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Imrahil wrote:

Haha, sweet idea! :)

Thanks, it's been an idea which crops up from time to time on the forums, and these Billie Dee Williams segments make for a decent reason to test out the idea.  Menus are coming along.

On those two frame glitch/rips, checked some more versions and they're on everything most releases until the SE.  Interesting Puggo's 16mm had them, but in the 8mm they cut the scene almost the frame before they would have showed up.

**EDIT**

Checked the CED Preservation and they're not there.

Being that this is the first interior shot of the movie and there's a whole lotta shaking going on, it's easy to understand why this was never fixed.

1977 Widescreen Boot - Frames 1 & 2

Puggo's 16mm Preservation - Frame 2

CED Preservation - Frame 2

REIVAX - SE Preservation - Frame 1 & 2

http://www.markdermul.be/tatooine/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z51sScCpt8&feature=player_embedded

Save the Lars Homestead

The Pioneers were able to see with their own eyes that the Lars Homestead - lovingly dubbed the Igloo - has suffered tremendously from the climate in Tunisia.

Soon this iconic movie location will perish and thus be lost to Star Wars fans forever. We cannot allow that to happen.

The plan is to go back, fully armed with the needed tools and plaster, with a small group of Pioneers (the four founders of the group) for a full week sometime in 2011 or 2012

Although I appreciate the idea, it seems that this trip will only save it for a certain period of time.  Wonder if it's better to set up a fund to support someone who lives there to maintain the place or build an enclosure.  The environment's just too rough for this type of dwelling to persist for any lengthy duration.

Every on-screen lightsaber ignition in movie chronological order. For retraction it's the reverse order. I only put in clips where you can see the lightsaber ignite/retract and not just hear it. Also only put in clips where the lightsaber is intentionally ignited/retracted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ey3g6BmuTI&feature=player_embedded

For those attending CV, if you see:

say hello.

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The l'Umanoid stars Jaws from the Bond films.  If you're still watching these things wait till you get to "Escape From Galaxy III" (aka Italian SW ripoff 3)... <shivers>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzRo9VybVpo&feature=related

SilverWook wrote:

I guess this explains why Lucasfilm forcibly shut down the site of the fan who created essentially the exact same thing a couple years back.

got a name or web address, my google-fu is failing.  the C&D would make a nice crawl.

http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/theloop/62851/The-Loop-Is-George-Lucas-Ripping-You-Off.html

Kevin and guests, Bill Hunt, Lore Sjoberg and Josh Griffin, discuss whether you should rush out and buy the new Star Wars DVD's or if George Lucas is trying to line his pockets with more of your hard earned cash

here's the OT.com thread about the appearance:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic-print.cfm/Tune-Into-G4-This-Afternoon/topic/6540/

benore wrote:

Otherwise, it's untouched.

This is most likely why it was moved out of Fan Edits into Preservation.  If you had mentioned that you've manipulated the storyline by moving scenes or changing dialog then it would have remained.

Feel free to explain, what your source was, what software you used, what other tools were used, what image modifications you made, how they were done, etc.

If you'd like to compare screen shots of your work verses various other preservation attempts:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-NEW-official-Screenshots-thread/topic/4681/

%20 Honors 'backstroke of the west' with an interview with Jeremy Winterson, finder and blogger of the engrish RotS subtitles.

Shortly after the release of Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith, the inevitable happened, a chinese bootleg. Although The People's Republic of China had decreed March 15, Anti-Piracy Day, the chinese speaking public's desire to view culture from outside their country had lead to a mini-industry of people re-subtitling movies. Normally, the re-subtitling is done into Mandarin for the benefit of the non-english reading world, but in this case the subtitler took it a step further and provided a new set of English subtitles for the world to read. But they weren't just read, they were embraced and became an active part of the cultural evolution as an internet meme. And we have Jeremy Winterson to thank for this opportunity.

So what is the bootleg story in Shanghai? (In New York City, many get sold on the sidewalks, between knock off shoes and other clothing.)
JW: In Shanghai in the evenings when people leave work they set up shop all over town- I'd sometimes grab a movie here and there walking back home from work. I had tossed the DVD onto a big pile. The street vendors aren't hassled by anyone so they set up shop on street corners for several hours during the evening- typically selling out of one or two small open briefcases. The place I used to buy from was a shop- it was a 'fake storefront'- when you walked in there was a woman with a rope who pulled on a section of wall to reveal the real store behind. Tons and tons of DVD- every type of series you can imagine in all sorts of weird combinations- every Sopranos episode in one box, every Star Trek New Generation, all of Palin's Around the World... each one was $1 per disc.

Living/working abroad, was the bootleg watching a way to stay in touch with the culture you grew up with? Especially since many movies never make it there or come out months/years later. Or maybe was the bootleg collecting been a coping mechanism to deal with the new surroundings?
JW: I've not been back to any bootleg shops since about a year ago. I've got a HUGE backlog of DVDs that I've bought and never watched and my customers haven't asked to go.

