Info & Ideas: ESB and ROTJ Wishlist — Page 165

Darth Venal said:

Bingowings,

I also like those seminal groups of people and it's work they produced which inspired me to do what I do now. But we are not those people here, and trust me when I say there is absolutely nothing we can do with our resources that hasn't been done already. Sure, we might make a creative choice that others may have considered and not pursued, but technically speaking, we have no means to be ground breaking.

I tell you what, why don't you humour us and  let's see what happens?

If nothing comes of it, it's just a fun hobby, if something comes from it that's just a little better it's an improvement and if something truly ground  breaking does emerge from the fun I promise (hand on hearts) not to make you eat any form of headwear ;-)

I'm not humouring you because that's patronising and disrespectful. It can be fun and realistic, you know.

Haven't posted here in ages, but Vaderios mockups are so awesome I had to comment. Love tha Jaba the pothead and the new violent arm cutting. The sand dunes in the last pic look a bit like a drawing though ;)

This dude looks a bit like the Predator :D

i love how the arm seems to be sliding off, kind of reiminds me of the gore in afro samurai. would be awesome to see in motion.;)

Not all of us can do that, Angel, so can you repost with the images stacked vertically (which makes more sense on this forum anyway) or reduced to fit? Thanks!

cap:

Bingowings said:

Ingenious Frinksta, now all I need is a length of tube that can reach to Australia :D

 

I have that.  My girlfriend considers it a mixed blessing.

 

Dinner? :-)

I love the Nikto guard mockup up above Angel, finally a Dune Sea that looks like a sea of dunes.

Question for everyone  who's working on mockups, and for Adywan I suppose if he's around, I've not seen him comment on this issue, but what can be done about the Sarlaac?

It seems everyone (I certainly do) prefers the original, hole with teeth Sarlaac, not the beaked one. But the only source of ROTJ that still has the original Sarlaac would be the GOUT, right? Which is piss poor quality. I suppose there's always photoshop and after effects and all that to cut the beak out and restore the dark pit, but the beak is really "in there" as such, isn't it? It's huge, and it moves, and takes up a lot of the screen, and I'm just worried that replacing it fully might be imnpossible to do without looking fake. I know Angel could remove it from one screenshot in a flash, but in motion, and every frame of it would be a daunting task.

Thoughts?

P.S. I may be completely wrong in thinking it's a hard one to replace, I know nothing about photoshop, so correct me if I'm wrong.

One possible solution is to pretty much remove the Sarlacc entirely in either of it's current forms.

When we see it it's either in isolation or framed in by sets.

Once in a while there is a live action element that crosses the field of the Sarlacc in either it's physical set or CGI forms but they could be isolated for later use.

A redesigned physical model could be built and dropped into the space, it needn't be life sized, the Sarlacc isn't as huge as the sand worms in Dune so scaling down the sand isn't as much of an issue as it was for that movie. Though the bigger the model the better the effect (I'm not trying to underplay how difficult this would be, designing a model and building it, matching the lighting and reintegrating the live action elements would be a massive undertaking).

So like much of what is being proposed here it's not so much impossible but difficult.

For me part of the problem is the written ambition of the script doesn't match the resources available on the location and that's something that can only be augmented with CGI in a limited way.

Stuck with the footage as it was originally framed I think the beak and extra tentacles was as much as they could do back in 1997 (they couldn't move the creature so they added parts to it and animated those).

Threepio in the script describes Carkoon as a pit and the nesting place of the Sarlacc but the location is more of a dent in the sand.

Ideally the pit should be more rocky (so sand doesn't fall in it as much) and when the barge first turns up it would be great if the Sarlacc wasn't there and was enticed to the surface by the sound of the party arriving.

It would be visually much more interesting to see a giant Lovecraftian sand/sea monster heaving it's way up a stony pit than just having a sand crater with a sexually worrying mouth already hanging open in it.

Star Wars is always at it's best when it takes the visual language of one cinematic genre and turns it on it's side.

The sequence was meant to evoke images from maritime adventures (pirate ships, sea monsters, walking the plank etc) but it's a little too conservative with it's references so it would help to revisit some of those films and see what works and try and figure out what can be put into the existing footage in a convincing way.

Angel's mockups show the potential of shifting the live action elements around to compose much more interesting shots.

As with so much in ROTJ the problem isn't so much the story but the presentation not doing the story justice.

Luke's facial expression is a reaction shot to the fully revealed creature, it's a really nice piece of non verbal acting on Mark's part. He is channeling Sir Alec. You can almost hear him thinking "mmm...that's a bit nasty, oh well all the days work of a Jedi...maybe I should have dropped Ben off at Anchorhead" anyone else would have gone OTT, it almost sells the current footage. To get the maximum effect from Luke's reaction the creature need to be a bit more of a monster so when we look down we gasp at how hideous it is and Luke does his "here we go again" look.

A lot could be done with just sound, the rumblings of some vast creature bursting up from the depths.

When the skiff gets hit it could knock it closer to the Sarlacc so it can pull people off the deck with it's tentacles Jules Verne style.

It would also be fun to have the bad guys swing over on ropes (especially if King Of The Rocket Men is busy elsewhere) it would add to that swashbuckling feel and set up what Luke and Leia do later.

If the sail barge destruction was more like Dave's video mockup. the creature could pull people out of the Sail Barge too as it collapses, and then duck back into the hole to survive the explosion.

Slightly changing the subject, the Weequay that Luke defenestrates sounds too human and it's almost like he has stubbed his toe rather than he is plunging to he death.

There were plenty of alien falling noises made for Jedi Outcast which would work better.