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I like it and what it does for his character (every little bit helps). The last line is very unclear though.
I’ve also just finished editing TPM down into just 18 minutes containing all of JarJar’s lines
Why even bother continuing the thread when it’s already produced the perfect version of TPM?
I’m tempted to slap on an intro and some credits and submit it to IFDB as Phantom Menace: 'Tis Demanded by the Gods Edition.
Anyway, in the sanity of morning, I’ve now realised that the file was rendering as huge because I forgot to tick the box for ‘only render this small section’, so I was rendering the entire movie instead. I’m an idiot. The new video is available in the spreadsheet now. I’ve added some notes in the sheet for a few words we might be able to make.
As I was working over this all yesterday, focusing on solely Jar Jar’s lines brought a few things into focus for me:
Beyond trimming his idiocy and obnoxiousness, I think more work can be done on his passivity. I wonder if we could frankenbyte any new voice lines to actually give him some agency. Looking over my list, a few ideas:
You have an impressive knack for organization and attention for detail. Putting all that together was no mean feat. I agree with your observations on Jar Jar. I think if only he was a real character he would have been much less jarring.
The Gungan religion explanation was such a cheap way to get him to tag along. I’m having the life debt be Qui-Gon’s assertion and Boss Nass presumably goes along with it because Jar Jar is a burden. I like your ideas for actually giving him a personality.
The blue elephant in the room.
Here’s a messy example voice edit, to have Jar Jar both demonstrate some personal conviction, and explicitly suggest that the Queen seek their aid.
I like it and what it does for his character (every little bit helps). The last line is very unclear though.
Yeah, it’s a real mess, but with work could be improved. I pulled down the volume on that last bit. I don’t know how to pull ‘clean’ voice off a track mixed with audio, but just wanted to put an idea out there.
This is really promising! The first ‘Mesa’ comes off a little strong, but rewatching it it isn’t that bad. I do think that last line replacement is a little dirty, since you can hear a little music/sound effects in the audio still. I almost wonder if that line would be served better with some silence. Jar Jar lingers on that fact, and maybe it’ll seem like the gears are turning in Padmé’s head.
In that very first line, I assumed Jar Jar is saying ‘pasted’. I wonder if you could change it to “Gungans get wasted too, eh?”
Maybe the meaning of the word ‘pasted’ is clear to others, but maybe ‘wasted’ would be a little clearer to understand. Maybe you could make this change if you got the write W sound.
Could do. And wasted is a much better solution there. But I’m no great audio editor, I mainly just wanted to make the tool for the community. I’m committed to finishing Clone Wars before picking up anything new!
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Could do. And wasted is a much better solution there. But I’m no great audio editor, I mainly just wanted to make the tool for the community. I’m committed to finishing Clone Wars before picking up anything new!
Totally! Definitely the priority is CW: Refocused. This is something I plan on playing around with myself sometime soon. (Though now I also want to work on the Boba Fett idea I mentioned in the other thread… and work on the Rey Nobody edit…)
I think your test is a very good sign though that we can make Jar Jar easier to understand at the very least.
That’s a really good shout. Is anyone able to provide a list? (Could copy my spreadsheet to use as a template, then I’ll merge them?) I’ve watched those episodes to death for my edit, please don’t make me watch them again! 😉
I can certainly give that a go. I’ll have a few spare hours Friday evening to get started. Can probably at least get his first two appearances done.
Thanks! Generally, all of the VFX/SFX is isolated from the music in TCW (with a few exceptions in earlier episodes) so it’s likely to produce a decent volume of workable stuff.
Following up on an idea Mrebo and PeterPan discussed in the Prequels Redux thread, I’ve just watched the relevant scenes in my TPM rewatch and I think it’s possible to make it so that Qui-Gon frees both Anakin and Shmi. After the podrace in their house Qui-Gon says both of them are free, Anakin starts celebrating that he can train to become a Jedi, he asks if Shmi is coming with them, Qui-Gon gives Shmi a look that Anakin doesn’t notice but Shmi understands, and Shmi explains that her place is on Tattooine and she’s not going with them.
First of all, why bother doing that? Well, I think that it helps drives a few points home. It shows us the disparity between Qui-Gon’s ethics and those of the Jedi Council, instead of simply having Obi-Wan tell it to us later on Coruscant. It makes it clear that (in Mrebo’s words) “she is left behind because the Jedi don’t make allowances for parents tagging along,” but also that Qui-Gon is the kind of person who would free her anyway, while still understanding the difficult position it puts them in. All of this supports the thematic idea that Qui-Gon would have been the right person to train Anakin successfully, because he isn’t as dogmatic and black-and-white-morals minded as the Jedi Council. Anakin needed understanding and flexibility, which the Jedi didn’t offer - but Qui-Gon certainly seemed like he would have done.
