TFA: A Gentle Restructure (Released) — Page 5

Oh, I’m not changing the title of the film. Just looking for a tagline so people have something to call the edit.

“Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens: Lone Star Edition” or something like that.

I feel like I’m going to have an emotional breakdown. DominicCobb pointed out a serious audio problem that I have confirmed to be present in every single one of my releases thus far, and would be the case with the TFA restructure if I proceeded.
That problem is that in the front and rear channels, the left and right audio are identical. The audio will still pan forward and back, and in and out of the center channel, but there just is not distinction between the left and right channels. It is imperative this be corrected. I didn’t pour such an ungodly amount of care into these fucking prequel edits to let this stand.
I have (still) been using Final Cut Pro 7 to do my editing. I have confirmed that the source audio files are good. (After all, if they were the problem, they’d have to have gotten the same problem across diverse methods of ripping them across projects.) When inside Final Cut, the waveforms on the individual channels show up as correct, with the left and right channels being different from each other when appropriate. (As someone talks while walking offscreen to the right, the right channel comes in on the waveform.)
But, when playing or exporting the audio in Final Cut Pro 7, the left and right channels are the same. (When someone walks offscreen talking, the audio will pan from the center channel to both left and right channels, rather than just the right.) This is a chronic issue that’s been present the entire time I’ve been editing for the past 3 years. It’s like this across every project I’ve done. I’m not even using the same machine as before! When I got this one, I did a fresh install of everything!
So far, I have tried alternating between stereo and dual mono options for the sound monitoring, project, and sequence settings. It makes no difference how it’s exported, because it’s like this when being played in the FCP7 timeline. I can’t find help through Google, and I’m extremely frustrated at this point. I’m really hoping some genius out there knows the answer and can help.

Well, I know one way to fix the problem, and am trying to find a faster one.
If I systematically go through the sequence and into nested sequences (sometimes a few levels deep), I can set the panning to be what it should be. But I can’t just change it at the top level because anything that’s nested will still pass along its incorrectly configured audio.
Even just exporting one track at a time at the top level won’t help because the nested sequences that comprise it are wrong. If there’s no way else to solve it, I can at least do it this way. Thankfully this approach won’t require doing each individual clip, and there are thousands, that comprise the final sequence.
That being said, TFA has very few nested sequences, being fairly straightforward and done over a short period of time, and will be handled first. I’ll finish the TFA project as planned before going back and fixing the prequels for one… last… reissue.

Have considered transferring the Final Cut project to Audition? (If you don’t have it a trial should suffice just to load the files and output a lossless 5.1 mix)

Interesting idea, but I don’t think it would work because the audio is indeed configured incorrectly inside FCP7. I’ve tested the solution and it will work. Thankfully there are few places in the timelines where it goes more than two levels deep, so it shouldn’t take an enormous amount of time once I can get to it.

Hal 9000 said:

Interesting idea, but I don’t think it would work because the audio is indeed configured incorrectly inside FCP7. I’ve tested the solution and it will work. Thankfully there are few places in the timelines where it goes more than two levels deep, so it shouldn’t take an enormous amount of time once I can get to it.

Awesome news Hal! Glad you were able to find a solution 😃

I’m beginning the process of exporting the final product. What remains now is to create chapter stops, modify the subtitle track to remain in sync, and write up the description.
Now is the time for cover artwork submissions. I can include as many as people care to generate, and will pick one to serve as the icon. Ideally, there’d be a handful of DVD covers, BluRay covers, and posters.

Specs include: 1080p BR video
2 audio tracks (regular Dolby Digital, and whatever HD format I can get out of Compressor, possibly PCM)
Chapter stops
English Subtitles

And let’s just go with “The Force Awakens: Restructured” as the title.

Here’s what I have so far for a writeup. Feel free to include as much or as little as you believe will be fitting for your cover:

"Tagline: It’s another Death Star…

Brief synopsis: It’s the same Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens you fell in love with, only restructured slightly so that Starkiller Base does not fire until close to the end of the film.
During the battle over Starkiller Base, the stakes are no longer protecting the Resistance base, but preventing the destruction of the Republic Capitol. Even though they destroy the First Order’s superweapon, they fail to do so in time to save the day.

Intention: Simply to move the destruction of the Hosnian system (Republic Capitol) to the climax of the film, and all the little things needed to facilitate it seamlessly. No other changes.

Additional Notes: How does this single change help the film?

- The second act, centering around the events of Maz's castle, remains focused on the characters and their struggle to keep the First Order from finding the map to Luke. The First Order catching up to Han and Rey is sufficient motivation for Finn to decide not to leave, without the Hosnian system being destroyed.
- Starkiller Base firing upon the Hosnian system in the third act links it very closely to Kylo Ren's resolution toward the dark side by killing Han, and pairing these events magnifies each. Han taking a risk motivated by love for his son and thereby causing costly failure is a dark mirror of Vader doing the same in Return of the Jedi and helping save the galaxy. 
- It alleviates the plot's very close parallel with the original Star Wars.
- Starkiller Base is depicted as functioning in an intuitive way: it drains the nearby star (or "the Sun," as Finn describes it), which covers it in darkness, and then fires on the Republic Capitol. Gone are the awkward questions about why the planet was still in daylight when it fired the first time during the second act, and whether the base is mobile. 
- It avoids depicting the Hosnian system clearly visible to the naked eye, very large in the sky, from lightyears away. The official Lucasfilm canon answer is that Starkiller Base created a "space-time disruption," an obvious bandaid answer to apologize for a wanton move on the filmmakers' part. One wonders whether these are common, because no one who witnessed the destruction had the slightest trouble identifying what was happening.
- It avoids raising the question of why the Resistance did not begin evacuating their base during the third act when they know they are the target. In the original Star Wars, the Death Star was looming overhead; here, there's no obvious reason why they could not have fled. 

