Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster HD reconstruction AVAILABLE NOW

[ultrase7en]

The ending reconstruction looks great!

[GodzillaFanatic2001]

That looks great! It's a real treat to see Ghidrah without the heavy yellow tint, even if it's just a short scene like this.

[Servanov]

Woah, I literally could not tell where the masking or editing was. In your post you said "on the water" and I watched it probably about 6 times and could not find where it was edited. That is how you know you are doing very well in your editing.

[omgitsgodzilla]

Thanks! It turned out to be a little more complex of a job than I first anticipated; I might post a video showing how I ended up doing it at some point.

[Kore321]

Great to see this is looking so good! Really appreciate the great work you are doing.

[GodzillaFanatic2001]

Are you going to attempt to correct the audio jump at the beginning of the US cut, between the Toho logo and the title card?

[omgitsgodzilla]

I actually already did that; my reference for the credits was Space Hunter M's SD recreation, which reinstates the Walter Reade-Sterling logo as well as correcting that audio skip.

[GodzillaFanatic2001]

Ah, nice. Will you be using his credits, or making your own?

[omgitsgodzilla]

I'm using his as a sort of a template to recreate the credits in full HD.

Added in 16 hours 10 minutes 59 seconds:
Well, I've finished recreating the opening credits and added the finishing touches to the whole project. All that's left now is rendering and testing. I'm planning to approach the actual release in a slightly more organized fashion this time around; I plan to render and upload both the MP4 and MKV versions between now and Christmas, then publish the download links on Christmas morning. (I'm also waiting on some Blu-ray art from the same guy who did the covers for G'85 and DAM; I'd like to be able to include those with the initial release this time.)

In the meantime, I'll probably be uploading a couple more BTS-type videos, so keep an eye out for those!

[GodzillaFanatic2001]

Sounds good. Love to see some BTS stuff.

[omgitsgodzilla]

Here's a quick look at how I recreated the final shot! It's perhaps a bit short on explanation, but all the components of the recreation are covered.

[heiseigodzilla425]

Here's a quick look at how I recreated the final shot! It's perhaps a bit short on explanation, but all the components of the recreation are covered.

Looks great! Will you be showing off your recreated credits and Walter Reade-Sterling logo before the release as well?

After that, I'll be moving on to Monster Zero in (hopefully) January, followed by Godzilla vs. the Thing, Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, the US TV version of Son of Godzilla and (just for shits and giggles because Great Hierohpant sent me the Simitar DVD) Godzilla's Revenge throughout the rest of next year.

Since you're doing Ghidrah, Godzilla vs. The Thing, Monster Zero, and Godzilla's Revenge, have you considered tackling Gigantis and Terror of Mechagodzilla to complete the Dreamworks Classics (previously Classic Media) collection of movies? (I'm ignoring GKOTM since Criterion took care of it.)

Terror of Mechagodzilla could potentially be two different projects, since you could do a reconstruction of the heavily cut theatrical version, as well as a reconstruction of the less edited TV version that includes the prologue.

[goji1986]

Here's a quick look at how I recreated the final shot! It's perhaps a bit short on explanation, but all the components of the recreation are covered.

Flawless! Very creative way of fixing that issue.

[omgitsgodzilla]

Looks great! Will you be showing off your recreated credits and Walter Reade-Sterling logo before the release as well?

I might! I may also do a video demonstrating how I did the credits as well.

Since you're doing Ghidrah, Godzilla vs. The Thing, Monster Zero, and Godzilla's Revenge, have you considered tackling Gigantis and Terror of Mechagodzilla to complete the Dreamworks Classics (previously Classic Media) collection of movies? (I'm ignoring GKOTM since Criterion took care of it.)

Those are both possibilities! I'm a little hesitant to take on Gigantis given the sheer amount of SD material I'd have to leave in, unless HD sources for some or all of the stock footage miraculously turn up. It's not exactly a priority of mine, but I wouldn't rule it out.

Terror of Mechagodzilla could potentially be two different projects, since you could do a reconstruction of the heavily cut theatrical version, as well as a reconstruction of the less edited TV version that includes the prologue.

I've been thinking about that as well. The TV version (as well as that of Son of Godzilla) presents an interesting dilemma in terms of presentation; specifically, there's the question of whether to reconstruct it in the film's original scope ratio, or in the pan-and-scan TV ratio of the original broadcast. I'm leaning towards a widescreen presentation for ToMG, since there's no reference for the cropped version that I'm aware of, but SoG is a trickier case that depends largely on whether I can create a textless widescreen version of the opening credits. I've got a vague idea of how this might be done (most of the Japanese credits could be patched over with the Sony DVD, and the English credits could probably be covered using the textless VHS-sourced recording of the TV version), but I have no idea if it would look good. I guess there's also the question of whether there are perhaps any foreign releases that could help, but that would depend entirely on my ability to get my hands on a rip.

