New YouTube Series about recutting George's STAR WARS SAGA. — Page 4

Another great episode. It’s such a fun and informative series.

Bored at 3AM said:

These, and RotJ, are the episodes I’ve been waiting for. My students adore Star Wars in all it’s many forms but there’s a 30ish minute section on Tattooine at the start of A New Hope where I can always see my students’s ADHD attention spans begin to chaff under the relatively slower pace of cutting edge 1970s editing.

Haha! I actually like the slow pace of the original in terms of how Episode 4 originally worked as the “first” STAR WARS film, but if ANH becomes the 4th STAR WARS film, it has to get off to a fast start to fulfill it’s new role in the SAGA. Glad you enjoyed it!

smudger9 said:

Another great episode. It’s such a fun and informative series.

Thanks Buddy! If there’s any topic in particular you want me to cover lemme know. I’ve got the next several episodes planned out, but I’d love to know what some of y’all are most interested in seeing.

Bored at 3AM said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Thanks Buddy! If there’s any topic in particular you want me to cover lemme know. I’ve got the next several episodes planned out, but I’d love to know what some of y’all are most interested in seeing.

cough Han in Return of the Jedi cough 😃

Patience young Skywalker, those episodes are coming. 😉

Do you do anything about the Luke-Leia kiss in ESB? ESB is my favorite movie of all-time and I don’t hold it against the film because of a retcon, but that hasn’t aged well.

G&G-Fan said:

Do you do anything about the Luke-Leia kiss in ESB? ESB is my favorite movie of all-time and I don’t hold it against the film because of a retcon, but that hasn’t aged well.

The short answer is that I cut that scene entirely.

The long answer is that I retooled Han, Luke, and Leia’s characters across the OT so that they’re now more consistent, which led me to also cut the scene in the Slug-Cave where Han and Leia snog (Han is a still a smart-@$$ in my cut, but no longer an immature creep). By doing that, the scene where Leia kisses Han on the cheek when Han successfully evades the Imperial Fleet is now the first kiss. Basically, if you move the Han and Leia romance to the subtext of Episode V, the “I love you” / “I know” exchange will then land with the same impact as the “I am your Father” line a few scenes away. After that all you have to do, is delete any references to a love triangle in Return of the Jedi, and you have a convincing love story.

The basic logic I went with is that Han likes Leia, because she’s trustworthy (he’s used to dealing with untrustworthy scum from the underworld) but not a pushover (It doesn’t hurt that she’s also pretty, lol). And Leia likes Han because he treats her like everyone else (he doesn’t suck up to her, because she’s a princess), and He’s the one who comes back for her (She can now trust him to act selflessly towards her). If you pay attention to the evacuation of Echo Base, Leia is the only member of the command staff that stays behind to organize the final defense, and Han is the only one who comes back for her. It’s also Han’s skills that allow them to evade the Empire over the next several scenes (Finally Leia can depend on someone else for the answers rather than being responsible for everything). All I did was follow that logic across the full sweep of Empire and recut it as a “Medieval Romance” not a bunch of disconnected romantic happenings. If you do that, you’d be shocked how much more believable/satisfying the “I Love You” / “I know” scene becomes.

I respect the approach. I personally think that Han being immature and pushy is an intentional character trait (and is why I think it’s 100% in-character for him to act the way he does in ROTJ; he was always insecure, that bravado was his way of hiding it) which fits the flawed hero he is, but I also understand if one prefers to make him more mature.

G&G-Fan said:

I respect the approach. I personally think that Han being immature and pushy is an intentional character trait (and is why I think it’s 100% in-character for him to act the way he does in ROTJ; he was always insecure, that bravado was his way of hiding it) which fits the flawed hero he is, but I also understand if one prefers to make him more mature.

Hear me out. . . Technically Han isn’t immature and pushy in A New Hope the way he is in the other two. For my money Episode VI Han is the best Han, so I cut out all of the “non-IV” Han moments from V-VI. It’s all a matter of taste, but if I can have the funniest/coolest version of Han Solo, then that’s the one I want!

One of y’all asked to see my version of the Final Battle from the Phantom Menace, and since I rendered it out, I thought I’d post a link here for anyone else who’d like to take a look:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16r3MW3PH6K1T_fnF-jCrwa2P1lUa91_r?usp=sharing

And here’s a bit of the logic behind the changes:

In my recut of tPM I reworked all of the main characters (Especially Qui-Gon, Padme, Anakin and Jar-Jar), so that the movie now feels like it has three protagonists (Padme, Qui-Gon, and Anakin in that order of importance), and Jar-Jar now fills the Chewbacca role of an interesting side character who is at times funny, but never annoying.

