And he hasn’t used the internet in 15 years because “fans are mean”. Wait - What - SRSLY?
We only have the full 1933 King Kong because of a 35mm print found in Argentina, so you never know what you may find.
I never knew that, that’s awesome! Out of question- did they even bother to keep film negatives back then, or did they burn them to retrieve the silver nitrate?
It’s nice that you made it but…
the torrent on MySpleen is dead so is there any chance of an re-seed?
I am currently seeding it. There’s no such thing as “dead” if you haven’t even requested ressed (which you obviously didn’t do or I would have received a notification).
Also this isn’t the forum to discuss problems with an external tracker, at least go to the Spleen forums and make a thread there.
Just a heads up, I’m hoping to release this by the end of the year or at least in January, sorry for how long it’s taken. It’s almost a year now since I “announced it” and I really thought it would be done sooner.
I am pleased to say that I’ve shared avisynth code with everyone who asked by PM, I never said to anyone “wait until it’s done”. 😃
That was from Team Negative 1, not poita.
Ditto.
Sorry for being so naive, but can someone tell me how many prints of ANH remain?
No one knows.
I would love to start searching for one in my country, but don’t know where to start.
Thanks again to all of you for your hard work!
If you do, search for ESB as it is the film released after IBs were discontinued and there are no known LPPs (IIRC), only rumoured that there might be LPPs. Faded or not, if you come across any I’m sure p. would like to know about them. You could keep an eye on ebay for a start, and look for any film collectors/enthusiasts in your area; they might have a print they would be willing lend even if it’s not for sale. You could even ask around vintage movie theatres that screen older 35mm prints, or film archives.
Alternatively, a company can make a giant SSD dock that keeps them powered on and not much else.
Or simply place a rechargeable battery inside the SSD.
Well, SSDs are actually far less prone to mechanical damage, since they have no moving parts - they do get damaged by repeated re-writes but if you’re archiving, you wouldn’t do that, so if they come down in price considerably, they could be better for archiving.
They’re also much more difficult to recover data from following a failure. But of course, in the future if they come down in price very considerably they’d be better for archiving.
Yeah, SSD will always cost more anyway, it’ll remain cheaper to buy 2x disc-based HDDs than 1x SSD, which means the disc-based HDDs will remain better for archiving, although they might of course get considerably cheaper in the future. SSDs are better for running your system from, but probably not suited towards archiving, and I predict in the future that will remain so - at least for quite a few years from now. 😃
Yes I have to drive between 2 and 6 hours each way, depending on the hospital I need to travel to, and it does usually mean extended stays away from the family. That and recuperation time can put a lot of stress on the family unit, when there are 3 kids to get ready and to and from school, one with special needs, and a boisterous 2 year old to contend with.
Yeah, wow.
I wasn’t meaning to pry, I’m very sorry to hear about that poita. I was just wanting to let you know that while I can’t imagine what you’re going through I’m somewhat aware of the challenges that are faced. : ( But I’m really pleased to hear that everything seems to be going well at the moment. And of course thanks for sharing! : )
This one was at least apparently in the original concept art. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awful change and it looks like a circa 1997 video game graphics. The original was one of those cases where technical limitations led to a ‘less is more’ effect, as with Jaws. But, the change does seem to be something originally intended, as opposed to the cases where Lucas is more likely lying.
Well changes get made between concept art and the final thing all the time don’t they? The concept art is often how it would look if it was a comic-book instead of a live-action-movie. I’m not saying Lucas is lying, but what he originally intended and what the director of the film originally intended might have been two different things.
Lucas has always claimed he “originally intended” to insert a stop-motion puppet as Jabba in SW. But everything about that scene tells us he didn’t - even without the lighting issues, there’s no way to insert a puppet into that scene using compositing. He has Jabba and Han walking together and closely interacting, and where he claims that the ILM effect was abandoned due to budget and time constraints, there was no way to ever put a special effect in that shot until the Special Edition. This points to the decision to abandoning the shot being made before they finished shooting it - otherwise the completed sequence would contain shots where Han and Jaba are far enough apart to make super-imposing a puppet-creature feasible, and probably close-up shots where you don’t need to see them both all the time to make it easier. This is more consistent with Gary Kurtz’s account who seemed to have no idea that a special-effect creature would be coming for that shot. He says the scene was abandoned for technical reasons (camera and lighting) and that the decision was made at the time of shooting, so they just added some dialogue to the Greedo scene to cover it:
Yes, because of the focus problems, and it was slightly redundant anyway because some of the information was already in the Greedo scene, so why not make all the information in the Greedo scene and eliminate the Jabba scene altogether? That’s what happened.
In all accounts though, the slug-concept for Jabba is not made until Jedi.
