zombie84

I enjoyed that. :)

Yeah, I can't remember how aggressive Ady's version dialed out the blue, but I remember it being fairly white, though not totally, mind you. It seems most people try to base the "theatrical colours" on the GOUT, which is the worst thing you could do because those damn transfers are almost black and white. I think the 1995 Faces set had pretty accurate colour levels from my memory, Hoth looked blue a lot of the time as it should, but it was only in some scenes and some shots and only to certain degree. You can recreate the original colouring by taking the GOUT and jacking the saturation in your PC player or television monitor 3/4 of way to its maximum levels, and when you do this you see skintones come back, colours are vibrant again, and Hoth is very distinctively blue a lot of the time. The Luke-Vader abyss/platform duel is pretty blue too. Dagobah has a lot of blue in it. It's part of the cinematography, it's a cold looking movie and it suits the subject matter I think.

That's nice, but Anchorhead said it looked like the people weren't touching the ground, and that's because 50% of the "people" in there are composites and CG characters.

No, since it was never released to the public.

The extras aren't though.

As much as reading that gave me a headache I am actually kind of curious where he got that understanding from. Is there some young earth creationism school of thought for home video now or something?

The OT and TPM were both shot on film. But film is not like digital in that the cameras don't really matter; they don't determine what the picture looks like. With digital, the sensor is in the camera and this determines what the image will look like and the characteristics it has, but film cameras are really nothing but motors to run the film through. It is the lens and film stock that determines the image characteristics instead. So using the same cameras wouldn't mean anything except that they are shooting on film; TPM was shot on film and it didn't make a huge difference. Part of the reason is because each shot is digitally scanned and digitally altered with so much CG.

Kenobius Prime said:

I don't see how Mr. Leggett's reply can make anyone here happy.  His reply, while seeming encouraging one moment, is a letdown the next.  There is nothing keeping LFL or Fox from pawning off a 1997 or 2004 version to the LOC, and more importantly, there is most likely nobody at the LOC that can verify just exactly what version of the film comes into their possession.  I commend Mr. Leggett for his prompt reply, and it does indeed sound like he at least knows there are multiple versions, but I just don't see it happening.  I would LOVE to be proved wrong.  But really, who at the LOC can actually dig the thing up and verify it?  Even if someone did say it is the 1980 print, could they provide proof?  Or, would they just take LFL or Fox's word?  Would pictures of the cans or reels be enough?  Could someone examine the film itself and provide pictures?

Highly doubtful.  I want to believe, but at this stage, I simply cannot.

 I think this level of deceit is unrealistic. If LFL is only going to loan out the SE, they will say so. There are no prints of the 2004 version, so it would be the 1997 SE. At this point, the Fox/Lucasfilm-Congress dialogue hasn't really started, so it's too early to say. But I suspect that if the U.S. government asks for a print of the original that they will comply. It might be worth asking them in six months what the result was, and they will either say they asked for an original print and got one, asked for an original print and got one only after some negotiation/persuasal, or asked for an original print and were denied but did receive the 1997 version. That they are aware of the original version and specifically seeking that version is a very encouraging sign. In fact, it seems that unless they get the original version, the film cannot be added to the registry, as the legislation states that it must be the first version published. Extra versions are a bonus, but the original version must be satisfied first.

From TFN:

UPDATE: Tracy over at Club Jade has another theory about Thursday's announcement, saying that the Panasonic connection may signal to the availability of The Old Republic on the company's portable gaming system.

The link, though, with the official advertisment makes it in connection with the BD, so I don't really buy into the game theory.

Part of me thinks that is what this could maybe be, but that is because I am a stupid fool. But what could it be about the BD that we didn't already know? We know there will be new docs and deleted scenes. Are they going to announce it has new changes to the films? I don't think they are modifying them in any significant way, at least picture wise. This is intriguing whatever it is. They might just be announcing the date and MSRP, who knows.

I have no idea if they were all in 1997 or not. Someone with the 97 SE will have to confirm that by going through them all.

I posted this in my saveSW thread, but I wrote to Congress to clarify if it was the original, and if it was a new or existing print. Good news. 1) It's the original. 2) It will be a newly struck print.

Michael:  In reference to the question, we always recognize and seek to ensure preservation of the original theatrical release version, per the legislation (which says the Registry version is "the version of a film first published")., though we might also try to obtain other versions as well. This would apply even in cases where we might prefer a different version (i.e. where a studio butchered a director's film before release).

Tho we recognize the original, we have no problem with the filmmaker going back and releasing a modified version (that is their right after all).  We would want to see all versions preserved well.

