The next change I’ve made is at the end of the assassination attempt on Padme’s life:
Once again, I feel like I applied “enter late, cut out early” too much. I took out the line, “Are you alright, my lady?” from v1. When I first cut this moment out, my logic was best described as “Come on, this is pointless. We don’t really need that, right?”
But looking back, ending the scene with Anakin running out of the room seemed oddly paced. Not to mention that reinstating this moment where Padme’s handmaiden asks if she’s alright gives the scene a better transition to the ensuing action sequence that’s about to occur.
My next alteration is arguably the biggest one. This change alone is responsible for why v2 is 2 minutes longer than v1. What I’ve done is simple. I’ve added back more shots of Zamm in her cockpit:
Let me explain.
With v1, I wanted to add in a mystery element to the bounty hunter chase sequence. I accomplished this by taking out a lot of shots where we see Zamm’s face. I took inspiration from the sniper scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket where the first time we recognize her existence is when she fires a bullet at Obi-Wan. Then gradually, as Obi-Wan and Anakin pursue her, they see her face. Well, at least Anakin does.
I wanted to make sure that mystery element still existed for v2, but I feel like the approach I took in v1 was rather clunky. I was trying to reveal Zamm’s face as late as possible, but I think that might’ve been a mistake. We see Zamm’s face for the first time in the middle of the scene where Anakin is trying to grip onto the speeder. And looking back, her first official shot wasn’t that good either.
So, I decided to show her face earlier in the scene rather than later. Now, for v2, Zamm’s face is revealed the moment Anakin jumps out of his speeder and latches onto her speeder instead. This meant bringing back a lot of Zamm’s reaction shots and an extra shot of Anakin trying not to fall off the speeder from Zamm’s POV. While there is a part of me that wishes Zamm’s face could be revealed later, I think revealing it at this point instead feels more natural and intuitive by comparison.