logo Sign In

Trooperman

User Group
Members
Join date
15-Feb-2005
Last activity
15-Jun-2015
Posts
1,406

Post History

Post
#142483
Topic
Idea: 70mm Empire Strikes Back on DVD?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/142483/action/topic#142483
Time
I like the 70mm mix not only because of the alternate/additional dubs and effects, but because of the original music. The best example of this is the cue after Yoda’s “That is why you fail.” In the 70mm, JW’s wonderful transition is intact. It was hacked in favor of more tracked music in the 35mm. Which I hate.

Also, I think this should be preserved because this was the original version of the movie. Release number 1. In fact, the folks that worked on it considered the 70mm “finished”. Only later did they turn around and officially “unfinish” the film so that they could change it for the 35mm release. There has never been a home video of this “finished” release. And it would be impossible to create was it not used for the ’97 Special Editions. That’s why I’m thankful for the Special Edition of Empire. I think it’d be great to have the 70mm version of Empire on disc alongside the 35mm version, for the record if nothing else. To have a version of the movie with the restored music and dialogue, but actually containing the original cut of the film, not the SE. I hate to put this idea out there like I’m saying, “I think this project should be done, but I’m too lazy to do it. Anyone want to do it for me?” Because that’s not the case at all. If nobody does this or has done this, then I WILL do it. It’ll just be a long while before I have time to do it, as I’m a very busy guy and am working on the Ep. II edit right now.
Post
#142429
Topic
Idea: 70mm Empire Strikes Back on DVD?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/142429/action/topic#142429
Time

I think that this could be a great project for someone to tackle- take the original 1997 SE track for Empire (which uses the 70mm mix), and patch the SE changes using the THX mix. Then, it could be synched to the EditDroid transfer, Moth3r transfer, or something like that.

If someone really wanted to get ambitious, they could also research the <span class=“Italics”>video</span> variations in the 70mm version (different wipes, hard cuts to replace fades) and recreate the video in the best way possible given what we have. If nobody tries this project, then I will get to it eventually. Just wondered about the feasibility of this (particularly the video issues).

Post
#142403
Topic
Updating the Thread Indexes
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/142403/action/topic#142403
Time
Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side

The "most ambitious fan edit" ever.

"Taking hamburger and reconstructing it into a cow."

"This will blow people's minds."

The highlight is: Anakin Skywalker is dubbed, just as Darth Vader was in the OT. The new Anakin has a lower and darker voice and gives a superior performance to Hayden. This is actually a creative collaboration with many, including Mark Haslett, Commander Courage, Rebel11_38 (who did the opening crawl), Twister111, MagnoliaFan, and MANY, many others. It will be out on DVD in 2006, with a trailer prior to that.
Post
#141471
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/141471/action/topic#141471
Time
Sounds like really neat work, OCP! However, from what I understand, this is not actually "the original version of The Empire Strikes Back" restored COMPLETELY faithfully (painting in laser bolts, slightly different numbers of frames, maybe the insignia will be flipped, the 2004 lightsabers, etc.)

It's a good point about the cropped cockpit shots- it seems like you would be able to fix that by taking the original and superimposing the DVD shot on there for better quality (maybe blending the edges to cover it up).

Another thing that you might not be aware of is that Lucas and co. made a specific point of changing the color and lighting of the characters (Leia and Lando) in the open window scenes, to match with the new environments. Even though your screenshot brings the hall back to the original, the orange still shows up on the characters (left over from the 2004 scene). If there was a way to tint that correctly or to eliminate the orange coloring, that would be great. Or maybe if the quality was good enough, you could just take the whole original shot- that way you wouldn't have to paint in the bolts.

One more thing I was wondering is what you've done about the famous snowspeeder transparency problem. Did you revert back to the original on that, or is it the SE version?

Either way, this looks like great work. Especially the corrected Cloud City shots and the Lando hatch shot. Great job on this.

Trooperman
Post
#141088
Topic
Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side (the TM edit) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/141088/action/topic#141088
Time
I’m sorry that I’ve been so bad about responding to all these comments; I had to do another quick movie for a friend of mine and that took up my spare time this week.

