I was bored tonight and had a whole lot of nothing on my plate. Pretty much just sitting at home in front of my computer or TV. It’s been brought up a few times in the past that someone should go back and try to re-create the “Lost Cut” that we’ve all heard so much about. Well, I haven’t done quite that, because I haven’t tried to remove the score and I haven’t re-edited WWII dogfights for those scenes or anything like that.
What I have done is taken a copy of the original version of Star Wars, re-inserted the deleted/alternate scenes that are floating around, and put a bunch of other stuff back in the original scripted order. This is a real quick and dirty edit. I did it in about 4hrs.
If someone wants to put a lot of finesse into doing a project like this, please do so. Some of the changes between different sources are kinda harsh, and there’s some nasty sound cuts, too. I edited in Womble and didn’t bother to de-mux the audio first, so if I modified any of it, it would have been recompressed, and I didn’t want that. As a result, there are a few kinda rough audio cuts, and one really really harsh one. I was just bored tonight, and I thought this would be a nice new way to watch Star Wars for myself, so I did it pretty much for myself. I just figured that there are some of you here who also might want to check it out.
I used a variety of sources for this thing:
*Deleted Magic (for deleted scenes, general order of things, and the entirety of the Battle of Yavin, because it was far easier to just lift it)
*Return of the Ewok DVD (for revised Jabba scene)
*Star Wars EditDroid edition (for the majority of the footage)
*Star Wars Molly Prototype XP77-4EB.1 [EditDroid video/Moth3r mono audio] (see note below)
*Star Wars 1997 SE Jedi/Feta edition (for Biggs scene toward the end)
I wanted to use the Molly Prototype for the whole thing because it has the Moth3r-sourced mono mix as the audio. I didn’t realize, however, that the audio drifts out of sync throughout the picture. When I noticed that, I cut out everything where the audio was out of sync and switched to just using EditDroid as a source of main audio and video. So the audio mix presented here is a real Frankenstein’s monster of sorts. It’s mostly the mono mix for the first 20mins, then the 1985 mix for most of the rest of it, with one or two instances of the mono mix (lifted from Deleted Magic) thrown back in where most important.
I took the Biggs scene toward the end from the Jedi/Feta edition because it was the only 4x3 letterbox source I had for the scene, which matched all of the other video sources that I used. I didn’t want to fuss with squeezing down a 16x9 image into the project for something so short.
Like I said, this was done quick, dirty and rough. It is by no means up to the quality standards that are set forth by all of the other editors here, but it should be fun to watch. I’m going to author the DVD tomorrow. I’ve already recieved 3 requests for the “promo” copies, which will go out next week. I’d like you guys to PiF to anyone who asks nicely.
If anyone wants to suggest a better title (because the one I thought up is pretty freakin’ stupid), please do so. Same goes for anyone who feels compelled to whip up a cover or something.
Thanks!