Misc. Comments

Hello, checking in with our friends in Corleone Land.

We wanted to give a general status update about the project. We're investigating a new source, which we received the other day and have quickly previewed. It's a home recording of a 1986 broadcast of The Godfather Novelette, which on the surface appears to be pretty much the same as our recording of a different, earlier broadcast. Other than that, we're pretty much 97% done.

We've had a lot of comments and emails recently, so I'm going to answer as much as I can. I broke my collarbone and dislocated my shoulder last week, which is why I haven't made any recent updates to the blog as sitting and typing was just too painful.


On to the comments/letters:


 


Thanks for the progress update! One further item pursuant to the whole fileshare upload thing: the other major site for free uploads of large files would be WeTransfer. Fast speeds and uploads up to 2GB in size for free accounts. Might also be worth a looksee... :) 

We're still looking into these staggered upload sites, so we're welcoming any feedback about such sites like this. Thanks for the info!

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Also came across this Australian VHS release of Godfather: Part 1 on eBay:

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=221277542824



Yep, we've screened all of the Aussie VHS releases that we know of. There were a couple of quick trims that we used, but for the most part they were all identical to the US/Euro VHS releases.

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 I would gladly download and seed the highest quality that you can post... 90gb+
A restoration of this magnitude should be seen in the highest quality possible!!!
Thanks for all of your hard work, looking forward to viewing the result!



Thanks! I agree, that if there ever was a project deserving a large file size, this would be it. Unfortunately, most folks aren't like Godfather fans. (Well, maybe hardcore Star Wars junkies.) We've learned from some projects in the past that at least 3/4ths of downloaders simply hit and run, and the good guys get stuck seeding into oblivion. We hope that a reasonable file size like this will encourage as many seeders as possible.

And like I said in the past, we're always discussing a version 2.0 in the future that will be true HD for the discriminating aficionados among us. This brings me to another point we'd like everybody's feedback on. For our next release, would you like to see an upscaled, slick HD version of The Complete Epic Trilogy, or would you rather see a fullscreen version of The CET? Let us know. 

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I was really crushed when I read that the scene of Michael killing Fabrezio in the pizza parlor was officially lost for good, as this one was a better and more crucial scene for the film compared to the obscure car bomb death. I was also reading about a long sequence of scenes taking place in the 1930's after Vito has killed Carlo Rizzi, where De Niro puts on 40 pounds to more resemble the Marlon Brando Vito and many others that bridge the gap between the young vito corleone segment and the 1945 segment, Are those all officially lost for good ?



I'll turn you over to our buddy at Paramount for this question:


I know that the bloody shootout at the Pizza Parlor death scene is gone for good. It was never actually finished. They spent a few days filming it before Coppola nixed it for good. When he viewed the dailys, he thought they looked absurdly ridiculous. It was so bloody that it was almost laughable, and he thought it might get them an X rating too, so he abandoned the scene midway thru shooting. All that remains is a few stills and I don't know whatever happened to the footage they shot. 

As for the other major sequences, I know that they are "officially" lost. After Barry Malkin made the rough cut of The Saga, pretty much everything that he didn't use went in the dumpster. But almost every single frame ever shot was transferred to video in '76 so Malkin and Coppola could make the edit more easily on tape. After they made their videotape rough cut, the engineers at Paramount used the tape as a reference to make the film master for the Saga. But nobody knows if these tapes were archived or not.

Just for clarity, even if these tape transfers were saved or not, they likely would not be usable since they were time coded to match the film reels they were taken from, meaning they probably would look like this:

Paramount has treated the Godfather franchise pretty badly. From destroying all of the excess footage, to ruining the negatives and losing first gen interpositives, it's a pretty shameful history. Even the excess footage from Part III has been lost, which is why the original opening to that film, which was finally released as an extra to the DVD, was taken from Coppola's crappy VHS dub. And that footage went missing less than ten years after it was vaulted!

So I'm not very hopeful that we'll ever get any "new" footage down the pipeline. I'm pretty sure that the only extra footage we'll be privy to is all of the excess material that has been spread out over the decades in hundreds of different commercial releases throughout the world.

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I just discovered a technique that could significantly increase the visual quality of this fanedit: superresolution.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/132950-csi-style-super-resolution-image-enlargment-yeeaaaah

Someone's doing it with Star Wars:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-GOUT-in-HD-using-super-resolution-algorithm/topic/17552/




I think Superresolution can be a pretty big thing if it's used correctly and for a high-profile project, like Star Wars for example. We didn't find out about it until long into the editing process though, so we won't be utilizing it for this project, but maybe in a future release. I'm especially interested in what it can possibly do for upscaling some of the low-res footage we have.

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"Blood On Their Hands"
The Special Effects Of The "GODFATHER" Saga
http://www.wideanglecloseup.com/bloodontheirhands.html


Great, informative article. Thank you for sharing the link!

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Nobody talks about audio.....

