The Cinema 5 logo would not have been on the original UK release, only the original US release, so I'd leave it off.
It shouldn't be hard. Just take the Blu-ray version, start straight out with the opening credits, remove the extra scene, and use the mono soundtrack.
Dentist on the Job was added for the 2001 DVD. The pre-restoration print I saw at the Paramount in Oakland back in 2003 most certainly did not have it. It didn't have the extra "get on with it" bit either. (And I seem to recall that it was screened at 1.33:1 open matte.)
I'd track down the 1999 DVD, I'm pretty sure it's the original theatrical cut. Before the 2001 DVD, I think the only American video releases that included the extra scene were on laserdisc and CED. I know that when I used to rent it on VHS, the scene was not there.
Also, that Cinema 5 logo only showed up on the U.S. theatrical run. It wasn't on the 1999 DVD, and it wasn't on the theatrical screening I attended - both of those just started with "PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD in association with MICHAEL WHITE presents". This project shouldn't have any logo at the beginning, or anything preceding that credit.
Harmy said:
If the mistakes were there on film, in cinemas, they will be preserved but I don't think they were.
Yes, lest we forget, none of the official releases have the original theatrical subs. VideoCollector's cropped bootleg and Puggo's 16mm are the only sources we know of with the original subs. By the time Harmy gets to the DeEd 2.0 of Jedi, I'm sure Return of the Pug will be out and we'll know for sure what the theatrical subs looked like.
As I pointed out, it's not one missing shot. When I synched up the audio, it showed that the shot before the closeup cut out early, and the closeup shot was joined in progress. The music is scored to the full version of the scene, and the music splice on your recording seems sloppy and abrupt.
If some accident occurred and that section got boogered up, the projectionist might have had to cut it out just so they could continue running the print. 70mm was expensive, so it was probably a lot harder to get a replacement print, especially on short notice.
Several seconds of footage being spliced out in the middle of a reel isn't completely unfeasible. A couple years ago, I saw a 70mm print of Ghostbusters, provided by Sony, where Bill Murray's line "So if we think of J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover's gonna show up and destroy us" was clipped out. Obviously, at some point down the line, that section took some kind of damage that resulted in it being cut out.
Admittedly, that was a 26-year-old print, and this ESB screening was during original release in 1980, but I'm just illustrating that it's not completely out of the realm of possibility that those missing 5 seconds were missing from that print only.
I second your interest in hearing another in-theater recording of a 70mm screening.
msycamore said:
Thanks for posting this! Well, it's a quite clear audible edit at that point. Hmm, this is weird, is there a possibility that you have repaired this segment at some stage and forgotten about it? It doesn't sound like it, maybe that print was damaged at that point?
The reason behind my thoughts is that the wampa cave sequence as seen in the 35mm release must be what Williams wrote the music for, an earlier cut of the scene doesn't make any sense to me unless they decided to cut that close-up of Luke at the last minute.
I was thinking the same thing - the 5-second jump may be because of a splice in that specific print. Also, the missing 5 seconds does not exactly correspond to that shot.
The following screenshots are from the Japanese Special Collection laserdisc, since it has the '85 track. If I the 70mm/'85 synched-up version in sync with this video, the 70mm audio cuts out in the middle of this shot:
...and resumes about here:
Michael Matessino did not mention a missing shot in the Wampa cave, and he supposedly saw the film 70 times in its original release. My guess is that the print had some damage there and the projectionist spliced it out...
Sounds like the missing shot is the closeup I posted the film cell of. What's interesting is that because of the missing shot, the 70mm version has a music edit. Listen to how you can just hear the end of the first French horn note, so it sounds like a "grace note".
The Dolby Stereo version contains more music over the extra shot, including the missing beginning of the first French horn note.
digitalfreaknyc,
There are seven people seeding Part 3 on TV Vault right now. I'll be seeding it too once I get it.
I take back what I said about the radar dish. It's actually not there in the film cell. You can see a cloud formation that is almost completely covered by the dish in the familiar version.
