Hokay, so the final FAQ is up. Links to it on editorial, resources and main page. One more week before classes start, so I guess I should burn some rubber on those missing pages.
They will be linked in the final version, so the Qs should be white, with the normal grey text answers. :)
The work in progress of the FAQ is up for preview.
http://savestarwars.com/faq.html
Do you think I missed anything?
CO said:
In defense of Anchorhead, I don't believe he ever posted on TFN. I know that cause he used to ask many of us what was it like over there? And we used to respond 10% bashers, 90% gushers.
I haven't posted there since I was permabanned around the GOUT release, so I would be interested if idiots like Gomertonic still post there.
Go mer tonic got so ridiculous the mods had to finally permaban him. Don't worry, there's about 30 idiots filling the void nicely.
The 2-disk original E.T. was a deluxe edition for cinephiles, so it was only made for a limited time as it was a "special" release, and thats the only reason the single-disk revised edition is in stores now. You can still find it if you really want it. When the film comes out on Blu Ray, I don't doubt it will be the same format as the Close Encounters, which had all the versions in equal quality.
You could still show the clip of the daily being shown in the flat-bed editor.
I duno. MJ was definitely a recluse. He pretty much never gave an interview until the early 1990s, and then it was only to clear his reputaion. Lucas is definitely NOT a recluse, though he was in the 70s and 80s. He seems unable to escape that reputation. GL and MJ have a lot more in common than people realize:
-Despite being regarded as reclusive, both are public figures
-Both are ridiculously wealthy
-MJ built Neverland Ranch, GL built Skywalker Ranch
-Both had their heyday in the 1980s
-Both are protective of their private life, and have a mysterious aura to them
-Both are among the most influential and successful artists in their fields, and both got famous at a young age, with scandal following them in the 1990s
-MJ in his recluse went a bit crazy and re-constructed his face. GL in his recluse went a bit crazy and re-constructed his films.
-Both have fans that either hate or have mixed feelings about them for their personal decisions, despite admiration for their early artistic efforts
-Both see themselves as, and to some degree actually are, misunderstood by the media
-Both of them had/have their contributions overshadowed by their failures at the end of their lifetimes
Of course, there are many huge differences. But while GL does indeed have a lot to be proud of in his life, ever since 1999, his reputation definitely has been mixed, much like Jackson since the early 1990s.
Okay, compiling a list of questions for the FAQ. Suggestions welcome. My audience for this is newbies who have no knowledge or only some knowledge of the subject, and TFN Lucas gushers who will be skeptical of the whole concept of the site. Here is the list of questions I have so far, not necessarily in sequential order:
Q: Weren't the original theatrical versions released on DVD in 2006?
Q: Won't the original versions look really crude and in poor condition? Isn't that why Lucas had to enhance and restore them for the Special Edition?
Q: Restoring or presenting the original versions in high quality is very expensive isn't it? Lucas does not have the money or desire to do so, nor should he be forced to.
Q: I heard the original versions do not exist as film. The negatives were destroyed, and there are no good copies. Is this true?
Q: It seems like every Star Wars fan expects something different for an "original DVD or Blu Ray." In terms of how original, whether any clean-up has been done, how many defects to leave in like matte lines and scratches. Isn't it sort of impossible to please everyone?
Q: The Special Editions are the same basic film. Is it really that important to have the originals?
Q: How can you demand that Lucas relinquish the originals? As both the legal rights holder and also the artist behind the films, shouldn't they be his to do with as he pleases? Isn't forcing an artist to make a choice they do not wish an unethical practice?
Q: Is the 2006 DVD better than any bootleg DVD? And if not, which ones are best?
Q: Have the originals been shown anywhere since the 1997 Special Edition came out?
Q: I have heard people complaining about the video quality of the 2004 Special Edition, but the picture and sound looks great to me, very clear and sharp, the best I've seen the films. What are people talking about?
Q: Where can I find original video and film material of the films as they were when they were released?
Q: I've heard about difference sound mixes of the films. Which sound mix is the original mix?
