Darth Venal

TheBoost said:

Ghost said:

 I also hate how the whole thing takes place in one little area. I wish there was a way to change the story around and make it more epic.  Not just on a Sail Barge.

 

It's an escape from the sail barge. What more do you want? Random starfighters, a herd of rancors, dueling sarlacs and a one armed Wampa back for revenge with its own rival sail barge?

Surely Darth Maul's legs would drop in for one last kick, too?

Ithilgore said:

Rather than removing  the wedding, I would say just make it so that their marriage neither a scecret nor frowned upon. I mean, in ROTS they live in the same house, yet the Jedi don't seem to notice they're a couple? It just makes them look like morons.

So love has blinded them?

Ric Olie said:

RoccondilRinon said:

Darth Venal said:

RoccondilRinon said:

Venal, I think you and Ric Olie would get along really well....

 Why, is he also of the opinion that you have no idea what you're talking about? Because I know I am.

No, you just want things simplified and explained ad nauseam. Doing so is his only purpose in life.

Ouch.  I do have a family, you know.

DV, I'd be happy to sit down with you sometime and watch JasonN's edits, or any other edits that play with Dooku's character.  We'll have endless fun explaining to each other what is going on.

 Thanks, Ric! You see, I need to be told exactly what's going. Maybe we should record it as a commentary.

RoccondilRinon said:

No, you just want things simplified and explained ad nauseam. Doing so is his only purpose in life.

You seem incapable of grasping the idea of a plot which includes shades of grey, in which the antagonist can be a good person, or the villains aren't necessarily working together.

Written proof that you have no idea what I'm talking about. That sounds like first year film student talk. Let's leave this one right here, shall we?

I do understand what it is you'd like Dooku to be, sincerely I do. But I think you're either being hopelessly optimistic about what the plot can support or what you can achieve as fan editors.

RoccondilRinon said:

Venal, I think you and Ric Olie would get along really well....

 Why, is he also of the opinion that you have no idea what you're talking about? Because I know I am.

RoccondilRinon said:

Yes, and I agree that scene should go if we're playing Dooku this way. How is that scene necessary to the film's conclusion? It tells us NOTHING we need to know.

I understand what you say, I just understand that it's wrong. Have you even seen any of these edits to judge how it works?

Playing Dooku what way? Exactly what are you left with if you remove the scene with him meeting Palpatine? You keep saying a mystery figure. I say it's a mess. What good is a mystery figure in the movie if he's killed at the start of the next without any further development? It doesn't create a mystery of any sort, it just weakens the plot even further.

RoccondilRinon said:

Who said anything about making him any less developed? The point is to make him more complex, rather than the two-dimensional villain he is. I consider this to be strengthening. Nobody's suggesting that we remove the film's conclusion or make it any less satisfying. If you like the film the way it is, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!

The point is to make him more complex? How, by removing the only shape his character has got. If you think doing that makes him more mysterious and complex, go ahead. Where you see mysterious, I see vague. And congratulations on not understanding anything I said, by the way, judging by your response. I obviously come across as someone who thinks this movie is just swell as is.  And yes, somebody suggested removing the scene with Sidious and Dooku meeting, and why? Because it instills mystery... What a brilliant idea. Remove any confirmation that Dooku is working with Sidious, after he's fought Yoda, Obi Wan and Anakin. But don't worry, we'll know exactly who he was aligned with in the next movie in the three minutes he appears before being removed from the plot.

Lucas already tried to put mystery into Episode II and admitted it didn't work, so they had to shoot new stuff to replace it. Not that that worked any better.

Ghost said:

Less is more

That is the mindset that needs to go into editing.

Could you be a bit less specific?

Okay, and we need Dooku's already under-developed character to be even more vague because..?  If anything, you should be strenghtening the character, not undermining it by being even less defined.