I swear I can see something at the bottom of the frame, but I'm not sure what. Maybe it's just damage. (I will note that in the Super 8, the bottom of the frame is cropped off.
This is even more perplexing - now we have film cells from the original 70mm cut and the revised cut. Even stranger, the Yoda/Dagobah-themed cells seem to come from a reddish-brown-faded, possibly Kodak SP, source - even though there are cells of other scenes from reels 3 and 4 that are not faded. So we could be dealing with multiple source prints here...
morgands1 said:
The distant roar of the wampa (where we see his shadow lurking) matches on both 70mm and 35mm. If one then ties the music cue where Luke sinks back down after trying to free his frozen boots and then tries to reach for his light sabre, all that - and subsequent sounds - match.
So the extra 5+ seconds occur as Luke comes to and reaches up to find his feet frozen into the ice of the ceiling. The added shot is probably the closeup of him just before he reaches up towards his boots, as seen in the master shot.
I ran your version in sync with the '85, and that closeup does seem to be the extra bit of footage.
This is interesting, because that shot was also included in the 70mm film cells:
As I pointed out, there are also 70mm cells of the bacta tank wide shot.
This either means that there were 70mm prints made of the revised version later in the summer, or that the cells were taken from a newly struck print made specifically to be chopped up into these individual frames. (But if so, why would they have sound-striped the print?)
Actually, to my ear, the line "Luke, we're ready for takeoff" is a different take in the '85 and '93. Billy Dee seems to place more emphasis on the syllable "off" than in the 70mm.
A lot of the confusion about the 70mm comes from the differences in the Super 8 digests (which used the 70mm cut as their picture source only) as well as the "Story of" LP, and of course the SE. We mistakenly assumed that these reflected an earlier mix, but now that we know that the 70mm mix is 99 percent identical to the 35mm, it means that these changes were made after the revised mix was locked.
In true Lucas fashion, he and Ben Burtt continued to tweak the mix after the revised cut was delivered, for the 8mm digests and Story LP. This period was the origin of many of the SE audio changes. Obviously, Lucas and Burtt preferred these alterations and documented them, because 16 years later, a lot of them made it into the SE. (Others didn't, like the different ADR takes for Han and Luke in the opening scene, or Leia's second "We have to go back!", or the 8mm's robotic voice and revised dialogue for the cloud car pilot.)
Also, is it right to call it 35mm vs. 70mm? Wouldn't the initial 35mm venues (drive-ins, I think) have also used this cut? Additionally, there are frames of the bacta shot among the collectible 70mm cells from the 90s (though I have a theory that these prints were made in the 90s, especially for those cells, and thus used the revised cut...)
h_h, I completely understand. It's your mix, you're free to do whatever you please. It is certainly more dynamic than the raw '93 mix.
The '93 mix is derived from the 6-track 70mm, but I am certain that they did something to it that can't be undone, even with your improvements (and don't get me wrong, they are definite improvements). Your recreation is amazing, but some sound effects just lack punch. If any levels were adjusted, and dynamic information was lost or dulled, it can't be fully recovered. (For another example, the high-pitched whine of the Tantive flyby will always sound at least somewhat clipped and distorted, because the peaks just aren't there.)
Mike Verta says that no video transfer can fully duplicate the color range of film, and we know that no amount of color correction to these transfers can recover what's not there in the first place. The same holds true for sound.
I now realize that I can't, and shouldn't, ask you to "fix" anything on my account. As it is, you're doing a phenomenal job.
Just for fun, though, I mixed together the morgands1 and LMayer in-theater recordings (with some pitch adjustment done to the former). I know that these recordings don't accurately reflect the raw sound information, or even how it actually sounded inside the theater, but I don't care. Since different sound information is missing from each of them, I wanted to hear what they would sound like played at the same time, and this is what I came up with: https://rapidshare.com/files/3561280182/MorganDS1_LMayer_test.mp3
In the new version, the Star Destroyer lasers at the beginning of the second Tantive/Star Destroyer shot seem kind of buried compared to the "before" example. I know that they're not that prominent in the '93 mix either, but they just seem too hard to hear now.
