During tonight's yearly "In Memoriam" section for the 94th Academy Awards, one of the honorees was Robert Blalack, recipient of the visual effects academy award for Star Wars in 1978. You can see the moment here (timestamp 2:46).There's only one problem with it: the clip shown alongside his image isn't from 1977's Star Wars, it's from the Special Edition that was released in 1997 for the 20th anniversary.Here's the moment as most viewers know it from the Special Edition onward (timestamp 5:21)Here's the original effect from the film in 1977 (timestamp 4:16)I don't think it's a huge deal, and I don't know if Robert Blalack was involved with ILM's work on the special edition changes, but regardless it's not the effect (or one of the effects) that won him (and the other award recipients) the Oscar in 1978. I'm sure whoever put together the highlight reel just grabbed a clip from Star Wars to put alongside and that was it. But that's sort of the point: the farther removed we are from the release of the original films, and as they're released again and again, we forget what the movie originally looked like. I've had discussions at various times with fans who just want a release of the original Star Wars films who don't even realize how much they've changed over the years: not just infamous editing and scene replacements, but matte line removal and wholesale visual effects that have totally changed the visuals of the films besides just rescanning the negatives in 4k.Again, I don't think there's anything malicious by it, and I'm not trying to be a purist of any sort (I love the '97 special editions I grew up with), I just think this serves as an example of how important film preservation is, and how we can collectively forget such important milestones in VFX and filmmaking when viewers lose access to the original work and vision of these creators. via /r/StarWars https://ift.tt/v9UHyor
No comments:
Post a Comment