Nice color grading! I feel the same about the issues you mentioned. I’m looking forward to seeing how this progresses.
Thanks! I’d love to hear any other suggestions/ideas you have for your ideal edit.
Hello! Yes, I did get an original copy of it. I’ve skimmed through and been inspired by a few cool ideas for sure. I need to sit down and watch the whole thing though. My major complaint in the first half was Bespin music on Alderaan?? What a mortal sin lol. But thanks for the tip! Anything else you’d like to see addressed in this edit that hasn’t been done yet in a way that is satisfactory for you?
I have watched a quite few different edits of Kenobi so when you a have Workprint available send it to me as PM and will happily give you some feedback. What run time are you aiming for? Patterson was 2hrs 29mins but I think anywhere between 2hr -2hr 15m mark would be better.
I am aiming to release my edit in January, so if I have a workprint done before then I’ll send it out to a few people to review. Personally, I feel so much more emotion with longer films compared to short ones. Maybe it’s because I prefer the TV show format in general as I grew up reading long form comic-style storytelling and Star Wars novels, but 2 hour movies rarely impact me enough as it flies through so fast. I’m all about compelling, sensible character development even at the cost of traditional action-movie pacing. So I’m probably looking at closer to the 3 hour range for my edit, but at the end of the day it’s 100% dependant on the quality of the scenes. I pretty much just go scene by scene and if it’s a good and worthwhile one then I keep it, if it’s pointless to the story I’m telling or impacts my character development negatively, then I scrap it. I don’t worry too much about run time as long as the content is good. Sometimes that means a 90 minute movie & sometimes it means a 200 minute movie.
OT member Phase3 had a wonderful suggestion for altering the final duel in the Kenobi series so that we don’t end on Obi-Wan’s baffling choice to let Vader live. The basic idea is to move the burying obi-wan in rocks to the very end of the duel so that after Kenobi walks away from Vader with a sliced helmet, he screams out “Obi-Wan” then cracks the ground with the force, proceeding to bury Obi-Wan, walk away from the fight the victor. Then Obi-Wan climbs out and the fight is over.
If we can make this work, I think it would make the duel even more amazing than it already is (I quite enjoyed the fight outside of the nonsensical ending where Obi-Wan lets Vader live).
I created a mock-up of this idea. The changes so far:
-Reversing the flow of Kenobi retreating so it links smoothly to the later part of the duel.
-Flip shot of ground breaking for visual continuity.
-Removed Vader’s line “And that is why you will always lose” as he breaks the ground, rough sfx replaced (can be polished later)
-Cropped out vader of wide shot of ground breaking for visual continuity.
-Removed vader’s line “Did you really think you could defeat me?” after he buries him.
-Rearranged shots of Vader walking away for better flowThe one key change remaining to tie this whole idea together is somehow changing the final shots of the rock burying so that Vader’s helmet is still sliced in half. I don’t know who would have the special effects skills to do this but perhaps a community effort would achieve this.
Mock-up of the rearranged duel: https://streamable.com/myzuo3
I 100% agree on a lot of the problems you mentioned here. Personally, I have a whole slew of issues with how that final duel takes place and I will definitely be addressing them in my edit. I will use a lot of your ideas here as inspiration and see if I can come up with any solutions to make this battle play out more in line with how I believe those characters would behave.