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The Force Awakens : Fan Edit Ideas — Page 19

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DuracellEnergizer said:

Someone should remove those godforsaken crossguard blades from Ren’s lightsaber. Also, as an added bonus, change the blade colour to something other than red (Dark green would be nice.).

Having now seen the movie, I can say – with 100.100% certainty – that I still stand by this.

Oh, except for one difference: Ren’s lightsaber would look better purple than green. I think this shade would do nicely

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Matt.F said:

Snoke, I have to say, is where the movie proverbially ‘shit the bed’. It’s just not good enough fx to pass as authentic, and really shows up as a CG construct.

There are more issues with Snoke’s hologram. According to the script, in the first scene with Snoke the audience is supposed to be led into thinking that Snoke is a real person and not a hologram until the transmission ends. This means that the fidelity of the hologram has been made higher than any hologram in the OT or PT, in order to pull off this trick. Personally, I don’t see the point of that at all.
Also, the hologram room has windows with sunlight shining behind Snoke, and that light should reasonably make the holo-projection suffer, but it doesn’t and that just looks weird.

I think best would be to first reduce the shots of Snoke to a minimum – making him more of a mystery, as the Emperor in ESB.
Second, if possible, lower the fidelity of the hologram – which I think would mask the low quality of the CGI and make the hologram look more like a hologram in Star Wars should look. Mask off Snoke from the background, lower the resolution of the holo by dividing into artificial scanlines, add noise and possibly interference, give it a blue tint and add that onto a new background that does not have a light shining directly into the camera.

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Darth Lars said:

Matt.F said:

Snoke, I have to say, is where the movie proverbially ‘shit the bed’. It’s just not good enough fx to pass as authentic, and really shows up as a CG construct.

There are more issues with Snoke’s hologram. According to the script, in the first scene with Snoke the audience is supposed to be led into thinking that Snoke is a real person and not a hologram until the transmission ends. This means that the fidelity of the hologram has been made higher than any hologram in the OT or PT, in order to pull off this trick. Personally, I don’t see the point of that at all.
Also, the hologram room has windows with sunlight shining behind Snoke, and that light should reasonably make the holo-projection suffer, but it doesn’t and that just looks weird.

I think best would be to first reduce the shots of Snoke to a minimum – making him more of a mystery, as the Emperor in ESB.
Second, if possible, lower the fidelity of the hologram – which I think would mask the low quality of the CGI and make the hologram look more like a hologram in Star Wars should look. Mask off Snoke from the background, lower the resolution of the holo by dividing into artificial scanlines, add noise and possibly interference, give it a blue tint and add that onto a new background that does not have a light shining directly into the camera.

I hadn’t considered that, but you are right. The fact that Snoke is represented as a hologram would give a skilled faneditor a bit of ‘wiggle room’ and leeway to tweak what is there and perhaps improve it. The full body shots aren’t too awful but if I recall there is a close up shot of Snoke (head and shoulders) that looks particularly bad and CGI. I haven’t got a copy of the movie yet so I don’t know the dialogue line delivered during that shot but if those few seconds of close up could be snipped that would also help.

We want Star Wars to have that tangible, touchable, textured feel, and it’s frustrating that TFA achieves that so admirably but for this one exception.

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Darth Lars said:

Matt.F said:

Snoke, I have to say, is where the movie proverbially ‘shit the bed’. It’s just not good enough fx to pass as authentic, and really shows up as a CG construct.

There are more issues with Snoke’s hologram. According to the script, in the first scene with Snoke the audience is supposed to be led into thinking that Snoke is a real person and not a hologram until the transmission ends. This means that the fidelity of the hologram has been made higher than any hologram in the OT or PT, in order to pull off this trick. Personally, I don’t see the point of that at all.
Also, the hologram room has windows with sunlight shining behind Snoke, and that light should reasonably make the holo-projection suffer, but it doesn’t and that just looks weird.