The main idea behind my recut of the final battle was to better match the sequence flow of Return of the Jedi’s final battle, which though flawed itself is closer to the mark. The two main flaws in Return of the Jedi’s final sequencing are too much Ewok footage and the pace-killer that is the Throne Room Duel. These two flaws carried over into the Phantom Menace, because both the Gungan Battle and the Duel of the Fates are the primary problems with the sequence flow.

The way I fixed the Gungan battle was to never cut back to it after it achieves it’s purpose (drawing the droid army into a large scale battle that they cannot pull out of). This tactic is clearly laid out in the battle plan scene, just like Han destroying the shield generator on Endor. We don’t need to know the precise outcome of the land battle, because that becomes obvious when we see Jar-Jar and Captain Tarpals at the victory celebration. The main Tone-Killer of the final battle is Jar-Jar’s antics, most of which take place in the second half. I also cut the scene where Boss Nass makes Jar-Jar a general. In my cut, Jar-Jar’s participation in the battle entirely voluntary as an average soldier defending his home. Jar-Jar was also never banished and is on good terms with Boss Nass and Captain Tarpals from the beginning.

As far as the Duel of the Fates goes, it’s sequencing is way off in the original, and the whole energy door sequence is a worse Pace-Killer than Vader and Luke’s game of psychic-hide-and-seek in the Throne Room. . . With that in mind I recut the duel so that only Obi-Wan gets stopped by the energy door, and Qui-Gon goes straight in. Both Qui-Gon’s noble end, and Obi-Wan’s final exchange with Maul have been overhauled to make them more intense, and I fixed several action cutting errors by using the techniques used to cut the sword fights in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The way I rewrote Qui-Gon’s character (I focused on how kind he was and cut every scene where he’s grumpy and cross), the audience should really care about his death, and by combining Obi-Wan and Maul’s final exchange with the scene where Obi-Wan creates his own high ground, the pacing now matches the end of the Bespin Duel from Empire Strikes Back.

As far as Padme goes, I recut all of the gun battles to feel more like the firefights from Episode IV, and I made it clear that her plan to capture the Viceroy succeeded, because according to George, she’s the primary protagonist of the Phantom Menace (He’s right, because when you recut the whole film with that in mind, it works like a dream).

Lil’ Annie has been overhauled so that every decision he makes is intentional. He’s also much more serious throughout the film than the vanilla version. I recut the fighter sequences to match the pacing and feel of the space battle from Return of the Jedi, and these sequences took the most work to get to. . . well work. . .

All in all this sequence has a hundred+ changes, so I hope y’all enjoy it! If all goes well I’ll finish the next episode of the YouTube show by next weekend, so until then enjoy the edit, and I’ll see y’all next time.

Hardened1337 said:

I’d like to see a full version of TPM. So far it looks fantastic

Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of Phantom Menace content planned for the YouTube Series. If you wanna see how I recut any individual sequence, PM me. The only sequence I haven’t finished yet is the Podrace (I’m going over it one last time), but other than that, she’s all done except for half of the color grade.

jkimm said:

Hey JoyOfEditing (JOE),

I really like what you’ve done with the final battle! Especially chopping out all of the Gungan fighting. The overall pacing is soooo much better. There are still a few things that kinda bug me though. I made some edits of a few scenes and am curious what you think?

Hey! I’d be happy to take a look, but those links require permission to view, so if you switch it to “anyone with the link”, I’ll take a wee peek. I’m gonna warn ya though, that in most every case I would probably stick with what I’ve got. I’ve tried a bunch of the edits that you’re suggesting, and while many of them work in isolation they cut against the flow or logic of the scenes that they take place in as a whole. I done about. . . I dunno 20-30 full editing passes on that sequence (The only scene I spent more time on was the opening/closing of RotS), so what you saw is pretty much a lock for me.

Basically, the short answer is: Many of the changes you’re suggesting could be successfully made if you sat down and recut the end battle from scratch and repaced it to accommodate those ideas. My cut is quite fast (on purpose) so a lot of the bits that annoy you are where I intentionally allowed it to drag a bit to reset the flow, so that the pace wouldn’t outrun the audience’s ability to keep up with the action. Everybody has different tastes, and I quite like a lot of the changes you’re suggesting. The bottom line is: there’s no perfect way to cut a scene, only balanced and unbalanced ways. My end scene is balanced against itself and my entire recut of the Phantom Menace (the overall pacing and flow/how all the characters were reworked). I really like your ideas, and I think they could totally work in different cut, but systematically I couldn’t use them in my cut. Make sense?

jkimm said:

Oops, all links should be available to view now.