FWIW, on the LMayer in-theater recording, the SD lasers seem to sound louder and clearer than in the '93 mix or either the "before" or "after" of your comparison. Then again, it's a mono tape recording made inside a movie theater, and it's not picking up the full dynamic range anyway. (Actually, between the LMayer and morgands1 recordings, I'm surprised at how much sound fidelity I can detect that I just don't hear in any of the official releases.)
I just don't believe that laser SFX would ever have sounded as vague in '77 as in that one bit in your new test. I understand that you can only get a certain amount of fidelity out of the '85 and '93 mixes, but could you possibly try to make them at least as audible as in the "before" example?
digitalfreaknyc,
TV Vault, another private tracker, has The Godfather Saga available in 720p MKV (but the poster says he also has it in 1080p, ~41 GB). PM me your e-mail address, and I'll invite you.
One of the strangest things is that some of the foreign posters were a Frankenstein mishmash of elements from the Jung and Hildebrandt posters. I'm thinking of the Israel and Norway posters seen in the Art of Star Wars book.
Actually, the footage in Rebel Strike is from the SE.
That's right. Dave Morgan's in-theater recording shows only minimal differences from the standard mix. msycamore listed them at the beginning of this thread. The 70mm mix was done before the standard 35mm mix, but the changes in the SE seem to be based on decisions made by Burtt and/or Lucas *after* the 35mm version was finished.
Some of the changes were already in place on the "Story of" LP and/or the Super 8 digests. The 8mm soundtrack even has Chewie roaring as he strangles Lando, drowning out Leia saying "...that we're going to trust you?", just like the SE. If there had been a revised mono mix of ESB like there was for the first film, I think there's a good chance it would have had some of the same changes as the SE mix.
Even though the 70mm cut was used as the picture element for the 8mm, it seems to me that the soundtrack was done *after* the 35mm mix. For example, although it only has the first Rebel fleet establishing shot (like in the 70mm version), you can hear the tracked "Yoda and the Force" music from the 35mm mix playing under the scene. Also, Lando's line "Luke, we're ready for takeoff" is the familiar take heard in the 35mm mix, not the alternate one that's in the 70mm mix.
Maybe Burtt and Lucas kept a running list of changes that they made/wanted to make to the mix? Even though there was no third complete mix of the film, the "Story of"/8mm differences are evidence that changes were still being made after the 35mm mix was locked, some of which were carried over into the SE mix 16 years later.
How was the film quality / transfer quality on this? I was amazed that this would be shown in 16:9 HD...
msycamore said:
Don't know about Jedi, but the IP for Empire seems to have been the source for all NTSC releases, including the '97SE.
This brings up a point nobody ever discusses: If the IPs were made in 1985, and especially if the ones for the sequels were used in the 97SE, doesn't it stand to reason that they were on low-fade stock? In other words, the color is intact - another strike against the official "no good sources for the originals" line.
In 1994, when the trilogy was screened in New Jersey, the projectionist said the prints looked excellent. He also rated the theatrical prints of the SEs unfavorably (or at least the first film). He said the droids in the Tantive corridor looked "dull and grainy" compared to the sharp and clear look of original prints. He also said that Leia's face (in her first scene?) had obvious color shifting (Treadwell and mverta observed similar color issues in the theatrical run).
The article is here: http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/83-Star-Wars-at-30-Years-Old-A-Lifes-Journey.html
This all feels to me like more evidence that when Lucas and co. say "It can't be done" what they really mean is "We don't want to do it."
"Interesting" is right. The ESB/ROTJ color timing is so strange to me, and especially ESB - the yellow-greenish look of the pre-THX transfers is so different from the examples I've seen of the original theatrical colors.
I cannot correct the colors for Empire to come anywhere near the original timing. They are so different that I'm starting to think that the pre-THX Empire/Jedi transfers were taken from new interpositives off the untimed negative, and timed completely differently, specifically to read better on home video. To me, they look even more unlike the original theatrical timing than the '82/'86 transfers of the first film.
