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Official STAR WARS Saga Discussion Thread: Part 5 (1 Viewer)

TravisR

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If I remember correctly, this version was something special and not something they did in a hurry. They used the Jurassic Park technology and it took years to do it, or at least they had the finished scene years in advance. I remember a reporter saying Lucas invited him to show this special scene much in advance and his jaw dropped. Maybe it was Star Wars Insider, but it was the stuff of legend and we knew this existed much in advance before seeing any photos.
At the time, it was cutting edge work and the Jabba scene is the best example of the SE largely being a test run to see what they could do with CG as they were gearing up for The Phantom Menace. It's kind of incredible how much better technology and the artistry got in two years with Jar Jar Binks which is clearly a major step up from Jabba.

The SE was definitely no secret and it was talked about years in advance. There's a mention of the re-release and the digital Jabba in Star Wars Galaxy Magazine issue #3 (another LFL licensed magazine) from Spring 1995 and I assume that Star Wars Insider mentioned it around the same time in either an interview with Lucas as he talked about getting ready to do the prequels or in their regular Prequel Updates with Rick McCallum.
 

TravisR

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I got that magazine. I think I even had a letter printed in the first couple of issues.
Lo and behold, you did in issue #3.

1643743917865.jpeg




Thanks to Chuck causing me to check my back issues, I discovered that the Special Edition was mentioned even earlier than I thought because it was in the first issue of Star Wars Galaxy Magazine from fall 1994 so the SE was public knowledge for more than 2 years before it was released.

1643743962558.jpeg


Note the planned 1998 release date for the first prequel.
 
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Josh Steinberg

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I seem to recall sending in a bunch of cereal box tops to get a copy of that on VHS but I could be thinking of something else.
 

Josh Steinberg

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There’s a lot of VHS stuff I wish I still had even though I have zero space for it. I can justify having Star Trek The Original Series because at least it’s not panned and scanned like Star Wars so it’s not painful to watch. But I loved the look of the different VHS editions.
 

SamT

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The amazing thing to me is that the effects of Jurassic Park still look good. How come Jabba V1 in the Star Wars Special Edition looks dated and not that good. They used the same technology.
 

TravisR

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There’s a lot of VHS stuff I wish I still had even though I have zero space for it. I can justify having Star Trek The Original Series because at least it’s not panned and scanned like Star Wars so it’s not painful to watch. But I loved the look of the different VHS editions.
I haven't seen Star Wars in full frame in its entirety since I got the widescreen tapes in 1993. However, I can't lie but I get nostalgic when I see old full frame clips. Such as in this Kenner marketing video from 1979. It contains the news that "Star Wars is forever. George Lucas and 20th Century Fox have plans for twelve more blockbusting chapters to the Star Wars story." It's amazing how close they got with that- Star Wars is forever and they'll get to 12 (and more) chapters soon.

 

TravisR

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The amazing thing to me is that the effects of Jurassic Park still look good. How come Jabba V1 in the Star Wars Special Edition looks dated and not that good. They used the same technology.
I think it's because they shot Jurassic Park with the knowledge of how much they could get away with in terms of CG and the Star Wars SE had to work with footage shot where there was no thought given to adding a CG character. Also, Jabba is on screen much longer and has much closer shots than the shots with CG dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
 

SamT

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I haven't seen Star Wars in full frame in its entirety since I got the widescreen tapes in 1993.

You mean half frame! ;) I saw the original trilogy in Pan and Scan for so many years that when later I got Return of the Jedi on VHS in widescreen as a gift, I was very upset. I was not used to the framing. I even tried to use my home camera to zoom in on television to make my own Pan and Scan. It was not successful.
 

Sam Favate

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I’m assuming everyone is familiar with the events of The Book of Boba Fett episode 6. If not, you may want to skip this post, although I’m not really talking about the specifics of the episode.

Rather, I’m interested in the techniques used to bring Luke to the screen. According to the article below, it doesn’t sound like Mark Hamill was much involved, if at all. They used stand-ins and body doubles (with the guy they hired from YouTube doing the features), and, I think, most significantly, they used a synthesizer to create the voice.

Here’s what Matthew Wood - longtime Lucasfilm creative person ( he played Bib Fortuna at the end of The Mandalorian season 2 - said: "It's a neural network you feed information into and it learns. So I had archival material from Mark in that era. We had clean recorded ADR from the original films, a book on tape he'd done from those eras, and then also Star Wars radio plays he had done back in that time. I was able to get clean recordings of that, feed it into the system, and they were able to slice it up and feed their neural network to learn this data."

If that’s the case, could (are they?) they do it for James Earl Jones? Harrison Ford? Carrie Fisher? It sure seems like they could create a performance from a deceased actor to fill an entire movie.

I recall a Star Trek video game that was in development in the early 90s but which never got made (Vulcan’s Fury) that used the original cast’s voices and had crude but good for the era CG reproductions of the characters. One of the developers commented at the time that once animating a person was possible, you could recreate the cast flawlessly, you just needed the voices.

Now it seems you don’t even need the voices.

Opinions on this will vary, but I’m pretty accepting of it. I like seeing where technology can take the craft of film making. Remember, there were people who complained that sound and color ruined movies for a long time.

 

Johnny Angell

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I’m assuming everyone is familiar with the events of The Book of Boba Fett episode 6. If not, you may want to skip this post, although I’m not really talking about the specifics of the episode.

Rather, I’m interested in the techniques used to bring Luke to the screen. According to the article below, it doesn’t sound like Mark Hamill was much involved, if at all. They used stand-ins and body doubles (with the guy they hired from YouTube doing the features), and, I think, most significantly, they used a synthesizer to create the voice.

Here’s what Matthew Wood - longtime Lucasfilm creative person ( he played Bib Fortuna at the end of The Mandalorian season 2 - said: "It's a neural network you feed information into and it learns. So I had archival material from Mark in that era. We had clean recorded ADR from the original films, a book on tape he'd done from those eras, and then also Star Wars radio plays he had done back in that time. I was able to get clean recordings of that, feed it into the system, and they were able to slice it up and feed their neural network to learn this data."

If that’s the case, could (are they?) they do it for James Earl Jones? Harrison Ford? Carrie Fisher? It sure seems like they could create a performance from a deceased actor to fill an entire movie.

I recall a Star Trek video game that was in development in the early 90s but which never got made (Vulcan’s Fury) that used the original cast’s voices and had crude but good for the era CG reproductions of the characters. One of the developers commented at the time that once animating a person was possible, you could recreate the cast flawlessly, you just needed the voices.

Now it seems you don’t even need the voices.

Opinions on this will vary, but I’m pretty accepting of it. I like seeing where technology can take the craft of film making. Remember, there were people who complained that sound and color ruined movies for a long time.

I was noticing that there have been more “animated” (pun intended) performances when I was watching the cgi Luke. He was better then the first time around but I think a person who did not know he was animated but was observant would at least think his acting was stiff.

Now they don’t need his voice? Jeez, I had thought he had recorded the dialogue and the studio had de-aged it. I hope they had to have his permission and had to pay Hamill.
 

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