Winds of Metamorphoses

Lately I've been coming up with new side-projects to obsess over, but the problem with all of them is having to wait until my contract is done before starting any of them. I've no desire to work in 3D in my free time, when I'm already doing 3D work throughout the week...

And then I stumbled upon a widescreen version of Metamorphoses/Winds of Change/Hoshi no Orpheus on Youtube.

First, a bit of a history lesson - Metamorphoses was a Japanese/American co-production by Sanrio, released in 1978. Based on the stories by the Roman poet Ovid, the film was meant to be like Fantasia, for the rock era. It bombed.

Not wanting to give up on it, the studio made some changes - the film's 5 segments were rearranged, 7 minutes were cut, the rock music was replaced by a new disco soundtrack, and narration by Peter Ustinov was added. Re-released in 1979 as Winds of Change, the film bombed again.

In 1985, the film was released on VHS by Columbia Pictures, which is how I came to know of it. It was one of several tapes my parents had rented & copied for me and my brothers to watch, and watch it I did! It was one of my favorite movies at the time, but gradually I'd forgotten about it. Finding it again as adult, I learned of its history... and the fact that there was this whole other, 70mm 2.35:1 widescreen version of the film that I'd never get to see.

The Japanese version of the film, Hoshi no Orpheus, was released on DVD in 2004, and I bought my copy sometime around there. Aside from the Japanese narration and the characters now having proper voices - none of which I can understand, unfortunately - it's exactly as I remembered it! It had no bonus features, though, aside from perhaps a trailer. And, like the VHS, it was cropped to a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Every so often, I'll think about the film, and wonder if it might ever get a 4k remaster, even as a fan project. However futile that might be, I was certainly surprised recently, when I'd found the letterboxed French version on Youtube. And the more I looked at it, I'd wondered if it might actually be the original cut of the film. It only got weirder from there.

I'd quickly decided to try to combine the French and Japanese versions, using the French version to pad out the Japanese version's frame to make it widescreen. It wouldn't be pretty, but it could be the next best thing to a proper remaster.

While trying to line up the film's segments, the first thing I'd noticed is that they're not in the same order. The Japanese version has its segments in the original Metamorphoses order, while the French version uses the Winds of Change order. The Japanese version is only 2 minutes shorter than the original, while the French version has many cuts, and some shots are even sped up. And while synching up one of the film's segments, I'd found some shots in the French version that are not in the Japanese one. Those shots have now made that segment over 20 seconds longer!

As a side project, this one could be fairly long-term. It took me a couple of days to synch up this one 15-minute segment frame-by-frame, but it will need more work beyond that. The French version looks like it has some lens distortion that will need to be corrected, and the colors need to be corrected as well. The movie's soundtrack is available online, so I may use that instead of trying to salvage the film's audio. I don't think Peter Ustinov's narration will be missed, as it wasn't that great to begin with. I'm fairly certain a group of drunken friends with a limited knowledge of the stories could improve funnier dialogue...