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The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released) — Page 20

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Ogg - Haha ... Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost. Terrible. The trailers on the Miramax DVD of The Thief are a Pokemon movie and something done in Flash starring some Barbie knockoff. The colors on the Miramax DVD are also really garish, and it has the worst transfer I've ever seen on DVD. Yeah, I just rented it.


Maybe I should do a poster inspired by that one, only with Tack on it etc. The poster is pasted-together and is clearly a quick mockup, but the typeface design is great. =)


Please send me those Vaughan Williams recordings, that'd be great! To approach a Folkless version ... Alex thought that the Thief's theme was just a ripoff of The Pink Panther anyway. (And Am I Feeling Love is The Long and Winding Road if you didn't notice - any orchestral reprise sounds exactly the same.)


Feedmyleg - Yeah, I guess I do have to cut the fight, or do something clever with it. We'll see. I was editing the rough cut just for me ... I have to work hard if this has any chance of being seen by the Williams.



Baronbrain - Sorry you're sick again. Blah. Glad my DVDs are keeping you company tho'. =)

I was having trouble with the 16x9 at Alex Williams' house too. For some reason both the PAL workprint and the Recobbled Cut were panning and scanning rather than letterboxing (which looked fine on the Recobbled cut but awful on the workprint). Was that the trouble on your end?

Oh well, none of these are the final DVD anyway.

I like my DVDs to be ABLE to pan & scan though ... it's nice to be able to go in a little closer sometimes. On The Thief, the pan & scan is a 16x9 ratio, or close, so that's not bad.


Thanks for the offer of the Froot Loops DVD! I'd kind of like to look at it actually. Maybe it doesn't have the saturation problems of the Miramax disc either.

Aaron Davis has already sent me the entire 5.1 track (slapped in at your webspace Patrick, if you want it too) ... so I'm gonna check that out and see how it is.


Okay, I'm checking it out. Listening to the center channel only. I don't hear a huge difference from the stereo track - there's still music there, and with all the crap Miramax did to it, I'll REALLY have to hunt through to get anything worth using in this mix. But I will. Cos I care.

Miramax added extra "music" which was done on some kind of cheap Casio keyboard, apparently by a 5 year old, and idiotic cartoony sound FX ... arrrgh. I'll keep checking for anything useable.
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Something I forgot to mention.


I mentioned a Clapperboard special about the production of The Thief (then called The Golden City, I think), that Roy Naisbitt has a horrible copy of and is planning to send me.


It's from 1969, as far as I know. A very early look. Still had Nasrudin in at that point I believe. Cool, eh?



EDIT: I've emailed Chief Roofless himself, Windsor Davies. We'll see if he responds. Also, I've gotten an email from animator Steve Evangelatos.

The beat goes on!

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Sleep, they sleep, they're all asleep!

But I am quite awake ...



As usual.


Did a test on coloring a short pencil test shot of Phido. Didn't look good. Left it in its pencil state instead. Learned my lesson!


Put the first pencil shot of Tack on a background, using Photoshop. Did two versions of the shot. Looks unusual but nice. Might help lessen the blow of cutting to a pencil test that early.


Chris Boniface continues to work on his restorations. His first version of Arabian Knight looked rather "blobby" - he'd overdone the Maximum/Minimum sort of filters to reduce the grain, and the image started to warp. He's toned that down now and I'm hopeful. I'm having him look at darkening the image a bit overall, to lessen the blow of the blown out highlights that appear in some shots.

The real test will be what kind of quality he can squeeze out of the workprint! THAT I'm excited about.
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Sorry I couldn't put a bid in at the last minute. I was busy finishing a uni assignment. Still, I'm glad you won the item.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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On the second mp3 up, he mentions the 16th century Persian art being the inspiration.. well, after googling some things, I found a picture...

ROYAL POLO PONIES

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Nice find Erik - that relates. =) I looked at some 16th century Persian miniatures on the web and I can see the influence, particularly in Errol LeCain's background work, and in the fact that the city is arranged two-dimensionally clumping up on itself, in a sort of vague 3-dimensional space. The history and atmosphere of the Golden City does feel authentic, and it shows his love for the real thing. I'm sure it helped Aladdin figure out how to do their thing.


Gamewiz has let me borrow his copies of the books The Animated Raggedy Ann & Andy by John Canemaker, which is a major illustrated coffee table book all about the Raggedy Ann film (which is a shock, since the film is seen as a failure today), the Exploits of the Incomparable Mullah Nasrudin which is the first two Nasrudin book and even has a story about what became Princess MeeMee and Prince Bubba in it ... Goblet and The Thief are in there too as usual .... plus two issues of FPS and one of Animato, which talk about the film. One interviews Fred Calvert, one has a lovely sad article by Tony White, one has a positive review of the Princess version of the film ...

