However, the good news is that we have (hopefully) two actors recording the stormtroopers and the officers. This will create more realistic "battle banter" in the action sequences. This only leaves the part of Uncle Owen to be filled (I know Jar-Jar is a work-in-progress at this point).
Another exciting thing I've found out is that I have the ability to plug in higher quality copies of any source I used (whether it's in the same file format or not) and achieve the exact same result, only in higher quality. This means that an HD print of SOTDS is technically possible with minimal effort on my part.
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Now, I want to address the interesting conceptual conversation we have going....
I was going to ask you if you'd had any success in making the analysis droid station into more of a Hal 9000 type interface? I know you had mentioned this before and I thought it was a great idea, but it's certainly wouldn't be easy. Hopefully something can be done about it though, because the droids are so visually distracting.
Sadly, no. And that scene (visually) will always irritate me. The same thing that happened with Uncle Owen happened with the special FX guy I was talking with; initially he agreed, but then later realized it was too time-consuming.
Because of this, I not only had to leave in the distracting CG robots, but I had to shorten the nightclub establishing shot from Blade Runner, and I had to attempt to turn the Anakin/Padme argument on Tatooine (about whether or not to rescue Obi-Wan) into a dusk scene by myself. If you recall, I changed the funeral scene to take place at sunset. This means that the following scene has to take place either at a later sunset/dusk, or nighttime. Nighttime was pretty much impossible for my abilities, so it wound up being dusk. I also had to do a lot of experimentation and color work to try and remove purple halos that appeared around Anakin's head on some close-ups. Upon close examination, I realized that the halos were actually already there (although much, much smaller), as a side-effect of the original compositing with blue-screen.
If this is your decision then I'd encourage you to use the KotR March for the Clonetrooper introduction and try to use similar KotR music for them throughout the film if you could. And the finale music is (IMO) the second best in the saga after ESB's, so I'd definitely keep the Imperial March in there as its big reveal.
This is what happened. I used the Kotor march for the introduction, and kept the Imperial March for the end.
I see your point; it's a lot of subtitles to take in in Episode I, but lip sync becomes a problem when you limit yourself to english, as you've experienced first hand in re-dubbing Anakin. For the betterment of the Gungans as a whole, they should have their own language.
It was definitely a problem (as it is with all ADR), but in the end I think it was very much worth it. And Preston has a good point, the point that it's not even as hard as doing lip synch to human lips - you're doing lip synch with a big animated beak.
i'm not really into the idea of him having a scottish/irish/british/australian twist at all.
Hey, just an idea. I'm not particularly set on that. But I think the following point is the best:
I simply cannot connect with an alien character that talks all the time, yet is babling in an alien language...it just doesn't connect with with the actors or story flow. I know that chewbacca never uddered anything in basic, yet he wasn't in full conversations with ANYONE , except solo on brief occasions. It just makes jar jar more useless if I have to stop and read what he is saying all the time....especially since we will be doing that for the nemoidians and any other alien through the movie.
I don't think such a main character like this should be subtitled for the whole movie. Subtitles are for the bad guys, the villains. There would be no rapport at all. I know how it feels, having watched more than one Ep. I edit featuring a subtitled Jar-Jar. It's fun for a while, and some of the dialogue (like in BOTF) is great, but it's a bit underwhelming in the end. Most people (myself included) loved it because it was so much better than the original, but I really think we should consider Jar-Jar directly speaking with the other actors, in English.
That's not to say that Boss Nass couldn't speak in "Gungan." And that's not to say that we couldn't treat Jar-Jar like Watto was treated in Episode I. He starts out speaking in Huttese (subtitled) for a bit, but most of the time he talks in English.
I think the best course of action at this point is for Sluggo to make two ADR recordings. One in an alien language, and one in English. That way, I'll have both and can make a decision as to what will work best for this movie.
Unfortunately we don't, and we also don't have access to the original "orchestral blowout" finale (as one of the LSO players referred to it), which I think would be the best thing to use.
I agree. I always wished that that had been released to the public.
Now, this may not be the way you want to do it, and that's fine, but if you do, then that would allow for creative touches like keeping the stormtroopers a surprise that would be really nice. I've already heard talk (either here or at Starkiller Ranch, I'm not sure) of people thinking Anakin becoming Vader should be edited so that it's still a surprise in ESB. It would be along those lines. I personally think those things would be a nice touch. At the same time, it depends on how you're handling it--like this is the first trilogy that came out, or like this came out afterwards, and you already know everything and want the coolness of seeing stuff happening and KNOWING that it's happening. Both approaches have their benefits. It's your edit. I'm just throwing out ideas.
Really, really good question. I frankly have no idea at this point.
Yeah, definately experiment with the nemoidians voice for different raspy, alien effects. The thing is these nemoidians have always LOOKED creepy as hell, its only their "doh de doh" human dialects were totally warped compared to their appearance. But I like the fact that we're having someone who is doing a real "alien" dubbing attempt for their dialouge.
I haven't been able to get "raspy" yet, but lowering and deepening the voice made a world of difference already.
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Thanks, everyone! November is approaching.....
-TM