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Post by jocksinclair on Aug 8, 2020 21:20:48 GMT -5
I have read a few fan references indicating that in the original broadcast, the Turkey Day version of "Night of the Blood Beast" had several alternate takes of riffs. The same script, but some of the lines were re-dubbed for the season 7 version, which was then used on the DVD.
What I'm wondering is, does anybody have a list of all the differences? The only specific one I have seen referenced is "Patrick Stewart fell in the quicksand."
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Post by jocksinclair on Aug 13, 2020 19:30:03 GMT -5
So I completed a first pass, and I spotted 45 differences in the theater segments. (Note that this includes the short, not just the feature.)
For the most part, they are dialogue shifts; in some cases, they create better sync, though sometimes they go wildly out of sync (see for instance "Miss Betty Furness"). I'm not going to bother to document all of these for everybody, they're the same performance just with minor shifts, although notably, they shifted the entire "restricted area" song that Servo sings, and to my ear, it seems to sync better to the music in the Turkey Day to version. I would call say it averages out to about zero; some are a bit better, some are a bit worse, but nothing that you'd even notice unless you were actively looking for it.
There are two lines which were re-recorded; "From a sentence by Gene Corman" and "Oh no! Patrick Stewart fell in the quicksand!"
Mike's line "Where is here, anyway?" is exclusive to the Season 7 version.
There's one part where Servo chuckles which was removed for the Season 7 version, but later on there is a part where they added Mike chuckling to the bots, so that kind of balances out.
Towards the end, when the alien is talking, Servo mutters "blah blah blah" in the Turkey Day version, removed from the Season 7.
There are three other parts worth noting: * both versions have a line where Tom says "I got skunked on Blood Beast"; in the Turkey Day version, it is earlier, in place of the line "His droppings are enormous". When he says the skunked line in the Season 7 version, his line in the Turkey Day version is "Say what you will about this movie, but the music is great!" which leads better into Mike humming along with the music. * both versions have a line where Tom says "It's one of those guns that says Bang!" It is thirty seconds earlier in the Season 7 version; the Turkey Day version places it where the Season 7 version has the line "Can I make you a shirt?" * both versions have Mike say the line "Donna omitted for clarity", but on two completely different shots. Odd as it sounds, they both work, I don't think it was a flub. Turkey Day has it about a minute earlier than Season 7, when the film cuts to the male heroes entering and Donna isn't in the shot. Season 7 has it on a shot of Donna immediately after a line about her having been attacked.
I'm going to do one more pass, but I doubt that I missed anything significant. I should note, the Turkey Day version had "episode specific" bumpers with a projector, similar to Season 6, where the DVD uses globe bumpers like Season 7.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2020 13:10:25 GMT -5
Nice work! It seems to be pretty consistent with how they did things as of season ten. In the taping session of 1010 (below) there's a bit after the movie where they receive scripts and then record audio for some 1009 riffs. There seem to be two categories: "add" (new jokes) and "replace" (either re-written jokes or new takes of old ones). I believe I've read somewhere that they used to do a writers' review of the first cut of the show about a week later, so I guess that's when they would add new riffs and note any unusable riffs from the original recording (ambient noise, flubbed lines, what have you). This of course is why Crow seems to be out of sync a lot of the time in every episode. So I can see two scenarios for the differences in 701 T and the "regular" version: 1. The later version followed a writers' review and new recording of certain lines. This could explain the editing and sync differences you described. 2. There was no review/additional recording for the regular version and they built the theater segment audio mix from scratch, either intentionally or accidentally using takes that had been discarded when the Turkey Day version was assembled. youtu.be/knqTkDheFpQ?t=6200
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Post by jocksinclair on Aug 14, 2020 13:31:03 GMT -5
Yeah, my guess is they didn't have time to do a full final cut before the Turkey Day airing (they were already working on the movie by then), although judging by Crow, it appears as if they have already done *some* syncing adjustments. Second time through I caught a line of Mike's which was slightly cut off in the Turkey Day, I assume that was a mixing error that they corrected in the final version.
It's a testament to how polished the acting and writing if this is the rough cut, since there were only a few re-recorded lines and a few re-writes.
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Post by Megalon on Aug 15, 2020 12:24:51 GMT -5
I had no idea there were so many small little differences in the riffing. Seems like a lot of editing work for so little effect.
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Post by jocksinclair on Aug 15, 2020 12:45:49 GMT -5
It has kind of a cumulative effect. Some of the small adjustments appear to be trying to make the lines sync better with the puppet movement. Other adjustments are probably to make the jokes more audible (ie, shifting away from dialogue or music stings), or removing distracting elements (a few times they took out some overlapping sounds). What I wonder is, did they always do this much little adjusting work, or was it partially a function of having shot the episode way early to show it on Turkey Day?
