I finished watching the edit and here is a bit of feedback…
The first change I really enjoyed was the ANH music added at the transition to Palps office. To me, that works well in helping establish a more “friendly” Palpatine.
If you make a 2.0 edit, I would consider removing the skeptical look from Yoda at Palps when he’s talking about extra security. That would help further establish we don’t know Palpatine is a baddy yet.
Again, nice addition of some ANH music. The OT sounds from Mr. Williams has some real emotion (for lack of a better word) behind it that a lot of the prequel scores seem to lack.
The scene where they all sit down and talk in Padme’s apartment: It’s a frustrating scene to edit. There’s only so much you can change because of the lack of footage and/or dialogue. And then, if you cut out the main piece of the scene which is Anakin and Obi-Wan bickering, the scene mostly becomes everyone sitting down and then almost immediately standing up again. With all that being said, your edit works pretty well. One continuity issue: Anakin says “We will find out who’s trying to kill you, Padme” and in the next shot he’s looking down. It’s just a bit jarring IMO.
The buildup to Zam shooting works well. What piece of music is that? It’s nice. Again if a 2.0 is going to happen, I would suggest removing the percussion from the first shot of Zam getting her gun. Since we all know these movies really well, we know when something has been changed by an editor. I think what I personally find jarring is when shots get shifted around (for a good purpose) but the audio (in this case, music) remains the same. So something like that takes me out of the moment.
Moving onto some of the color grading. I’m no expert when it comes to this stuff….I can’t always identify when something looks a shade different here or there. That being said, the Jedi achieves looked really cool in green! But why didn’t you finish the scene? They turned back to blue by the end of it. The only other thing that bugged me was in some scenes characters skin tones were desaturated except for their lips…they looked a bit orange/pink to me.
I like how you ended the scene with Anakin and Padme eating on the transport.
I have never seen anyone edit their first “kiss” this way. It threw me for a loop but it also works very well.
I also like the music you’re using in the asteroid belt chase…is that from TFA?
The best edit involving cutting the droids (specifically 3PO) out was Anakin and Padme leaving Tatooine. I can’t say I’ve seen anyone use this particular edit before. I liked it.
I know there’s not much to work with and you needed to somehow have Anakin and Padme brought into the deleted scene with Dooku…but it’s a bit odd. Using them going into the hallway with the Geonosians milling around behind them and then wiping to the deleted scene…it’s unclear as to what happened. I mean, WE know, but a casual viewer may not.
The ROTJ music with Palpatine being voted emergency powers does wonders for this scene IMO. Excellent!
I like the music choice for the arena monster battle here too. It seems like you’ve definitely put some thought into your music choices because they do fit into your scenes quite well.
Cutting out Padme’s jump is, of course, quite welcome! 😉
Again, the music added to the beginning of the battle of Geonosis is excellent! I would love to know all of your sources.
When Dooku turns to see Yoda and then turns away from him: you might consider zooming in a bit on that reversed footage so that it might hide the fact that it is indeed reversed.
And, again, the music at the end of the film is a really nice touch.
Overall (in case it’s not obvious), your music choices and placement are my favorite things about this particular edit. IMO, you could’ve gone much further with your editing choices…but AOTC is not my favorite to begin with…that being said, this is a fun alternative to AOTC. Thanks for sharing!