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Star Wars Phantom Menace 1.1 Editor Speaks
guinnessy writes "Studio 360 interviews the person who carried out Phantom Edit 1.1. You can listen to the interview here if you have Real Audio. It's quite interesting and explains why he hated Jar Jar Binks so much and what he did."
The Phantom Editor's Website!
Probably because you can start listening nearly instantly, vs. waiting for the whole file to download first.
Also, Real has some nice streaming features. They can dynamically change the bitrate of the audio depending on your ability to download it.
I have no doubt that MP3 or OGG could be used to do the same thing, but consider that Real is a big player in this space.
"Derp de derp."
A new Phantom Edit has just been released this month. True it's not by the same guy that did the original (LA) version, but then again the 2nd (NY) version was done by 2 unrelated people in NY, so I guess it makes sense for the 3rd (DC) version to be made by yet an other unrelated person.
You can find info about it at the phantom edit forum. Also you can download a 2cd VCD of the new version (thanks to Bit Torrent!) from me here.
There's no official site to download it. Search your choice of Google or Gnutella.
- Rob
Didn't they learn their lesson from the Ewoks? Jar Jar = the Ewoks to the nth degree.
Not for nothing, but I was quite young when Jedi came out and I loved the Ewoks - they were something for me to appreciate and I found them very entertaining - maybe the kids today feel that way about Jar Jar. I didn't really appreciate the whole series until I was older, but those Ewoks really turned me on to the Star Wars Trilogy because of their childish appeal. I can see why George felt the need to include Jar Jar in the first Movie this time instead of the third - he wants the kids involved so they stick through all 3 new movies and hopefully watch the other 3.
Sound waves should be free!
no, no, no.
the problem is that in the usa, there is a history of both legal and illegal discrimination against people of darker skin. the beard analogy doesn't fly for this reason--people with beards weren't ENSLAVED and then BEATEN and FIREHOSED in the streets of the south. as for the general southern accent thing, well, you might be able to prove that people with southern accents are less likely to get lots of types of jobs (tv news anchor, for instance). but there just isn't the same historical pattern of discrimination.
so there's a real diffence. which is why there's also a legal distinction (disclaimer--IANAL), see the 14th amendment.
what I'm not saying, though, is that these movies are illegal in any way. but i think people are justified in being offended.
-------- -praktike
m3u isn't really a format. It is just the file extension for a text file with a list of mp3 files in it separated by CRLF on windows and LF on UNIX. It is a playlist file.
You're thinking of Vain from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
dave
Just to clarify: I don't think the voice of Foghorn Leghorn was intended to parody a particular living or dead politician.
From some random website I found through Google
Foghorn Leghorn - Large, white windbag of a rooster seen in a number of Warner Brother cartoons over the years. Foghorn Leghorn (inspired by Kenny Delmar's Senator Beauregard Claghorn from Bighorn character, a Deep South politician from THE FRED ALLEN SHOW on radio) premiered in the Warner's animated feature Walky Talky Hawky (1946). His popular catchphrases are "I say, I say there!", "Pay attention, boy!" and "Now listen here!" In his book That's Not all Folks (Warner Books, 1988) Mel Blanc, the voice of this boisterous loudmouth southern rooster, relayed a confusion that arose about the initial inspiration for the voice of Foghorn Leghorn. "Delmar claimed he based the voice not on my (Mel Blanc) character's, but on that of a Texas rancher he'd once hitched a ride from. Bob McKimson claimed Foghorn's voice was derived not from Senator Claghorn's but from someone on another old-time radio program, BLUE MONDAY JAMBOREE. And I claim I first heard the accent at a 1928 vaudeville show at San Francisco's Pantages Theater when I was twenty. As I recall it, in one of the skits an actor played a clownish hard-of-hearing southern sheriff."
That is, Foghorn Leghorn's voice was based on some vaudeville act, and his name seems to have been derived from a *fictional* senator, the character of which appeared on the Fred Allen Show, whose accent may have been similar.
Sorry for everyone's mispelled names...
