Trooperman

1980s internet- wow. As Spock would say,

"Fascinating."

danny_boy said:

Trooperman said:

danny_boy said:

msycamorewrote:

Yes, Lucas had to get it restored due to the bad shape it was in, in order to release the Special Edition, but as we all know by now, the purpose of that event wasn't to restore the original film, that being made was just a stepping stone towards the revised cut of the film. It was in fact not restored in the truest sense either, the 62 shots made on CRI-stock for example were replaced with digitally re-composited shots, all the optical wipes were redone etc.

 

That's true to a degree-----but the original film was restored---here is Rick Mcallum saying as much:

One of the most frustrating things is, if you could see the print that stuck of the original negative that we have done - it's perfect. It's not perfect in terms of the color restauration, because we still have a long way to go.

http://www.maikeldas.com/SWrick1eng.html

Unfortunately when you read that snippet in context, it's clear that they hadn't actually scanned the film yet to start making special edition changes.  After they made all the changes, it is my understanding that they went back to that clean, beautiful negative and cut it up for the purposes of pasting in the new 35mm special edition shots they had just printed from their computer. 

 

Yes---I agree---but it would also mean that the original negative has not been altered-----it was disassembled into it's constituents parts so that it's differing film stocks could be washed separately----but then Robert  Hart(the editor of ESB and ROTJ) put it backtogether without inserting any new frames/elements.

 

 

 

 

True, but THEN they chopped it up.  So for all of probably about 2 months or so, the complete original negatives to Star Wars were restored. 

The point is, AFTER that, the negative seems to have been cut up for the purpose of inserting Special Edition scenes.

danny_boy said:

msycamorewrote:

Yes, Lucas had to get it restored due to the bad shape it was in, in order to release the Special Edition, but as we all know by now, the purpose of that event wasn't to restore the original film, that being made was just a stepping stone towards the revised cut of the film. It was in fact not restored in the truest sense either, the 62 shots made on CRI-stock for example were replaced with digitally re-composited shots, all the optical wipes were redone etc.

 

That's true to a degree-----but the original film was restored---here is Rick Mcallum saying as much:

One of the most frustrating things is, if you could see the print that stuck of the original negative that we have done - it's perfect. It's not perfect in terms of the color restauration, because we still have a long way to go.

http://www.maikeldas.com/SWrick1eng.html

Unfortunately when you read that snippet in context, it's clear that they hadn't actually scanned the film yet to start making special edition changes.  After they made all the changes, it is my understanding that they went back to that clean, beautiful negative and cut it up for the purposes of pasting in the new 35mm special edition shots they had just printed from their computer. 

In fact, I strongly dislike the 2004 and 2011 cuts, but from a preservation standpoint they don't bother me at all.  They are the digital "George Lucas fan edits". 

The 1997 versions worry me much more because that was done on film and from what I've read it sounds like they just rendered the CGI scenes out to 35mm film and then cut up the ON to reflect the change.  If that's true, that's an almost unforgivable error. 

I think too that since the error was made in the early 80s, all home video releases would have contained this error and generally people wouldn't have realized there WAS an error.  Of course, if people had known they would have wanted a corrected copy. 

But I think the primary difference is that Coppola actually shelled out the money to restore the original versions of "Godfather".  Even Spielberg is putting out ET on Blu-Ray and says it will be ONLY the original version.

Whereas George Lucas is aware that the original versions are slowly fading and rotting away, and not only doesn't he care, but he PREFERS it that way. 

EDIT: And according to some reports, the original negative has been deliberately vandalized (i.e. special edition shots were actually spliced into the NEGATIVE).  That isn't the same thing as some Paramount home video employee who didn't know what he was doing.

My favorite SW game is still TIE FIGHTER from the 90s.  It made you feel like you were in a Star Wars movie.

Does anybody know if you could run it on Vista or Windows 7, or Mac OS in a simulator?  I still have XP but will probably upgrade in the future.

The Palpatine opera scene and the one where Anakin points the lightsaber at Palpatine's head and he goes "I can feel your anger" seemed very striking to me.

Hayden in ROTJ cancels out the moral of the whole movie. George Lucas back then was not as secular and was a lot more focused on the moral lesson. 

Darth Vader DID become good at the end when he sacrificed himself to save Luke. That's what "Old Anakin" as the ghost shows. 

Luke: I've got to save you!

Anakin: You already have, Luke.  You were right...you were right about me. 

Growing up I always assumed that Anakin meant that Luke saved him from going to hell or something like that. 

But whatever the original intent was, Hayden at the end completely cancels it out.

"Ewoks and the Marauders of Endor"?  What on earth is that? 

Well, apparently there are 3 versions of that too.  I know nothing about this.  I thought it was only a TV movie.

I vaguely remember reading an article stating that "Caravan of Courage" theatrical was simply a matted version of the full screen version we already have.  So there are 3 versions:

1. "The Ewok Adventure"- original version, has "Ewok Adventure" titles.

2. "Caravan of Courage" theatrical.  A matted version of "Ewok Adventures" (unsure of the aspect ratio) with new opening titles

3. George's DVD version.   A full screen version of "Ewok Adventure" with full screen "Caravan of Courage" titles and possibly other minor changes (?)

Battle for Endor has two versions (never received a theatrical run):

1. Original version in full screen.

2. George's DVD version in full screen which apparently has altered dialogue in places.

doubleofive said:

I wrote an article based on the NYT piece Zombie wrote that article from:

http://doubleofive.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/save-star-wars/

So it's the same article where he says its way to expensive and other lies. No new news, that makes me sad. After watching "People vs" last night, I've been hoping he'd come to his senses faster.

