Star Wars 'Video Rental Library' First Print VHS...

I've noticed that there is a collecting Star Wars fan base that want the first print VHS tapes. I happen to have one that I bought a few years ago and it is in a hard case and has 'Video Rental Library' on the box and each one has a serial number. I was viewing mine today, because it will be going up on Ebay, and noticed that there is a block of lettering that is inherent in the print at the top left of the screen. I don't know if CBS/Fox did this on purpose or if it was a mess up on there part. Anyway, here are a few screen captures from my tape:










My question is this: Does anyone have an original first print they can check? Is this normal on this VHS? Thanks.

 

This version has the wrong Fox logo and fanfare. It is supposed to have the slanted zero, and the fanfare is supposed to be the Cinemascope Extension version from 1954 (also heard in High Anxiety in 1977).

 

I played the tape from my VCR through my DVR/DVD recorder and then to the flatscreen. Through some help of a few friends it looks like that may have led to the appearance of the lettering in the upper left corner. Overscan showing more than what should be seen on a regular older TV. Very funky to know that there is more to the picture than you are really seeing on the older TV's. It is a first print which has the serial numbers/library numbers on both the case and the cassette itself. The VHS itself is one sturdy SOB. It's got metal pins where the tape secures to the takeup reel (Tails Out side). Heavy duty construction compared to the later VHS tapes of the late 80's.

 

Looks like FOXVID and a number to me.

 

A lot of older VHS releases had this sort of info across the top, where the average TV would never show it.

 

Wow, that's a bizarre "spoiler" key superimposed on the image. I had no idea Fox was doing that with their rental-only tapes. My memory is that those tapes were duplicated in special red VHS shells that said "rental-only" on them. (I know for sure WB did this; not so sure about Fox.)

The whole rental-only thing was really whacked. The studios went nuts about the fact that the 1st-sale doctrine allowed video dealers to rent VHS tapes an infinite number of times without ever having to pay any royalties back to the studio. Needless to say, this idea ultimately did not work.

The first official transfer, BTW, was done in 1982 by my old pal Pat Kennedy at Modern Videofilm in their original building. It was pan/scan only, done from 35mm IP. It was since retransferred a half-dozen times, including a letterbox HD version done by me in 2004 at ILM. I believe a 4K version is waiting in the wings, but I have no clue if it'll be the 1977 theatrical version -- which would require a ton of time and money to tweak. But it could be done.

 

If Lucasfilm were to go about restoring the original theatrical cuts (if they so needed to) would they do it in-house or get someone like the esteemed Robert Harris to oversee the restoration?

I actually don't think they need to, the original theatrical versions already exist, likely as digital negatives; on the Empire of Dreams DVD documentary, at around the 1hr 15min mark, there is a section detailing the initial opening of Star Wars in 1977, and the footage shown in the documentary is of the theatrical version - no 'Episode IV: A New Hope' on the opening scroll, original model shots, no praxis effect, etc - and it's in anamorphic presentation and looking pristine to boot.

I would love to know which versions got the recent 4k treatment, it worked wonders on the Bond films...

 

The Disney people are pretty demanding, and they have their pick of the best restoration companies in the world. When I was working on the new versions of Star Wars and Jedi back in 2004 at ILM, I was told for a fact that all the missing original pieces still existed but were totally beat to hell. They would require weeks and weeks of meticulous dirt cleaning, de-flickering, stabilization, and so on in order to drop them back into a new digital version. They definitely have studio prints that reflect the original release, and there are film continuity cutting scripts that show exactly where the correct edits should take place.

I no longer have an inside source for information like this, but I was led to believe they were prepping 4K versions "at some point." In fact, I was kind of upset that the negative scans from 2004 weren't done as pin-registered 4K scans, but they had already been done many weeks before I was hired for the job.

 

Weren't the original camera negatives given a thorough restoration back in 1995-96 prior to them being re-cut for the Special Editions...? Maybe that's what the recent 4k restoration has upgraded, one can hope.

