In Despecialized Star Wars… how much effort would it take to switch the Yavin base shot with the special edition’s one? I would much rather look at the CGI wall instead of the blank grey one.
Not much. You can use your own editing software and create your own version which is what I did with Harmy’s Star Wars Despecialized. I swapped in the SE Alderaan and Death Star explosions, as well as the X-wing shots in and around Yavin. It was easy.
…and in Despecialized Empire Strikes Back, I would like to switch the SE Emperor hologram with the original’s monkey face.
You might want to consider swapping in Adywan’s hologram for the Emperor. I just finished editing Empire Strikes Back Despecialized, and I really considered that choice heavily; however, I elected to just stick with the original. All of Adywan’s versions are an improvement over the 2004 SE hologram and offer continuity compared to the original, but ultimately I decided the final version Adywan put out with the whole scene just wasn’t enough of a homerun for me to justify the edit. I wish he would have done something more like what he did in the trailer he put out. Anyway, I was really unsure about this one so I elected to defer to the creative decisions of the brilliant people who made the original film.
Would these changes mess up with the frames / subtitles etc with the rest of the movies? I mean… are the special edition shots longer than the original ones? The Emperor one might be a problem since the dialogue and everything is different?
Most of the edits are very easy and just require swapping shots in and out. However, some edits may require experience and creativity. I will give you some examples:
-On Hoth, some of the speeder shots don’t look good anymore. I swapped them in with BluRay footage, and these edits were extremely easy. Assuming you cut the edits in the right places, you won’t even notice while watching.
-On Cloud City, when the Falcon lands there is a wipe in the frame rather than a camera cut, and so editing around the wipe or creating your own wipe requires a little more effort than say the snow speeder edits I did earlier in the movie, especially if you want it to look seamless and good.
-Later on, there is the shot with Leia in the window right before Lando’s betrayal. The original shot looks very dated and bad to me, so I edited in the SE version, but it comes with all of Lucas’s usual CGI quackery, which I didn’t want or need. Of course, you could just edit in the entire SE sequence which would be the quick and easy path, but it’s really out of place in the film if you ask me.
What I did was I only used the SE shot from the window’s exterior, and all of that other junk with ships flying around a fake computer-looking city I cut out. That edit requires creativity though because as you alluded to, the timing is off between the two versions and therefore the soundtrack won’t match. I had to cut the new shot into the right place to match with the sound effects of the escort ship flying by, but then there was dead space until the camera cuts into the room with Han and Leia. Luckily, there was a moment while Leia was pacing around where she briefly stopped in the room–it was at that point I spliced the shot and slowed the rest down to match the timeline and get the sequence back to the correct timing.
-Finally, I edited in the shot of Vader’s shuttle flying to the Executor, but not the scene from ROTJ where he lands and disembarks that stops the whole movie in its tracks. This was the most difficult and time consuming edit I did on either film, because the soundtracks are mismatched when you add in a whole new scene with different musical timing. But, after some persistence and a few tries, I was able to finish it perfectly.