enderdrag64 said:
Awesome thanks!
Regarding the jump cut during 1M3, I actually noticed this during my rewatch with the unedited cue, but I disregarded it because I assumed that only a few frames were cut. I suppose it is possible that it could explain the 1 second gap though. It’s certainly much less invasive than trimming footage to add in the 3PO scene.
As for 3M3 Rev, if I’m to understand what you’re saying, you think that the wide shot was extended after the rear-projection dialogue was cut, hence why the sync is so difficult? I will also say the wide shots from the deleted scene and from the finished film look completely different in terms of camera position, perhaps the final film’s wide shot wasn’t even in the scored cut.
Also that’s an interesting comment about muting Biggs’ name, I never noticed that before. I guess adding Gold Leader is a reasonable explanation. The exchange is in the script, so it’s not like it was made in editing, but perhaps it was removed during scoring and added back later. The script does have associated storyboards for the entire end battle as well, I want to compare the final film against them and see if they reveal anything more about this change.
In regards to the Landspeeder scene, the blu-ray version is some strange creation taken from I think? the cut that Lucas presented to his friends. It ends exactly where there would be the cut scanner display graphic would be, and I think the rest of the conversation would have originally taken place inside rear-projection filming environment and only THEN cut to the Tusken Raiders watching the speeder going through the canyon. All this to say I think it’s fallacious to take the blu-ray deleted scenes totally at face value, as in many cases they seem to have been taken from random post-production sources (sometimes not even for the scenes taken from out and out dailies) and cut in a way to actively discourage attempted fanedits. That does not accurately represent the scene in the scoring/preview cuts, I’m sure, but a much earlier stage in editing. The effects shot of the speeder from the final film seems to me like it was made to be the opening shot of the scene, and just extended with some of the ADR from the rear-projection version (which they would have had to do) overlaid to make up for the missing scene. Effects shots for these big-budget films can often get made with lots of extra slack so that they can be manipulated like any other coverage, just for situations like this (just look at the supplemental material for Blade Runer and Alien).
I just think it’s rare for these late post-production cuts to get preserved (after all, the Ghostbusters sneak preview had to be referenced from a VHS dub), and we’re extremely lucky to have the opening ROTJ scene in such a complete form as we do.
Also, the Tusken Raiders getting set up to ride out is (to me) a very obvious case where footage was just wholesale removed at the last minute with little to no regard for the music. Is there any shuffling of music after the obvious jump cut? Because to me even the visuals seem like a hard cut.