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The Force Awakens - Ridley's Edit (WIP) — Page 3

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Do you think you will be inserting the certain iconic shots from the trailers? Like kylo igniting his lightsaber in the forest, x-wings approaching, stormtroopers etc.

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I’m considering it, if the shots fit in seamlessly and make the sequence better then I will include them.

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Sir Ridley said:

I’m considering it, if the shots fit in seamlessly and make the sequence better then I will include them.

I’ve added the shot of Kylo igniting his saber in the forest for my own perpetually unfinished edit. It fits the scene well and besides the hood being present, it works well. I added a lot of the cut stuff from the trailers and TV spots before stopping work after Finn wakes up in the desert.

https://vimeo.com/247987600

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Bobson Dugnutt said:

Sir Ridley said:

I’m considering it, if the shots fit in seamlessly and make the sequence better then I will include them.

I’ve added the shot of Kylo igniting his saber in the forest for my own perpetually unfinished edit. It fits the scene well and besides the hood being present, it works well. I added a lot of the cut stuff from the trailers and TV spots before stopping work after Finn wakes up in the desert.

https://vimeo.com/247987600

Thanks for showing me, that works nicely! 😄

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Yeah seeing this id say it might be better just hearing the ignition. The original felt so much more ominous. Iconic shot or not, I don’t think it works as well.

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Telion said:

Yeah seeing this id say it might be better just hearing the ignition. The original felt so much more ominous. Iconic shot or not, I don’t think it works as well.

Yeah, it works well by itself, but of course it has to be weighed against the original cut. Might not be an improvement.

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I know you are using the same restructure as Hal 9000 when it come to Star Killer so here’s a heads up on a mistake I just noticed with their edit. When the resistance arrives, the weapon is not draining the sun. It only has an ambient red glow, as if it was ready to fire, but of cause it isn’t and the sun doesn’t become ready until Kylo kills Han. I’m not sure if it should be seen in any other shots where it is not, but yeah. I already let them know, I’m unsure if they are making changes anymore but at least you can catch it now.

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Thank you for mentioning it! However, the firing hole and the charging hole are not the same, so you wouldn’t be able to see the charging happening from that angle. I don’t think there’s an issue, but I will keep this in mind just to be sure.

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(Don’t you just love it when you accidentally hit CTRL R)
So I didn’t make myself clear, my bad. They were two different issues. First off, yes the cannon is separate, but I only meant to be referring to that in light of how it is glowing red, were as the thermal oscillator didn’t go red until it was about to fire. So maybe making it white or dark or something might be better.
Second is that based on this:

Yellow being the direction of light (which may or may not be incorrect due to 3D to 2D mistranslated on my part) I would say that the stream should be visible on either the surface, trench or just behind the edge of the base.
That’s that last I’ll say on it. I think I said what I meant this time.

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Thanks for clarifying! It’s funny, I animated the Oscillator shaft to glow red since it seemed to make sense, not thinking about the weapon port itself. It makes sense to darken the port I suppose.

As for seeing the stream off of the star, based on your interpretation of the shadows it would make sense for the intake port to be somewhere just off the bottom left of the frame, so that the light could be sucked straight into the base.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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I see what you mean now! Yes, maybe the weapon shouldn’t be glowing, I will think about changing that.

I agree with Neverar about the stream though, I would say it’s outside the frame. If the shot showed more of Starkiller Base the stream might be visible. Maybe I could create and insert a zoomed out shot of the base where we see the stream to clarify what’s going on.

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Nice clarification Telion! I appreciate your effort of making a diagram. For some reason I always pictured the two ports being on opposite sides of the planet, but they clearly have to be close enough where they both could be in sunlight simultaneously. Maybe they’re at a 45 degree angle from each other on the planet? Close enough where they could both be in sunlight but far enough as to where either port would be over the horizon from the other, since Rey and Co. and Black Squadron can see the stream from the oscillator.

It also makes me wonder about how the First Order dealt with the planet’s rotation. Obviously the base could only absorb sunlight while the absorption port was facing the sun, but then how exactly does it aim? Can they alter Starkiller’s rotation artificially? And the base fires almost immediately after the sun is drained, so either it was coincidentally convenient or they planned it, either by adjusting the planet’s position or timing their attack with it’s natural position.

And I can’t imagine what kind of effect forcibly altering a planet’s rotation must have on it. Earthquakes? Damaging the ecosystem? Although, we see no life on the planet besides trees… Maybe Starkiller also has some kind of terraforming system to maintain its habitability as well. Regardless, Starkiller clearly is a technological marvel even beyond the Death Star. It’s almost a shame they introduced it and blew it up in the same movie. If they were going to repeat the super weapon idea, I almost wished they either went all in with exploring the concept or not have used it at all.

I definitely understand the issues people had with it, not only with repeating the Death Star plot device, again, but also rationalizing how a military junta could afford and construct a weapon on a greater scale than the Empire ever did in their prime. And I know this is a space fantasy and we shouldn’t be too worried about the science of it all, but it is still interesting to think about.

But I agree with your idea Ridley, an establishing shot that helps position the cannon and the absorption port could help clarify that. Maybe using this shot or a static wide of Starkiller?

EDIT: Sorry for rambling on your thread, Ridley!

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I appreciate the rambling though, thanks. 😉

In the establishing shot the sun is shining mostly on the weapon side where we don’t see any intakes. The planet goes dark when the sun is drained, so we’ll have to assume that the sun shining on the base is also the one being drained and that it can be drained from that angle.

