Star Wars Episode II: The Galaxy Divided (The Brash Cut) - CANCELLED

***This Project is cancelled. After 4 attempts from scratch, I just couldn't make this film work, and believe me, I'd exhausted pretty much all that was possible using straightforward editing. This movie is a mess. Having said this, I do believe I was onto some decent changes and who knows, hopefully some of my ideas will make it into an ambitious edit utilising brand new footage and new visual effects. I'll leave everything as is here in the hope it'll remain a useful reference for people (though youtube has been extremely zealous in blocking most of my videos).
Thanks everyone, for your interest.***

Well I've been a lurker on these boards for a while, and joined this year and I think it's about time I started getting in on this editing lark :)

My first edit will be of Attack of the Clones, as I feel that film is the biggest mess out of all of the prequels. If this edit is a success, I may move onto the other 2 prequels. I have no intention of editing the OT as I feel Adywan's edits will be the definitive versions (which will no doubt be true for his PT edits too, but at least I have a head start on him for those :P)

I see this edit more as a proof of concept than a definitive edition of the film. There are far more adept editors out there than me who can make a more ambitious edit. Hopefully, my edit will demonstrate some of my ideas compellingly enough that they appear in other people's subsequent edits too.

The Phantom Editor's cut, "Attack of the Phantom" has been invaluable, as many of his changes are spot on and are being incorporated into my edit.

The ideas at the The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread have also been helpful, and many of my changes will have been raised by myself and others in that thread.

Members Trooperman, SomethingStarWarsRelated, Angel, bobgarcia74, Darth Editous and mrbenja0618 have also been extremely helpful, whether it's letting me borrow their concepts, giving me advice, brainstorming with me or helping me out with the technical side of things. Thanks guys!

Also, 'confusedmatthew' and 'Redlettermedia' and their video reviews of the film have both been an amazing resource, pointing out the stuff that just doesn't make sense.

So onto the details:

Software:

Final Cut Pro
Adobe After Effects CS5
Soundtrack Pro
Garageband
DVD Studio Pro

Equipment

Mac Mini 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Blue Yeti USB Microphone
Me and my insomniac tendencies 

Sources:

DVD of Attack of the Clones
Assorted Star Wars soundtracks - from both the films and computer games.
Assorted online sound effects libraries.

My aims with this edit:

To address the nonsensical plot, Jedi stupidity, Anakin being an asshole, Boba Fett being a kid, and many other issues.

General Changes (constant throughout):

• Complete colour correction.
• New music where there was reuse from TPM or I felt there was an opportunity for something more 'Star Warsy'

• Every scene has been trimmed and rearranged in order to remove annoying/redundant dialogue, bad acting, unconvincing, vomit-inducing romance, unnecessary exposition, long, boring and fake looking action sequences and Anakin being a jerk.
• Anakin is made likeable for someone who's seeing the film for the first time.
• There are far too many cuts for me to list them all. Hopefully TV's Frink will compose a cutlist script for me once the project is completed.

Specific Changes:

• New title and Crawl :-
  
  

  Episode II
  THE GALAXY DIVIDED

   

  The time of Peace is over.

  Several thousand star systems

  have declared

  their intentions to overthrow,

  the Republic.

   

  This separatist movement, led by

  former Jedi Master Dooku, has

  made it difficult for the limited

  number of Jedi Knights to maintain

  peace and order in the galaxy.

   

  With the prospect of dark times ahead,

  and with the galaxy on the brink of open

  war, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine has

  Approved the deployment of a CLONE

  ARMY to assist the overwhelmed

  Jedi....
  
  

