sherlock, could you see about moving Finn’s line about Endor to the part where Finn and Rey are working on the Falcon? If anything, maybe we could hear the beginning of Finn’s like while the camera is still in the cockpit with Poe and Chewie, like we’re doing a J-cut. The whole line doesn’t have to be used. Just whatever fits and still makes sense.
Hey, remember THIS??? From two months ago??
This is a somewhat radical idea I had, and so I feel the need to walk through my thought process (because god forbid I suggest an idea without bloviating about it for 45 minutes). If it won’t work in Ascendant, I won’t be upset. Mainly, I just want to know – does this even work, in practice? I know what I want the scene to convey; does that come across to everyone else?
What I’m thinking is: move the Kylo/Palpy Force call out of it’s current, V1 spot. (We could add in a shot from the Vehicle Flythroughs of the Star Destroyer, either before or after the Falcon is tractored into the ship, in order to pad that out.) Instead, structure the film like this: Rey escapes from Kylo -> Pryde shoots Hux -> (Another new establishing shot potentially, from the Disney+ footage) -> Reinsert the scene of Kylo -> Wipe to Hyperspace, Rey complains that, like, no one gets her, man.
Then, for that Kylo scene, get rid of the entire ADR conversation with Palps. It’s all useless, repetitive dialogue that really doesn’t progress the story at all, so who cares about that. Then, do some fancy cuts and audio mixing, and have Kylo instead be “hunting” for Rey through the Force.
- It explains how Kylo knew they were going to Endor, which was never explained in the theatrical cut.
Just like Jannah, he must have heard Babu Frik’s public broadcast. - It allows us to have Rey telling the group about Endor in kind of a fun, interesting way; and gives us more time in which to do so.
- It builds on the idea that “[Kylo] and [his] Knights are going hunting for the scavenger,” which…Kylo never really does? He Skypes her a few times, and just somehow manages to find objects relevant to her location each time through pure happenstance (Pig necklace, Vader mask…). For his entire mission to find Rey, he’s always two steps behind her, which makes him completely nonthreatening and unintimidating as a villain; he just relies on luck the entire time. This way, we can explain how he keeps finding her, which retroactively makes him intimidating again. And we can use this scene to justify cutting that stupid f**king necklace tracking scene, because I still think that that’s dumb as all hell. (And that necklace scene hurts the pacing of the film anyway.)
And then I thought…if Kylo is searching all across the Force, this scene actually becomes a goldmine of possibilities; which you can read about below, because this comment is already way too long:
In this example, I’ve basically made it into a three-part sequence. First, I added some Rose and Leia dialogue. I like the idea that Kylo is instinctively drawn to his mother before anyone else; I think that adds more to his internal conflict. I also like including both Rose and Leia more, so that both characters feel like they have a slightly larger presence in the film. Both new clips have been restructured from existing lines, so it’s not 1:1 with other lines the viewer will have heard. With the Leia line I used, it also helps to quickly foreshadow the ending Civilian Fleet thing – rather than having Lando rally all of their forces from across the galaxy off-screen in 15 minutes, Leia will have already sent out the call for help, and then Lando just goes to collect them, basically. (This also allows Leia to do more in the film than, er, “nothing,” which…I dunno, I like that.) Kylo also reacts to hearing his mother with a new line.
After Rose and Leia, I added some combat sounds from various sources, a couple of “Skywalker!” lines provided to me by Hal, and some all-new dialogue that I regrettably recorded myself. The idea here is that as Kylo “scans” for Rey, he picks up on some anti-First Order rebellions happening somewhere. Again, just trying to keep that “galaxy rising up” through line running across the film – first with the opening crawl, then with the new puppet show, then with the Kijimi rebellion that I still want to incorporate, then this, and then finally it all comes to a head with the Civilian Fleet at the end. All across the film, we’re just building more and more – and the stakes are getting higher and higher – before the finale. You know, almost like a “movie”! I edited the audio here to hopefully sound like Kylo is searching through multiple uprisings.
Part 3 is the Finn and Rey conversation, built out of four different dialogue lines, with some gentle re-pitching and noise cancellation filters. Throughout the new sequence, pretty much all audio has different reverb and echo effects applied, with additional layers of sound happening underneath. Music is taken from the FYC album. Hopefully it all comes together!
And overall, by stretching out this scene, it’s another chance for us to slow the pacing a little, while simultaneously building up Kylo as a character, exploring the state of the galaxy, foreshadowing the finale, and progressing Rey’s plot. Blip bloppity bloop.
So yeah, those are my thoughts/hopes for this new sequence. I’d really like it if it could work, so I’m open to suggestions. Visually, does it work? How’s the audio mix? The tempo? There are probably a lot of ways to mix the audio to make the “Force tracking” idea come through. I’m open to considering different audio effects/mixes/volume levels if people have suggestions.