Nanner Split- I can’t wait to see this either. You don’t know how rewarding it’ll be when I’m finally able to sit down with the disc in the player and watch it the way I’ve always wanted to.
Commander Courage- Whether you’re sounding critical or not, you’re the one that pointed out things to watch out for, and therefore your advice is extremely valuable and I like it. It’s very good when people critique my work because it’s easy to subconsciously gloss over the faults when you were the one to do it in the first place; a fresh, unbiased pair of eyes is great. So…please keep it up
Nightmare scene- This is one scene that I had to put a great deal of thought into as I was synchronizing music and sound. Basically, I was in quandary and I had two choices. I could have the music climax at the end of the dream as Anakin’s eyes pop open (then the music dies down as Anakin calms down (realizing it’s a dream) and we have transition to next scene. OR…the music keeps building even after Anakin wakes up (and his eyes pop open- punctuated by brass) so that we climax on the transition. I chose the latter because it gives me the feeling that Anakin is deeply worried about this and that this is an important point in the movies. If we climax as Anakin wakes up, the music dies down afterwards (as he thinks about it), and this gives you a kind of resolution that we don’t want- it should keep building and building until the next scene. The score kind of blurs dream and reality (the scary music continues even after Anakin wakes up). I did prototypes of each method of cutting and music, and this way gave much greater impact.
Therefore, if the music does not climax as Anakin wakes up, then it follows that this is not an important point to the scene (the fact that he woke up, the fact that it’s a dream, and so on). Therefore, crossfading the dream with Anakin in bed (with the slow zoom) gives a wonderful frantic feeling with the music that even after he wakes up, the dream is still very much with him. I’m not sure if I’m being very clear at all (if not I apologize) but I think you’ll agree upon seeing it. I think it’s OK that it doesn’t exactly match up with the ROTS dream, because this is the first dream we’ve seen and it seems OK that it could be made special or different.
Thinking into the future, what I had in mind for the ROTS dream was the wonderful musical chord and general film style of the dream from Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”. You see the woman falling (accompanied by frantic strings) and then there’s a wonderful dramatic chord as it cuts to Jimmy Stewart sitting up it bed and staring at camera. He’s gone crazy. This whole thing worked very well and seems like it can be carried over into Anakin’s situation. Consider the parallel- Stewart’s character is feeling guilty because he let the man die at the beginning of the film, because he was not strong enough to save him (his vertigo).
Anakin was not strong enough to save Shmi either, and it weighs heavily on his conscience.
Padme: You’re not all-powerful, Anakin.
Anakin: You’re damn right I’m not. I’m weak. But someday I will be. Someday I will become…(etc.)
But when Stewart is not strong enough to save the woman from the bell tower, he goes insane. Anakin is going insane just by the thought that he won’t be able to save Padme. So the music and the style of this dream will be in the style of the one in “Vertigo”. Another interesting parallel- Stewart becomes INFURIATED at the end of the movie when he realizes that it was a trick and that the woman was not what he thought she was. Anakin will become even more livid in my ROTS because he suspects (or finds out) that something is going on romantically between Padme and Obi-Wan (on top of the fact that she actually showed up with Obi-Wan). I want to put back this subplot whether the deleted scenes are available or not.
“The shot of the guard in the Naboo ship seems squeezed horizontally. Maybe it's a after effect of you cropping it from full screen, and it'll looks fine in motion.”
It does look fine in motion, but it is squeezed- you’re right. I must have messed up the full-screen to anamorphic equation. I’ll go back and fix that shot. The reason I cropped it is because I edited “Very good, lieutenant,” out of the mix and you could see lip flap even from the back view.
“The platform shot looks fine; I guess you just wanted a closer view of the explosion.”
Yes, and it also looks more realistic. But the biggest reason I did it is because I hate the way everything looks so perfect, new, CG, and symmetrical in the PT. Notice how perfectly the explosion seems to be framed. A closer shot throws off the balance and looks more realistic.
“The de-saturated shot of Coruscant is EXCELLENT. It looks REAL!!! And although I have no idea of your reason for flipping the shot, it looks even better that way!”
Thank you; sometime I’ll have to post screenshots of the Council room, Palpatine’s office, etc. because they’ve been de-saturated a lot as well.
“The binary sunest looks very washed out and faded, but I assume this is to match the new color scheme of the scene and not be an exact copy of the one from ANH.”
Yes- I can try to sharpen it up, though.
“Excellent work on the balcony. Before everything looked too blue, as you noted. My only concern with these shots is that their faces seem to be a bit grainy. Of course this maybe nothing and it might look fine in motion.”
I had noticed this graininess as well, actually. It appears to be a side-effect of the chroma-key work that was necessary so that we don’t have bright green plants during the nighttime. I will work on smoothing this out, although it does look better in motion.
“Keep up the good work, you're a real Trooper, man. (Ok, that was lame. Sorry.)”
Ha ha! Lame, yes. That’s my sense of humour right there, though.
“Perfectly awesome.
The new cropping has great impact. You improve the shots and make the worlds feel more real. One thing Ep III did was make Coruscant seem more used and real-- your new shots give me the same impression.”
Thank you, MTHaslett.
This is a very big part of the work I’m doing on this- playing with the colors and desaturating, cropping, flipping, and doing other things to improve the CGI. I’m glad you liked it- I will post more examples. Welcome to the forum, Darth Newmancer!
1. “Whens it gonna be done? (no pressure)”
The simple answer is…I don’t know. However, I know that people like to have dates and deadlines, so I will say that this will be done in one form or another BEFORE next Labor Day. I can’t say how much before.
2. “When it is done how can I get it... will there be a bittorent out for it, or will I have to buy a copy or something?”
You will not have to buy a copy. You will get it for free one way or the other (aside from shipping and blank discs). The story is that I’m not going to be able to distribute these myself. It’s too risky and time-consuming for me. What I’m going to do is send out 1st generation copies to those who’ve helped me, and then I’ll send a few discs to people who are willing to distribute them to whoever wants them, at no extra charge. And knowing Rikter, I’m almost sure it’ll eventually wind up on Bittorent.
3. “Finally, I heard your voicing over Anakin's voice... how that going?”
It’s going quite well- obviously I’m not finished yet, but I’ve definitely made a dent in the dubbing work. I still haven’t completed dubbing the balcony/fireside scene, however. When I dub, I usually do the whole scene in one session, even if I had lines left over from previous days. This is because I don’t want voice variances within the same scene (dry throat, time of day, etc.).