A Saga on Home Video, 2nd. Ed. Released!

It’s finally here!

In May 2017, when I released A Saga on Home Video in its 1st Edition, I was four years deep into my YouTube series, From the Star Wars Home Video Library, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well-received the work was by the collecting community. Only a few things tended to drive criticism:

  • Why was it in grayscale instead of color? We’d be willing to pay more for color!
  • Why only paperback instead of Kindle or hardback?
  • What about releases after Rogue One in 2017? The saga will continue to grow, so will the book somehow return someday?

Well, now A Saga on Home Video has returned in its 2nd Edition and has addressed all of those few concerns about the original version.

For those who don’t know, A Saga on Home Video is a narrative history of Star Wars on home video in the United States, though it also veers off frequently into various foreign releases when they are rather interesting or, more importantly, provide a useful contrast to the American market.

The original version of ASOHV was a single volume that  was about 300 pages. It contained 300+ grayscale photographs (instead of color, so that costs could be kept down for that first attempt to see if such a guide would even have an audience). That version is now out of circulation, and the new 2021 edition has grown by leaps and bounds beyond its predecessor. The 2nd Edition now spans three volumes that total around 1,000 pages and 1,500+ color photographs. All photos are of items in my own personal, extensive Star Wars home video library (no stock photos).

So what’s in each volume?

Vol. 1 and 2 each focus on the live action, theatrical films. Vol. 1 starts with the earliest home viewing options (e.g. Super 8 reels) in 1977 and continues through the Blu-ray reissues and digital launch of Episodes I – VI in 2015. Vol. 2 then picks up with the “Disney era,” beginning with the home video launch of The Force Awakens in 2016 and continuing through the most recent releases at the time of publication in Nov. 2021.

Vol. 3 covers everything else. It begins with coverage of the non-parody, fictional television series (DroidsEwoks, the Ewok telemovies, Clone WarsThe Clone WarsRebels, and Resistance), then continues in that vein somewhat by addressing Disney+ (though not strictly limited to non-parody, fictional material for that chapter). It transitions from there into the parodic content of the LEGO Star Wars material before moving into behind-the-scenes programs, followed by oddball items that just don’t fit anywhere else. A final main chapter with tips for collectors and new afterword wrap up the volume (and series).

You can find more information about A Saga on Home Video here.

October 2021 Update on “A Saga on Home Video, 2nd Edition”

It has been six months since the last update on this website (rather than on my YouTube channel) on the status of A Saga on Home Video, 2nd Edition. While I won’t go into as much detail as the last update here, let’s take a look at where things stand.

What is 100% complete for sure?

      • Dedication page
      • Interior cover pages

What is definitely almost ready (so much so that we’re talking about only maybe one more day of work or less)?

      • Legal copyright page (waiting on ISBN)
      • Table of contents for each volume (waiting on final page numbers)
      • Acknowledgements (need to check all episodes of From the Star Wars Home Video Library on YouTube to make sure I have thanked everyone who needs to be thanked)
      • Patreon Credits/Thanks (need to do a final check of names after Oct. 31, 2021, deadline and payments process for the month)
      • Prefaces to all three volumes (waiting on final data to put at the end, along with determining whether to include descriptions of all sidebars in each volume’s preface or just the ones that show up in that volume; preface for Vol. 1 also needs a final picture count for the book)
      • Introduction (also needs a final picture count for the book)

What is very close to done and just awaiting a final check?

      • Ch. 1: Glimmers of Hope
      • Ch. 3: The Original… One Last Time
      • Ch. 4: See It Again… For the First Time
      • Ch. 10: Teddy Bears, Towanis, and Trouble Again (needs a run-through to position pictures to limit dead space)
      • Ch. 11: Genndy Goes Micro (needs a run-through to position pictures to limit dead space)
      • Ch. 13: Joining the Rebellion
      • Ch. 14: A Home Video Kaztastrophe
      • Ch. 16: Brick by Brick
      • Ch. 19: This is the Way
      • Maybe Ch. 7: Enter: Disney, Ch. 9: All Together Now, Ch. 17: Behind the Curtain, Ch. 18: A Cantina Full of Oddballs

What is close to a final check but definitely has some minor things still to address first?

