ROTS DVD

Inside the DVD: Revenge of the Sith
October 06, 2005

Disc One: The Feature

On November 1st, the Star Wars saga will be complete on DVD with the release of the missing piece of the puzzle, Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. Developed by the same team that put together the bestselling and award-winning DVD releases of the other Star Wars films, the Episode III DVD was produced concurrently with the hit movie.

"From the beginning of production, George Lucas wanted to be sure we chronicled everything that went into the making of Episode III specifically to create an incredible DVD experience," said Jim Ward, the DVD's executive producer and Senior Vice President of Lucasfilm Ltd. "This DVD has literally been three years in the making, and it's going to be a fantastic way to complete the Star Wars saga at home."

Like its predecessor Episode II, Revenge of the Sith's live action was captured with the latest generation of HD digital cameras and lenses. Since the source material and the final DVD transfer stayed within the digital medium from beginning to end, the finished result is pristine image and sound clarity, overseen by the quality assurance experts at THX. Like previous releases, the release includes a THX Optimizer for on-screen calibration of picture and sound to perfect levels.

To best preserve the image and sound quality of the feature, the centerpiece of any DVD release, Lucasfilm has once again separated the movie and bonus materials onto two discs. Upon inserting Disc One into a DVD player, the screen soon fills with an Episode III environment transformed into a menu presentation.

DVD Producer Van Ling is again responsible for taking the worlds of Star Wars and customizing the imagery to create a dynamic and engaging menu experience. "ILM really worked hard to give me usable elements as digital files," says Ling. "I'm constantly trying to find ways to take their elements and use them in ways they never intended or could even imagine."

The menus consist of familiar yet new presentations of Episode III imagery. One of three randomly selected environmental themes appears each time you watch: either fiery Mustafar, with its lava rivers and heat-blasted industrial facility; Utapau, base of operations for the wicked General Grievous; or Coruscant, with the showdown between Emperor Palpatine and Yoda in the Senate being a featured scene. Hyperspace members, for more information about the creation of these menus, click here.

Knowing that fans like to home in on their specific favorite scenes, Lucasfilm segmented the film into 50 chapters. With titles such as "Tragedy of Darth Plagueis," "Mace vs. Sidious," "Order 66" and "Immolation," and animated presentations on the menu screens, viewers will have no problem finding just the scene they're looking for.

The DVD is available in both Widescreen and Full Screen. Determining which version is right for you is primarily a question of personal tastes. Widescreen preserves the rectangular image as it was presented in movie theaters, but in order to fit that rectangular image into the more squarish shape of a standard TV image, black bars appear at the top and bottom on the screen. Full Screen doesn't have the black bars, but fills the screen top-to-bottom with imagery. However, since a rectangular image cannot fully fit into a square shape, parts of the image are cropped out of the frame. An example of the differences is included here, but to find out more about the differences, see this article.

Disc One presents multiple audio options for viewers. You can fully experience the rich aural experience of Revenge of the Sith in Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 EX, or choose from English Dolby Surround 2.0, French Dolby Surround 2.0 and Spanish Dolby Surround 2.0. The movie also has optional English subtitles that can be toggled on and off. For those seeking insight into the creation of the movie as it plays out, one of the optional audio tracks includes commentary provided by George Lucas, Producer Rick McCallum, Visual Effects Supervisors John Knoll and Roger Guyett and Animation Director Rob Coleman.

"This was my seventh commentary with George [Lucas], including all six Star Wars films and THX 1138," says Gary Leva, producer of the audio commentary. "We have fun together and, since I've also produced documentaries for all the previous DVD sets, I know the ground we're covering pretty well by now. So I can ask intelligent questions and sort of guide him into areas I think would be interesting for fans. George has gotten increasingly skilled at doing commentaries. It's been fun for me to work with him over the years and watch the progression."