I think best would be to first reduce the shots of Snoke to a minimum – making him more of a mystery, as the Emperor in ESB.
Second, if possible, lower the fidelity of the hologram – which I think would mask the low quality of the CGI and make the hologram look more like a hologram in Star Wars should look. Mask off Snoke from the background, lower the resolution of the holo by dividing into artificial scanlines, add noise and possibly interference, give it a blue tint and add that onto a new background that does not have a light shining directly into the camera.

Very good idea!

Return of the Jedi: Remastered

Lord of the Rings: The Darth Rush Definitives

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All the deleted scenes for “The Force Awakens” have timecodes on them on top of the video. I don’t know if this was done intentionally by the filmmakers but it will be very difficult to add them to the movie without too much cropping. I figured you’d need to either crop a lot of info at the top till the bottom portion of the timecodes vanish from the screen and then crop the sides to create a 2.40:1 aspect to match with the movie or you need to remove the left side of the frame completely and use the remaining 1.85:1 area. If the 3D bluray contains 1.78:1 IMAX scenes then this won’t be a problem to integrate. So you either crop the sides out or crop the top and sides out. In any case all the situations are Lose-Lose!!!

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Darth Lars said:

Matt.F said:

Snoke, I have to say, is where the movie proverbially ‘shit the bed’. It’s just not good enough fx to pass as authentic, and really shows up as a CG construct.

I think best would be to first reduce the shots of Snoke to a minimum – making him more of a mystery, as the Emperor in ESB.
Second, if possible, lower the fidelity of the hologram – which I think would mask the low quality of the CGI and make the hologram look more like a hologram in Star Wars should look. Mask off Snoke from the background, lower the resolution of the holo by dividing into artificial scanlines, add noise and possibly interference, give it a blue tint and add that onto a new background that does not have a light shining directly into the camera.

I think the latter is one of the better TFA edit ideas I’ve heard. In his first appearance, I was unsure as to whether or not he was a hologram. But the way they had him fade out at the end of the scene did seem like they were trying to make it a surprise. But it was a bit of a dumb gimmick similar to trying to trick the audience into thinking Padme is a handmaiden.

If they tighten up the CG in the sequels, this idea would definitely help by obscuring the version in TFA. If it’s the same, though, it really doesn’t matter.

Can’t say I have any interest in removing Snoke’s lines at all. Cutting away from him a little more (quicker shots of him) but keeping his dialogue would be okay if it can be done without reusing shots.

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darthrush said:
Very good idea!

But…I came up with the idea first :[

Lord Haseo said:

  • Removal the TIE Fighter exploding in the sand
  • Make it so that when our heroes are spotted in Maz’s Castle the First Order spy sees them and reports that she found the droid and the Resistance droid does so a minute or two later
  • Trimming the on foot chase when Finn and Rey are being perused by Storm Troopers.
  • Trimming the Rathtar scene
  • Removal of the weirder than fuck hug between Leia and Rey
  • Trimming the interrogating in the interrogation scene between Rey and Kylo Ren
  • Making Snoke’s hologram obviously a hologram
  • Remove helicopter shot
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Lol I knew that would fire some people up.

Lord Haseo makes valid points though…

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

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Would it somehow ruin the structure / momentum of TFA if our companions never met the rathtars and Kanjiklub? I guess it all depends on whether “The Raid” fellas got eaten or not (and will they appear in ep VIII?). I thought those CG slimeballs were totally unnecessary. It felt more like an homage to some other movie rather than “here’s an exciting adventure moment”.

I am excited about the upcoming fan edits where I might find my go-to version of TFA. Removing the rathtars wouldn’t remove anything from the plot so that would also make it “futureproof” in case we see more of Kanjiklub later.

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Actually the leader of the Guavian Death Gang told the First Order BB-8 was on the Millennium Falcon and in the hands of Han Solo.

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Lord Haseo said:

Actually the leader of the Guavian Death Gang told the First Order BB-8 was on the Millennium Falcon and in the hands of Han Solo.

I was thinking of doing a quick edit next week when the blu ray gets here and the first thing I’d cut would be the rathtars scene, which messes up the rhythm of the movie.