      • Ch. 2: The Great Format War (check on some audio notes)
      • Ch. 5: Rise of DVD, Demise of VHS (check on some audio notes)
      • Ch. 6: The Lucas Films in HD (one more picture probably)
      • Ch. 8: Rise of 4K, Demise of 3D (two more pictures probably)
      • Ch. 12: Rewriting the Clone Wars (one more picture probably)

What will have to be the last chapters addressed before final locking of text?

      • Ch. 15: Empire of Streams (to make sure Disney+ coverage is up-to-date)
      • Afterword (to make sure looking ahead is still accurate)

What’s next?

I’m waiting on an HD-DVD copy of Superman: The Movie to arrive in the mail, so that I can use a side-by-side shot of that with the same film on Blu-ray (from the John Williams AFI boxed set) to illustrate the second “format war” in which Star Wars did not participate until the victor was already known. That will allow for a picture in either Ch. 6 or 12 or both. That item is currently in “USPS is in possession of the item” limbo somewhere in Connecticut.

I need to snap a couple of pictures of the interior of the South Korean Blu-ray and 2D/3D Blu-ray packages for Solo, as I mention what is on the interior art so I figure I might as well show it too.

I need to look over some early chapters to address any audio changes for the saga (such as when you started to have four-channel stereo available, prior to 5.1).

In general, I need to go through chapters, as noted above, to pin down final wording and such, along with final layouts so that there’s not a lot of dead space due to pictures.

Once the final text is done, I’ll have a final page count, which will let me work on cover images, which, since they are wraparound image files, requires me to know the exact spine width before I can create them. Pictures are taken, and the design concept is firmly in place. I just need to make them once the text is locked.

So are we still looking at 2021?

I hope so, but we will see how things go. If not, it will be in early 2021, as writing and picture taking/insertion is pretty much done. We’re nearing the more technical side of the process very soon.

To keep up with the project, keep an eye on my YouTube channel, where project update videos are posted monthly. I will, of course, post further updates here too as publication nears.

April 2021 Update on “A Saga on Home Video, 2nd Edition”

Fans who have been keeping up with my YouTube channel or Patreon get monthly updates on the status of my various projects, including the second edition of A Saga on Home Video. Fans can also follow my posts on the Star Wars Home Video Facebook Group (where I share some preview images at times) or my Facebook author page. However, in an effort to use the site a bit more, I thought I’d finally post a detailed update as to the progress of the book as of April 2021, just weeks shy of the 4th anniversary of the first edition.

Here are the key takeaways for the project’s current status and some details for each:

It’s No Longer Just One Book… It’s Three!

A while back, Microsoft Word (even on my relatively new PC) started to choke on the working file for the second edition. This forced me to consider the length of the guide, and I decided that with as large as it was getting, a change was needed.

I have now split A Saga on Home Video into three separate volumes for the second edition. Each volume is numbered without a subtitle (though I considered a few subtitles that were eventually abandoned for simple numbering). So, what is in each volume?

Volume I covers through right before the home video release of The Force Awakens. In other words, it includes: the original introduction; Glimmers of Hope; The Great Format War; The Original… One Last Time; See It Again… for the First Time; Rise of DVD, Demise of VHS; and The Lucas Films in HD. No chapter names have changed since the first edition, and no new chapters have been added, though content is heavily revised with a lot of new additions.

Volume II covers the live action films in the Disney era, so it includes material covered by the chapter Enter: Disney in the first edition (with plenty of expanded content), plus two entirely new chapters: Rise of 4K, Demise of 3D and All Together Now. Each chapter is rather large, hence only three in this volume that is comparable in size to the other two.

Volume III then covers everything that isn’t a live action theatrical film. This includes the Droids and Ewoks cartoons, plus the Ewok telemovies and a brief mention of The Star Wars Holiday Special in the chapter Teddy Bears, Towanis, and Trouble Again. That is followed by the Clone Wars 2D Micro-series in the chapter Genndy Goes Micro. (These two chapters were originally a single chapter in the first edition: Droids, Ewoks, and a Guy Named Genndy.) It then covers The Clone Wars and Rebels in Rewriting the Clone Wars and Joining the Rebellion as in the first edition (with expanded content), followed by a new chapter on Resistance, entitled A Home Video Kaztastrophe. Before diving into parody fare, there is also now a new chapter that is currently entitled The Baby Yoda Show that looks at The Mandalorian and its accompanying Disney Gallery series, but I’m not sure if that will remain as it is now, which would necessitate another very short chapter on The Bad Batch, or if those Disney+ series will end up merged into a single, renamed chapter. LEGO Star Wars items are then covered, as in the first edition (with more content), via the chapter Brick by Brick. The original chapter that followed, entitled Behind-the-Scenes and Other Oddities in the first edition, has been split into two and expanded: Behind the Curtain for behind-the-scenes materials and A Cantina Full of Oddballs for miscellaneous items. The chapter Tips for Star Wars Home Video Collecting has been renamed This is the Way and, of course, expanded. This volume also now includes an afterword for the entire three-volume guide, entitled Into the Unknown.

