ChainsawAsh

Okay.  I just finished recording The Beast with a Billion Backs: Parts 1-4 from Comedy Central, both in SD and HD.  General notes:

- Fuck you, Comedy Central.  Stop putting the fucking end credits over the opening credits of the next episode - it makes recreating the opening "tagline" things nearly impossible.
- The Infosphere claims, under "Film to Episode Edits," that "The bulk of the introduction sequence is replaced by a summary of the previous part of the movie, this section is introduced by Kif; he sighs and says "Previously on Futurama", then his head inflates and pops." (for Part 2, which is what I've linked to) - The problem is, this isn't true, at least on the Comedy Central airings.  So where does this footage exist?
- Comedy Central did indeed broadcast them in widescreen in HD, so the episodes on my preservation DVDs will remain in widescreen
- I'll need a good way to replace the credits for Part 1 and add credits for Part 2, 3, and 4 - which means I'll need to do one of the following:

METHOD ONE
- Somehow manage to erase all opening credits for Part 1
- Get the font used for the opening credits
- Recreate the opening credits for each part

Method One would yeild the highest quality.

METHOD TWO
- Replace the relevant portion of the screen on the DVD with the relevant portion of the screen from the HD broadcast

Method Two would yeild lower quality, and has the potential to create very obvious "seams" in the video between the broadcast and DVD versions.  On the plus side, it's a lot more plausible and easy to do than Method One would be, and it would be 100% faithful to the broadcast version, while the first method would just be simulating it.

At any rate, I've got a lot of work ahead of me, especially if I want to try to recreate the "Previously on Futurama" segments that apparently exist (which I would like to do, if anyone knows where I can find them).

LV - torrent links aren't allowed on the open forum.  I'd take them down before Jay or Moth3r see that.  Sending links via PM is fine, though.

The NTSC DVD-9 is up on Mininova, and a DVD-5 is as well, though I can't tell if it's NTSC or PAL.  There's also quite a few different AVI/MP4 versions up.

I don't think there's a PAL version online anywhere, really.

I don't care, it's not like I have a copyright on the idea. =P

And Janskeet, I haven't really started the full-on work for the edit(s), but I'll be sure to post an update here as soon as I have something to update.  =)

Um, the DVD-9 is around 7-8 GB.  That's why it's a DVD-9.  I don't know the size of the PAL version, but my NTSC DVD-9 of Revisited is 7.6 GB.

TheBoost said:

ChainsawAsh said:

It's pretty good - kinda has a pretentious-film-school-movie vibe to it, but that might be because I'm currently in film school and see a lot of pretentious B.S., so I immediately throw non-linear, stylized shorts into that category.

 

 But isn't it a linear chase film? Just really, really, stylized. (one line of real dialog if I recall, but it has been years)

I don't really remember, I haven't seen it in years, either.

Ripplin said:

Has anyone ever seen the student film version of THX? Is that even possible? (or was it possible in the past?) Just curious.

It's on my LD-transfer DVD as a bonus feature.  I believe it's on disc 2 of the official 2-disc DVD ... but then, of course, you have to deal with the "George Lucas Director's Cut" of the film itself.

It's pretty good - kinda has a pretentious-film-school-movie vibe to it, but that might be because I'm currently in film school and see a lot of pretentious B.S., so I immediately throw non-linear, stylized shorts into that category.

Could you or Gaffer post a link to the ROTJ Rescue Plan video you mentioned, C3PX?  I haven't seen it and I'd very much like to.

I suppose having you on my ignore list is kinda pointless, since I look at and read all of your posts anyway.  You're off.

Congratulations!  That's great news!  I wish your family the best :-)

Sevb32 said:

I don't think it would be substantially that much larger than you think. Larger, yes, but not hugely.

Really?  Watch ESB again, all the scenes where they walk on and around the Falcon - then watch SW, the scene where they hide under the floor ... there doesn't seem to be room for them to stand up straight inside the ship based on the ESB/SW exteriors, but hiding underneath the floorboards would be completely impossible.  Not to mention the cockpit set where the interiors were shot was 40-50% larger than the cockpit for the "full-size" Falcon used for exteriors.  I'd say it'd have to be substantially larger.

At any rate, this is all very off-topic now.  Again.

Sevb32 said:

Yeah've I read that site on the falcon a lot, what's cool is some guy is gonna build a full scale falcon with full interiors, although it may take him years to complete it.

That would be amazing - I'd travel a long ways to go see/walk around in that.  It'd have to be substantially larger than the film's depiction of the Falcon (that is, the "full-scale" models for SW and ESB).

