msycamore

Gregatron, now I get what you mean about the SE, I admit that calling it an error in the original isn't exactly the correct way of describing it, I edited that part, thanks. But I still cannot hear the deactivation sound in the 35mm Dolby mix, you say that you can hear it in the '93 remastered (GOUT) track and on the GOUT-foreign tracks, but more importantly, can you also hear it in the original theatrical Dolby Stereo? Personally, I cannot hear it, hmm this may be a case where you need to listen more carefully with your headphones, which I haven't done yet...

corellian77 said:

Having the technology (not to mention the origin) surrounding the space jockey explained ruins that sense of mystery and wonder which Alien so expertly created.

I agree, that mystery is one of the major reasons the original Alien film is so powerful, explain this and the magic is broken. This is sacred ground for many of us how silly that may sound, but sooner or later Hollywood cannot resist dickin' around with these things that you love, it's inevitable, it happens with everything you thought was sacred, you just need to ignore the new material.

You're welcome!

frank678, I'm pretty sure you can make it look slightly better when playing with the levels, but that's not how it's meant to be, sorry about that. The red and the saturation is definitely higher once Side 2 kicks in, that is right after Tarkin's "We will then crush the rebellion with one swift stroke" People's faces tends to burn in many places from then on. One place where the contrast goes out of whack is in the first part of the garbage compactor scene and then in the Death Star battle the levels are unfortunately all over the place. Oh, well. Even with these problems this LD is still one of my favorite video transfers of the film.

Frank Frazetta’s work made such an impact that director George Lucas asked him to do some work on the Star Wars films. Unfortunately retaining rights was equally important to Lucas and he refused to allow Frazetta to keep any of his originals and so Frank turned him down.

http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/category/the-artisan-series

George Lucas later claimed that Frazetta's artwork for Buck Rogers was the inspiration for the Star Wars Saga.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/fantasy/Frank-Frazetta.html

Tom Jung's Style A poster is definitely made to resemble Frazetta's work. Don't know if Lucas approached Frazetta to do poster work though.

Gregatron said: 

The deactivation sound appears to be there in the GOUT and the earlier mixes, but it's just buried much deeper in the mix. 

Are you absolutely sure about this? because I definitely cannot hear it in either the original Dolby Stereo or the remastered '93 track.

Gregatron said: 

Also, the SE mixes seem to have it come earlier in the shot, when the saber is still seen to be lit. So, this error seems to have been introduced for the SE, whereas the original got it right.

I'm a little confused by your description. Luke's saber is seen to be lit all throughout the shot when he runs out of the cave. That's why the deactivation sound of his saber is out of place there in the 70mm mix and SE, but you say that it's there in the other mixes as well, just buried much deeper in the mix, I may be wrong but I cannot hear it.

hairy_hen, I avoided to add those two sounds that appear in the '93 surround until we know for sure they're part of the 70mm audio.

• After they get out of the garbage pit and Chewie runs away frightened, the trash monster makes a sort of high-pitched roaring before Han fires a shot back into the doorway.


• When the TIE fighters first appear in the Death Star battle; the first X-wing to be destroyed has a different/enhanced explosion sound. (There is also a short bit of the same screeching sound effect present which is listed below)


• A screeching sound is heard where it in the 35mm Stereo was a short moment of silence just before the first Y-Wing (Gold Two) explodes.


• When Han Solo takes out Vader's wingman in the trench at the end of the film the sound of the explosion is greatly enhanced.

• When Luke runs out of the wampa cave, there is a clear sound of his lightsaber deactivating. (This sound effect is actually buried very deep in the 35mm mix if you listen hard enough)


• Different laserfire can be heard during the snow battle, the sound regurlarly used for TIE fighters instead of X-wings as heard in the 35mm mix.


• The TIE fighter sound effects are different in the Imperial fleet establishing shot after Luke's failure at the cave. (Can be heard on the 2006 Bonus DVD Spanish and French audio tracks)


• The establishing shot of the rebel fleet at the end of the film doesn't contain tracked music. The two additional shots of the fleet added to the 35mm version required the tracking of a section of "Yoda and the Force" to precede the cue "The Rebel Fleet".


• Lando's line "Luke, we're ready for takeoff." is a different take. (The same take later reappeared in the '97 Special Edition audio mix)


• The exterior shot over which Lando says "When we find Jabba the Hutt and that bounty hunter, we'll contact you." is not in the 70mm version, instead when Luke says (voice over), "Good luck, Lando" the scene cuts directly to inside the rebel cruiser where Luke says, "I'll meet you at the rendezvous point on Tatooine."


• Lando's line "Princess, we'll find Han. I promise." is a different take.

• The opening crawl on the 70mm prints used the music John Williams scored for the opening crawl to The Empire Strikes Back. *

You can check if there's a big bang when Han takes out Vader's wingman in the trench at the end of the film, if there is, it's the Six-Track Dolby. The 35mm explosion is almost inaudible.

Thanks for sharing this Protocol Droid! :)

TServo2049 said:

That's my plan, I just want to focus on the stuff that's not well-known first. I can plug in the more known changes any time I want.

Ok, just wanted to be sure what the goal of your list was. It's one of the reasons I mostly pointed out added content.

TServo, this is just my opinion but I really think you should try to make a definitive list of all the differences in the mono mix in terms of content, which means also add the more common changes you don't have listed yet, I definitely think there are many who are interested in such a breakdown.