But if we consider Kershner’s interview - that appears to be from 2004 (or possibly 2003) - he is not anticipating any further changes to be made for DVD. And he was consulted for the 1997 version. He also referred to Empire as “his” movie, and said that he didn’t want to direct Jedi because he didn’t like the plot of the film. He was very candid in that interview, he was very respectful to GL and co, but was firm and clear about the issues he commented on.
What we have from the 1997 Lucas interview is a different justification for the changes than he could have made in 2004. If pressed on the question about “well why are you making changes to Jedi when involvement from the director is impossible?” Lucas could have answered “well there is Kershner and I and that’s a two-thirds majority for the decision to make a few improvements to the trilogy”. The issue is over what GL and Kershner wanted in terms of “improvements”. Kershner was happy to see technical improvements, but didn’t particularly want the content changed. And as for what Marquand would have wanted is anyone’s guess.
If Lucas had directed the movie instead it would have come out considerably different to how Kershner made it in the first place. How each of the three directors apply concept art as a director is going to be different. I don’t think Lucas will be allowed in the future to make systemic, permanent, changes to TFA or the other new SW films. But I suppose only time will tell.
No, typically producers aren’t the primary authors of the film. Typically a director is the primary author (especially when acting as a co-writer). However in case of OT, Lucas was the primary creative director. He basically came up with the main ideas (story, characters, concepts, etc.), he co-wrote screenplay and oversaw the the rest of the writing, he worked with conceptual artists (McQuarrie, Johnston, etc.) to put his ideas into reality and worked with the editors to make the final cut. Basically the hired directors had control over principal photography, i.e. directing actors and crew to realise the scenes, which is exactly what they were hired for. In case of ROTJ Lucas was interfering with Marquands work during principal photography, which makes me wonder why he hired him in the first place.
So would this mean that JK Rowling has the right to go through the Harry Potter film series and impose changes - even changers that the directors of those films don’t agree to?
As I said in some other thread, Lucas was the primary author of both ESB and ROTJ. While directors were basically hired hands to handle principal photography phase.
I am not saying the changes to the films were good. I am just saying that primary author should be the one making special editions. While in many cases director is the primary author of the film, it wasn’t the case in ESB and ROTJ.
Of course they’re hired hands - that’s the whole point. Lucas isn’t the director of those films, or the primary screenplay writer either. He’s the producer. Yes in a way producers are essentially the “primary author”, that’s certainly the case where they take over final cut of the film, impose changes, approve script rewrites, approve sets and costumes, approve casting decisions, etc.
Kershner says in the same interview I quoted from in the OP this:
I turned it down. I told him, “I don’t know anything about special effects.” But he said, “You don’t have to. You think up anything you want and it’s up to Industrial Light and Magic to make it work.” Now, I don’t know of anyone else who could have said that, but he owns the company. So I’d ask for the most impossible shots, and they would do it.
It is clear the director had wide creative control. Perhaps even moreso than most producers would give to directors in mainstream Hollywood films of the time.
7/18/98
In yesterday’s update, I mentioned a quote by George Lucas about the DVD version of the Star Wars films. Thanks to the efforts of Bits reader Grant Peterson, I’m happy to present the exact quote to you now. It’s an excerpt from the article An Expanded Universe: Digital and analog special effects collide in the retooled version of Star Wars by Ron Magid, originally published in the February 1997 issue of American Cinematographer. There can be no doubt, that it reveals that Lucas was already thinking in terms of DVD, even as the format was just about to find its way to consumers. Here’s the excerpt:
“Occasionally, [you can] go back and get your cut of the video out there, which I did with on both American Graffiti and THX-1138; that’s the place where it will live forever. So what ends up being in my mind is what the DVD version is going to look like, because that’s what everybody is going to remember. The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s, to go back and reinvent a movie.”
Okay. The first time I saw this quote I thought it referred to the 2004 version, but it actually refers to the 1997 Special Edition and was published in February 1997 (7 years before the DVD version was released).
One thing has always struck me about this quote. “I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s, to go back and reinvent a movie.”
That’s fair enough in and of itself, and as I understand it Lucas got permission from Kershner to make the special edition changes to Empire. The most substantial changes were improving the quality of the optical composites. But Lucas was calling the shots and he isn’t the director, he’s the Exec Producer - the ‘studio’. He did it with the permission of the director, yes, but Kershner didn’t come to him and say “I wish to make changes to Empire”.
Then in 2004 we learned that Lucas went and made further changes to Empire without any involvement or knowledge from the director. We know this because Kershner said this in a magazine interview:
How did you like the changes made to Empire for the 1997 theatrical rerelease? My film is the way I cut it. The other films were changed - a lot. My film, I can tell you just what was done. The Snow Creature [Wampa] was added, which was good for merchandising. It was okay, but I could have lived without it.
