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Episode 3 - Editing Back in Progress (* unfinished project *) — Page 11

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Originally posted by: Johnny Ringo
Please keep in mind this was a rush job. was just looking for a 'roto' example i'd done.

Gaussian blur... hmmm. Didn't think it could be so simple. Nice-looking saber!
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Originally posted by: Saintheart I will also bring up one thing that really is pretty much unfixable no matter what anyone does, and that's Obi-Wan's effortless (no, I mean anti-suspension-of-disbelief effortless, not Jedi effortless) deflection of blaster bolts as he's running up the stairs. I mean, his saber doesn't even move to deflect bolts coming from different angles!


If you notice this happens a lot during the opening fights. When Obi Wan and Anikan crash their ships in the hanger they kill the droids in almost the same fashion. Stand still, and eventually a droid shooting your saber will kill itself. I've tried to fix both instances in my edit, but really the best you can do is make it less obvious the droids simply have no aim rather than fix it entirely.

Also, take a look at the duel footage I've edited with Dooku. Some of the issues remain, but I think I've been able to make Dooku's crushing of Obi Wan fast enough that it could actually happen in the time Anikan is on the ground. Let me know what you think.


Part 1 (Keep in mind this is a rough edit of the ENTIRE opening sequence right up until the invisible hand crashes)
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TheTome: I'll get back to you once I'm on my home machine and not chewing up Valuable Work Resources by being on here ...

I just had a thought regarding the Obi-Wan Force push problem: slap a closeup of Palpatine in there like darkhelmet's done, but throw in some saber noises and clashes over the closeup. That might trick the viewer into believing that the three are actually engaged in combat off screen, and let it more readily accept that the Force push comes after a short part of the fight that we as the audience have missed...?
"My teaching is like a raft used to cross a river. Only a fool would carry the raft around after he reached the other side!"
--Buddha
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you mean leave it exactly how it is in the film? lol


Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me

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Good God, is it?

*Goes to watch the train wreck again*

"My teaching is like a raft used to cross a river. Only a fool would carry the raft around after he reached the other side!"
--Buddha
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Originally posted by: Johnny Ringo
There are many different ways to add these sorts of effects. The simplest way I've found is to use gaussian blurs. Rotoscoping itself is basically and exercise in patience. I might be able to help you. I've had some good results...inconsistent, but good.

Please keep in mind this was a rush job. was just looking for a 'roto' example i'd done.
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/2227/doic7.jpg

I'm still catching up with the various ep3 edits and whatnot.


Could you post a tutorial on how you did this?


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Sure, Definitely if you guys are interested. Just keep in mind that my methods are in no way definitive. Just various things I've played around with. I'll try and get something together with screen shots. I may not get it posted today though - my sister just had a baby so I've got other things to occupy my time this weekend.

I was intending to put together a replacement shot of Dooku igniting his blade using a different shot. As an example to GM and the gang and Cuz i dislike the original shot quite a bit. I'll still see if i can get it done, when and if I have the time.



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That sounds great, Johny! Tell your sister congratulations on the baby.


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You guys know of any decent screen [desktop] recording software that is free?
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I'm taking a look at camstudio but having trouble trying to get decent results. In the meantime here are some screenshot examples, Hopefully with explanations that you all can follow easy enough. And remember kids, this is just a method uncle Ringo uses. If you find a better way, that's great. I'm sure a video will be a lot easier to follow so i'll try get something sorted.

So I was flicking through rots looking for a suitable moment. I never really liked Mace having a purple saber glow so I settled on this scene...

"Whether or not he is the senate remains to be seen"
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/9241/s1te5.jpg

We need to remove the coloured glow which is a bit of extra work. I'll be using photoshop 7.

If we were creating a saber from scratch we would begin by outlining whatever prop blade was used during filming, and filing in that area white - on a fresh layer. I would then duplicate the white blade we've created and play with some Gaussian blur to ensure the blade has smooth edges.
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/8654/s2yf2.jpg

Here i have taken the original image and duplcated it. So we have 2 copies of the same image, one above the other. I set the layer type of the top image as 'colour'. Then i used the smudge tool to drag the purple glow areas of the image toward the white core. Now if i set the top layer back to 'normal' it should look something like this...
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/6130/s3lu0.jpg

Now i have used the magic wand tool to highlight the white saber core - this will be on the lowest image that we haven't edited. I have filled in the area with white on a new layer - above all others.
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/4264/s4uv5.jpg

