Alright, I watched the scene again. It goes
- Shot from the side of the puppet show (this will need VFX too)
- Wide shot of kids laughing (they could be laughing at anything at this point, could just be the narrator’s description)
- Shot of the puppet stage (we slot in whatever VFX we come up with)
- Close up of kid laughing (could very easily just cut this out)
- Wide shot of kids looking in wonder
- Rey watching (maybe slot in some cheers here)
So, looking at it, if you cut the close up of the kid laughing, you really don’t need to do anything crazy here. My final suggestion would be you see the walker on one side, and then Luke pops into frame on the other side. Alien says “Skywalker,” or like “Mastah Jedai Skywalker” some shit like that. Nothing too over the top, gets the point across quickly and efficiently.
I think we could even slot in a closer shot of the stage after the kid laughing to have some breathing room for the scene.
Truth be told I don’t think that’s necessary, I would just make the puppet shot a little bit longer than in the film as is. Don’t think you need to provide too much emphasis here, less you get into fan edity feeling territory. I like the idea that this is just a subtle little moment without much fanfare, as if, like “of course this is happening, we don’t need to make a big deal of it.”
Alright, I watched the scene again. It goes
- Shot from the side of the puppet show (this will need VFX too)
- Wide shot of kids laughing (they could be laughing at anything at this point, could just be the narrator’s description)
- Shot of the puppet stage (we slot in whatever VFX we come up with)
- Close up of kid laughing (could very easily just cut this out)
- Wide shot of kids looking in wonder
- Rey watching (maybe slot in some cheers here)
So, looking at it, if you cut the close up of the kid laughing, you really don’t need to do anything crazy here. My final suggestion would be you see the walker on one side, and then Luke pops into frame on the other side. Alien says “Skywalker,” or like “Mastah Jedai Skywalker” some shit like that. Nothing too over the top, gets the point across quickly and efficiently.
To make it easier on our VFX gods, I don’t think we even need the side shot.
You could cut it pretty easily, but I do think the shot provides a nice bit of geography. There might be other ways to make this easier for the viz wizzes, like maybe just obscuring the area that shows the puppets with something.