Thanks for posting this Karo.
I know I am a newbie here, I am doing my best to learn about the Vader replica culture specific to these two forums.
I can imagine how being secretive seemed like a good
modus operandi to protect certain details of your prop replicas, to be able to verify, for you TM owners, the pedigree of your helmets.
But from the posts here, that same secrecy allowed pirates to make their best guess and profit by it (e.g. SPFX) without recourse because no one would confirm or deny the authenticy of the helmet in question. And fears that anyone might make a knock off led to folks posting misleading (e.g. photo shopped) images, which only fuels mistrust by others. "We're lying and concealing to protect our items" is not a good defense and, in fact, is one of the major problems as I see it when eFX now comes up with their LFL-blessed ANH helmet and even allows a few RB mold pictures to be posted.
If anyone gets details so they can cast a good knock off, it should not matter if they did not have documentation from someone who has an authenticated TM and transferred ownership to them.
Provenance. At this point, based on all the knocks off that have been reported, it has to be about provenance to confirm authenticity. That is how the art world does it. And technology and the internet has only helped that. When Butterfield's tried to sell a few faked Nagel paintings, and posted images on the web, believe me, they heard about it and the paintings were pulled.
I don't know if you TM owners also made agreements not to replicate your copies. I do not know, but it seems like there was a desire to keep this TM cast a rarity.
The way this C-Scar/Mark debate has been going, obviously the secretive
modus operandi has turned out to be folly.
At this point, there is so much historical speculation going on that anything shy of all us Vader freaks using a time machine to go back in time and see the original helmet during the window of time between it being filmed for ANH and the UK and US castings, I doubt this will ever get resolved and the whole c-scar/mark will never be fully resolved.
I will personally say I do not like the manner and tone in which a certain person makes his pronouncements, which seems highly inflammatory, but I was hoping the members of this forum would not validate his "This is about attacking me" perspective. I see many of the folks here are capable of acting and responding better than that, but others appear quite willingly to play into his vision of how things are.
At this point, I am highly prone to believing that the c-mark is a scar that was present on the TM because of the way many of you have openly responded. It has that undefinable "ring of truth" to it. It also now seems it is highly likely the scar was cleaned away or repaired before Rick Baker make his mold, but when I keep reading personal attacks, I start to feel less inclined to agree since I loose respect for folks and the issue immediately gets muddied by someone's desire to put someone in their place, and then the question of truth and motivation is no longer pure.
At this Den, I don't understand the few folks who appear to want to boil themselves in someone else's pot and help make his point...someone who doesn't even participate at this Den.
As an outsider just walking in for the first time, I am seeing fault on both sides when it would have been very easy, just by the manner, to make it clearer to us newbies that this really is about becoming open, getting information to the larger Vader community, and sharing information. It could have been a slam dunk for members of this forum.
Again, I apologize for still learning the culture here, but it is clear this place aspires to rise above personal attacks and provide solid information for high-end Vader nerds.
....change of thought....
This forum. Wow!
The fact that Brian Muir has participated here at this forum is beyond amazing. Wow.
I wish I had known about this place and all of you two years ago.
It would have prevented me from purchasing an SPFX helmet that now
I will be giving away to a fellow Vader fan for free once my eFX ones arrive.
Peace out.
Karo wrote:
Other than Tom, Joerg and Jesper, the original TM has been seen and handled by Eric (Slasher X), Mike (Vadermonkey) and myself. The TM is quite heavy and to be honest has a rather weird old smell to it based on it's age. When looking at the faceplate from the inside, you can clearly see it's a bit aged. How many years, I have no idea.
All the details you see here in this thread and many others across the Den are all on the original TM faceplate. If anything, Jesper removed certain artifacts and details that I wish he had left on. In his quest to try and uncover the true base laying, there were ceratin sacrifices that were done. However, if he hadn't really been commited, then the TM would have looked like it does in those 1st stage pics that are being posted on the rpf now. For that, I thank Jesper for his diligence in uncovering the truth.
I recently posted some pics for the TM owners of the original with some other of the other castings. They will agree that the details you see here are also on the original. Posting pics of the original, which by the way has already been done numerous times, will prove nothing. The new argument will be that the original TM was altered, blah, blah, blah. I can assure you it's not. That is coming from someone who had hands on experience with it, not someone who claims to know something about it based on pictures.
I wasn't too happy about this thread being posted or the size of the pics being offered. Some of my TM brothers feel differently and that's ok, we don't need ti agree on that. There isn't a faceplate out there as authentic as the TM that has been posted with nice clear pictures and with the information that accompanied those pics. Raw pics of the original TM have been posted numerous times and specific details pics have been posted by me plenty of times. I think the TM guys have been very open with regards to the TM in both pics and information. And as Carsten stated, A LOT of info has been gathered from it. It's really a shame, that even now, that same willingness to show pics and give out accurate information is being used as an attack on it. This is why we don't ever make any progress with vader threads. The same people making the same wild assumption based on incorrect information and stating it as fact. In the end though, as I just proved on the rpf, all it takes is time to realize who is full of hot air.
* I stand corrected in regards to the photoshopped image. There had been several pics that had been posted at one time that were photoshopped as Mac explained that he was asked to do. Since that pic didn't have the C scar yet, I assumed it was one of the PS pics. I aksed Tom to go on the forums for clarification on a few points and I'm glad he did.