And, speaking frankly, I don't believe a word that comes out of Lucas' mouth most times, the man lived in a bubble and was surrounded by both yes-men and paid employees, all of whom parroted the official party line about the theatrical versions no longer existing in completed negative form. Even if that were technically true, the individual elements do still exist and are undoubtedly preserved, Lucas is too shrewd a businessman to dispose of anything, much less any future commercial opportunity. The noted film restorationist Robert A. Harris has publicly commented several times that everything exists (IP's, safety copies, original 35mm prints, etc) for him to fully reconstruct the original theatrical versions if he was approached to do so, his acclaimed restoration of The Godfather I and II were very considerable works of restoration and they turned out to be fantastic in both picture and sound quality.

The Empire of Dreams documentary, I believe, is the smoking gun that proves the original theatrical versions were scanned and digitally archived, I could be wrong about that, but I don't think I am... but when Lucas' own VP in 2006, Jim Ward, allegedly strongly advised him to do right by the fans and NOT to release sub-standard transfers of the original trilogy (as happened), I think that implies, at the very least, that the theatricals could in theory have been released in proper, anamorphic presentations... you don't advise your boss of an alternative plan of action if said plan doesn't even exist.

But with Lucas (thankfully) out of the picture, we might - just might - get the theatrical versions released... but then again, we should have got them nine years ago...

 

As far as I know, they didn't cut into the original negatives for the new versions and instead just made digital dupes.

I think this is an unfair characterization of Lucas. The guy I worked with twice a week for three months was very aware, had very definite ideas, and there was no wishy-washy-ness. I did actually have discussions with him on alternate approaches to give him what he wanted, and my take was that Lucas appreciated the honesty... but at the same time, it was made clear to me that this was his movie, not ours. I liked and respected him quite a bit, and even if I didn't like the prequels and didn't like many of the new VFX changes, I understood why he did them. I found Lucas to be razor-sharp, very bright, and a much nicer, thoughtful guy than the image you see in the documentaries.

I asked producer Rick McCallum (who I worked with every single day and supervised all of the project) about whether it would be possible to reconstruct the original theatrical releases, and he essentially said there wasn't enough time or money available. It was also clear that the "correct" version of each film was the one inside George's head at the moment, and only he could say if it was what he intended or not.

One things fans have to get straight: we don't own these films. Lucasfilm owns the movies (now Disney). Fans are just the customers. You can gripe and argue and complain all you want, but if the original artist chooses to change the work, that's the way it is. We have no say in it. If it were left up to me, I would've gone with the compromise of having a "Director's Revised Version" with all the contemporary footage and remixes, and then the "Original Theatrical Version" exactly as it was shown in theaters. That way, everybody would've been satisfied. But it was not my decision to make.

BTW, I'm a big fan of the movie The People vs. George Lucas, which I think has a lot of insight into all the issues and I think they cover the controversy very well. I think it's very telling that Lucas personally approved their use of scene clips and soundtrack music for the documentary. And as far as "Yes Men" go, as god is my witness, one of the main Episode 3 editors had a small poster over his computer display that said HAN SHOT FIRST. It was there every single day in the edit bay on the second floor while I was working in C Building at the Kerner Blvd. facility in San Rafael, and Lucas never asked the editor to pull the sign down. The editor told me that George found it amusing.

 

I've always thought that because Lucas owned the rights to the Original Trilogy, it would be him putting up the cash for a new remaster of the Theatrical Versions (for all three films, you would have to be looking at close to $10 million. I remember the footage was in pretty rough shape in 1996, I'd hate to see what it looks like now!). Thanks for confirming that he HASN'T destroyed the original elements, Vidoit. That wouldn't make sense and Lucas doesn't come across as being that spiteful. In fact watching a recent video with him, about Disney turning down his ideas and why he has washed his hands of Star Wars, I almost felt sorry for the guy. He has gone from being the godfather of modern cinema to being a comic book villain in the eyes of fanboys.



I love his F.... You-"Jar Jar Binks" response too - BTW.

I've always thought the whole point of Binks was to be an annoying character (which fans seem to have missed and have just dismissed him as a cynical kid friendly cash-cow. He's the frustrating fool that we as an audience are not meant to like. After all, his incompetence brought about the rise of the Empire.

Mind you - the prequels still have their share of problems as films.

