I've just finished Re-editing Episodes I-III, now what? (Released)

Hi all, this is my first post on this superb looking forum.

I’ve just yesterday finished re-editing Episodes I-III featuring hundreds of changes and fixes to each film making them the best they can be (Before Adywan gets round to his promised complete sound and CGI reworking that is).

I’ve begun burning them off onto Blu-Rays for my own personnal enjoyment but I was wondering how I went about opening these projects up to the Star Wars community.

Here’s just a few of my changes:

• ROTJ Fox and Lucasfilm logos used in all 3 films.

• Jar-Jar is no longer annoying!  There’s less of him, he has a new voice, new character, new subtitles and he’s now a Gungan Warrior Prince and Boss Nass is his father!

• Young Anakin is also no longer annoying! He’s brave, he’s an amazing pilot, he never says “Oops” and he takes part in the battle of Theed on purpose (Not by Accident!).

• No mention of “Medicloreans” or uses of the phrase “Younglings” at any point!

• Almost all deleted scenes are fully or partially re-instated.

• All Lightsaber Duels are tighter, closer and faster in-line with the OT.

• Anakin is no longer a complete d**k in AOTC.  He’s heroic yet vulnerable. You actually like him!

• Padme and Anakin slowly fall in love in AOTC (Instead of spending the whole film spitting venom at each other).

• All dialogue has been trimmed line-by-line for god-awful-misjudge-ness e.g. “You’re the kindest boy in the galaxy” and “This Parties over”

• Any terrible Digi-Doubles have been kept to a minimum.

• Young Boba is surly and doesn’t speak.

• No pointless and over long CGI shots e.g. the full 360 of Obi on that Lizard thing.

• Less clowning around yet more humour.

• A few OT hero-music stings (“Dah da da da daaah”)

• Yoda v Palpatine and Obi v Anakin are largely seperated in ROTS.

• Padme does not die from a bl**dy broken heart! She dies because Anakin actually does fatal damage to her in his jealous rage.

• And most importantly, Anakin is never named as Vader or shown in the suit to save that surprise for ESB.

There are hundreds more little trims to tighten pacing and change emphasis to both the visuals and the soundtrack.

So anybody interested in seeing them? And how do I get them out there?

Looking forward to your responses,

Ryan

My cuts are created from:

PT DVD deleted scenes / PT Blu-Ray deleted scenes / PT Blu-Rays / Various OT soundtrack elements / OT Theatrical DVDs

The running times (Including credits) are as follows:

TPM My cut = 2.00.51 / Original Cut = 2.16.10
AOTC My cut = 2.01.32 / Original Cut = 2.22.28
ROTS My cut = 2.16.09 / Original Cut = 2.20.05

Sounds very interesting! I've not released a fan edit myself, so I can't be very much help, but I'm sure fanedit.org has some kind of submission process/instructions.

Yes I've just been looking through that.  I was posting YouTube videos of rough edits of scenes but the YouTube/Fox N*zis got upset.  So not sure how to share it with people.

I have some Myspleen invites, if you need one.  Just PM me.  Your edit sounds very interesting.

Thx for your responses guys/gals.  The MySpleen invite would be great.

"Just when you think you're out... they pull you back in!" => Just spotted I've missed the removal of Jar-Jar catching his foot in the stirup during the finale of TPM.

Reading about your colour-correction aalenfae.  This is something I haven't done due to time, skill, patience etc...god knows I tried.  Seemed that unless I did it shot-by-shot/frame-by-frame I was making it worse.

I have tweaked a few of the worst offenders e.g. Palps v Yoda / Anakin Padme picnic / Anakin & Palps at the opera / end of democracy senate scene / ROTS final Tatooine scene

But even in those scenes I'd love to go right in there picking out individual elements.  For example when Yoda fights Palpatine: I'd make his office dark metallic grey, carpet red, cc yoda, Palpatines skin dry yellow not boiled pink, palpatines robes blue/grey not purple.  I have succeded in making it alot darker and moodier ala ROTJ throne room though.

Would love to make the city chase in AOTC actually look like Blade Runner (Like they clearly intended).  That scene is like a colourful disco held on a rollercoaster!

Ryan

Oooh, ooh! Aalenfae, heard your Grievous redub.  Love it.

One of my unrealised ideas was making Grievous a resurected Darth Maul.  Inspired by the fact that Maul's eyes are used for the Grevious animatic on the Blu-Ray.  With your redub and a skilled Ewan-channeling-Alec impersonator I could pull that off lol.  I always tought it would add real motivation for Obi tracking Grievous.

By the way. Another unused idea was making Dooku a more ambiguous figure and not a sith in AOTC. If you remove his "Dark side I sense in you" reveal at the end he becomes the fore-runner/father of the rebellion and interestingly places the Jedi on the wrong side of the conflict.  Problem is that I knew I couldn't make it work in ROTS.

Ryan

Ryan, are you still working on these, or have you uploaded them? If you're done, I'm interested in getting a copy.

