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The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

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Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#101

Look on page 117 of the PDF (the paper says 113): > Vader: You're very good, Luke. But I'm twenty years older and stronger than you in the use of the Force. You haven't a chance with me... any more than your father had. This draft was written before they came up with the idea that Vader could actually be Luke's father!

I believe the actual shooting script for ESB omitted Vader’s admission that he was Luke’s father; the replacement line was “No, Obi-Wan killed your father”. The actual line, “No, I am your father” was kept secret and only shared with the actors on set when they filmed that specific scene.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the "I am your father" wasn't in the shooting script anyway. The script said "Obi-Wan killed your father", and it was changed to "I am your father when James Earl Jones" said the line for the voice of Vader. Maybe it is that way in subsequent published scripts but not the original.

Right... Lucas told Mark Hamill before that scene was filmed so he would ham up his reaction.

And also so that the secret wouldn't get out

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#103
post #22

How long until you drag this PDF into an AI chatbot and it spits out a 1 hour movie

Soon, but I don't think I, and we, will really watch them. I think we'll watch the "real" old movies instead. I think it'll take the route of other art forms, and we will value the craftsmanship just as much as the output

The promises of the film experience at the dawn of the digital era were never realized. All of the work has been put into minimizing the costs of movie making and distribution.

Consumer display and audio technologies are the exception, but movie theaters still haven't incorporated automated ambient effects like local haptics or spatial audio, smellovision, lighting, etc, like in stage productions. There are no custom data tracks or queuing allowed in industry formats. Anything would have to be built separately and manually synced.

Despite our art and technology, there is little excess or imagination in film today, and it is desperately resistant to change.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#104

A bit of context: Leigh Brackett was a sci-fi author and screenwriter that George Lucas hired to write the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back in 1977. She wrote it based on a story conference the two had but unfortunately passed away from cancer a month after submitting it in 1978. Lucas then wrote a few drafts himself but wasn't satisfied. Eventually, he brought on Lawrence Kasdan, who would also write Raiders o…

Giving Leigh Brackett wroter credits is a nice touch, didn't know that! Stuff like that is why HN is still a great place in today's online world.

"Giving Leigh Brackett writer credits is a nice touch, didn't know that!"

If things worked back then the way they do today, there are writer's guild rules that would have presumably required credit.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#105
post #25
post #22

How long until you drag this PDF into an AI chatbot and it spits out a 1 hour movie

I suspect right around the time government hops in to "regulate AI" for "safety" and other "harmful content" reasons.

You don't need the quotes.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#106
post #22

How long until you drag this PDF into an AI chatbot and it spits out a 1 hour movie

How long until I can get a highly accurate OCR of this PDF with open source tools?

Everyone seems to point me at tesseract, but it does things like turn:

  CHAPTER III
into something like :

  CHAPTER 1|l
Granted with sans-serif fonts, the characters themselves are ambiguous, but I have no idea how the language model lets that through.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#107
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Big Sleep has the reputation for making no sense/convoluted plot. I enjoy it.

That wasn't Brackett's fault, Chandler famously said he didn't know who killed the chauffeur. Like many of his novels The Big Sleep was made by combining two or more of his short stories, and sometimes things didn't make sense.

Nice detail. I really enjoy the movie scene for scene and it had to be pointed out to me that it makes no sense.

I suppose that is the magic of movies. The suspension of disbelief.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#108

Look on page 117 of the PDF (the paper says 113): > Vader: You're very good, Luke. But I'm twenty years older and stronger than you in the use of the Force. You haven't a chance with me... any more than your father had. This draft was written before they came up with the idea that Vader could actually be Luke's father!

I believe the actual shooting script for ESB omitted Vader’s admission that he was Luke’s father; the replacement line was “No, Obi-Wan killed your father”. The actual line, “No, I am your father” was kept secret and only shared with the actors on set when they filmed that specific scene.

Not all the actors. David Prowse, who played Darth Vader had no idea. Only Hamill knew. There were only four people who knew at that point. Lucas, Kasdan, Hamill and Kerschner.

Re: The Empire Strikes Back First Draft by Leigh Brackett (1978) [pdf]

#109
post #22

How long until you drag this PDF into an AI chatbot and it spits out a 1 hour movie

How long until I can get a highly accurate OCR of this PDF with open source tools? Everyone seems to point me at tesseract, but it does things like turn: CHAPTER III into something like : CHAPTER 1|l Granted with sans-serif fonts, the characters themselves are ambiguous, but I have no idea how the language model lets that through.

Your assessment of open source OCR performance is the same as mine - it still sucks. Even proprietary large models like Google Gemini suck at it.

If it helps at all, someone manually did it https://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/the-empire-strikes-back-...

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