Star Wars Special Edition News by the ton
Harry Jay Knowles
Go check it out on the web page http://www.bga.com/~rodan/coolnews.html
Ahhhh, what the hell, this is too cool of news to keep just to the
page. Here yall go.....
New SPECIAL EDITION NEWS!!!!
Ok folks here is the big one. The big ol description of the MAKING
MAGIC:
MAKING OF THE STAR WARS SPECIAL EDITIONS. I went through the
CD taking notes. Unfortunately the images and video files are in a
non-copiable format. So I can't show you the pics and videos. I suggest
you
buy the CD now, personally, if you wish to see it for yourself.
The CD is split into 5 sections: 1) George Lucas- "Why a Special
Edition?" 2)
Sneak Previews: New Sequences 3) Lucasfilm Archives 4) Industrial
Lights &
Magic - Production Crew and finally 5) Lucasarts Credits
Star Wars: A New Hope Special Edition
The Tatooine search for the droids by the Stormtroopers kicks off with
the
Imperial Lander taking off. Stormtrooper looking through field-glasses
pan.
They show an early animatic of the shot, then the plate shots they
filmed
recently. The new shots from this sequence show the dewback behind
troopers, a shot of two dewbacks in the background where there used to
be
one. An early dewback animatic moved to erratic for Lucas' tastes and
he
wanted it slowed down. The dates on this material came from May 3rd,
1995.
Then it's off to Mos Eisley. Lucas says that Mos Eisley was one of the
reasons
besides the Jabba thing that made him want to do the Special Edition.
OB1
sets us up for this biggest baddest town and it didn't deliver. Lucas
only
filmed a couple of street shots because of a lack of shooting time. So
now as
the Landspeeder enters the town all the bunny-rat creatures scurry
away-
maybe 25 or so of these critters. Pretty nice looking. City is bigger
too. As the
speeder heads into the town the camera cranes up to show the speeder
continuing down a street through the now gigantic space-port city of
Mos
Eisley. There is a humongous castle keep like structure with many
large tan
domed Moorish-like futuristic archetechture speckled with an
occasional
crashed ship body laying about. Then we cut to a street-level shot of
the
Landspeeder rushing away from the camera on down the street which is
more
claustrophobic feeling. No longer a sprawling suberb looking area. They
show
models for the city, that were photographed and painted in the
computer
then realized as fully moving matte paintings. Some 39 ILM staffers
and
children dressed up as denizens of Mos Eisley to be placed into this
Digital
Matte, including effects god Steve "Spaz" Williams. The next shot is
the
infamous Swoop & Ronto encounter. By the way Ronto was a Bronto and for
a brief Lucas suggested moment could of wound up being called a Pinto,
then
Lucas just dropped the B. Wow Genius at work. What a wonder. The guy on
the swoop was called by ILMers BUBBA FETT. The Stormtrooper that
questions OB1 and Luke will now have a small Imperial Probe Droid fly
behind him. For the Mos Eisley sequence they used CG Dewbacks, Male and
Female Scurriers, Rontos, C3P0, OB1, Luke, Jabba, Jawas, R2D2,
Stormtroopers, a LandSpeeder, the Falcon, the mini Probe Droid, and a
Thin
Droid. The bird's eye take off of the Falcon was done by ILM effects
man
John Knoll. The Greedo confrontation with Han has changed. Lucas always
envisioned the shot as having Greedo motion to shot Han and Han beat
him
on the draw. However it wound up looking like Han was a cold blooded
killer. Yeah so. Well Lucas had them pull the camera back to show Han
and
Greedo in the shot and Greedo fires a micro second before Han, but
misses as
Han blows him away. Material for this sequence was dated from December
3rd 1993!!! to January 24, 1995.
Next we move on to Jabba at Han's Falcon hanger bay. Now what is the
sound of Jabba slithering. Well sound effects god, Ben Burtt, filled a
garbage
can with wet towels and moved them around producing a perfect squishy
squirmy slimey sound as Jabba moves and gesticulates. He is also
responsible
for the odd exclamation sound that Jabba makes as Han steps up and
over
Jabba's huge tail. Lucas laughed out loud when he saw that. Now the
problem with this footage is Han does not leave a shadow on Jabba.
Hopefully this will be corrected since the primary lighting source is
to Han's
back although this footage was finished as of June 8th 1995 so they
have had
plenty of time to fix it. . Originally Jabba was to be in a floating
throne which
we see storyboarded dating from Febuary 16, 1994. Also of minor
interest is
Steve "Spaz" Williams, who did all the Jabba animation, directing an
actor
in a Boba Fett outfit against a big blue screen set. This probably
doesn't
interest many of you.
We don't get to see it here, but Ben Burtt talks about doing soundwork
for
the Biggs and Luke reunion on Yavin before the fight. So expect it in
the
film.
Then there is a little matter of a Death Star attack. This is a John
Knoll tour
de force. As he is responsible for CGing the X-wings, Y-wings,
Tie-Fighters, 3
different views of the Death Star, the Gun turrets. In all there is now
30 rebel
ships to match the dialogue. Also that is John Knoll's face on each and
every
one of those pilots. We can see 5 of them. He starts us off with a 180
degree
shot of the X-wings approaching the Death Star. First we see their
fronts with
the Planet of Yavin in the background, then the camera begins to pivot
and
zoom 90 degrees to along side the lead X-wing then the camera pivots
and
continues another 90 degrees till all we see is the back of the ships
and the
Death Star in the distance against a starfield. One shot I am dying to
see is of
4 X-wings diving at a 66 degree dive while rolling towards the Death
Star. I
think it will look fabulous. Also something of interest is ol Ben
Burtt has
added ultra low sub-woofer sounds for during ship fly-bys and
explosions
that will shake and tremble your body in the audience. Also the
Spaceship
sounds can come at you, then over your head and over to a back corner
behind you. Hee Hee Hee, I'm gonna love this sound.
