I’ve replaced the Russian dubs in my collection with despecialized dubs from the 2011 Blu-rays, which sound much better than what I had before, and are available in the usual places. Subtitles to accompany these new dubs will be included in the next Project Threepio.
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There’s a whole discussion thread with links and other info here:
Ah, thank you very much Adywan, I was considering shots 2 & 3 from your link to be the same shot. Good source info though, it looks like you chose the right ones based on that. But now I’m doubly confused about why they thought it wasn’t clear where our heroes were with respect to one another. Nevertheless, I’m glad they did it, because I prefer the 35mm ending.
The 8mm digest is unique audio, not found on the 70mm mix (morgands1’s in-theater recording confirms this). However, it may have some of the alternate video present on the 70mm prints. I think Puggo Edition actually has the missing radar dish on the Falcon that people report on the 70mm prints, and maybe others? Not sure, but I didn’t see this on your vimeo link. I also don’t know which ending it would have, although I suspect it’d have to be the 70mm ending, similar to what you have in your vimeo clip. You could use the morgands1 audio here to maybe get something that flows better, but the quality would drop, so maybe not.
Yes, I love that alternate Leia line because her lips actually match the dialogue for a change!
EDIT: I’m also not sure you’re clipping the right bits for the 70mm ending. What you’re clipping matches what adywan did, but I’m not sure adywan got it right either (but I could be wrong too). There’s three shots:
Two of the three were added for the 35mm cut, but which two? Adywan removed 1 & 3, but the audio lines up just as well removing 2 & 3. Considering that the stated reason for the additional shots was “to allow the viewer to see where Lando and Chewie were with respect to Luke and Leia”, it seems like 2 & 3 are the shots that do that. Just having shot #1 gives you no idea, and then I can see why they added those other two scenes for the 35mm cut. Shot #2 gives you a decent idea on its own, so I’m not sure why someone would feel the need to add the other two shots, especially because #1 doesn’t provide any additional context at all.
Well, I’m assuming you know about 4K77 and 4K83? These are film scans of the originals, not edits of home video releases. Don’t let the “4K” fool you though, the 720p projects you’ve already mentioned have a lot more fine image detail. Nevertheless, they’re truly the original versions, and there are lots of versions to choose from – the initial scan is the same, but different color grades and levels of DNR are applied in various iterations. IMO 4K83 is definitely worth a look, but 4K77 is more of an acquired taste.
There are discussion threads for these project here, with instructions on how to get them.
Lithuanian voiceovers are now synced and despecialized.
People confuse schizophrenia with dissociative identity disorder all the time. I’m not gonna judge.
Maybe he’s thinking jaundice.
Anyway, without having to rehash a huge discussion thread too much, SW DeEd 2.x was graded based on a Technicolor reference print. Why? The theory was sound – everyone’s got their own idea of what looks good, but Harmy wasn’t interested in what looked good, he wanted what looked accurate. Since most Star Wars prints had long ago faded to pink vinegar, we had no good color references… except Technicolor prints, which didn’t fade much at all under the right circumstances.
The result? DeEd 2.7 looks very much like a Technicolor print you might have seen in a theater in 1977.
The bad news? Technicolor prints were often very unlike other 35mm prints in terms of colors. Especially around this time, they often had a heavy yellow cast. So DeEd 2.7 looks very unlike what you might have seen in a theater in 1977, if it wasn’t showing a Technicolor print (which was most of them).
Going forward, Harmy’s indicated that he plans for a more neutral grade, or even multiple grades, when he redoes Star Wars for the 3.x series.
EDIT: The 1993 versions of the films have their own issues. They are heavily magenta-tinted, so everyone has red faces instead of yellow faces. In terms of color accuracy to non-Technicolor source, the 1997 Special Editions are actually pretty good for commercial releases, although I think the home video versions still got messed up somehow. I’d say DrDre has the best sense of Star Wars colors, if you want to check some of his threads. Nobody should use the 1993 releases as a color reference.
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Korean dubs are now synced and despecialized for the trilogy. The lip sync is a little inherently scattershot, but they turned out really nicely.
Uzbek voiceovers are now synced and despecialized for the trilogy – all films are incomplete, as they’re from censored TV broadcasts, or had other issues.
jjn26: PM sent.
weyb: This project just does subtitles for the main feature, sorry. Commentary subtitles are likely available only in English if you can find them at all.
