I know the scene was shot. If you look very closely (on the widescreen version), when Noah's waking up, you can see on the other side of the brook the giant footstep that Parameter left (he then supposedly shrunk due to the nothing). Supposedly it was quite an involved scene involving Noah, which only makes sense. If you look at the size of that set, it's gigantic. It takes up an entire soundstage, with an artificial brook running down the middle. That's a HUGE piece of the budget, and they're not going to spend that amount of money for a scene of no consequence. As I recall, it's only used twice, once when Artax nuzzles Noah awake ("its time to eat") and the other only for a couple of seconds when you see the Gmork arrive at night to find Noah gone. Hardly seems worth building the set for that.

I also remember seeing a picture of Parameter a long time ago. It was a studio still of the actor in full costume. I believe in one of the books (Remy Eysen's, I think, not sure) it mentions that they shot the scene, but then upon looking at it, Wolfgang Petersen felt having a shrinking giant took away from the visual effects of the Nothing as being a massive storm (which I have to agree with him).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the scenes with Barret being discovered by the janitor in the school attic were actually used when the film was released in Germany, right? I think they were just cut for the U.S. market for time reasons.

A friend of mine went to Neue Constantin's offices in Germany many years ago to try and see if he could find that lost footage. They rummaged around and gave him a folder of old stills. As for the footage, a lot of that stuff was thrown in boxes and nobody knows where any of that stuff is. One can only wonder at the condition it's in (it it survives). It's sort of like the BBC with the missing Doctor Who episodes. Once the individual episodes were aired in the 60s, they just threw the master tapes out, lol.

If The Neverending Story had the popularity level of say, E.T., then maybe the footage would someday be found. But baring a miracle, I'm betting it's gone for good.

--- In barretoliver@yahoogroups.com, <pascal@...> wrote:
>
> Wasn’t that scene in the movie? Or is it only in the German version? Just Parameter is missing, but the brook is there.
>
> From: pascal@...
> Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2012 11:25 AM
> To: barretoliver@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [barretoliver] Re: Neverending Story Blu-Ray
>
>
>
> Wasn’t that the scene that was never shot? As far as I know, there are no cut scenes left.
>
> From: hadrianspqr
> Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 10:50 PM
> To: barretoliver@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [barretoliver] Re: Neverending Story Blu-Ray
>
>
> The full HD version looks spectacular. Ten times better than the DVD. A German version of the film would be nice, but what I would really like to see is the lost footage of Atreyu and Paramenter (or whatever that shrinking giant was called). That was a very expensive set they built, complete with a brook running down the middle of it, just for a couple of seconds of footage of Noah waking up.
>
> --- In mailto:barretoliver%40yahoogroups.com, <pascal@> wrote:
> >
> > Well, what they should do is release the German version...All we get is the cut American version. Did not buy it, still have the rare first DVD release.
> >
> > From: hadrianspqr
> > Sent: Friday, May 04, 2012 4:23 PM
> > To: mailto:barretoliver%40yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [barretoliver] Neverending Story Blu-Ray
> >
> >
> > I found an interesting review of THE NEVERENDING STORY high definition Blu-Ray release that Barret Oliver fans might be interested in. It specifically compares the American Blu-ray release to the Dutch Blu-Ray release, which is "brighter and more well-lit," and shows several screenshots to compare the two. It also mentions that director Wolfgang Petersen was never consulted on the American release (a surprise), so we can only guess which version (darker or lighter) is the one he would approve of.
> >
> > I'll also cross-post this message in the Noah Hathaway newsgroup, since it's also of interest there.
> >
> > http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-NeverEnding-Story-Blu-ray/8478/
> > http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=138040
> >
>