- Post
- #1578715
- Topic
- Star Wars - John Williams rough cut information
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1578715/action/topic#1578715
- Time
Yeah, based on the score and trailers, ROTJ’s late post-production may have been the most radical reshuffling; I’ve heard Lucas had a sort of bizarre fixation on getting the runtime to an exact number, is that attested to by reputable sources?
But yeah, in regards to the blu-ray scenes; that’s not a theory, that’s exactly what they are. The Rinzler extras explain that certain shots they have are dailies taken from incomplete sources where bits had been snipped out for use in the final film. That’s I think where the really intact deleted scenes on the blu-rays are taken from; the dirtier a piece of film is, the more likely it is to have come from an actual test edit (the exception being the Luke in cave scene, that must come from an extremely last minute edit).
The sources of deleted scenes we have basically boil down to three sources as I understand it:
- Raw footage. The stuff like Vader and Chief Bast, Aunt Beru in the kitchen, the Endor bunker; this footage is not only pristine, it’s basically the raw footage taken straight from the spool and put on the blu-ray (the Rinzler raw footage stuff for ANH and ESB seems to be from stuff transferred for Empire of Dreams originally).
- Editing room test cuts. The black and white stuff that IS edited but in rough shape. This was probably traded around the editing room and used for screening to higher ups; you can see John Williams watching some early assemblies like this in “Music by John Williams” with Kershner. These were not screened on a wide scale but were meant to just represent how a sequence MIGHT look put together, used as reference for more high quality assemblies later. This is also the way in which Richard Marquand’s original cut for ROTJ survives, according to Rinzler.
- Actual test screening footage. As I speculated above, I think the blu-ray’s Luke on Tattooine scenes are sourced from the cut that Lucas screened for his friend group and the Fox executives; definitely edited, rudimentary sound mixing, just enough to be watchable for a group to get a general sense of what the film is. I think the extended Luke and Leia medbay scene is also taken from a similar one of these cuts for ESB, as is the extended Echo Base hallway argument.