Hello all again! I apologize for not being active as much on the forums, and as of the state of my ANH edit, it’s still in the air as I am still pre-occupied with academic responsibilities, but I will try to get it done this year if I can clear out storage for this laptop.
In the meantime, I have been deeply delving into the uses of AI video generation (such as Kling, Hailuo Minimax, Veo 3) and it’s use for extending or animating deleted or alternate cuts from the OT, such as specifically utilizing AI-image-to-video generations, which as the name suggests, takes an input of an image, then extrapolates from that singular frame to create a cohesive video generation output. I waited until the technology would somewhat mature enough to be mostly consistent, as AI videos do have a tendency to be a bit “janky” for lack of a better term.
I chose a production(?) photo of Luke and Vader walking across the Death Star hangar entering into the throne room from ROTJ, which I presume was cut due to time constraints during the “Black Friday” overhaul of the film in late 1982, as I always wondered how this scene might’ve looked like in motion.
Using a combination of Adobe’s Firefly to extend the edges of the frame to fit a 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and grading it and adding some rough sound FX and score, I’d wager that the output fits right in to the subsequent shot and could, in theory (as this is a proof-of-concept), extend the film to have some breathing room in between shots. I’d love to know some thoughts and inputs to this.
Also, as an addendum, I believe a beta version of Premiere Pro has a feature that does use AI to extend clips so you could theoretically “stretch” them out for as much as 5 seconds. Again, this could be a pretty cool solution to pad out moments in films, such as TROS.