Each volume also now includes its own preface, along with a guide to its content and the various types of sidebars.

Expanded Sidebars

The first edition included four types of sidebar:

    • Meanwhile in… (covering some notable foreign releases)
    • Forever Tinkering (brief opinions on changes to the live action films)
    • Changes for Better and/or Worse (detailed breakdowns of changes to TV episodes)
    • For a More Digital Age (info on digital releases)

The second edition introduces three more sidebar types:

    • Go Figure: Hasbro Commemorates Home Video (info on home video tie-in action figure packs that celebrated home video without including home video items within)
    • Spectacles for the Spectacle (a look at the various Star Wars RealD 3D glasses available out there, since RealD passive 3D can be used at home)
    • Across the Galaxy (images that place releases from multiple regions side-by-side without commentary)

ICYMI Above: Everything is Updated!

All chapters have been revised with new and/or updated content for the second edition. (Even the chapter Glimmers of Hope has new content, thanks to a sidebar on the Italian Minicinex.) Between these updates and all-new chapters, each of the three volumes of the second edition will be about the same size as the original first edition (approx. 250 – 350 pages per volume).

More Pictures… and in Color!

The first edition of ASOHV included about 300 grayscale pictures. All grayscale pictures have been replaced with color pictures. (Only five or so are color versions of the original pictures, so nearly all are brand new pictures.) There are also many, many new color pictures that have no counterparts from the grayscale pictures in the first edition. Across the three volumes, there are over 1,200 color pictures in the second edition. (We may cross 1,300 before work is complete.)

Cover Concept

Rather than making the cover look like a VHS cassette like the first edition cover, my current plan is to make all three volumes look similar to the 2000 Original Trilogy VHS release covers, probably all in white (but that’s not decided yet). The images in the boxes would be of various items together that are covered in that volume. (I can’t work on cover art much until I have final page counts due to needing to account for spine width, unless I don’t use custom spine art.)

Formats

Assuming all goes well, the three volumes will be available in paperback like the first edition but also as an eBook for non-eInk Kindle devices, thanks to Kindle Textbook Creator. Even for Kindle, however, it will be three separate volumes, as the text has been altered to fit the three-volume format.

When?

At this point, I can’t say exactly when the three-volume second edition will be ready for release. It should definitely be in 2021, and I’m hoping for second or third quarter. I don’t foresee it being pushed back into Q4 of 2021 or into 2022, as it’s nearly ready. I expect at least another one or two full hand-edits, but the number of photos still to take is minimal, and I’m slowly whittling away my current to-do list for other minor topics to mention/cover.

Future Editions

I’ve been asked what to expect after the second edition. Is that it? Will there someday be a third edition? At the moment, I don’t really know for sure. What will probably happen is that when enough new content is released, I’d release some kind of separate update book that would be a supplement to the three-volume second edition, rather than updating all three files all over again, or perhaps I’d offer both as options: a revised third edition or just a separate book that contains new content only. Honestly, we’re years away from anything like that I’d expect, so I’m not too worried about making that decision just yet. We’ll have to see what happens in the Star Wars home video market in the years to come.

Thanks!

My thanks to all of you who have bothered to read this far or have been keeping up with the project by other means. It’s definitely a labor of love, and I’m eager to get it out there.

Why Create a Guide of Any Kind?

I turned 36 in 2015. Usually, a number like that isn’t a milestone, certainly nothing akin to turning 18, 21, 40, etc. However, for me it was quite a Finn (er,  I mean, a “Big Deal”). You see, I had launched my Star Wars Timeline Project back at a time when I didn’t feel the need to actually track the starting date of my work. I know that I’d spent time toying around with it in 1996, but I didn’t put together a formal file or actually release it to others until later, nor put a date on any of the releases until The Star Wars Timeline 1.1, released on  Jan. 13, 1998. That meant that I knew its first public release had been in 1997, just not the exact date during the final quarter of that year. As such, I decided that when discussing things like anniversaries for the project, I’d simply link the anniversary to my birthday (Oct. 17).

