CatBus

I'd be satisfied hearing people who had worked with Leigh pronouncing Leigh.  Presumably if they pronounced it too badly when they worked together, she'd have corrected them. That's why I was interested in seeing if anyone heard it during a commentary track or making-of featurette, even if it was someone else talking.

But yeah, point taken about people and their weird-ass pronunciations.

So Harmy, are you going NTSC on this one? I don't want to start editing until you give the word.

Also, does anyone have the French audio for ROTJ from the NTSC GOUT? This track was available on both NTSC and PAL, and I'd rather have one straight from the NTSC than a re-encode of the PAL.

Aggh, conflicting opinions on Leigh's name (Molly offered "Lee" in another thread). Anyone got anything authoritative on that one for a tiebreaker? Or a podcast we can listen to to find out for ourselves?

I get the feeling transcribing is the easy part--doing the voice recording and putting together the audio tracks is where this thing will really go off the rails ;)

Thanks for the kind words, though. The genesis for Project Threepio was an SDH project for a deaf friend. It just didn't seem right not to extend the same courtesy to the visually-impaired, once we had the materials to make it happen.  Heck, once we have the scripts, we could translate the descriptive scripts into other languages and then merge them into the dubs and then... argh, no. Someone else will need to do that part!

I posted this and some other pronunciation questions in a new thread here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/How-to-pronounce-the-names-of-the-creators-of-Star-Wars/topic/17138/

Figured there are plenty of people who probably know the correct pronunciations, but few of them who are also interested in this somewhat arcane topic.

I have two scripts complete, the third (Jedi) may be harder than the others, due to big chunks of video missing in the SE.

One of my failings is that I've never really cared to listen to a commentary track or behind-the-scenes making-of featurette about Star Wars. As such, I've never really heard the correct way to pronounce many of the names behind it.

Can anyone provide guidance with the following?

Leigh Brackett (sounds like "Lee"?)

Richard Marquand (sounds like "Mark-AND"?)

Howard Kazanjian (sounds like "Kaz-AN-jee-an"?)

Ian McDiarmid (sounds like "Mick-DUR-mid"?)

All of the others seem fairly self-explanatory, but if you know of any that have a very counter-intuitive pronunciation, go ahead and let me know that too.

Ugh. I suppose the upside of using NTSC-synced video is that PAL-synced audio will be, at worst, two frames late, which is more tolerable than two frames early.

Here's the original discussion of the frame differences. PAL has two extra frames at the Dagobah-to-fleet transition. NTSC has an extra frame during the Endor battle after the Ewoks jump over a log.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Whats-missing-from-GOUT/post/457548/#TopicPost457548

The screencaps appear to be dead though, so maybe you could get frame numbers from Darth Mallwalker.

Uh, yeah, PAL frames or we're already totally screwed.  Please don't switch back to NTSC, or people won't be able to share audio between your project and others, e.g. dark_jedi's.

And Harmy--dammit about the burnt-in sub timing, but I'm sure I'll survive.

EDIT: Regarding the Belbucus tracks, I think we're likely to get another digital stereo track from schorman's archive, for '83 and '93, which will hopefully be better quality, as well as giving us a chance to sync to the PAL frames.  If Puggo discovered a unique 16mm Jedi mono track (did he?), then we can do that as well.  Resyncing a handful of audio tracks for which we have excellent-quality sources available is the least of our worries.

I wouldn't mind hearing if you plan on timing the burnt-in subtitles any differently for the next version (i.e. appearing or disappearing on different frames), or changing their appearance (positioning, size, etc) from 1.x.  I'm really hoping "No" for timing differences, but early notice would help me.

Actually all our frame references use the PAL GOUT for Jedi, because someone, at some point, decided that the PAL GOUT had slightly more detail for Jedi.  So you'd actually be making a mistake by using the NTSC GOUT.  i.e. dark_jedi's upscales and various audio tracks use the PAL GOUT frames.  hariy_hen's ROTJ 5.1 audio used NTSC GOUT by mistake, but he plans to fix this.

So we use NTSC GOUT for SW and Empire, PAL GOUT for Jedi.  Because we're weird that way.

Not excited here either. This could change as the (reputable) reviews roll in, though.

I probably won't even bother to see it unless people really rave about it.  The Star Wars franchise has been dead to me for so long, I have my doubts anything can kick it back to life again.

I saw ROTS (for free, come on...) when some people said it wasn't as bad as the other prequels. Never again. Never. Again.

Agreed (except on points 4, 5 and 6...). TPM was an awful movie and huge disappointment, but the prequel trilogy steadily got worse as it continued, hitting rock bottom (or so I dearly hope) in ROTS.

Scripts are well underway, let me know if there are any special requests or things to look out for.  I'm planning to include credits up to a point (basically getting through all the stars and co-stars, but stopping short of the scrolling credits).  That way, pronunciation issues are kept to a minimum, except I'm not sure how to pronounce Leigh Brackett's first name.

Sticking pretty tightly to the American script for Star Wars (the one included with the DeEd, which I've decided sounds bad enough to just go ahead and redo with the others) and the UK scripts for Empire and Jedi (the Alex Newman/James O'Hara ones, despecialized), but I am going through and fixing occasional things that sound wrong or are bad descriptions (by my judgment).

TV's Frink said:

We did?  I thought we signed up because we wanted the OOT on DVD, and we stayed because hairy_hen's mom is easy.

