Okay, so it's no secret how badly I hate "Jedi Rocks." Having played "Lapti Nek" for five years in marching band at Friday night football games as a kid really endeared me to the song. Plus, "Jedi Rocks" is quite simply a horrible, horrible song. Unfortunately, the only way to restore "Lapti Nek" is to re-insert a good capture from LD, and there is still the concern of a mismatch in video qualtity, audio levels, etc. To boot, the film version of "Lapti Nek" isn't available anywhere to my knowledge. So I'm creating something totally unique, that's a bridge of sorts between the OT and the SE. There will be enough good OT restorations to sate our taste for the OT, so I'm taking an approach that's completely unique.
I took the CD version of Lapti Nek from my Anthology CDs and reprocessed thru a 5.1 encoder. I'm not sure how well this is going to translate in the end, but I'm trying. I then took the entire "Jedi Rocks" DVD video and cut up into the indivudal shots. I found a reasonable start point for the song, at the first horn flare, since that's how "Jedi Rocks" begins. I then began to reorder and match as closely as possible, different shots from the SE, up until the point where Oola is dropped into the Rancor pit. A handful of shots are re-used, but I tried to use different frame sequences where possible. The video is pretty much set to the music, though I may tinker with one more shot. I'm working now on Oolas struggle with Jabba, trying to get in some "dialogue" into those shots. I was able to sample audio elsewhere of Jabba talking that works for his vox, but I need to find some audio that will work for Oola. Obviously, the DVD audio is out, as it has music underneath that clashes. I return to the original audio with her scream as she goes down the pit (there is still a bit of source music there, but the crossfade seems to be working nicely), but I need a few grunts and "nos" leading up to that to make the whole sequence work a bit better. Any ideas?