(You know...maybe the statement about the "1985 IPs" refers to Empire and Jedi only? Empire debuted on video in 1985, Jedi in 1986, and the JSC releases were also in '86. AFAIK, these were the only NTSC transfers of the films until '93.)
Like I said, this isn't *as* important as SW, because we actually have an ESB source with good color. It doesn't look like anyone's biting, so we may be able to wait until someone does have sufficient money to fork over.
As to the documentaries, I have no idea, I'm not a film collector and I don't actually frequent the 8mm Forum.
I'll keep my eyes peeled on eBay, maybe those will turn up in the future. Fortunately, I believe both would have been on LPP...
OSI doesn't like taking screencaps, because he says his camera messes up the color balance and makes the print look worse than it actually is.
"I do apologize for no screenshots up on the auction. We have a lousy digital camera that makes every picture you take from a print look terrible, and we wouldn't be able to do the print justice, but let me say that the color is well saturated! The blues are terrific. The faces have the proper colors, and the scenes, (especially in the carbon freezing scene) are incredibly good."
OSI is on the 8mm Forum, I don't think he's going to lie that the color is better than it is.
OSI Osgood from the 8mm Forum is selling a Cineavision scope 8mm print of Empire on eBay, with a starting price of $1,200. Unlike the SW one, this has no reserve, and a Buy It Now option - for $1,850.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Empire-Strikes-Back-scope-feature-Super-8-color-snd-RARE-/320876848528?pt=US_Film&hash=item4ab5c02590
I was intrigued about the "dialogue differences," but then this quote gave me pause:
"In every other version I have seen, (even the super 8 digest versions of this), Yoda gives out a yell before saying, "Away with your weapon, I mean you no harm." There is no yell in this at all from Yoda, and I think it's much more appropriate for a Jedi Master, to not yell out like that, he's a Jedi master, after all!"
The yell is the alternate version; in fact, since it wasn't in morgands1's in-theater 70mm recording, I don't think any original release of the complete film had it. Now I'm wondering if it's just a mono fold-down of the regular 35mm stereo mix...
OSI already tried to sell it once and there were no takers. It's not as important as the first film, since this project already has a print with intact color, but still...anybody with really deep pockets want this?
I think by "we" he meant himself and cinch. The content exists still, all the posts are listed in the archive section, it's just that it's hidden from everyone else for the time being.
Nothing was deleted, it's all still there, just not available to us.
Jedi Temple34 said:
Looks like a dodgy aperture plate or the screen masking motor was giving up and projectionist didn't make any preparations to see that the masking was at correct 2.35:1.
Films often on video disc are seriously cropped on the sides and often sometimes the top and bottom of scope film. Someone needs to go to SpecSavers!
Mike Verta explained that the print had platter scratches on the edges, so the projectionist probably cropped close to hide them. Also, I think the Senator was a primarily 70mm venue, so its screen was closer to the 70mm aspect ratio, which isn't as wide as 2.35:1. The amount of image shown in the Senator screenshots has an aspect ratio close to 2.20:1.
But did the projectionist crop it too much, even if we take these things into account? Not sure, it sure looks like it though...
I don't think shifting the hue helps the overall color - some colors are helped, others are harmed.
Color correction can be better achieved with a program like AviSynth.
Actually, I did some fooling around with that Luke/Ben picture in AviSynth, it took several layers of ColorBalance and the newer version of Tweak for the 2.6 alpha - the version with the startHue and endHue variables. Then I did some extra tweaking in Picture Manager. Here's what I got out of it:
I was trying to match the warm, muted look of this picture Mike Verta took from that private IB Technicolor print screening he attended:
When I turned up the saturation on the Verta picture and on my final correction of the Technidisc, Luke's skin comes out looking a similar hue of orange on both. Luke does have a more orange complexion than Ben, and Ben's lips do look kind of purple. Not sure how much of this is due to the color shifting I had to do, but you can also make out similar color relationships in this Senator screenshot:
Unfortunately, once again my settings only worked for this one image.