zombie84

Yeah, it's pretty neat to finally see. I like it. Vader's dialogue is a bit lame, don't know if that was final, but the scene builds tension at the opening very effectively, something the start of the movie was lacking in my opinion. Here it sets up the Luke v Vader/Luke vs Dark Side confrontation from the get go, plus it tells you that Luke WILL be coming to kick ass, you just don't know when. :D Shoulda put this back in the film instead of that musical number.

That's pretty awesome.

I guess the bottom line is that for a mulit-billionaire to be so concerned about profit when the show is guaranteed to be at least modestly profitable, it just smacks of unnecessary greed, and it frustrates me that this is really what the bottom line has come to mean for Lucas and his projects.

Also, it kinda saddens me that this really interesting filmmaker (at least, I think--he never gets a chance to demonstrate it) spends his time creating what he frames as a money-making series instead of doing something that he cares about so much that he doesn't care about how much money it loses because he's a gifted filmmaker with more money at his disposal than many small countries and can do absolutely anything he wants. But he spends his time making merchandising spin-offs that has him concerned with profit ratios instead. I don't get it. Make something you believe in and will sacrifice to see it made, not something that you think will be impressive on the financial books.

Maybe he wants to get its profit high so he has more money to give to charity, that's just not what it seems like.

TheBoost said:

zombie84 said:

 Money isn't an issue with Lucas. He's a billionaire. Can mere mortals like us even grasp what that means, how much money that is? But besides that, lets say he was just a regular producer. This is Star Wars. Its going to make its weight in gold. As for the technology--I know Lucas wants to make very high quality shows, technically speaking, so that its basically like an hourly feature film. Which would mean a lot of special effects. But look at the last two seasons of Battlestar Galactica. It's been done. Probably Star Wars would require more than that even, maybe, but the Star Wars audience is about five times the size of the Battlestar audience. Again: it's not about "can we do it". It can be done, and they can make a lot of money off of it. Its more about "can we do it for this amount of profit percentage".

See, if he really cared, it wouldn't matter if they only get $120 million in returns for every $100 million spent. But he wants to get $200 million returns for every $100 million spent. Why? There's no practical purpose since he's a freaking mulit-billionaire. It just becomes its own game. "How cheap can we make it? How much profit can we make?"

So yes, Lucas has more money than he could ever spend. You claim he has no 'practical purpose' for money.

Let's think about that.

Since he doesn't NEED to make any projects, whether for a 10% net profit of a 3,000% net profit, and since you insist that "Star Wars" will cut a profi, what is the exact cut off that shows Lucas "cares"? Is it a 5% profit? A one dollar profit? What is the fair profit for focusing his energy, time, talent, resources, and wealth on?

Its not about assigning it a fixed number. You seem to be missing the point that a billionaire is complaining he doesn't have enough money to make a show profitable when it is guaranteed to at leas be somewhat profitable. It just speaks of such a greed-oriented outlook, and that rubs me the wrong way.

(And to be fair, the production values on "Battlestar" aren't even near CLOSE to what "Star Wars" would be. Remember they did whole episodes where you didn't have to see spaceships in order to save cash. Not just avoiding space combat, but avoiding showing space at all. Not to mention the same sets, costumes, and every outdoor scene was miraculously in the same copse of trees.

That's true, but I doubt every single SWLA episode will feature ten different brand-new environs each episode. The way it was described about following side-characters, if for instance it followed a band of smugglers we could see their ship being a common set, like on Firefly. It's hard to know exactly how elaborate or intimate it will be, but TV shows have common characters and therefore common environs and sets.

More importantly, if we would peg the Star Wars audience as being 2-3 times larger than the Battlestar Galactica audience (this is a conservative figure, IMO) it would translate to about 2-3 times the budget, which would be quite formidable. And BG was hugely profitable at that ratio, one of the biggest hits the SF network ever had. So, at 2-3 times the scope of the latter BG episodes, Lucas would be making a killing. And here he is complaining he doesn't want to go ahead until he can make it more profitable? What's the point? Its just pointless greed.