After the recent selection, we will in the near future request that Fox/Lucasfilm strike and send us a new 35mm print of the original 1980 release version.  We do that for all the studio titles, and the studios do cooperate.

Best, Steve Leggett

24 hours for a government reply? Wow. The US bureacracy is faster than I thought. The news is good too:

"

Michael:  In reference to the question, we always recognize and seek to ensure preservation of the original theatrical release version, per the legislation (which says the Registry version is "the version of a film first published")., though we might also try to obtain other versions as well. This would apply even in cases where we might prefer a different version (i.e. where a studio butchered a director's film before release).

Tho we recognize the original, we have no problem with the filmmaker going back and releasing a modified version (that is their right after all).  We would want to see all versions preserved well.

After the recent selection, we will in the near future request that Fox/Lucasfilm strike and send us a new 35mm print of the original 1980 release version.  We do that for all the studio titles, and the studios do cooperate.

Best, Steve Leggett"

Excellent news! This is really exciting. :)

Well, the title of his review says it all:

"Not the book I thought it would be,"

He thought it would be The Making of Star Wars, telling about the scoring, filming, effects, etc., so instead of purchasing the book with that very title he got this and found it focused on the storytelling aspect.

I guess that isn't hit home so hard in the book description, but I thought it was at least indicated. I never was a fan of the description though, as it wasn't written by me. At least this will give me leverage to re-write it if there will be a second edition. :P

Also: request:

Does anyone know how to make a random quote generator thing? I would like to put one in the sidebar on the main page to cycle through five or six nice soundbytes by Lucas and others every time someone refreshes the page. I'm afraid this is way beyond my own abilities.

Well, this is the letter I wrote:

Hello Steve Leggett,
 
My name is Michael Kaminski and I am writer from Toronto who specialises in cinema studies. I understand that this year 1980's Empire Strikes Back was added to the National Film Registry and I had a few simple questions I was hoping you could clarify for me about the print. Firstly, I was wodering which version of the film this print represents? As you may know, the film was re-released in 1997 in a heavily modified form. I was also wondering whether the print was donated by Fox, Lucasfilm or a third party, and whether said print was already existant or if it was newly printed for the occassion.
 
Thanks in advance for your reply,
 
Michael Kaminski

Also: not heard from LOC yet. As it is a government position, they may have monday off in order to satsify new years holiday hours since it fell on a weekend. Standing by.

Harmy: I did a newsflash about ESB's preservation.

Wow, everything is tinted a brown-red in that 2004 shot. Look at it!

Puggo: A very brief moment of that scene--in fact the moment with the deleted father dialogue--was seen in 1977's The Making of Star Wars as Told by R2D2 and C3P0 television special.

I have a Starlog issue from 1987 or 1988 that has a (partial, probably) transcript of the event. Lucas says he is considering putting the Holiday Special on VHS when someone asks about it, so he clearly didn't hate it as much back then as he now insists.

I'm not familiar with the MM copyright extension thing, can you explain it to me?

The whole idea of LOC is so that if there is a nuclear war or if a studio goes crazy and decides to junk all their prints or if people just simply forget about the films and they decay and get lost, this will be a safety back up that is protected by law from ever having harm come to it and safely stored in a very well-guarded federal reserve.

Of course, this assumes that the actual original is out there to be seen. No one can see the LOC prints, the whole point is to lock them away as last-ditch reserves. But in the case of SW and ESB they are "backups" to an "original" that no longer exists, in effect making them "originals" that we are incapable of viewing. Bizarre situation. Sending an email to them now, will report back if they confirm anything.

Motion pictures fall under the category of "works made for hire" and thus fall under corporate and not personal copyright; Lucas doesn't own the films, his company does, but he owns the company so he found a loophole to control them to his personal desires. Copyright for the SW films is owned by Lucasfilm LTD (and formerly Twentieth Cent. Fox for the first film). There was a pretty big copyright extension law put into place in 1998, which complicates things by dividing lines between before and after 1978, but it looks like corporate copyright is the same across the board.

Corporate copyright protects the works for 95 years (increased in 1998 by 20 years from the previous 75) from the date of publication. This means Star Wars will enter the public domain in 2072. Empire Strikes Back enters the public domain in 2075 and Return of the Jedi in 2078.

This is not quite as dramatic as 100 years, but at roughly six decades from now, probably most of us here won't be around to see it, and certainly no one who actually saw the films in their original release will be able to. I'm sure that in 2077 there will be a really big "Star Wars 100th Anniversary" thing where people will finally be able to show the original version with complete freedom. Maybe I'll be around, showing our fan preservation discs as museum pieces from the ancient days when rebel fans tried to keep the films alive using things like analog NTSC video copying and mail-order trading.