zombie84

none said:

What channel is that?

 

Star Wars Appentice Facts. The guy has a bunch of other channels, and that's where he made most of his money, but now he's doing a SW trivia series.

My guess with websites and advertising is they put them up first.  Doubt LFL questions many fan sites, too many not enough time.  I agree with msycamore that without ads gives the air of the website's purpose being a scholarly exploit.  But you gotta do what you gotta do.  The overall design has a column which most sites would fill with money making opportunities.  For example:

Comparing advertising schemes: http://starwarz.com/starkiller/

Yes there are a few articles but for the most part the site is just publishing the scripts, and they've got ads.  They're not supper intrusive, as they're buried below the fold, under site navigation.

Yeah. I guess the difference is that revenue is made in a subtle, not obvious way (e.g. people see an add, you make a few cents). Whereas I'm sort of saying "BUY this book!" I mean, I'm not saying that, but certainly it could come across that way. Let me put it this way: the reason the book's cover is a stock photo from NASA is because we couldn't legally use characters or images from Lucasfilm. I guess I still see the website as an extension of the book--it was originally built for the sole purpose of hosting it--even though it's now become its own thing.

Sneak preview: http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/sisterthatneverwas.html

You know I'm thinking more about this...

My main concern was that I do financially benefit from the site, indirectly, through promoting my book. I don't make much money, but I do make a bit of money as a result of the site's existance,  through book sales. That was my concern why there may be legal trouble.

But I'm thinking about all the major SW websites--rebelscum, TF.N...they must make money through ads and stuff. I know TF.N makes pretty decent cash, it is some people's fulltime jobs. There are also Youtube channels--I know one guy who runs a Youtube channel featuring SW related things and he bought a house with the revenue.

Do these people have inside deals to get permission? rebelscum is affiliated with TFN, and it wouldn't surprise me if they both have permission directly from LFL. But I'm wondering now how much Lucasfilm actually enforces any of this.

On the plus side, I whipped up a decent new article for the site in about an hour! A new record. I won't be posting it for a few more days, until more people see the new announcement.

xhonzi said:

Zombie- when do you think you'll be done with revisions enough that we would be able to use those for recordings?

It could be a while. I won't have anything close to a rough draft until the end of July at least. My concern right now is more geared towards getting rid of some old content rather than adding some new content. Though I do have a lot of new content to add.

Having heard the first clip: it sounds awesome! Much better than expected. Also weird to be hearing my words read back to me in an epic voice.

Anyway, this is a very good start. I guess I leave this to you: certain parts of the book are a bit redundant and long-winded, so feel free to just edit out whatever parts you think are appropriate. The book wasn't written to be spoken aloud so I imagine more areas than even in print would need to be reduced a bit.

But otherwise this sounds pretty cool.

I dont really agree with his criticism of either trilogies, I was more impressed by his dose of reality: the 35th anniversary of Star Wars is really the 15th anniversary of the SE. Star Wars never had a 35th anniversary because it died at age 19.

I followed a link from that wired page. Did anyone see this? It's brilliant.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/opinion-starwars/

Lucasfilm has been running itself for a while now. They have a lot of material to work with. That's why they have been withholding a lot of content regarding video releases. According to a friend who knows insiders at Lucasfilm, the projection right now is a 50-year plan, that is, stretch out the material to keep the company alive for fifty years into the future. Supposedly, every single piece of film material--every take, every foot of film--from the star wars movies has been scanned in 4K and is sitting in computers. Few have seen it all because it comprises hours of footage.

And yeah, I'm willing to bet the OOT is included in that. I'm sure they're sitting on it for long-term investment reasons. Maybe the 50th anniversary, once Lucas is out of the way?

Last I heard, they were going to release AOTC and ROTS in the same year. That was a rumour, but I believe it, or at least that it is being seriously considered, to just get the PT out of the way. TPM wasn't a collossal failure, but I do believe it would be considered a minor one relative to the expectations they had. It made a profit theatrically, but only a small one. I don't think they ever expected it to do numbers like 1997, but I honestly think George believed that the 1999 box-office numbers were due to people genuinely liking it, and not because of hype, obligation, and all the other factors that drove people that hated the film to see it three times. A lot of fans said the same thing--if everyone hated it, how come it made so much money? On the surface, that would seem to make sense, people vote with their wallets. But this film is an exception to a lot of traditional release rules.

Without the hype, and having accepted that the film wasn't good and moved on, most people who saw the film in 1999 stayed home--almost all of them, it would seem. $671 million in 1999, in todays dollars, versus $43 million with inflated 3D prices or $30 million adjusted for normal prices. That's an estimated 84.8 million tickets in 1999 versus an estimated 5.5 million tickets in 2012. In other words, only about 15% of the people who saw it in theaters in 1999 came back this year. It pushed it into the $billion area, yes, but at the same time it took until 2012 reviews before the film officially became "rotten" at rottentomatoes. Neither accomplishments are too grand anyway, since the film was already close to the edge of both as it was.

