[proposal] The Complete Dollars Trilogy

[Koopa Luath]

OK, so I've been thinking for some time, why not make a definitive edition of the Dollars Trilogy with all known official cuts, in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish (and possibly even Japanese with the voice of the great Yasuo Yamada, the eternal voice of Lupin the Third, if someone can chip in in that regard)?

The way I see it, the goals of this project are:

1. To gather the five aforementioned languages, plus maybe even the Japanese audio, for all three films in the series (Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), and sync them to the best-looking video tracks for each of them;
   
2. To make both subtitles and dubtitles in each language, and sync them as with the audio. There will be at least four subtitle tracks and five dubtitle tracks, with the subtitle tracks all translating the original Italian (I may have the numbers or terminology flip-flopped, though, correct me if I do);
   
3. To restore the original opening credits and closing "THE END" screen (plus any other intertitles) for all languages;
   
4. To make a multi-audio version from each of the applicable audio tracks, with each audio track being active depending on the native language of each character's performer (e.g. for Fistful: English for Joe; Italian for Ramon Rojo, Doña Consuela and Antonio Baxter, and members of the Rojo gang; German for Marisol, Piripero, Esteban Rojo, and Sheriff John Baxter; and Spanish for Silvanito, Don Benito Rojo, Julián, Juan de Dios, Jesús, the cavalry captain, and members of the Baxter gang);
   
5. To make the applicable audio adjustments to each audio track (most notably at the very start of Fistful, where the overture music timing tends to vary between languages; namely, I'd like a unified timing for the overture music on each audio track);
   
6. To restore the different cuts for each release;
   
7. To find the best versions of scenes deleted from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly excluding those found on releases since 2003;
   
8. To make OAR and pan-and-scan versions; and
   
9. To restore different credits for certain of the cast and crew.
   

The cuts for each film will be as follows:

Fistful of Dollars:

• Original theatrical cut
  
• UK theatrical cut with restored UA Hexagon logo and credits for Bob Robertson, John Wells and Leo Nichols
  
• Television cut with prologue featuring Harry Dean Stanton and credits for Bob Robertson, Johnny Wels and Dan Savio
  

For a Few Dollars More:

• Original theatrical cut
  
• UK theatrical cut with restored UA Hexagon logo
  
• German theatrical cut
  

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

• Rome premiere cut
  
• Original theatrical cut
  
• International theatrical cut with Italian onscreen character designations during the first few scenes and at the end
  
• UK theatrical cut with restored UA Transamerica T prototype logo (my best guess at this time based on its UK premiere date)
  
• German theatrical cut (questionable, depends on if anyone can find the exact details of what was cut)
  

The sources I intend to use for the video base of each version:

• Fistful of Dollars: Italian RHV Blu-ray
  
• For a Few Dollars More: German Tobis Blu-ray
  
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: American 2014 Fox Blu-ray and/or the upcoming Kino Blu-ray
  

As I only have the Tobis Blu-ray of FAFDM out of the above, this may take a while, to say the least, while I acquire the remaining visual materials. In the meantime, any help in the creation or else acquisition of clean or upscaled HD footage would be well appreciated! On a side note, I might do a restored English credits sequence more closely matching that of the Italian original for TGTBATU. Also: I'm attaching some notes to follow in the restoration of each credits sequence, based on what I know from snooping around in various parts of the Internet.

I'll update this post as I can think of anything else, or else others suggest visual, aural or supplementary materials.

[Evit]

Do you know if the television prologue featuring Harry Dean Stanton exists in HD? Considering that it was basically the inspiration for Escape from New York, it always attracted my attention.

I'm not sure I understood point 4 of your list

[Koopa Luath]

The intention I stated in point 4 is to make an audio track with complete lip-sync, or else as close to that as possible. And as for the prologue, more likely than not it'll have to be upscaled. So, it'll have to come straight from either the DVD or the Blu-ray, depends on which looks better in comparison to the bitrate suggested by spoRv's equation of width x height x FPS x motion rank x constant, in which case the width would be 720 or 640, the height would be 480, the FPS would be 29.97, the motion rank would be, I'm guessing, 1 or 2, and the constant would be either 0.116 or 0.136. In any case, first source I get that includes the prologue, I'm using FFMPEG to deinterlace via Yadif (x2) so I can try to figure out for myself what the framerate really is for the prologue, because not only will it very likely have to be upscaled, it'll also have to be cropped to the same aspect ratio as the main feature, perhaps among other methods of processing, so as to get it to match up as much as possible, which is why video quality will be of the utmost importance when it comes to the prologue.

[Evit]

lip-syncing an Italian film shot with no sound where everyone spoke their own lines in their own language, lines that are often different from any dubbed version since the script was mostly refined in post-production...? This is so nuts I now actually want to see it! Ahah! Have you thought of a name for this version?

Speaking of the TV intro, I can't find that prologue anywhere at the moment. Do you have any link on youtube? Was it ever published on DVD or BR?

[Koopa Luath]

It's available on both, actually. It's simply a matter of figuring out which to use as the source footage for the (re)integrated prologue. Course, dubbing might also have to take place in Italian, French, German, and Spanish (and also Japanese if we end up including that language, too), so I might also require a clean effects-only track even if it has to be at least partially recreated. Also, there are YouTube and Dailymotion links, but they're not often found in good quality, and even the one I could find in 480p with no hard subtitles is very likely to be disqualified for failing the spoRv Equation of Quality Sources. Remember: we who make these fan restorations generally want our sources to be in the best possible condition.

[Evit]

I found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppZuqec9lq0

[Koopa Luath]

That's the 240p one. I believe there's also one at 480p.

[Stamper]

Good idea, you would then fix all pitch for all foreign tracks!

[Koopa Luath]

As necessary, yes. Obviously, I would prefer to use 24fps or NTSC tracks for each language if available.

[Koopa Luath]

As for the video source for Fistful... I'm beginning to wonder whether I should use the RHV Blu-ray from Italy as I had originally planned, or the Tobis Blu-ray from Germany. I mean, the German Blu-ray, according to my calculations, looks 5.77 times better than ideal, while the Italian Blu-ray looks 5.19 times better, and they both look similar save for the color grading, but the Italian Blu-ray has the original Italian titles.