• Camera Pans down instead of up after the crawl (in line with the rest of the saga)
• Cutting yoda's cringeworthy line "seeing you alive brings warm feelings to my heart"
• Removing Anakin and Obi Wan bickering about Politics during the Kouhon attack. If there's anything the Prequels have to much of, it's boring politics. Instead, I might be replacing it with a (muffled) conversation about Anakin's mother (possibly about having freed her if I can cobble a line together), so that the foreshadowing of both Palpatine's rise to power, and Anakin's mother's death are done in a less blatant way.
• Jango does not speak to Zam. We see them meeting on the ledge, exchanging the tube, all to sinister music. It works a lot better this way.
• Cutting Much of the speeder chase with Anakin being a jerk and the stupid weaving between flames and 'power couplings' scene'. Now anakin just positions himself over where he knows Zam is coming from, and drops down a SHORT distance.
• Removing any mention of Zam being a "changeling". Now she has a femme fatale vibe, as when Obi Wan finds out she's a woman, he tells Anakin to be extra careful.
• Removing Anakin's "Tell us NOW!" from Zam's death scene. He seems a lot more compassionate without it.
• Hopefully making the dart disintegrate Zam.
• Reinserting the analysis droids deleted scene, but redubbing the droid, so that they find traces of something that links the dart to Kamino.
• Removing subsequent Dex's diner, Library and Younglings scenes - They are superfluous, and show the Jedi's ignorance of Kamino as well as the stupid missing archives thing that went nowhere. If we had the 'Lost 20' scene to work with, giving background on Count Dooku, I'd include this. Fingers crossed we get it in the imminent blu ray release!
• Removing Anakin's slimyness towards Padme.
• Moved the senate scene to just after Padme and Anakin leave for Naboo. Cut Jar Jar's involvement. Omitted all mention of creating an army. Cut Mace saying he's going to Geonosis to help Obiwan. Changed Yoda's line so that he's saying Obi Wan will go to Kamino.
• Reinserting Mace/Obi Wan deleted scene instead of the Yoda on a floating toilet one.
• Replacing Anakin and Padme talking with the Queen of Naboo with the deleted scene of them with Padme's family.
• Re-edited Kamino scenes to remove Jedi ignorance of the Republic ordering a clone army. Also hopefully redubbing Lama Su to achieve this more effectively.
• Also hoping to cut down Fett's involvement with the army through not having him be the sole host (again through redub of Lama Su)
• Remove all mention of Sifo Dyas.
• Jango Fett is now only referred to as "Fett" or "Bounty Hunter", so that we take for granted it is Boba. No mention of him asking for an unaltered clone for himself either.
• Remove child Boba.
• Cut down the Obi Wan/Fett fight.
• Fett's visor changed to red.
• Cut Watto scene. I tried keeping it, but there was just no way to edit it without it being apparent that Shmi was still a slave. WHICH IS RETARDED!
• The protocol droid at the Lars homestead is NOT Threepio. He will be redubbed with an alien voice that will portray him as a servant to Shmi, disgruntled with Anakin for leaving after freeing his mother. For some reason I'm thinking of Kreacher the house elf from Harry Potter in creating this new character.
• Cutting gratiuitous and fake looking space battle. Obi Wan simply follows Boba to the planet.
• Giving Boba a reason to go to Geonosis. He gets a transmission from Sidious telling him to lead Obi Wan to the seperatists. He's essentially framing Dooku for Amidala's assassination attempt, and kickstarting the war that will bring him to power.
• We never see Boba after this
• Anakin never tells Padme about his MASS MURDER OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN!
• Dooku is now good. He does not fight yoda. He leaves Anakin and Obi Wan alive of his own free will. Scene of him with Sidious removed.

Changes I'd like to make, but need some guidance:

• Dramatically recolour Geonosis, like in Angel and Bingowings' mockups.
• Give Kamino a reddish sky when ObiWan encounters Fett, so that it mirrors and contrasts with cloud city in ESB  (ESB - arrive in the day, Boba escapes at dusk. This cut - arrive at night, Boba escapes at Dawn.)
• Recolour ALL lightsabers blue, except Dooku's which will either be green (to mirror luke's) or another colour (to preserve the impact of luke's)
  
  

I've currently made a few rough videos from my timeline showing a few examples of the changes. These are by no means final, and could use more tweaking (not to mention colour correction)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsl3qi8LP8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrIPznFKkmY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKiVFstZV2Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eTxp1IgdAA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=var1udq3hi4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onooMQABtcg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsJ0Dlx1hJM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGTTG4Bbjf0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49L3xzkZ3Pc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKxDE9mJtrw

And here are a couple of mockups of my intended changes/additions:

I plan to assemble a 5.1 surround mix, and a dvd with a simple menu. Nothing too fancy. Although it will incorporate seemless branching ;)

I would appreciate any help, input or suggestions people can give me. The best edits are a collaborative effort, and hopefully we can come up with something special.

I'm hoping to colour correct and add new music (your mockups would be an invaluable resource for me doing the former).