Phantom Menace was the only good prequel.  True, it wasn't very good, but it's a hell of a lot better than the other two.  There's nothing redeemable about AOTC except for Christopher Lee, who is criminally underused.  And the only good part of ROTS is the Order 66 sequence.  That's it.  The rest of that movie is terrible.

It's easier to count the "good" moments in those films because there are so few.  For TPM, on the other hand, it's easier to count the "bad" moments, because while there are a great many, there's also a lot of good in it.

BAD
- Midi-Chlorians
- Gungans
- Jar Jar (he deserves his own count, apart from the Gungans)
- Planet Core sequence
- Podrace
- The way the Jedi are portrayed
- The way the Sith are portrayed
- How the Republic seems to be set up in the most illogical manner ever
- How political the film is, in spite of the fact that the politics don't make sense!
- Yoda's portrayal (repeat throughout the PT)
- Jake Lloyd.  In fact, Anakin in general.
- "Cute" humor / any time battle droids talk
- Anakin builds Threepio?!
- Anakin builds anything the story requires him to build?!
- Padawan instead of Apprentice
- The Padawan hairstyle
- A boring space battle
- Ric Olie

GOOD
- Darth Maul
- Lightsaber duels (the only time I can say this for the PT)
- Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon
- Terrence Stamp as Chancellor Valorum (though he's criminally underused)
- Coruscant
- Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan
- Watto!
- Ian McDiarmid (though once he becomes the Emperor in ROTS ... ugh)
- Actually having a death that the audience is invested in (Qui-Gon)
- Shot on film!
- The fact that it had a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end, unlike AOTC or ROTS.

As you can see, the bad outweighs the good, but there's still quite a bit of good - especially that last one.

Ideally, all the prequels would have, you know, not sucked, but they did.  But TPM is the best of the bad ones.

TESB - 9/10
SW - 8/10
ROTJ - 6/10
TPM - 4/10
AOTC - 2/10
ROTS - 2/10

(I think I've ranked the six films in another thread, but I don't remember if the ratings I gave them are the same.  My apologies if I've contradicted myself here.)

skyjedi2005 said:

I saw some pretty laughably bad previews for a cheapy horror movie he made recently called drag me to hell.

Spider Man 3 was pretty bad imho...

...The third one not a terrible film by a long shot, still it felt disjointed and felt like they were trying to cram way too many plots and villians into a single film.

First, I've been told by reliable sources that Drag Me to Hell was actually very good.

Second, I enjoyed the first two Spider-Man films immensely ... but 3 was absolutely, completely and utterly awful.  I will not be seeing 4 or 5 (he's shooting them back-to-back, or at least that was the plan not too long ago), regardless of whether he directs it or not.

While X-Men 3 had good moments, and you could tell it was trying to be good ... Brett Ratner just couldn't handle it.  Bryan Singer has even said that he regrets not finishing the X-Men trilogy, and I have to say that I agree with him.

But there's no excuse for the shitfest that was Spider-Man 3.  Nothing was good in that movie.  That was the first time I've walked out of the theater literally shaking with rage at what I'd just seen.

X-Men 3 just didn't quite make it, and ended up being very average.  (We won't speak of the abomination that was Wolverine.)  I actually do own it on DVD ... but no one can ever make me buy Spider-Man 3.  There's a reason I haven't bought the first two on Blu-Ray - you have to buy the third one to get the first two.

Well, that "sky" doesn't feel like it was shot in the early '70s at all.  They should've just left it.  Damn it, George ...

That said, it actually doesn't bother me that much.  It's one shot and the change actually makes sense, unlike many in THX 1138 and the Star Wars movies.  But I still wish it hadn't been changed, just like I wish they hadn't erased the cobra's reflection in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I'd help you out, but I lost my EditDroid set long ago.

And it shouldn't be terribly difficult, I wouldn't think, but I haven't tried it myself, either.

skyjedi2005 said:

i'm looking forward to Mass Effect 2

You just reminded me of why I'm sad that I don't own an Xbox 360.  My old roommate had a 360 and the first Mass Effect.  I played a lot of it and thought it was amazing ... then he moved out, and I never got to finish it.  I'd get it for Windows, but 1) I'd have to start from scratch, and 2) I have a Mac, and I have to restart every time I want to play a Windows game.

That and the fact that it's taking forever for us PS3-owners to get Fallout 3's DLC.  I may just wait until the Game of the Year Edition comes out.  That'll solve two problems: Getting all 5 DLC packs for the same price I paid for the original game instead of shelling out $10 apiece for each one, and getting a copy of Fallout 3 for myself (I've been using the copy I bought my brother for his birthday, which I can't exactly take back to school with me).

The official reason is that the entire movie takes place over the course of a night, yet the opening shot is during broad daylight.  Changing it to sunset makes better chronological sense.

I didn't know they erased a building, though.

