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Episode I: PaulisDead2221's Edit (* unfinished project *) — Page 2

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Originally posted by: Miasta
I have always had an idea for the ending that I think would be better then the original, or any of the awesome fan edits I have seen so far; and probably not too hard to pull of. Basically it is to get rid of the ENTIRE celebration parade.
Best. Idea. Ever.
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I just got back and I'm going back to editing.

I fixed the podrace and now it's back to its theatrical version, without Jabba/Greg Proops/C3PO/couple of cheesy lines/"Oh Poodoo"

Okay the more I watched the celebration scene, the lamer it got. And since a lot of people seem to want it gone, I chopped it off.

Okay, the funeral scene, I'm still not sure about continuing the funeral music into the credits, that seems like a big mistake. But if I could make it work I'll consider it. Would I still use the optical wipe that all Star Wars films end with? Do I fade out and fade into the credits?

The other option (keeping the Star Wars fanfare) is to change the music to something kinda sad, but big and climactic, to mix right into the ending music. I brought out an old mp3 of Prokofiev's "Midnight" to try and it kinda works, but of course real Star Wars music would be much better. Suggestions?

The opening I haven't gotten around to working with yet. If I wanted to fix the Jar Jar thing someone brought up earlier, I could show the Jedi and Jar Jar walking across the overpass, preparing to descend upon the group, this would give Jar Jar some kinda opening that would be less silly than him hanging from the overpass as the Jedi fight, but in any way I edit it, Jar Jar is just gonna show up out of nowhere. Suggestions?

Thanks again guys.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Phht, fine I don't even care!

Seriously though, I'm leaving for China for three weeks this coming wendsday, so I'll be out of commission again for awhile, but they have computers there so I'm pretty sure i'll be able to come back here every now and then, so keep posting.

Here's a sample of what my new opening looks like right now, I just wanted to show this before I start committing to any reconfabulating of the beginning. Just pretend like the title crawl before is perfect and explains everything.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Absolutely great! This is the best reworking of the beginning of TPM I've seen (and I've seen a lot). It makes it feel a lot more like SW, being thrown into the action, and having to figure out what's going on as you go, rather than having it laboriously spelled out to you. Only point of contention is the first cut - it seems unnecessary and confusing to show the ambassadors ship, then cut straight to the queen's ship.

As far as the ending goes, I think you have to have the iris wipe into the end credits and go straight into the fanfare at the same time. Can't you do this from the last shot of the funeral without changing the funeral score?
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I like what I'm seeing! But I have a few suggestions,

- Cut out Panaka's entire "sitting ducks" line. It adds nothing to the story, it sounds lame, and by keeping him in, you're introducing too many characters at once. Good thing it's relatively easy to do.

- Cut out or reposition the ambassador ship sequence at the beginning - it's too close to the Queen's starship, and it may confuse the audience.

- I'm glad you cut out R2 introduction and clean-up order, as it's way over the top, and drags the film down.

- Please remove Jar Jar's "weesa going home!"

Keep it up, this is by far the most interesting Episode I project.
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Originally posted by: PaulisDead2221
I had an idea about my opening, it's only a tad shoddy and I think everyone can tell just by hearing about it. I could redo it and show the ambassadors coming, Sidious having them killed, cut to the invasion (a real great transition btw), plus shots of the capital being taken, and a line to the Viceroy about the Queen being captured, then show them being taken off to the camps after being asked to sign the treaty, then the Jedi jump out of no where and save everybody, their origin left to the Star Wars extended universe. And trim off any cheesiness along the way. Then we can set up the Jedi, set up the Queen, set up the pilots, get some interaction with the battle droids a little, etc.
This would also work. Why not try it and see which you prefer?
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Hmm... that clip doesn't work for me for a number of reasons. Like the others have stated, cutting from the ambassadors' ship right to the escaping Jedi is very confusing, and I'm not sure how you get around that if you can't somehow generate a new shot from the opening pan down. It also doesn't feel right to me that the queen is getting out of dodge before the sh*t even goes down... but maybe I'm just conditioned to expect the old dynamic of her wanting to stick it out and resist. The neimoidians say they don't dare go against the jedi, but the jedi aren't even there any more. They just split. Then we see the ambassadors' ship again, and apparently it's taken ten minutes for them to travel about 50 feet. Cutting from the shot of the ambassadors' ship docking to the shot of it sitting there when the guns turn on it isn't a good transition. You'd need more of an angle change to justify it. Right now it looks like a weird jump cut.