In regards to the music, I'd like to change the music in places, to give the film more of an OT feel but I'll have to see about that as both the dialogue and existing music are on the centre audio channel. Hopefully I can make the existing music almost inaudible. We'll see!

At the moment, I'm concentrating on the dialogue/visuals, and I'll go back to sort out the sound after that part is finished :)

I'd love to know if there was a program that generated the 5 other channels based on what's in the centre channel. Would make the job a hell of a lot easier!

Is there anything stopping me editing, and then doing the colour correcting? I've never done colour correction before and have just jumped straight in to cut all the crap out.

Well I'd like to remove the reference of the assassin being a changeling, so I'm considering it. I think it's only funny to us because we know what the line was originally.

Comments like that are rife in movies in the era of the OT. I thought it might give Zam a Femme Fatale vibe. Thoughts?

Now mystique is definitely a "changeling" that could fit into star wars :P

I've updated the list of changes to as far as I've got in my timeline. Not all these changes are done already, but all are planned. I will add more soon.

Well my edit should be back underway after a computer crash, and having to relocate my project files after a clean OS install.

Stay tuned...

It would be good (if possible) if you could stabilise Zam's face before the morph so she just dies (we don't need to hear her swear in Zamese).

They are the only prequels we are going to have so we might as well make the best of them and unlike the OT there is so much that people aren't precious about so they can be a useful testing ground/learning experience for people new to the game.

I've seen some PT edits that really improve things and some of the ideas on the Radical Redux Thread show genuine promise.

As for the OT ROTJ has almost as much wrong with it.

I can't imagine anyone even suggesting some of the ideas for changes for a film like ESB.

And that promotes imagination.

So in a way Lucas' mis-steps get the little grey cells firing more because they were such a let down.

IrishLuck1980 said:

Let the prequels die already.  No amount of editing will make these films decent.  They are garbage, through and through.  I have thrown out anything that is prequel related.  (Except the Soundtracks.  John Williams came through for us there).

That attitude accomplishes nothing.

I have a video of the opening uploading to youtube as we speak. It's very slow for some reason. Will add a link when it's finished uploading.

In order to change it from panning up to panning down, I've done a freeze frame of the empty starfield for the duration of the crawl and rotated it 180 degrees along with the following shot of the pan up so it now pans down.

A new crawl will be put on top of the freeze frame - I've read before about someone having made a good template for writing crawls (was it for after effects?) Can anyone direct me to this?

And what I'm wondering about my rotated shot is it seems to have lost quality in output when compared to the unaltered shot immediately following it. Anyone got any idea why this is? Or how to rectify it?

Seeing as you have a Mac this might be useful :

http://alienryderflex.com/crawl/

And this thread if you want to have more control over the process:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/UPDATED-v0-4-Star-Wars-Opening-Crawl-After-Effects-Template-SEE-FIRST-POST/post/307531/#post307531

Ah I don't have a Mac. I'm editing on Adobe Premiere on Windows 7.

I think you may have misread me saying I'd installed a new OS as me meaning OSX.

I do have a hackintosh partition running Leopard, but that's not what I'm using. I'm far more familiar with Premiere although Final Cut is far superior.

Thanks for the link :)

Still processing, but here it is. If anyone has any insight into why turning the shot upside down would reduce the quallity, that would be a great help.

I just hope the youtube clip is good enough that people can see what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eTxp1IgdAA

I'm trying to partition Hackintosh my slab too (it's currently Ubuntu'd or Um Bongo'd as I keep calling it).

Though I'm currently writing to you on a Mac.

There's a good guide on lifehacker on installing Snow Leopard from scratch on a hackintosh. And seeing as the upgrade disk for Snow Leopard (25 quid) can also be used for a full install (EULA aside), it's as near a legit way of doing it as you're going to get.

Just slap an apple sticker on that bad boy! :)

SSWR. Thanks for the comment. For some reason Youtube won't let me reply to you, and I JUST realised this is a change already implemented in your AOTC Fan-o-matic. D'oh!

Hmm weird. I'm on the page and it only shows one comment, no reply from me.

Haha I was looking at that today actually, trying to find a place to use it. I'm cutting the actual scene it's from, so I don't know.

Don't worry. I won't give it to anyone else in any case ;)