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The Force Awakens : Fan Edit Ideas — Page 22

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Why would the ramp be down at all, though? Seems like someone would have been on it recently for whatever reason.

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The ramp being down is like the door being unlocked, and to tell the truth most of those rusty bangers aren’t locked because no one would want to steal them, so that doesn’t bother me.

But the lights being on seems almost like the Falcon is sitting there with its keys turned in the ignition and the engine running. ‘Awakening’ is a theme of the film so don’t you think it would have been neater if the Falcon had seemed to be asleep and was only powered up when Rey reached the cockpit?

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I think there could’ve definitely been a great ‘coming to life’ sequence if the falcon was found in another circumstance. Powering everything up, seeing a dust covered console, etc.

In the action of how it plays out, it’s harder to picture, but I don’t know the shot by shot sequence off the top of my head to picture whether it could work. But yeah, it could be neat to see the lights turn on from one end of a corridor to another, along with sound effects.

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towne32 said:

Hal 9000 said:

It was a change from the trailer, not the finished film.

Yep. Fortunately many redditors have pointed this out and the OP has said “oops, shouldn’t have posted this” after ranting about it in a number of posts first. Now we’ll get to see it pop back up every few months in an “OMG you Lucas h8ers are hippocrites!!!”.

Still, I’m intrigued as to why they were changed.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

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dkeighobadi said:

towne32 said:

Hal 9000 said:

It was a change from the trailer, not the finished film.

Yep. Fortunately many redditors have pointed this out and the OP has said “oops, shouldn’t have posted this” after ranting about it in a number of posts first. Now we’ll get to see it pop back up every few months in an “OMG you Lucas h8ers are hippocrites!!!”.

Still, I’m intrigued as to why they were changed.

In one of the interviews on the making of the film, someone (JJ?) described this as one of the most time consuming effects shots in the film. It’s quite possible that they worked on tweaking it more after the trailer. Whether the previous flags were placeholder easter eggs, or there was a new decision, whether due to PT content or aesthetic is a mystery for now.

I think the same interview described the final shot of the Falcon landed on Luke Island as another surprisingly tricky shot, due to how many sources they needed to combine. Kinda reminded me of the various sources that make up the Falcon docked in the Death Star hangar in SW.

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In case anyone could be prompted to come up with genius ideas, the weak point in my proposal is still Finn’s change of heart and return to Maz’s castle. As it stands, minus FX work, he sees the TIEs approaching, and then we next see him in the basement. Missing is some sort of telegraphing that he wants to head back.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

In case anyone could be prompted to come up with genius ideas, the weak point in my proposal is still Finn’s change of heart and return to Maz’s castle. As it stands, minus FX work, he sees the TIEs approaching, and then we next see him in the basement. Missing is some sort of telegraphing that he wants to head back.

Maybe you could pair his reaction to ties with him saying “it’s the first order” to Han instead of “it was the first order”. You’d have to work with the audio a lot.

Return of the Jedi: Remastered

Lord of the Rings: The Darth Rush Definitives

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Hal 9000 said:

In case anyone could be prompted to come up with genius ideas, the weak point in my proposal is still Finn’s change of heart and return to Maz’s castle. As it stands, minus FX work, he sees the TIEs approaching, and then we next see him in the basement. Missing is some sort of telegraphing that he wants to head back.

Just add back in Han Solo watching and Finn asking “where’s Rey?”.

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Well, if he asks, “Where’s Rey?” then I think it’d be strange not to cut back to Rey. At most it’d be just a final shot as she runs away.
And nobody is fleeing, just staring at the sky. I’m not sure it’d work very well. But, hey, I’ll give it a shot with a mockup.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

In case anyone could be prompted to come up with genius ideas, the weak point in my proposal is still Finn’s change of heart and return to Maz’s castle. As it stands, minus FX work, he sees the TIEs approaching, and then we next see him in the basement. Missing is some sort of telegraphing that he wants to head back.

It’s been ages since I posted here, but I felt like I had to comment on your ideas.

I think that it could indeed work to keep the shots where Finn returns to the castle by doing the following: Keep the scenes with Finn where they are and just cut out the destruction of Hosnian Prime, but instead of having the TIEs having arrived already, we only see them in the distance.
It’d go like this: Rey runs away from the castle. Then instead of Hux’ speech and the destruction of Hosnian Prime we see Finn looking up and he spots the TIEs in the distance. It cuts directly to Han and the other visitors of Maz’ castle who are wondering what’s coming towards them. Finn arrives and tells Han that it’s the first order before asking about Rey and we continue with the movie just like in the original version.

Changing Finns text would require some audio work of course but I think that this could work better than having the TIEs already at the castle when Finn turns around.

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You could add TIEs, or you could add a still image of the Finalizer floating in the sky far above them. Might be easier effects-wise. You could maybe even show little specs flying out of it if you wanted, as if they were TIEs and transports. Also making it just the Finalizer, as if the fighters have not made it yet, could help explain why no one is running yet.

Something else I think would be interesting to add (while not really necessary at all), is some lines from the first teaser. I always liked when Snoke mentioned the awakening, he specificied it being both the dark side and the light. I thought it would be interesting to add that to his conversation with Kylo. Especially if one were to omit the Han Solo reveal, Snoke mentioning “the light” would add some context to Kylo saying he won’t be seduced.

The only problem is that while Snoke saying “and the light” is clean, “the dark side” has a lot of background noise that would be hard to take out. Alternatively, you could have Kylo Ren say either “the dark side” or “the darkness” as he says both within the film, then Snoke could retort with “and the light”.

