Bobson Dugnutt

The biggest edition for this latest round of editing, was adding in a lot of Doug Chiang (Design Director) and his panel from SW Celebration, he now additionally discusses his design process, and dives deeper into things like the Battle Droids and Trade Federation, as well as added material in every other section of the doco.

I reccommend watching on it on its own as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYK1OXlm7Us

There’s a lot more John Williams too, as he talks about the music theory and crafting specific tracks, and how they relate to the OT. I found an interesting pack of interview clips that I assume were taken from some kind of EPK Tape or something. Incredible stuff, he now has his own section dedicated to the score.

There’s further specific discussion of the progression of digital filmmaking, with both the CG Characters, and how George tried to get the industry moving, with this film and leading into AOTC. Episode I was the first film to project digitally, and shot a lot of 2nd unit and additional photography on digital cameras, a first for the industry. Really compelling stuff.

Hopefully that extra 80 minutes is worthwhile enough to go around this monster project again!

Project resurrected!

After some time away from the whole thing, I’ve come back with fresh eyes and armed with even more footage!

TV SPECIALS
Star Wars - The Magic and the Mystery (1997)
Star Wars - An MTV Special (1997)
From Star Wars to Star Wars - The Story of Industrial Light and Magic (1999)
Omnibus S37E09 - A Long Time Ago - The Story of Star Wars (1999)
Dream Weaver - 60 Minutes Australia (1999)
AMC Cinema Secrets - S01E04 - Epic Battles (2000)
DVD FEATURETTES
Costume
Design
Fights
Story
Visual Effects
OTHER DVD MATERIAL
Introduction to Animatics
Podrace Lap 1 - Animatics
Deleted Scenes Documentary
The Beginning - Making Episode I (2001)
STARWARS.COM WEBISODES
All I Need is an Idea
Assistant Director
Bad Droid Karma
Boys in Paradise
Costume Drama
Home Sweet Home
It’s Like War Now
Movie Music
Prime of the Jedi
This is a Creature Film
Thousands of Things
Three Thousand Anakins
Pickups and Reshoots (Episode III)
OTHER STARWARS.COM MATERIAL
Casting Director
Depth
Interview Outtakes
Naboo Soldier
One Day to Go
Podracing
Something Out of Nothing
Sound
The Fall
Watto
BLU-RAY COLLECTION INTERVIEWS
Darth Maul Costume
Pre-Senate Address Costume
Queen Amidala Senate Costume
Senate Guard Costume
Full-Sized Battle Droid
Jar Jar Maquette
Naboo Starfighter Model
Republic Cruiser
Sando Aqua Monster
Trade Federation Battleship Model
Anakin’s Podracer Model
Dud Bolt Puppet
Eopie with Anakin Maquette
Queens Royal Starship Model
Sebulba Maquette
Sith Speeder Model
Watto Maquette
C-3PO Costume (Episode II)
BLU-RAY INTERVIEWS
Coruscant Overview
Tatooine Overview
Naboo Overview
Rick McCallum Interview - Filming in Tunisia
Rick McCallum Interview - Podracers
Liam Neeson Interview
George Lucas on Preparing to Write Episode I in 1994
Ewan McGregor Interview - Episode II
Blue Screen Acting - Episode II
COMMENTARIES
George Lucas, Rick McCallum, Ben Burtt, Rob Coleman, John Knoll, Dennis Muren, and Scott Squires (2001 DVD)
Cast and Crew - Archival (2011 Blu-Ray)
SW Celebration Panels
Creatures of Episode I with Nick Dudman - Audio Only (Celebration I 1999)
Phantom Menace 20th Anniversary (Celebration Chicago 2019)
Doug Chiang: The Evolution of Star Wars Design - Designing Episode I (Celebration Chicago 2019)
OTHER SOURCES
An Exclusive Interview with George Lucas - Part 3 of 3 - ROTJ VHS (1995)
SW UK Fan Club VHS - Behind the Scenes of Episode I (1999)
John Williams talks The Phantom Menace (1999 Interview)
Filmmaking Has Turned A Corner - Widescreen VHS (1999)
Episode II - The Saga Continues (2000 SW LD/VCD Featurette)
SW77 - Cantina Rough Cut (2011 Deleted Scenes)
TPM - Extended Podrace Wager (2011 Deleted Scenes)
Discoveries From Inside - Models and Miniatures (2015)
Conversations - Doug Chiang Looks Back (2015)
George Lucas on the Digital Revolution (2015)
ESB - Hoth Battle Rough Cut (Making of ESB 2015 eBook)
Every C-3PO Costume Explained By Anthony Daniels (Wired Youtube Video 2020)
Light and Magic - Episode 6 (2022)
Obi-Wan Kenobi - A Jedi’s Return (2022)

