Goodbye Gary Kurtz, Without you this film would not have been the classic it has become.
Just a quick update, I am getting a reel cleaned and scanned in a week’s time, thanks to some donations from people here and at Fanres, so thank you to everyone.
In the meantime, I jokingly replied to a PM of someone who didn’t like the colour on the print, asking them to take a colour-blindness test. To my surprise they did, and found out they were partially colour blind.
For a bit of fun, here is the test site:
https://www.color-blindness.com/color-blindness-tests/
Take them all if you are bored, and see how you fare. Hopefully I will have some new images from the scan late next week 😃
I still feel like your monitor calibration is slightly off, or this video needs to be watched.
https://enchroma.com/pages/test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOlmjHLO388
(just ribbing…)
Hey!
Great to see you back again!
Can you bounce me a PM, I’d like to invite you to another project where we could really use your expertise.
Replied 😃
I haven’t received a PM
It’s better than the laserdisc.
It is likely going to be scanned on a 6K Arri with a 16mm gate, I’m not sure what resolution at this stage.
Thanks for the offer of subtitles etc. I’m sure they could be put to good use.
Also thanks for the plan to donate, I spent $870 just on freight this week for various Star Wars projects. Eek!
Thank you!
Yes thanks Bendu!
$2 would help 😃
In all seriousness, it wasn’t a dig, we have a lot of new people here who aren’t aware of the difficulty, risks and costs both financial and time in getting this stuff done.
And again, in all seriousness, $5 or less is a genuine help, if a hundred people (and going by the downloads, there are many, many hundreds of people) donated $5 or even $2 it would be a massive help in covering some of the costs, people don’t need to be on big money to help out. I earned a stupidly small amount of money last year, and I always appreciate people foregoing a coke or something to help out.
AH, here we go.
I’m not sure, I remember something about Warwick Davis making a film, maybe it was that one?
i only learnt today that FSWTJ got a 16mm release, Please get this uploaded sometime, hearing lapti nek and ffancy man along with some deleted footage would be amazing, then all we need is someone ot find a copy of god damn return of the ewok
Yeah, shipping, cleaning and scanning is rarely less than a couple of thousand dollars in costs.
What is Return of the Ewok, and did it have a film release?
Yeah, that really was an odd thing to do.
The question was never wether fan-edits were legal. They are not. So any way of distributing fan-edits, no matter if paid or for free, is technically a copyright infringement.
Technicality–making a fan edit is legal, distributing it without a license from the copyright holder is not.
Sadly, not if the blu-ray is used as a source. By removing the copy protection you have breached the DMCA.
So far only two people have expressed interest. I hope that more people will be interested in seeing these in good quality.
If you want SPFX done, and it is on 16mm let me know as I will do it at the same time.
PayPal is fine, but for small donations apparently they are taking like a $5 fee,so drop me a PM and I can send bank details, it stops the donations being eaten up by fees. The paypal info is in my signature if you prefer.
I will be restoring all of these fully to BD level quality, and it will be done fairly quickly, before the end of the year if I can get some money together for storage and physical cleaning.
None of these documentaries are currently available in a high quality format, nearly all the versions released, even those on the Blu-ray box-set are from worn out, NTSC SD tapes.
This will be the only way I think that they will be ever been seen in good quality, and with the full colour information present.
Thanks to everyone that is interested in making this happen. I’m excited to see them myself!
Thank you!
No problem.
Anyone that wants to donate to help make this happen, bounce me a PM, I can send bank details for US, UK or Euro donations with no fees.
I really want this done, more than any of the other projects. The film is fading fast for Empire, the others are safe on IB or LPP but very soon, there will be no watchable original Enpire prints in existence.
The reels arrived, they will be going into storage until they can be scanned, there is a bit of a backlog on the 35mm scanner.
Well,
I pulled the trigger and picked up the three Star Wars docs on 16mm, and will be scanning and restoring them.
The colour and detail are fantastic on these, we will easily be able to make lovely Hi-Def versions of these.
From Star Wars to Jedi, The Making of Star Wars and Star Wars-Classic Creatures with Carrie.
The scanning will take place before the end of the year, as I can get time on one of two 16mm machines. It will most likely be on the Arri.
I have setup bank accounts that can accept USD, Euros, GBP or AUD, without fees, or of course PayPal, but their fees have become very high.
Anyone that wants to help with these, please do, they were kind of expensive,
(2300 Euro/USD2600/GBP2050/AUD3700) but I haven’t seen any in this good condition, and hopefully will get some of it back selling them at the end.
Obviously they need to be cleaned and scanned and put on HDDs. I went out on a limb with this one, so I hope there is some interest!
Any help much appreciated, this won’t interfere with, or slow down my other projects as I can get someone else in the company to handle 90% of it.
It will be great to finally see these in HD, and in full colour (4:4:4, not 4:2:0)
Bank details via PM if wanted.
Thanks
Poit.
No, the water they used was blue/clear, not red.
The initial tank fill was red, you can see it in the other shots, they were shot before they lowered Mark into the tank.
