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My own edit of Episode I (my 'The Perfect Edit') (Completed)

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 (Edited)

I created my own edit of Star Wars Episode I: The
Phantom Menace recently. I mainly did it for
research and knowledge purposes. I am still a sort
of newbie at video editing and doing this helped me
learn a lot about editing and pacing. I didn’t
create this edit to release it; I just did it for
myself. Right now the quality isn’t great. I ripped
the Episode I DVD to a DivX video file and edited
from there using Sony Vegas 5. After editing I
rendered it to an even smaller DivX file, so it is
totally unsuitable for release or anything. I just
wanted to see how it worked out. It did. And now
comes the reason I created this post: I want to
know how to edit it again but this time do it in
DVD quality. I want the image and sound quality to
be exactly the same as it is on the DVD, and I want
to learn how to put back the finished edit on a DVD
and do all the menus, etc. If one of the editors
here, or somebody that knows about editing can get
in touch with me and teach me how to do these
things, I would be very happy. All I want to do is
create my own personal version of the first episode
that I and my friends can watch instead of Episode
I.

In the meantime, I will list all of the edits and
enhancements I made to my version of star wars
episode I. The only other edit I have seen of Star
Wars Episode I is the one from Rikter’s torrent,
the Angrysun one. I watched it after I made my edit
and noticed a couple of smart things that I later
incorporated into my edit. I have never seen any of
the Magnoliafan edits(I’m still very interested in
seeing them, if someone can hook me up), but I did
read a lot about them. One thing caught my eye when
I was reading about them: Watto humming the cantina
music. I decided to add it to my cut as well. I
hope you aren’t angry Magnoliafan about me ripping
you off, but that inclusion of the cantina humming
is GENIUS! If you are offended by me using this, I
will take it out.
So with that out of the way, I want to list ALL of
the edits and enhancements I made to Star Wars
Episode I.

This is what I call The Perfect Edit (kinda
egotistical eh?). My cut of the film is basically
meant to reduce Jar Jar’s role as much as possible
in order to make him tolerable and also tighten up
the pacing a bit. I removed a lot of scenes from
the movie. The DivX file that I ripped off the DVD
had a running time of 2:16:11. The Perfect Edit has
a running time of 2:01:00. Almost a full 15 minutes
have been removed. I didn’t try to add anything
extra in the movie regarding plot, ala
Magnoliafan’s edit. I just tried to cut this one as
faithful to the original movie as possible with all
the crap excluded, so there hopefully won’t be any
conflicts in regards to story with the other
movies. Another thing, if anybody wants to
incorporate any of my edits into theirs, go ahead.
I don’t mind.
 

The edits (in order):

1. Obi-Wan’s dialogue in the beginning of the movie
ends after the word “elusive” and cuts to the next
scene.

2. The Viceroy’s dialogue with Sidious has been
shortened. After the VR asks Sid about the Jedi,
Sid immediately replies with “kill them
immediatly.”

3. The scene with the battle droids going to
destroy what is left of the Jedi is changed. You no
longer see TC-14 exit the smoke. Instead the Jedi
immediately ignite their lightsabers and proceed to
cut down the droids.

4. Directly after the Droideka attack scene, I
removed the dialogue of the trade federation guy
about the Jedi being no match for Droidekas.
Instead you see the TF guys watching the screen
when the other TF dude informs them that they’ve
gone up the ventilation shaft.

5. Obi Wan’s line about “the negotiations were
short” is removed to conform with edit #1.

6. The TF invasion scene direct follows Bibble’s
line about where he says " A communications
disruption can only mean one thing. Invasion."

7. I removed the close up on Jar Jar when you first
see him and he screams “Oh no!!” The scene just
cuts to Qui Gon telling Jar Jar to get away and
then him grabbing on to him as usual.

8. After Jar Jar and Qui Gon stand up, the scene
cuts to the next one before Jar Jar gets to say
anything. The next scene begins with the “mui mui I
love you” line.

9. Removed the “More? More did you spake?” line.

10. Cut to the next scene where I remove the
“exqueeeze me” line. It starts out with “the most
safest place would be gunga city” and works better
because it doesnt make jar jar sound annoying and
makes him actually helpful.

