Would Patreon be a viable option for this as a way for people to kick in a buck or two on a monthly basis to keep the lights on? The good news is that $70 isn’t a huge amount of money so it wouldn’t take that many people giving small monthly donations to reach that goal.
Happy Holidays! For Christmas this year, I gave custom Blu-ray sets of the Original Trilogy as gifts and decided to design some box art for the project. Here are the results:
And here are the designs themselves (For the gifts, I hid some Easter eggs in the barcodes which I’ve not preserved here). If anyone wants editable PSD files to be able to adjust the features list or whathaveyou, shoot me a PM.
Jumping in with a question of my own: does anyone have advice for disc artwork if you don’t own a printer that can print directly onto discs? Any recommendations for print shops that can reliably handle this? I’ve poked around online and most services I can find only work in large batches of discs.
Alternatively, are stick-on labels really as bad as their reputation suggests (certainly not ideal, but as an alternative to dropping a few hundred dollars on a new printer)?
Happy Holidays!
I did a cursory search and it doesn’t seem like anyone here has already taken on this project, so I cut together a reconstructed version of the original 1987 broadcast version of A Muppet Family Christmas. Every home video version has been trimmed down to varying degrees – the UK DVD version is the most complete, but even that has some rejiggering of transitions in and out of commercial breaks.
I used the UK DVD version for the bulk of the footage with missing transitions, shots, and bumpers taken from a recording of the full broadcast I found on YouTube. This is the best copy of the broadcast version I’ve been able to find, but if anyone knows of one better, please point me in the right direction. Audio is also taken from the DVD for most of the length of the special, but there are a few sequences where the DVD audio is missing music, in which case I used the audio from the broadcast recording. The title card does appear twice – once at the end of the opening sequence as it did in the original broadcast version, and once at the very beginning as it does on the DVD. Every recording of the broadcast is missing the first few seconds, so I don’t have any footage to replace the DVD title.
I’ve uploaded this on MEGA, and I’ll happily share a link if you shoot me a PM. This has always been my favorite Christmas special, so I’m excited to share this version of it here. Hope you enjoy!
Was just scanning through this to compare it with the Blu-ray, and unlike the disaster that is the Beauty and the Beast Blu, the color-timing here is pretty darn close… except on Genie. For some reason, Genie is a completely different shade of blue throughout the entire film. I don’t understand why they’d more-or-less preserve the original color timing except when it comes to this one character.
Also, and this is just strange, there’s a more pronounced drop shadow behind the opening credits on the Blu-ray than there is on the print.
By any chance, has this been completed?
I have covers for the original trilogy finished and plan on posting them soon! I’m actually making some custom Blu-ray sets for a few friends for Christmas and don’t want to upload the covers before I’ve actually delivered the gifts, but shortly after Christmas I’ll upload them here 😃
Thanks! I’ve got the first two seasons (Chapters 1-20) up on Mega now; season three will be up later tonight. If anyone wants a link, go ahead and slide into my PMs.
On a lark, I went ahead and took a first pass at re-editing Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars micro-series back into its “original,” individual chapters. I used an upscaled 1080p version of the official DVD releases and recreated the individual title cards in Photoshop. I eventually want to take another pass at timing the fade in/out of the titles, but for now it’s “close enough.”
The interesting thing I discovered, though (and the reason I put “original” in quotes) is that it seems the series was initially edited together as two continuous features and then split into individual chapters in much the same way I did. At the very beginning and ending of chapters you can sometimes see a frame or two of wipes and transitions that were not fully removed. I’m not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but I never knew that before I started this project.
Anyway, I’m not sure how much interest there’ll be in this since it’s just plain easier to watch the whole series as two roughly feature length movies rather than copping it up into three-to-five minute chunks, but it’s another Star Wars film and television production that I haven’t seen preserved in the way it was originally aired, so I thought it’d be worthwhile for that alone.
I’m not sure where the best place to host these is. I currently have them in an unlisted YouTube playlist (not gonna post the link here because that’s frowned upon; PM me if you’re interested), but that’s hardly ideal. I don’t have access to MySpleen either, so if anyone has any advice on finding a semi-permanent home for these, hit me up.
UPDATE: I now have the files available for direct download on Mega. Shoot me a PM if you’d like the link.