Here's what that looks like, You can see that using the smudge tool we have hidden the purple area sunder the saber core. and the are that was purple will take on the colours from the areas i used to smudge. Let's set that layer back to 'colour'.
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/9233/s5gc8.jpg


You can see that there really isn't much of a glow coming off that thing now. Now I'll take the layer that we created with just a white blade section and give it a bit of a blur. You can see now that it seems to have a bit of a glow. The amount I blur things tends to vary on how close an oject is to the camera and therefore how large. These blades aren't too close so I wont have to blur things too much. It's best to just play around and see what looks best.
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/3296/s6xh9.jpg

* The glow could be a little stronger so BEFORE i blur that layer with the white blade i'll duplicate it. then i will blur each copy a different amount. IF the glow appear too stong I can easily reduce the opacity a little. - this method is an on the fly adjustment, it would have been simpler create a white area larger than the original saber core. But let's move on for now.
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4286/s7tb6.jpg

* If i smudge the colours offf the other blades you can see they appear to have more of a glow than Mace did.
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/8805/s14de1.jpg


Now we can play with adding our own glow. Things tend to vary depending on the shot. I've chosen 2 shades of blue to create the glow for this saber.

I'm going to use the magic wand to highlight the saber core on the original image again. Now i'm going to want an area larger but in the same shape. I will go to 'select' on the menu bar, then down to 'modify' and then choose 'expand'. I will choose an amount, in this case about 3.

Creating a fresh layer above the others i will fill in the area with a light blue [0,150,255] - RGB value
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/9206/s8nb4.jpg

After doing that i will set this layer to 'overlay'. Now it's starting to look like something.
http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/778/s9ky3.jpg

Now we will do the same again. Highlight the original core. But this time expand by about twice the amount we did last time, so this time I'll choose 6 as the amount to expand. Thin I will fill a new layer with a darker blue [0,50,255] - RGB value. I'll set this layer to 'color' and drag it below the lighter blue layer.
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/7940/s10hp8.jpg

Now i will add a gaussian blur to each of the blue layers, I'll blur each of them about 6.
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/994/s11ax9.jpg

and that's about it. Of course the more fine tuning you do the better results you will get.


I noticed a few other things while playing with this scene...

one thing about star wars is that the lightsabers have never ever looked consistent. a lot of the times it's not noticeable but here's a shot of the mace vs sidious duel - notice there still isn't much glow going on here.
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/4770/s18br7.jpg

And yet here we are only moments later....pretty brightly lit.
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/2939/s15jv1.jpg
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/4498/s16ba5.jpg
In this case the same method used earlier will wind up looking different here.


This shot really reminds me of 'spaceballs' - "You idiots. That's not the chancellor killing you...It's his digital stunt double."
http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/3472/s17mm1.jpg
btw..What the hell was this guy ^ waiting for?

did any of that make sense?

Anyway I'll try get a video together soon if i can.

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Well, I'm happy to report that my wireless is back up and that I'm typing toyou from my own PC!

To the light saber rotoscoping at hand: Nice job, Johnny! That's some magic you've got going on there.

Oh, and that guy was just waiting for his cue, of course.
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Johny, do you do all those steps to each frame? That would take forever.


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Originally posted by: TheTome
If you notice this happens a lot during the opening fights. When Obi Wan and Anikan crash their ships in the hanger they kill the droids in almost the same fashion. Stand still, and eventually a droid shooting your saber will kill itself. I've tried to fix both instances in my edit, but really the best you can do is make it less obvious the droids simply have no aim rather than fix it entirely.

Also, take a look at the duel footage I've edited with Dooku. Some of the issues remain, but I think I've been able to make Dooku's crushing of Obi Wan fast enough that it could actually happen in the time Anikan is on the ground. Let me know what you think.

You know, I never really noticed the lack of aim for the blaster bolt deflections. The hangar fight did always annoy me, but I thought it was only because of the lame droids. However, the ease of Anakin's and Obi-wan's defense was troubling, too. I never knew there was THIS much wrong with the scene. Hmmm...

Nice music selection for your Dooku duel edit! It really felt that much more intense, like an act 1 opening in Star Wars should be. It does slow down dramatically when Anakin has Dooku at his mercy. Any way to extend the previous music into this section, too? Keep the adrenaline flowing?

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Originally posted by: Marvolo
Johny, do you do all those steps to each frame? That would take forever.