Nanner Split- I can’t wait to see this either. You don’t know how rewarding it’ll be when I’m finally able to sit down with the disc in the player and watch it the way I’ve always wanted to.

Commander Courage- Whether you’re sounding critical or not, you’re the one that pointed out things to watch out for, and therefore your advice is extremely valuable and I like it. It’s very good when people critique my work because it’s easy to subconsciously gloss over the faults when you were the one to do it in the first place; a fresh, unbiased pair of eyes is great. So…please keep it up

Nightmare scene- This is one scene that I had to put a great deal of thought into as I was synchronizing music and sound. Basically, I was in quandary and I had two choices. I could have the music climax at the end of the dream as Anakin’s eyes pop open (then the music dies down as Anakin calms down (realizing it’s a dream) and we have transition to next scene. OR…the music keeps building even after Anakin wakes up (and his eyes pop open- punctuated by brass) so that we climax on the transition. I chose the latter because it gives me the feeling that Anakin is deeply worried about this and that this is an important point in the movies. If we climax as Anakin wakes up, the music dies down afterwards (as he thinks about it), and this gives you a kind of resolution that we don’t want- it should keep building and building until the next scene. The score kind of blurs dream and reality (the scary music continues even after Anakin wakes up). I did prototypes of each method of cutting and music, and this way gave much greater impact.

Therefore, if the music does not climax as Anakin wakes up, then it follows that this is not an important point to the scene (the fact that he woke up, the fact that it’s a dream, and so on). Therefore, crossfading the dream with Anakin in bed (with the slow zoom) gives a wonderful frantic feeling with the music that even after he wakes up, the dream is still very much with him. I’m not sure if I’m being very clear at all (if not I apologize) but I think you’ll agree upon seeing it. I think it’s OK that it doesn’t exactly match up with the ROTS dream, because this is the first dream we’ve seen and it seems OK that it could be made special or different.

Thinking into the future, what I had in mind for the ROTS dream was the wonderful musical chord and general film style of the dream from Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”. You see the woman falling (accompanied by frantic strings) and then there’s a wonderful dramatic chord as it cuts to Jimmy Stewart sitting up it bed and staring at camera. He’s gone crazy. This whole thing worked very well and seems like it can be carried over into Anakin’s situation. Consider the parallel- Stewart’s character is feeling guilty because he let the man die at the beginning of the film, because he was not strong enough to save him (his vertigo).

Anakin was not strong enough to save Shmi either, and it weighs heavily on his conscience.


Padme: You’re not all-powerful, Anakin.
Anakin: You’re damn right I’m not. I’m weak. But someday I will be. Someday I will become…(etc.)

But when Stewart is not strong enough to save the woman from the bell tower, he goes insane. Anakin is going insane just by the thought that he won’t be able to save Padme. So the music and the style of this dream will be in the style of the one in “Vertigo”. Another interesting parallel- Stewart becomes INFURIATED at the end of the movie when he realizes that it was a trick and that the woman was not what he thought she was. Anakin will become even more livid in my ROTS because he suspects (or finds out) that something is going on romantically between Padme and Obi-Wan (on top of the fact that she actually showed up with Obi-Wan). I want to put back this subplot whether the deleted scenes are available or not.


“The shot of the guard in the Naboo ship seems squeezed horizontally. Maybe it's a after effect of you cropping it from full screen, and it'll looks fine in motion.”

It does look fine in motion, but it is squeezed- you’re right. I must have messed up the full-screen to anamorphic equation. I’ll go back and fix that shot. The reason I cropped it is because I edited “Very good, lieutenant,” out of the mix and you could see lip flap even from the back view.

“The platform shot looks fine; I guess you just wanted a closer view of the explosion.”

Yes, and it also looks more realistic. But the biggest reason I did it is because I hate the way everything looks so perfect, new, CG, and symmetrical in the PT. Notice how perfectly the explosion seems to be framed. A closer shot throws off the balance and looks more realistic.