As for the theatrical version, I might do that as well, but I'd want a reference for what the theatrical title and credits looked like before I tried it. Considering that it's widely considered an inferior version and I'm not sure if adequate, accurate references are available, that one's not really a priority either.

Flawless! Very creative way of fixing that issue.

Thanks! I kind of half-worry that the work I've done on it will be distractingly obvious now, though; maybe I'll revise it a little before the final render.

[Great Hierophant]

GvSM, SoG and ToMG are always rather troublesome when you are talking about restoring the original U.S. version because far, far many more people in the U.S. saw these films on TV, not in the theater. Everything I have read about ToMG's theatrical release suggests that it was rather a low-key affair. The only source for GvSM's theatrical release is a citation to David Kalat's revised book, A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series. As much as I appreciate Kalat's enthusiasm for the series, I'd prefer a confirmatory source. No evidence exists that SoG ever played in a U.S. theater near-contemporaneously to its TV release.

Which TV version of ToMG do you take? The original one with the Saperstein prologue, which vanished from circulation by the late 80s, or the Pan and Scanned Bob Conn theatrical release that replaced it? My preference is for the Saperstein one reconstructed with widescreen footage taken directly from the other films. Strangely enough, if you add back the cropped bits to the Bob Conn version that circulated on TV and video for 15 years, you almost have the theatrical version.

Were there no credits on the mythical theatrical GvSM release? Such cuts for TV I can understand, but seems to be a little bare bones for the theater. Also, that jingle..., really goofy for the theater.

What about GvM? Megalon has three releases, an early mostly-uncut theatrical release, the "G" rated release and then there is the singificant 1-hour NBC airing hosted by John Belushi. I am not sure if a videorecording of the NBC version exists.

[omgitsgodzilla]

I'm pretty sure Sea Monster and Son of Godzilla were only ever shown on TV and never actually came to US theaters. In fact, if you watch goji1986's Sea Monster reconstruction, there are a couple discrepancies in the dub that suggest it was actually made with the cropped version in mind - Ichino has one line where there doesn't seem to have been one in the Japanese version, and Nita saying "Hey!" to get Daiyo's attention before making the "You and us are friends" gesture is left silent. In both cases, those characters are cropped out in the US version.

By the TV version of Terror of Mechagodzilla, I mean the Saperstein version with the prologue. What you described (recreating the prologue in widescreen using the HD transfers of IoAM and AMA) is what I had in mind.

In other news, Space Hunter M just dropped in on the OriginalTrilogy.com thread about this project with a bunch of useful info. The main take-away was that the Classic Media reconstruction has a lot of issues beyond the obvious ones I've already addressed and I should be using something from an actual 16mm source to sync the Blu-ray footage. Seeing as I've got a little while before the targeted release date, I'm going to try and see if I can't get my hands on such a source and revise the project in time.

[goji1986]

Were there no credits on the mythical theatrical GvSM release? Such cuts for TV I can understand, but seems to be a little bare bones for the theater. Also, that jingle..., really goofy for the theater.

I made the executive decision to place the Walter Reade Logo before the film. Like it's been said, there's no definitive proof (other than a blurb in Kalat's book) that Sea Monster was ever shown in theaters stateside. Even so, the Walter Reade Organization was a distributor for the original Night of the Living Dead in 1968 and the same jingle and logo (albeit in black and white) was used, so I based my decision off of that

[omgitsgodzilla]

I'm revising the reconstruction using a VHS rip and I already found another mistake the CM editors made: When the UFO club looks up and sees a bunch of meteors falling (in the US version, just before the one carrying King Ghidorah lands), they used the wrong shot for the meteors. The shot they used appears after the club looks up in the Japanese version, whereas the correct shot (identifiable by the stars in the background) was actually the one right before King Ghidorah's meteor lands in the Japanese version.

[GodzillaFanatic2001]

Interesting, nice catch. How many little mistakes did you notice overall?

Also, which audio source will you end up using, the CM dvd or the VHS copy you found?

[omgitsgodzilla]

There was another instance of the editors using the wrong shot when Godzilla comes ashore in Yokohama. They used a similar shot, but you can tell it's the wrong one by Godzilla's tail movements and the position of the buildings in the background. There were a couple of shots during Rodan's emergence from Mt. Aso that showed some buses leaving. While they were in the right place, the editors really screwed up the timing (they're actually two pieces of a single shot from the Japanese version) of which exact parts of the shot were used by a pretty significant margin - off the top of my head I want to say 17 frames, but don't quote me on that.

There's an Australian DVD release from a company called Siren that's actually a direct transfer from a 16mm TV print (as opposed to the old tape master used for every other version I'm aware of) and has much better sound quality. It's incomplete - I think the sound cuts out at a few spots where commercials or reel changes would be - but it really is a noticeable difference. My plan is to slow it back down from PAL speed and use it for the majority of the film, then fill in the missing audio with the CM DVD.