Now all in all in Star Wars: A New Hope: Special Edition there are 23
CG
models and alot of CG grain. Say what? Well apparently the ILMers had
to
match the grain of the original film that had at some points Nylon Hose
over
the camera lens.
STAR WARS: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK:
SPECIAL EDITION
You know how the Falcon is escorted by the cloud car over some clouds
then
the next shot is of the Falcon landing. Well that apparently bugged
George.
So he is changing it. He is going to have a Point-of-View shot from
the
Falcon's perspective as it flies behind a cloud car through a
completely CG
realized Bespin. Then a Bird's eye shot of the Falcon barely
navigating
through the dense grove of buildings in a beautiful shot leading up
to the
landing. Lucas and Company also shot new footage of the Wampa, which
will
convince us he is a bigger meaner not so cuddily character. Nice
looking pics
of the Wampa in the cave. We'll see. Looks nice.
STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI: SPECIAL
EDITION
First off if you are looking to see the end of Jedi footage it isn't
here. No
Coruscant, or Tatooine, or Endor. Oh it is in the movie, I saw the
footage
with Sansweet in College Station, but here they show us Jabba's
dancing
show. They seem to be keeping the puppet Jabba. The band is larger
with a
BIG Kabuki-style drum that is placed in front of the Hanging Han Wall
Plaque. Two big guys play the drum beating on it from either side.
One is
obese and the other looks like one of the Skiff guys. Sy Snootles is
completely
CG so she will be moving around a bit more than she used to. Expect
great
mouth and face movements. The lead male blues singer of the group is
someone named Yuzzum on the storyboards, but his name is pronounced
(Yuhz ahh). He is a sloth-footed, hair-less goat legged, furry abdomen,
beaver
faced (well sorta) with a big big mouth and antenae on top of his
head, and
finally 4 fingers. On each hand two of the fingers ar very small. Also
there is a
fat Gollem-like character that plays a big harmonica like device that
plugs
into the base which is controled by foot pedals that the alien plays
with his
feet. There is also 3 back up singers. One is a white Oola, another a
female
Greedo, and a red-haired punk horned girl. Also the original Oola is
back as
a stroke of luck by Rick McCallum.
--
Harry Jay Knowles
Austin, Tx
512-467-8747
For More information about cool news and my favorite newsie links go
to....
http://www.bga.com/~rodan
http://www.bga.com/~rodan/coolnews.html
Well gee what else can I say.........
James K. Richter Jr.
Where is this CD-ROM available? This isi the first time that I have
heard of it?
James R.
Marc Foreman
James K. Richter Jr. <jric...@mail.texas.net> wrote in article
<325D7C...@mail.texas.net>...
> Harry Jay Knowles wrote:
> >
> > Go check it out on the web page http://www.bga.com/~rodan/coolnews.html
> >
> > Ahhhh, what the hell, this is too cool of news to keep just to the
> > page. Here yall go.....
> >
> > New SPECIAL EDITION NEWS!!!!
Well, when I bought the THX laserdisc special edition a couple years ago, I
had a premonition they'd want me to put my hand back into my wallet sooner
or later ...
marc
Brett Moseley
Wow... Gotta hand it to Harry...
So I guess the Biggs scene IS in the new movie....
-Brett-
Harry Jay Knowles
I received over 125 messages asking who, what when where
why and how on this cd-rom. First I bought it at a mall
store. If you live in the USA or Canada expect it to be at
your big software dealers if not already then at longest by
the end of next week. The Special Edition disc is sold in
conjunction with Dark Forces, Rebel Assault, Rebel
Assault II and Tie Fighter a collector's edition. The entire
package is called
THE LUCASARTS ARCHIVES VOL 2:
THE STAR WARS COLLECTION
kenkhong
hello, everyone... please E-mail to me, I am ace, I really crazy in
hollywood 's movies... faster... my inbox always empty...help...
> "James K. Richter Jr." <jric...@mail.texas.net> wrote in article
<325D7C...@mail.texas.net>...
WWatchOne
In article <53k9at$d...@dailyplanet.wam.umd.edu>, bre...@wam.umd.edu (Brett
Moseley) writes:
>So I guess the Biggs scene IS in the new movie....
Different Biggs scene. More talk just before the Death Star battle, not
the shot at the beginning.
WW1
(at least, that's how I've read all the various posts and such about it)
World Watch OnLine: The Buckaroo Banzai Mailing List
Email: WWat...@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/wwatchone
"If it aint one thing, it's another." - Rawhide
Ryan Silva
> Wow... Gotta hand it to Harry...
>
> So I guess the Biggs scene IS in the new movie....
ONE Biggs scene is in SWSE, not all of them. Don't go looking for Biggs,
Deak, Fixer and Camie in Tosche Station, those scenes are still in the
vaults. Break out your Making of Star Wars video tapes for a look at the
scene to be reinserted- Biggs' talk with Luke and Red Leader just before
the assault on the Death Star.
ry
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