Disc Two: The Extras

After enjoying the movie, viewers can delve deeper into the Episode III experience with Disc Two, where all the bonus features reside. Known as "value-added material" in the industry, Lucasfilm has taken care to make bonus material engaging, insightful and entertaining. While some other DVDs load their value-added discs with playable interactive gimmicks and games, Lucasfilm has instead concentrated on making the material illuminate the filmmaking process and serve as a sort of abbreviated "mini film school."

Disc Two content is also introduced through a series of animated menus that transform familiar Episode III settings. The tight production deadlines of the Episode III DVD meant that Producer Van Ling and his team only developed the concepts for the Disc Two menus, but the actual execution of these designs fell to The Studio at New Wave Entertainment. "They have a very different style and feel from my menus, which were very interesting to see," says Ling. Producing for New Wave was Paul Miles Schneider, with art direction by Mike Romey. Environments include the bridge of General Grievous' cruiser, the Jedi Temple computer rooms, and Darth Vader's rehabilitation chamber.

The centerpiece of the bonus material is the 78-minute documentary Within a Minute. It is an unusual format for a documentary, with a specific and challenging story to tell. "It truly is mind-boggling how many people, how many thousands of hours it takes to make just one sequence," says Rick McCallum. "An interesting experiment is to actually take a sequence of shots, and analyze how many people were involved in the making of that sequence. Within this brief moment of the film you really have a window into the entire process it took to make Episode III."

To that end, Within a Minute takes a 49-second sequence from the Mustafar lightsaber duel and looks at its development from start to finish. "There are hundreds of names and jobs in the end credits, but hardly anyone understands just what all of those people do and what an enormous contribution they make to the movie," says Tippy Bushkin, director of Within a Minute. "By focusing on less than 60 seconds of the movie, Rick McCallum and George Lucas examine the entire process of making Episode III in a fun and fascinating way."

There are two other documentaries provided by Bushkin and her crew within the same section of Disc Two. The Chosen One is a 14-minute look at Hayden Christensen's role as Anakin Skywalker and the transformation of the character into Darth Vader.It's All For Real is an 11-minute documentary about Nick Gillard, Stunt Coordinator and Sword Master for Episode III, and his crew's development of the amazing action and swordplay in Revenge of the Sith. Hyperspace members, for more information about the making of these documentaries, see this story here.

Fans who have been tracking the making of Episode III online since the earliest days of production are already familiar with the Making Episode III web doc series. First debuted on Hyperspace, the best 15 chapters of the 18-chapter series are included on the disc. Watch the following in full screen resolution without having to log onto the website to see them:

* "Two Worlds, One Movie"
* "...One World, Two Movies"
* "We Still Do A Little Bit"
* "Creating General Grievous"
* "This Weapon Is Your Life"
* "Video Village"
* "Epic Designs for an Expanding Universe"
* "C-3PO: His Moment to Shine"
* "Pick-ups & Reshoots"
* "Becoming Obi-Wan"
* "The Wookiees are Back!"
* "B-107: The Life of an HD-Tape"
* "The Creatures of Episode III"
* "Endlessly Compelling: The Music of Episode III"
* "Becoming Sidious"

The Episode III DVD also contains a collection of deleted scenes. As in previous DVD releases, some of these scenes have been completed, with finished visual effects, sound and score.

The first one, however, in a mix of complete and incomplete footage, serving more as an animatic to a story-point cut from Episode III. "General Grievous Slaughters a Jedi; Escape From The General" has the evil cyborg general kill Shaak Ti before a helpless Obi-Wan and Anakin. The two Jedi escape Grievous' grasp by cutting their way through the cruiser's floor, from the proverbial frying pan into the proverbial fire by landing into a chamber filled with volatile starship fuel.

The next three deleted scenes follow the cut Rebel Alliance storyline cut from Episode III. Padmé Amidala would conspire with Senators Bail Organa, Mon Mothma and others to create worst-case contingencies to Palpatine's growing powers. In "A Stirring in the Senate," the Senators gather in Bail Organa's office to start the discussion. In "Seeds of Rebellion," the conversation picks up in Padmé's apartment. In "Confronting the Chancellor," diplomacy is given once last chance as Padmé voices her concerns to Palpatine with Anakin standing nearby.