I'll be scanning all of these .... as much as I can ... this is gonna take forever ... The Raggedy Ann book has artwork and discussion of The Thief in it, and lots of information about Richard and his work, as well as obviously great images of all the Raggedy Ann characters and those who animated them. A lot of caricatures of the animators as their characters, which seems to be de rigeur for these films.

I want copies of these books.

There is so much printed material, so many quotes that appear in printed sources ... I've realized that along with a documentary it would be a good idea to do a book, if I have time ... I could go into a lot more detail about the making of this film given a few hundred pages to play with.

I've self-published books before (like my Tao of Cow) so it's no hassle really.

If anyone wants to help with either the documentary or the book, let me know. What I could REALLY use ... it would be difficult, but if someone could transcribe some of these interviews I've done as I post them ... DAMN, would that be helpful.

Anyone know any good text-reading OCR programs for Mac?
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I've always used Omnipage on the Mac for OCR - check out their website at http://www.nuance.com/omnipage/mac/. Worked pretty well for me in the past although I have not used the more recent versions.

I would be interested in helping with the documentary and book. Perhaps if you get a list of people who want to help, you can farm out things you need help with so that people are not duplicating work.

Should I e-mail you off-line to talk about this?

Sean
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Omnipage also has a PC version of their program, which I have used with great success in the past, so consider that reccomendation seconded.

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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Hmmmm, where do I find your e-mail address?
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I would love to help with anything you need. As long as it is within my ability.
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Thanks guys ... email me at tygerbug at yahoo.com.

What I could use most is transcriptionists and editors. Listening to the audio interviews and writing it all down, and people to look at what I've got, various sources and things, and try to make sense of it ... editing as cowriting in a way.
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Hey OCP, I'd like to offer my services, for anything that you need done. I have a ton of experience with OCRing scanned text. While I don't use Omnipage, I am extremely familiar with it's most well known competitor, a program called ABBYY Finereader. In a past life, I was into amateur pyrotechnics, and when I learned about OCR software, I came up with the idea of digitally archiving books and articles on professioal pyrotechnics. Over the course of a couple years, I worked on several projects, and probably OCRed around 2000 to 2500 pages of material. My biggest challenge was the restoration of a very rough PDF made up of 500 scanned images of an old textbook on military pyrotechnics. Not the most informative text, but I felt it was a rather necessary classical text on the subject, so I extracted the images from the PDF as jpegs, imported them into Finereader, and OCRed them. Not easy, considering the damn thing had tables, diagrams, chemical equations with subscripts, and so on. Another text I worked on used handwritten subscripts and superscripts for equations and footnotes. So I can deal with some really problematic shit.

I'll send you some samples of my work in a bit.
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Thanks Tweaker!


Coincidentally, I've actually found a copy of Abbyy Finereader and I'm using that to OCR a whole lot of articles about the film. I'll do more tomorrow.

Yep, OCP is OCRing.


Would you be interested in helping with transcripts and editing?
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That's perfectly fine.

If you need any help with Finereader, let me know.

Edit: Emails sent.
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http://www.xs4all.nl/~hwalther/images/Opc-ThiefCobbler.jpg

"One ... Eye?"

Man, I would love to have this cel. I'm jealous of the one who does.


She looks odd without her veil on.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie
http://www.xs4all.nl/~hwalther/images/Opc-ThiefCobbler.jpg

"One ... Eye?"

Man, I would love to have this cel. I'm jealous of the one who does.


She looks odd without her veil on.


Here's the cel as seen in the film:

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/7051/yyoneeye6bi.jpg

Also, here's the Saddam Hussein cameo:

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/604/saddamthief4na.jpg


Also, I was wondering why Zig-Zag was making some weird movements after tripping on Tack... I just noticed there are tacks stuck all over his arms. Ouch.

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/8150/zigzagstuck4bl.jpg
"I was a perfect idiot to listen to you!"
"Listen here, there ain't nothing in this world that's perfect!"

- from The Bank Dick
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Well, here we are then. I guess we're writing a book.

John "Tweaker" Nesler and Chase Mixon are on board and already doing transcribing, which I am hugely thankful for. My chief editor is gonna be Sean "Figmentfly" Murphy, who did great work on the Legend FAQ and helped get that movie out of obscurity and onto DVD in its proper cut. Sounds like typecasting to me.

I went through EVERYTHING I have on my HD currently, and scanned about a hundred pages of new material ... and put it all in one big text file.

It is 207 pages long - just a collection of articles relating to the Thief, a great many of which I scanned and OCRed myself within the last few days. (I'll send the new stuff to Eddie, maybe it'll go on his site.)

Hopefully Sean and the team can help make sense of it all. =)

There will be more ... If John and Chase and anyone else can transcribe the Alex and Roy interviews, and the old making of documentaries like The Thief Who Never Gave Up ...

