towne32

Molly said:

G E Predator said:

CatBus said:

G E Predator said:

That shows Lucas has no appreciation for his art.

Or respect for other peoples' art. A most meddlesome executive producer.

 He should consider himself lucky that his films spawned a fan base that cares enough about them to help preserve the theatrical versions and show them to future generations.

I wouldn't be surprised if decades down the road, the preservationists make the final win, and while even the 1997 versions, never mind the 2004 and 2011 versions, have completely faded into obscurity, while the original theatrical versions painstakingly restored by longtime fans remain the definitive versions in circulation.

 I think this is exactly why a quality release of the OOT has been avoided. Let it out even a single time and it will usurp the updated versions. And the two things could've peacefully coexisted in overpriced "DELUXE MULTI-EDITION"s this whole time. 

1978 Director's cut, you mean?

I made a reconstruction of the 1971, using the Bluray and laserdisc, synced up to the 1971 audio. It's on myspleen if you would like to take a look, but it's obviously not the real deal.

I hope I'm not being too negative or outdated here in saying...

I really like the compromises of aliasing and detail in v10. :)

Someone has already done this and it's on myspleen in 720p and 1080p. I don't think there is a DVD5 but personally I'm happy to see the scene move away from the MPEG2 format. Hopefully you can re-encode the 720p version without difficulty. 

team_negative1 said:

As one more preview, here's an update on the newer Intro, and part of the flyover:

===============================

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k4umJBQE9NOTk4buu03

Team Negative1

 Looks nice. The image is really stable compared to the GOUT.

It would be great to one day have a blu-ray with seamless branching options for the '77 vs. '81 crawl.

mumbles_ said:

Congratulations! I'm readying the fireworks for the big release... 

 Weesa almost freeeee

;D

Could you resize that comparison please. :)

Cool project! Good luck with it.

It's too bad this is basically impossible for AOTC unless someone has a scan of the theatrical. ROTS is probably not worth encoding for so few changes.

poita said:

DrDre said:

Looks great poita! Do you plan to do the trilogy in one go or will you be releasing them one at a time?

 As mentioened previously, I have about a year's worth of work to get 1977 finished, and will work on the others after that.

The main priority for me is getting all three movies scanned at archival quality, my big problem at the moment is getting enough HDDs to be able to have a backup, and I'm also paying for a print today.

You might have seen in the 'other preservations' threads that Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, The Matrix, Lady and the Tramp and Star Trek III have all been scanned, so data space is getting a bit insane. I still have Cinderella to get to as well.

 I am dizzy from all the awesomeness in that post.

Getting off topic, but Vinnie, have you had any luck re-inserting a modified film into its original BD50 menu? 

For some films (where the runtime matches), I have had success doing this by replacing the m2ts file and running the file structure through BD-RB. Sometimes, though, no luck at all.

Molly said:

There's better fan editors here, I just was considering reconstructing the 1971 cut in color (as far as possible) from the resources we have.

 Mine is on the spleen if you'd like to take a look, but I'm sure you're capable of better!

edit: speaking of not being a great faneditor, I've made a little attempt of patching over the missing video. Turns out there's not as much material to work with as I'd hoped for. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2svm9s

Version with 16mm used: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k4cpwXc8rzChE9boeTa

SilverWook said:

 When has bad child acting ever made George cut a scene? ;)

I believe the scene humanizes SEN a bit more than George may have wanted. Without it, SEN is more of a selfish person who wants THX for his new roommate, (his old roomate's death might even be a tad suspicious) and has the computer skills to get what he wants.

Either version suggests this society pretty much raises kids via machines, and adults don't interact with them much.

I was under the assumption that SEN was trying to press THX into bunking up partially using the fact that his roommate died due to THX's negligence/error. I figured he was that pile of waste being carted out of the disaster area on the monitor. 

I have yet to actually watch the bluray version of the long SEN/THX conversation about roommates. It looks to be quite different.

I don't think there's any lack of gratitude here. Super thankful! And I don't think its strange to also try to learn more about the mysterious history of the film. It's real, of course! And from 1971! But some accounts suggest there may or may not have been yet other versions.

Molly said:

So I take it the majority of the differences are rearrangement of scenes, and not added or deleted footage?

I'm not familiar with THX, I'm mainly curious and from a preservation standpoint.

