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Star Wars: The Coaxium Heist (COMPLETED)

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 (Edited)

Completed

Been working on this over at FE.org and forgot to share over here.

Intention:
This movie looked like Star Wars but never really felt like it to me. Some of that lost feeling is due to a single uninterrupted narrative and the complete absence of one of Star Wars’ most iconic tools, wipe transitions. This edit will attempt to bring some of that Star Wars feeling back in and remove moments that are overly silly or ridiculous.

Edit List:
00:00:00 - added FE title card, Custom Star Wars disclaimer, aurebesh DigModiFicaTion logo, Custom Walt Disney 20th Century Fox title card
00:00:57 - added custom crawl (expanded star field to allow for pan down)
00:02:25 - added Correlia and a space dock to pan down
00:02:32 - added Battlefront 2 space shot of Fondor
00:08:46 - removed close up of Han’s eye
00:10:59 - added deleted Corellia chase scene
00:16:56 - trimmed/rearranged scene to have Han tell the officer his full name
00:17:09 - replaced Han being blown through the air with a custom wipe transition to a space shot of Mimban with star destroyers approaching
00:17:15 - trimmed Mimban cloud scene to reuse later and cropped Han’s first shot on Mimban to remove the on screen text
00:17:27 - inserted a rearranged version of the deleted Mimban assualt scene to show off a bit more of the Mimban war and Beckett’s team though I removed any direct focus on the minigun character who dies as it creates a narrative that is never resolved. Lots of audio reworking in this edit
00:24:45 - cut stormtrooper chatter (removed Han’s subtitles when he’s talking to Chewbacca)
00:25:34 - cut Han’s faking being mauled by Chewbacca
00:27:44 - inserted Mimban sky shot that was cut earlier in the film
00:27:45 - removed Han/Chewbacca shower scene and added wipe transition to Vandor space sunrise scene. While I like this scene and tired to keep it, I needed to add a wipe here and it just wouldn’t work with the shower scene
00:33:14 - removed Han yelling he’s ok and Chewbacca growling back to him
00:54:52 - reversed and repurposed shot of Han to allow for a wipe transition to the exterior of Niima Outpost
00:55:07 - removed droid cage fight. Sure it’s world building, but it’s distracting and L3 verbalizes enough to give us the narrative
01:01:54 - trimmed L3 and yelling and removed cage fight scenes
01:03:06 - cut L3 saying she can’t work with people watching her. It’s just creepy odd and I wanted to eliminate all of the droid sexualization stuff from the film
01:03:06 - added green screen welding sparks to distract the eye from the fact that her saw isn’t spinning at all
01:05:39 - cut L3’s lines to Han. Now she simply says “Excuse me”. Added droid sfx and gear sfx to simulate her movements
01:10:09 - cut the equal rights scene between Lando and L3. I’m all for equity, but this just felt tacked on. Again, L3’s character still fights for these rights and talks about them, but she isn’t solely focused on them either. This scene just makes her into a walking poster for equal rights. She’s much more than that and removing this scene makes her character more dimensional by allowing us to see her for who she is rather than this one focus area, imo
01:10:31 - cut Q’ra and L3’s girl talk scene. There is no sexual tension between Lando and L3 in this edit
01:16:17 - removed droid saying “freedom”
01:18:03 - cut short shot of Q’ra and Beckett after Han tells them he’s at the vault
01:18:14 - cut Q’ra and Beckett’s response to Han’s taking out the guard
01:19:30 - cut L3 turning around and yelling about the droid rebellion
0:1:24:24 - removed Lando hugging L3 and caressing her after her power goes out. He still yells, but it’s more like how Luke reacts to R2 than what they imply in this film
01:27:12 - removed Beckett’ and Han’s back and forth about if the Tie fighters are still on them
01:28:24 - cut down some of the scene when Q’ra first goes back to help Lando and sees the fire
01:28:35 - cut Beckett complaining about hurting his fingers
01:31:53 - cut Lando asking if Han knew it was the escape pod why would he do that
01:33:58 - cut the back and forth after Han yells “Now!”
01:34:06 - removed the Falcon loosing power gag
01:34:54 - removed Han’s lines over the radio after he says they have coaxium that they need to off load immediately
01:38:59 - stabilized scenes and layer masked the falcon departure in order to remove the falcon leaving gag
01:39:20 - removed Han’s macho moment with Enfys nest and the falcon leaving gag. Repurposed a zoomed wide shot of Enfys and the marauders while Beckett continues his speech before cutting back to him talking visually
01:56:18 - removed Darth Maul cameo. I don’t like it. If they make a second Solo film I’ll put it back or create a flashback for the edit I’d undoubtedly make of the new film,. Here it’s just fan service without any meaning. Now if anyone can do a good cosplay of Xizor I’ll put him in there… Removing him makes Beckett’s character more credible,and Q’ra’s character more devious.
02:00:46 - added wipe transition to Numidian Prime
02:00:53 - cut zooming in camera on Lando and some of his lines
02:03:27 - cut the dice scene and added iris out, moved audio mix up to create natural flow to credits
02:03:53 - made custom edited by and fanedited by credit to replace the preexisting one
02:12:05 - added aurebesh DigModiFicaTion logo
02:12::15 - added FE.org title card

