A great alternate opening for the original ESB would have been a pan down to the fleet of Star Destroyers, with the Super Star Destroyer flying in overhead. I think if we had that shot with a Death Star in there, that would be perfect for our edit of ESB.
Yes, this might be answer. Mangrove's great pictures (thanks for those) would come into play not in RotJ, but in ESB. Instead of cutting-and-pasting the entire opening from RotJ to ESB, we's used this kind of altered opening to ESB, moving the big fleet scene to there, and inserting the Death Star in the background. Then we see Vader's shuttle heading towards the Death Star (as per Mangove's picture) with the following scene of him and Jejerrod. This would establish the fleet is stationed around the Death Star, which makes sense. Also with this maybe we wouldn't have to add the shot of Vader's shuttle flying back to the Executor, and leave him on the bridge as per the original version. It could be assumed Vader would be going back and forth from the DSII to the Executor, as he does in RotJ.
Then we get to RotJ, leaving the opening of that as-is for the most part (because Palpatine wouldn't travel to the DSII in the Executor, which is Vader's Star Destroyer). The only difference is it would continue onto Emperor's arrival instead of Vader's arrival. The transition from the shuttle in space to the shuttle in the hangar will be tricky though; there are no shots of the Emperor's shuttle LANDING, it's just sitting in the hangar. So a cutaway will be necessary, but all the bits with the officers will have to be in ESB. I'll experiment with this stuff and see what I can come up with.
Btw, although I'm not the offical editor on this project, I have been experimenting with a lot of scenes I'd like to share on this thread. The problem is the files are HUGE. I'm currently using Womble, and was wondering if anyone knew how to compress the files or save them at a lower resolution (so I could upload them to the web). There is probably an obvious answer to this I'm overlooking, and I'm sure I could figure it out eventually, but I figured someone here would be in-the-know.
As for the chronology of the project, Erik is correct in that it's best to work on all the films at once (to an extent). While at the moment we are physically working on Episode I, conceptual work on all the films is ongoing, and in fact that is the purpose of this thread. It was pretty dead in here for a while, but hopefully this kind of discussion can be ongoing, regardless of which film is being worked on at the time.