Originally posted by: Trooperman
Aargh! I just lost everything I just typed...

I definitely think we should go with Ep. III next. As someone said, Ep. I is pretty far removed from the actual meat of the story. The OT is already great, in my opinion. The logical next step after Ep. II is to continue and tackle the cringeworthy badness that is Ep. III. As I finish up Ep. II over the next couple months, I think it'd be good to discuss some basic plot points.

Big ones:

-How do we make Anakin's turn (and subsequent stay through Ep. III-VI) to the Dark Side believable and logical?
-Does Darth Maul=General Grievous? If so, how? If not, how do we salvage that whole section of Ep. III (without filming new footage- I don't have a Panavision handy

)

With Adywan onboard, he has the SPFX tools and knowledge to make more radical changes possible.

Also, cinematography-wise, Ep. III is a huge improvement over Ep. II, especially for the Anakin/Palpatine scenes (which I wish there were more of). Less work there.

Also, GoodMusician's complete Ep. III score will make music much easier than it was with Ep. II. I wound up replacing the majority of the music for SOTDS, simply because the tracks were hacked up and mixed far too low in the soundtrack. And as GoodMusician said, very little music has been released otherwise. So that'll be a lot easier.

And I'll be back for Anakin, along with all of the other actors in SOTDS, as far as I know. So it looks like things would be set to go after SOTDS. I'm kind of tired of doing this right now, but I'm sure I'll help edit part of the movie. I relish the idea of redoing the scenes involving Anakin. Thinking about fixing the Grievous scenes, lightsaber-fighting Yoda, and etc. just gives me a headache at this point.

But that's stuff to be worked out later. Now if those two basic points can be hammered out, we'll have a starting spot

As far as Maul/Grievous goes, if we're going to do it, then...I hate to say it, but I think we would need a scene in SOTDS with Dooku. Perhaps we can splice together some Christopher Lee dialogue and stick it in the meeting with Palpatine at the end? But however it gets done, I think it would be necessary to have it in there. Either that, or you'll have to stick something in Episode I or Episode III to acknowledge that this has been happening. From there, I'm not sure what to do other than what has been said in the most recent discussion of this, with some dialogue over the close-ups in Utapau. We are, of course, freed up quite a bit with what Grievous can say because there is no mouth to be dictated by.

Now, as far as the turn...hmm. It seems like the best course of action is what C3PX said--have the turn happen in the chamber. However, I'm about to go into a little more thought-process detail here and stuff. It seems like if we're going to execute something, we need to get figured out why stuff is happening. This is just my two cents on the issue, so take it or leave it--I'm the music editor.

If I wax incoherent, bear with me.

As I think about it, Anakin was just saying he would've liked to kill Palpatine. Then he goes and tells Mace. Doesn't sound like he's planning to turn anytime soon. But, I think one thing that would push him over at least partially is Mace's "If what you say is true, you'll have earned my trust" line. What, I haven't earned it already?! What the crap?! And then he puts on a good face, and goes into the chamber like Mace said, and stews over all this. He's taking it all in. He goes over everything. He hates the situation. He doesn't want this to have to happen (and his dissatisfaction becomes clear in his talk with Padme, talking of overthrowing Palpatine). Finally he gets to "They don't trust me anyway...I might as well save Padme." Of course, we don't know all this is happening, but that's part of the whole thing.

But as a help to elevate it, I think music can help in these kinds of scenes. I'm thinking we can put an altered form of the section from 7:13-8:11 of "Rescue From Cloud City/Hyperspace" from the ESB score to underscore the ruminations scene. Listen particularly to the statement of the Imperial March that starts at 7:47 to see what I mean. It's a churning, disturbed segment of music, and it really could underline the turmoil inside Anakin is he tries to figure out what he's going to do--it kind of gives us a peek inside him as the Dark Side pulls on him. The end of the section would segue into the "I Am the Senate" cue which begins when Anakin starts to leave the Jedi Temple.

So, all that struggling he does in front of Mace and Palpatine in the original ROTS is done in the chamber now, like C3PX said. I think adding that ESB music will really make that scene in our cut. Somehow we handle the arrest attempt (the clip on Erik's site was pretty good, although we may want to do some tweaking), and then Anakin arrives. Like C3PX said, Anakin basically charges in there. I think it would be nice though if before that happens, we have a brief shot of Anakin taking in the scene, maybe bracing himself in a "here goes nothing" kind of way, and then charging in. Now, whether he should kill Mace directly or not, I personally am undecided. It would definitely be a powerful moment, but then there's the lightning all over Mace. If nothing else, I suppose it would be an improvement just for Anakin not to talk about it, but...hmm. It's a pickle.

I'm glad you'll be back, Trooperman! Yes, it's amazing the amount of music that we've gotten. I actually have an edit of the score myself. It's got a couple rough spots, though. And GoodMusician is bound to have found some useful alternate takes and such that make my job easier...

We still definitely need to soften the picture on ROTS, but yeah, the Mustafar duel, for instance is actually pretty okay looking. Sometimes it gets out there, but it's pretty good. It's just a matter of making it look more like film.

Sadly, I haven't gotten to view the clips yet.

I look forward to checking them out.