We'll post all these for reading and on the web, of course, but all this will be VITAL for quotes in building a complete version of the story.

Overwhelming at this point, as it should be ... looking at a lot of raw material which will become a really compelling story ...


The Animator Who Never Gave Up

Richard Williams and the Thief and the Cobbler

The destruction of the greatest unfinished animated film ever made

---


This story is to be told in chronological order - there would be a chapter up front telling the whole sad story briefly, and then we go to Richard Williams being born, and tell the whooole story from there.

Because it's not just the story of a film, it's the story of an entire life. It's the story of a mad, temperamental genius who tried to make the greatest animated movie he could, and failed completely because of the sad realities of the film business.

This is a biography of Richard Williams and a biography of a film that is a living, breathing character in and of itself. An eccentric and strange movie unlike anything else ever made - and in that way reflects the personality of its creator, who was rather unlike any other animator.
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I can't really express how goddamn amazed I am right now, so I hope that those simple words will suffice.

Now, if I may suggest something. If you're self-pressing this book, will the copies that people eventually order be ordered from you or will they be ordered from some 3rd party company? Because if they go to you first, a neat idea could be to glue a disc sleeve into the back cover of the book and a copy of the Recobbled Cut would come with every one. (I stole this idea from the novelization of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians that I have, which is quite hilarious.)

I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.

Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.

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I'm moving to America soon so I am very very busy, but if there are any short audio clips I could listen to on headphones at my office desk (telephone converstaions, short interviews, etc) I can transcribe them on my lunch breaks or something while you guys concentrate on the bigger, more pressing stuff.

War does not make one great.

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Sure ... could break the longer interviews up into shorter clips. =)



Now the bad news .... not for this project, just for me ...

I expected to have money in my bank account to cover the $675 I have to pay in rent in a couple days.

Nope. I have $35 in my checking account.

Crap.

I've been unemployed for a month or two, and when you're mailing out a few dozen copies of a 12-DVD set of The Thief and the Cobbler, for free .... well, things add up.


=(


Gonna get kicked out of my apartment. Lemme think about this, what I'm gonna do.


Anyway .... progress on The Thief moves forward regardless!



I'm scanning about 90 pages of the John Canemaker book on Raggedy Ann & Andy. Somewhat interesting.
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Those of you who have the "Animating Art/UK commercials" DVD in this Richard Williams pack will have seen Oscar Grillo's short "Seaside Woman." He's a great illustrator with an unusual style.

Here's his take on The Thief.


I did work at Richard Williams Studio at different times but I never
worked
directly on The Thief and the Cobbler, which as you know was called
several
different names over time. It started being known as The Adventures of
Nasrudin, based on the traditional Persian stories collected by Omar
Ali
Shah. Richard Williams quarrelled with him and not having the rights
for the
book decided to turn it around and it ended up as a mish-mash and, in
my
opinion, one of the most miserable animated failures of all time. It
will
be near impossible for you to put it together again, since R. Williams'
version varied so much over time that it would look like a Persian
tapestry.
I think the best and most genuine surviving bits are the animation of
the
Thief, as it was done by Ken Harris. Ken was a master animator and one
of
the principal animators of Chuck Jones' "Coyote", so his Thief bore an
enormous resemblance to that character. I could tell you loads of
stories
but I'm afraid I wont be able to write them for lack of time and
perhaps...
interest. I have never been very enthusiastic about this project. From
the
word go I believed it was Williams' "folly".

If you live in LA try to contact Corny Cole, who was a very early
collaborator of Williams. He produced some magnificent early
story-boards. I
have a complete script of one of the versions of the Thief, given to me
by
Richard W. to lure me to work on the project and also some prototypical
versions of promotional booklets from another version, made to attract
finances for the film.I also have two authographed copies of Ali Sha's
"The
Adventures of Nasrudin" illustrated by R.W.

I was not able to see your trailer because there were some
difficulties
with the viewing player. If you wish to send me a copy of the DVD I
would be
very happy to revise my opinions.

I salute your resilience and patience in doing this labour of love.





Haha!

I'm really curious what Oscar would think of the final film. I'll definitely send it to him. Him remembering it as an unfinishable mess, and never having seen what the final product was, ought to be interesting.


I'd love to contact Corny Cole, who did great work here and on Raggedy Ann, but don't know his contact info. He's not in the book.



Anyway.



The book would be published by a third party - wish I could slip copies of the Recobbled Cut in there, but no dice.

If you're ordering the book I presume you know about the Recobbled Cut anyway. =)
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Does the Raggedy Ann book tell what aspect ratio the movie was in? I saw it on the big screen, but it was so long ago! What little I saw on tv in the 90's did look cropped.

Where were you in '77?

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it was cinemascope, same as The Thief. Very wide.
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That's what I thought. I hope Fox releases it on DVD one of these days. Parts of the movie are quite weird and surreal.

Where were you in '77?