I actually adjusted the scenes using your edit so that the order of each remains the same. I completely understand if you’re locked into what you have and wouldn’t expect you to make any changes. I’m really excited to see more of your work

Huzzah! It worked! I LOVE these!!! The main hope I had when I started doing the YouTube show was that folks would wanna try their own version of those scenes and in doing so get better at editing, so this is great! I really love the in-sequence kill of Darth Maul! “Brutality! Ben Wins!” HAHA! Fantastic Job! And you’ve got good instincts on all the other cuts, I actually tried out quite a few of them myself when I was cutting the sequence.

The reason from my point of view, that you need to keep the bit where Ben falls into the pit, is because George is creating a visual mirror between Duel of the Fates and the Bespin Duel from Empire Strikes Back. Luke loses a fight, falls into a cylindrical hole, and gains a father he doesn’t want VS Ben wins a fight by jumping up out of a cylindrical hole, and Anakin gains the wrong father in Ben, because Qui-Gon, the father he needed, didn’t make it. With that in mind I restructured the whole end of the duel to match the flow of the Bespin Duel in order to make the mirror shine better.

I personally wouldn’t make any of your other cuts for this reason: All of those cuts work in isolation and would work if the you’re not dealing with a sequence that’s intercutting 4 subsequences (Gungans, Padme, Duel of the Fates, and the Space Battle). This is what I was hinting at in my last post. You’re cutting a bunch of moments when the action is dragging (The Gungan Button, Qui-Gon talking to Annie, Panaka’s excessive force against a window, ect), and you’d want to cut those kind of drag points, if you were doing a straight scene with no intercuts. But! When you’ve got a 4-Way intercut, you actually need a few drag points just like rests in a fast piece of music. That’s why that starfighter takes forever to hit the ground, it’s creating a breath before we charge into the next section of the battle. The long shot where the battle droids unload from the MTT is another example of that kind of musical breath.

SO! If you were say cutting a version of Duel of the Fates, where you never cut away to the rest of the battle most of your cuts wouldn’t just work, they’d be exactly what you’d want to do, like how you trimmed down Obi-Wan’s falling all over the place. For example I used the exact sort of cutting techniques that you used on Duel of the Fates to recut the Duels at the end of Attack of the Clones, because those flow in a straight sequence without ever cutting away.

Here’s a link to my recut of the Attack of the Clones Duels. Pay close attention to how I reworked the beginning (similar to how you cut the extra Anakin lines), and How I recut Dooku’s kill shot on Anakin (Similar to your rework of Ben smoking Maul): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-GJ1VlEvPO5XlQALDODDeZdWrGEH_ZHP?usp=sharing

Bottom line! Great Work! And I’d love to see more! Keep it up!

JoyOfEditing:
I really enjoyed watching the videos on your YouTube channel, and I hope that they inspire more people to do some editing of their own.
As I mentioned to you via PM, I especially love what you did with the Probe Droid scene on Hoth; I will definitely use that for my own edit! 😃

Phase3 said:

As I mentioned to you via PM, I especially love what you did with the Probe Droid scene on Hoth; I will definitely use that for my own edit! 😃

I take it you’re doing edits for the entire saga?

Phase3 said:

JoyOfEditing:
I really enjoyed watching the videos on your YouTube channel, and I hope that they inspire more people to do some editing of their own.
As I mentioned to you via PM, I especially love what you did with the Probe Droid scene on Hoth; I will definitely use that for my own edit! 😃

Cheers! That is my main goal of the channel. It’s an editing show that happens to be about STAR WARS, since it’s a film series most folks have seen. Hopefully it’s useful for folks that wanna pick up the craft and can’t afford overly-expensive Film School. It kinda cracks me up that so many folks in the comments wanna argue how STAR WARS should be cut, when that’s not the point. The point is to use STAR WARS to teach you how to cut, so you can go off with the know-how to make your own adjustments. At least my man, jkimm gets it! I’m still laughing at how brutal his recut of Ben’s take down of Maul is. Great work, buddy!

Glad you enjoyed the Probe Droid recut! I did not realize how controversial the number of Probe Droids that landed on Hoth was (check the comments on that video. They’re hilarious!).

Speaking of controversy, the next video (hopefully out next week at this stage) will probably be the most controversial change I’ve made to date, and I’m really looking forward to your thoughts as to whether it worked or not. Today, I’ll be working away at that thingy we’re PMing about, so hopefully I’ll have a file for you soon.

