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OM Curator

Museum Curator
Greetings All!

Well, it's been a long time, but we've finally gotten the time to spend on the Museum. Paula and I have been extremely busy, but we promise to dedicate more time to the preservation of Origin's past.

Lots of new acquisitions have occurred over the last several months. A few Ex-Originites have contacted us, and added to the Museum's ever-growing inventory. Here are a few of the specifics:

Daniel Bourbonnais-Origin artist (1989-1992) Dan was nice enough to contact us, and offer some unique items from his collection. Among these are a few Wing Commander 2 'cels', the photo-ready board for the 'WingLeader' cover (the title that was to become Wing Commander), and 2 boxes FULL of 5.25 disks from the day! The treasure hunt for more relics is on!

https://www.wcnews.com/news/2212

https://www.wcnews.com/news/2211

(Thanks to the guys at the CIC for their articles!)

Mark Vittek- Origin Developer Extrodinaire! Mark was at Origin from 1990 thru 2002, and collected a multitude of Origin artifacts. After winning an Ebay auction for a Crusader 'standee', Mark was gracious enough to donate a HUGE box of Origin memorabilia to the cause! The CIC did an article on this event, and we are most thankful to Mark for his generosity!

https://www.wcnews.com/news/2256

I'll post again about some other donations soon. In the meantime, please let us know what you think!

"...Preserving Worlds..."
Joe Garrity
Curator of The Origin Museum
 
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Excellent news -- thanks for the update, Joe!

I had a peak through some of the new additions to the museum the other day and was pretty much overwhelmed by all the cool stuff -- I don't know where to start, although the 35mm Wing Commander 3 film reels are of particular interest -- did you receive all of the film reels for the entire shoot or just a sample?

Unfortunately I don't have the expertise or equipment to undertake the digital capture of 35mm film, although it is likely achievable. Hopefully the digitil transfer of these reels is something that will be attainable by the community at some point in the future. Just watching them on a small home projector would make my day.

Edit: Wow! The Academy Series bible and two episode drafts are online. /Drool :D I'm going to savour these over the weekend.

Keep up the great work, Joe and thanks again!

Cheers,


BrynS
 
Welcome back BrynnS and Maniac89!

About the Wing 3 Film Reels:

Unfortunately, No-we only recieved a sample of the film shot for Wing 3. There are 3 small reels, and 2 large reels-a rough guess of the footage time is about 23 minutes. These reels are however a *very* significant find. All available information (up till now) is that Wing Commander 3 live action was shot on video tape ONLY. Back in 1994, the quality of straming video on computers was not 'up to scratch', and filming on celluloid was not cost-effective--by the time it was digitized on the computer it didn't make a difference!

Without being able to 'view' the film, it is uncertain whether these were just 'test reels', or whether any of this footage are the final 'cuts' used in the game. My guess is that they're only test reels, used to compare to video, and see if it made a difference.

Just to satisfy your curiosity, I *DID* unroll a bit of one of the big reels tho, just to see if I could identify anything. I'm pretty sure that it's one of the opening scenes--the one where Blair and Paladin have found the Concordia (Mark Hammil is wearing that 'rain slicker'). :) It's also interesting to note that the entire background is BLANK--the greenscreen is *NOT* filled in yet!

As for transferring the film to digital format--no info on that yet. I haven't done any real research, but I'm assuming that it's gonna be expensive. I also would hate to have to mail it anywhere, being such a rare item--who knows if it'll ever come back? :eek:

As time permits, I'll put out as much info as I can--hang on tight...there's more excitement to come!
 
OM Curator said:
As for transferring the film to digital format--no info on that yet. I haven't done any real research, but I'm assuming that it's gonna be expensive. I also would hate to have to mail it anywhere, being such a rare item--who knows if it'll ever come back?

Chances are probably low that you'll end up sending it to a fanatic WC collector. But if you can just get a projector for the reels, simply making a regular video recording of the projected image would be a fine interim solution to digitize what you have and show everyone any potential differences (such as the green screen back drops).
 
This is some top-notch stuff you got here Joe,what I would do to have a collection like yours . . .

The Maniac
 
I'd be extremely interested in seeing more unused artwork, preferably from Wing Commander 1. Is there more in the collection which you haven't shown us yet? There was some low quality screenshot from a waterworld scene which didn't make it into the final product in Computer Gaming World back in the day. It would be nice to see some higher quality versions of this.
 
Alkarion said:
Is there more in the collection which you haven't shown us yet?

Joe has so much stuff, I"m not sure if he doesn't have anything!

The Maniac-ac-AC
 
Joe, as was posted on wcnews recently, one of the 5.25" disks you refer to has the Wing Commander II cover art stored on it. Do you already know whats on the other disks? Any plan of making them available to the rest of us?

I guess it would be wise to extract the contents soon since one never knows how long old disks keep working.
 
I'd be extremely interested in seeing more unused artwork, preferably from Wing Commander 1. Is there more in the collection which you haven't shown us yet? There was some low quality screenshot from a waterworld scene which didn't make it into the final product in Computer Gaming World back in the day. It would be nice to see some higher quality versions of this.

Yes, Alkarion, there's more...MUCH more. Although I've gone thru most of it, there's still a few boxes that I've done nothing more than 'browse' thru--there are still LOADS of items that I haven't examined closely yet. On top of that, we have literally dozens (hundereds?) of items that we haven't had a chance to post about yet--things like developers T-shirts, unusual game versions, LOADS of pictures (there must be over 600 slides in one box!), and of course, games, games, and more games. :)
The specific 'waterworld scene' image I have not come across, but I would not be a bit surprised if an image is nestled snugly in a folder in the Museum right now (perhaps a slide?)--I'll keep an eye out for it.

Originally Posted by Alkarion
Is there more in the collection which you haven't shown us yet?


Joe has so much stuff, I"m not sure if he doesn't have anything!

Every time I think that we have recovered all of the major artifacts, there is always someone else that shows us something new. Also keep in mind that we're not 'hoarders'--it's not important to us to have one of everything--ChrisReid's collection has MANY things that we don't have! His Wing 3 collection alone makes my mouth water! But I don't have a need to 'posess' these things, as long as they're cherished and preserved by others--C.R. (and LOAF, and Hades, and Kris, etc) are ALL excellent preservationists--even MORE so, since they're ahead of us in documenting and archiving--images, scripts, files, props...VERY capable hands! :)


Joe, as was posted on wcnews recently, one of the 5.25" disks you refer to has the Wing Commander II cover art stored on it. Do you already know whats on the other disks? Any plan of making them available to the rest of us?

I guess it would be wise to extract the contents soon since one never knows how long old disks keep working.

The Wing 2 cover art was on a single 3.5 floppy, found in the folds of one of the EA boxes--totally by accident! It was not part of the 'Bourbonnais Donation'(those were the 5.25" disks). I've done a bit of work in going thru them, but I'm not finished. Most of the contents is artwork from Savage Empire, and Martian Dreams, and a game I do not recognize (a childrens title)--I have not found any Wing Commander images in there--yet. Although I've gone thru all of the most obvious data disks, there are still a few left that I haven't reviewed. One of the disks is actually WOLFENSTEIN 3D! :) (hmmm...at least that's what the label says--who's to say that it doesn't contain something else?):eek:
 
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