11. When Qui Gon asks jar jar if he can take them
to the city the scene is changed around a bit. Jar
jar says “On second thought no” then cuts to a
close up of his head where he continues saying
“this embarrassing…”

12. When Jar Jar jumps into the water, he doesnt do
that acrobatics crap. I cut it so he jumps right
in.

13. I removed the part where Jar jar sticks his
head out of the water.

14. When they enter the gungan city, I removed the
part where jar jar says “so good bein’ home.”

15. After the scene where tarpals says “hey yousa
stoppa there” I removed the dialogue with jar jar.
Instead it just cuts to the other rider coming from
the other side and shocking him.

16. Boss Nass’ dialogue starts with “dis army of
mechanics up der…”

17. After Nass says “wesa no like da Naboo” it cuts
to Obi Wan telling him “once those droids take over
the surface…”

18. I removed jar jar’s line of “any help here
would be hot” It sounded stupid.

19. After Qui Gon demands Nass turn over jar jar, I
cut the part where Nass asks jar jar about the
“life-play.” It just cuts to him doing that stupid
mouth shaking thing.

20. I eliminated the whole “e-gad whatsa mesa
sayin!?” scene by just ending the part where qui
gon bows down with a soft clockwise wipe that cuts
to the Bongo swimming. I also cut out all the underwater parts.

21. After you see the bongo swimming for a while i
added a cross wipe to the scene where the fighters
are flying towards the federation starship.

22. After the VR says “no need to report that to
him until we have something to report” we wipe to
the invasion on the ground.

23. After qui gon gets out of the bongo, i cut it
before he gets a chance to turn his head back and
look at the waterfall.

24. When the Queen and the handmaidens are walking
tobe processed, Qui Gon and Obi Wan are sneaking
around. I didn’t like this because it ruined all
the sense of imminent doom that the scene could
have had so I went and took out the part where they
are sneaking around. In my edit, the handmaidens
are walking around when the jedi come out of
nowhere. I think it works better this way.

25. In the hanger, right after the droid says
“where are you taking them,” qui gon slices at the
droid.

26. Removed the part in the ship where obi tells
qui gon to wait with the droids.

27. Removed R2 bumping into Jar jar on the ship.

28. Removed the Padme cleaning R2 scene.

29. edited the scene where qui gon, jar jar, and r2
are in the desert. Jar jar no longer makes the
comment about the sun and it just cuts to panaka
yelling “wait.”

30. Removed jar jar stepping into crap.

31. Added watto humming the cantina song as the
heroes enter his shop. I admit I stole this idea
from magnoliafan, but it is just too awesome. i got
the sound clip from the sound files of star wars

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lol

You and I should hook up mate! I am currently looking into doing my own edit of both Ep1 and Ep2 and many of my planned cuts are the same as yours! So much so it is scary!

One of the other guys on this site sent me this link which someone posted on another site as to the whole process of editing a DVD and then reburning it in DVD quality. Scroll down and one guy has posted the process. Check it out, its simple to follow and when I get my new computer I'll be sure to try it out! Well done!

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=182859&highlight=

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Thanks for the link. And yea, if you want to hook up, that would be awesome. I wouldn't mind doing that. It would only end up in a better edit.
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I do agree that the edited version is much improved over the original. Pretty much right after I saw Episode I, I knew I could never watch it again without editing out Jar Jar. So, I set out and did just that long before I ever heard anyone else on the internet had done the same thing. Anyways, my version was cut by about 15 minutes as well. (Can you believe there is that much of Jar Jar??? He's practically in every freakin' scene!)

Another thing that always bugged me was the movie has this great looking villain named Darth Maul, then they give him nothing interesting to say. (Unless you count "Yes, my master." as interesting.) So I decided to remove all his lines. I decided that by making him a completely silent character, it added to his mystique. I also removed that scene where he is walking alongside the leaders of the Trade Federation and they are two feet taller than him. I felt that made him look a little silly.

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Originally posted by: hypersonic5The rest of the cuts(and there are quite a bit of
them) come during the battle sequences. I changed
it around a bit to make anikan less annoying and
lucky. In my version there is no autopilot. He is
flying the ship by himself and doing all this stuff
to help out.



I was watching this the other night, and it did occur to me that scene with Anakin piloting the ship was annoying and just plain stupid. It was then I realized I was going to have to go back and reedit this. I was thinking about cutting the entire scene all together. When you think about it, it really serves no purpose. Sure the Trade Federation's droid army shuts down as a result, but who cares? You can show the Gungans surrounded by the droids, then Amidala reclaims her throne and says, "Now Viceroy, we'll discuss a new treaty." That's really all that matters. The Trade Federation's leaders are captured, so that's the end of it.