I don't actually care very much about the show. If it happens, fine, I hope it turns out well. If it doesn't, oh well, who cares. But I just cannot fathom that Lucas could say he's put it on hold because he doesn't have the money for it. Does he really care that little, with all his billions of dollars? It's a very disheartening mindset to see displayed.

Lucas saying in 1998 or so that you can tell a director's talent by if he can make a $50 million movie look like a $200 million dollar movie. Not whether he can actually make a good movie

Lucas has ALWAYS been about the technical side of film making. Always. This is nothing new. Watch THX 1138:Digital Labrynth. Watch the OT. Watch Radioland Murders or Young Indy. Listen to him talk. Aside from his wierd Joseph Cambell obsession 90% of what Lucas has to say has been about the visual and technical side of film. The technical aspects have always been what really got him going. Always. This is not some new idea he has now that he's rich and evil.

Given that the modern filmmaking world would in large part not exist without Lucas's efforts, even though I wish the PT was a better group of films, I can't act like Lucas's viewpoint is wholly without merit.

 I never said anything about technicality. I know Lucas is a technical director, always was and always will be. My point was to highlight his financial-oriented point of view. Instead of valuing good filmmaking, he values high profit. It seems to be the opposite of what the film industry should be, but highlights the very worst aspect of what the film industry often is. 

TheBoost said:

zombie84 said:

Do you really think he will LOSE money? Really?

No, it's a matter of: I thought I would net 129 million from this, but with the extra expenses I will only net 27 million. Re-think it to be cheaper boys!

Sorry, I don't buy this "he's providing us with entertainment as his personal loss" bullshit. He just realised his profit margins weren't as big as he was used to. He's just cheap. He was the same way on the prequels. Think about how many people are going to CV this year. Every single one of those people will drop between $10-$100 on various products related to this thing. Plus you have all the other non-hardcores, plus all the advertising revenue and network purchasing that will likely pay for the show as it because it is freaking Star Wars.

When Lucas makes a product, its cuz he's a greedy money grubbing bastard. When he DOESN'T make a product, it's because he's a greedy money grubbing bastard.

 Don't pull the Lucas Can't Win card, there is a difference here. He tried to make the product, but when he realized the profit margins weren't big enough he put it on hold until they could figure out how to make more money.

Money isn't an issue with Lucas. He's a billionaire. Can mere mortals like us even grasp what that means, how much money that is? But besides that, lets say he was just a regular producer. This is Star Wars. Its going to make its weight in gold. As for the technology--I know Lucas wants to make very high quality shows, technically speaking, so that its basically like an hourly feature film. Which would mean a lot of special effects. But look at the last two seasons of Battlestar Galactica. It's been done. Probably Star Wars would require more than that even, maybe, but the Star Wars audience is about five times the size of the Battlestar audience. Again: it's not about "can we do it". It can be done, and they can make a lot of money off of it. Its more about "can we do it for this amount of profit percentage".

See, if he really cared, it wouldn't matter if they only get $120 million in returns for every $100 million spent. But he wants to get $200 million returns for every $100 million spent. Why? There's no practical purpose since he's a freaking mulit-billionaire. It just becomes its own game. "How cheap can we make it? How much profit can we make?" Its the monopoly syndrome. I remember Lucas saying in 1998 or so that you can tell a director's talent by if he can make a $50 million movie look like a $200 million dollar movie. Not whether he can actually make a good movie. But this is what Lucas has come to value. Running a billion-dollar corporation for twenty years sorts of changes the way you think about everything.

Yeah, I am re-editing it right now actually. I was thinking of photoshopping out the circle, but I didn't want to be seen as "tampering" with the image. Maybe it would be a good idea though.

Any suggestions on where to cut down on stuff?

No, did not get further pics from Belbucus. He hasn't answered my PM, but I don't think he frequents these boards too much anymore.