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Once the visual effects are done of TIEs coming in from the distance for Finn and Han’s reaction shots, I’ll need ideas for how to mess with Finn’s dialogue. I’ve gone over the film and don’t hear anything suitable to replace, “They’ve done it.”

My stance on revising fan edits.

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I’m checking for alternate dialogue that’d fit as well. No luck so far. Say if nothing really fits, you could rearrange the shots. First, you could have the patrons and Han looking up, then cut to Finn running up to Han, then cut to the insert shot of the sky above them. And just have Finn’s line be said over the insert shot. Then cut back to Finn when he asks, “Where’s Rey?”

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Okay cool, thanks for making a mock-up of it!

I see what you’re saying. It feels weird to cut right when Finn starts talking. I guess you could argue Finn could mean “they’ve done it” as in they’re actually invading a planet not in First Order space (although Jakku wasn’t either).
Another interesting thought I had about why no one is running might be because no one has seen TIEs (nor a Star Destroyer) in possibly 30 years, so everyone could be stunned by what they’re seeing. So Finn could be saying “they’ve done it” in the sense of they’ve built a new fleet, explaining it to Han. In a way, the Empire has returned. But I know, that is just me pulling straws.

The only other thing I can think of is not have him say anything at all besides “Where’s Rey?”. Just have him run up, cut to sky for a second, then cut back to him looking around for Rey before he asks where she is. Because if you think about it, Finn is sort of pulling a Ric Olie since Han probably knows exactly who it is.

Sorry for the long messages. Just trying to think of different ways to make it work, because I really like this idea of moving the Hosnian destruction until later as well.

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I do, too. I didn’t even upload a clip of the same thing but without Finn’s line about the FO because it’s choppy.
If having a brief awkward phrase is the worst of the damage, I say it’s worth it.
Takes care of the issue of Hosnian Prime’s destruction being visible instantly from another solar system, never raises the awkward questions about SKB’s renewability, makes the SKB subplot a less precise recapitulation of ANH, and feels more emotionally organic for the plot. I firmly believe this would have been a far greater choice had it been decided during the making of the movie, and I’m leaning toward it being pulled off by fan editors to my standards of fooling a sharp hypothetical first time theater audience.

JEDIT: Also, and I’ll have to give it a looksee, I wonder if some of the X-wing pilots’ chipper attitudes should be toned down since they ultimately failed to stop the FO from destroying their capital in this version. I’m looking at Porkins Jr. after the Falcon takes off.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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If one were to rotoscope the windows of his X-Wing and do some color correction, Poe’s serious face from the first teaser might be useful for a more somber climax.

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I feel like that mockup would feel a lot more viable with a consistent score. Not saying you messed up or anything (I know it’s a mockup) just saying the music jumps are making it feel more awkward than it will ultimately be with one piece carrying through the whole sequence.

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That mockup looks really good already. If it’s somehow possible to have Finn say: “It’s the First Order” instead of only “First Order” it’d be much better though. And if that’s not possible, I agree RogueLeader’s idea of him only asking about Rey. There’s no real need for him to say anything else.

And I also agree that the happyness in the shots after the destruction of SKB has to be toned down. It could actually work to just remove all cockpit shots and simply show the X-Wings and the Falcon leave with some sad music in the background.

Also, here’s something else: Before I saw Hal’s mockups, I would have placed the destruction of Hosnian Prime even later into the movie, so that the SKB fires just before it itself gets destroyed. That’d be after Finn gets “knocked out” by Kylo and we’d then need to cut between the Resistance pilots attacking and the First Order command center where they count down. Then it’d end with Poe flying into the oscillator just as the SKB fires.
I like the idea of the Resistance being this close to saving the Republic, but just barely not managing to do so, but Hal’s proposed version probably flows more natural with the material we have.

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The mockup was super quick and dirty, for sure. The point is that I don’t think it feels right to cut the shot of Finn running up to Han in two. If Finn could be made to say “it’s,” maybe the audience will think he’s basically saying, “Now they’ve really done it.” And ideally there’d be toned down music that isn’t so dramatic, perhaps looped music from Rey’s scene we cut away from, or maybe just a quieter version of what’s already there.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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“It’s the First Order!” sounds great, Hal. Like you said, I think the “they’ve done it” line is excusable in order to achieve what we’re trying to accomplish. Unless someone could get a line of Finn saying “found us” or something like that we’ll probably have to stick with it. The only other thing I think someone could do is have them blow something else up. One could add someone air traffic of patrons coming and going to Maz’s place in the few wide shots we have, like when the Falcon flies toward it and then when Rey is looking out over the lake, then maybe when the First Order arrives, they might blow up a random ship or two that are trying to leave, ensuring their targets won’t escape on another ship. Of course this would require more vfx, but just an idea.

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“It’s the First Order” sounds great. “They’ve done it.” is okay in that scene, just like RogueLeader said, but I’m not sure if your first idea with the Finn running shot split in half isn’t the better solution. Both versions work quite good I think.

The thing I don’t like about your mock-up is the placement of your scene. As I explained earlier, I’d keep these shots where they were in the original movie before BB-8 reaches Rey. There are two reasons for that:
First of all, it’d give Finn and Han more time to get to Maz and in the cellar for the lightsaber. But more importantly, it would allow the TIEs/Stardestroyer to be seen from a bigger distance, thus giving the people a reason to watch for what’s coming instead of running away like they would if TIEs were right above them.

Also, as a sidenote: Where did you take the “It’s the…” from for the First Order line?