Peter Suschitzky (the DP) decided the scene with Luke in the tank would have more impact If the tank was the main source of light in the scene. The did a test with a WWII searchlight firing at a mirror suspended above the tank. It flooded the room with red light, and they were worried it wouldn’t pick up well on film, and that it would make Luke look like he was being cooked. After the test and just before Luke was about to be lowered in, the big mirror shattered, sending huge, potentially deadly shards into the tank at speed. The thought on set was that had Mark been in the tank he might not have survived. They drained the tank, removed the glass and refilled it with chlorinated water. The lighting looked much better, less light was required and Luke was more visible, so they shot it with the tank ‘blue’.
The scenes shot before the accident have the original red liquid in there. There are photos of mark being lifted out of the tank, under normal lighting and the water is clear/bluish, and poor Mark looks like a drowned rat.
Also, On the print you can see the rainbow ribbon wire near Luke’s mouth, and the full colour spectrum is present. Had the water been even mildly red, those colours would not be there.
I don’t mind the Ewoks, but there is so much more I don’t like in Jedi.
First though, the space battle outside the Death Star is fantastic, The Luke/Vader battle is really well done, and you feel Luke’s belief and his choices, and when he goes batshit protecting Leia, it is very moving, and also scary as his love/protection of her might lead to him embracing the dark side.
The speeder bike sequence is also absolutely wonderful.
On the downside though, the story is tired, another death star with another ‘flaw’ that means it can be taken down with a single shot. Also, the Max Rebo band is so very poorly executed.
A blue elephant that is clearly made of foam rubber, a lead singer that couldn’t possibly stand on those legs. The character designs are awful, and they are poorly executed, and the music is painful. I didn’t think it could be worse until the Special Edition, and my god, it got so much worse.
Jedi is so much wasted opportunity. The ‘comical’ death of Boba Fett was such a waste of potential for that character. Leia is wasted in the film, she could have had a much wider role, but had little to do in the movie.
The rest is better summed up here:
http://filmthreat.com/uncategorized/50-reasons-why-return-of-the-jedi-sucks/
I’m okay with the Ewoks, I think there could have been better choices, but it is the weakest in the trilogy for me.
I have absolutely no proof for this so feel free to ignore this post, but the bootleg version I used to watch on my VCR in the early 90’s was a bit different. During the chasm jump Luke first missed, then Leia kissed him, then he tried again, this time he made it and Leia kissed him again, “for luck”. I remember thinking it’s funny what a young guy can do when he’s “properly motivated”. The second difference was during the meeting before the Death Star attack. After the wamp rats comment Luke and the pilot next to him shook hands and introduced themselves. And I’m pretty sure the guy introduced himself as “Wedge”, and I was pretty confused that there are 2 different pilots named Wedge. The third and last change I remember was the third Biggs scene right before they go inside the ships. I was very confused when back in 1997 I found online a list of SE changes and this scene was listed there - to me, it was always a part of the movie. I actually had a feeling that it originally was a bit longer.
The tape doesn’t exist anymore, I replaced it with the first official VHS tapes when they were released here and later with the SE tapes, so I have absolutely no proof that these are something else than messed up memories, but if you want a rumour list, here are mine.
Ben Burt has said that the missed throw was never shot, and he never did sound effects for it (he was asked just last week at a conference).
People often believe they saw this, but there is simply no way. I have looked at almost every conceivable version of the scene on the original film releases, the VHD, the VHS, The LD, the CED, the Fox original PAL test LDs, the bootleg in cinema recordings, the U-Matic tapes from the original HBO broadcasts, the Derran Super8 release, the other Super8 release with the original crawl, the armed forces 16mm release. In all cases there is no sign of a splice or even a place where a splice would be.
When I ask people whose memories are ‘crystal clear’ on this scene, and get them to PM me how the scene played out (i.e. exactly the scene in order, the throw, then what. Did it cut to a close-up of the hook missing, or was it a wide shot, was there a reaction shot from Luke or not, did you see the hook fall into the abyss or not, did you see luke re-spool the rope, or did he press a button and have it retract, did Leia react, how long did this all take etc.) funnily enough, everyone’s “Storyboard” of the sequence of events is radically different.
If I ask in an open forum, and someone posts a sequence of events, then funnily enough, everyone remembers that exact sequence occurring.
I’ve spoken to editors and actors over the years, as well as people in duplication, and now (via proxy) asked Ben Burtt, and in every case, they say it never happened, and that the extended Tattoine scenes absolutely didn’t happen, after the extremely rough cut of it was put together as a daily to placate Coppola, when they watched it, with no score, sound FX and optical FX not done, they all hated it, and that was the last time that was ever seen. The visual effects, scoring and sound effects didn’t proceed any further, and no even vaguely high quality version was ever made. (If they had done a release, the credits would have had to have been re-done to include Koo Stark).
People do have memories of seeing this, but people also have memories of an entire film that never existed.(https://www.thisisinsider.com/does-the-movie-shazaam-exist-2016-12)
If someone ever comes forward with a bootleg, I’ll put on a stormtrooper suit and dance to “Sorry” by Justin Bieber*
Memory is a horrible thing, it seems so very real, I had a memory of a line being in Star Wars that never was, (it was in the comics, which though I don’t remember reading them, it’s probably where I picked it up), but the early Biggs scene, and the throw-and-miss I can see no evidence for ever being seen in public, and an emormous amount of evidence against it.
[*This is a genuine promise. I’d love to be wrong, and will absolutely strut my Stormtrooper stuff if I am]