(Sorry about the colouring)
The more I think about it, the more an FAQ seems like a good idea. So, bridging the two suggestions above, I think I will put a little disclaimer above the editorials page stating that for the uninitiated a browsing of the FAQ might be the best place to start, with the editorials here linked for further detail. That way, people looking for simple, to the point answers can find them in the FAQ, and if they want further info there will be a link back to the full articles on each corresponding topic from the editorials page. I might also put a glossary of terms there. I try to define all acronymns within the articles themselves, but this might be helpful nonetheless.
Any additional film sources are always useful. Thanks for doing this Puggo.
FWIW, I have found that importing clips into photoshop and correcting them their is the most powerful method for getting rid of the red in faded prints. I've been amazed at what I have been able to recover using all the tools available there. But it is a lot of work, and hard on your CPU.
Puggo you magnificent bastard, I finally got around to downloading this a few days ago and its so much fun! An amazing, unique project. Part of me wishes this was done in HD because I'm sure there is more quality to squeeze out than a DVD can make apparent. Anyway, very cool. Made me nostalgic for the Star Wars 1977 midnight screening I never had, LOL.
Harmy said:
I think this is completely awesome and you're a great writer Zombie, I already knew like 95% of the information in these articles but I still enjoyed reading them :-) The only thing I would suggest is that there should be a simpler article for each of the main issues and then you could click "for a more in depth analysis" that would be your editorial article. These articles are great for us who are already passionate about these issues but if someone who isn't familiar with the problems read those articles they might feel overwhelmed with information, so it would be nice to give them a simplified matter of fact articles that would show rather than describe (more comparison pics, maybe even clips). I might try and put something together myself but I'm having my good computer repaired now and it may take up to a month so I don't even have photoshop now.
Do you mean like the equivalent of an FAQ? I have toyed with that. Something that was meant for mass audience and stays fairly light was the article How the Grinch Stole Star Wars, as it touches on everything but doesnt get too detailed. On the about us page I have suggested this as a starting point for the uninitiated. I do see your point though, I'm just worried about making something that is redundant. My best thought was an FAQ that has short simple answers and then points to the corresponding article on the subject for greater detail.
Also, thanks everyone for the suggestions and corrections. Will fix things up eventually.
Gout page up.
http://savestarwars.com/gout.html
This will be my last editorial, I think. Will concentrating on tying up all the remaining loose ends.
Lucas dying will be like when Michael Jackson died. Everyone, including many of his admirers, had a problem with his professional and personal endeavours but once the media circus that was his life ended and his music was no longer tied to all that, suddenly everyone realized why they appreciated him and his work in the first place. When Lucas dies, people will forgive and forget about Jar Jar and Howard the Duck because they'll be too busy crying over all his technological and philanthropic contributions to the world, and all the films he made that we love.
Except if there's no original Star Wars. Then people will say, I wish I could appreciate him for the work he did, but all he'll let me have is this crappy tape from the early '90s.
well, other than the mono and the 1993 mix, its not about differences in sound effects, its more about mix levels and dynamic range, kind of hard to make comparison clips for some of these. My goal was to preserve the actual mixes themselves in a central, accessible location, or if someone else did I could simply say such and such exists and people could find it themselves.
Hmm, true. Maybe a way to go about it is to host them through a torrent site, so that if people search they can easily find them. Is there a sort of "audio package" already out there that is sort of the equivalent?
So I made a list of the major things to do that I could use some assistance on, or advice and suggestions.
To do list:
-Make SE-original comparison pics for all visual changes
-Media contacts information (any suggestions, leads?)
-Newsletter subscription script
-Need more 35mm scan examples (Belbucus still MIA with his pics, since he hardly comes here any more)
-Add more articles for the links page (suggestions welcome)
-Post original theatrical audio files
This last one here is a bit of a grey area. I don't want to bring down the wrath of LFL, but at the same time I feel this is sort of safe because its only fan-created audio captures that require you to buy an official product in the first place. I wanted to preserve these here so people can hear them, but also as a handy resource for fan preservations, no need for people to dig through newsgroups or ask people to post material. I'm struggling with where to host them though, since the files are huge and are legally in the grey. I was thinking of splitting them across Rapidshare. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about doing this? I still need to collect about half of them anyway, but I'm trying to figure out the logistics of how to do this first.