It also means that Anakin’s frustrations with the Jedi arbitrarily forbidding him from seeing his mother in AOTC serves to highlight the whole “Qui-Gon and his lackadaisical approach to the Jedi Code was the right way to do things” idea, by absolving Qui-Gon of being (in retrospect) a complicit arm of the Jedi Council when it comes to Shmi, and Anakin’s attachment to her.
Basically, the Jedi being actually pretty terrible is a big part of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, and if you want to enhance the themes of Qui-Gon being the only one who’s really got the right way of doing things, it helps to make it about “the Jedi won’t allow attachment so he can’t even check on his mum” instead of “Qui-Gon was fine with leaving his mother a slave if it meant getting a strong Force user for the Jedi.”
“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas
TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars
Ooh, that is a good one! She’s freed by the time of AOTC so that works, you’d just skip the scene with Watto and assume Anakin knew she was living with the Lars family. You’d also have to make the deal scene work with Watto in TPM. I wonder if Anakin can reference it in AOTC, perhaps using a line like “Attachment is forbidden. If Master Obi-Wan caught me doing this he’d be very grumpy” as they approach Tattooine. Worth investigating!
I wasn’t thinking about it when I watched the chance cube scene, but, I think it could work with a bit of clever editing. Make the bet for two slaves, like Qui-Gon originally wanted; Watto disagrees that a pod is worth two slaves, but greedily agrees to let chance decide, pulling out his weighted chance cube. He rolls it, Qui-Gon uses the Force, Watto is pissed off, telling Anakin that if Qui-Gon isn’t careful he’ll end up owning him too, etc as the rest plays out like the theatrical.
The only thing I can’t figure out off the top of my head is what to replace “red, the boy, blue, his mother” with to convey the idea that red = both and blue = neither.
“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas
TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars
Could you maybe skip that bit?
Qui-Gon: “I’ll wager my new racing pod against, say, the boy and his mother.”
Watto: “Hmm. Well, uh-”
[Cut to Jar Jar watching them to cover Watto being closer in the next shot]
Watto: “Deal*. But you won’t win-a the race, so it makes little difference.”
*(Could source this from their original deal. For a moment in that line above he’s got his back to the camera.)
That would work! Though I’m generally a proponent of retaining as much original footage as possible, lest a TPM edit become too short, so if it could be retained somehow, I think it would be worth keeping it in.
“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas
TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars
I like this idea a lot, though I agree with Eddie that we might have to drop the chance cube. Which I would like to keep for the symbolism, but then again it doesn’t really count as Qui-Gon fiddling with fate, because Watto was 100% trying to scam him.
“Vader! Hologram, now!”
It also serves to take one layer out of what is originally a complex three-layer gamble.
First of all, why bother doing that? Well, I think that it helps drives a few points home. It shows us the disparity between Qui-Gon’s ethics and those of the Jedi Council, instead of simply having Obi-Wan tell it to us later on Coruscant. It makes it clear that (in Mrebo’s words) “she is left behind because the Jedi don’t make allowances for parents tagging along,” but also that Qui-Gon is the kind of person who would free her anyway, while still understanding the difficult position it puts them in. All of this supports the thematic idea that Qui-Gon would have been the right person to train Anakin successfully, because he isn’t as dogmatic and black-and-white-morals minded as the Jedi Council. Anakin needed understanding and flexibility, which the Jedi didn’t offer - but Qui-Gon certainly seemed like he would have done.
It also means that Anakin’s frustrations with the Jedi arbitrarily forbidding him from seeing his mother in AOTC serves to highlight the whole “Qui-Gon and his lackadaisical approach to the Jedi Code was the right way to do things” idea, by absolving Qui-Gon of being (in retrospect) a complicit arm of the Jedi Council when it comes to Shmi, and Anakin’s attachment to her.
These are really good points!
“That’s not how the Force works!”
Basically, the Jedi being actually pretty terrible is a big part of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, and if you want to enhance the themes of Qui-Gon being the only one who’s really got the right way of doing things, it helps to make it about “the Jedi won’t allow attachment so he can’t even check on his mum” instead of “Qui-Gon was fine with leaving his mother a slave if it meant getting a strong Force user for the Jedi.”
I really don’t like this aspect people attach to the prequels. I don’t think Lucas intended it at all. He genuinely believes in eastern philosophy and the concept of detachment from material things, including people, to become more spiritual, and that the Jedi are good guys. You could sincerely argue that the Jedi were right to not want to train Anakin and to teach him to let go, because it did lead him into trouble. (The only aspect that goes against this is the contradictory Chosen One stuff, which makes it seem like the purpose of his existence was to get in close with Palpatine so he could bring him down much later. But that’s another issue.)