It will be AC3 (lossy) 256 or 448 kbps? But why not PCM, FLAC, DTS 768 or 1536 kbps (lossless)?
Bigger files, but for this EPIC I don't care. :]




We hear you (no pun intended). It will technically be lossy, but it will be a high bitrate.

I wanted to talk about the audio mix at some point, so I guess now's as good a time as any. I've been asked about the mixing project, and why we went from 5.1 DD down to 2.0 DTS. The reasons are manifold, ranging from file size, to best compatibility for the majority of viewers, etc. I think we reached a pretty good compromise in DTS:X.

For those unfamiliar with this fairly new codec, here's basically what you need to know:

1. DTS:X is an open-source codec that is designed to recreate a virtual surround soundscape in a headphone setting.

2. You do not need any special codecs to play DTS:X back on your PC. If you already have the DTS codec, you can decode DTS:X.

3. Playback on Blu-Ray or DVD is universal, however, only a few players and receivers support true DTS:X. For owners of home theater setups without DTS:X, the sound will play out in standard DTS.

4. While designed for use in quality headphones, DTS:X can still be enjoyed in a live multi-speaker setting.

5. DTS:X encoding can be mapped in a number of different ways, including a 32 channel soundscape. We have chosen the 11.1 channel configuration for this project. For a demonstration of this profile, check out this video consisting of a sound test and a DTS:X 11.1 mix of Soundgarden's "Spoonman".



So the bottom line is that our DTS:X mix will sound great with 2 speakers or 20 speakers. And even though it's not flac, it's (in our opinion) the best sound you can get from a moderate bitrate and manageable file size. We think you'll enjoy it.

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WTF!?
Paramount confirmed shooting GF4 (prequel) based on book “The Family Corleone”. (2012)



Ha! Now that's an April Fool's Day joke if I ever heard one! Again, our man in the know:


You're going to hear talk about the Godfather IV until the day you die. Bottom line, it's never getting made. Some of the big rumors right now are that they're making "The Family Corleone" into a movie but it is bullshit. See, "The Family Corleone" was actually written in the early 1980s as a script for Part III. The idea was that they were going to flesh out the 1930's sequence that was cut out of Part II and recast De Niro as Vito and find a new Sonny. They were talking about getting Stallone to play a young Luca Brasi and then it was Mickey Rourke, or Charlie Sheen, that was going to play the Irish kid. But Paramount rejected that script over thirty years ago which is why it sat in the dustbin until Puzo's kids needed the money. I've read the original treatment, it was garbage. And Ed Falco only made it marginally better. It needed Coppola to be a decent story. 

Other things you're going to hear are Eddie Murphy is going to be a black godfather or Denzel Washington. This too goes back to the 80s when Mario Puzo thought he could add a part of a young black crimelord based on the real life criminal Frank Lucas. But Coppola nixed the idea and that character ended up being Joey Zasa. But yes it is true that Eddie Murphy was who Puzo had in mind and he even agreed to do the film if it ever got made. But that never happened and later they made a movie about the real Frank Lucas which was American Gangster with Denzel Washington, which is why his name has come up. 

Other rumors? They're going to make one with Al Pacino and Andy Garcia that takes place in the early 90's. They're making a sequel based on the Winegardner books, or the video games. Or that Francis Ford Coppola is writing a new script. They're all bullshit. The only truth to any rumor is that Coppola called Puzo and talked about making the 30's era movie with all new unknown actors, but Puzo died a few weeks later and Coppola said that he would never make another Godfather film if Puzo wasn't involved. 


There you have it, straight from the decapitated horse's mouth.

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never coming out (((((:- never coming out (((((:- never coming out (((((:-

i think it will never come out, same thing in 2012 , this blog has been around since 2011-2012 and we are in 2015 now , they promised allot and delivered nothing !!

 yes it is never coming out, they been saying it will come out for 3 or 4 years now !!!, i mean why would i believe they will release it now!!, they could at least release what they have ,and re -release a better edit each time they do it, also editing dose not take that much of time , i've been editing for years , i edited a godfather 1 an 2 films in one huge 7 hours and 32 minutes edit and it took me 2 days to do, so spare me the it takes time crap, if they wanted to release it they would have done it 4 years ago!!!



Seriously man, just stop. Pretty much every post with you is "this is never coming out, these guys are liars, waaaah waaaaah waaaaaah". You haven't contributed anything to this project, so please stop bitching as if we've taken money out of your pocket or something. As other posters have pointed out to you, we all have lives, jobs, families and various little things that occupy our lives. We've spent hundreds of dollars and (combined) thousands of hours putting this together and all that we ask from you is a little patience.


