The Force Awakens: Starlight (V1.1 Released!) — Page 70

That’s pretty cool! Interesting how even if you input the same dialogue multiple times, the output is different in each case.

Here’s what I came up with. It gets the info across, to me.

I probably did two dozen takes on ‘evacuation’ and even then I had to splice two takes of that word together to get something usable. The AI just doesn’t like that one, clearly.

I wonder how much of the oddness is just the expectation of another sound. I think it’s definitely in the range of what Daniels would have done, but more like a weird take rather than a wrong one, you know?

I tweaked it again, and it might be slightly better, but I’m happy with it as a piece of pure exposition rather than performance.

That dialogue change gave me the idea of moving the previous 3PO dialogue about the Republic fleet to later in the film:

“General, are you seeing this?”
“Two more X-wings down. That’s half our fleet destroyed!”
“And their weapon will be fully charged in ten minutes. Without the Republic fleet, we’re doomed!”
“General, we need to take out some of these TIE fighters before we make another run at that oscillator. All wings, break off and retreat!”

This means that I’m reintroducing the ten minute countdown notice, which in this version is actually helpful since the prior update was at fifty minutes.

Glad you think so!

I’ve gone back through the thread and read all the suggestions and critiques, copying them to my notes document for consideration. There are a ton of them, thank you to everyone who provided feedback, I’m working through it and will be making plenty of changes to the edit in light of these comments, and where I decide to disregard the critique I hope to at least provide my rationale for doing so 😃

Looking forward to it!

RogueLeader said:

What about the Voice AI site people were sharing a few weeks ago. I think there is a 3PO voice on there.

EDIT: https://fakeyou.com/

Ezekiel “what’s your name?”
Tony “Tony!”
Ezekiel “fakeyou, Tony!”

“That name faking sucks!”

So I’ve been sitting with the updated crawl for a while, but it just feels a bit off compared to the structure of the first. I really like going from Luke’s disappearance in the first paragraph to the First Order in the second and the Resistance in the third, that way there’s no splitting of the First Order between the first and third paragraphs. In light of this, here’s the new crawl:

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Knights, has vanished.

In Skywalker’s absence,
malevolent forces raised
under the banner of the
IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER
have emerged from their
barbaric hidden fortress
to terrorize star systems
throughout the peaceful
New Republic.

With the Republic falling
into chaos and division,
a few brave senators have
secretly called upon a
daring RESISTANCE to
find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

I believe this fixes the two biggest issues people took with the first crawl, namely the run-on sentence in the second paragraph and the inaccurate role of the Republic in the story.

Another adjustment was changing ‘Jedi Order’ to ‘Jedi Knights’ because that is a bit more well-known to the average viewer and more illustrative of their role as warriors. I’ve also changed ‘missing Jedi’ to ‘last Jedi’ to clearly state that plot point.

Finally, the word ‘raised’ in the second paragraph has a double meaning as Finn describes being literally raised by the First Order. The word ‘terrorize’ more accurately describes the activities of the First Order at this time (such as the events described in Bloodlines) and offers some explanation of why traditional armies and fleets fielded by the Republic may not be effective against this foe.

I’m pretty happy with this crawl, personally.

Yeah, even just looking at it I may change ‘IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER’ to ‘sinister FIRST ORDER’ and ‘barbaric hidden fortress’ to ‘hidden Imperial fortress’, which would imply that the Starkiller was first an Imperial project. It’s a shame because I like the whole line taken up by that title, but it may be clearer the other way…

JEDIT: This crawl also threads the needle of the fortress being important to the story without stating that it is a superweapon, which would work for any edit which removes that aspect of the story 😉

If you can’t tell, I love writing Star Wars crawls. I made a few adjustments to yours:

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Knights, has vanished.

In his absence, malevolent forces,
raised on a hidden Imperial fortress,
have established the sinister
FIRST ORDER, terrorizing star systems
throughout the peaceful New Republic.

With the New Republic falling into
endless chaos and division, a
few brave senators have secretly
called upon a daring RESISTANCE to
find the last Jedi, and restore peace
to the darkening stars…

Nice one! Much to consider.

JEDIT: So having considered it, though it’s nice to have the Imperial fortress before the First Order, it reintroduces that awkward sentence construction that I’ve tried hard to avoid this time.

I worked a bit more on the second paragraph and came up with this:

In Skywalker’s absence,
warriors raised in exile
under the cruelty of the
IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER
have emerged from their
fearsome hidden fortress
to terrorize star systems
throughout the peaceful
New Republic.

This puts the responsibility for malevolence on the First Order rather than the soldiers, and also works in the idea that the Empire was actually exiled after their defeat.

Well Tzetzo, it’s a well-articulated introduction but it’s too wordy for an actual crawl. As a point of comparison, the original crawl to the film was 88 words and I’m trying to keep my crawl down to the low to mid 80’s. So 124 words is rather impossible.

How about this one?

79 words:

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Knights, has vanished.

In his absence, warriors, raised
under the cruelty of exiled
Imperial remnants, have emerged from
their fearsome hidden fortress as
the sinister FIRST ORDER, terrorizing
star systems throughout the galaxy.

With the New Republic falling into
endless chaos and division, a
few brave senators have secretly
organized a daring RESISTANCE to
find the last Jedi, and restore peace
to the darkening stars…

They’re all good crawls, y’all. It’s just that there are a ton of restraints on the crawl that need to be taken into consideration, or rather, things that I feel are important to a nice-looking crawl.

For example, there are only about 25 characters (including spaces) to work with on each line. ‘Jedi Knights, has vanished.’ is 27 characters, but that’s pushing it.

The number of lines is also important for the timing of the crawl to sync up with the music. I’ve found that a 4 line, 9 line, 8 line crawl is optimal.

So the thing is, these crawls while good largely won’t work with my constraints. that’s what makes it so challenging, as flowing sentences often become unworkable due to word length.

JEDIT: Here’s what I’m working with right now:

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Knights, has vanished.

In his absence, legions
of brutal warriors under
the command of the
IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER
have emerged from a
mysterious hidden base
to terrorize star systems
throughout the peaceful
New Republic.

Overwhelmed by chaos,
several members of the
bitterly divided Senate
have secretly called upon
a daring RESISTANCE
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…