This is all excellent, Joy. You have a great eye. What’s your editing background?

Hardened1337 said:

Here’s a link to my recut of the Attack of the Clones Duels. Pay close attention to how I reworked the beginning (similar to how you cut the extra Anakin lines), and How I recut Dooku’s kill shot on Anakin (Similar to your rework of Ben smoking Maul): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-GJ1VlEvPO5XlQALDODDeZdWrGEH_ZHP?usp=sharing

Bottom line! Great Work! And I’d love to see more! Keep it up!

I think the AOTC duel works better like this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/157a6pMCVCYktaJfK9sfcpKof7mvmXhbx/view
Having that few seconds showing that Obi-wan’s in pain makes no sense to me. Obviously a little color correction needed but that’s all.

Okay, that is a fantastic fix! Can’t believe I missed that, because I used the same shot-combo-trick to stitch together two Qui-Gon shots from the same angle in the Duel of the Fates. (Timecode 9:40 in the link a few posts above. I used a flash frame to hide the stitch.) Great work!!! In fact, I liked your change so much, that I did the same thing to the Obi-Wan portion of the duel by cutting out one of Anakin’s reaction shots, and then before I knew it I recut that whole dang section to make Dooku more skilled. The new version implementing your change has replaced the last version at the same link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_iGmOFLvu-TE-YzHQqzj408MTRmpji4f/view?usp=sharing

Great work!

EddieDean said:

This is all excellent, Joy. You have a great eye. What’s your editing background?

I starting goofing around with a mini-VHS camcorder when I was 11, and then taught myself how to composite, stop-motion animate, and a bunch of other stuff. Because of all that I got accepted into a special high-school film program that’s part of the public school system in my hometown and was probably the best program of it’s kind in the country during the time I went there. After three years of that course, I had a college-level grasp of Editing Theory, After Effects Compositing, and Film History. I’ve always been really good at the visual side of Filmmaking, but I STUNK at the storytelling/writing side, so I decided to round out what I was bad at in college by taking an English Lit degree at St. Andrews in Scotland (Think Oxford or Cambridge. We’re no.1 in the UK, baby!). That degree kicked my butt! But by the end, it had achieved it’s purpose by teaching me how to research and write properly as well as how to tell a story clearly to an audience. While I was doing that degree I took two years off in the middle to work, so I could get out without any debt. During those years, I worked professionally as an Editor, Animator, and Motion Designer. I did some work for Discovery Channel, and I designed and animated the GIANT 360 boards at the Carolina Panther’s NFL Stadium.

When I got out of College, the high-end editing/post production industry collapsed in my neck of the woods, so after several years of trying to make a go of it, I started doing other work professionally, and in my own time I began writing graphic novels, because that’s the cheapest way to make a movie, lol! Hopefully in the next several years, I’ll be able to publish those, and long term I’d love to turn them into features, if they do well (Finding a good illustrator to work with has been really hard for some reason, but hopefully I’ll eventually be able to track one down). The reason I started recutting STAR WARS was actually to stay in shape so to speak, haha! The stuff I’d like to do eventually is as complex if not more complex than George’s SAGA, and I wanted to get as good and fast at cutting as possible, so that if I ever got the chance to work on a project of that scale, I’d be as prepared as I could be.

One of the reasons that I started doing the editing show was to make the knowledge and expertise that I got from my education and professional experience more accessible. (Film School is way too expensive, yo!) Back in the day, I was able to work professionally as an animator/compositor because of Andrew Kramer’s free AE tutorials at VideoCopilot.net, so I thought I’d try to do the same kind thing for Film Editing, so other poor folks like me could learn for free, if they’re keen.

That’s really awesome. Definitely seemed like you were more than amateur! St. Andrews is a lovely town- great beaches if they’re not full of jellyfish! I’m an Edinburgher, currently on holiday at Loch Tay, so I know the area! 😉

It’s good to have you with us, I think the community would agree that we’re really enjoying the fresh eye you bring with your videos. Star Wars editing, especially of the prequels, has gone through a couple of phases, each growing on the last, over the last couple of decades. I’d argue we’re in the third phase of that right now with AI voice lines and so on being available, and a lot of your cuts are novel even in this fertile environment.

Your goals are interesting - also novel, they’re a bit more aligned to the mythological/poetical narrative language than we’re used to - but I think it’s likely we’ll see edits stealing many of your scenes in future. Something a little more aligned to canon, perhaps Hal’s detail + Spence’s pacing + your scenes + elements of restructuring from all three, with a dash of new CG and AI voicelines, could be very appealing here.