as well.

Is it completed yet? If so, is there a link for it?

@Bobson Dugnutt

PM sent. Thanks!

I would very much like to get a chance to see this, as well as any of your other Star Wars edits. I have seen a lot of very positive comments about your work here and around the Net. Thank you very much.