TServo2049

OK, here's a comparison of a shot with the larger .866 x .732 camera aperture. Same color coding as before (along with dark green for the full .866 x .732 aperture).

Since this comes from one of the very dark, very blue frame scans, I color-corrected it in AviSynth to approximate the original theatrical timing, and did some brightness/contrast adjustment. Unfortunately, this completely blew out the seams in the ceiling lights, but whatever.

If this shot is any indication, the JSC (magenta) and Technidisc (yellow) were sometimes opened up into the area outside the .838 x .700 projection aperture. (This is probably why you can see the glows around the edges in the lightsaber composites.) I'm not yet sure how cropping was handled for scenes with both apertures, like the Mos Eisley stuff. I'll look at those later.

As you can see, the GOUT (cyan) again falls into the .838 x .700 area, off-center up and to the right. The GOUT always seems to be framed above and to the right of frame center. Also notice that none of the transfers show any of the picture outside the .838 x .700 aperture boundary on the right side (light green). Also, all of them are to the right of my hypothetical 5% cropping at .838 x .700 (which I've noticed in my other comparisons).

Gregatron said:

It was always easy to hear in the 1985 VHS/LD mix, which is what I grew up on.

You really think so? I still think it's pretty faint in that mix (at least compared to the 70mm theater recording - I went back and checked it and I *could* hear the "and", maybe even a little better than in the other mixes).

The '85 mix, which is also on the Dark_Jedi V3 disc, is basically a direct transfer of the 35mm Dolby Stereo mix - both sounds are equally faint in the '85 mix and the 1980 theatrical bootleg telecine.

Gregatron is right - I'm listening to the V3 right now with my Sony MDR-EX57LP earbuds, and both the 35mm stereo and 1993 mixes on that disc have the deactivation sound, but it's so quiet that it might as well not be there. It was actually a bit easier for me to make it out in the 35mm mix than in the '93.

Previously, I also spotted the "and" in Threepio's "and...do take good care of yourself" in both the 35mm stereo mix and the '93 mix. Like the saber deactivation, it's just very faint (but not as faint as the saber to my ears).

I just listened to morgands' 70mm in-theater recording again, and both of them are pretty audible there. Gregatron's theory as to why the saber deactivation is so quiet makes some sense, and as for Threepio's "and," perhaps the mixers put it in at a lower volume to make it seem like was saying it softly and timidly.

In both cases, I'm not sure what's up with the very faint versions in the post-70mm mixes...

The Shearer tweet made my day. Now if someone could just tweet Peter Cullen and ask if he voiced the Cantina bartender...

I think I heard a similar retimed ADR line: when Luke says to Threepio, "Come on, let's go have a look," the pause before "Well, come on!" seems to be shorter.

Since Luke's back is to the camera when he says "Come on, let's go have a look," I'm assuming that it was the part that was retimed.

Another telltale sign - in the first trench run, when the first guy to get blown up (Gold Two) gets hit, before the ship actually explodes you can hear a high pitched "pew pew" explosion sound. It's the same effect you hear right before the Death Star laser fires down the shaft and the two guys shield themselves.

That's my plan, I just want to focus on the stuff that's not well-known first. I can plug in the more known changes any time I want.

Well, there are things like the Jawa chatter, where it's a mixing difference, but such a difference that I first thought that the extra Jawa dialogue was *added* to the mono mix.

I guess I'll only include major mixing and editing differences (things like the different music edit when the X-Wings dive).

I was just thinking about who performed the voice overdubs in the first SW. A lot of the incidental British cast were redubbed by Americans, as well as the Stormtroopers. Not many people talk about this, but a few famous voice actors can be heard.

Some of the Stormtrooper voices were done by Terry McGovern, who was also in THX 1138, and voiced Launchpad on DuckTales and Darkwing Duck. He was the Stormtrooper who gets mind-tricked by Ben. "These aren't the droids we're looking for."

McGovern also says "The Death Star plans are not in the main computer", "All right, check this side of the street. The door's locked, move onto the next one." (That's what he says he said; the "It's secure" version in the mono mix is not the same person) and "Stop that ship! Blast him!"

