msycamore

doubleofive said:

A bunch of new photos up, a couple I have questions on:



Did they really just change the color of the letters?

This shot isn't a change at all, the lack of scanlines is due to very bad vertical detail/resolution on the GOUT-telecine, you can see the same thing happen in the hologram of the Emperor later in the film. And the lack of green lettering is just another '93 color screw-up like the odd colored TIE lasers when they chase the Falcon.

From an earlier pan & scan transfer of the original film:

Thanks for the quick reply!

EDIT: So, you're using those same values on all three films?

Chewtobacca said:

Dark_jedi, are you going to alter the resizing values in G-Force's scripts to prevent horizontal resizing?  With the greatest of respect to G-Force, the values in the scripts are simply wrong, as they needlessly stretch perfectly good picture, shifting it into the overscan area.  It would be much better not to resize horizontally.

So what settings in the scripts do you recommend for the resizing? I'd like to try it out and compare the results of the two methods.

Well, I don't know which version you have, skyjedi but my R1 DVD of American Graffiti have a dolby 2.0 surround track not a 5.1 track. I know the audio was in Dolby for the first time in '78, it even says so on the posters of the re-release but are you sure the initial '73 release was in mono? I thought they just reworked the original 4-track stereo into Dolby because it was the new popular format back then.

I thought the release date for this book was the 12th October, so I was very pleased when it arrived last friday. :) Haven't have the time to start readin it yet, but it looks very promising.

Welcome to the forum, erri_wan! and thank you for the kindness of sharing this rare little gem you have. :)

I didn't at first understand you had the complete film, just the alternate opening. Very interesting, a few questions, how long is this cut? maybe hard to check now due to PAL-speedup. Do you know when they aired this, was it in the late nineties?

I doubt this version is the original '71 US theatrical cut but nevertheless it's a really rare and cool Italian TV-version you have here!

skyjedi2005 said:

So the blu ray of THX is in DTS and the movie was never even released in DTS.  The real version never was in Dolby as far as i know, but academy mono.  So what if the directors cut dvd was in 5.1 that was not Walter Murch's awesome mix.

Not sure if a re-release ever came out after star wars 77 in Dolby. There is no info to confirm or deny.  Though i bet the directors cut theatrical was in Dolby 5.1, or DTS.

American Graffiti's original mix is not on the DVD either, so Lucas has committed more alleged crimes against cinema than Star Wars.

But why would they include the original audio mix when the original cut of the film isn't included?

As far as I know the audio mix on the American Graffiti DVD is the original Dolby mix for the 1978 theatrical re-release and that is the only cut of the film that's been released on home video so far, along with the additional tweaks done to the opening scene in the nineties.

SilverWook said:

I was also thinking recording the opening credit roll would be a good idea as well. Could it be de-colored to match the original look? I'm on the fence about it, as the scratchy original seems more in character of the original film.

I also thought about that, taking out the color in the letters should be easy but I don't know if it's worth it, you would still have to degrade it.

cupanudles said:

Quick observation (because this is the first time I have noticed this as well), the sky is not the only thing that has changed in this shot. As you can see, the structures behind Mel's Diner has also been removed. FYI

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. But my point was more about the impossibility of restoring the original opening of the film with the help of just this still from the documentary when the opening credits have also been digitally replaced. Someone skillful enough could probably restore the background with the help of that footage but you still have the altered credits, also on top of different footage of Dreyfuss and Ron Howard etc. So the only way to go imo. is the Laserdisc. I also suspect that the opening "A LUCASFILM LTD/COPPOLA CO. PRODUCTION" in green is an alteration, at least a post-SW alteration made for this cut.

Well, it's not exactly easy to keep track of all these damn changes.

I think it's really sad that Raimi have done a Lucas on the blu-ray as the restoration on it is looking damn good. It could finally have been such a perfect release. :(

I hope you somewhere down the road decide to make a fan-restoration of the theatrical cut also, as there's still no perfect version out there, (though your earlier version comes very close) and it doesn't seems like it will ever be released with the original audio again either.

Impressive list of work done already!! :) Keep up the good work.

There shouldn't be any real problem to degrade the logo and get it to match your video, I've gotten a few good suggestions on how to in the technical thread.

Not a bad idea, I never thought about it. I wonder if he got the whole movie.

No, I'm not but the video clip is from a french broadcast. Ok, we try sendspace instead.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/vwl3oa

'97 Crawl from "reivax"

Edit: deleted

Thanks for the suggestions!

ChainsawAsh said:

Are you comparing PAL '97 to PAL '04? 

No, I don't even own the '04 in PAL format. If you don't believe me, you could always check your VHS tape or wait for me to convert the "flunk" footage to NTSC...

Maybe I could convert the opening of the '97 crawl and post a clip of it, so you could see for yourself. I tried to post comparison images of it earlier but imagehack is really fucked up sometimes. :(

But... maybe the PAL-master of the '97SE have a different crawl, but I really doubt it.

Did you ever check the super-8, Sluggo? I'm curious.

Anyway, hopefully we can get some of the questions answered about the 70mm cut when Rinzler's book comes out in a few weeks.

Thank you, Doctor M!

I'll try out some of those.

Ok, I compared the 1997 SE with the 2004 DVD crawl frame by frame and they are exactly the same as I thought, the weird thing is, even though the 1981 SW logo recedes much slower than the SE, it disappear much earlier cause the SE logo slows down after a while.

Well, I've never seen his fan edit but that moon isn't in any official version of the film.

Sorry if my last post came of as sounding rude, I'm just curious if I've actually missed something here?

The fast receding logo first appeared in the 1997 SE, that I am 110% sure of, with PAL source or not. I believe that what ChainsawAsh means is that the '04 version was even further sped up. He seems pretty sure about it, I haven't checked that yet.

And where comes this third moon talk from? I posted a link to the '81 opening shot on the previous page, here you have a beautiful pic of the matte painting which was used for the shot, http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070811234427/starwars/images/7/7f/Tatooine.jpg 

I cannot see it??

Ok, you may be right about it. I just realised that my '97-source is in PAL format, sorry. ;) Completely forgot about it.

doubleofive said:

~39 frames 2004
~28 frames 1977

It may not seem like a lot, but I think it is.

 Ok, I checked it and it's identical in the '81 opening...

~28 frames 1977

~39 frames 1981 & '97/'04

 ...maybe they'll get the musical timing right again on the fourth version. ;)