The next deleted scene, "A Plot to Destroy the Jedi?" is a quiet scene with Yoda, Mace Windu and Obi-Wan in Yoda's apartment. They discuss the imbalance in the Force and the danger of Palpatine's rule. Finally, there's "Exiled to Dagobah," the long-anticipated scene where Yoda arrives on the bog planet where he will live out the rest of his life. These deleted scenes are playable with optional introductions by George Lucas and Rick McCallum.

Marketing and promotional material developed for the release of Episode III is also included on the disc, including the theatrical teaser and release trailer, as well as the "A Hero Falls" music video, which features John Williams' epic "Battle of the Heroes" score. There are 15 television spots, ranging from action-packed commercials for younger audiences, longer emotional spots for older audiences, and even the review spots that showcase the overwhelmingly positive critical response to Episode III. Disc Two also features poster galleries and dozens of photos from production, including some never before published.

By now, gaming fans should know that November 1st is not only the release date for the Episode III DVD, but also the day the sequel to the most successful Star Wars videogame of all time comes out. Star Wars Battlefront II is coming out for Xbox, PlayStation 2, PC and Sony PSP. The open-ended battlefield play of the original that let you control the troops, vehicles and weapons you wanted against multiple players, is back and better than before. It now features playable Jedi characters, space combat, and new Episode III content. For those wanting a taste of Battlefront II, the DVD contains a fully playable Xbox demo of the game. The trailer for the game, as well as the trailer for Star Wars Empire at War is also on the DVD.

There's more. The DVD is your gateway to online exclusives. With the Episode III DVD, an Internet connection, a web browser with Flash 7 or higher, and a system running Microsoft Windows 2000 or higher*, dvd.starwars.com is your source for exclusive text-based commentaries. Find out a wealth of behind-the-scenes trivia, hard-to-spot visual details, and expanded universe lore as in the Depth Commentary. Compare the differences between the movie on paper and the movie in action with the Script-to-Screen commentary, and get a whole new and decidedly strange interpretation of Episode III with the "Busted Protocol Droid" Commentary. That's just the start. There are more online commentaries and unique viewing experiences in the works for Episode III and the entire Star Wars DVD library.

* Some features may work on Apple Macintosh running OS 10.2 or higher.

IGNOctober 6, 2005 - On October 6, 2005, Jim Ward, Sr. Vice President of Lucasfilm and President of Lucasarts, led a demonstration day at Skywalker Ranch to promote the upcoming release of Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith on DVD. The film, which comes to DVD on November 1, enjoys an elaborate two-disc set stacked with extra features sure to excite Padawans from five to fifty. The purpose of the afternoon, Ward explains, was "to make sure we had the best value-added material that we could possibly have, and not just stuff to cram on there but stuff that people actually wanted to watch. And rather than just list everything for you, we thought we would just play a piece that would probably better demonstrate what's on the DVD itself."
In addition to the feature film, the DVD features animated menu screens, which Ward explained followed those assembled for the release of the previous Star Wars DVDs. "You randomly can go to any one of three planets and have three completely distinct menu sets," Ward says. "We've done that for I and II, IV, V and XI, and now we're going to do it for Episode III." He went on to reveal that Utapau, Coruscant, and Mustafar are the three planets which displayed on the menu screens.

Once the viewer navigates into a specific menu screen, the display shows the interior - more specifically, the cockpit - of a star fighter. "You can see all of the great things that we in fact have on this particular disc," Ward says, describing some of the myriad extras. "One of the things that we have been known for with our past DVDs, and this is consistent with this DVD as well, is actually taking deleted scenes and actually completing them and putting them on the disc. We've shown extended pod races - we've shown lots of different things - and this disc is no different; [and] we wanted to give [journalists] the opportunity to see a couple of the deleted scenes."