I've apologized numerous times for the length of time that has elapsed from inception to completion. And the twelve month hiatus in between where I had no idea if this was ever going to be finished because one of the guys with the most recent batch of completed files went MIA or the other long break where our soundman was deployed to Afghanistan. Yes, the missed "deadlines" for this thing suck, and I take full responsibility. But in a way, it's worked out for the better because we turned up a few cool sources in the meantime that we've been able to utilize and it's better than putting everything together for download and then turning around every six months to say "Wait! We found another two seconds of deleted footage! Ignore the last release and download this again!" We want future releases to be complimentary, like an HD version or a full-frame version, not "mandatory" re-releases that contain new footage that we just found. Who wants to keep downloading the same thing over and over again?

Like Michael said to Clemenza and Tessio, "Be. Patient. There are negotiations being made that are going to answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems. That's all I can tell you right now." And any constructive criticism is always welcome, but if you're just going to keep posting inanities, you can take your nonsense elsewhere.

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Hey guys if you want an extended version of the two films with all hd footage, this guy made an edit of that: http://www.fanedit.org/forums/showthread.php?14167-The-Godfather-Extended-Edition-HD/


Very cool. We were just talking about this a couple of weeks ago, for the guy that wanted an all-HD version of the first two films with just the AMC bonus scenes added in. Or vice-versa, I can't remember.

Someone asked me a little while back if we were going to submit our cut over at fanedit.org, and the answer is probably "no." Don't get me wrong, I love the site, but when I was told by a mod that we wouldn't get "approval" for this project because making a long chronological cut doesn't qualify as a "true" fanedit, I realized which way the wind was blowing. No offense to anyone over there, but we don't need fanedit.org's stamp of approval. This was made by fans for fans, not for wannabe film critics or amateur filmmakers with delusions of grandeur. The only opinions we care to hear are from you guys.

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I recall this scene in the book. Genco is on his death bead asking The Don to help him cheat death. He is worried about satan. As I recall, the Don says something like, "this is the life we choose". I never heard about this scene ever existing in any version. Very interesting.
Regards
(I was nine when my mom took my to see the Godfather in a theater on Cape Cod)




Yeah, that to me was a key scene that should have been included in the film no matter what. I mean, the most iconic element of the film's marketing, the marionette strings, basically came from this scene. (Not to mention the profile pic of Brando that was used so extensively in the Euro posters:

Which kind of reminds me of the Pacino pic from the deleted Pizzeria massacre scene that was one of the most famous publicity stills prior to the film's release...

Also, the accompanying scene just prior to arriving at the hospital spawned a number of publicity stills:

... but I digress. It can be argued that the puppet strings in the logo are merely implied throughout the story and really don't need to be explained, but then again you can say that about any number of scenes, both excised and intact. To me the Genco scene, and the accompanying scenes that were also cut, establish so much about Vito's character that we wouldn't easily infer otherwise, such as:

1. Prior to getting to the hospital, Vito asks mockingly if Micheal's "American" girlfriend can find her way to the city alright. It shows that Vito clearly doesn't 100% approve of Micheal's WASP paramour.

2. Things are already tense between father and son. "What are all these Christmas ribbons?" he says, while running his hands along Micheal's tokens of valor. "They're for bravery," he answers. "What miracles you perform for strangers..." Vito trails off. "Michael, you never come to me as a son. I want to talk to you about your future. I have plans for you." "Si," Micheal answers, walking away, obviously not wanting to pursue the conversation any further.

3. Vito's oldest friend and counselor Genco believes that the Don is so powerful he can even cheat death. Obviously the man has left a larger-than-life impression on even his closest friend. But he himself is modest. "Genco, I have no such power."

4. Vito, if not religious, at least has some concept of Christianity. "You blaspheme," he warns Genco after his old friend begs his Godfather to chase Satan away. He also has come to terms with his own mortality, (or maybe he sees such fears as unmanly) as he gently presses Genco to not fear death.

5. Vito cares deeply for the suffering of others. "Stay with me Godfather," Genco begs, and he does.  

So yeah, I think it was an important scene in the book and on the screen. But I think it was better in the film than in the book, as the dialogue was more natural and less contrite. Which is a general criticism I have with Puzo's writing. His dialogue comes off stiff and preachy. Read the dialogue in any of the shooting scripts (Coppola mainly handled the framing and narrative; he let Puzo write the dialogue for the most part) and compare it to the finished product, which was altered by Coppola and/or the actor during shooting. (A really great example is the semi-final screenplay for Part II.) But that's another discussion for another day.

(And don't get me started on the line "a lawyer and his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns" line that Puzo fought tooth and nail to include in the final film, but was shot down (pun intended) by Coppola, not just once, but for all three films!)

Also, I'd love to hear more about the first time you saw The Godfather out on Cape Cod. In fact, I'd like to do an entry about everybody's first contact with the franchise- what was it like the first time you saw the Godfather or its sequels, and what were your impressions? How old were you, where was it, etc? Leave a comment or email us at godfathermuseum@gmail.com!

We want to extend a huge thanks to everyone that has supported us, even with our less-than-stellar release timelines. Your comments and emails mean a great deal to me personally and we deeply appreciate your understanding and eagerness to see this cut.



Till next time!