Kurt: This is Studio 360, at my desk is the film editor Doby Dorn and we're talking about all kinds of editing. Millions of "Star Wars" fans were lukewarm about the 1999 prequel "The Phantom Menace". But one disappointed fan actually did something about it. He calls himself the Phantom Editor. And with his personal computer he entirely recut the movie on video and started giving it away. This new phantom edit has become a global phenomenon thanks to the Internet and we invited him to speak publicly for the first time about why he did what he did.
[Starwars soundtrack]
PhantomEditor: The very first day that Phantom Menance premiered that...that afternoon I was thinking "Boy this movie needs a re-edit." I don't know, that afternoon I went up there sat next to a few people who had saw it when they were kidding about bringing their little kid in to see it. I thought "Wow this is really cool." And then the movie started and that sorta went right out the window.
[Jar-Jar-Binks]
PhantomEditor: On the screen there was so much extra material on there that I thought if they could remove some of this extra stuff THAT would actually make a better film. It's not that George Lucas didn't have the technology to do what he wanted to do, it's that he did. And somehow the movie became more about the technology then the storytelling aspect of it. The things that I...I was concerned with... uh... in my edit were the story redundancy, the over-abundance of Jar-Jar antics that didn't seem to carry the story forward, and the presentation of Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker.
[Anikin: "You mean I get to come with you in your staaarshiiip?"]
PhantomEditor: He ends up being the evil character Darth Vader in the other "Star Wars" movies and the actions don't really seem reflective of that character. The blowing up of the droid control ship within the "Phantom Menace" was actually done as a... you know... an accident, where he hit the button and physically he says the word "Oops" at the end of it during the explosion.
[Anikin: "oops"]
PhantomEditor: Instead of letting him be heroic he ends up being a fumbling goof. All the happy accidents are now diminished.
PhantomEditor: Uh... throughout the whole movie from that battle sequence on Anikan's actions are now motivated by his heroic character. There are no oops's, there are none of the yippee's either...
[Anikan: "yippppeee!"]
PhantomEditor: There's an excessive amount of Jar-Jar antics, and what I mean by that, is the little examples which are almost a showpiece for the ILM special effects... where it takes you out of the story lets him participate in some little antic, and then you have to fight to get back into the story again. By removing alot of those things, I am not taking away from the story, I'm actually helping it by keeping people involved.
[Jar-Jar]
PhantomEditor: Initially when I did this it was for the audience of me and it really started out pretty harmless. The offering of a few copies to friends, who of course had friends who worked somewhere else who wanted to see it, and it began to get talked about. I mean, there was a point where I was getting over 200 emails a day. The first time I got one from New Zealand, that's what really scared the hell out of me, because I'm like "How did you see this?"
[Music swell]
PhantomEditor: First I remained anonymous because I guess that's originally what I wanted to do. You know, it was really a joke between friends, and I'm sure alot of those people knew who I was anyway. But when it got really huge like that it became really overwhelming for somebody like me who had edited this on a low end computer sitting on a $40 computer stand in my apartment. And then I didn't know the legal terms of it. All I knew is that I felt really safe because I wasn't making any profit off of that, but it was becoming aware to me that other people out there were.
[Deathstar music]
PhantomEditor: Initially George Lucas had said in public at the MTV awards that he did want to see it. But then later they put out a press statement that he would not ever watch it. Actually, I do think he should watch it. I just think that those people are making movies with their wallets. And might need a little kick in the butt from somebody like me who is completely at the other end of the scale which is similar to the message which is in the "Star Wars" films, that the underdog, the Luke Skywalker character overpowers the Empire.
[Music swell]
Kurt: Mike J. Nickels is the phantom editor and our story was produced by Michael May. Dody, you know the phantom editor I understand?
Dody: Yeah I've met him a couple times, and I have a copy of the "Phantom Edit". Is that what it's called?
Kurt: That's what it's called yeah.
Dody: [Laugh] and uhh, but I've never watched it.
Kurt: What do you think of... of what he's done? I mean the idea of... of a mere civilian taking a piece of, you know, zillion dollar entertainment and... and by his lights improving it?
