There’ve been a few ANH fan edit projects cropping up lately that are mixing and matching elements from the original version and the various special editions. There are some fantastic sources available for just that, including Harmy’s Despecialized and Respecialized editions. I’m even working on a custom SE of ANH myself.
And one thing I’ve reached an impasse about is the “look, sir, droids” scene. I’ve seen a few projects go the ‘Darth Editous’ route in an attempt to remove the added shots using SE (or '04, or '11) footage. A fresh clock wipe takes us from the new version of the sandcrawler shot into the next scene at approximately the point the original did. Naturally, the running time of the two shots is slightly shorter than the original.
My problem is that this wrecks the music in the transition. Originally, the clock wipe coincides with a brief reprise of the “Imperial” ANH music. In the ‘Darth Editous’ school of thought, this is gone. Using audio from the original doesn’t sync properly with the dialogue or dewback sound, and attempts to sync it have failed because the music gets botched.
Any ideas or examples could be useful for multiple people working on various ANH projects.
I wouldn’t mind just using Despecialized footage, but I prefer the shots of the sandcrawler before and afterward from the SE.
Just wondering if anyone has any breakthrough ideas on this one. My version won’t show any CGI dewbacks outside of this scene, but to me the slight jerk in the audio and pacing of the video in doing a ‘Darth Editous’ style edit of the scene lead me to prefer keeping the SE version wholesale. But it does seem weird to focus on the CGI dewbacks in this scene, never to see any again.