Also for clarity, the hairy_hen 5.1 with added music was included by mistake (HH explained that it was his personal version and meant to provide the “accurate” one for inclusion with the MKVs). Personally I really like the added music in the Obi-Wan scene, but for those who want the new hairy_hen 5.1 with no added music, he’s made that available for remuxing as well.
Ah, interesting! Where would one go about finding that?
I keep hoping that Rian Johnson had a personal print struck and that it might show up at one of the repertory houses here in LA, but that’s not going to benefit anyone on here in terms of being able to do a release print preservation.
It was either the fourth or fifth time I saw it. Definitely glad I got to see it on 15/70, but I’m also glad it wasn’t the way I saw it for the first time.
How much of the dome’s surface did the screening take in San Jose? I mean cause if it’s only a small segment then the image doesn’t get that distorted.
There was obviously some amount of distortion and a small amount of cropping on the corners to account for the round screen, but the aspect ratio was mostly preserved (and did not shift in the way Force Awakens did). All told, a little more than half of the screen real estate was taken up by picture with letterboxing along the top and bottom edges.
The more significant quirk of the dome (or, at least that dome) is every seat is designed to immerse you in the picture so even in the back row it felt a bit like sitting in the front row of any other movie theater. Whether that’s a pro or con I suppose is up to the individual viewer.
Thx for your answers! I should have elaborated that I know about the Vista screening and the IMAX prints of TFA and Rogue One. Are you sure there were 15/70 prints of TLJ though?
You are so lucky to have been to that screening of TFA. Are you the person that writes “starwarsatthemovies.com” ? Anyway, what did you make of it?
I actually drove all the way up to San Jose to see The Last Jedi on 15/70 at the Tech Museum! Alas, it was on a dome, and so – I believe – were all of the 15/70 screenings of TLJ west of the Mississippi.
And no, I don’t write for them, but the print was spectacular. Saw Force Awakens opening night at the Chinese Theatre (3D IMAX Laser projection) and then that following Sunday on 35 at the Vista. There was a bit more flicker than typical (not sure if it was an issue with the projectionist – I’ve seen other films on 35 at the Vista without such pronounced flicker), but the colors and texture were terrific. It really felt like the best way to see that movie.
35mm definitely exists for Force Awakens; I saw it at the Vista here in Los Feliz (apparently having the movie play there on 35 was a personal request by J.J.). The others haven’t screened on 35mm here in LA, but that doesn’t necessarily mean prints don’t exist. 15/70 IMAX prints for all three do exist, but that’s a whole other matter.
Thanks for the comparison; the untouched frame doesn’t look too badly faded at all. Is this Fuji type of print therefore generally more stable and slower to fade to red than whatever was used for the Grindhouse print (Eastman?).
From what I understand (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), Eastman film was by far the worst when it came to fading because their cyan dye was basically trash. Fuji has other drawbacks that Kodak doesn’t, but as far as fading goes, it supposedly lasts about twice as long.
Beauty and the Beast is in my top three favorite films of all time, and I knew the color timing on the Blu was incorrect, but I don’t think I recognized the depth of its badness. Seeing the comparison side-by-side is gutting.
In other words, bless you for taking this on.
RU.08 said:
It is possibly the most modified of all the Disney animations on home release. Every home release going back to VHS and Laserdisc has made the beast visible way earlier than he is in the actual film. It changes the entire mood of these scenes where the beast is but a silhouette.
Even the way the Beast is drawn here indicates he was never meant to be seen with the level of clarity present on the home video release. His features are exaggerated in a way that works in silhouette, but looks almost off model fully illuminated.
Took a stab at making a set of Blu-ray slipcovers for all eight saga films. I decided to use the sequel trilogy title aesthetic (Serif Gothic) to have a consistent look on the spines, while using the original title treatments and teaser poster artwork on the cover. I haven’t gotten around to designing a back cover yet, but here’s what I’ve got so far:
Is there any other way to get access to this, then?
Would anyone happen to have any MySpleen invites they’re willing to part with? I’ve been trying to add these shows to my collection, and this seems like the most ideal way to enjoy them.
Just stumbled across this thread in my search for decent quality rips of the Holiday Special. If download links are still available, I’d love to get ahold of one. Much appreciated!