 Between 1971 and 1978 yes, it would seem so. And those changes all (if I recall) occur in the second half of the film, after the arrest. The exception (footage not present at all in the 1978 cut) being about 30 seconds of the SEN + kids scene, which was almost certainly removed due to bad child acting and really bad voice dubs.

I'll have my "Unspecialized" reconstruction on spleen sometime tonight if anyone is interested. It would be up, but my computer crashed mysteriously during the encode.

Well, it's probably censored for one scene.

I'm not a Fantasia expert either, but if it's like all of the other Disney films from that era (and I'm sure it is), the Blu-ray does not have genuine color timing and the entire film is digitally rotoscoped so you're not actually looking at any of the film cells anymore.

^I'm pretty much on board with your ranking in terms of least terrible to most terrible.

As for the first category, the lightsaber and landspeeder alone would have been reasonable repairs for re-releasing a film on its 20th anniversary. I probably didn't learn that the '81 crawl wasn't the original until 1995 when someone explained it to me, so the change has never really made my skin crawl. The sandcrawler is one of those changes that I'm still against in principal, but man, the new shot looks good. 

The new song might be better than yub nub, but it's too weird to change the music in the very last scene of the trilogy. And the visuals, with all the extras standing around awkwardly in front of green screens with wonky cgi backdrops pushes the scene into the "No" category for me.

The only ranking here that I 100% disagree with is the Sarlacc. Really awful CGI. As a kid, I liked the mystery and absurdity of some powerful and ancient, shapeless beast that exists somewhere in between the definition of monster and scenery. Now it's a weird smooth and shiny bird thing in the ground.

msycamore said:

 

No problem. Huge thanks for doing it in the first place. As this was more for analysis than anything else it's cool, no need for another re-encode. Others may think differently of course. You might want to mention the absence of it in the description though, in case you've not already done that. Thanks.

 I agree with both points. I think most will be happy with this as is, but I believe there are people discussing it (lack of Buck Rogers) as a difference with this print and that should probably be more clear.

ShaneLSD said:

excuse my ignorance but i just put the original b&w 16mm scans together and from buck rogers to the end credits its 86min my LD is 85min the so called WB cut was cut by 5mins even with differences people have mentioned its nowhere near 5 mins so it is my belief that this is not the WB cut that george lucas said is 5min shorter it simply is not 5 min shorter. can someone correct me please? i dont understand.

 This is exactly what we've been discussing for the last few pages.

It seems that, if there was a shorter cut in 1971, there was also this cut produced for some reason or another. And despite the length being similar to the LD, you'll see that the scenes in the second half of the film are in a different order at times.

phbart said:

The one from spleen (and it's multiple reencodes) has no Buck Rogers :(

 "Can you be more specific?"

The original prores files have it, unless I'm going crazy.

I'm not an expert on the history of this film or the sources for info about it.

Is it possible that Lucas just claimed that the studio hacked his film apart and deleted large chunks in order to justify the changes (mostly scene order) he made to it in 1978? Is the intro video/buck rogers change confirmed by anything but word of mouth or memory?

(Also: I've got an encoding of my reconstruction uploaded (LD+Blu frame-matched to the 16mm, with 16mm audio) if anyone else would like a link by PM, to view it and give feedback, thanks)

ratpack1961 said:

towne32 said:

AntcuFaalb said:

towne32 said:

Thanks AntcuFaalb!

The scene in question for anyone curious but not familiar: 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2s7m2s

This hyperlink gives me a 403.

Ah, private videos are different than on youtube.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k1es78dhT0YjLZboeTa

That's a great clip with the extended footage.  Was that the Italian version combined with a current print or the new 16 mm version available?

 16mm. I can post my version with the Italian but it's a monstrosity. :)

Edit: oh, the other footage is bluray, hacked into a totally different order

200 days til the new flick.

AntcuFaalb said:

towne32 said:

Thanks AntcuFaalb!

The scene in question for anyone curious but not familiar: 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2s7m2s

This hyperlink gives me a 403.

Ah, private videos are different than on youtube.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k1es78dhT0YjLZboeTa

Thanks AntcuFaalb!

The scene in question for anyone curious but not familiar: 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k1es78dhT0YjLZboeTa

DrDre said:

Here is the video sample for SRV10. As before it is the first 10 min of Star Wars, this time at 1080p:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_LYKyZDiajZkVzX0h2VUctWmc/view?usp=sharing

For full quality please download. Enjoy!

 Holy crap.

That's good.