But to be honest, I like your idea of there being no autopilot. Although for me, the most obvious contrived plot device was this: Qui-Gon has Anakin come along with him INTO BATTLE so he can be safe! (Huh? Why not just stay in the forest with the rest of the female gungans or something??) Then - he tells him to hide, and where do you suppose he hides? INSIDE THE COCKPIT OF A STAR FIGHTER! And then R2 is somehow snatched up and placed inside the EXACT SAME star fighter! At this point, the coincidences and plot holes are too much for me to bear. I also have a hard time believing he is such a good pilot at such a young age (no matter what Obi-Wan told Luke in episode IV) and the whole thing suddenly comes across as something I would expect to see in "Spy Kids" or something.

So hypersonic5 - any suggestions on how I could eliminate all these contrived plot devices that annoy me to no end just so we can have a rather dull space battle to mirror the end of Episode IV (which doesn't even come close to equalling one in any prior Star Wars film)? Maybe with a little thought, I could keep it after all.

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HS5, I loved those edits. I just watched magnolia's 1.2 re-edit and the balance of the force edit and all the things you mentioned were fresh in my mind. MF's balance is very tight and he has a deft skill for editing. Watch it and use it for your gold standard. You direction may be different than his, he chose to keep it tightest to a story with no plot holes, meaning jar-jar stays in. I too am phenomenally annoyed by his mere presence on the screen. So I appreciate his episode 2 (clone war) to a greater degree, though in either Balance or Clone War his skill and thought is obvious. I agree on a number of your edits and now that I watch them I think a number of the same things as you said. Just two hours ago I was saying it'd be cooler if they just came out swinging the sabers instead of the droid coming out. It'd be cooler if Jar-Jar did not do that jackass cannonball and resurface. Good edits...I like your thought process. Magnolia did something that was very smart which started with 1.2 and he expanded to many of the alien creatures is dubbing over them and giving them better dialogue. I still hate jar-jar's voice even if its not in english (that shrill...rgggh). Did I say I hate jar-jar? I think the Roger-Roger droids, 1. need to not say roger-roger 2. need deep, meaner robotic voices - they have geeky voices that do not intimidate AT ALL. The scary part is while your changes are numerous and thoughtful, Magnolia said he made over 2000 changes, some minor like dropping "umm" or "I think", some major like the voices. It needs to be an ongoing process and there will in fact someday be the perfect edit hopefully. I appreciate your work and would love to see your edit when you work it through, maybe hand it to Rikter or Magnolia even in the form its in now, to give them ideas. Continue the good work. Matter of fact its got me thinking I'd like to do video editing (I wonder how many star wars fans have thought this). BTW that point on Anakin with the auto-pilot was dead-on.
16 years I wait and this is what I get???
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I am suprised Rikter or Magnolia haven't commented on this yet. I'd like to know what kind of software everyone uses for DV editing/sound mixing. HS5 you use Sony vegas, but I know alot of people use Avid Express, Pinnacle Liquid, adobe Premiere Pro, Canopus DV storm, and some others. I guess I'd really like to know what MagFan uses b/c its done so well.

This is the best site I've found for selling that stuff and reviews...

The Video Guys

I am planning in the next year on getting a top of the line computer to do editing...maybe dual proc, definitely NVIDIA's SLI to bridge to videocard's...sick, PCIexpress is about to blow up. And alot of rendering power will be in a common man's hands. Oh and you'll finally be able to play Doom3 at its highest settings...512mb GPU, 2 gigs DDR ram., 4GHz processor, its disgusting but they made it as an engine to be used for several years so its made for tomorrow's systems...ok I am getting off-topic.

Anyway, I'd like to do some editing of many movies, beyond star wars. So I'd love to hear feedback. I am sure HS5 would like more feedback on his movie too.
16 years I wait and this is what I get???
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^ speaking of Magnolia - anyone seen him post lately? maybe he's busy on other Edits?


hypersonic5 - your Edit does sound intriguing. I hope you get a copy of Magnolia's Edits soon, and let us what you think of them and how they compare.

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.

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Just a quick reply; I will be busy for the next week or so, so I can't reply to everyone's questions in-depth until then. I'll just leave this thread here and I will check back in like a week and see if anybody has added anything. I hope to hear especially from magnoliafan and rikter, they seem like just the guys that can help me with stuff. I basically want to learn a couple of things, like editing in DVD quality, dubbing things over, painting things out of a scene, dvd authoring etc. I do not know as much about editing as I hope, because everything I know, I taught myself to do.

See ya in a week.
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