In any case, I think it’s better to just remove the attachment ban/forbidden love stuff altogether. From the Lucas perspective it doesn’t play well to a modern western audience and comes across as cold, and from the revisionist perspective it takes away Anakin’s agency and responsibility for his actions. It makes it less a personal tragedy and more some kind of weird cautionary tale about the dangers of suppressing people’s Freudian urges or something.
Respectfully, Vladius, that definitely was intentional. Both George Lucas and Dave Filoni have said in interviews that the Jedi dogma seen in the Prequels was deliberately intended to be taken as a negative, and a factor in Anakin’s, the Galaxy’s, and the Jedi’s fall. (Whether or not that idea successfully landed for audiences is up for debate.) Dave’s explicitly said something along the lines of “that’s why they live in a literal ivory tower”. And the elements of TLJ where Luke criticises the dogmatic past of the Jedi order were apparently a feature of George’s original ideas for the sequel trilogy which he sold to Disney.
That said, whether or not we choose to emphasise or retain those intentions in a fan edit is of course entirely up to the editors.
I’m not posting that for conflict, just for information.
Speculating now, I think he intended that Qui-Gon was supposed to represent the first challenge to that dogma (hence his lower standing in the order), Yoda to represent entrenched dogma fading as he realises its flaws near the end of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan’s and Yoda’s meditations (in life and as force spirits) to represent their coming to understand an alternative existence within the light side of the force, and Luke as the intended inheritor of the new order.
Anakin would have been the first inheritor of the new Jedi if Qui-Gon hadn’t been killed, causing the tragic cascade that led to Vader, delaying the light’s revival. Luke was the new hope, delayed in his path by the presence of Vader. After Return of the Jedi, Luke sought to rebuild the order - already a better one based on the limited information he had, and under the guidance of the force spirits - but in his attempt to rebuild what was lost he still incorporated some of the old dogma, as we’ve seen recently. The tragedy he caused his own family with Kylo Ren and the failiure of his new/rebuilt order sent him, like Yoda and Obi-Wan, into doubt and exile, before the discovery of Rey (and his reconnection with Yoda) helped her forge what will follow.
The only force spirits we’ve seen have been those Jedi that challenged or questioned the order’s dogma, which seems deliberate. (And, for me, makes the final moments of Rise of Skywalker Ascendent all the more powerful, continuing that thread into Rey.)
Well said, Faraday.
Eddie, I like the directness of your approach. I struggled to think of how to make it happen in that scene.
My solution leaves much implied but I really like that Qui-Gon pulls off yet another stunt. Only I’m not sure if it gives enough to the viewer. A possible assumption is he traded the winning podracer for her freedom.
Here’s what I’ve been working on to free Shmi:
The blue elephant in the room.
Here’s a quick little mockup of the deal just being a straightforward ‘the boy and his mother’.
There’re a couple of alternate ways you could cut that, but that’s a simple one. Music transition at the cut seems fine too.
One other idea I had, if you still want a little Qui-Gon manipulation, would be to add in the shot of Qui-Gon waving his hand (originally to manipulate the dice) as he’s saying ‘the boy and his mother’, or just after it. There you’d be implying that he’s using a mind trick to get Watto to accept.* There’s maybe a conflict there with him failing to mind trick Watto earlier. However, you could read that as Watto rejecting the first attempt because he STRONGLY wants spendable money, whereas the second attempt succeeds because Watto’s mentally WEAK to gambling, something that Qui-Gon’s now realised he can exploit. That’d also give Qui-Gon a little arc (fail > succeed) but also be a little manipulative for a Jedi - perhaps emphasising his less dogmatic side as he does something a little wrong to achieve a greater right.
*You could also split the scene of Jar Jar looking left and right around that shot, to emphasise it. He looks from Watto to Qui-Gon, we see Qui-Gon’s hand wave, he looks back from Qui-Gon to Watto as we see Watto accept. Might help tie it together.
Nice work! I agree about the little Qui-Gon arc and characterisation that leaving the hand wave in would do. It would also explain why Watto’s mad when he leaves the conversation, and let you leave in his comment about Qui-Gon as he passes Anakin. Plus, it’s easy to cut Watto in the earlier scene saying “I’m a Toydarian,” to make it sound like he’s saying a mind trick won’t work on him because he’s not weak-minded, not because it arbitrarily doesn’t work on his species.
Which I never really interpreted that way, though. I parsed it more like someone saying “I’m Sicilian, I won’t fall for the switched cup routine,” and it’s just an easy line to misinterpret, like “You’re a big guy / For you” in The Dark Knight Rises.
“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas
TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars
Yeah. And thinking about your whole idea, even if the viewer is watching TPM first, and doesn’t have the context that parents can’t come with Jedi when they go away to get trained, Shmi explains “my life is here”, which implies enough to make that element of it work.