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Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - uncensored HDTV airing(s) (Released) — Page 3

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Yes, I saw that last week, very tempted by the 35mm print, even though it isn't scope. I'd love to know what the actual movie consisted of, there are so many rumours...

Shipping cost to Australia puts me out of contention though, they want a grand to ship it!

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Well, the film print would be one way of confirming you have the original theatrical presentation.  I lack the equipment to transfer something like that to a digital format, though.

I decided to do some tests to see if it would be possible to undo the edits in the blu-ray version using the french version.  Since most of the edits are a single frame or only a handful of frames, it might be possible.

Here's a test I did to remove the censorship on the Betty Boop scene since it was only one frame.

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Oh and to answer your question Silverwook, I could easily scan the missing frames from a 35mm print to reinsert into any restoration project.

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I don't think Who Framed Roger Rabbit was presented in scope.  It looks like the film had a hard matte on it, instead.  I'm curious to see what actual frames look like for the live-action segments, though.  In many cases, animated films were animated at full-frame and matted later.  In some cases, the prints have a mix of hard-matte and open-matte sequences since the mattes won't be visible on-screen.

If the price stayed low, getting the film print wouldn't be an issue here.  Scanning the frames would be a problem on my end, though.

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I can scan it, maybe if someone is ever holidaying in Oz....

 

I wonder how much it would be via sea-freight?

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poita said:

I wonder how much it would be via sea-freight?

Surface is no longer available via USPS. :(

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I'm going to try and create an uncensored version of the movie using the French HDTV, German HDTV, and blu-ray releases.  The German version has additional picture information along the edges that was cropped off of the blu-ray version but it's got a lot of DNR, as well.  If I can restore the film grain and get the colors to match up I can get something a little more complete.

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I don't suppose someone on here won the 35mm print?

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Where were you in '77?

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This is something that has bugged me for years, hopefully someone here can help me. I remember watching a scene from the movie on television years ago that now doesn't seem to exist. It was Roger and Eddie sitting in a car and Eddie is complaining because he's hungry and there's nothing to eat. Roger then proceeds to show off the benefits of being a toon by imagining some food and then proceeding to snatch it out of his own thought bubble and eat it. That much I'm sure I remember. I also want to say that the scene then proceeds with Roger goading Eddie into trying to do the same and almost succeeding...but that's all pretty fuzzy in my mind.

So....did this scene ever actually exist?

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Tobar: I've never found any evidence of that scene.  The only scene that was confirmed to have been used in the TV version was the pig-head scene, which was cut very late in the production.

I've done a few more comparisons and it seems there are some differences between the German HDTV version and the blu-ray version.  In the Betty Boop nip-slip scene, there were two edited versions.  The first edit, which appears on the German HDTV version, just added extra black to her dress to cover the nipples.  The second edit, on the blu-ray and vista series DVD, added more black and reduced the cleavage line as well.

Also, during the scene where Jessica is thrown from the cab, there were two edited versions.  The original version of the scene had three panty shots, one in each cut.  The german version covers the first two shots but in the third shot, where Jessica bounces off the ground, the panties still show up briefly.  In the blu-ray version this panty shot is covered up as well.

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The question I'm afraid to ask... does any of this matter?

I mean grabbing some high quality stills of the cut frames would be more meaningful than cutting them into the movie.

I'm usually pretty good at catching fast action, but we are talking single frames here.  Do they even register when you watch it?  It's the whole reason they were able to slip by responsible parties and into theaters unnoticed.

Even a hummingbird couldn't catch Tyler at work.

Dr. M

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Cut one frame from a scene and see if you notice it. If someone else doesn't do it, I'm going to make the best possible preservation of this as is possible. Are the scenes essential to enjoying Roger Rabbit? No. Should they be preserved? I think so.

FE<3OT

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 (Edited)

On a side note, you can read the movie script here:
http://sfy.ru/?script=who_framed_roger_rabbit

You can see some of the things that were planned but were changed or removed during filming.

As far as restoring the censored frames, yeah they aren't crucial but I still want to do it as a project, if only to get some video editing practice.  The Baby Herman middle finger is pretty obvious if you're looking for it since it lasts for several frames.  If you know they're there, the other frames do become visible. 24-25 fps is not fast enough to fully hide a single frame gag from most people.

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SilverWook said:

I don't suppose someone on here won the 35mm print?

In the past when someone has won something I had an interest in I have contacted the seller and asked if they will pass my email address onto the buyer.

About 50% of the time, I hear from the buyer, it might be worth a shot.

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I'm kind of curious about:

Also, there appears to be a small delay on shipments of some copies of the Blu-ray release of Disney’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: 25th Anniversary Edition.  Amazon currently lists a shipping time of “9 to 12 days” and claims it’s “due to a manufacturing issue”.  In any case, just know that there may be slight delays in finding copies depending on the retailer you purchased the title from.

Does that mean they found something else to cut?

Dr. M

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From what I've read elsewhere, they accidentally used the full frame version for the DVD that's included. Nothing wrong with the Blu Ray. Store copies that have reached shelves have a sticker acknowledging the error, and offering a  disc exchange.

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Where were you in '77?

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 (Edited)

It sounds like they included the wrong disc from the 2-disc vista series DVD release.  Maybe they will offer a replacement disc or something.

Also, the Best Buy stores around here have the blu ray for $24. Hmm...

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"OUR BAD!"

Never thought I would see that term used by a professional...

On a side note, it's kind of funny that the book is called "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?" @_@

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I've started working on converting the BD video to something I can work with and I will be using the french version to restore the segments of the frames that were censored.

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Are you going to make an HD version?

FE<3OT

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That's the plan.  I'll be recreating the uncensored frames individually and then replacing the censored frames with them.

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Which frames? How do you know that there aren't any additional "Easter eggs" that are yet to be discovered/documented?

So I devised an Avisynth script that takes the French video, colour-matches it to the Blu-ray and attempts to align the two sources spatially by using simple manual crop & resize. The script then "subtracts" one from the other.

If the two videos were identical to one another, they would cancel each other out and you'd be left with a totally grey screen. However, because the BD is sharper than the HDTV source, and the edges aren't exactly aligned, you end up with a ghostly image of the original:

Where there are significant differences between the two, you end up with black or white artefacts. For example, the dirt spot and the hair on this frame in the HDTV source

Do not appear on the BD, so you get this:

This is also true of places where the animation has been redrawn, thus:

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Here's a sample in motion:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/w1x5yu

Questions:

1. Can anyone improve on this method? I've found using ffmpegsource I get duplicate frames, and AVCsource decodes extremely slowly on this ancient PC (I get about 4fps). Plus I don't always seem to get frame accurate output.

2. Anyone up for watching the entire film this way and looking out for black or white flashes? ;-)

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