“The de-saturated shot of Coruscant is EXCELLENT. It looks REAL!!! And although I have no idea of your reason for flipping the shot, it looks even better that way!”

Thank you; sometime I’ll have to post screenshots of the Council room, Palpatine’s office, etc. because they’ve been de-saturated a lot as well.

“The binary sunest looks very washed out and faded, but I assume this is to match the new color scheme of the scene and not be an exact copy of the one from ANH.”

Yes- I can try to sharpen it up, though.

“Excellent work on the balcony. Before everything looked too blue, as you noted. My only concern with these shots is that their faces seem to be a bit grainy. Of course this maybe nothing and it might look fine in motion.”

I had noticed this graininess as well, actually. It appears to be a side-effect of the chroma-key work that was necessary so that we don’t have bright green plants during the nighttime. I will work on smoothing this out, although it does look better in motion.

“Keep up the good work, you're a real Trooper, man. (Ok, that was lame. Sorry.)”

Ha ha! Lame, yes. That’s my sense of humour right there, though.



“Perfectly awesome.

The new cropping has great impact. You improve the shots and make the worlds feel more real. One thing Ep III did was make Coruscant seem more used and real-- your new shots give me the same impression.”

Thank you, MTHaslett. This is a very big part of the work I’m doing on this- playing with the colors and desaturating, cropping, flipping, and doing other things to improve the CGI. I’m glad you liked it- I will post more examples.

Welcome to the forum, Darth Newmancer!

1. “Whens it gonna be done? (no pressure)”
The simple answer is…I don’t know. However, I know that people like to have dates and deadlines, so I will say that this will be done in one form or another BEFORE next Labor Day. I can’t say how much before.

2. “When it is done how can I get it... will there be a bittorent out for it, or will I have to buy a copy or something?”
You will not have to buy a copy. You will get it for free one way or the other (aside from shipping and blank discs). The story is that I’m not going to be able to distribute these myself. It’s too risky and time-consuming for me. What I’m going to do is send out 1st generation copies to those who’ve helped me, and then I’ll send a few discs to people who are willing to distribute them to whoever wants them, at no extra charge. And knowing Rikter, I’m almost sure it’ll eventually wind up on Bittorent.

3. “Finally, I heard your voicing over Anakin's voice... how that going?”
It’s going quite well- obviously I’m not finished yet, but I’ve definitely made a dent in the dubbing work. I still haven’t completed dubbing the balcony/fireside scene, however. When I dub, I usually do the whole scene in one session, even if I had lines left over from previous days. This is because I don’t want voice variances within the same scene (dry throat, time of day, etc.).


Post
#140516
Topic
Info &amp; Offer: dark_jedi DVD gift packs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/140516/action/topic#140516
Time
Yes- it was VERY nice. Thank you very much. I received mine on Wednesday but did not have a chance to look until later.

Great job on the transfers- I notice some horizontal bars, dot crawl, etc. on the DE, but it was probably due to the fact that I was watching on a computer monitor rather than a TV. I'm sure it'll look fantastic on TV. The pan-scan editions are very impressive as well, especially considering that these aren't the "Faces" pan-scan; this is the pre-THX LD pan-scan. It looks great, and so does the SE trilogy with the bonus disc.

Thanks so much for these! Unfortunately, I won't be able to duplicate this set right now as I've been having some serious burning buffer/codec merit value problems. Eventually I will more then make this up to you guys through my own projects.
Post
#139741
Topic
Info: Does Anyone Have The Old Original Theater Bootleg '77 Tape? (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/139741/action/topic#139741
Time
Oh- I don't believe you're wrong at all; I just wasn't aware of that release. That's fantastic!

If someone somehow got hold of this 1983 Japanese LD and ripped the audio, that would be the ideal copy of the original stereo mix. I know Neil S. Bulk has a copy that was ripped from a time-compressed LD and then decreased in speed; however, even this has yet to surface in a project.
Post
#139729
Topic
Info: Does Anyone Have The Old Original Theater Bootleg '77 Tape? (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/139729/action/topic#139729
Time
Which LD release had the original stereo mix? Are you talking about before the 3PO line was added when Burtt did the remix?

