Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace: Redemption ** unfinished project **

Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace: Redemption is my attempt to bring some of my favorite edit concepts together into a seamless experience with 5.1 surround sound and improved picture quality, including color correction and contrast adjustment.

This cut will be available in two versions: the canon cut, which will be a more traditional edit along the lines of The Phantom Edit, and the more ambitious standard edition which will borrow some concepts from Magnoliafan’s edit, with the motivations of the Trade Federation re-imagined and most of the annoying characters dubbed over with new voicework. I myself am an animator with some voice acting experience, and I will be recording the voices myself using my school’s sound production equipment. The characters you can expect to hear dubbed over are Jar Jar Binks and all of the gungans, as well as Nute Gunray (although his voice will be quite similar to the original version, since I am dubbing him over for the sole purpose of changing the film’s back story).

The goal of this edit in both forms is to provide a more enjoyable cut of Episode I on all counts that I can manage. I want this to be a disc that you will not feel ashamed of putting on your 50" LCD television due to bad image quality, 2-channel audio, and jarring transitions between edits.

As with The Phantom Edit, Redemption will be focused on trimming away some of the fat of Episode I to make the movie’s pacing feel more energetic, as well as removing as many of Jar Jar Binks’ less flattering moments as plausible, and trying to prevent him from drawing attention to himself when it is not appropriate for the story (which happens A LOT in the original cut). In the original version he was like an adult version of Elmo, not only refusing to embrace proper grammar and diction but also staunchly demanding to be the center of attention at all times. The dubbed version will be even more different, re-imagining Jar Jar as an opportunistic scoundrel rather than an disadvantaged nitwit.

Anakin wil also be getting some minor changes. Most of his more noticeable “childisms” like “Yippee!” are gone, and he no longer apologizes for his competence by constantly saying “oops.” In Redemption, we will see more of the fact that Anakin is very resourceful and intuitive, but is also reckless and a bit stubborn. I feel like as he is presented in this version, his transition into who he becomes in the later films will feel a lot more natural.

Overall, this cut owes a lot to The Phantom Edit, and in the case of the dubbed version Magnoliafan’s edit. I look forward to seeing your feedback when it’s done!

UPDATE the color correction is going along very nicely. I’m currently doing some rotoscoping for a scene that always frustrated me, so that’s taking a while, but you can at least see some preview images below of the progress I’ve made so far. The first shot is the one that involves rotoscoping. The way the lightsaber gets introduced in my cut will hopefully be a bit more exciting than in the official version. Don’t expect a anything crazy, but it will hopefully be a lot more exciting than how they did it in the official version.

The “Canon Cut” will probably be availible a lot sooner than the version with the dubbing, but I’m hoping to make it worth people’s while nonetheless by offering a solid all around edit with significantly better picture quality than the official disc.

Older color correction example

Newer, more refined color correction example:

This thread is sort of a "parking spot" for my projects specifically. I plan on changing the title once my TPM edit goes into production, but for now I'm trying to collect ideas that I specifically want to use in my edit. (And to be frank, that thread's size can be a bit intimidating to navigate!)

Timstuff,

In case you were unaware, I've transcribed cutlist scripts for all the prequel fanedits I've gotten my hands on.  You might find some interesting stuff with how other faneditors have approached their edits.  Follow the link in my sig if you're interested.

Those are going to be very helpful. :)

Glad to hear it :-)

Timstuff said:

As for Episode 2, it's still a bit early on to be looking that far ahead, but there are two big changes that I want to make that come from both Attack of the Phantom and Magnoliafan's edit.

First of all, like TPE I want to change the dynamic of Anakin and Padme's relationship so that they hook up relatively early on in the story. Their interactions make way more sense if viewed in context of them having had a romantic liaison and Padme having second thoughts about it, rather than Anakin just pining about how he wants Padme and her having to explain to him why not. This also means more time can be spent on Anakin's issues on Tatooine, rather than his sexual frustrations.

The other big change is Dooku, who I plan to re-imagine as being a rogue Jedi rather than a straight up Sith lord (or at the very least, his true loyalties will be kept a mystery). This also means that like in Magnoliafan's edit, his lightsaber will be re-colored. If I'm going to do this I want to make sure that it is technically well executed and there are no visible "seams" in the re-color job, since that was the one weak point of Magnoliafan's treatment of the character (little artifacts from the original would occasionally show through). Here are some tests I did with Dooku's saber color. Not sure which one I like as of yet, but I think that the purple, gold, and blue would be on my short list.

My favorite prequel edits have been JasonN's.  I'd definitely recommend you check out his Ep2 edit for how he handled Dooku as a rogue Jedi, as well as the Ani/Padme romance.  Another good source for the romance is Slumberland's edit.

if you ever get another chance of redubbing that first scene this is the kind of dialog i thought of on my spare time that might fix the shitty dialog (mesa) and make jar jar a lot more tolerable

jarjar: you saved my life, thank you

quigon: you almost got us killed are you brainless?

jarjar: (bragging like it's a cool thing) well i speak (or) i speak don't i?

quigon: the ability to speak does not make you intelligent now go on

jarjar: no way i'm staying, sticking with you as a humble servant is a whole lot safer.

quigon: that wont be necessary

jarjar: well my instinct tells me otherwise

(battle droid fight)

jarjar: that's twice you saved me

obiwan: whose this?

quigon: a local we have to move before more show up

jarjar: more? hey wait a minute!

that's the idea i have so far.  as you can see i just changed the dialog so it isn't that far off from the original dialog and with a good voice actor with the right accent or no accent, jarjar might come out a whole lot better character than he is now.