Removing his meeting with Sidious is one of the stupidest things I've heard so far. This isn't directed at everyone, by the way, but to those I've been debating this with. Do you have any idea about character? About script writing? Because it seems not. Suggestions about making his character even more nebulous - sorry, mysterious - and pages of debate about repainting a light sabre... what?!

All you'll end up doing is ruining about the only half-decent performance in the movie, and making already convoluted events even less clearly defined. Yes, that's what Attack of the Clones needs, less clarity in the script. And hey, after all, it's only the third act of the fucking movie, why bother giving us any sort of conclusion whatsoever? Why have the movie end with the Sith having succeeded in their machinations to start a war? Less is more, after all(!). Well, not when the script already has nothing, it isn't.

RoccondilRinon said:

Venal, you are not a vast majority. If we're accustomed to red = bad guy, blue/green = good guy — which even if we've only seen TPM and AOTC up to this point we would be — Dooku wielding a red sabre is the giveaway that he's a villain. If you give him a different colour — any different colour — it's less likely to pigeonhole him as a simple villain in the viewer's mind.

Notwithstanding my defence of a yellow/gold sabre for him, I don't mind him getting a green one, provided the only other characters with one are Luke in ROTJ, Qui-Gon and possibly Windu if we're painting him as the unduly suspicious character that was thrown about a while ago in this thread, and all the other Jedi get blue.

What a joke. You're saying your average Joe who sees these movies gives a fuck about a yellow/purple/green/orange light sabre? Yes, blue is good and red is bad, I'm sure most people pick up that much. But are you really suggesting that those same casual viewers read ANYTHING into other colours of light sabres? If you think that you're deluding yourself. That was the vast majority I was referring to.

And this logic you're going on about Dooku being a character of unknown affiliation... exactly how long do you think viewers were wondering which side he was on? If the script was trying to pull off some mystery about him then it fails completely. There's ambiguous dialogue with Obi-Wan after he sees Dooku colluding with the Seperatists which achieves nothing whatsoever because it's so badly written, then a scene or two later he's watching two Jedi and a Senator about to be slaughtered. Oh, and then he flees, fights three Jedi and escapes to be with his Sith master. At what fucking point are we supposed to be wondering whose side Dooku was on?

Give me a fucking break.

No offence, but the change of light sabre colour, for the vast majority of people, is completely pointless and conveys absolutely no new information.

ibid.

Avatar said:

jason n gave us a very good idea of seeing dooku in a new light as a rogue jedi trying to save the galaxy from the sith that he only knows rather than a sith

What, and you can do all that by colouring someone's light sabre?

Wow.

Ghost said:

So was I. It's a fact that it's happening. The time frame isn't clear yet.

 Do you have a source?  I haven't heard anything about it. 

 Well I'm not revealing my source, not a chance. But Rick McCallum has hinted pretty strongly on a couple of occasions.

Can anyone actually tell me why we're changing light sabre colours anyway?

Ric Olie said:

Darth Venal said:

shanerjedi said:

I don't even know what "perfect CG" means. What does that mean? Seriously.

 Only Ric has the answer.

Sorry DV, but if no one else has the answer, I can't have it either.  I only have answers to questions that don't need asking.

Sorry Ric, I think I was leaping a bit laterally there... that was my point. There's no answer to the question because perfect CG, or perfect anything, is subjective.

Ghost said:

It's a fact that he is.

 I'm talking with more changes. 

So was I. It's a fact that it's happening. The time frame isn't clear yet.

I don't even know what "perfect CG" means. What does that mean? Seriously.

 

When you can't tell the difference between CG and real life.  It sounds like a stretch now, but I think CG will get there someday.

With human CG characters, it will never happen. And I mean that sincerely, not being reactionary. It will never happen that we have CG humans who are totally distinguishable from real humans, for the reasons I already stated.

shanerjedi said:

I don't even know what "perfect CG" means. What does that mean? Seriously.

 Only Ric has the answer.