Yes- only that wasn't the only change that was made. He added some new stereo sound effects and fudged the sound in other small ways as well (not nearly as noticeably as he did to the '93 mix, though).

Any LD made before 1985 would have this mix on it, although the speed would need to be decreased for inclusion in a project (the 1st LD's were time-compressed). I would love to see this mix coupled with either/or the '87 widescreen LD's or the 93/95 LD's for the picture.
Post
#139450
Topic
Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side (the TM edit) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/139450/action/topic#139450
Time
Here are a few shots from the nightmare sequence I don't believe I've released yet:

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/9031/dream14ss.jpg
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1322/dream20sy.jpg
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5548/dream32on.jpg
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1047/dream40uo.jpg
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/6715/dream59uj.jpg

As you can see, I've made use of the full-screen DVD as well as the widescreen to achieve the effects I wanted. This happens in other places:

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/8344/newpic1a6zp.jpg
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/8433/newpic11ws.jpg

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/2515/newpic2a4ia.jpg
http://img322.imageshack.us/img322/1309/newpic22gv.jpg

And some other shots:

http://img331.imageshack.us/img331/3963/newpic3a3lb.jpg
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3228/newpic36yg.jpg
http://img347.imageshack.us/img347/5479/newpic4a0rt.jpg
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/1517/newpic41lo.jpg

And a couple balcony stills:

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/8320/newpic76mo.jpg
http://img307.imageshack.us/img307/3747/newpic109dz.jpg
http://img342.imageshack.us/img342/8007/newpic115tf.jpg
http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/6673/newpic125bh.jpg
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/1640/newpic141ol.jpg
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/1864/newpic156yd.jpg

MTHaslett: That's a very interesting idea. And yes, your guess was correct- I was thinking of this for the arena.

To everyone- sorry I haven't been keeping you up-to-date with my progress. I'll try to be better about that.

Trooperman
Post
#138386
Topic
Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side (the TM edit) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/138386/action/topic#138386
Time
Thank you for your support. Yeah, the binary sunset, the shot of Anakin, and the shot of Padme walking out are know perfectly synchronized to the music (they weren't before) and the shots have been color-corrected for consistency.

I'm still waiting for you to tap me for Lama Su -- but I have to admit, I'm grateful you haven't called on me yet because I have been way too busy lately.

Ha ha- so have I. But I warn you that I will be calling on you very soon for this (if you don't mind).

Getting your performance right and mixing it correctly is going to blow people's minds.

I really hope so. I'll try to release it without a lot of fanfare and just let people see it first- let it build up a reputation.

I love the color corrections you've posted, so I know that balcony scene is going to look excellent. With "film look", flash-frames, the old title cards, the darker droid factory, the binary sunset, etc. I fully expect this to look like an OT film. (BTW -- how are you going to handle the sound effect for Jengo Fett's "bombs" -- their silent/delayed sound was definitely NOT OT to my ear. Does it work for you?)

Good point about the bombs. I will probably be changing that so that there is no silence. I'll probably just replace the sound effect entirely. I'm also considering using chroma-key to change the color of the bombs from blue to red or orange. I'll post screenshots of this, the binary sunset, and also the balcony scene in the future.

The flash-frames are actually not as hard as you would think- I'm not getting fancy. It's done pretty much how it was done in the original SW (bright frames, red tinted frames, etc.)

Anyway, I say forget you ever mentioned finishing this year. Pick a new deadline like next Labor Day and give yourself lots of breathing room. There are so many changes in your cut that promise giant improvements -- I feel like time is on your side. Taking your time and letting the tweaks get massaged is the way to go -- don't rush anything, if you want my opinion.

Thanks for saying that. I'm sorry to everyone, but it's become clear to me that this isn't going to be done by the end of the year. On the same note, it will very likely be out in less than a year. I don't really know- I'll do whatever my schedule allows me to. But I'll try to do it as quickly as possible.

Screenshots later