Sure, but isn't it nice he at least seems to be entertaining the thought now?

"The quality of the original is not very good. You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it" -George Lucas

Indeed, you would have to do a whole restoration on it...Interesting idea, Mr. Lucas....

The Jedi Council forum or something like that.  Here's another link:

http://savestarwars.com/starwarsblurayblues.html

It's an old story, but it still shows that his hard-line stance on restoring the originals seems to be softening a little...

May 14th, 2012.  George Lucas is 68 years old today.

It seems he has been weakening on the original versions in the last couple of years, too.

"Lucas wasn’t badmouthing the original releases (his usual M.O.), but that there would have to be a big restoration done to get a high def master…And he’s also stopped calling the originals “workprints” instead referring to them as the “classic versions.”

His reasoning at not releasing them at the same time was the time and expense of doing full restorations of the original materials was prohibitive and as such the "recent releases get priority over what we call ‘the classic’ version of things."

I'm not supposed to say in public, but it's one of the best.

It was me being paranoid because someone PM'd me and I thought it was too good to be true and had to be some kind of agent.  Actually, it was the man behind one of the coolest fan edits I have ever seen.  Sorry again for the confusion. 

It wasn't youtube, it was someone who I thought was a copyright agent but as it turns out, may have been just a really nice guy.  I probably overreacted.  Sorry for scaring you guys.  Clearly I need some sleep...

-TM

I am shocked, shocked to find editing going on in this establishment.

brash_stryker said:

Fair enough if you don't want to carry on, but don't let youtube be the reason :-p

It's not.  Suffice it to say that I have been warned. 

Project closed until further notice.  The film has been taken off of youtube and will not be available for further viewing.

I thought that it was covered under the fair use clause in copyright law, but I now understand that making this available without obtaining prior written license has the potential to be an infringement of copyright. 

Needless to say, I do not, cannot, and have never supported the intentional breaking of copyright law.  Therefore, this project must end. 

For details on why this happened, PM me. 

Thanks,

-TM

Fantastic!  What characters would you like to try?  We could do this over PMs if you like.

-TM

Well Erik, I think deep down I want to finish this thing, so I don't blame you at all for putting the pressure on me...

Thanks for the comments and offers for help.  I'll seriously think about this, and hopefully a couple more actors come forward because if we have those ADR tracks sounding good, then I definitely think it will be worth it to re-edit this zombie edit.  Maybe call it Episode II: Attack of the Killer Zombies...

But seriously, it's all about the dubbing.  I actually read the 1st page of this thread just a little bit ago (I was young then!) and that was the problem from the very beginning- how do we get professional sounding dubs? 

If this basic issue can be solved, again, that would definitely give me the motivation to do whatever it took to go back to the drawing board and finish this up.

Episode II: The "I Don't Like Sand" Edition

Had me cracking up during Anakin's dream.  Very funny. 

I suppose I would edit on Vegas 5.0 the way I had done in the rough cut.  Not being able to work off of the rough cut audio mix would be a nightmare and I'd have to basically remake the audio from scratch.

EDIT: Although if I decided to do that I would redo it in 5.1.  The original idea was encoding matrixed 4.1 PCM, but I don't know how many people have the Pro-Logic decoders anymore.

And in that case I would buy newer, faster editing software that I could use on the mac.  Something like Final Cut Pro.

(edited for content)

EDITED to remove link.


Erikstormtrooper, you're exploiting my soft spot.  You know I don't like to leave things unfinished....


OK, so what if I were to pull this back out again?  What would make a "new version" worth it?

1. New, better color correction
2. Dubbing.  Lama-Su is the only new dub I can keep from the rough cut.  All else must go.  EDIT: Forgot Nute Gunray.  Will leave Nute as-is.  It blends well into the movie.
3. Creative changes

f I can somehow get professional sounding ADR recordings (matching the rough cut dialogue) for:
1. Anakin
2. Jar-Jar Binks
3. Owen Lars
4. Mas Amedda (the blue alien)

Then I will do my part and, barring any unforeseen problems, I will put out another version of this. 

In addition, if anybody is able to recut any scene from the movie with better color correction and an HD source, let me know and I will digitally "splice" it into my current DVD-9 file.  The final result in this case would still be DVD, but when you use HD as a source and then re-encode (for color) the DVD will look sharper.

But these are two components that don't actually require any information from me (since my rough cut is on the internet for now).  These are: New Video cut to match the rough cut (sourced off of the HD and recolored), and New Dubbing. 

At a bare minimum, if I can get those 4 dubs sounding good enough, I will put them into the rough cut and then focus on the audio.  I would really enjoy a new video track, but it's not actually necessary- and I wouldn't want anybody to waste time on that until we had dubs that could work. 

I also need to see what all is what because my video PC crashed several months go.  Not to worry because it is backed up on hard drive mostly, but I think I may have lost a folder of assorted audio files ("elements" in the "mix") which could cause various problems and be generally a pain to work through again.  If I'm actually resurrecting the EDITABLE audio on this (a collection of hundreds of different files) I'd also need to re-specify the file paths on everything because everything is on the hard drive and nothing will be where the project files expect it to be....

It would be a logistic nightmare, that's all.  All the project files are on old software and I haven't touched those actual files for 5 years. 

But if I have those 4 professional sounding dubs, then I will do it.