Eh, a bit too straightforward for my taste. I won't disagree with Lucas in that I think Jar Jar needs to have a unique way of talking, it's just that the particular kind of voice, accent and dialogue he gave Jar Jar is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I want to get away from the baby talk and pseudo ebonics and towards something that's more palatable. I think making him an ego-driven scoundrel works since it leaves the door open for him to act foolish at times, but without having to come across as irritating. He needs to be a quirky, humorous character or he ends up just being a somewhat strange peripheral to the rest of the cast, but that doesn't mean he has to be annoying to the audience.

My goal is to make him be an annoyance to Obi-Wan and Qui Gon, but entertaining for the audience. I think that's what Lucas' original intention for the character was, it's just that he horribly botched it up in execution.

Looking forward to following this one. Your redubs are something I might be very interested in using for my own edits.

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but seems like a good place to ask, could you recommend a mic for recording new dialogue?

Timstuff said:

My goal is to make him be an annoyance to Obi-Wan and Qui Gon, but entertaining for the audience. I think that's what Lucas' original intention for the character was, it's just that he horribly botched it up in execution.

I don't know. From the outset Qui-Gon calls Jar Jar an idiot, tells him to go away and ends up spending most of his interaction with the character saying only "Don't touch anything" "Don't do that again" etc. And Obi-Wan just says "wtf is this?!".

BmB said:

Timstuff said:

My goal is to make him be an annoyance to Obi-Wan and Qui Gon, but entertaining for the audience. I think that's what Lucas' original intention for the character was, it's just that he horribly botched it up in execution.

I don't know. From the outset Qui-Gon calls Jar Jar an idiot, tells him to go away and ends up spending most of his interaction with the character saying only "Don't touch anything" "Don't do that again" etc. And Obi-Wan just says "wtf is this?!".

Lucas certainly succeeded on the first half of Tim's mission statement but on the second half...?

I know some very wee kids who like Jar-Jar just as he is but as these are family films their giggles usual come with the discomfort of slightly older people in the room who can remember Stepin Fetchit type characters.

I think he's hilarious. For the same reason I love Caboose from Red vs. Blue. I love moron humour.

Belgium!  Post deleted!

Timstuff said:

i believe green would be a better color for dooku.

here is the idea of what it would look like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngOjuEckyCE

i have always believe that the knights of the old republic should only possees blue lightsabers just as the sith posses red kind of like the old days of red vs blue.  green would be a rarity to only luke, dooku or yoda

There was never anything in the OT to suggest that green was rare, though. We only saw three Jedi lightsabers in the OT-- two were blue, and one was green. Any speculation about which color was more common is just that-- speculation. The only thing we have to go by is the prequels, where green is commonplace. And going by the expanded universe (including games), yellow is a possible color as well.

In the spirit of this being a fan-edit, I decided that rather than write a completely new prologue crawl for the movie, I'm going to try and stick with the format of the original, and integrate bits of it into my own. Take a look see:

*EDIT* Apparently my copied-from-MS Word-text was bugging up some people's web browsers, so I deleted it. It doesn't matter though since I'll have a video up pretty soon anyway *EDIT*

As you can see, I plan on borrowing Magnoliafan's plot element of the Trade Federation dealing in slavery, which is both the reason for their conflict with Naboo (which in the original is very ambiguous), and it also raises the stakes. Also, the whole thing ties in a lot more with the events with Anakin on Tattoine, since he also gives a face to the slavery issue that the plot now revolves around.

Oh yeah, another thing I've been toying with the idea of: one problem that I've noticed is somewhat inherrent with some of the more extreme edits of the prequels is that if you are not watching the entire set (like say, you watch one edited film and the other two films unedited), there's a lot of plot holes and inconsistencies. This can be particularly annoying if an editor never finishes their trilogy, or you simply want to mix and match because you prefer some cuts of the film over others, and there's also the issue of how the cuts fit in with the greater canon. With my edits though, I'm hoping I can somewhat avoid that.

I've been thinking about what I want to do with Jar Jar Binks' voice, and there are a couple options I can take with it. One option, which I've done expiriments with was to completely discard his "canon" voice and make up whatever one I wanted. I liked the results, especially since it meant I wouldn't need to cut his dialogue as drastically, but there is a bit of concern about whether or not casual viewers will accept it.

The other option I've considered is to simply have Jar Jar and the other Gungans speaking in Gunganese throughout the movie, but unlike in other edits I would actually record myself speaking the dialogue in a vocal tone similar to the original characters, so that if you were to jump from my Episode 1 edit to the unedited Episode 2, the transition wouldn't be quite as jarring (although that's kind of inevitable, given how annoying un-altered Jar Jar is). It's possible that I could also release more drastic cuts that discard the larger canon and merely focus on exploring interesting new edit concepts, but I'm thinking for my first time around I'll try to keep things fairly simple, and focus on making the story better, cutting the annoying crap, and possibly doing some color correction (amongst other minor effects tweaks).