According to McGovern, other Stormtrooper voices were Scott Beach, Morgan Upton and Jerry Walters, but they may not have done *all* the trooper voices; Colin Michael Kitchens says that he performed the line "Look sir, droids!"

John and Tom Sylla did Cantina background chatter; Tom Sylla is the voice saying "All pilots to your stations" in the Rebel base.

Here's where it gets interesting. All of the people I just listed were working out of the San Francisco/Marin County area where Lucasfilm and American Zoetrope were based. However, I spotted several voices of people who worked in Los Angeles; some of them are famous or well-known in voice circles.

The Death Star officer who tells Vader "There's no one on board, sir. According to the log, the crew abandoned ship right after takeoff" is dubbed by none other than Harry Shearer, of "The Simpsons" fame. Only a couple places online mention this, but I spotted this one myself first. The voice he uses sounds kind of like Kent Brockman (the news anchor on The Simpsons).

Shearer may also be the voice of "There goes another one" and the Rebel pilot (Gold Two?) who says "Computer's locked. Getting a signal" and "The guns...they've stopped." The site that said this doesn't seem to exist anymore, but the voices for both those characters do sound like Shearer to me.

According to the old Starwars.com Homing Beacon newsletter, Michael Bell dubbed the voice of Commander Willard - the guy who says "You're safe. When we heard about Alderaan, we feared the worst." Michael Bell is a well-known cartoon voiceover, he did Duke on the original G.I. Joe, Prowl on Transformers, Zan of the Wonder Twins on the Superfriends cartoons, Lance and Sven on Voltron, and too many other voices to name here. Listening to Willard's voice, it definitely is him, though he's doing a very subdued performance.

Now here's one I'm not sure of, and I can't find any info anywhere to back me up. The Cantina owner sounds like he was dubbed by Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime on Transformers. Listen to "We don't serve their kind here" and "We don't want them here." The way the guy doing the voice drags out the "eer" sound in "here," it always makes me think of Cullen's gruff Optimus Prime voice. Anybody else think it might be him?

You'll notice I didn't mention Aunt Beru. That's because I believe it's actually Shelagh Fraser dubbing herself using an American accent, in both the stereo and mono mixes. Last year, Moth3r started a thread called "Beru's voice" where this was discussed.

Anybody got any other info on the voice dubbing in SW?

"Other" Beru? I thought that was only the mono. Morgands' 70mm recording has the normal one ("most of his friends have GONE" - mono is "most of his FRIENDS have gone")

We don't know how faded it is...

I can't believe that a cropped 16mm print of ESB would go for MORE than a widescreen 8mm print of SW. (Though I guess we should consider ourselves lucky...)

Moth3r said:

TServo2049 said:

If you want to come up with actual sound comparisons, go ahead. I like your stereo-in-one-ear, mono-in-the-other approach. It's just that I don't have the time to do that myself.

This has already been done (and, IIRC, the audio file is synced to the GOUT video).

Know where I can find it, perchance?

I'm not going to provide sound samples. This is just a list.

If you want to come up with actual sound comparisons, go ahead. I like your stereo-in-one-ear, mono-in-the-other approach. It's just that I don't have the time to do that myself.

That's why I'm asking for others' help - so that I don't have to watch the whole film and record all the timecodes myself.

Which timecodes should be used? GOUT?

If I use GOUT, I will warn that the GOUT-synched Belbucus reconstruction is not *100%* accurate to the real mono mix. One example I can think of is that the Fox fanfare on the reconstruction is just a mono fold-down from the soundtrack CD.

CatBus said:

ALSO: Where is the Buckaroo Banzai love in this thread?

*slaps forehead* I can't believe I forgot to mention that film! One of my personal favorites...

I was just listening to the mono mix of SW again, and noticed differences which nobody seems to have mentioned before.

In general, due to the narrower frequency range of optical Academy mono (100Hz-8kHz vs. Dolby Stereo's maximum of 30Hz-16kHz), certain sound effects are vague or nonexistent; the low-frequency rumbles and high-frequency whines are dulled considerably. (For example, compare the Tantive/Star Destroyer chase in stereo and mono. The high and low frequencies just aren't there in the mono.)

