Erikstormtrooper said:
Possessed said:
Sluggo said:
The music sounds great!
I think the clip works fine without the orbital shot of Tatooine. It is R2 and 3PO out in the desert. Where else would it be other than Tatooine? If you wanted to announce it is Tatooine through the music instead of a visual, you could drop in a very small segment of music from the original Star Wars score from when the droids were wandering in the Jundland Wastes.
Well, see from a storytelling point of view it looks fine. The main reason I added it was just to slow things down a bit. Imagine how fast that would be, that would have the story literally jumping from luke and r2 on degobah and r2 and 3p0 on tatooine in the span of about 9 seconds. Now with the orbital shot, it's at least 15! lol. You're right tho, it doesn't look very good. Maybe I should replace it with a generic shot of just a desert of tatooine? Would be a better establishing shot and still slow the pace down.
What about a slow zoom in on the matte painting of the X-Wing and Falcon parked in the desert? Could that work as an establishing shot?
I love this shot too.
Another source for this transition is the classic "pan down" to Tatooine from the opening shot of ANH. Cut it or loop it for a beat before the Blockade Runner comes into the shot, then wipe to the unused matte painting. Poetically speaking, that classic image of Tatooine could work as a visual cue to this "rhyme" from ANH of going back to Tatooine. Lucas constructed ROTJ with many such rhymes.
ANOTHER IDEA: Later, once the Ewoks join the final battle, there is a lot of visual joking in the original cut. But there seemed almost a beat of real gravity when one or two Ewoks die. Can the dead Ewoks move up, timewise, in the battle? The sooner we see Ewoks die, the more real the battle will become.
EDIT TO ADD: The DanEdit does a great job of this. His work on the Ewoks is terrific! I would only add to his work the little bit when we first encounter them by showing Ewok feet and a spear stalking up to Leia's unconscious body to leave her in a sense of impending danger before cutting away to the others.