Have you gotten a sense that the subtitlers are aware of the movie in a cultural sense, so that when they translate they interpret the subtitles in a certain way? From what you've seen, do the Chinese subtitles generally have a certain tone: mechanical, jingositic, other?
From what I've seen, it's only the newest of the new releases that get special subtitle treatment- and not all DVDs either, as the less popular movies will sometimes have subtitles missing or have subtitles from a completely different movie. I wonder if whoever was paid to do the subtitles just swapped in a file from another movie knowing that the pirates couldn't tell the difference.

Of course when the DVDs are released then the pirated DVDs wind up being straight copies with no issues.

So there's a window in which there's demand for subtitles and there aren't any original subtitles/script available for reference. That's when human translation comes in. A lackey gets paid to watch the movie and translate it over to Chinese (or in some cases, Bahasa Indonesian) and then the other subtitles are created from there. If you look at my blog the Rocky Balboa movie got the same sort of treatment.
(http://winterson.com/2007/04/rocky-vi-is-strange-shell-wave.html)

For the lackey to do his job he has to do a fair amount of interpretation. Not only the words being said but the meaning behind them. In Backstoke you can see that sometimes he misheard what was being said (eg. with Yoda's pregnancy vs premonitions) or in other cases he changed the meaning slightly (eg. force becomes 'wish power').

So a fair amount of cultural understanding is needed for the subber to work on the movie.

Take us back to 2005, we're you specifically interested in Star Wars or was it just the latest/greatest?
JW: I've always been a big Star Wars fan. I even queued up in line for Episode 1, which I found to be a bit of a disappointment at the time.

Was there any Star Wars buzz, the hype in the US was palpable, but did the culture over there get that excited? Or just run of the mill, here comes the next American Summer Blockbuster Movie.
JW: Fairly run-of-the-mill. The original trilogy never was launched in a big way in China so kids weren't raised up on it. People did know it was a big movie but they didn't pay any more attention to it than say, Avatar, which was hyped up in China even more.

When you started watching 'star war - the third gathers - backstroke of the west', how did it all settle in, the realization that hey, i've come across something extraordinary?
JW: It wasn't until my sister came to visit and was watching it early one morning that we realized how bad/good the subtitles were.

How far into the movie were you when the realization dawned that it was time to blog?
(http://winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html & http://winterson.com/2009/01/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west-redux.html)
JW: At the time I was blogging regularly. As soon as I saw how crazy the subtitles were I thought I gotta share it with my friends. Of course I never expected so many people to read that particular blog entry!

Did you have to advertise it's existence at all, or once posted friends and search engines drove traffic organically?
JW: Not at all. In the beginning I posted just 5 or 6 screenshots. A friend told me he would circulate my entry around his office and that's what started the initial traffic, I think. I got people requesting me to post more screenshots so I did it shortly before going on vacation. The next day I found that my website was down due to all the traffic and scrambled to find ways to put it back up. Some readers helped me set things up using the coral cache to reduce bandwidth and I also increased the amount on my account.

How early after posting did the blog fail to handle the traffic?
JW: From memory the first couple of days there was a spike and then it started to come down. Maybe a few thousand people. After I posted the other screenshots I had 50,000 unique visitors overnight. It took me a day to fix things, which wasn't easy as I was traveling overseas and in the meantime a couple of people posted mirrors which for a while got a lot of traffic. In the first couple of weeks there were around 500,000 visitors. Now it's a fairly steady number of about 300-400 per day unless someone new links, in which case it can spike quite a bit.

Then in the weeks after your blog post, you watch the popularity soar. Must have been annoying the number of times you got asked for a copy, any strange people request one?
JW: I like to think that I was allowed to keep Backstroke up because the Star Wars folks have a sense of humor. I got lots of requests to send off a copy of the DVD and only mailed off 2- one of them to someone at LucasArts. =) I took a quick look back at the folks who had requested a copy of Backstroke- a bunch of random ones. Aside from LucasArts there was a guy in Pixar (who apparently represented a few folks who wanted to see the DVD) and a guy in a venture capital firm in California. Most of the requests came within the first week- now I just get a 'comment' every now and then on the website.

What/Where do you think the tipping point was which shifted this into viral mode?
JW: I think people just saw it as something very funny, and as a lot of people know Star Wars there were a lot of people who appreciated it so it got forwarded on and blogged about. Darth Vader's unusual-sounding "Nooooo..." at the end of the movie was already being parodied, and when 'Do not want' came out as the translation people jumped on it. I think it was the YTMND and /b/ folks who got things going, but not totally sure.