Here is an ongoing list of differences I've found, with GOUT timecodes. I'm using the original Dolby Stereo mix as a basis of comparison, not the '93 mix. (A warning: The GOUT-synched Belbucus reconstruction is not a 100% accurate reference, so I will note if anything can only be heard in genuine mono sources like Puggo Grande.)

• 00:00:00-00:00:18 - Fox fanfare has less reverb (Puggo Grande has the actual mono mix fanfare; Belbucus reconstruction uses a mono fold-down from the soundtrack CD)
• 00:01:59-00:02:16 - Various differences in flyover scene; Tantive's lasers are louder, flyby roar/whine is lower; Star Destroyer lasers are quieter; music seems to be more to the front of the mix, especially when Star Destroyer is flying overhead
• 00:02:16-00:02:22 - Star Destroyer lasers are louder, Tantive flyby roar/whine is lower (possibly also due to lack of high frequencies)
• 00:02:22-00:02:25 - No sound effect for laser blast that hits the Tantive; different explosion sound
• In the interrogation scene, Captain Antilles' dialogue is edited differently. In the stereo mix, it sounds like "We intercepted no transmissions! *ugh* *ugh* This is a consular ship...(pause)...we're on a diplomatic mission!" In the mono mix, it's "We intercepted no transmissions! (pause) *ugh* *ugh* This is a consular ship...we're on a diplomatic mission!"
• When R2 falls over after being knocked out by the Jawas, he makes a different sound effect when he hits the ground. (In addition, there's an extra sound effect at the end of the previous shot after the electricity animation ends; it's a metallic "bang".)
• The background Jawa dialogue is a lot louder than in the stereo mix. (At first, I thought the mono had extra Jawa chatter, but it is in the stereo too, it's just much quieter.)
• 00:20:47-00:22:37 - When the hologram appears, an added sound effect can be heard of a metal object falling to the ground. The hologram itself has a new sound effect as well as added sound distortions when the image breaks apart. When Luke removes the restraining bolt a new sound effect is added when it shuts down the hologram.
• 00:34:44-00:35:21 - Again the hologram of Leia has a sort of projection sound (the static distortions were already in the stereo mix)
• 00:51:25-00:51:31 - Creature vocalization added, heard at the moment when Luke has sold his speeder, more exactly when you see the legs of an alien passing by in front of the camera.
• 01:25:02-01:25:04 - Luke's line "What good will it do us if he gets himself killed?" is a different ADR take.
• 01:42:52-01:42:57 - "Lock S-foils in attack position." Added X-wing sound effects.
• 01:46:08-01:46:10 - "There's a heavy fire zone on this side" can be heard more clearly due to the lack of distortion on the radio transmissions.
• 01:50:17 - 01:50:24 - "Stay there. I just lost my starboard engine." Added sound effect for Red Leader's damaged ship.

I think we should try to find all the differences in the mono mix, sort of list of differences in the 70mm version of ESB. I'm sure there are lots and lots of other subtle mixing and editing changes, some of which may be really hard to spot, but I think we can try to find as many as possible.

I don't have the time or patience to do this all myself, so if anybody else can provide any more differences they spot, preferrably with timecodes (for -1), I'll add them to this top post.

I'll sum up what I wrote in that thread:

Most clips are from the 97 SEs (and not the official released transfers either). The scenes that were CGI'ed for the SE were replaced with very crummy-looking, low-res transfers of LFL archival prints. They seem to have even less vertical image detail than the GOUT.

The dailies, outtakes, and raw effects footage have similar quality issues - in fact, I noticed the same jaggies in some of the clips in "ILM: Creating the Impossible", so maybe LFL transferred all this stuff at the same time?

I've been revisiting the scene of Han running after the stormtroopers, and I don't think there's really a zoom in the GOUT. -1's previous comparisons weren't completely accurate. The test captures he did seem to be stretched out too much vertically, besides being crooked/distorted, while his GOUT screenshots seem horizontally squeezed a little too much. He didn't perfectly match the proportions of the two images, and I can see places where the two sources are out of alignment.

I tried stretching my own GOUT screenshots over the same frames from the '04/'11 transfer (taken from Harmy's DeEd 1.0). I was able to come up with a rough border of where the GOUT image falls relative to the '04/'11.