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Post by JLH on Aug 15, 2020 16:32:04 GMT -5
According to the production schedule on Tom's Temple, they didn't shoot the episode that much earlier than the rest of season 7. In fact, the Turkey Day version's host segments were shot AFTER the regular version's and show 702 in October.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2020 18:53:48 GMT -5
What I wonder is, did they always do this much little adjusting work, or was it partially a function of having shot the episode way early to show it on Turkey Day? It's a small sample size, of course, but there are the "rough drafts" of four or five episodes online. There's probably more to be learned about MST post-production from comparing those to the finished versions.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Aug 19, 2020 21:53:25 GMT -5
This is kind of fascinating to me, actually. I'd thought the only differences were in the host segments, but it's nice to know that there's more to it than that
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Post by jocksinclair on Aug 29, 2020 14:02:27 GMT -5
According to the production schedule on Tom's Temple, they didn't shoot the episode that much earlier than the rest of season 7. In fact, the Turkey Day version's host segments were shot AFTER the regular version's and show 702 in October. Did they typically shoot episodes that far ahead or was it something to do with incorporating the movie schedule?
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Post by JLH on Aug 29, 2020 20:27:03 GMT -5
According to the production schedule on Tom's Temple, they didn't shoot the episode that much earlier than the rest of season 7. In fact, the Turkey Day version's host segments were shot AFTER the regular version's and show 702 in October. Did they typically shoot episodes that far ahead or was it something to do with incorporating the movie schedule? The movie was shot between seasons 6 and 7, closer to season 6. They were wrapped months before they even began filming season 7. And yes, they usually shot months ahead. According to the onscreen slates, for instance, season 5 began filming in February 1993, while Season 4 had just ended filming the prior month.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2020 22:43:31 GMT -5
1013 was taped around the same time season 10 premiered, so in that case they were about 4 months ahead.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2021 13:07:28 GMT -5
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Post by jocksinclair on Jan 2, 2021 10:54:22 GMT -5
That's not necessarily Turkey Day specific; I know that when I was restoring the missing frames around the non-bumper commercial break, I remember one episode that had two different times for the Info Club release. Sometimes, the DVD has a different font. I wonder whether it's actually in the master or was added after the fact.
But I will admit that I did my comparisons on the audio level, so maybe I'm just making an excuse...
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2021 13:22:32 GMT -5
That's not necessarily Turkey Day specific; I know that when I was restoring the missing frames around the non-bumper commercial break, I remember one episode that had two different times for the Info Club release. Sometimes, the DVD has a different font. I wonder whether it's actually in the master or was added after the fact. But I will admit that I did my comparisons on the audio level, so maybe I'm just making an excuse...
Do you remember what episode that might have been? I'd bet it was a Season 1-3 episode, back when they used a more obtrusive font for the info club ( "Fan Club" until 112) address in the theater. They switched to a more arty (and smaller) font in Season 4 (e.g. 415), which basically remained the same until the end of the Comedy Central era (619 - notice the slight difference). (And strangely once more in Revenge of the Creature, although they use the "Sci-Fi era font" in that episode, too.)
I haven't checked the Info Club stuff as obsessively as I have other aspects of the show--I'm not that far gone into loony land, yet--but I've noticed that the timing, style, and placement of the address is consistent in Diet Kolos' broadcast editions, in DAP copies (where available), and the Rhino/Shout releases in episodes from Seasons 4-7. It's possible there are some episodes from this stretch where this isn't the case, but I haven't come across any of them myself.
Season 1-3 is a different story, though, as the address in almost all of those is missing on the DVDs: Rhino's 106 is a rare exception. The broadcast editions of some of these episodes also have the Info Club address while the DAP copies of same do not (306, 309). But again, in my experience, this only happens with episodes from the first three cable seasons.
For what it's worth, the address in the Shout! version of 701 is consistent with the circulating DAP copy of 701 ("standard version").
I can only guess how this relates to the episode editing process. Based on these observations, I'd guess the master edit of episodes 101-324 did not always (never?) have the address during the theater segments, as you suggested. That might have only been added for the broadcast master sent to Comedy Central/Channel, although evidently not all the tapes the network received and aired had the address - frankly, I can't explain that. But from 401-706 (and probably the Sci-Fi stuff), the consistency across various broadcast copies and official releases leads me to believe the address was included in the masters BBI retained.
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