Edited the scene aboard the Tantive IV when Lea is brought to Vader.

AUDIO: He now speaks the phrase 'Take her away!' slightly slower and in a lower tone.

VIDEO: Inserted a couple frames to smooth and slow down his hand gesture.

Update: Removed the scene with the clunky trashcan-looking robot aboard the sandcrawler. It it very obvious (way more more than C3PO) that there is a person inside. All in all it is  bit too childish plus the whole droid sequence is too long in my opinion.

Editing: Just reversed a 13 frames from R2D2 leaning forward and added it right there so it starts leaning backward to match his actions after the cut scene. Also a few short (all together lest than a sec) cuts to accommodate the audio cut.

Audio: a straight cut at the points of best transition. Added a repetition of some robots noise to shorten the needed video cut.

Hehehe, a 'This thread is worthless without pics!' reply.

I'll post some videos this week.

Here is the Take Her Away video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChtS8vWC4q0

The upward hand gesture is now 11 frames instead of 9 frames long. AUDIO: the phrase 'Take her away' is now app. 12% (70ms) longer and Vader speaks with a lower pitch. I limited myself to only small changes, which still don't sound too fake or in your face.

The following scene where an officer says 'Holding her is dangerous!' and then the other officer informing Vader about the jettisoned escape pod is cut. After Vader says 'Take her away' we see the stormtroopers escorting Lea away with a wipe to the stardestroyer.

I feel there is nothing important lost by cutting the segment while making Vader stronger. We don't need to see him talking to so many low ranking officers.

Yeah, I don't get it either. Anyway, here it is, again: http://www.filedropper.com/anhr2vader1

Joshua_Blue, that clip was pretty good. Having Vader be more distant does work. The only qualm I have though is: would it be possible to have a more Star-Wars-y transition like a wipe instead of the current crossfade? In any case, I think this will definitely be an interesting edit and I'm glad you started your own thread for it. After watching SW so many times, it's always unique to see a narrative change.

@The Aluminum Falcon

You are right, I wanted to use a wipe, but I am new to Kdenlive and video editing in general, so I didn't know how. I've set the transition to Wipe, but I still did not get the desired effect. Only now I realised that I also need to select a luma image file for the true wipe effect.

Problem is, there is a diagonal wipe just a few seconds later, so having 2 wipes only 2-3 seconds apart looks odd, so I may need to keep the crossfade. Or at least use an extremely soft wipe, sort of a blend between wipe and a crossfade.

I really love this idea.  I always thought Vader was ironically too un-Vader-like in his first movie because of how badass he became later (the improved voice in ESB being a huge part of that).

However, every time I try to download the clip it only gives me the first few seconds.  Could someone upload it somewhere else?

This sounds cool. I'd like to see Vader a bit more dark then what he currently is in the movie. It was ESB that showed how evil he could be. And early dose of that would be cool.

I'll soon upload a longer clip with the new wipe. In addition to the 'Take her away!' hand and voice slow down, I additionally  toned down previous Vader's movements like in Jaitea's video clip.

I went for the diagonal wipe to match the diagonal wipe afterwards. Since the new wipe is much faster than the previous crossfade, the two wipes are no longer just 2 seconds apart, so it looks OK. The only thing is the quality of the wipe: it's ok, but not great. I need to check those luma files Kdenlive uses...

Here is the new longer video: http://vimeo.com/30821416

Fantastic! The wipe works well and looks natural in my opinion. Vader also comes across more menacing with the alternate shots of hum.

Generally I'll be also removing some shots of people looking 'too 70s'. I'm taking this step by step as I go, I don't have everything planned out yet, just a general idea of what I want as the end result - a stronger Vader and a movie which looks a bit less outdated, without adding CGI.

Well I said SOME shots, not all of them. Those shots that I can remove/replace without too much trouble ;)

Just trying to minimise the 70s, not eliminate it. And BTW, Luke's hair is just fine.