I'm still curious to see where you take this.
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I would include the queen rescue from Theed, because I like to see as much of the Jedi as possible.
In my opinion, one of the best points of TPM is that it shows the Jedi at the height of their strength. I especially like how the Nemoidians are scared of the Jedi on board the Trade Federation cruiser, but I agree that if the scene has to go, then it has to go.
To make Jar-Jar's sudden appearance make more sense, maybe it can be established later that Jar-Jar and Padmé are close friends already from the start, by removing shots later in the movie where the two don't appear to be?

I wonder also if there could be shots of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon sneaking around in Theed that could be added to the beginning of the queen's rescue. Perhaps from later in the movie, or from the deleted Bongo/Waterfall scene? (I have not seen it myself, though. Got only the VHS of TPM)

Another question:
Would it work to (re-)insert (parts) from the deleted scene where Qui-Gon slashes a probe droid in half just before running for the starship?
I have read reviews of the scene that make it appear that it could explain better why Qui-Gon and Anakin are running.
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In SW, we didn't see Leia hanging out on Alderaan or intercepting the Death Star plans transmissions (material more suited to a radio drama), she was under attack right at the start. That's why I like this opening. The rest can be explained in the crawl. Just cut the first shot of the Ambassadors' ship and tilt down from the crawl straight to the queen's ship (if you can).
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For the ending you could wipe straight into the funeral and leave out the long distance shot. At the end of the scene after the close up of palpatine have the music swell and then insert the distant shot of the funerl pyre from outside and wipe into the credits as per usual.


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Unfortunately, we may have to steal your idea for your opening sequence for the Starkiller PT. This never occurred to me before.

Great idea!

Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side

Emperor Jar-Jar
“Back when we made Star Wars, we just couldn’t make Palpatine as evil as we intended. Now, thanks to the miracles of technology, it is finally possible. Finally, I’ve created the movies that I originally imagined.” -George Lucas on the 2007 Extra Extra Special HD-DVD Edition

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Hey! Guess who's back! I went to China and chilled for three weeks. I couldn't find a computer so I couldn't catch up with everybody. I came back with a bunch of cool stuff, I got a 3 vcd set for RotS cause I liked the packaging, I got a 4 disc set for my Spiderman edit where the bloopers are reinstated like they were scenes and the movie goes on as normal and everyone laughs...and I got some stuff that wasn't legit--yeehaah!

I'm going to work on two openings. For one, I've flipped the shot of the Queen's ship escaping from Naboo so the top of the frame contains stars, and am currently trying to track it right with the descending shot from the opening crawl so it looks like we're panning down to Naboo. It looks fine going down, but when the shot pans left I run into problems, but I'm working on it.

Another opening starts with the ambassadors passing by the camera, cut to "what is it?/kill ambassadors" scene, kill ambassadors, show queen asking about ambassadors, show Neimodians denying it, "does she expect an attack blah blah" "disrupt all communication down there," show the Queen being worried "check the transmittors" that whole scene, show invasion--or splice it with "check transmittors" scene maybe, show Queen captured, show Queen escorted, Jedi pop out of no where, somehow get them onto the ship without the lame "where are you taking them" scene which has never been re-edited right before.

The ending: If I go ahead and cut out the celebration, which I'm leaning toward more and more, I'll borrow the music swell from the final scene in RotS to smooth out that transition, and I'll cut all dialogue between characters during the funeral to make it more "final."

DVD menus...ugh I wanted to use the ones from the official dvd for consistency sake, but I have no idea what to do with "starswars.com" in the corner. Maybe I'll work on my own, maybe I'll put real effort into it.

I just got confirmation on my check from a contest I won awhile back. I can get some new equipment like a new HD and a DL burner so I can actually finish this project, and be able to work on other projects without slowing down on others.

Oh yeah, and wookiewok, I swear "wesa going home" is gone.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Does this look okay? I don't mean video quality, don't worry it'll look a tad better than this. But was I able to lift out the "does not compute" exchange smoothly?

Oh, and I need help with the title, I'd show you my brainstorming notes, but it's embarrasing. I finally settled on "edit the sad parts" cause I was looking for a song to name it after, but that was just as a joke. How bout a free copy to anyone with a winner title? (ahhgh, who am I supposed to be? mverta?).

No titles starting with: A, C, G, O, P, Q, S, U, V, X, Y, and Z--they're weak or silly looking letters, unless the title is just so damn good--then maybe A, C, and S are acceptable too.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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As far as I could tell you removed "does not compute" smoothly
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I think your biggest problem with that shot is the jump in music. There's nothing to prepare the audience. One second they're walking quietly, the next the music is blasting and things are happening.