As Harmy said before, the '04/'11 transfer has less image on the right and more on the left than the GOUT; for these frames at least, it also has less on the bottom and more on the top than the GOUT.

Here's the previous images cropped to roughly match the GOUT framing, compared to the actual GOUT screenshots. I vertically squashed the GOUT frames a bit, to undo the slight horizontal compression so that they'd match the '04/'11 proportions:

As you can see, the GOUT doesn't seem to zoom in like -1 thought. Besides the two sets of images not being the same proportions, I think that part of what might have thrown him off was the fact that the wall paneling on the left is messed up by the DVNR. Look at the third and fourth frames - some of the detail from adjacent frames is cloned into the blank areas. That may have confused -1 as to where the GOUT boundaries were in the complete frame.

I think that we'll eventually find that the GOUT framing is actually pretty consistent.

Agreed. My point is that people railed over the BD transfer because it looked very different from previous releases, but this Derann print has a similar palette. Not the same, but similar. It doesn't justify the BD transfer per se, I just find it interesting.

This looks awesome on film.

Nice. The Neverending Story is another childhood favorite I'd love to see on film someday.

It's interesting that the color timing of this Derann print is actually fairly similar to the controversial Blu-ray transfer. It looks more balanced than the Blu, but it's interesting to see that there was a version with a similar high-contrast, blue/orange look long before the modern blue-and-orange epidemic...

Even if the films of the 80s were on the whole not as good as the films of the 70s, I still wouldn't call the 80s the absolute worst decade for film. IMO, the last decade was much, MUCH worse overall. At least the 80s didn't have endless CGI, ADD editing, overuse of handheld/shaky-cam, or unrealistic high-contrast teal-and-orange color grading.

Back then we had lots of low-budget garbage, but now we have too much big-budget garbage. For example, you listed Death Wish 3 and 4, Ghoulies, and Friday the 13th Part III as examples of the "average" fare of the 80s. I'd still rather watch a braindead Golan-Globus action film, or a Charles Band horror film, or an 80s slasher film than a Michael Bay movie, or Final Destination, or Saw. I can actually physically tolerate the 80s stuff; the 2000s stuff hurts my eyes, hurts my ears, and hurts my head.

That's just my opinion.

negative1 said:

very cool pictures and comparisons.

by the way, my aspect ratio is off on a lot of pictures,

but that doesn't change the overall percentages i posted,

which is just for comparison. when i do crop the sides, you

are seeing the entire picture unless i mention it.

I was talking about my percentages. They aren't based on the actual amount of exposed image per se, they're based on the .839 x .700 aperture that was the standard for Panavision at the time. I am not showing 0%-5%-10% cropping of the total used picture area, I'm showing 0%-5%-10% cropping based on a projector calibrated to the 1977 standard Panavision aperture.

As I just demonstrated, some shots actually use the maximum sound aperture, which falls outside of the SMPTE protected area. A comparison of the GOUT to the entire exposed image will always show a higher percentage of cropping for those shots; for example, even if the telecine operator kept the framing in exactly the same place for this whole sequence, the closeup of Ben and the Mos Eisley matte painting would have a higher percentage of cropping compared to the full exposed picture, because the amount of exposed frame increases.

Your images do basically contain the entire picture. However, for my 0%-5%-10% comparisons, I need to be able to see the black space around the exposed image on all four sides. Looking at many of these full frames with soundtrack, the camera exposure seems to "trail off" on the left - sometimes you crop this off. I also need to be able to see how close the right edge is to the sprocket holes, because of the scenes that use more of the frame; for those shots, even 0% cropping at Panavision aperture would take off some picture on the right side.

I'm trying to demonstrate the maximum and minimum amount of image that would have been seen in a theater in '77, to provide a guideline for how you should do your cropping. Thus, I need fixed points of reference - that's why I would prefer versions with the complete frame, including the top and bottom frame lines, the soundtrack and the sprocket holes.

I can wait for more images. I'll still try to do GOUT/JSC/Technidisc comparisons, but until I get more full frames, my 0%-5%-10% will either be guesses, or will be 0%-5%-10% of the entire exposed image, or I just won't include them.