The menu screens change again - "we meet our friend General Grievous," says Ward - and he punches up the first of two deleted scenes. "The very first one up is the one we're going to take a look at, called 'Grievous Slaughters a Jedi: Escape From the General'. This is a partially completed scene where we've gone back in and done special effects work at ILM; it's partially an animatic and it's partially a rough cut, but in all the entire sequence is one that was taken out of the movie, but for particularly those of you who are really into Star Wars, it's a moment where our beloved friend Shaak Ti bites the dust. You're going to hear George [Lucas] and Rick [McCallum] discuss why that didn't really remain in the movie, and each one of the deleted scenes has an introduction by George and Rick explaining the context, explaining what the deal was, and then obviously the complete deleted scene."

Lucas' comments explain the need to excise footage from the first major sequence of the film: "There was a lot of material there, and the first sequence, if you will, up until the crash of the Star Destroyer, was an hour, and we needed to get it down under a half hour, so a lot of things had to go. Everything that was important in that scene ultimately got moved to the bridge scene, so we didn't really lose any of the important information. We just did it in a much more economical way."

The scene which follows depicts Obi Wan and Anakin's arrival aboard the starship. Shaak Ti kneels before General Grievous as he goads the Jedis; after he executes Shaak Ti by stabbing her through the chest with a light saber, droids surround Anakin and Obi Wan, and they discuss (via a system of signals that baseball players would envy) an escape route. Eventually, they use their light sabers to cut a hole in the floor and fall to the fuel tanks below.

"The next one I wanted to show you is actually one that's near and dear to all of our hearts, particularly Rick McCallum's," Ward says. "For those hardcore Star Wars fans in the audience, ok guys, you're going to cry at this one, because this is a very short scene and was in fact cut out of the movie. We were all really pushing George to try to keep it in; there were really good reasons why it wasn't, and you'll understand why, but this is the famous scene where Yoda actually goes to Dagobah, and ends up there and obviously we meet him again in The Empire Strikes Back."

Producer Rick McCallum describes the scene thusly during his DVD introduction: "[It was] one of the most painful things for me that was cut out of the movie. It's a scene where Yoda basically arrives on Dagobah; it's that simple. It's no more than 30 seconds long - he arrives, the ship lands, you establish the planet, and I was heartbroken when we didn't put it in the movie. I begged George to do it, and I understand the reasons why he didn't." Lucas explains further, "looking at the film, we realized that it was more important to really follow the threads of the children and not the threads of all of the characters, so we first deal with the mother, and then we deal with the father, and then we deal with the two kids. Putting Yoda in there was a bit of unneccessary exposition; we know where he ends up, and we didn't think it was necessary to sort of show that's where he goes."

"I loved that shot," continues McCallum. "It's a beautiful, beautiful moment, and I'm hoping one day as he's tinkering away doing the revised version" - a comment that elicited more than a few uneasy chuckles from the audience - "that he'll think about putting it back into the film, or if nothing else, I'm very happy that everybody gets a chance to see it now."

The scene is as McCallum describes - Yoda arrives on Dagobah in under 30 seconds - but few sniffles are heard in the crowd; quickly, Ward moves on to the featurettes. "We actually have two featurettes on this disc," he says. "The first one is called 'The Chosen One' and one of the issues obviously in this film is he transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. But we wanted to take a much deeper look into that, particularly in what we're going to show you today - an outtake of that - particularly the 'fried and crispy' part where he actually burns; we thought that would be an interesting angle to look at.
"Also," Ward continues, "the next featurette is called 'It's All For Real,' which is actually an interesting story about doing all of the stunts as real as we possibly could. The section we're going to show you is actually a pretty dramatic moment on the set where George changes his mind, and you can see everyone involved who had been planning for months and then George changes his mind on the set like that, they've got to react. So it's a pretty interesting little story."