The problem is, there's no tension as they enter the room. Use music to raise the tension level. Maybe add a simple drumroll or something right before Qui-Gon activates his lightsaber to kind of segue more smoothly into the sudden action.


--InfoDroid

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Before I decided to leave the titles alone for my edit, I thought calling TPM "Cloak of Deception" after the novel that happens prior to it was a good idea.
Then AOTC was to be "The Approaching Storm", and ROTS "Labyrinth of Evil".

I never had the nerve to make the final cut.

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Hmm, I'm sorta wanting to leave the title alone like you did, but I want this to easily stand from both the original and other releases. You know, not "PaulisDead2221's TPM," but something cool. And since I want to change the title at all it must now be better than the original title or else it's just stupid.

My title for Episode II starts with an S, so both I and III need to start with a stronger letter to sandwich it in. "Cloak of Deception" starts with a C, weak letter. Thanks though. I'd go with "Mask of the Phantasm" if it weren't already taken.

I fixed the clip I posted to accomodate Infodroid's more critical ear. Thanks to calisto though.

Hey! for fun: Here's a peek at the drive I'll be using to burn the DVD. link I think it's pretty good for the price. If anyone knows of anything better for less than 50 bucks then let me know.

Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Let's take a final stab at it

Episode I: Return of the Sith
Episode II: Shadows of the Republic
Episode III: Rise of the Empire

damn, don't want so many titles with "of the" in them, but oh well.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While looking over my timeline I realized the Queen has a TERRIBLE plan to win the freedom of her planet, and Quigon's line "That's a well conceived plan" is an all-out lie. OMG I mean they don't even have a real plan. Basically we're going to fly up to something 100 times bigger than us like bees and fly around trying to hit something and make it explode. Christ, when they tried to destroy the Death Star, they had a magical exhaust port that lead right to the main reactor which for some reason if you bump it, it destroys the entire station. "Queen, there's great risk to this plan," "Don't worry, I'll fire randomly into the air at the battleships with my pistol that sounds like it's got a wah wah pedal attached to it and maybe that'll help, or maybe I'll hide under a rack of coats and hope somehow this all turns out okay!"

Anyway, it's a bit shoddy. I took a shot used seconds before of Anakin turning to the Queen, reversed it, and shortened it, just so in all ways it's almost a new shot, and layed it over the audio transition between when the Queen finishes her plan and when Quigon talks about their lasers not penetrating the shields. At least now no one's pretending this plan of hers is going to work.

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Spaced Out - A Stoner Odyssey (five minute sneak peek)

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Falle, I named my Episode 1 edit Return of the Sith also. I think it is cool because Episode 1 has the sith returning and Episode 6 has the jedi returning.


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Paul: If I remember correctly, there might be some music cue from the Ep.3 soundtrack on track 15 that you can use to transition between Qui Gon's funeral and the end credits; it's a loooong medley of John Williams' SW music.
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Here's a very quick, crude quicktime of how I did the ending to my Ep. I edit... Rise of the Sith:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=84B14D513134B8A1

I used the funeral pyre music from the end of ROTJ, then pitch shifted the crescendo from the end of the ESB overture to match and take it to the credits.
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Here's a very quick, crude quicktime of how I did the ending to my Ep. I edit... Rise of the Sith:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=84B14D513134B8A1

I used the funeral pyre music from the end of ROTJ, then pitch shifted the crescendo from the end of the ESB overture to match and take it to the credits.


BINGO!!! You nailed it! Beautiful work. That's almost exactly the way I always imagined my dream edit ending for this movie. That abomination of a celebration ending is now gone. I must get a copy of this whenever you are finished. I haven't read back through this thread, so when do you expect your edit to be finished? And what can I do to get a copy? PIF? Trade? Let me know. And thanks!
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I just started getting copies of my episode 2 edit out, but my episode 1 edit is pretty much done... just another week or two for final tweaks and the slow-ass mpeg2 encoding on my aging G4. I'll start a thread soon, I'm sure. In any case, I don't mean to distract from paulisdead's edit.... I just know there's been discussion here as to how to excise the 'Dinotopia' parade, and wanted to show one example of how it could be done.
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Originally posted by: PaulisDead2221
Let's take a final stab at it

Episode III: Rise of the Empire

damn, don't want so many titles with "of the" in them, but oh well.


What about just rephrasing a bit? Like "Episode III: The Empire Rises"?