(New OP since relaunching this idea in Jan 2022)
Focus threads:
COMMUNITY FOCUS THREAD 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE
COMMUNITY FOCUS THREAD 2: RETURN OF THE JEDI
The Idea
Like many here on the forums, I’ve been absolutely amazed by the things we’ve been able to collectively achieve when we rally around a single movie as a community and share our insight, ideas, feedback, found resources, and myriad technical talents.
There are many edits which are fantastic examples of this, with Hal’s Rise of Skywalker Ascendant as perhaps the best example of a challenging movie being improved so much by community collaboration. Elements like the puppet show, the Knights of Ren voices, the masses of new CG shots, and of course all the community voices in the “For Skywalker!” moment, were all wonderful collaborative additions. But the thread itself was also a place for new ideas to be analysed, challenged, worked through, and solved by masses of different fans, whether they had technical skills or not.
So now that TROS 2.0 is released and collective community focus is a little lighter, and there are no immediate new movies to contend with, what if we channel that great community momentum towards the existing movies?
The Proposal
This is up for debate, but my idea right now is to produce about one new thread every so often, focusing on a single movie in the saga, to provide a focused channel for similar collaborative thought and discussion on that movie. The original idea was one per month, but I think realistically just ‘when it feels like focus has died down’ is most sensible now.
I know we have some major episode working threads, and we also have the radical ideas threads, but the difference here would be about drawing as many people as were interested in to consider the same content at roughly the same time. I’d produce an OP for each thread with a semi-detailed overview of the movie and its scenes, and add as much useful information as I could that might help guide the collective thought process, then I’d maintain those OPs over time adding suggestions, ideas and resources provided by the community.
For a given movie’s active focus thread, everyone who was up for it might:
- Optionally choose to rewatch the source material or their favourite edits of that source
- Analyse the original or edits on their plot, scenes, shots, dialogue, pacing, direction, video quality/source, audio, aesthetics, tone, etc
- Highlight their favourite elements from their favourite edits, which perhaps others are unaware of
- Identify elements from the source material which might provide unexplored opportunities for further editing
- Highlight any forgotten ideas in the various threads for edits of that source, which they think deserve to be brought back to the fore
- Resurrect any older radical ideas which are maybe more possible with the new technologies we now have
- Consider priorities for editing based on the strength of the individual movie, its place in its trilogy, or what it contributes to the wider saga
- Discuss, review, mock-up, revise, create new elements which editors can choose to use
The Approach
I’d see my role in this being to remain neutral and to simply provide and maintain the resources, and foster a collaborative environment. I wouldn’t seek to impose a particular structure, so much as plant as many seeds as possible that might make it easier for new trees to grow.
In each thread I’ll take each original movie and list it out in scene order, list out common criticisms and popular edits for that movie, then conclude the OP with perhaps a few leading questions to generate discussion.
This Thread
This thread is intended to explain the intentions behind this project, act as an index for the focus threads, and provide a place for feedback on this project’s approach (what can I do better in the focus threads, etc?)
It’s also a place for thoughts on editing the franchise as a whole. Not to review the entire franchise or anything crazy like that, but to share thoughts about the ‘big picture’ which might later affect individual movie discussions. I’m thinking things like how we feel as a community about adherence to wider canon, consistency between movies (like TFA Starlight and TLJ Legendary setting up more of TROS), elements that appear in a few sources but are unpopular to some (midichlorians, chosen one prophecy, etc), elements which are conflicting or retconned (“I remember my mother even though she died in childbirth”, etc), aesthetic priorities (OT-first, modern-first, consistency vs respect for older sources), and so on.
Is there anything else worth thinking about in terms of how I structure and approach these threads? Anything you’d like to see me include in the OPs?
Interested in any and all thoughts here, folks!