Regarding sharing it, some people pack their edits into a collection of RAR files (200MB or so each); after which they either upload the RARs to a file hosting site and create a DLC file to download them with JDownloader, or else they upload the RARs to usenet.

Others upload a torrent, perhaps to Myspleen.

What is Vimeo like for automatically taking down videos that have even the merest whiff of copyprotected material?  Would be nice to stream a few scenes for people to watch.  As I said, I deleted all my YouTube clips as I don't want my account wiped :-(

Ryan

I think Vimeo is a pretty good choice, as Jambe Davdar's OT commentaries (Star Wars Begins, Building Empire, Returning to Jedi) are up there. However, I think Adywan complained about some of his clips being taken down (though still others of his have been up for years).

If you were really paranoid about their taking it down, I think you could password=protect them on Vimeo and tell us what the password is.

Yes chyron8472 I've finished them already,

(I've also nearly finished my prefered cuts of the OT.  Pretty modest reworkings based on the BR special edition prints with all the W**T THE F**K!!! moments restored back to the original way they went e.g. Han v Greedo atrocity, Wampa scene, Jabba Palace disco, Boba Fett redub and Vader yelling NOOOOOOOOO!!! cut but alot of the nice new CGI FX shots retained).

Uploading them in someway is my goal so others can actually ENJOY the PT.  I'm set, I can enjoy my versions (til Adywan betters them!) but others are still cursed with having to hate these miss-edited films.

Ryan

I would think the easiest solution for sharing the (full versions) files is to upload them to a torrent. The only problem with it comes when there is no one around to seed it. Myspleen is a private, invitation-only torrent tracker which, in fact, was originally started in order to have a place for Star Wars fan edits.

On the one hand, this makes it harder to find for the fans-at-large (who don't know about Myspleen); on the other hand, it's extremely easy to find for Myspleen members, as their site has a very easily navigable torrent database.

It is likely that if you use some other method to upload them, then I will probably put them on Myspleen, myself.

You said you burned them to bluray discs... are these Blurays or AVCHDs? If they are AVCHD, you could burn them to Dual Layer DVD discs.

Ryan - I've just PM'd you an invite to Myspleen. Personally, I would prefer Myspleen over Vimeo, as I would be able to download the movies. But, of course, I would be relying on you to learn the whole Bittorrent thing (I have no idea how to turn a video file into a Bittorrent, so don't ask me!)

I'm looking forwarded to seeing your edits (any way I can). Good luck.

Bester said:

(I have no idea how to turn a video file into a Bittorrent, so don't ask me!)

It's fairly easy.

1) Download uTorrent 2.2.1 ( prefer this version over the newer versions)

2) Open uTorrent, and click "File" -> "Create New Torrent"

3) Click "Add Directory" or "Add File" (depending on if the source files are one file or many)

4) Include links to desired  torrent trackers.

5) Click "Create and Save As..."

6) Go to the torrent site of your choice and upload the .torrent file to it.

I consider myself pretty techno literate (building my own pcs etc) but I do have a mental block when it comes to complicated Internet things... I usually just shout at my PC things like "Why aren't you connecting!". Uploading a torrent is a mystery to me but will give it a go somehow.

Thanks for all the responses. I'm uploading some Vimeo stuff soon.

Ryan

aalenfae said:

I'm just afraid - because a lot of fan edits are unavailable because nobody is seeding them.

Yes, that is a concern with torrents.

However, Myspleen has the ability to broadcast a seed request in the event that there are no seeders. I did that when I was trying to get hold of Returning to Jedi.

chyron8472 said:

Bester said:

(I have no idea how to turn a video file into a Bittorrent, so don't ask me!)

It's fairly easy.

1) Download uTorrent 2.2.1 ( prefer this version over the newer versions)

2) Open uTorrent, and click "File" -> "Create New Torrent"

3) Click "Add Directory" or "Add File" (depending on if the source files are one file or many)

4) Include links to desired  torrent trackers.

5) Click "Create and Save As..."

6) Go to the torrent site of your choice and upload the .torrent file to it.

Thanks chyron.  You learn something new every day...

If you're using Myspleen, the only torrent tracker used must be "http://www.myspleen.org/announce.php", and after you upload the .torrent file to Myspleen, you must redownload it and make sure the re-downloaded .torrent still sees your files in uTorrent (if it doesn't, right click, use "Advanced -> Set Download Location"; then right click and use "Force Recheck")

The reason why you must redownload the .torrent file after uploading it is because Myspleen wants to make completely sure that no one outside of Myspleen users can see it, so it disables the file from using peer exchange and distributed hash tables.

arrghh trying torrent. not going well. will keep trying. Ryan

1st Vimeo clip uploading

PM me if you need any more help.

Vimeo isn't co-perating.... this is why I hate the internet sometimes.  It hasn't explained why the video won't play.

Have a look:

http://vimeo.com/64834621