Perhaps Vader’s dialogue in the deleted scene could be changed. Maybe something like, “Luke… join me… it is the only way to save your friends”. Something like that could plant that idea early in the film that Luke might lean toward the dark side to save his friends, which we kind of see during Tatooine sequence.
Funny that you mention that transition in particular, because I’m pretty sure that’s what I did in my very first edit!
I think if you were pursue the idea that Leia tries to rescue Han on her own, then the droids and Luke come later, this could be a way to order and re-cut scenes without new effects.
*Vader’s Arrival
*Jabba dance scene
*Leia sneaks into the palace
*Alter their capture so Boba Fett catches them instead of the whole palace hiding behind curtains
*Han gets thrown in jail, where we see Chewbacca for the first time
*Leia is taken to Jabba
*The droids approach the palace
*Bib Fortuna whisks them off to the dungeons instead of seeing Jabba
*Luke Arrives
I don’t know if I would go with this approach now, but it could be fun to see how this would look in practice. It would definitely make the Jabba sequence move much more quickly, for better or worse.
One thing that would be cool to see come out of this focus month would be some smaller little edits that people could share and use for their own projects. I wanted to expand on one idea I had that I think could make for cool little addition to the film.
Rebel Ships Crash into Death Star Shields
This is something I know Ady also has planned for his edit so it might be redundant, but it could be a fun project, especially because this idea was originally planned but never made. Overall, it would take three major things to pull off.
First I guess one would start by painting out a few of the fighters once they got to a certain point in their flight path. Then, we could find some practical explosion assets that could be used for when they blow up. Any idea where to source those? Finally, some kind of effect of when they impact the shield.
I have seen a proof of concept of this idea floating around before, but I felt like the effects didn’t blend very well with the rest of the movie. I think it would be cool to replicate the shield effect we see inside the core of the Death Star. There is this quote regarding the effect in the Returning to Jedi documentary:
“To create the blue energy effects, a laser was aimed at a rapidly spinning mirror which emitted a cone of light. Some was then blown through the ray to achieve the final effect”
I’m curious if anyone has any insight into this and could further explain how it could be replicated. I would definitely be interested in trying to film something similar for the effect if some people in the community could help me understand the process better.
Also, I’m wondering if we could discuss which source would be the best option for us to use for the community project in general, or for doing effect shots like these.
I have a lot more ideas in general for ROTJ, but I’ll post a little bit at a time so I don’t just inundate the thread with too many random thoughts.