TheBoost said:
I think what Phantom Editor did was great... he edited the movie as an editor. He didn't try to re-write it...
Well SOMEONE has to. Someone has to make it right. Lucas certainly didn't. The Prequels could have used a few re-writes. And now that the technology is available to us at home, what's wrong with trying to make it better? Of course, "better" is subjective. But what I've noticed over the years is that this board is heavy on people with opinions and light on people with any sort of real technical or artistic skill. So what you end up with is a group of people with talent being critiqued and many times discouraged by those who really don't have much talent at all.
Even Adywan has had to endure a lot of crap from naysayers for the decisions he's made, and he's delivered a final product far beyond anything that a fan has yet produced.
I started out as just a reader on this board, and over time took it upon my self to learn how to edit and do all this stuff so I could fix some things that had bugged me for years. Obviously, I wasn't going to wait around for Lucasfilm or anyone else to do it. I make my edits available to the community on the off chance that someone may have felt the same way about certain scenes and might enjoy the changes I've made for myself.
I don't want this to sound as if I'm condemning anybody on this board, and none of this is specifically directed at you TheBoost. There are actually quite a few members who have been incredibly gracious and incredibly helpful, who have consistently made valuable contributions to the fanediting community here without ever making an edit of their own. People like Sluggo, Ripplin, Ben_Danger, Vaderios and many others. They are supportive and they're enthusiastic.
But, for the most part, the attitude here is not like that. There are many people who are against changes of any kind. If that's the case, then why are you participating in a fanediting discussion on a board centered around "Fan Edits, Preservation Efforts, and Other Fan Projects"? There are others who just feel the need to crap out their negative opinion onto everyone else's head. And then there are those who I call the "Unpleaseables", these are people who want to see changes made, but whatever you put out is never going to be good enough for them.
Anyway, before I get off on too much of a tangent here...the point I'm making is that you can trash other people's efforts all you like, but can't truly appreciate the amount of work that goes into a fanedit without trying to make one yourself. That's the only way you're going to see your "opinion" come to fruition.
--ID