 

I used to have a letterboxed version on Beta in the late 70's. I have no idea of the source. The version I got was so many generations down that the burst, I'm guessing, had simply collapsed and rendered either a monochrome picture, or several sections where(again I'm guessing) the subcarrier or SC/H phase got completely out of control and made a gnarly sploshing of color that looked like oil in water.

It definitely was a letterboxed version, with far, far too much info on the bottom. Splice lines were easily visible. Perhaps the colorist was from Mos Eisley?



Dan

 

Bootleg?

 

My Australian PAL copy doesn't have this. It's a first release RENTAL edition too.

http://swonvideo.com/vhs/vvhsanh1982aus.htm

 

I think so, yes. Even back then, with loose QC and release prints allegedly being used for videocassette issue, I cannot imagine anyone signing off on this. And letterbox in the late 70's?
The horror! My copy began already on the Lucasfilm ID, I recall, so it was already upcut a bit.

Dan

 

Yeah, bootleg copies of Star Wars were highly prized in that era. The trick was finding competent people who knew how to make a decent master videotape... and competent + bootlegger rarely added up. All these bootlegs wound up looking worse and worse on subsequent generations, so it's very likely that once you got 6-7-8 generations below the master, the color and everything else just went to hell.

I was initially against letterboxed video in the 1970s because I hated the idea of throwing away 40% of the on-screen resolution to blanking. What changed that was laserdisc, since the LD format had about 50% more resolution than VHS, and it made widescreen images tolerable. I think once widescreen monitors became popular in the late 1990s/early 2000s, it got to the point where nobody is bothered about letterboxing any more, as long as it suits the film.

 

I absolutely don't wish to paint Lucas as some kind of malevolent caricature, that's certainly not what I either meant nor intended to convey; by all accounts, he is a very personable, likable, and genuinely nice guy who is indeed a razor-ship businessman and still a very creative mind... but he has a revisionist, stubborn streak in him that rankles many people, and THAT'S what gets some fan's heckles up. The 2006 DVD debacle is proof of that, Lucas could have either released respectable presentations of those films there and then or had work done on them (if needed) before releasing them, but he knew exactly what he was doing by deliberately releasing sub-standard, non-anamorphic transfers, and that's something that is simply both inarguable and indefensible. What would it do to him, either personally or artistically, to have released both the original theatrical versions alongside his revised versions of the Star Wars trilogy, and give people the choice of which version to watch? And it's not just with that trilogy, he's done the same thing with THX-1138, by releasing an 'updated' version of that film onto DVD in 2004 with new VFX shots, but not simultaneously included the original director's cut available for the previous three decades.

I think Frank Darabont's own experience (writing for the fourth Indiana Jones movie) and comments on Lucas say it all;

“I told him he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.”

'nuff said.

 

Surprisingly, Fox has sewn up the rights to the first Star Wars movie for a long time, and I think Lucas' interest in spending money to make the studio a profit is very low. The other films' status are different.

The people at Lucasfilm told me that they've always been a bunch of packrats and saved just about everything, going back 40 years or more. There are things that have dropped through the cracks, and assembling together a "virgin" version of Star Wars would be daunting. I don't think it could be done in less than a year, and I'm guessing it would cost about $1000 a minute (at least $1.2 million) per film. Maybe more if they wanted to go nuts and redo the composites and fix the actual mistakes in the original film. And that would lead to a conversation as to whether the "mistakes" are gospel or not. I personally would have no problem if the real obvious technical mistakes were fixed, like seeing stars through spaceships and stuff like that. But no content-related changes or story changes.

Yeah, that's my opinion as well. I think Lucas saw a chance with Jar-Jar to drop in some terrible irony, that this flippant, annoying character who always meant well and was very polite wound up causing horrible damage in the decades that followed, having one of the deciding votes in the Senate. My problem is, the character was so irritating, I didn't give an F that he was ironic. My theory is that Lucas was desperately looking for something to lighten up the first couple of movies, and instead of doing this with the existing characters or snappy dialogue (as other writers had done for the first few movies), he just introduced a comedic character that didn't work very well.

Yep, that is the George Lucas I knew. I didn't called him "stubborn," but I would say he's "quietly determined" and won't settle for anything less than what he wants. I did have a few occasions where I gave him more than what he wanted, and those were good days. But what you saw on the 2004 home videos were exactly what the director chose, good or bad.

