One question, have you watched other fan edits, like the one from Hal9000? Some edits make very subtle changes, but they make a huge difference in the final result.The inclusion of some deleted scenes also ends up greatly improving the story, being more important than other scenes in the movies.
I’ve never seen Hals edits of the individual prequel movies but I would be open to a watch in the near future. The things I’ve heard are quite good, particularly splicing in a scene from The Other Boleyn Girl to extend Padme’s pregnancy and match Leia’s description of knowing her mother.
Do you know which deleted scenes people are using? I’ve looked through all of them for the prequels and most had temp VFX or seemed to be cut for a reason. I’m sure there are some VFX wizards in our ranks who could fix the limited VFX. Unfortunately not my strongest area!
I will say, I’m working on adding a small scene with a hologram effect that explains Kenobi getting to Kamino without the investigations and missing planet business. It’s the one plot hole in my version that I’ve always been a little disappointed with. Should be live by the end of this weekend.
My current edit is just under 3 hours and while I feel I could shave a bit off, I’m quite happy with where it’s at narratively. It was my first ever fan edit about 8 years ago, so my ambition was less to make sweeping changes and more to condense while learning from the process.