New page up:

http://savestarwars.com/specialeditionfail.html

As usual the text and formating are not final. But leave feedback about general flow, if I missed anything, if anything needs to be added or corrected, or if there are better examples. I kind of struggled to express how the crushed black levels work, I don't know if that comes across clearly. There was a really good page explaining about the evils of crushed blacks with reference to photography and the SE but I've forgotten it. I'm also not sure if the page is rambling and unordered, I tried to be thorough and progress logically from one issue to the next.

Yeah, its not just about adding CG here and there--a lot of it is very invisible-seeming if you hadn't seen the original, and a lot of scenes were completely re-edited and re-thought. But no one has ever talked about the creative or technical aspect of it, you are right, I never considered that. It is a bit strange. Maybe no one really cares, it's still an obscure movie even with Lucas' name attached.

You'd be surprised, more was added than you'd think. Some scenes were edited differently too. Theres a youtube video showing all the new changes.

Do you really think he will LOSE money? Really?

No, it's a matter of: I thought I would net 129 million from this, but with the extra expenses I will only net 27 million. Re-think it to be cheaper boys!

Also, you have to look at it in the big picture. Lucasfilm is a comglomerate studio. When a studio makes a blockbuster, they don't actually make much money off of it. In fact, most of the time they lose money. But they don't just get profit from the boxoffice. Transformers 2 may not bring any profit from the box office, even with its $400 million worldwide receits, but its okay because you have a video game, two action figure lines, a novelization line, an soundtrack album, pez dispensers, t-shirts, posters, trading cards, bubble gum, pepsi tie-ins, mcdonalds happy meals and other material that makes up for it, plus DVD and homevideo. Thats built in to the profit planning from the beginning, and its the reason why studios make these kinds of films. Moreover, you have to look at the bigger picture: even if Transformers 2 is a collosal failure even with all of its anscillary protection, it's just one of ten properties you will have on the marketplace that year. Three or four might fail, three or four might break even, but the one or two successes carries over and so you still end up breaking even or coming out ahead.

Sorry, I don't buy this "he's providing us with entertainment as his personal loss" bullshit. He just realised his profit margins weren't as big as he was used to. He's just cheap. He was the same way on the prequels. Think about how many people are going to CV this year. Every single one of those people will drop between $10-$100 on various products related to this thing. Plus you have all the other non-hardcores, plus all the advertising revenue and network purchasing that will likely pay for the show as it because it is freaking Star Wars.

"This is a 1080p HD version of the original theatrical edition with appropriate scenes upconverted from the DVD. No attempt was made to clean up or enhance either source in any way."

Do I take this as meaning he just grabbed the HD SE files, and then edited in pure GOUT scenes as-is? Because if that's true, I don't think it would really be watchable. He said about 5 minutes are from the GOUT for ROTJ, so I guess he put the whole scenes in instead of shot-by-shot. This was probably for the best since the back-and-forth quality change will not be so disorientating, but it still will be so distracting that I'm not sure what the point of watching it in HD is, especially with the screwed up colouring (which obviously will not match).

msycamore said:

Puggo's 16mm restoration

 All the other stills vary around a bit, but here this one matches the Technicolor still almost exactly. There is a bit more blue in it, which i would say is maybe a bit unnatural and a byproduct of the telecine or aging. I would say this is the best colour reference for the two shots that precede and follow it. The first one looks like it has a bit of an exposure problem in the centre screen perhaps but you get a sense of the coloring and brightness of the shot (pinkish sky with some orange, and fairly bright but duller than full daylight; it's pretty consistent with the next shot of Luke, which probably was filmed at the same time, and the sunset insert done as an insert by second unit at a later date and location).

Its been reported by more than just them.

Apparently, Lucas didn't make enough billions of dollars last year.

This just goes to show that it is all just a money making scheme, not art. Lucas is literally a billionaire. And his company profits annually in the billions. But if he has to lose one or two million to make actual films--god help him. Better make more Jar Jar Binks colouring books. It's pretty sickening, how ridiculous it has all gotten.

