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The ‘Custom Special Edition’ That Almost Wasn’t, But Then Was (Released) — Page 4

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What if the second dewback stood still? Would that be better, or is the single dewback preferable?

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Here’s the finished sequence. Thanks to Sir Ridley’s contribution, I was able to retime the opening of the shot, since there was not nearly as much of it present as in the OOT. The final sequence is timed to the OOT, but uses SE elements.
I was also able to independently slow down the dewback (ramping footage back up to full speed before it starts moving), and animate the trooper by reversing and then slowing down footage.

https://vimeo.com/310188616
password: fanedit

My stance on revising fan edits.

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It is literally unnoticeable. Looks perfect!

Not exactly related, but the way the music transition between that scene and the following sandcrawler shot, is that just how it is in that version of the audio? Seems like a very brief crossfade, or whatever you want to call it.

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Gotcha! Lookin’ good though. Ridley, I know I have mentioned this before but I think it’d be cool for you to do a BTS video of you doing some fx work sometime.

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I was thinking about something watching some Episode IV fan edits. 2 scenes I have a question in particular. The Mos Eisley entrance. Various fan edits make the entrance seem choppy due to couple things being cut. Like the robot slapping the security droid and the jawas falling off the ronto. Mostly a lot of fan edits cut around the stuff. They dont like which it’s understandable as those two parts is very childish humor. The most favorable version of the scene edited in a good way to where it’s not so choppy is Adywan Revisited. So I was wondering how yours will be done.

The second scene I have a question about is “If the Ship is as fast as his boasting we ought to do well.” Something I’ve always found cool is with Adywan and KK650’s is they used a wipe with that shot and not the fade. It just seems natural and not weird being none of the other films have had a scene to scene fade transition to another shot. George took the fade away with the imperial spy fading to the docking bay stairs. More then likely he thought it being strange as well being to what I stated. Just thought I’d ask. Love your Custom Special Empire Strikes Back.

All my life as I looked away to the future, to the horizon. Never in my mind did I know where I was, what I was doing.

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RogueLeader said:

Gotcha! Lookin’ good though. Ridley, I know I have mentioned this before but I think it’d be cool for you to do a BTS video of you doing some fx work sometime.

That’s a possibility! I’ll keep it in mind.

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Just got the Greedo subtitles into shape, using Catbus’s font from Project Threepio.

I didn’t have time to render out a preview for you yet for entering Mos Eisley, but I will try to tomorrow.

I’m redownloading 4K77, in the hopes it can serve as a source for the two Wolfman shots, since the current Despecialized uses GOUT for them.
And Neverar’s technicolor version will help with Luke’s ghostly image in the homestead.

It doesn’t look like I’ll restore the ‘cone of light’ from R2’s projector in the garage because the Despecialized can’t be made (by me) to conform well enough to the surrounding footage. (Unless, of course, someone wants to add them manually to those three shots.) I wonder if the SE intentionally left it out since most shots do not have it anyway.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Here’s a candidate for the entrance to Mos Eisley. I carefully blended Adywan’s color corrected BluRay master, NewGuy’s ANH, and the Despecialized. Sometimes I overlaid the first two in order to better blend between sources, since they align perfectly. A little film grain is applied in spots to help mask transitions between sources, also.

https://vimeo.com/310480965
password: fanedit

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

Here’s a candidate for the entrance to Mos Eisley. I carefully blended Adywan’s color corrected BluRay master, NewGuy’s ANH, and the Despecialized. Sometimes I overlaid the first two in order to better blend between sources, since they align perfectly. A little film grain is applied in spots to help mask transitions between sources, also.

https://vimeo.com/310480965
password: fanedit

It’s a good balance of old and new!

The thing that sticks out to me though is the first wide shot of the city after they enter. It feels like this should be switched with the next shot, since the speeder at least feels like it’s going as fast as it did before. But there is also the issue of the checkpoint. The wide shot makes it look like there are spacious boulevards with ample room to evade detection, yet this is in contrast to the sudden crush of people and buildings in the next shot and the inevitable checkpoint. This is a problem in the SE as well, in the panning aerial shot.

I think that using this

This one

and then this

and this

directly after entering town, but before the checkpoint would illustrate the narrow streets in this part of town. Then you could use that aerial shot to help dissolve the tension after they escape.

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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ANH is looking (and sounding) really good! I’m very pleased with how its coming together after a short time of working on it. (Partly because of my extreme familiarity with doing exactly this sort of thing.) I was pleased to find a handful of shots which 4K77 ended up being better to use than the Despecialized, such as reinstating the Wolfman.

Things that aren’t 100% perfect:

  • I am not going to alter the timing of the crawl or opening shot, since doing so causes unnecessary problems.

  • I was going to make the lid to the escape pod blue again as 3PO and R2 wander away from it, since it appears blue again during the “look sir, droids” scene, but the 2004 master’s colors are beyond my ability to un-fuck up. It’s such a tiny thing, anyway.

  • Upon taking a closer look at the long shot during the sale of the droids to Owen and Luke, the added CGI vaporators aren’t really more than a very slight continuity issue, since most of the added vaporators wouldn’t be in frame in the subsequent shot from that angle anyway.