So here’s what I think. The positions of the gun and the intakes are fixed. But there might be many small intakes spread out across the surface. The intakes can also be tilted and take in the sun energy at an angle. I assume the sun beam can bend a bit as well. First of all the gun is pointed at the target (by moving the planet around somehow), and the sun is drained through one or several intakes that are the closest ones to the sun being drained.

So perhaps we should see a beam from the sun that goes behind the planet on the side where the sun shines.

Here’s a look at a charging port. There are mountains around it, and we see a small outpost with TIE fighters on the left side which indicate the scale of the thing, it’s big but probably not big enough to be clearly visible from space. I’m guessing about 200 meters in diameter, maybe? It’s also angled a bit.

Here’s a shot of what the draining looks like from the surface, the beam seems to be angled relative to the surface of the planet. It looks like the beam goes into a single spot.

In this map we don’t see any big charging holes, but there are many circular things on the surface, perhaps some of them could be charging holes? We can also see a line across the side of the planet that seems to separate it into a front half and a back half, I wonder if this could suggest that the back is different and maybe that’s where the charging happens? There also seems to be some sort of structure on the bottom of the planet, could that be related to the charging? Perhaps it charges from the top and/or bottom?

Another wiew of the back of the planet, nothing visible there though…

No visible charging holes here, unless they’re the black dots in the middle of the hexagon patterns.

A view of a screen suggesting that the sun beam enters the top or bottom of the planet, not sure how accurate this is though as the graphics need to be simplified to some extent.

Here’s a piece of concept art showing many massive charging holes, this might be a hint.

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Oh and another idea I had that may be more difficult to pull of (if not impossible) is that I feel it would make more sense for the beam to hit the Hosnian system’s star, blowing that up, which then has that same ‘death disk’ thing form the death stars explosion which hit and wipe out the planets. That rather than having it travel as a single beam which randomly fans out right as it gets to the planets, splitting into 5 different beam that perfectly hit each planet.

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Yes, that is an amazing diagram indeed. I guess we shouldn’t think too much about the science of it all, but it would be nice for the logic to check out so there aren’t any inconsistencies that will confuse the audience.

And I like that idea. The beam splitting into like five beams at the last minute was a weird choice. If one were driven enough to make such a change, I would definitely prefer something like making the Hosnian Star Go supernova to destroy the whole system (setting it more apart from the Death Star), or just make it one beam and destroy one planet.

It would be nice if it were somehow possible to visually show that the laser travelled through hyperspace as well, though I only have vague ideas of how that could be portrayed.

I think there multiple ports is a good theory, Ridley! It would make sense for it to switch ports or something as it rotated. Like I’ve said, I guess these details aren’t super important. I guess it’s just mainly to know for that establishing shot if you decide to make it.

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Is your project going well, is’t been a few month and I haven’t heard a peep. Are you OK? Is this thread dead? I don’t want to nag, but its just their haven’t even been any suggestions and I’m kinda getting a ghost town vibe.

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projects here tend to go quiet from time to time. usually just means there’s nothing to report.

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Yeah, I haven’t worked much on it lately, but I wouldn’t say it’s dead (and neither am I, I’m fine, thank you). Suggestions are still welcome and I’ll let you know if there is something interesting to report.

Hal is doing Restructured V3 and he wants to include some effects I have planned for my edit. I will replace the facial scar on Kylo (which looks different in TLJ) and remove Chewie from the scene where he should have been hugged by Leia, so those shots will be completed some time in the foreseeable future.

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Sir Ridley said:

I will replace the facial scar on Kylo (which looks different in TLJ) and remove Chewie from the scene where he should have been hugged by Leia, so those shots will be completed some time in the foreseeable future.

Doin’ the Lord’s work.

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Here’s something I don’t think I’ve seen before. An unused shot of Han hanging up his dice in the Falcon. Concidering how they show up in TLJ (and Solo) I thought it might be nice to show them in TFA. But where is this clip from? Is it available in high quality somewhere? Looks like it might be from a behind the scenes video, could it be on the blu-ray? https://twitter.com/theswlegacy/status/953379237242732544

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Sir Ridley said:

Here’s something I don’t think I’ve seen before. An unused shot of Han hanging up his dice in the Falcon. Concidering how they show up in TLJ (and Solo) I thought it might be nice to show them in TFA. But where is this clip from? Is it available in high quality somewhere? Looks like it might be from a behind the scenes video, could it be on the blu-ray? https://twitter.com/theswlegacy/status/953379237242732544

I believe it’s on the feature doc on the blu-ray, yes. Really annoying that they didn’t put it in the film or on the BD as a deleted scene.

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DominicCobb said:

Sir Ridley said:

Here’s something I don’t think I’ve seen before. An unused shot of Han hanging up his dice in the Falcon. Concidering how they show up in TLJ (and Solo) I thought it might be nice to show them in TFA. But where is this clip from? Is it available in high quality somewhere? Looks like it might be from a behind the scenes video, could it be on the blu-ray? https://twitter.com/theswlegacy/status/953379237242732544

I believe it’s on the feature doc on the blu-ray, yes. Really annoying that they didn’t put it in the film or on the BD as a deleted scene.

Ah, thanks! I’ll see if I can locate it. Not sure if it fits into the film somewhere or if the footage can be used at all but I’ll look into it.

Jedit: There it is!

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Yeah, I was really miffed when I learned that they filmed that moment and cut it.

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Yeah, I find it incredibly frustrating that Abrams cut it out. It was that moment that inspired the whole dice thing in TLJ.

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