Heh. Welcome to the wonderful world of rotoscoping. I've never seen it reverse-engineered like that, but that looks good.

If it's of any assistance, there's two tutorials on how to do this at

this address.

The author of these two tutorials, Ryan Wieber, went on to work for Lucasfilm and rotoscoped some, if not many, of the lightsabers for the Episode III video game. There's truth to this; I've stooged around on theforce.net for a number of years, and Wieber can be seen in one of the pre-production videos for the game when he and the rest of the team got the chance to watch Nick Gillard and Hayden Christensen in action so they had a better idea of how their different characters "move". Most of the saber rotoscoping you'll see in later fan films use his method, so it seems to work...

(And no, I am not Ryan Wieber, nor any individual connected with him.)
"My teaching is like a raft used to cross a river. Only a fool would carry the raft around after he reached the other side!"
--Buddha
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Originally posted by: Saintheart
Originally posted by: Marvolo
Johny, do you do all those steps to each frame? That would take forever.


Heh. Welcome to the wonderful world of rotoscoping. I've never seen it reverse-engineered like that, but that looks good.

If it's of any assistance, there's two tutorials on how to do this at

this address.

The author of these two tutorials, Ryan Wieber, went on to work for Lucasfilm and rotoscoped some, if not many, of the lightsabers for the Episode III video game. There's truth to this; I've stooged around on theforce.net for a number of years, and Wieber can be seen in one of the pre-production videos for the game when he and the rest of the team got the chance to watch Nick Gillard and Hayden Christensen in action so they had a better idea of how their different characters "move". Most of the saber rotoscoping you'll see in later fan films use his method, so it seems to work...

(And no, I am not Ryan Wieber, nor any individual connected with him.)


I stopped using photoshop, because it requires you to do it frame by frame. Johny's method is very neat, and I will probably attempt it sometime. Now I mostly use After Effects, and the Wieber method.


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Yeah it's actually a bit more streamlined than it appears. Remember that I was trying to remove something from a shot first. There are many methods. I've tried a few and i generally get good results. I don't always do things exactly the same, it really depends on what you are working on.

Maybe Wieber has some insight into the top secret methods employed for the films then. In every documentary piece of footage i have looked at they never explicitly state how they render modern day light saber effects. It would be nice to know the exact methods used for the films.

The thing about star wars games is that they wouldn't really need to do any roto work. Just create a glow and apply it to the blade.

Whatever you try M, could you post examples of your results? good or bad...
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I think I'd prefer green for the Council members and blue for everyone else. Although that could present some problems.
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http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/3472/s17mm1.jpg
btw..What the hell was this guy ^ waiting for?


Lucas forgot to say " Faster , more intense"

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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not to seem dumb here... but is it possible to cut away during this fight to say Anakin flying to the Jedi Temple... and then cut back... then it would seem like they lived longer... lol


Is it not sad that in this time, we are more surprised by acts of love than acts of hate?
-Me

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Originally posted by: GoodMusician
not to seem dumb here... but is it possible to cut away during this fight to say Anakin flying to the Jedi Temple... and then cut back... then it would seem like they lived longer... lol


DarkHelmet originally did just that in his edit of the scene. I think it worked quite well.

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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Originally posted by: Erikstormtrooper
Originally posted by: GoodMusician
not to seem dumb here... but is it possible to cut away during this fight to say Anakin flying to the Jedi Temple... and then cut back... then it would seem like they lived longer... lol


DarkHelmet originally did just that in his edit of the scene. I think it worked quite well.


I think the guys from 'Star Wars: Reborn' are planning something similar iirc.

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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
btw..What the hell was this guy ^ waiting for?

Lucas forgot to say " Faster , more intense"

<smirk> He must've forgotten to say that a lot during filming.

(small) PROJECT UPDATE : I'm encoding what I hope will be my final anamorphic video source for doing the final editing. Most if not all of my edits so far have been sourced from inferior letterboxed DV AVI sources. BUT NO MORE! I'm hoping a 5.1 surround sound treatment doesn't prove to be too much of a headache. I'll update as often as I have something to share (whether it be video that I just can't keep under my hat or just my status).
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Alright, my first update: should the new 20th Century Fox opening be kept, or should the movie open with the retro 70s version? If retro, any suggestions for a 16x9 anamorphic source for it?

I was thinking of losing the new Lucasfilm logo in favor of the 70's version as well, to keep continuity with the GOUT as if this one really came before the Holy Trilogy.

Thoughts? Suggestions?