The original 13 part series ran at 4:43, and the current runtime is about 6hrs, so there is a lot of new stuff in here. I tried to work a lot of the unused footage from the first run, before working in even more material, and then keep adding more and re-arranging. I’ll watch this before release and try to trim it down a bit and make sure there isn’t too much fluff. It’s running at the same length as the Fellowship of the RIng Appendicies, so we’ll see where we end up.

Last things to work in will be the cast/crew commentary, and then I’ll do a pass at trimming it down and we’ll see how we go from there.

I’m having fun with some on-screen text too which is fun, trying to do a bit of this.

https://vimeo.com/819526776?share=copy

EvantheKidDS said:

If hypothetically the OT gets proper 4K transfers of in their unaltered forms, could the Revisited Trilogy look and sound just about the same?

You ask very silly questions sometimes.

An official 4k Blu-Ray of the unaltered theatrical cut, perhaps a scan of a 77 Technicolour print, probably an interpositive if anything, would look nothing like an unofficial fanedit, made to be what the Special Editions could of been, coloured and crafted too look like what a fan wanted to create. From the custom sound mix, to the new visual effects.

Revisited is not a theatrical preservation, never has been, and has never aimed to be anything like the unaltered original cut.

It’s like asking if Revisited is going to be anything like Harmy’s 3.0. Completely different things with different goals. They would never ever look or sound exactly the same.

EvantheKidDS said:

If hypothetically the OT gets brand-new, proper 4K transfers of all three in their unaltered forms with the same kind of treatment and care found in releases like the 2021 Scream Factory 4K Release of Halloween (1978), or the most recent 2023 Disney 4K Release of Cinderella (1950)

CamSMurph said:

Two days left in this year’s Star Wars Celebration. Any news?

I can safely say there has been no news regarding TROS: Ascendant at SW Celebration, but we’ll check back tomorrow and see if they’ve reported anything.

Uncut? As in they show the theatrical cut with no edits? Probably.

Uncut? As in showing an extended cut of the film?
Absolutely not.

The studio found the deleted scenes and locked them away as was Kubrick’s wishes. Unlikely they’ll be seen anytime soon.

Bought a 2nd hand print copy and absolutely loved it. A great exploration of George and his rewriting of history and going back on his word both behind the scenes and about the story of the films itself. It paints a great picture of how the films were crafted and how the story creatively evolved over the years, with constant retcons.
The evolution of who Vader was, who Luke’s father was, with Kaminski coming to a great conclusion on exactly when they were merged into one. The exploration of the early 9-15 episode series, potential antholgy stories, unwritten sequel trilogies, mysterious Journals of the Whills, this book has it all.
Everything is cited and its sources listed in a hefty section at the back of the book, so you can tell that this was all heavily researched and isn’t coming out of thin air. It’s a great read that isn’t Lucasfilm sanitised.

I really oughta re-read it, as well as “How Star Wars Conquered the Universe” which I haven’t read yet, but have heard great things about.

Anything is possible in our wildest dreams when you wish upon a star!

but no

Petition to get this version added to the end of the film. WE GOT THE POWER!

https://youtu.be/wq8JZ1zAOXM

“Y’know, a guy named William Shakesman once said, “brevity is the soul of wit.” This just means don’t waste my time. You keep it nice and simple.”

Sorry champ but a 3:41 video is a tough ask for anyone to sit through. Also I think Mike makes a pretty good allegory for what George did, comedic and light heartedly.

Also, I mean there was an original version of the films, watched for 20 years really. Maybe a few technically different versions if you want to say new crawls and 70mm changes, mono mixes, etc.

EDIT: yikes this is also the Woody Allen is innocent guy too

One of the little changes I really like is the use of adding another wide of Obi-Wan, which I’m pretty sure is taken from Light & Magic. Great to see some unused material and VFX being finished for an edit like this!

Luke - Yavin Yellow or Jedi Blacks (without the tunic)
Leia - Hoth
Han - ESB Jacket

Tried to soften the scene somewhat to match the rest of AOTC. Did some blurring, sharpening and then noise removal before colouring and adding light grain. This isn’t using any deaged version of the scene also.