Have you followed the 'backstroke of the west's cultural evolution? From subtitle to meme to __INSERT HERE__? Where have you found traces of backstroking influence?
JW: In the beginning I was amazed/shocked at how much traffic my site got. I was constantly searching to see who was saying what about it. I haven't searched for Backstroke stuff in a long time now. 'Do not want' is still very much out there- I stumble across it all the time.

Brief history of 'backstroking' influence:
Most notoriously the 'Do No Want' meme: http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Backstroke_of_the_West

"Oldfags also recognize this film as the origin of DO NOT WANT."

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/DO_NOT_WANT

Also commonly expressed in proper English as; "I find myself desiring not to offend, but I must make clear my severe and vehement dislike for the offered material. I say sir, please kindly remove the offending post and yourself from my sight."

While the original clip spawned a YTMND (http://donotwant.ytmnd.com/) meme, the "Do not want" line was found infinitely more lulzy and has thus spread throughout the internets as one of the most widely used memes.

Gallery of 'Do Not Want' images: http://macrochan.org/search.php?tags=Do+not+want (possibly NSFW)

More Info: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-not-want

5 years later, one bootleg dvd brought about over 500 comments to your blog post, and search engines find over sixty thousand results for 'backstroke of the west', and one of the subsequent meme's 'Do Not Want' finds over 6.5 million images, how crazy is that?
JW: Totally crazy!!!!
Makes me wish I had something worthwhile to say rather than just the random crap on my blog... hahahah....

Do you think the original subtitler will one day surface?
JW: I think the original subtitler has no idea. If I had to guess I think it was probably some student at a lower-tier university in China who was paid a few dollars to translate it from English to Chinese, then a computer was used to make the subtitles in English from the Chinese. That's the only way I can think that the meaning got so twisted but yet still stuck to the subject of the movie.

Very much thanks, Jeremy.
%20

::Extra Info::

For those interested in specific translation interpretations, the following wiki page has explanations of how things possibly got re-subtitled: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_War_The_Third_Gathers:_The_Backstroke_of_the_West

Watch 'backstroke of the west': http://www.youtube.com/user/BackstrokeOfTheWest

dbowgett has superimposed the backstroke subtitles onto the Original Star Wars: http://dbowgett.users.btopenworld.com/

Authentic Audio Backstroke? http://www.youtube.com/user/TheThirdGathers

Real Fake Authentic original Star Wars Engrish subtitle screencaps: http://www.opticalsin.com/sw_engrish/main_anh.html (found 2004)

As with your book and other website, having everything quoted, footnoted, and documented adds credibility to those that want to follow the paper trail.  For instance this Hamill/Sansweet thing, what's the evidence for this?  The John Knoll quote from the Blockbuster book.

Also a glossary of terms like Lowry, and the various preservation people/projects will help get people up to speed.

Modify the <pre><title>"Template #45 - Aquarium Template"</title></pre> on each page.

In the preservation reviews you get specific on image quality aspects.  If they can be captured in a pic with arrows pointing to the various imperfections, that will help those who are unfamiliar with the terms but might sense it visually.

The second article talks about the fanboys "who don't care", this seems like a pot shot.  Yes they exist, but maybe replace them with something like the 'general populace, who will consume the latest and greatest, just because it's 'new' could suffice.  Use the weight of the financial force of the general populace against the argument that proper preservation needs to start from the source.

Is an article about the expanded preservation type projects, the variations of SW, something you have in mind?  Projects like the preservation of the Audio Description Audio (since it's not an option on any of the Home video version) is an angle which can fortify the cause.  All the old making of specials that babyhum and others have preserved could be mentioned there.

digitalfreaknyc wrote:

What does this mean.  What were you bootlegging?!?

The explanation/results are available:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/AN-EMPIRE-SPIK-BOOTLEG-FAN-COMMENTARY-EDITION/topic/11687/

http://noneinc.com/AESB/AESB-FAQ.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmMONoB8xn0

George Lucas was a Superstar Destroyer of Ahmed Best's career.

Jambe Davdar wrote:

FCP is not automatically connecting because of a bug in my version. I even tried updating but the data is lost.  It knows that the media is offline but has lost the register to each of the media so I have to do the whole things manually. Plus its lots about 1/5th of the media completely.  It things 1/5th of the project came from a file called 'clapper sound', it didn't. So I have to edit all of that back in!

Sounds like a significant pain. (but lots of practice!)

Another option is to open the FCP file in a text editor and find out where everything used to be.  Then create a virtual drive with those exact locations.  Then see if everything reconnects ok.  But if the real error is the editing file got corrupted and replaced the file locations with 'clapper sound' then this is probably not worth it.

More Japanese Phun - (can't find an online video version)

(from Super Mecha Kucha Happy Fun Monkey Bash DX Vol.4)

via: http://www.geekologie.com/2009/09/you_look_different_is_that_you.php

Love the SW ripoff/clones/takeoffs/etc.  Please post away.

