I decided to take a crack at a fan edit without prior experience in video editing. I learned a little bit from tweaking a fan edit of Episode III, but I really learned a lot about editing and got a feel for it from doing this cut.
The basis of this fan edit was Hal 9000’s Custom Special Edition of A New Hope. From there, I added several things from Adywan’s Revisited edit, like the Deathstar reveal where it’s above a planet (I then had to replace the other original shots of the Deathstar with Adywan’s for the sake of consistency. Up until when the Deathstar travels to the Alderaan system.)
Certain shots from the Cantina scene were also replaced with Adywan’s, like Greedo and Han’s conversation (The coloring in Adywan’s version of ANH is very different, so there’s a bit of inconsistency there. Not jarring however, imo.) I liked how Adywan made the aliens in the Cantina blink and more expressive. Only some shots were replaced to keep the changes subtle.
A somewhat big change is instead of Obi-Wan cutting off Baba’s arm, he cuts of Evazan’s. This was an edit from Adywan that I liked since we all are used to the fact that lightsabers instantly cauterizes wounds. Yes, Aqualish are different in that their wounds aren’t easily cauterized, but if you were showing ANH hope to a Star Wars newbie (or just someone who hasn’t seen ANH or doesn’t remember every detail), I find that this change doesn’t require explaining that fact to them. The change keeps consistency with the rest of the franchise and isn’t completely lore-breaking.
I added The Clone Wars force-choke sound effect to Vader force-choking Admiral Motti.
I added this to the sequence of the Death Star detroying Alderaan, but I removed the shot of Jar Jar and Bail Organa (I think that’s supposed to be him) and I kept the original 2011 SE explosion. In a future version, I’ll remove the extra footage since it doesn’t work as much as I would’ve liked it to, and because the sequence is very low quality.
https://youtu.be/veASKu0-okY?t=67
As for the addition of Rogue One and sc38 reimagined, I decided to edit them in the same way that the video linked below showcases (Though for sc38 reimagined, I added a side swipe and some transitional music between “Open the blast doors!” and Obi-Wan vs Vader in the hallway.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwtPFOCAPys&t
I took the 3D 20th Century Fox logo from video linked above, but I replaced the second logo with Adywan’s 3D 20th Century Fox logo and the Lucasfilm logo from his Empire Strikes Back Revisited.
I didn’t like the quality of Darth Vader’s breathing in the intro, so I replaced it with a higher quality version that I got from here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ItiLF-jyL0
I couldn’t find the slow Imperial March theme, so I just went without it. I think it works just as well. Vader’s breathing is creepy on its own, and the slight echo only adds to it.
In the beginning sequence of the Storm Troopers boarding the Tantitive IV, I cut a bit of the Rebels looking up at the ceiling when the Star Destroyer is bringing the Tantitive IV closer. I wanted to speed up the beginning sequence a tad bit because the Vader hallway scene from Rogue One starts us on a fast paced note, and we already saw the Rebels being boarded in that scene.
There are some other minor changes, but the majority of the changes are listed above. I am happy with the result, even though the quality of the footage from Adywan’s edit isn’t HD like Hal’s edit, and even though there are some minor audio bugs (like a small pop noise when certain sound clips play/end) since I used kdenlive instead of Premiere (kdenlive is free). In my next version, I will be using less footage from Adywan and I’ll make sure there won’t be any sound bugs.
I don’t have it uploaded on Google Drive at the moment, as uploading takes a long time and other people use the wifi (uploading takes up bandwidth), but if anyone is interested in seeing the edit I can PM the link when it’s ready.
Edit: It’s available. Comment below a request for a link, or just PM me.
Edit 2: Thank you to those who gave feedback! I’m currently working on V1.1, which will have the audio problems fixed and the Deathstar explosion reverted back to the SE version. I’m also beginning production on V2, and the basis of it will be 4K77. I won’t be using any footage from Adywan since it’s low quality and his HD version isn’t out yet, and I’ll be editing in the “good” special edition changes that Hal9000 chose. I’m going try implementing 4K 35mm footage of ANH from 1997 (The existence of this version of ANH was brought to my attention by CourtlyHades296) instead of using footage from Hal9000’s edit, just to keep things at 2160p and maintain the film reel aesthetic. The footage isn’t restored like 4K77, so I’m seeing what I can do to the scenes I need to match the look of 4K77.
Edit 3 (10/11/2020): v1.1 is finished and available!
So here’s what I did:
In regards to SC 38 Reimagined
-I sharpened the entire thing
-Color graded it (to the best of my novice ability) to fit the color grading of Hal 9000’s edit
-Replaced the non-reimagined footage in SC 38 Reimagined with Hal’s footage.
-Added film grain
-Made it widescreen / added black bars to the top and bottom to match the rest of the movie. I had to shift around some shots where the black bars cut off too much.
For the other changes and fixes:
-I replaced the first 20th Century Fox intro with a 4K copy I found on YouTube. It was oversaturated, so I had to color grade it to match the coloring in the second 20th Century Fox intro.
-I replaced the old Rogue One intro with a 4K copy (It was HDR so it was really washed-out looking, so I had to color correct it)
-Reverted the Han shoots Greedo scene and the Deathstar explosion to the original versions in Hal9000’s edit
-Fixed all of the audio problems.
I have various versions I’ll be rendering and uploading. Right now I have a 1080p MP4 h.264 copy uploaded, and soon I’ll be uploading a 1080p MP4 h.265 copy, and 1440p and 4K MP4 copies (both h.264 and h.265 for each.) If you’re not familiar with codecs, h.265 is a video codec that is superior to h.264 because the video compression is much better where it retains more quality, the file size is smaller, and streaming is faster. However, not all players can play h.265 files (A lot of modern players can, but not all.), so that’s why I’ll have h.264 as an option. Also, If you are able to play 4K video and you want to download my edit, I highly recommend watching it that way. But in the meantime, the 1080p copy will be available for you to watch.
Edit 4 (11/7/2020) v1.1.1 is finished and availble! Here are the changes:
-Replaced the Rogue One HDR footage with 4K footage from YouTube, since I couldn’t color correct the HDR footage to my liking. (It was brought to my attention that Vader’s lightsaber looked orange in v1.1)
–I color graded the interior shots of the Tantive IV in the Rogue One intro to match Hal9000’s color grading.
-I increased the film grain for the Rogue One intro and for SC 38 Reimagined
-After Obi-Wan says, “Come here, my little friend. Don’t be afraid.”, there was a pop noise while R2 was responding to him. I swapped the audio in that specific part with audio from a different copy of ANH. Apparently this popping noise wasn’t my fault, as it was present in Hal9000’s Custom SE before I did any editing.
-There was small pop noise right before Vader’s line, “Her resistance to the mind probe is considerable[…].” I fixed this as well.
-Fixed a couple of shots where Vader and Obi-Wan’s lightsabers were overly bright.
-For v1.1, I had an issue with the meeting room audio since in v1, the audio was desynced. I ended up replacing Hal9000’s audio with audio from a different source, just to make things sync up. This was unfortunate, because Hal had added a low, bass-y sound while Motti is being choked, and this force-choke sound is consistent with the rest of the franchise. In v1.1.1, I was able to put Hal’s audio back in.