During one of the film's biggest confrontations, in which Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) tries to apprehend Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), Lucas changes his mind mid-shoot and insists that Jackson and McDiarmid do their own stunts instead of leaving the heavy lifting for the stunt doubles. Ward overstates the moment's importance - the situation is summarily resolved in a matter of an hour or so - but its message is clear: no matter how much pre-production work Lucas' team offers, they must always be prepared for unexpected changes on the day of the shoot.

Ward then moves on to the centerpiece documentary, which will no doubt earn accolades as much from the critical community and production participants as the fans themselves. "We have a history of doing these [documentaries] both to give people insight into the true process that happens - both the good and the bad. We've certainly done that for our DVDs, and last year with the History of Star Wars - it was also on A & E, and we won an Emmy for that, so we're very proud of this. This time, George in particular was very adamant about a certain approach. You know the credits that roll at the end? Do you guys happen to have any idea what each and every one of those people actually does? It seems like a lot of people, right?"

Before anyone answers his rhetorical query, Ward launches into his pitch. "We thought we could tackle that issue, because we felt and really George that people, when these credits start rolling, it's like, 'my God, why does it take so many people to make this movie? This is Hollywood excess' - or whatever, and that's not really the reality. The reality is that it does take each and every one of those artists to put a movie together. So what we decided to do is take a sequence that's basically less than a minute, isolate that out, and educate the viewer about every single person that touches that less than 60 seconds.

"Usually behind-the-scenes are about the sexy stuff - the special effects, the actors - and we have that in there. But very rarely do we go into each and every facet of what it takes to make a movie, and when you do that, the challenge becomes it's educational but you also need to make it fun. We think we've actually cracked that with this documentary called 'Within a Minute'."

Ward offers a sample of the doc, which features several outtakes, including the set-up, the beginning of it, and then visits the art department, the editorial process, 3-D match movers and practical models - "a lot of the unsung heroes," as he puts it. "Not only is it fun to watch," Ward explains, " but if you have any affinity towards movies, you're absolutely going to learn something and you're going to learn what goes on at least in the world of George Lucas of how to make a film."

The footage opens with a sort of spider-web of different bubbles that circulate around different nuclei - categories, including special effects, production, etc. - and moves directly into one, where a willing crew of artists supplicate themselves at Lucas' feet while he announces which drawings will or will not be used to design the Mustafar duel sequence. From there, different excerpts are shown of different departments in action, but the most exciting revelations were already made - namely, that Lucas called in Spielberg to offer some insights during the pre-visualization, and that the director 'shoots around' his film during principal photography and finds the finished product in the editing room.

That said, the documentary proves to be unlike any other 'making-of' featurette ever made, and will no doubt offer fans new insights into which roles the respect most, and more importantly, they want to take when inspired by Lucas' films.

The final demonstration is a quick glimpse at the Xbox playable demo Lucas offers for the new Lucasarts game Star Wars Battlefront II. Hayden Christiansen himself pops in to demonstrate the game's agile action - despite the exaggerated protests of Ward - and disappears again (check back with IGN DVD next week for a chat with the young actor about embodying Darth Vader), but the point is made; even for gaming novices like myself, the two levels of Battlefront available on Episode III's Disc Two are enticing enough to consider buying an Xbox upon which to play it.

Meanwhile, there are more than a handful of other features not demonstrated by Ward and his able crew, but the final feature he advertises is not the trailers, TV spots, or even DVD-Rom content; rather, it's an Easter Egge, which he says is accessible via the same codes used on previous DVDs.

In the Easter Egg footage, Yoda creeps into frame, casts aside his trademark cane, and performs and impromptu dance to the tune of The Roots "Don't Say Nuthin'." While the clip is hardly substantial, it demonstrates an inescapable truth about Lucasfilm's efforts to revolutionize movie-making as we know it: even when we think we've figured out every last detail, extra, and bit of bonus material, their endlessly inventive staff offers up yet another new feature to catch audiences off guard.

Orionnavodno se vidi opet kasnije u filmu kao hologram