As for the Neimodians, I intend to leave much of their voicework unchanged, and I'll be re-recording it when the story necessitates it (this will probably mean dubbing over Nute Gunray and his associates completely for consistency's sake, but I'll be mimmicing their original voices).

Production is underway! I'm probably going to be working on the project mostly from school computers since they are more tolerant of the high-stress rendering needs of Premiere and After Effects, and because I can more easily use my Windows-only portable HDD to store data (at least until I can afford to get a new one for my Macbook). Today, I began the task of transitioning the project into a Windows environment, and I also did some voicework for a trailer I hope to have out sometime soon, with new voicework for Nute Gunray, Jar Jar Binks, and a narrator (I'm not sure if the trailer will have a narrator, but I'm keeping my options open). I'm also probably going to ditch the Celtic-sounding accent on Jar Jar that was in my prior experiment, since I discovered a way to convey the voice without needing a "foreign" sounding accent to make it sound unique.

Also, I think I have decided on a title for the edit, since it all comes back to what this whole project is about: "Redemption." At its core the Skywalker story is about redemption, and this since this project is a chance to redeem the movie from some of its weakest elements I'm hopeful that the title will prove appropriate.

Production is well underway! If this was a traditional edit I'd probably be considered about 40% finished with the actual editing in Premiere, but that's a lot more generous than the actual number because I still have voice overs and color correction to take care of when the editing is over. I just made it up to the pod race and got as far as Jabba's intro (now without the gargling announces), and I've made lots of little cuts here and there. Overall I'm quite pleased with how this is turning out, and I think I will be able to meet my goal of making an Episode I edit that is visually pleasing and pretty close to seamless. I just hope I don't botch up the DVD, because that is definitely going to be the tricky part.

I'm also thinking about doing two versions of the release: one that has my new voice overs and story alterations, and one that is a more conservative, traditional fan cut that cuts down the annoying elements rather than radically re-imagining them. The "purist version" will exist as an alternative that fits more easily into existing Star Wars canon without altering the backstory or re-imagining the voices of characters like Jar Jar, whereas the regular version will be more the fantasy "What if it had been this instead?" cut. I'm not yet sure which version I'll personally enjoy watching more though, since not exactly the sort of person who loves listening to my own voice.

As I've stated before, The Phantom Edit is providing a lot of inspiration for what I'm doing in my edit, but I'm not following it beat-for-beat. There are some edit ideas from TPE that I've taken a step further, and I've also got ideas of my own. The "Regular" version will have a bit in common with the Magnoliafan edit, since it changes characters' voices and re-imagines their personalities and motives. Both versions will probably have an alternate opening crawl, although the "purist version" will be less modified since the background story will not be changed.

We shall be watching the production of this fan edit with great interest!

(walks away smiling)

Initial editing is DONE! There's still plenty of work to do such as the ADR, cleaning up the image in After effects, and composing a DVD out of it, but the bulk of the work is now out of the way. I've got the movie down from 2 hours and 15 minutes to 2 hours and 8 minutes, including about 4 minutes of reinstated footage (meaning the total time cut is about 10-11 minutes).

At this point in the process I expect that I could potentially have the "canon cut" finished sometime next week since all that needs to be done to make it is reinstate the deleted voices (well, for the most part-- there's still quite a few voice bits I'm leaving on the cutting room floor even in the canon cut, obviously), and do the color correction. The dubbed version will be done sometime in March I'm guessing.

Keep your eye on this thread for future updates! I'm very excited to have reached this milestone, and I look forward to reaching the next one!

I need some feedback on the opening crawl for the "canon cut" of Redemption. I think I'm close to what I want, but I need some fresh eyes to look at it.

Episode I
THE PHANTOM MENACE

Turmoil has engulfed the
Galactic Republic. The greedy
Trade Federation is amassing
weapons of war.

Hoping to deter sanctions and
fines against its franchise, the
Federation has entered the
peaceful Naboo system with
a blockade of deadly battleships
to demonstrate its authority.

While the Republic Senate
debates this alarming chain of
events, the Supreme Chancellor
has secretly dispatched two
agents to settle the conflict--
Jedi Knights, the ancient
guardians of peace and justice
in the galaxy....

Now, compare to the original:

Episode I
THE PHANTOM MENACE

Turmoil has engulfed the
Galactic Republic. The taxation
of trade routes to outlying star
systems is in dispute.

Hoping to resolve the matter
with a blockade of deadly
battleships, the greedy Trade
Federation has stopped all
shipping to the small planet
of Naboo.

While the Congress of the
Republic endlessly debates
this alarming chain of events,
the Supreme Chancellor has
secretly dispatched two Jedi
Knights, the guardians of
peace and justice in the
galaxy, to settle the conflict....

You can now see some screenshots of my edit in all their de-pinked glory! Check the first post.