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Georgian voiceovers are now synced and despecialized for the trilogy, available in the usual places. Return of the Jedi is incomplete.
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Malaysian dubs are synced and despecialized, as well as Ukrainian dubs, which replace the Ukrainian voiceovers in my collection. Like the Indonesian dub of Star Wars, the Malaysian dub of Jedi had some content editing for a TV station. Not too bad, most of it was dialogue-free cuts which were recoverable, but a couple lines were lost and are patched in with English.
If it helps, this was geared toward the “technicolor look”, which had a heavy yellow bias (it was really like that in theatres IF you saw a tech print!). It was also IIRC working from an already-processed version of the Blu-ray that had gone through a less-than-ideal de-purpling process. Either way, the result is definitely far from perfect, but it’s still my favorite go-to version of this film.
Harmy’s already commented that future versions won’t necessarily have that hardcore technicolor look and will be more neutral/natural. The problem was (and still is) that everyone’s got their own ideas about what looks good, and technicolor prints are the only references that can definitively tell us how the film looked back in the day – but that yellowish cast comes with that particular package, and isn’t how it looked for most people who saw the film on a different kind of print (now pink and vinegary).
Wow, much thanks to Clarissa Yazzie for providing the Diné translations in that article. I have not found the original Diné script anywhere for subtitling purposes, but it’s a start.
And for those who didn’t piece together the name on the translation credit, Clarissa also voiced Leia – and nailed it!
The Definitive Collection laserdiscs actually started our GOUT standard (it wasn’t called “GOUT” back then though, but DC Laserdisc rips were the big thing everyone synced their audio to before the actual 2006 bonus discs existed), so I’d be surprised if it wasn’t perfect sync. That said, the current project now uses the theatrical frame standard, which should not be noticeably different than GOUT for this purpose.
I think there was an early erroneous pressing of the DC laserdiscs missing part of Leia’s welding scene in Empire. Those won’t sync.
But as far as actually using a genlock, I haven’t done it. Does this mean you have? If so, that’s pretty cool!
Wait until you hear about the spoon.
Indonesian dubs are synced and despecialized for the whole trilogy, available in the usual locations. Star Wars was the only dub that was cut/incomplete, which leads me to believe the full dub is out there somewhere. If I get it, I’ll sync it. Project Threepio subtitles for the untranslated sections will come after I’m through more of these languages (i.e. to verify what sort of accompanying subtitles the other dubs may need).
Okay, I’ve synced the first Indonesian dub and plan to proceed with the rest (available in the normal places). The Star Wars dub was bowdlerized – that is to say, someone had edited out all the naughty bits – and so it was a real pain to restore, and there are parts missing, which revert back to English. Sadly, this is the only version of the Indonesian dub I have access to right now, but the next version of Project Threepio will include Indonesian “titles” subtitles, to translate the untranslated parts.
What people consider to be naughty can be pretty idiosyncratic, and I’m guessing in parts due to not having the accompanying edited video, but this appears to be the naughty bits of Star Wars: any dead body or severed body part, any closeup of anyone shooting a gun or brandishing it in a dangerous manner (people getting shot not an issue), Leia hugging Han (but hugging Chewbacca and kissing Luke is OK), people drinking, smoking, or talking about engaging in illegal activities such as smuggling. And misc other things I couldn’t figure out.
Most other parts of the film were largely intact, but the cantina and the Death Star were edited to shreds. Thankfully, only a few lines of dialogue were lost because a lot of the cut scenes had no dialogue. But still… ugh. Although as someone who actively edits out parts of the film added in 1997 or later so that it syncs to fan edits of an out-of-print version of the film, maybe I shouldn’t throw stones.
Either way, I don’t think the other films, or dubs in other languages, have this problem. Just a one-off. But I’ll be holding off on releasing that new Project Threepio until I can confirm there aren’t similar problems in any of the other dubs.
The 2005 date is likely the correct one for the dubs in my collection. I don’t recall having to remove the scream when Luke fell into the chasm, which would place the ESB dub as post-2004. However, there may have been ANOTHER Cantonese TV dub in the mid 90’s to which simps is referring. Multiple dubs are not uncommon.