 

I grabbed one of those professional Sony projection TV's from around 1980 or so. Bulletproof construction quality, and what I think was a 72" 4x3 screen. I had lots of trouble making most people understand what letterboxing is. But yes, I hear you about letterboxing itself: I remember seeing either Spartacus or Ben-Hur in widescreen on a 19" set, and it honestly looked like someone's belt.


Dan

 

See post number 3 in this thread for details of why the letters, which looks like FOX VID, appears in the upper left of the screen. I played a second time it on my 21 year old Panasonic and the lettering doesn't show up.

 

Even though he didn't direct ESB or ROTJ? I usually consider films to "belong" to the director, so Lucas acting like those films are "his" is just another example of his arrogance.

 

Haha, that's some pretty obvious stamping on the frame above, reminds me of just how much overscan reduced what we all saw for so long.
So far nothing official compares to the Japanese Special Collection and its super cheap USA Fox letterboxed ports. These LDs are the only way you're going to get something near the original presentations.
I understand George always wanting to tweak things, as all creators only see the negatives or inherent problems. But after the 97SE all the other stuff is ridiculous. I remember getting the DVDs on the day of release and doing all three...but even at 14 wondering why the colors looked so weird and what was going on...and then seeing Hayden's face pop up.....
What he did to THX 1138 is even worse and IMO painfully bad. I do at least credit the 2004 DVDs (along with the differences in the Bonds) for getting me into transfer processes.
The BDs can burn in hell for all I care, just for the idiotic sound alone.

For any 4K, they have to go back to original materials. All the 97 material is 2k or less, as are the 2004 and BD changes. The problem will be convincing Disney that it is financially profitable to restore to the original state. (With all sound mixes!!!)

I think the big shift was somewhere at the beginning of Jedi. Gary Kurtz sums it up perfectly when he says he felt something shifted from the original intent around that time and thus he departed. Harrison's comment about wanting to give Han at least something to do by killing him off is beautiful: that he thought the reason for not killing Han was that no one could sell dead Han toys.

I don't blame George nor do I dislike him at all. The prequels were a decent enough idea but they were misguided and not really all that necessary. But then again I've gotten my SW fix from the better EU stuff since the OT anyway. I do hope he does do those smaller pictures he keeps talking about, as he finally seems to be fully done with Star Wars.

 

All George Lucas had to do with the restoration of the original trilogy back in the mid-1990's was (as happened) to restore/clean up/preserve the negatives and digitize them, remove the matte lines and other optical effects 'seams', correct the mistakes in the three films - the missing Millenium Falcon in the Yavin IV overhead shot in Star Wars, the visible puppeteer's arm in The Empire Strikes Back, and the disappearing TIE fighters in Return of the Jedi - but also re-do a very, very few VFX shots that were either not finished or were not what was fully intended because of limitations of time and technology back in the day. If he had done only that, and been disciplined about it, no-one would have complained because it would have made for 'complete' films. But he just went buck wild with the alterations - even ILM visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren lamented that they "went too far" for the Special Editions - and changed things, both visual and audio, that didn't need changing, and then denied audiences the choice of which version to watch...

And a nice 4k restoration - no doubt worked on by our own Vidiot - with a simultaneous DVD/Blu ray release in time for the 30th anniversary in 2007 would have been the icing on the cake... hell, I'd even buy the prequels if the original theatrical versions were included as a big box-set. The prequels are films that could actually use a new Special Edition treatment; tighten them up considerably in the editing (a LOT of redundant scenes in that trilogy), upgrade some of the more cartoonish VFX shots, and make Anakin Skywalker a little more sympathetic as a character via careful and judicious editing of Hayden Christensen's performance.

But then again, all of that should have been done back in the day, ho hum...

 

Perhaps they'll take a few million from the BILLIONS of dollars that they'll make off of the new film and throw the restoration process for the original film a bone.

 

The arm in ESB wasn't fixed until the Blu IIRC.
The only problem in the OT for me is the visible garbage mattes from improper levels.

Even the Prequels need good transfers without DNR and the original theatrical cut of TPM.