I'm not sure if the cropping is *completely* random. I will warn that the 0%-5%-10% boxes in my earlier comparisons may be inaccurate, since some of these screens were cropped or stretched by -1, and may be the wrong aspect ratio or not show the 100% complete frame area. Also, I had to do some guesswork with the binary sunset comparison, since there are no "landmarks" at the top of the screen.

I have your Technidisc rip plus the JSC V8 Project burned, but thanks for the offer.

I'll do the Han chase scene if -1 posts uncropped LPP frames where the whole border is visible. I don't think I can work with the faded frames, they seem to be crooked or bowed, and the gate edges are cropped out.

In the meantime, here's Luke and Ben. Same color coding as before. This time I sourced it from an image with soundtrack and sprocket holes (I cropped off the left sprocket holes). I lined it up with the SMPTE framing chart scan I used to make the 0%-5%-10% diagram, including the blank soundtrack space, so the boxes should line up perfectly:

Again, GOUT is pretty close to 5% cropping, but it's shifted to the right. The JSC is cropped on the sides a little more than the GOUT, and the Technidisc is cropped even more, but both have more on the top and bottom. The JSC basically touches the top of the used frame area (you can even see a bit of the rounded edge in the top right-hand corner), while the Technidisc comes very close to the bottom.

I will point out that both the JSC and Technidisc transfers share a trait of earlier widescreen transfers to crop more on the sides than, so the image would read better on smaller TVs. GOUT is cropped on all sides, but in general it has more on the sides than the other two even if it has less on the top and bottom (and as I demonstrated before, sometimes this is a good thing).

Here are some more 0%-5%-10% comparisons from this part of the film - I'll do the GOUT/JSC/Technidisc comparisons in the future.

Notice, by the way, that some shots occupy the entire usable frame area instead of the standard Panavision aperture. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. For those scenes, I'm guessing that the picture outside of the green border never showed up in any theater.

Here's the 2x stretched SMPTE RP-40 framing chart I use for reference (reduced, the full resolution is much higher), complete with the blank space where the soundtrack is located. (You can see my 0%-5%-10% boxes. I drew in the dark green "target" lines when I was making it, so that I could center the 5% and 10% boxes.)

The full usable picture area is everything to the right of the soundtrack space. The reason I don't think the area to the right of the 0% box ever showed up in theaters is because it falls outside of the SMPTE framing area (the checkerboards), and the projectionist would have lined up the framing so that the image on the screen fell inside the checkerboard.

I'm not sure how many more scenes in the film use the entire frame, since -1 hasn't shared many complete frames including the soundtrack and sprocket holes.

Hey -1, could you do more screenshots like these, just full-frame scans with soundtrack and sprocket holes, and 2x horizontal stretch?

OK, here's one of the lightsaber frames -1 posted earlier (albeit brightened by me). Again, I combed together previous screenshots from the forum as my references - thankfully, I could find plenty of images of this shot.

Again, I didn't include '97 or '04/'11, as the image is pretty small and extra lines would just clutter everything. (And also because the scene was recomposited in the SE anyway.) Same color coding as before - blue is 5%, red is 10%, cyan is GOUT, magenta is JSC, yellow is Technidisc.

The aspect ratio of -1's screenshot isn't 2.35-2.40:1, it's closer to 2.20:1, but I can't tell if it's cropped a bit, or vertically stretched a bit. I included the 5% and 10% anyway, even though the actual 5% and 10% cropping may be wider.

Again, the horizontal cropping of the GOUT and JSC fall in the 5% zone; Technidisc seems to be halfway between the 5% and 10% lines. The vertical cropping is a different story: GOUT's is near the 10% line (I wonder if they were trying to hide the aforementioned bright areas on the edges?), while Technidisc is close to 5%, and JSC is even less (which is why the glows are so visible on those, JSC in particular - the gamma boosting didn't help either).

This time, it's the JSC that has the least cropping - probably too little cropping on the top and bottom...

Well, it probably doesn't apply to every scene. As I find more screens of raw frames with sufficient detail to match up the edges of the various transfers, I'll do more.