Tried to base it on this shot somewhat, but the bloom and colour still isn’t quite right.

Depends on when you ask George and what he feels like saying that day

Fruit672 said:

can you send in some screenshots of the roj deleted rancor scene if you have that version? I want to see if its any better quality than the ones on youtube.

Other than Youtube and it’s usual compression, it’s about the same.

Ronster said:
Put your mac screen in a NDI

https://www.ndi.tv/

then stream your epub book videos to a screen capture like OBS on another computer?

It’s honestly not really worth it for an extra 0.3mb/s. you’d end up losing any improvements over the screencapping anyway.

After a lot of fucking around and messing about, and buying another copy of the eBook through iTunes, at the moment I can somewhat say that the Apple Books version of Empire Strikes Back is extremely similar, with a very minimal difference in bitrate, but basically identical.

The 10 clips from the eBook, only those with raw/deleted footage, in my existing rip, in total are 85mb, with each file having a bitrate of 1.1mb/s.

The Apple Books versions add up to 109mb, with the average bitrate being 1.5mb/s.

These are both pretty rubbish bitrates, considering the film on the 2011 Blu-Ray is roughly 32mb/s, however the Apple version of the eBook footage is definitely a little better.

The resolution for my version is 640x308, and the Apple one being 640x480. Which doesn’t mean much, as it’s just the black matte that is cut out in my version.

And also, the Apple version is locked up with DRM, with no current way I can find to unlock it. The videos don’t play, the images don’t open and the text doesn’t load, if you take it outside of the Apple Books app on a Mac computer. This was a waking fucking nightmare to work out. If anyone could figure out how to strip the DRM from the individual files, they still could be useful potentially since the bitrate is still slightly higher.

Every video file is also tagged with “SD for Apple Devices”, so it seems unlikely that there are any HD versions out there, unless anyone wants to test the Google Play versions, but I will not be sadly.

Unless there is some sort of alternate release of all this footage (another Blu-Ray or digital bonus or something), all of this stuff will be locked in barely 480p quality. Some of the SW Gag Reel made it into the TROS Doco, and there was a re-edit made of it on the ROTS Blu-Ray, but it suffered from being cropped to 16:9 and some horrid ghosting effects. In the end, some upscales we make will likely be the best we’ll ever have.

Here is a smiley Mark for your troubles!

no

The ones I have are 304x640, which came out of an .epub file, of which I don’t even remember where it came from. They look decent when upscaled, but still not amazing.

My .epub file is 519mb, and according to the Apple Books website, their version is 1.2gb, so it seems that the video files would be a lot better.

I can’t buy or download that version of the eBooks (looks like they aren’t avalible in Australia?) but it looks pretty confirmed that the video files would look a lot better. Best way to get it would be to download it to an iPhone/iPad/iPad, and sync it to a PC/Mac, and then figure out how to extract it from there.

Hopefully someone is able to get that raw ebook file, I’d love to crack into it and get the higher res video files. Would do wonders for many projects around here.

Lovely video but I doubt this is from 89, looks closer to 97, somewhere around TPM production.

Here’s George in 89, shooting Last Crusade for comparison.

Or him dressed in the Emperor’s robes from ROTJ, also in '89, which is just here cause I thought it was fun.

While the video as a whole is not great and is completely muddled and a little mean spirited towards RocketJump.

But it does feature a lot of great research into the lost cut of the film with a lot of good sources. I’d honestly rather prefer that the video was a 2 hour exploration into the editing of the film instead of this odd take-down. The constant replaying of footage and overanalysing of minor wording within the script got tiring. The actual discussion and talk of editing SW was great to listen to and I hadn’t heard a lot of it.

I’d also reccomend The Secret History of Star Wars to those who haven’t read it before, as it features heavily in the video.

The Naked Gun films aren’t exactly the amazing visual experiences that the Blu-Rays are just so unwatchable. I mean I just watch them on DVD. I doubt a 35mm scan would be the head and shoulders improvment that we’re all clammering for.

Please stop asking for stuff like this and fixing DNR and Dolby Vision and whatever else.

The music transition at the end isn’t 100% smooth, but everything else is absolutely perfect! I’d love to use it in an extended edit myself, the de-age stuff doesn’t worry me too much.

no

I’ll kick in a few bucks, is the best way to do it through the PayPal link?