But if the Scottish guy telling the First Order about BB-8 on the Falcon is the only continuity issue then I don’t see the problem. It seems likely that Snoke has access to the Force, so why can’t it be assumed that he’s used the Force to get the information?

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daneditor said:
It seems likely that Snoke has access to the Force, so why can’t it be assumed that he’s used the Force to get the information?

Because it’s not established that he can do things like that. Forcedunit is already a poor writing tool in situations where it’s kind of explained so no explanation at all would be nearly unforgivable. I think the best course of action is to trim the scene as much as possible while still having it be a proper scene. At least that’s what I’m doing.

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But does one really want Snoke revealing to the audience about Kylo Ren’s being Han’s son at that time or do we want to keep the revelation for later?

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I don’t think you can edit the film in a seamless manor to make that reveal the slightest bit impactful. At best it’ll come off like a good PT edit meaning it’ll be only passable.

I think the question should be “Is the prospect that Kylo Ren is Han and Leia’s kid worthy of a big reveal?” And I say no. Everyone saw it coming and even the film makers didn’t deem it necessary to make it a bigger deal than it already was.

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Lord Haseo said:

daneditor said:
It seems likely that Snoke has access to the Force, so why can’t it be assumed that he’s used the Force to get the information?

Because it’s not established that he can do things like that. Forcedunit is already a poor writing tool in situations where it’s kind of explained so no explanation at all would be nearly unforgivable. I think the best course of action is to trim the scene as much as possible while still having it be a proper scene. At least that’s what I’m doing.

OK, I’ll put it another way: why does the audience need to know how Snoke discovered the news? And is it worth the entire rathtar scene just for that piece of exposition?

I personally don’t need to know how Snoke got the info. Whether it’s the Force or his spies or whatever. He’s a powerful overload-type. He’s clearly got some powers.

Him getting the info before Kylo Ren tells the audience that Snoke is ahead of Kylo Ren in the game. That’s what matters, not some mechanical plot element.

Besides, I think the rathtars really damage the movie and would be much better cut altogether. It screws with the pacing to have an action scene there. The escape from Jakku only finished a couple of minutes earlier. The film needs a breather with a bit of quiet character stuff with Han. Then onto Maz.

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daneditor said:
OK, I’ll put it another way: why does the audience need to know how Snoke discovered the news? And is it worth the entire rathtar scene just for that piece of exposition?

Well there is a lot of things that aren’t explained in this film so I don’t see how it would be advantageous to add to the list. Also what about Chewies injuries?

Besides, I think the rathtars really damage the movie and would be much better cut altogether.

If it had absolutely no impact on the plot I’d agree with you completely. It’s the worst part of the film but still essential.

It screws with the pacing to have an action scene there. The escape from Jakku only finished a couple of minutes earlier. The film needs a breather with a bit of quiet character stuff with Han. Then onto Maz.

The time between the escape from Jakku and when they run off to the Rathtars is 6:50 seconds. I think that’s plenty of time before the scene even happens. I didn’t even bother factoring in Han trying to talk his way out of the jam he was in before Rey accidentally released the Rathtars.

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I don’t dislike the Rathtars but I will admit the whole sequence feels like it’s from a different film. Still, if you get rid of it you lose some nice humor and “I have a bad feeling about this” (which to me is a necessity for a SW film) Also you get the aforementioned continuity errors of Snoke knowing, Chewie injured, and also why they leave the freighter. It’s also a good scene to reestablish Han’s character.

The best thing to do is might be to cut it down (you can probably remove Finn getting grabbed entirely).

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After watching the film again, a couple times actually, I have decided this: The Rey interrogation scene I am keeping, but both Kylo rage scenes are most definitely being removed.

~The original trilogy is my life… kind of~

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That_OT_Ruler said:

After watching the film again, a couple times actually, I have decided this: The Rey interrogation scene I am keeping, but both Kylo rage scenes are most definitely being removed.

If you want to keep Kylo’s face as a reveal, you could re-work the scene so that the same dialogue occurs but he doesn’t take off his mask

Prequel Fan-Edit thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Yet-another-series-of-prequel-edits/id/17329