I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds here, but I just saw this update to the Facebook page explaining why things have taken so long. Some of this is already known by many here, but I thought it would be nice to place it here since Ady can’t/won’t here:
I see we have the usual posts lately complaining about how long this has taken to complete. So maybe i should fill you all in on what has happened since i started this project…
Why is it taking so long? Well real life gets in the way at times. Not long after i started this project i had to put it to the sideline when my elderly Mum became ill. Dad was too old to properly care for her so i stepped in. Luckily they lived a couple of minutes walk from where i lived at the time. So i would work on the project when i had the chance, which wasn’t too often. I could work on little bits and post the occasional progress video or still image, but thats about it. She progressively got worse and sadly passed in 2010. As you can understand the last thing on my mind was working on an edit. Then, just a couple of months after her funeral, my Father was diagnosed with cancer. I was the only one in the family that was able to care for him as he went through treatment. Sadly, a year after my Mum passed, i lost my Father too. So then i had to go through sorting out the funeral, the estate and the subsequent sale of my parents house, dealing with money hungry solicitors and other stuff. This took over a year to sort out. All the stuff i was working on was being done at my parents house; the miniatures etc , as i was, at the time, living in a small 1 bedroom flat so it was impossible to do any of the work i wanted to do.
With the upcoming sale of the house i was instructed by the solicitor to remove all items belonging to me. Everything had to go into storage. So work on that side of things had to stop.
By this time the Blu-Rays were released. A better quality source to work from. So i had to redo all that i had done up to this point, this time using the blu-ray files. Luckily all project files were saved so it was mostly a case of re-rendering everything out, but that still took a lot of time and effort. Then there were computer problems and hard drive failures in which i lost a lot of work already done.
The sale of the house took until mid 2012. At this point i was able to start looking at buying a house. Anybody thats ever moved house or purchased their own will know just what an upheaval that can cause and just how long it takes to settle in. I was moving to another county entirely here in the UK. The house needed some work but it would be worth it to have much more room and a place our own. So, in August 2012 i moved into the new house. I needed a workroom so that took until after Christmas to do so i had to get that set up and build the desks, materials storage etc. Unpacking all the stuff brought up problems. mainly how damaged the miniatures/ sculpts i had been working on were. So all that had to be redone. And i could finally start on some of the bigger things i needed to make. In October 2012 my daughter went into premature labour , 2 months early. So i was back and forth to visit them and that was a round trip of over 70 miles each time until my grandson and daughter were well enough to come out. The last thing on my mind again was the edit.
So work never properly started until early 2013. That will only really have been 3 years . And i have a personal life that is more important to me than any edit. I’m really not prepared to spend every minute of spare time i have working on Empire, even though i have done just that to get many scenes and other things completed. This is not my job, it’s just a hobby. A hobby i don’t want to stop enjoying doing. But it’s almost complete. A few more things left to do and its going to be done and then i can move on to the next film.
Another hold up has been through people letting me down. People offering their help for shots i was unable to do by myself. Then leaving you hanging on for months, giving you small samples of how far they have got with a shot, only to stop contact leaving me high and dry. So then i had to find someone else to help me . And that happened on more than a few occasions.
Some think i have gone overboard by building miniatures, filming live action etc but it’s been necessary. I have things planned for ROTJ and especially the prequels that can’t be accomplished my mere editing and effects work alone. Empire has given me the opportunity to see what I can and can’t achieve. Learn new skills needed for the following edits. If it turned out it would be impossible for me to do something, then i would have to redo all my plans. Luckily things are still on track.
So now you know why things are taking so long.
Link: https://www.facebook.com/swrevisited/posts/1267148799967366