other edits
-extensive color correction of nearly every individual scene
-audio crossfades for each edit to ensure seamless audio transitions
-addition of sfx or rebuilding of surround track when needed to achieve edit
-as with all my edits, I reduce the level of profanity

Teaser Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYBngpp0wrI

Release:
1080p 5.1 MP4




digmodification.wordpress.com

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I’d be interested in seeing this

“You can’t polish a turd. But you can shape it to look like candy.”

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 (Edited)

Your Rogue One edit was nice, easily the best conservative cut I’ve seen of this movie. I still haven’t dared to watch Solo again (between this and TLJ in 4k, I always choose TLJ 😄), your cutlist seems to remove many of my problems with it (mainly L3 and most of the silly prequelism).

Hum… maybe now is the time to try this SW flick again…

(PM sent !)

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 (Edited)

I am also very interested in seeing this because of the editor in question and the amount of L3 cuts.

If I may ask, was there ever a thought to do something about Han speaking Shyriiwook (or is that even possible)? Personally I could definitely live without ever hearing that part again, haha. But the amount of L3 cuts in the list really brings me joy.

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The sounds AWESOME. i can see this becoming my go-to very quickly

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BandobrasTuk said:

Is it already finished?

Hum… oh, man… by reading the description I thought it was finished, now I look lame with my PM sent 😕

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bromeo said:

If I may ask, was there ever a thought to do something about Han speaking Shyriiwook (or is that even possible)? Personally I could definitely live without ever hearing that part again, haha.

Personally, I think getting rid of the subtitles in that scene is helpful. You get everything through context just fine, and it removes the weird feeling of it being literally the only time in ten movies that Shyriiwook is subtitled.

Plus that means you could cut out one or two instances of Han’s growling if you really want to.

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I’m curious in what you mean by “changing the hue of Proxima’s lair to a darker grey blue”. I remember it already being so dark you could barely see anything.

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Zachary VIII said:

I’m curious in what you mean by “changing the hue of Proxima’s lair to a darker grey blue”. I remember it already being so dark you could barely see anything.

I assume that means de-saturating the blue hue - it looked like a blacklight was on during that scene.

solo-star-wars-gallery-han-qira-lady-proxima.jpg

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ForceGhostRecon said:

I assume that means de-saturating the blue hue - it looked like a blacklight was on during that scene.

I checked that scene, and yeah, I forgot how ridiculously saturated it is.

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Hello all. All subtitles will be removed in this edit. L3 is more comedic relief than protestor now. I can’t fault her arguments and think with some of the initial stuff in the cantina-ish place removed we can retain the humor without the blatant protestong undertones. L3 is almost like a bickering sister/best friend to Lando now, or so I’m hoping.

The removal of L3 and Qi’ra’s girl talk scene does cause a slightly odd feeling in the extension to the Falcon flying through the cluster, but it’s kind of like the Falcon’s initial arrival at Yavin, which consists of long shots of the falcon in space and no dialogue. I think it will be fine though.