And I say limit it to content and not the differences in mixing levels etc, because the mono mix is so drastically different in so many ways from the Stereo mixes, that if you start to list everything that's different about the mix you can easily fill a book about it.

Great and interesting info TServo, had no idea about Harry Shearer's involvement.

01:01:20 - 01:01:22 - When the TIE fighter passing by the Falcon, there's an added sound effect coming from the Falcon when Han touches the control panel/switch above him.

01:05:09 - 01:05:14 - Added sound effect which I believe is meant for whatever it is that moves the heavy box along the floor which the crewmen are about to carry on board the Falcon. One of the crewmen seems to hold some sort of device for it, that's my take on it. ;)

01:39:06 - 01:39:19 - It's not only Hamill's line, "So... you got your reward and you’re just leaving, then?" that's a different take, Ford's following lines are as well.

"That’s right. Yeah."

"I got some old debts I got to pay off with this stuff."

"And even if I didn’t, you don’t think I’d be fool enough to stick around here, do you?"

Not sure how accurate all the timecodes are that I have provided.

Great news!

00:51:25 - 00:51:31 - Creature vocalization added, heard at the moment when Luke has sold his speeder, more exactly when you see the legs of an alien passing by in front of the camera.

Also, forgot about this one.

01:50:17 - 01:50:24 - "Stay there. I just lost my starboard engine." added sound effect for his damaged ship.

doubleKO said:

Can anyone explain briefly the differences between the Theatrical/Director's Cut/Special Editions of the Alien series and which they think are better? Likewise with Terminator 2 and Blade Runner? 

You have pretty good comparisons of the various cuts of the Alien series, T2 and Blade Runner on this site: http://www.movie-censorship.com/list_en.php 

Bobby Jay said:

Sorry to dig up an old thread but found this today:

http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=294598

Turns out the Aliens blu-ray had more changes to it than I had thought. I can't check my discs at the moment due to being in the middle of a house move but are these changes made to both versions or just the Special Edition?

I cannot answer your question as I don't own this release myself, but the pulse rifle/ flamethrower edit mixup on the dropship, had apparently been corrected already in '92 for the broadcast version of the Special Edition, only for the DVD's to bring back the continuity error.

On a second look at that page you linked to, except "scratches on the window" and "Bishop in the hole" scenes, aren't the other two scenes listed exclusive to the Special Edition cut of the film?

Wasn't it in the 2004 DVD audio commentary, Lando Calrissian suddenly became known as Clarissian?

00:20:47-00:22:37 - When the hologram appears, an added sound effect can be heard of an metal object falling to the ground perhaps, caused by Threepio beeing startled by the whole thing. The hologram itself has a new sound effect as well as added sound distortions when the image breaks apart. When Luke removes the restraining bolt a new sound effect is added when it shuts down the hologram.

00:34:44-00:35:21 - Again the hologram of Leia gets a sort of projection sound, the static distortions were already in place in this sequence for the stereo mixes so that is nothing new this time.

01:25:02-01:25:04 - Luke's "What good will it do us if he gets himself killed?", the new dubbing sounds horrible IMO.

01:42:52-01:42:57 - "Lock S-foils in attack position." added X-wing sound effects.

01:46:08-01:46:10 - "There’s a heavy fire zone on this side." The whole line can be heard more clearly due to the mono mix dropping the stereo mixes distortions of many transmissions in the battle.

-1, if you wondering about the more obvious changes in the mono mix this page: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/russdawson/mono/index.htm is a good start, but I see that the added X-wing sound effects after "Lock S-foils in attack position" is missing there, that one stands out to me as a quite big change.

Another subtle difference, is in the assault on the Death Star, the line "There’s a heavy fire zone on this side." in the Dolby mixes that line gets cut off at the end due to the distorted quality applied to many of the voices.

Yeah, the mono mix is full of these subtle differences, I don't think anyone here have tried to document all of them before except the more common line differences, so I like the idea, one difference that comes to my mind right away is the added sound effects of static distortions of Leia's hologram in the garage.

Well, that explains it, I suspected something wasn't quite right about that comparison.

I must also say that I'm surprised by the random cropping we're seeing, like Harmy pointed out earlier in the thread, especially on that "Han chasing the stormtroopers scene" can we please get a comparison on that as well, if you can and have the time? Just let me know if you need specific frames TServo, I happen to have both the SC and Technidisc sitting on my HD, instead of you chasing around the forum for them, some of them may even be resized.

We also have to keep in mind that these three transfers were intended to be seen with TV-overscan so when it comes to the horizontal cropping maybe that also played a role? even though they usually have 8 black pixels at both edges, much more than that was often cut off by the old tubes. But again it seems like 5% cropping is pretty much perfect, it take care of all the junk not intended to be seen.

Maybe these have been posted here already?

35mm

70mm

They are taken from in70mm.com btw.

Whoops! wrong film. ;)

TServo2049 said:

Well, it probably doesn't apply to every scene. As I find more screens of raw frames with sufficient detail to match up the edges of the various transfers, I'll do more.

Yeah, it varies quite a bit from scene to scene I guess, but it's nice to see it presented like that. I noticed that you wrote the red as 5% and blue as 10%, not the end of the world. ;)

TServo2049 said:

Speaking of which, did you ever notice that weird Biggs frame before?

If you're talking to me, no. I was referring to the lightsaber shots. I like that cropping chart BTW.