Ok, so I’ve just finished reading all the pages in here prior to my first replies before continuing to comment in here (and because it’s all really quite interesting 😉 ). Below are a few comments I’ve made on some of the posts:
Well, it’ll still be a very focused edit on this particular issue, but there are a few minuscule things I’ll want to do. Nothing major, just things like removing Kylo Ren identifying FN-2187 by name on the bridge…
Just wondering why you felt this needed removing? After the first attack on Jakku, Kylo does look very pointedly at Finn for a few seconds, almost staring and he very well could have been using his force mind delve (whatever you call this new dark side force power) to note the particular storm trooper’s ID since Finn did look a bit odd standing there still amongst all the activity and staring back, so it’s not a great leap to think Kylo has made a similar easy leap to guess this is the storm trooper that helped Finn to escape, he may have even reached out with the force to check for the trooper (he does seem to pause for a second as if reaching out with his force sense before announcing who the trooper is) that he’d noted earlier on Jakku and found he could no longer sense his presence aboard the Star Destroyer and therefore it again is another easy logical leap.
Hello! What a great idea for a fan edit. I quite like TFA as-is, but this really improves the only aspect that I thought was lacking in the finished film - Starkiller Base. I just watched V1 last night and thought it was great. I did have just one suggestion, though. And I think my reasoning for it might be hard to articulate, but I’ll try my best…
So, I think the surface shots of Hosnian Prime as it goes kablooey should be removed. For the hypothetical first-time viewer, the death of HAN FRICKIN’ SOLO is gonna be a pretty big deal, yeah? So as the Starkiller fires, the viewer is still gonna be reeling from that I think. That’s a very personal, human-level tragedy.
Now, I’m totally fine with the Starkiller firing on the Hosnian system right after that. I like the symmetry - Han’s death sort of signaling the turning point where EVERYTHING goes down the crapper. But! It seems to me like those shots on the planet surface were there in the original scene to add a human dimension to the event, like “Look! There’s PEOPLE here! They’re all gonna die! It’s SAD!” And yeah sure, that kinda sorta works in the scene’s original placement. But where it is now, I think the viewer doesn’t have much time to care about a bunch of random folks when they just saw Han Solo die. It’s enough to just see the planets explode from a distance. Han fulfills the human-level tragedy in a way, even though he’s obviously not on any of those planets.
It may sound strange, but he’s much more important to the audience than the billions of faceless, nameless people that die on those planets, ya know? So cutting away to the people on the surface kind of dilutes Han’s death, at least for me. It feels like the movie’s going “Oh yeah, Han Solo died, but also THESE PEOPLE!!!” and it’s too much. Does that make any kind of sense? I’m worried it doesn’t. Anyway, just a thought that I had. I can pretty easily do it for my own version if Hal doesn’t want to.
I thought this was very well articulated and made perfect sense, at least at the time of posting. Whether this would still work or not with the current line up of changes for V2?
Episode VII
THE FORCE AWAKENSLuke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the fallen Empire, plotting it’s return to power.
Failing to convince the NEW REPUBLIC to combat this emerging threat, General Leia Organa mobilizes a covert RESISTANCE while the First Order completes its devastating new weapon.
Desperate for her brother’s help, Leia has sent her most trusted pilot on a daring mission to Jakku, where a clue has been discovered to Luke’s whereabouts…
I think your new crawl is awesome but there were a couple of things I thought that might improve it ever so slightly. One is to add “as” before “to Luke’s whereabouts…” and the second is to really clear up that Leia does not know at this stage about the SKB.
Though in clarifying this, it does tend to lessen the impact of “Desperate” in the next paragraph as you think if she doesn’t know about the weapon then why is she suddenly so desperate where it actually makes more sense for her to be desperate if she knows about the weapon…it’s a bit of a catch 22 situation so maybe your current wording still works best here. It doesn’t say she knows about it (though it is slightly still implied even if coming after the blurb about Leia with the NR and Resistance) so it fits with the events later in the movie but it still also lends itself to the urgency in her desperate attempt to find Luke. Anyway, below is the crawl with my two suggestions incorporated, see what you think:
Episode VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS
Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the fallen Empire, plotting it’s return to power.
Failing to convince the NEW REPUBLIC to combat this emerging threat, General Leia Organa mobilizes a covert RESISTANCE though unaware the First Order are also nearing completion of a devastating new weapon.
Desperate for her brother’s help, Leia has sent her most trusted pilot on a daring mission to Jakku, where a clue has been discovered as to Luke’s whereabouts…
Here are NeverarGreat’s two R2 scenes with proper audio and fully formatted. The only thing missing is a few sound effects for BB8 (head turns and rolling away). Anyone have any isolated FX already I could use?
Password: fanedit
These looks amazing, the only suggestion I have is maybe if you could make the “harddrive activity” lights ever so slightly brighter / more obvious? I found it a lot more obvious myself once I full screened the video but wonder whether it’s worth looking at again in the final pass?
Here’s a version with only the Star Destroyer emerging from the clouds:
https://vimeo.com/199518952
Password: destroyer
I don’t think this is the latest version, though I’m sure what my comments refer to still exists in the latest version and that’s simply that I find the clouds are too different between the two different shots of the destroyer in the sky. The first shot looks great (though I think there’s another version of the video with thicker clouds and the destroyer looking even larger in the screen? - this was my preferred version for this shot) but then in the second shot, the cloud that was partially obscuring the destroyer is now no where to be seen instead of still visible with the destroyer instead showing more of itself as it continues to slide into view.
Not sure if anyone else picked up on this but its something that catches my eye time and again.
I think that’s about it for now anyway 😛 I did have some other posts ready to quote but at this stage I can no longer remember exactly what it was I was going to say in reply anyway.
I do have one request for the edit though Hal whether you’d consider it and that is to move your blurb about it being a fan edit to after the end credits? It just feels like it spoils the atmosphere as you wait for the movie to start and get presented with a wall of text instead that blatantly points out you’re not watching the original where I like to believe that when watching it and present it as such to any family or friends I show it to and then afterwards I explain that it’s a fan edit and credit whoever the author is.
Anyway, V2 is shaping up really nicely and I can’t wait to watch the end result. A big thanks to yourself, all the contributors and the author of that article that started it all. Keep up the great work!
.Val
JEDIT: I don’t think I’ve got the latest crawl quoted above as I didn’t think I changed the end of the 2nd paragraph as much as it appears here. Looking for it now to update above 😉 - I’ve now updated the quoted crawl above as per Sir Ridleys last linked image example http://imgur.com/j2uZxjQ