I believe they had anamorphic Laserdisc in Japan, but only because it lasted long enough there to see the introduction of 16x9 displays. I don't know why this is anamorphic, as there would be no advantage to it since 16x9 tvs didn't exist in the United States at the time this would have been made, IIRC.

Those rip marks have to be on the negative itself if its on the 1977 telecine and the 1985 IP (plus, possibly the pre-85 home video IP). Did this appear on the SE? I was going to say they might have replaced it with a different source, but if it was there in 1977 then there probably isn't an undamaged source since its the o-neg. They might have scanned and painted it out but I don't think they were doing that for the 1997 release.

In regards to the topic here, I converted the best of the screen photos to make them viewable.

see http://savestarwars.com/technicoloribscreening.html

The redone titles I can live with, since they look about the same. The way I look at it is that its the same as when Lucas re-wrote the title crawl for Star Wars (or is it, A New Hope?). No one complained about A New Hope being the only version of Star Wars that was ever on home video.

The photoshopped establishing shot I don't like though. It's sneaky, and tampering with the original photography. Very minor, luckily, but there was no need to do it. The titles were re-done to have better clarity because the opticals were so grainy. The photoshopping was done because Lucas wanted a shot he never got, which is changing the film.

Hmm, yeah true.

To be perfectly frank, I would rather watch the Director's Cut. There's one or two things that I'd like to see left out, but it thoroughly enhances the scope and enjoyment of the film. But it would be great if this was the original just so people can see it and keep its memory alive.

A print from 1971? If you can see anything on it that would be a miracle. But THX was very unpopular, so maybe it only got played a few times. Still, it should be pinker than Darth Vader's lightsaber in the Special Edition.

Sadly, this is probably the Directors Cut, which had a very limited theatrical run in 2003. But I'd like to know either way!

Maybe this was a demo disk. They did that back then, didn't they? I always thought this montage was never on any commercial release but was an in-house promotional thing for vendors and the like, maybe something to show at tradeshow. The Empire footage has blue in the Vader fight and a pink tint in the AT-AT shot, which means its not from the GOUT. Wasn't the 1995 release coloured differently? I remember Hoth was bluer. It would also tie in, since it was the "THX" release. Thoughts?

see you auntie said:

zombie84 said:

I'll have to see if I can find it in the library some time.

If you don't have it on hand that's cool don't worry about it.

 Oh, University of Toronto library has it, I've checked it out three times in the last year, I just have to find the time to go down and find it in the mazes of book stacks.

Spent the night converting the raw photos from the Technicolor screening to correct the perspective. I shrunk them by 50% in size as well, so instead of 10mb they are about 1mb, but they should still fill your screen.

Some choice examples:

http://savestarwars.com/images/senatorcorrected/technicolor2.jpg

http://savestarwars.com/images/senatorcorrected/technicolor6.jpg

http://savestarwars.com/images/senatorcorrected/technicolor32.jpg

See http://savestarwars.com/technicoloribscreening.html for more. I didn't do the complete photo collection though. Maybe one day.

Puggo: Thanks a lot for the advice. This is exactly the sort of stuff I am hoping to sort out by posting the work-in-progress here and getting feedback. Of course, the main page I sort of threw together and always planned on re-working, but probably the text would have been on similar lines to the way it is now. I'll keep your post in mind when I go through and start editing.

digitalfreaknyc said:

zombie84 said:

I dunno, DVD from 2001 to 2004 was twice as crowded as that, and SW and Indy both managed to do okay.

 What are you talking about?

All of those are coming out from October to December of this one year.  I'm not talking about several years.

 I know, I meant the Christmas season of every year from 2001 to 2004 had huge boxsets and long-awaited special editions of classic films. Pretty much every major catalog title came out on a special edition in that time, including all boxset releases.

But you are right in one thing in that the marketplace was different. There were a million DVD owners back then, but not nearly as much Blu Ray owners now, so there's not as many buyers in proportion to titles. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

This is actually pretty fun.

Yeah, most of the site is still under construction. Lotta dead links, temp photos, unfinished details. I'm working on getting the content up before I tweak that stuff.