It's McQuarrie intellectual property, because he made it. But it's the copyright of Lucasfilm, because they paid for it. That's my understanding of how that works. I may look into that though.

Definitely :-)  Where would we be without bad puns?

Yeah, it's kind of absurd. This is the most popular film EVER MADE. EVER. Gone With the Wind sold more tickets, but it's no longer current.

-1977: Star Wars is released. Makes the equivalent of $1.13 BILLION dollars in todays currency.

-1978-1983: Goes on to earn roughly another $100 million dollars in todays money in re-releases over the next five years.

-1982: First VHS tape to sell over a million copies. Retails for about $80, or $180 in todays dollars. =over $180 million.

-1995: Released on video. Breaks records for a video re-release.

-1997: The twenty-year-old film is released again and earns $240 MILLION in todays dollars.

-2004: Released on DVD in trilogy set. The OT sells $100 million dollars worth of copies...in a SINGLE DAY. Goes on to selll...maybe a Billion dollars worth by Christmas? Just an estimate.

-2012: George Lucas is worth something like $4 Billion dollars. "It's too expensive to restore them! How would I earn a profit"

Reminder: the above figures add up to about something like the equivalent of... nearly $3 Billion dollars? Something in that range. A movie that has sold $3 billion worth of sales, in todays dollars. Yeah, there's no money there. It would be such a wasteful investment.

Ah, my bad. I wasn't sure if I was missing something.

Frink that pun is so bad even I thought of it.

I doubt that would stop a lawyer from pursuing the cease-and-desist case he had filed against me.

EDIT:

The "public" pictures like the theater photos are a safer bet, but at the same time whoever took those could sue the exact same way. Maybe Lucasfilm owns some of those too. There are some photo archives you can use though, for a subscription price.

So I finally did a small update today. No real new content, but it is on its way.

One thing I did do was create a Facebook page. The idea was suggested before and I didn't see the point, but everyone is doing this now so why not. Any "like"'s are appreciated: http://www.facebook.com/secrethistoryofstarwars

Also, I'm thinking of re-designing the website, to be a bit more interesting to look at. I'm not sure how I feel about using official pictures since I am making money off a product on the site, and Lucasfilm have so far left me alone. But I feel like there should be something a bit more eye-catching. Any thoughts?

Maybe I am just slow here but...where can I find this mysterious Google folder?

Blackenstein.

Half the time I can't even tell if something is digital these days. If I hadn't learned that Prometheus was shot digitally I would have never guessed. Once you know it's easy to say "oh, now I can see." But the truth is that digital cameras have the exact same lattitude as film cameras these days. That high-contrast, glossy look is what you find even on film productions. It's just a style, and it's been around a while. Transformers 3 doesn't look much different than Transformers 1, yet the original was an old-fashioned film production and the third was all-digital. The difference is often pretty minimal. Six years or seven years ago a good eye could tell, but now you can't really trust your eye because the film productions look like the digital ones much of the time.

The way darkjedi goes around randomly being a total cunt to people, while simultaneously basing his work off other peoples work and then not sharing the results or giving preportional credit, I'm surprised he wasn't banned two years ago. Hopefully he will stop acting like a 14-year-old jock now.

greenpenguino said:

Superman VS The Elite (2012)

Fantastic. It really explores Superman's Morals and ethics in the modern world and explores whether or not they're outdated. The new superheroes that challenge superman, 'The Elite' are the dark, edgy and gritty Superheroes that a lot of people cry out for. I could go on and on about this, but I'd advise people to go, get a copy and watch it, especially those who are the naysayers of Superman.

4 out of 4 balls

This sounds really cool. Will have to check it out.

As long as it is just the demo. The book itself is already long-winded in many places. I'm cutting out a good ten to fifteen pages worth of stuff just from reducing the repetition and by condensing things for the new version.

I haven't updated this page since a day or two after I posted it:

http://savestarwars.com/specialeditionchanges.html

Since I haven't been keeping up with this thread, I've lost track of the extra changes found since I posted it. Have you guys been keeping a running tally like I was here or do I have to re-read a few pages and update my numbers and spreadsheet manually? Sorry to make a "do this work for me because I'm too lazy to just do it myself" type of post. I'm fine doing it myself, but if you guys already did that would be better. :p

No one except a small band of teenagers and clueless fanboys would say they wouldn't prefer the originals exist. McCallum probably always felt this way. But at the end of the day--what can he do, right? Threaten to quit if Lucas doesn't release a version of the films they are millionaires off? He gets a lot of crap but there is only so much he can do, and I'm pretty sure he's gone on record saying he has brought it up before.

You should def retitle this Young George Lucas. I thought i was going to be seeing footage of a grey-haired GL.

Also, this is fantastic. Good job!

Anchorhead, I never expected you of all people to become one of the EU experts around here.