As a side effect of this, turning 36 became an important milestone, as it represented the day when I’d officially been producing The Star Wars Timeline (by then The Star Wars Timeline Gold or “SWT-G”) for literally half of my life: 18 out of 36 years. Any time spent working on it thereafter would mean that I had worked on it for more than half of my life, growing into a larger percentage with each passing year. By the time it ended with its last release on Aug. 11, 2018, I was about to turn 39 and had been working on the project for about 21 years. I’d spent slightly over two full decades producing a massive Star Wars fan project, something that, while it and my first podcast, ChronoRadio (2002 – 2007), did inadvertently lead to my ongoing “side gig” as a writer, had (and could) never directly provide any type of profit.

About a year prior to the end of the SWT-G, I’d also self-published a nearly 300 page guide to Star Wars home video releases from the United States, the first edition of A Saga on Home Video. Both were extensive guides to one aspect of Star Wars or another, based on something I collected. It raised the obvious question: Why create a guide of any kind? Why produce something like these projects, especially when the longest-running of the two could never earn a cent of income for all the work put into it?

     

I would love to say that either of these projects was mostly born out of a sense of duty to fellow fans. However, while that did play into why The Star Wars Timeline Gold continued for as long as it did, that wasn’t the primary impetus behind the project. Both projects were designed in part to fill a “gap” in fandom resources. A Saga on Home Video is the only resource of its kind (as a narrative history and guide, and even online resources that simply catalog home video products are few and far between). At the time it began, the Star Wars Timeline Project was one of only a few of its kind, and by the time it ended, there was no other Star Wars chronological project of its breadth and scope. (Its closest analog would’ve been something like Wookieepedia, but they are two very different beasts: one a chronology primarily developed by one person and the other an ecncyclopedia website developed by hundreds or even thousands of individuals.) So filling a niche and serving other fans were both part of the reason the projects existed, but not necessarily why they began.

Each of the works was a “passion project” or “labor of love,” growing from my own fandom, particularly for Star Wars home video collecting and the continuitiy of interconnected Star Wars stories now known as the “Legends” continuity. Even then, though, that explains the interest perhaps, but not the actual driving impulse to get started and keep going.

As it turns out, Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery’s elder Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), captured the rather mundane reason quite well. When his son, “Indiana” Jones, is shocked to discover that his father, whose passion for Holy Grail knowledge is extreme, doesn’t simply remember all of the salient details they need for their quest now that Henry’s “Grail diary” has been lost, he answers, rather testily, “I wrote them down in my diary so I wouldn’t have to remember!”

And that’s the key component to the creation of both The Star Wars Timeline Gold and A Saga on Home Video that is often missed. I love this stuff, but it’s not possible for anyone, even an expert, to recall every nuance of a particular subject, no matter how passionate they are about the topic. Both projects have, at their core, a desire on my part to create a guide for myself so that, despite my (presumed?) expertise in either area, I would not need to actually (and impossibly) remember all the minutiae of Star Wars chronology or home video release details.

It sounds self-serving, and in that aspect (if viewed in a vacuum), it certainly is. What I see as the thing that distinguishes someone creating projects like these and someone who attacks, tears down, and belittles others online with their in-depth topical knowledge of a particular corner of Star Wars information is not just a matter of tone. I happen to believe that someone with a deep understanding of a subject, if presented with the opportunity to help other fans learn about that subject or expand their understanding of the subject, should, if possible, be willing to share that information. It’s one of the things about fandom that can help engender goodwill and cooperation, especially in an era like the one we’re living in today, wherein social media exacerbates fandom’s divisions and rarely its unifying facets.

So, why create a guide of any kind? It’s a labor of love that channels your own passion for a subject (and requires that passion to be maintained in order to maintain work on the guide itself), but it is often created as an aid for one’s own reference. Some fans just feel a pull toward the Light Side (so to speak) and believe that such knowledge and experise is meant to be shared for the benefit of others when possible.

It was definitely all about me.

But then it was definitely all about you.

It was all about us: the unifying ties within fandom.

If someone creating a fandom guide can look back on years, or even decades, spent on such a project with that mindset, I think we can decide that all the time and effort was worth it.

A New Dawn

Okay, so that was a bit of a melodramatic title (and a reference to a Star Wars novel), but it’s a fitting one. For years, StarWarsFanworks.comNathanPButler.com, and ASagaOnHomeVideo.com have languished mostly unused and bereft of updates since Fanworks ceased to be used as a hub for the Star Wars fan audio community.