  • Sir Ridley is graciously re-adding the cone of light to R2’s projector for three shots in Luke’s garage.

  • I am currently using the Despecialized for three shots of the entrance to Mos Eisley. The two front-facing shots of the speeder during the checkpoint don’t blend 100%, but are fairly close.

  • The Despecialized edition was also used to remove the added Jabba scene, which itself uses GOUT footage. It’s… not fantastic, but the best option available.

  • I’m not going to use another source to re-animate the blinking light on the Death Star which the SE mistakenly omitted, since any of these would see a change in aesthetic far too distracting to be worth something no one in a million years would have noticed anyway.

  • The shot of Han cornering troopers down a hallway uses Despecialized, which itself uses GOUT. The 4K77 version of the shot stands out as too obviously from a different source, so this shot isn’t great, but it works for how brief it is.

  • Obviously, it’d be nice to have Adywan’s project completed in order to show the Falcon in hyperspace after escaping the Death Star and to better accomplish the SE’s creative solution to trimming the Biggs scene. However, I’d rather put this to bed than wait that long. Both fall outside the focus of the project, anyway.

  • I am keeping both ‘praxis’ shockwaves in ANH. The Alderaan explosion from the OOT needed to be redone, so I don’t have much choice but to keep it. And, while I don’t love the shockwaves, I do think it would be a slight mistake to feature the Battle of Yavin sourced entirely from the SE and then revert to the OOT for only the explosion. I’m not sure how to argue for it, beyond my intuition.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

  • The shot of Han cornering troopers down a hallway uses Despecialized, which itself uses GOUT. The 4K77 version of the shot stands out as too obviously from a different source, so this shot isn’t great, but it works for how brief it is.

I’m biased by this SE alteration since for some reason I think it works better than the theatrical version 😄

Anyway, I like the cutlist so far. I’ve been watching Newguy’s version as my reference cut but yours is gonna look less yellow and the choices made seem to be very close. If I end up making subs (probability is high) I’ll let you know of course 😉

By the way does Adywan’s regrade correct the saber that turns green aboard the Falcon ?

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Hal 9000 said:

  • I am not going to alter the timing of the crawl or opening shot, since doing so causes unnecessary problems.

Have you considered replacing the overly-fast-receding SW logo with the correct-speed one from the Spanish language crawl? That wouldn’t require changing the crawl itself or the opening flyover.

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Now that’s a good idea! Consider it done.

And Mala, I can send you a reference file if you’d like to. That’d save me some trouble for sure, if indeed you are willing to.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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I’d probably be okay with the SE trooper hallway shot, given the less than ideal look the footage I have available isn’t when placed next to the BluRay. It’s a little silly, but for a custom SE next to a good presentation of the OOT, it might be all right.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Thinking ahead to ROTJ, the biggest hurdle will be the Sarlacc. If I go for the full-on original version, it’ll be tough to get the DeEd or other source to blend well, I imagine.

In a perfect world, we’d have the option to keep the added cgi tentacles but leave the beak behind. I have no idea how difficult it would be to remove only the beak, but it looks like a total of 10 shots would stand in the way of that option.

(I can’t tell from the description, but this may be just what Adywan is planning to do. If that’s so, I might just have to leave the beak in and hope to do an update whenever Revisited is complete.)

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

MalàStrana said:

By the way does Adywan’s regrade correct the saber that turns green aboard the Falcon ?

Forgot to answer that earlier; yes, it does. It’s a right-seeming blue throughout the film.

Oh that’s nice ! I kinda like all the changes that occur after the infamous Jabba scene, except this weird SE alteration that poses continuity issues.

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Hal 9000 said:
And Mala, I can send you a reference file if you’d like to. That’d save me some trouble for sure, if indeed you are willing to.

I can help. I’m quite busy right now but your cut is going to be very close to NewGuy’s cut so I can manage to do something quickly based on what i’ve already done (depends what’s your release date is for the finished product). I assume you’ve kept a change log of the number of frames removed/added to easily track the synchronisation ?

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Things should be synced to the BluRay until the ‘look Sir droids’ scene, then again through MOs Eisley, then through Jabba, then from there until the end. There are very few sync-affecting changes, by quantity.
No particular release date; no rush.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

Thinking ahead to ROTJ, the biggest hurdle will be the Sarlacc. If I go for the full-on original version, it’ll be tough to get the DeEd or other source to blend well, I imagine.

I’ve probably asked (don’t remember), but are you keeping the burp joke when Boba gets eaten ?

As for the beak, it never bothered me (because of the Dune vibe perhaps ?), and watching this comparaison (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcLAOcutuxs) I find the animation still good (the texture got a little bit old but since there is no real close up on it, it doesn’t destract), I nevertheless understand why so many hate it (it changes the nature of the Sarlacc).

Removing it while keeping the tentacles would require pathway to many abilities some consider to be… Sir Ridley wizardly 😄

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Hal 9000 said:

Things should be synced to the BluRay until the ‘look Sir droids’ scene, then again through MOs Eisley, then through Jabba, then from there until the end. There are very few sync-affecting changes, by quantity.
No particular release date; no rush.

Ok, should be easy then ! I’ll let you know.