TFA: A Gentle Restructure (Released) — Page 23

Something like that sounds good in theory.

Here it is with the truncated line:

https://mega.nz/#!jc0QGAZB!O8P8q_gTpxa5tXwtlk8ypPUEUAc59gUxFrCbpxhwtlc

I gave up trying to turn ‘the weapon’ into ‘their weapon’, so if anyone else wants to take a stab at it, be my guest.

Considering that Leia has some awareness of the First Order’s capabilities, perhaps the crawl needs to more specifically reference a weapon:

Episode VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen in secret from the ashes of the Empire with a weapon of unfathomable power.

Unable to convince the New Republic of this deadly peril, General Leia Organa gathers allies from across the galaxy to form a covert RESISTANCE.

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 it’s somewhat important to let the audience know that they will eventually be dealing with another Death Star-like weapon, so that they can adjust their expectations from the outset. 😉

It could work like that, but I don’t know that one is better than the other. It’s already a short exchange. It was also some work to get Poe’s mouth to look right at that point in the conversation.

This scene might just be best served with simple omission.

The scene flows better without it (I prefer the scene in V1), but I think it serves the film more to establish the base at this point. Han refers twice to the fact that Finn has worked on the base, so right now it feels like a callback with no origin. It’s a tossup for me, whether to serve the moment or the continuity of the film.

Also, there may be a way to rearrange the scenes in this area of the film for greater effect. If after ‘I need you to tell me all you know’ we cut to Rey’s interrogation, it continues that info-gathering theme. Then, since Kylo’s questions are about Luke’s location, cutting directly back to Leia examining BB-8’s map after Kylo’s temper tantrum continues the Luke theme. The Resistance base scenes continue until ‘The report on the enemy base is coming in’. Having Han and Leia’s talk about Kylo after he has just been unmasked may now have more emotional effect, since we can put a face to their discussion. Then we cut to Hux’s demonstration. The audience learns the capabilities of the weapon just as Leia does, and after this the film progresses as normal.

This has the added benefit of allowing for more time between Finn (presumably) telling Leia the location of the Starkiller and the reconnaissance flight which results in highly detailed scan data.

Now there’s an idea to toss around. I may not get the chance until the weekend but I’ll see how that does pacing-wise for sure.

Excellent. I apologize for continually bombarding you with half-baked ideas, it’s my perfectionist/tinkering nature. You’ll just have to render V2 eventually just to get me to shut up. 😉

On the contrary. After V1, I was sitting around hoping for other people to improve upon it.

Well then you’re very welcome 😃

JEDIT: I’ll just leave this idea here to come back to later, since there’s edit specific stuff to do right now:

As it is presented in the film, R2 has been in low power mode ‘since Luke went away’. BB-8 suggests that the map to Luke could be in R2’s backup data, and at the end of the film C-3PO says ‘you’ve found what?’, indicating that R2 has been searching his backup files in low power mode since Luke went away. The problem of course is that it is awfully convenient that he just happens to finish his search when everyone needs a morale boost at the end of the film. The idea that the presence of Rey unlocked the data also strains credulity, in my opinion.

So, my idea is to have R2 awaken some moments after BB-8 hits him but after the others are gone, using the beginning of the shot where his lights come on. He has overheard BB-8’s comment about his backup data, something he had not considered. He then starts to comb through his data, perhaps using a new sound and a flashing light on his body, much like the light of a hard drive reading data. Then, at the end of the film, he can complete his search and announce his discovery as usual.

If that word change tips the scales to including it in the edit, I’ll give it another try 😃

The last video I posted removes that reference. 😃

Posted where?
I agree about not using Hosnian Prime as the location of SKB.

In theory, it would be a good thing to have Poe say something in that moment to the effect of, "Finn here worked on their base!"
As with any of these ideas, unfortunately, it comes down to deciding whether it can be done convincingly. We’ll have to see, but could you post a link to the most recent version you got?

NeverarGreat said:

Here it is with the truncated line:

https://mega.nz/#!jc0QGAZB!O8P8q_gTpxa5tXwtlk8ypPUEUAc59gUxFrCbpxhwtlc

I uploaded it to Mega because Vimeo crashes Firefox when I go to the upload page. Apparently it works fine with IE.

Bah, I’ve worked for hours on this, and nothing fits. It’s fine though, I’ve realized that ‘Finn’s familiar with the weapon system, he worked on the base’ is audibly identical to ‘Finn’s familiar with a weapon system, he worked on the base’.

So I’m fine with leaving it as it is, and leave it up to interpretation as to whether or not Leia was aware of its existence before this moment.

Looking (and sounding) pretty good. 😃

If we go with this change of NeverarGreat’s, it will make it more important for the crawl to allude to a weapon in some way. Here’s a proposed re-re-re-re-re-re-re-revision to include a short mention.

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 its 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…

It’s good. 😃

@sirRidley, yes, the Poe was in motion during ‘weapon’, so there’s little I could do to make that sharper. I tried to make ‘the weapon’ into ‘a weapon’, but it sounded unnatural and I realized that he basically does say ‘a’ since the ‘th’ part is blended with the ‘with’ sound.

I see a problem with this edit as it stands now. Since the Republic still stands after the Resistance learns of the Starkiller and its capabilities, there should be some scene where the Resistance warns the Republic, or at least makes some mention of their danger. Otherwise, it seems like the Resistance is extremely negligent in their duties and allows for this atrocity to unfold at such an epic scale. At the very least, if the Republic thought that it was in danger, they would have evacuated the government to a secret location.

There may be a way to easily fix this, however. During the Resistance briefing scene, simply re-insert the line from Leia that ‘our system is the target’ (eliminate ‘next’, obviously). This way, the Republic will assume that the First Order means only to destroy Leia and the Resistance, a group that the Republic dislikes anyway. Then we could record a line that is said by someone in the crowd to the effect of ‘The Republic won’t help us!’, and then re-insert C-3PO’s line: ‘Without the Republic fleet, we’re done for!’.

It’s intended to be a surprise to the Resistance, certainly. But remember, the briefing scene comes directly after Hux’s psychotic rant against the Republic and the senate in particular. So in juxtaposing two conflicting pieces of information, the audience will hopefully understand that the Republic is always the true target, with the Resistance deliberately misinformed so as to lull the Republic into a false sense of security.

As for the problem with blowing up the Starkiller, I assumed that it would have multiple uses after absorbing the star, it is logical to destroy the planet. Also, nobody has called off the Resistance attack, and why would they? Even if the planet had no further shots to fire, there is still a massive amount of FO equipment there.