Finally, I’ve taken the time to change my webhosting plan, ditch the original site, and convert over to a much more functional, easily managed and updated WordPress site.

As of tonight, the basics of the site are ready to go, making today its official relaunch under all three domain names. A single article was posted prior to this official relaunch to whet appetites and get feedback, and now we’re ready to roll.

Welcome to the new home of my various works. I appreciate you taking the time to visit.

A Saga on Home Video’s Picture Process

The most common request after the publication of the first edition of A Saga on Home Video back in 2017 was that if there was ever a new edition, it should have color images, even if it raised the printing (and retail) costs. This was such a common request that I took it to heart, and now that work is ongoing for the second edition, nearly all pictures in the book are being replaced by new color images (not just color versions of the original images). I say “nearly all” because there are a few items no longer in my collection or that are too large for my current photo setup, so I’ll be using the color originals from the first edition to include them, but that is only about 10 or less images in the entire book.

For those wondering how the photo process works for ASOHV, I thought I’d share that process here. It’s not glamorous. In fact, it’s rather tedious. It works, though, which is what matters.

For the first edition, pictures were typically taken with the items lying flat on an off-white tabletop. Here’s an example of a raw image from the first edition:

I would then just crop that image and convert it to grayscale for use in the book, like so:

Since they were grayscale, that was a fine setup. However, with images now being in color, I needed a better setup to capture those pictures. I picked up a travel photobox via Amazon that I now use for all pictures. Such a box has a built-in light, a white interior surface, and openings on the front and top to allow taking pictures with mostly even lighting.

Step 1: Setup

The first step in the process is for me to clear away all the toddler toys all over the floor in my office (AKA my Star Wars collection room) to set up the photobox against the wall, between a pair of bookshelves (protected from toddler snatching by project boards and storage tubs), underneath a window that has its curtains closed. (This isn’t so much about keeping out excess light as it is for heat. My office gets hot very quickly, and that process is only accelerated by having the photobox turned on.) So, the rather non-galmorous photographing setup looks like this most of the time:

Step 2: Raw Pictures

The second step is then to actually take the pictures. If an item isn’t overly reflective, I will typically take the picutre with the image lying flat on the bottom of the photobox, using an opening in the top to snap the image. This usually requires shifting the items a bit toward the back and right side of the photobox to make sure the overhead, built-in light doesn’t reflect on the product. This is an example of one such raw photo, showing the Sept. 2019 Multi-screen Edition reissues of Episodes I – VI. (Yes, this is a new product for the second edition, since it was released over two years after the first edition’s publication.)

Step 3: Digital Alteration

After a few minutes, the images that are captured with my iPhone synchronize to iCloud, so that I can download them onto my PC. At that point, I open them in Adobe Photoshop for a series of quick corrections. First, most need a slight rotation adjustment, which I do in 0.15 or 0.25 degree increments. Second, I crop the image so that the entire product is shown with as little of the background as possible (though I’m not terribly picky, since the background looks fine in print). Lastly, I update the image size to 300 pixels per inch and a maximum dimension of 5 in. (length or width, whichever is greater). This has actually decreased the file size of the images in the book, even though they are in color, since I had not resized the original images from the first edition in Photoshop before inserting and resizing in Microsoft Word. The finished image will come out like this:

Step 4: Inserting Images Into the Book

Finally, I need to actually insert the image into the working file of A Saga on Home Video, 2nd Ed. in Microsoft Word. To do this, I create a new table in the document. In this case, that table would be one column with two rows, since I would just have this image centered on the page with a caption beneath it. (Other pictures require more rows or columns, depending on how I am arranging the images.) I then insert the picture, centered in the top cell of the table. In the bottom row, I insert a caption with the main body font (Garamond) scaled down from the regular 11 point body font size to 10 point. Once that looks right, I remove all borders from the table. The end result is a page that looks something like this:

Now, imagine going through that process for what is currently over 750 pictures (and counting) due to sometimes needing to retake pictures or take more than one shot of the same product to see which looks best. As I said, it’s not at all glamorous, but this tedious work makes the whole of the second edition look leaps and bounds better than its first edition predecessor. To me, that makes it worthwhile.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief look into the development of A Saga on Home Video‘s second edition. There’s more to come as work continues.