Dody: Well, uhm, I think if it's an irrepressable urge.. uh.. uh.. there's no reason why somebody should stop doing something that's an irrepressable urge. I mean why? Why should he, I mean, he's not try to, as he said, not try to make any profit from it. Uh... I understand the irritation of the person who did make it. I... I understand it. But I don't have an answer for that. I don't really have an answer for whether he... I mean, what are the options? Could they come and put him in jail for having done that? I mean, there are over... over time there are examples of.. of other films... I think it's "Once Upon a Time in America" that had the European version where the time structure was all over the place, and then they made an American version that was... much uhm.. I mean obviously these were the people who owned the film, but I doubt seriously if it was the film-maker who wanted it to completely rearrange the time and made it much shorter. And people were critical of it. So I think when something like that is done that it opens... that its a forum for discussion.
Kurt: I understand that "Momento" in a European DVD form was in risk, or is going to be reorganized entirely, is that true?
Dody: Not exactly, uhm... the... I think it's the DVD release in England has an easter egg on it where you can play the film in forward chronology and Chris and I actually have never put the film in forward chronology. So while we were working on "Insomnia" we rented [laugh] the film, and digitized it, and put it in forward chronology. And we were so shocked by the change in how you experience the film; it was a completely different film. Uhm.. the character of.. of Lenard Shelby was now a really bad guy and in the structure that is Chris's design, he is someone who is avenging his wife's horrible murder. So he is a sympathetic character all the way through. And part of the purpose of that in telling the story that Chris wanted to tell is that it is an anti-revenge revenge tale. Because you spend the whole film thinking this is a good guy that we have empathy with who is going to avenge his wife's murder and at the end, or the middle of the story you realize, oh, maybe he is just a psycho.
Dody: And then it makes you question, I'd like to think it makes you question, the whole idea of revenge. Ah... because it's suddenly your perspective has shifted.
Kurt: And when you re-edited it as technology allows us to do and put it in the normal straight forward fasion, it's like you turn a beautiful, amazing, oragami construction into a... just a piece of paper.
Dody: Right, exactly, and it felt suddenly just like a... uh... uh... low rent, you know, film noir.
Kurt: Dody Dorn, thank you very much for joining me today in Studio 360.
Dody: Been alot of fun.
Kurt: Starting next month, you can see Dody Dorn's work in the new movie by Christopher Noland "Insomnia". It stars, Al Pacino, Hillary Swank, and Robert Williams. For more information about Dody Dorn, or about anything else you've heard on our program, visit our website, studio360.org.
Kurt: Studio 360 is produced by WNYC along with PRI, public radio international. The production team includes, Julie Berstein, Cary Hillman, Peter Clowny, Jocelyn Gonzolas, Steve Nelson, Michelle Speagle, Lisal Muhas, Andy Lancet, Lou Alcasky, Micheal Rayfield. The music is by David Vantiegams. I'm Kurt Anderson, and I do hope you'll join us next week in Studio 360.
Announcer: Studio 360 is co-produced by WNYC radio and public radio international, and is supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Tiffany and Company Foundation, and the Horith W. Goldsmith Foundation.
[PRI sound]
It appears Ockham lost his razor and grew a beard.
"Anyone who would feel bad because they saw a movie where people who had dark skin were evil probably feel bad about pretty much anything.
no, no, no.
the problem is that in the usa, there is a history of both legal and illegal discrimination against people of darker skin"
no, no, no. the problem is that there is a history of discrimination all the way back to Noah. Someone out there is always oppressed, downtrod, and yes, discriminated against. Your ancestors (some hundred plus years ago) were slaves. Her ancestors 100 years ago were women. My ancestors were poor Irish people forced into bondage by a government who oppressed them. Get over it. It is people who define the boundaries who keep discrimination alive. Others choose to teach their children to love everyone no matter what their skin color, religion, heritage or sexual preference. Eventually we'll all get it right.
~lilz~ Optimism IS a disease.