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to transition from the crawl to Corellia and found an HD cinematic shot of Battlefront II that I’ll post to see what you all think. Greatly appreciate your positive feedback and interest!

I’m actually beginning to see a gem in this movie that I at first didn’t like at all. I think with this edit I might even like it as much as TFA.

digmodification.wordpress.com

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This is exciting! I love what you did with Rogue One and was hoping you would work your magic on Solo at some point.

Any chance you’d consider keeping the Maul cameo? I understand that it’s quite unnecessary, and potentially confusing for some, but it was the one scene in Solo that got my nerd juices flowing full force. Seeing the PT and OT come together was awesome. Maybe I won’t miss it after you improve the rest of the film, but I know it’s a highlight for a lot of people (in my circles at least).

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I would be very interested in watching this! There is some good in the movie that needs some good cleaning to help polish it up a bit!

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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Oooh this looks like the edit I’ve been waiting for. While I enjoyed Solo, it was brought down by padding and the unnecessary nods to the other films. Just felt too tongue-in-cheek?

There is one thing that bothered me and I’m not sure if it’s possible to fix. I’ve always imagined the Kessel Run as a Han’s legendary feat. The fact that he got help from a bunch of other people kinda lessens the value of it. Probably just a nitpick, it was still a fun sequence to watch.

Anyways, I’m diggin’ the list of changes. Are you planning to do any color correcting by any chance? I’m not sure if it was the theatre I saw the film in, but it was so dark and monotone. The film just felt devoid of any interesting color.

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Color correction will be happening. My main focus, at the moment, I’d to remove the blue tint. I’ve seen some edits go vibrant with colors, but those end up looking overly saturated to me. One struggle I’m finding is that to eliminate the blue, I’m needing to mute a fair amount of tones. This makes it feal almost grittier, which I kind if like. Increasing saturation reveals some blues again which I’m not keen on.

Currently I’m using the following:
General white balance to remove the blue to the film> secondary color correction for space scenes to remove the massive blue tint further. The sky is now very grey on Corellia, Mimban and the train heist. I grew up in cloudy weather and it looks pretty close to my eyes. Perhaps my eye for skin tones reveals that I’m a troglodyte who doesn’t see the sun resulting in none yellowy/orange skin.

I’m really trying to push myself to tackle color correction on this film (currently the hangup on some other projects). It definitely is one of my next steps in skill building. I’ll try to post some screen shots later.

Thanks again everyone!

digmodification.wordpress.com

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this soinds interessting! looking forward to seeing it!

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While a lot of people seem to be more focused on just brightening the film, your approach on the removal of the blue tint is really interesting. I didn’t notice just how “blue” the grade is until I looked at your comparison images.

So you don’t really have any intention of increasing saturation or contrast, right? Just color correcting generally, possibly brightening a smudge? I like it. I think what you’re saying about the bleak grey skies comes across. Some of those shots, especially the train heist, feels on the edge of total desaturation/black & white. Which I like, because it kind of makes the existing color stand out more than it did with the blue tint thrown over everything.

I guess the movie being bleak vs the colors popping really depends on taste. I think what you’ve done emphasizes the mood of that harsh reality, the life of crime under the brutal Imperial regime. Whereas a LUT that made the colors pop more might be leaning into that adventure film mood more.

Even if you didn’t want the movie to be brighter or more colorful per se, I could see others using your grade as a solid basis since you have basically color corrected the film. I’m also not a color expert so this all just my random thoughts.

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Thanks RogueLeader! I did play around with brightness and contrast, but as I increased both the result was that any area that was backlit or predominantly white developed a massive glow and/or lost definition/image detail. It just ended up looking overly compensated to my eyes so I left the lighting as is. Thanks for your feedback! 😃

digmodification.wordpress.com

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I actually checked that one out, but the colors look hyper saturated to me. Maybe I live a dull life, but colors aren’t so vibrant to my eyes.

digmodification.wordpress.com