You are reading too much into it. TOS was never so serious, or so technical. There was like 3 episodes of TOS where they travel back in time to 20th century earth (convenient for viewers). Seems like they do it all the time, right? In fact, one episode (assignment earth?) is so ridiculous it just opens with the Enterprise already back in the 1960s and Shatner's voice over goes something like "we are on a routine time travel mission to further understand 1960s culture on earth..." or something like that. No further background is given. And the thrust of the episode involved a guy in a bad suit who has a magical black cat and a secret portal in the closet of his Washington office, and he accidentally abducts an I-Dream-of-Jeane counterculture ditz girl as his secretary, in a plot to sabotage a nuclear missle to teach humankind about the dangers of the nuclear Cold War.. And then at the very end of the episode you discover that the magical Black Cat is actually Elvira or something, but its only for one shot and its not really elaborated upon. The episode ends before the Enterprise even travels back to its own time, I guess we just assume that they know what they are doing since it was like the 2nd time in that season alone that they did it.
Yeah.
And you know what, its a pretty amusing episode. That was Star Trek.
So, if time travel is so fucking routine that the Federation sends the Enterprise on a casual mission to the 1960s to study American hippie culture, you'd think whenever there was any problem in the universe the could just hit that magical "undo" button by going back in time. Fuck Spock knowing it, by TOS it seems to a casual technology the entire Federation uses.
Again, the science in Star Trek never made sense, and none of the plots were ever consistent. The Boost had it right, there is this myth that TOS was this ponderous, perfect show, but it was a mainstream 1960s adventure program with karate-chopping captains and bellbottomed, beehived seductresses in every episode, with about half the episodes involving the crew trying to overcome some flamboyant trickster god or escaping from a world that ridiculously was exactly like earth in a certain historical period except for one crucial difference.
The JJ Abrams ST captured the spirit of TOS pretty perfectly. I think a lot of Trek fans these days just grew up with the 90s' Trek, which is pretty far removed from the corny, actiony, sexy, adventury Trek of the 1960s.
I plan on including it on my page of SE changes. I have links to your page only temporarily, because re-doing everything from scratch is a huge undertaking and this is fine until I get around to that.
Yeah, I saw that too.
Sooo, I'm basically calling the website open for business. All of the major pieces are there, and I think the formatting and text has been cleaned up so that it looks basically complete. Tell your friends. :p
Two pages are listed as coming soon: a screen materials page, and a media contact page. The first is being worked on now, plus another editorial on why the GOUT sucks, which will be the last editorial until new news breaks, but the second I am bit stumped on. Any contacts and suggestions here would be appreciated.
The other thing I would like to do is add a newsletter subscription, to just send a text email when there is a major site update or any relevant news. There are tutorials out there, but .CGI-bin stuff is a bit over my head. Does anyone here know how to do this stuff so thats its simple enough for a bonehead like me to use it?
Even if Lucas put in writing that it could never be seen again, eventually this would get challenged. You could argue it be legally protected under cultural heritage laws, it's just that these aren't extended to motion pictures under current legislation. It's a matter of time before that happens, whether in ten years or forty years. No one has put the motion before congress because there has been no need, because every other copyright holder has been 110% forthcoming about releasing original versions, pretty much with few exceptions (like maybe theatrical Lawrence of Arabia, but this is just laziness/little demand, rather than deliberate suppression).
Easterhay said:
We watched it as a family yesterday and it's always a scene that astounds me.
Anakin Starkiller was originally the father of the twins in one of many original drafts. It's funny how some fans pull up on Lucas's constant revisions to his story before settling on one version - do these people honestly think that when they pick up a book in a bookshop that the copy they are holding is the first draft of that story?
It was actually Kane Starkiller that was the father of twins. Annikin Starkiller was actually the son, who was later renamed Luke. The thread of a father with multiple sons and then the father dying was a part of the story from early on, but this is completely different from what Lucas implies was "always" there.