Lasersword or Laser Sword or Lightsaber?

Even by RotJ they hadn't figured it out.  Never seen "Pit of Death" before.

This might just be an artist by artist thing, if you go to Rinzler's Making of SW book pg 272,  there's storyboards from the opening sequence with 'Star Destroyer'.

Yet here's an Empire storyboard with "Stardestroyer" :

Accidental 'S' - "Death Stars"

Michael Coate has written articles about the theatrical releases (specifically what theaters and runs) of the films, some of the articles have pictures:

http://www.in70mm.com/news/2003/star_wars/index.htm

Another article from the site with pic:

http://www.in70mm.com/newsletter/2000/62/dolby/index.htm

http://www.fromscripttodvd.com/star_wars_a_day_long_remembered.htm

http://cinematreasures.org/news/16528_0_1_0_C/

These two links are other places which could lead to people who might have photographs/info of the movie, or other information helpful to SaveStarWars.com

The 70mm collector film cels from the 90s, are those of useful reference?

http://astrogalaxy.blogspot.com/2008/05/star-wars-film-cels-posters-and-cards.html

Seems like Stardestroyer was the original spelling and once it hit the marketing side it got changed to Star Destroyer.

http://theswca.com/index.php?action=disp_item&item_id=48214

http://c-spanvideo.org/program/id/229550

At 01:21:01 (use the Transcript feature to jump)  little SW joke.  Unfortuantely the transcripter was just as oblivious as Mr. Nader.

TV's Frink wrote:

DaveyTod's edit was eventually restored - they thought it was just a rip of the movie, rather than an edit.

Restored, by which you mean the community has returned to distributing it.  LFL has not to public knowledge (OT.com and FE.org threads reviewed) sent a second message pertaining to 'The Clones Revealed'.  You can perceive that as them being ok with it, but the written letter and court of law state that their cease & desist still stands as valid and active.

TV's Frink continued:

There is a big difference between discussing a fanedit and announcing "I plan to steal a portion of this work once it is available."

I was not debating that.  Was trying to get the correct terminology out there and to discuss larger issues which could make the big difference moot.

TV's Frink:

I swear we've had this discussion before.

Yes we have, and again Imminent Infringement is the correct term for possible copyright infringement in the future.

TV's Frink:

But why defend someone who says "I'm going to steal the parts I want once they are out?"

I didn't defend him.  His Imminent Infringement claim is just as absurd as your piracy claim. 

TV's  Frink continued:

Fanedits are still most likely illegal, IMO.

Then why not enter every thread and proclaim piracy?  If you are going to do this for the ones which haven't happened yet, why not the easy ones, the ones which have happened?

But Lucas has indicated (indirectly, I believe) that he has no problem with fanedits.  He certainly seems like the kind of guy who would have tried to shut them down if he really cared.

Lucas's opinion doesn't matter if someone else at LFL makes the final call.  Ask DaveyTod.

The EFF thing applies to DVD ripping.  What the person does with the material still applies to the regular laws.  and in the case of much around here untested Fair Use.  What's interesting about the recent expanding of the rules is that they don't apply to new technologies like blu-ray.

TV's Frink wrote:

Feel free to explain further how this is not piracy.

It hasn't happened yet.  The correct term is Imminent Infringement.

FYI: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26

July 26th, 2010

 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won three critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions today, carving out new legal protections for consumers who modify their cell phones and artists who remix videos — people who, until now, could have been sued for their non-infringing or fair use activities.

That means that every fan edit which used a DVD rip was illegal until just over one week ago.  Did/Do you view your cut scene list as illegal activity?  You can make all the internal regulations you want, but the Rule of Law is a different thing.

http://www.landoistheman.com/

That seems to be the blog of the project

and their official youtube channel with documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheBlackstarwarrior

Shouldn't the focus of relying on LFL to preserve SW come to a close.  They, like fan editors, want to play with it why the franchise can still draw a crowd.  Let them play, fatigue will eventually set in.  For me it makes sense to at this point attempt to create a distribution system which can link up the few remaining prints of this film with the theaters who want/can still play them.  While I was bootlegging the 30th anniversary ESB presentation in Time Square, a random passerby-er let me know that most of the theaters in NYC have gone digital and all the projectionists are being let go, since you can higher a kid in high school to run the new digital projection systems at vastly reduced prices.  This is not just an issue of this specific movie never to again be able to be seen in it's original form, it's all of movies making the transition.  It would make some sense that the last generation of film projectors and film projectionists should get their day in the lamp light.  Show off their craft and present great movies the way it used to be done.  In one or two generations the last of the film projectionists will probably be dead.  So like this recent screening in Baltimore, it seems like a fantastic idea to create a website which can link projectors with old film stock.  Not sure if that's something you want to consider.