I've been working away at this a fair bit lately. Mostly the first 10 or so minutes as well as a few other main parts and the ending.
Before I show some screens of where I am currently at, Please keep in mind that NOTHING you see here is final until you see it [eventually] in motion. Consider these as notes and revision for the final exam.
SPOILERS BE HERE
To kick things off i just wasn't satisfied with the 'A long time ago....' title card. The lettering seems somewhat Anorexic to me and a sickly shade of blue. Maybe it's just me but I could hardly bear looking at it - I also wanted to steer it closer to style of the cartoon itself...So I made my own. In addition to that i decided to have the logo receed a little rather than just sit there, Give it a bit of life.
- I haven't used any 'star wars' fonts at all but I am sticking to the same font for everything to keep it neat and simple. [it's called Tunga] The title card lettering is the same as the subtitles and the end credits and the main crawl.
After a while another Idea struck me...
As you may be aware I decided to lift the whole introduction of Ventress from the storyline since 1) It halts the main story and 2) She seems to track down Anakin a little too soon for my tastes. I'd seen some fan films where there were introductory scenes wedged between the titlecard and the main titles and really liked the idea. After a lot of shuffling I decided to show the introduction of Ventress BEFORE the main titles so as not to interupt the main story later on.
But that wasn't quite enough, In order to keep it interesting I decided to have the 'present time' setting being the duel in the penthouse and feature the Arena introduction in 3 major flashbacks throughout. this idea worked better than i epected and helped me avoid some editing hassles. An example is where Ventress brings the column down to crush Dooku, in one shot they have blades crossed and in the very next shot - the very next frame, they are standing about 8 feet apart from each other.
The flashbacks would be in black and white and the 'present' would be in full colour. after a while I decided to add a blue tint to the flashbacks since pure black and white looked a little flat. It also helps to give a somewhat cold feel.
So we kick off with a new titlecard which [the text] then fades to white. then blackness. I was trying to find a good way to start the scene while I was rewatching clone Wars and noticed a shot that starts with a closed curtain that is pulled back as Dooku walks into the viewing box. hmmm, change the pink curtain to black. That will do nicely.
Another Idea I wanted to try was to start of in black and white but then introduce colour unexpectedly - the glow of lightsaber blades. This was definitely an inspiration i drew from watching Sin City.
Apart from a whole range of minor visual corrections and tweaks the olny other major thing to tackle was to give the hologram you see more of a blue tint, more like the movies. It probably seems pretty simple but it's taken a lot of work just to get it to that point. there are a few other minor ideas i've considered which I may go back and do. It depends how satisfied I feel with the overall outcome.
The real pain here is the audio, Since it's only in 2.0 I can't really separate the dialogue from everything else - If anyone can help me in this area i'd be very grateful.
I'm still undecided as toi how i will go from the end of the intro to the main titles. I am thinking of either
- fade in the starfield background
- wipe to the starfield back ground
- cut to black ala LOST. and then after a moment cut in with the main titles. this is probably most inline with the movies.
MAIN TITLES
As far as the main title sequence goes I've got the whole thing done rough But I still can't decide if I should show footage within the lettering ala any of the Bonus disc main menu titles...
I figure I have 8 seconds - that counts the logo fading out. What scnes would people think would be apropriate to show? The last test shot I did had the main logo with footage from chapter 1 and then the whole logo turns solid yellow before fading out. It looked okay but i'm still not too sure. I may try going from yellow outline with black interior to footage interior to solid yellow. Or possibly footage interior to black interior. 8 seconds is not a lot of time though.
Once again unable to find the star wars logo in good quality I created my own based off a vector image I found. I found this Necessary as I've never found a single fontthat accurately recreates the logo letters properly. anyone else?
MUUNILIST
I don't really have anything to show for this yet but mainly I'm recutting it all so that the ARC mission and Obiwan's ground assault + Durge encounter paly out side by side. Rather than showing seperate parts of the same battle at separate times. Also without pausing for the Ventress intro it should all flow a lot smoother.
I'm really not sure what I want to do with Kitt Fisto's underwater assault right now.
I'll try to post more soon - Remember guys, Comments welcome. - If you see something wrong it's a good bet I already know about it but it's hard to spot everything with the same pair of eyes.
oh, and the other major change I'm looking at is cropping the image - or at least using black bars, this is twofold, to feel more like the movies and also to hide some visual nasties. So if you don't understand a change i've made it's quite possibly for a technical reason more than a story reason.
Remember - Nothing is final!