In the first treatment, the story is about a master-student relationship between an older Jedi and his young student. The treatment doesn't seem to have been completed. The second treatment is a remake of Hidden Fortress, about a General's mission to escort a princess through hostile galactic territory, with a duo of idiotic bureaucrats. This was expanded into the rough draft, where the General was broken up into two people, one being General Skywalker as per the treatment, and the other being Kane Starkiller, who has a son named Annikin that he is training. The duo of bureacrats was converted into a duo of robots. Lucas also added two villains, a General Darth Vader and a Sith Lord Valorum, plus an Emperor Cos Dashit.
So, as you can, yes, the earliest scripts were even way more different than Lucas tells. But Lucas also says that the basic story of the whole trilogy was included in these scripts, which isn't true at all. ESB he made up by the seat of his pants in 1977 and 1978. He had to have Leigh Brackett confer with him on the plot, because he didn't reall have anything. So I would say you shouldn't be too hard on people that doubt Lucas' accuracy here. They are right.
Easterhay said:
zombie84 said:
Easterhay said:
zombie84 said:
Easterhay said:
Well the fact is I was misquoted. How's that for starters?
You were, and that was unfair to you, but don't side-step my point. "Negativity" in regards to the subject that was in discussion is pretty understandable considering the history of the person in question with regards to these sorts of claims (i.e. that Lucas is known for stretching the truth or just plain making stuff up) and also when considering the specifics of the alleged event in question (i.e. that it seems a little fishy the way it is often reported). Saying that you're tired of people speaking about Lucas in a negative light seems a bit unmotivated and unnecessary since peoples issues here are fairly understandable. It really just seems like you didn't like people picking on Lucas, regardless of the reasons.
Well, I don't think Lucas is untouchable at all. Ergo, he once said Star Wars was a nine part saga and he has recently went back on that and acted as though he never said it.
However, saying and doing things that some find disagreeable does not make that person essentially bad. There is no such thing as a bad person; all people are essentiallly good. This is my belief.
That's great, but no one said Lucas was not essentially good. CO said he's had enough of Lucas' bullshit with regards to spin-doctoring things, which he justified with a list of precedents. Furthermore, as I argued, the circumstances of the alleged psychologist incident does not seem realistic given the context reported. And that was what you objected to. Which is stupid, because he's got a pretty good case to be negative here. Its becoming further evident that, as I said before, you really just don't like seeing Lucas picked on.
It is neither unecessary or unmotivated (how do you work that one out, fella? How does carping and negativity motivate anyone other than to continue to it all the more, especially when the braying gallery is urging them on?) to complain about negativity? Some people here are so consumed by their feelings that they will deny Lucas everything, even when it is clear as day that he is not always dishonest or economical with the truth. After all, w hat has Anchorhead just done if not lied about what I said just to fuel his own argument? This is what I mean about being consumed by feelings: someone says something thay find objectionable, so from that point on they object to everything that person says. It's witless.
If someone does something that is perceived to be bad and then does something that is good, is the good deed then ignored in favour of the bad? Tell me, where's the motivation in that?
Okay, I don't know what the hell you are even talking about anymore. CO said he had enough of the Lucas bullshit, because he felt this particular example was another instance of it. He was right about the precedents he listed, and he is probably correct about this one too. Thats it. And you objected to this? Why? Some invented stuff about "some people here...will deny Lucas everything". Where the hell does that come from? The objection CO raised was valid and specific and justified by a long list of precedents and reasons why this example fits the M.O.
You do a good job of side-stepping the point and then re-directing it in your favour with an irrelevant point. Are you Arawn Fenn's brother?
Here's an idea: let the person to whom I was speaking answer for themselves. I'm not answerable to you for anything other than what I direct to you. You'll know when I'm speaking to you - it will be clear from the post. I believe I've already said more to you than I'm obliged to on this issue.
In other words, I'll ignore your point again.
If you want a private conversation go to a private message, otherwise if you post in a public discussion everyone that reads it has the right to chime in when you say something stupid.
I don't believe the 2004 Jabba is the TPM Jabba. Thats bullshit. They look nothing alike. The TPM Jabba looked and was coloured like him, the 2004 Jabba is something completely different.
What source are you using for the 97 SE? It looks really good. I only have my VHS tapes.