That's no mom.

That so made my day, thanks!

Easy.  The PT didn't happen.  Similarly, there were no sequels to the Matrix.

http://xkcd.com/566/

Also, for what it's worth, the Special Editions didn't happen either.

Now there are two of them.

Nothing quite like a good thread resurrection, but there's actually something to report on this front, so it's not your typical necrobump.

A while back, in Harmy's ESB thread, there was a discussion about descriptive audio tracks.  It turns out, Harmy had official (British TV?) descriptive audio for the Special Editions of ESB and Jedi (not sure which versions of the SE, or if they're the ones previously mentioned, but not sure I care).  Rather than continuing to clutter up his thread with updates on this, I figured I'd move it on over here where it seems to belong.

The thing is that this audio isn't really that usable in the traditional sense (unless you want to watch the Special Editions, I suppose).  Even if you could despecialize it convincingly, the quality isn't great, they use some pretty nasty ducking, and the voiceover mixing levels seem a little out of whack to boot.  However, there is some value in these--the script of the descriptive audio.  I'm pretty certain we're all pretty much amateurs in this game, so having a pre-made script is better than winging it without a sense of what really needs to be described.  Descriptive audio is weird--florid but curt--and it's hard to write like that.  It helps to have something written by people who do this professionally.

So right now I'm transcribing the descriptive audio into a text script file.  I am also despecializing as I go, replacing some British idioms (some of them sound very bad to a US listener!), and making occasional corrections for things that are simply wrong, but more-or-less keeping most things the same.

When done, we will have scripts that our golden-voiced member (Barry White was unavailable, so I'll try to get Mavimao instead) could read.

Then, we could splice-and-dice the audio into a GOUT-timed mono track of audio description only, which could then be blended with whatever audio we like, however we like.  I'd make a stereo track myself, trying to use minimally-intrusive ducking.  But if someone wants to do a 5.1 track, or something like that, it would be totally doable.

Anyway, that's the plan right now at least.  There's always the possibility of some unforeseen roadblock, but the main obstacle really seems to be it's simply going to be a lot of work.  No, I have no completed scripts yet.

EDIT: I suppose I should add that, if this works, we could do the same for Star Wars, but it's a much lower priority, since we have decent GOUT-synced audio already.  The Star Wars audio has issues (low quality, 81 crawl, non-theatrical audio during asteroid scene, volume changes and pitch warbles).  I'm cleaning up the worst parts of this audio up by just patching in '77 stereo audio from a good source, but the best option for the long term would be to re-record the overdub and overlay it over completely new audio, just like the plan for the other two films.

TV's Frink said:

blaice said:

ALSO: I forced my mates to watch the 2011 and despecialized of SW back to back with me and they couldn't tell which one was the official release as per quality, transfer, remastering etc. They don't know (or care) much about the changes so it was a good test to gauge purely the visual grade of v2.5. /GG

 Time to find some new friends.

Not many friends will still talk to you after you force them to watch the 2011 Blu-rays. I'd say these friends are keepers... assuming they're still friends.

Harmy said:

WOW...

The Imperial March sounds really good on that instrument, and I really liked the lightsaber. The rest was just really creepy. I'm voting for the horse.

PM sent.

TheBoost said:

I'm not certain that thinking the character is a not so bright necessarily translates as a slap against the movie.

It's the interview as a whole, not that quote in particular. But I'm not sure it's a matter of Ford "not getting it", so much as being bitter at being personally tied to that character much, much longer than he would have preferred, with audiences (and interviewers) never ceasing to gush over it.

Heck, if I did fantastic work at a job I despised, and people couldn't stop talking to me, even decades later, about how great that job was, I'd do anything I could to change the subject too, including sounding like a bitter grumpy old man if that's what it took.

Generally prefer Harmy's.  The fact that some SE elements are present doesn't bother me as long as I really don't notice them, and all of the DeEd's have reached this threshold for me.  The only thing that really bugs me on occasion is the variability in quality (exceeding the already high variability of the theatrical versions).

I've noticed that the DVD downscales of the DeEd's "blend better" by putting an artificial upper limit on the detail, and that limited quality is still higher than any other non-reconstructed source--so for those who can't stand the variability, the DVD downscales of the DeEd's may work better.  That said, I still prefer to watch the 720p versions and suffer with the occasional jarring moment.

Honestly though I think it's not so much the resolution, but the colors that push Harmy's work over the top for me, especially for Star Wars.

Back when the DeEd's were at version 1.x, I preferred dark_jedi's work.  Still do in many ways for Jedi.  Those eyebrows, man...

Plus, I never really adjusted to the whole "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" thing, so that limits my video options for Star Wars.

I'm hoping -1's work makes this whole "you must choose: high-def reconstruction or lo-def original" dichotomy moot.

Not sure I agree with the premise. Plenty of A-list talent was wasted on cardboard cutout characters in the prequels: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman. Samuel L Jackson was just another one.

I'm going to go with "No, he was not a good addition", but that's really no reflection on him given his company. Unless I hear a rumor that during shooting, he grabbed a movie camera, threw it on the ground, and pooped on it, in which case he was a great addition.

I'm not sure dumb is exactly the right word.  Impulsive, absolutely--he doesn't spend much time thinking about the consequences of his actions, like a "smart" character would.  He shoots, as it were, from the hip ;)