When I went up to San Anselmo, California, to see the work in progress on the Special Edition, we looked at the film, and I was making some notes about color changes and sound - never about cutting. No cut changes. And we came to the scene where the group is on Cloud City, walking through a corridor. When I had originally shot it, I was not happy, and I told George I didn’t like the set because it was just a corridor and we should have had round openings so you see the city as they walked through. It would have cost a lot of money to open it up and put miniatures out there, and it would have taken more time to build it, and you’re always fighting time.
So, I’m sitting in the screening room looking at the scene. They walk down the corridor, and here are the openings and there is the city. I was shocked. I said, “George, look!” And he said, “Yeah. It’s a gift for you.” But those were the only changes.
Who’s idea was it to add a CGI shot of the approach to cloud city?*
Who’s idea was it to add an outake shot of Vader from Jedi to Empire?*
So who replaced Hologram Palpatine, and gave him different lines to say then? Was that the director?
Who removed the director-approved scream Luke makes?
*Yes these are made in the supposed director-approved version, but Kershner is unaware of them - he says he made “no cut changes”.
When we get to Return of the Jedi it’s a whole ‘nother matter. Marquand died in 1987, so we only have Lucas’ vague word that he wanted changes made to Jedi for re-release. However, he was dead. He didn’t make any changes, he didn’t approve any changes. He didn’t have the opportunity to oversee the changes made for the 1997 SE the way that Kershner did.
So who’s idea was it to replace the Sarlacc pit with a Sarlacc creature?
Who’s idea was it to add Hayden Christensen?
Who’s idea was it to remove the Yub Nub song and add pictures from SW planets that Marquand knew nothing about?
And who’s idea was it to digitally erase Anakin’s eyebrows and make endless other CGI changes?
Were these really the director’s ideas, or, were they merely the studio’s ideas? The ideas of the Executive Producer?
Hey Valeyard. Just wondering if you ever managed to get your script(s) worked out?
Not yet, haven’t had a chance to do it. I should be able to get on it soon though.
I must admit I don't like the trailer as much as the teasers.
SilverWook said:
J.J. directed Armageddon?
Oops he did the screenplay not direction. I guess the only films he directed that I've seen are the MI movies.
I'm not as familiar with JJA's style, I've seen Mission Impossible III-V, Armageddon, and Forever Young. The latter two I haven't seen in a long time, and from memory Armageddon was an easily forgettable experience. But that said I really enjoyed MI-GP and MI-RN. But there were still issues with them - I didn't believe for a second that someone can hang onto a passenger-jet by their fingertips while it takes off. That was just as bad as Indy surviving a nuclear explosion in a lead-lined fridge. Yes they might have filmed it eight times with Cruise on the outside of the airplane, but even the world's strongest stunt-double wouldn't be able to do it without a harness - his fingers would be ripped clean off. At least the whole movie wasn't like that though, unlike Man of Steel which was absolutely horrible IMHO.
I hope there's less implausible action sequences in this film.
AntcuFaalb said:
poita told me to tell everyone that he had some complications and went back to the hospital. He knows some people are waiting for PM replies and he'll get to them when he gets back. It may be a while, however, so please be patient.
I was really saddened to hear that. Given that poita lives in a rural location hospitals probably mean travelling quite some distance from home, and being away from his family.
Does anyone still need proof that people don't deserve medical problems? No one deserves them, especially not someone like poita. :( Hopefully everything got sorted for him this time.
I'm not in-the-know about the technical stuff either, I just parrot back what I hear poita and others saying. As far as sourcing a print your best bet is to watch eBay. When you find one you can ask the AMPS heavyweights if they know anyone who can scan it. Some people might donate to your costs, but you'll probably have to bear the brunt of the cost. It's very premature to ask people to help now before you have a print and someone who will scan it. :)
Poita scanned Jurassic Park, as far as I know, at his own expense. He owns the scanning machine which is worth around $550,000 new (and has the expertise to use it). Team -1 have a home-built scanner made from a projector (they didn't scan JP though), which poita has said could be built for around $1,000 excluding the costs of the projector, the camera, the computer and required software.
If you're serious you'll need to keep an eye on eBay and see if any prints come up for sale.
+1 to Jetrell Fo's comment. Getting a 35mm print scanned is not exactly cheap or straightforward. You are looking at the cost of purchasing or renting the print (note if you rent it you need permission to scan it from the owner, and most people are not willing to have their prints scanned), you need to have it shipped to your scanner, you then need to have it cleaned and possibly repaired and scanned. Typical scanning cost at 2-4k from a commercial outlet is around $20-30 a minute (and they won't scan a print you don't have rights to). You also need HDD's to store the scanned files on. All up a single scan could cost you around $5,000 or so. You then need someone with expertise to clean-up your scan (or do it yourself if you have the expertise).
Rest-up p & I hope the surgery went well!
It's another rip to add to the collection like these:
It belongs on the Spleen - Spleeners love that stuff!
Could you upload it to Myspleen?
Do you have this release dave88?