Ghost said:

Looking at how far CG has come in the past years, I have no dought it will one day look real.  Look at the jump in CG from TPM to ROTS.  I have a feeling that Lucas is waiting until he can perfect his movies all at one time with perfect CG.  There has got to be another addition coming out.  Blu-ray?

 Depends by what standard you judge real. That's clearly different for you and me. And photo-realistic textures and lighting are only a small part of the process to successful CG characters.

Do you guys think that GL will release another edition of his films? 

 It's a fact that he is.

shanerjedi said:

corellian77 said:

Darth Venal said:

I think Padme's Ruminations is the best scene/new score in Episode III...

Agree with you 100% on that point Darth Venal.  I'd go so far as to say it's the best scene, visually and musically, of the entire PT.  As much as there is that needs fixing in the PT, it's moments like this one that remind me that there are still a good deal of scenes that make the PT worth watching.

Luke: There is still good in those movies... I've felt it.

Ben: They're more special effects, now, than movie... twisted and evil.

I have to say that was one time in my watching the prequels where I was moved emotionally.

 

And me, buddy. The only time, as far as I can remember.

Correction, it was the only time I was moved in the way the movie was intending.

 I know, we're racking 'em up.

Let's try to stick to the titular films of this thread, shall we?

Right, I need to buxom tickets for the cinema.

Hehe definitely too much.

shanerjedi said:

Darth Venal said:

Ithilgore:

Films like Avatar are pushing CG forward and sowing seeds for CG to one day look fully convincing

First of all, I agree with all your post, but one point...

In all honesty, I don't think CG humans will ever work. There is no getting out of Uncanny Valley. I work in this part of the industry, and while some do think it's possible, eventually, I have to say that the majority do not. And nor would they want it to be.

There's an irony in the pursuit of ultimate realism with CG, that being: if your aim is to create a photorealistic human, why not just use a human? Some say "you can get it to do things a real person can't". Fine, then use it for CG doubling, stunts etc, like we already do. What you can't do is nuance a performance in a computer the way a real person behaves. We can probably create photo-realistic still images that could fool nearly anyone. But we are so far away from a realistic moving human, Uncanny Valley isn't the half of it.

Think of what it took just to recreate Yoda in CG. Everything that Frank Oz did live on set back in 1978/9 in a matter of hours and days took many months to replicate in a computer with far more man hours. And it was less convincing. And it was harder to achieve. So what's the point? CG augmentation is one thing, but CG Creation is another.

EyeShotFirst:

I really think that the model ships in the OT minus the garbage mattes, were more convincing than CGI.

I agree completely with that. And now that compositing of live action elements can be done without "traditional" matte lines, it can't look any more real than real. Realistic scale, of course, has to be achieved with models, but as for lighting etc, it cannot ever look more real.

By the way, don't get too excited about the CG in Avatar. I've seen about 40% of the CG for that movie (which equates to about 25% of the whole movie) and yes, it's good. But it's no historical leap forward.

 

 Hehe, man of few words Shaner?

mrbenja0618 said:

Still like green.... yellow and orange almost look evil/sith like to me.

Yeah those warmer colours definitely feel more Sith. I think blue, white, pale green and maybe other paler colours seem more Jedi-like.

I don't like purple at all, or at least the pinky-purple Mace Windu had. A darker, more true purple might be better, but I don't know.

corellian77 said:

Darth Venal said:

I think Padme's Ruminations is the best scene/new score in Episode III...

Agree with you 100% on that point Darth Venal.  I'd go so far as to say it's the best scene, visually and musically, of the entire PT.  As much as there is that needs fixing in the PT, it's moments like this one that remind me that there are still a good deal of scenes that make the PT worth watching.

Luke: There is still good in those movies... I've felt it.

Ben: They're more special effects, now, than movie... twisted and evil.

 Hehe that's very funny, although it scares me a bit that it's so true.

Although I'd have Ben say: "They're more CG, now, than man..."