Wow, I like the sequence a lot. My initial reaction to watching the theatrical original is that u have this slight moment of u certainty because u don’t know if the proton torpedo would work and let alone save the rebel base in the Knick of time. Your sequence seems to portray this from tarkin’s pov. While he thinks victory was attained the viewer can appreciate for a few seconds it is quite the contrary.
I hadn’t consciously intended this, but a good analysis! I can see it.
How did u rotoscope the explosion starting at 0:18? Is it the same explosion that proceeds down another shaft several seconds later? And what program did you use? If im not mistaken, it looks like your explosion was manually drawn? I use Davinci resolve and for explosions, the Luma keyer works well for rotoscoping explosions in fusion page. For my low standards at least
I put this together in Premiere - all of the explosions are from their original source material.
(Hidden if you want to see the video before reading where it’s all from)
I used footage from Star Trek Discovery for the photon torpedo falling down the shaft, the hangar bay floor exploding is from Chernobyl with a new floor rotoscoped in, the large space with all the orb structures exploding is from Battlefield Earth, the final explosion of the whole Death Star is from Man of Steel with the Death Star rotoscoped in, and all the remaining shots are from the 1996 Keanu Reeves action movie Chain Reaction. I just colour corrected some elements in some shots - the Battlefield Earth shots are originally highly saturated purple, and the shaft that you’re talking about was originally terracotta brown in Chain Reaction.
However, the fact that you assumed the effects were custom made hopefully indicates I’ve done a decent job at combining it all!