This project was born of the emergent idea from all over the Internet after we all saw the film. Numerous people at OriginalTrilogy.com suggested this idea immediately after release, and William Gillis laid out a detailed blog post about it here: https://humaniterations.net/2016/03/26/how-to-fix-the-force-awakens/

Other sources: TIE sound effects, stills of TIEs and transport ships
Special Thanks: Everyone at OriginalTrilogy.com who contributed, including:
Jackpumpkinhead
Octorox
Smithers
Chris Solo
Ben_danger
That_OT_Ruler
RogueLeader
Kexikus
Bingowings
Darthrush
ImperialFighter
Yuri_Kenobi
Littlev87
Tomo
NeverarGreat
Cheebo
DominicCobb
TK251
SkywalkerFan01
Rpvee
MalàStrana
Scott109
William Gillis for his blog post summarizing the rationale for the idea

Release Information: NTSC DVD-5, 1080p mkv, 720p mp4
Special features: Subtitles (English)

Editing details: My goal was to restructure the film to place the Hosnian system’s destruction in the third act, and to do so as seamlessly as possible.

Cuts and Additions:
Removed General Hux from the first scene with Snoke, where he suggests using the weapon to destroy the Republic. (FX by Jackpumpkinhead to paint out Hux walking offscreen during first shot)

After Rey flees Maz’s castle after her Force vision, replaced the Hosnian system being destroyed in the sky with a Star Destroyer and approaching TIE fighters. Finn and Han now gaze up to see that the First Order has caught up with them, as they feared.

When Finn is introduced to Leia, removed mention of the Hosnian system’s destruction.

Removed Threepio’s line, “It is very doubtful that Artoo would have the rest of the map in his backup data.” (This is the sole deviation from the stated goal of restructuring the film to move Starkiller Base firing to the third act.)

After Rey resists Kylo Ren’s mind probe, added the portion of the Snoke scene from earlier where General Hux suggests using the weapon to destroy the Republic. (FX by Jackpumpkinhead to overlay Kylo Ren’s face over where his mask was for one shot)

Moved General Hux’s impassioned speech to after Kylo Ren overreacts to Rey’s escape from her cell.

After the speech, the nearby Sun beings to be drained, as Hux and the troops gaze upon the stream being sucked into the planet. (Recolored to yellow-orange, and reversed so as to appear to be going down into the ground)

During the briefing scene at the Resistance base, removed Leia identifying their base as the Starkiller’s next target, Threepio lamenting the prior loss of the Republic fleet, and well as mention that the First Order is charging the weapon “again.”

During a brief cutaway to the Resistance base as Han and Chewie infiltrate the oscillator, removed Threepio’s line, “It would take a miracle to save us now.”

Immediately after Kylo Ren kills Han, the Starkiller fires and destroys the Hosnian system, as Leia senses it through the Force.

As Finn and Rey start to head outside the oscillator, cut to the battle in space where the fighters notice that the oscillator has been damaged. Cut back to Rey and Finn at this point, before the X-wings begin their descend toward the trench.

As Kylo Ren and Rey duel, cut to the X-wings descending toward the trench, skipping over the portion of the sequence used earlier.

As the Falcon flies away from the imploding planet, removed shots in which the fighter pilots appeared more joyful than the galaxy’s fresh loss would lead one to expect."

Anyone have suggestions for audio output formats? I’ll do a 448 kbps AC3 track, and something less lossy. It seems like the best option from Compressor is PCM, but that results in a nearly 5GB audio file.
Unless someone wants to buy me the $1400 DTS audio encoder suite, I think we’re going to need to find a different format.
Personally, I’d be fine with a 640 kbps AC3. But I know that HD audio would be preferable, since the source material is 99% DTS audio anyway.

This is hella-cool
Thanks for all the effort.

Well, everything is ready. The 1080p mkv, 720p mp4, and DVD5 are sitting on my hard drive ready to be uploaded. I just need one good set of cover art to clothe them in.

Since this project was born out of a single idea, I don’t foresee the need to do a V2 later on. If anything awesome is put forth in other TFA edits, I’ll join in enjoying them, but the only things that would have a place in this project would be drastic improvements in making the single idea work more effectively.

That being said… one of you clever people should really put together a sweet cover.

I think once Smithers eventually removes the music from TFA it could be a worth a V2 to get rid of the hard music cuts. Overall though, I’d like to give a big thanks to you Hal and others who made this happen. It’s a pleasure for many to enjoy and it means a lot that you all took the time to create this. Thanks! 😃

Well, perhaps someone may want to take this and mash it up with other things. For me, this project was a compromise between really liking the idea, and also really resisting going into fan edit territory with TFA. The solution: strictly limit the edit to just that one thing, and get out and don’t look back.

The audio cut’s aren’t “hard” like you say they are. the music transitions quite well actually, I think it’s just the idea of getting past the change itself and not the editing. That being said, should I make a thread for the “musicless” tracks in the Fanedits subforum or the Special Projects subforum?

I misunderstood what you were saying. But like I had said somewhere earlier, I don’t think a music less track would have helped this particular project. There aren’t that many edit points and none felt limited by the music.

lol, yes, yes. I removed Threepio’s line, “It is very doubtful that R2 would have the rest of the map in his backup data.” What’s the other change?

Oh, that was not intentionally removed just to remove it. I replaced it with the stormtroopers doing an about face, because otherwise we won’t be able to see this happen. I felt it was more elegant to replace their salute with their about face, rather than have the salute (which only ever is shown the one time) and then not see them get to the position they are in a few shots later.

In other words, it’s tied directly in to removing Hux’s line, “Fire!”