The ... project?

Possibly.  I seem to remember one particular shot in Bender's Big Score that was clearly panned & scanned rather than just zoomed in - it literally panned from right to left to follow the action.  But that may have been before Comedy Central had an HD channel - I don't think I've watched any of the films on CC since then.

Well, I'll know on Monday, since I'm recording it both on our SD DVR upstairs and our HD DVR in the basement.  I have a feeling I missed Bender's Big Score this week, since Bender's Game is on the following Monday.

That would be because they're the same actor.  McDiarmid as Palpatine in the PT was very good, but then he was "transformed" into the Emperor ... and it all went to shit.  I mean, come on, he doesn't even look like the ROTJ Emperor at all!

He put himself in the medal ceremony at the end of ANH:R.  And his is the severed arm in the cantina in the DVD-9 (final) version.

Jesus, bumping a thread that hasn't had a post in almost two years?  I'm shocked you even found it!

As I said in my initial post, the TV airings were pan & scan, so the widescreen DVDs show more picture.

And I'll be re-creating the credits as best I can using credits from older episodes, but with the new names and episode numbers and such.

And there are short "Previously on Futurama" segments at the beginning of Parts 2, 3, and 4 of each respective "movie" (and the beginning of The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 1, since Bender's Big Score ended on a cliffhanger).

--edit--

Just discovered that The Beast with a Billion Backs: Parts 1-4 will be airing on Comedy Central on Monday, June 15 at 9 PM Eastern time (at least I assume it's Eastern time).  I'll be able to record it myself, I'd just hoped that others would be able to locate recordings of the TV versions that were already online.

So, I guess TBwaBB will be my first attempt at this.  Which is good, since my copy of Bender's Big Score is fucked up.

I know the title doesn’t make sense, but bear with me.

As you can tell from my avatar, I’m a huge Futurama fan.  With Comedy Central’s announcement that a new season of Futurama (production season 6, aired season 7) consisting of 26 episodes will begin airing on June 24, I’ve decided to start this project.

So what does that have to do with this project?

The four DVD movies (production season 5) were split up into 4 episodes each and aired on Comedy Central as aired season 6.  These episodes use different opening title cards, added “Previously on Futurama” segments, and different edits of the episodes entirely.

But since the movies themselves were released on DVD, I don’t foresee these versions ever being released, doomed to air occasionally in reruns while they’re forgotten otherwise.  I believe that season 5 (or 6, depending on if you go by production seasons or aired seasons) deserves to be preserved the way it aired, just as seasons 1-4 (or 1-5) were in the four DVD sets.

So here’s the plan:

First, I need to find TV recordings of the Comedy Central aired versions of Bender’s Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender’s Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder (they advertised them as TV-movies, and aired them in 2-hour timeslots, but they aired them as 4 back-to-back episodes rather than the unedited movies).  This is probably going to be the most difficult part, so any help in finding TV recordings of the movies would be greatly appreciated. 😃

Then, I’m going to use Blu-Ray/HDTV rips of the movie versions I’ve been able to procure, and basically treat this whole thing like an online edit.  I’ll lay the TV rip in the timeline, then over the top of that, make the DVD/Blu-Ray/HDTV rip match the TV rip’s video track exactly.  Any shots that are missing from the DVDs (there are a few) will stay in fromt he TV rips.  The TV audio will be used.

Planned disc-by-disc contents (English Dolby 2.0 Surround Audio, menus that probably won’t be animated, though I may surprise myself):

Futurama - Volume 5DISC ONE

• _Bender’s Big Score: Part 1
• Bender’s Big Score: Part 2
• Bender’s Big Score: Part 3_

DISC TWO
_- Bender’s Big Score: Part 4

• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 1
• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 2_

DISC THREE_

• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 3
• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 4
• Bender’s Game: Part 1_

DISC FOUR

• _Bender’s Game: Part 2
• Bender’s Game: Part 3
• Bender’s Game: Part 4_

DISC FIVE

• _Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 1
• Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 2
• Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 3_

DISC SIX

• Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 4
  - Bonus Features:
    - Everybody Loves Hypnotoad Episode 3H312: Amazon Adventure (maybe)
  _  - Futurama: The Lost Adventure_ (video game cutscenes edited to make an episode) (maybe)

I’m splitting them up that way because I want to use single-layer discs to make it easier for people who don’t have dual-layer burning abilities.  Spreading them out to 3 per disc means there’s only about an hour per disc, which should prevent any loss in quality from compression.  I may do an alternate 3-disc dual-layer set as well, but I haven’t decided yet.

But of course, in order for any of this to work, I need to find TV rips of the broadcast versions of the movies.  So if any of you can help find them, I’d greatly appreciate it.  😃