Possessed Return of the Jedi-* Resurrected!!* — Page 10

mrbenja0618 said:

I kinda agree with Dan... And also how do explain Luke's black glove before he gets shot in the hand?

It cannot be explained. It is something Luke wears on his bum hand sometimes. Kind of like his poncho in ANH.

EDIT: also, I think Possessed said he's cutting the "shot in the hand" beat. It seems like a phoney bit anyway.

Possessed said:

And MTHasslet, you do have some good ideas, and I'm sure I will use some of them.  I will retain the first bit of the wicket and Leia scene I think.  As for Vader, I have no problem with his personality in this movie, at all.  I always assumed that having connection with his son had drastically altered his view on everything.  He had plans before, but harming his son and then connecting to him with the force sort of softened him up a bit.

 

Most, if not all of ewok silliness will be removed.  They will be in the final battle, but mainly on their serious shots will stay.  (Which means, when they reveal themselves, when they kill something, and when they get killed themselves). No more will wicked hit himself in the face with a rock and strangely have no damage done to his face.

Possessed, I know I will love this edit. I am impressed with your decisiveness and clarity -- even if you are wrong every now and then ;-)

This edit is so close to what I would do myself that I get a little passionate about the places where we diverge. I hope you don't mind. Let me know if I come on too strong.

The last place I know I have a suggestion is in the pacing of Luke's escape from the Death Star. I'd like to see it more closely linked to Lando's assault on the main reactor so there's a stronger sense that he won't make it out in time.

Does that sound interesting? If not, I won't bother getting into the specifics.

I'll have to look for other cuts. Most of what I would suggest happens already in the DanEdit, so if you like anything there, I say go for it (with appropriate thanks).

As for upping the tension as Luke and Vader talk, it's mostly simple. After the SuperStarDestroyer crashes, the original cut goes inside the DS2 where everyone's panicking and running for cover. This doesn't make obvious sense-- sure it's bad news, but the crash shouldn't affect the DS2 one iota.

So cut instead to Lando and Wedge going into the DS2, follow them all the way to the center-- there it is: WOW. Let's hit it. Wedge blasts away and something blows up.

CUT TO: inside the DS2 where everyone's panicking and running for cover. See Luke carry Darth to the ramp of his ship and collapse.

CUT TO: Lando flying in for his attack run-- he blasts the reactor and it starts to collapse.  We gotta get out of here!

CUT TO: Luke and Vader -- they talk and the tone is somber-- but added sound effects make it clear that the DS2 is collapsing from the inside. Distant explosions grow louder and more constant. Luke doesn't care, he's going to have this moment.  He reluctantly agrees to remove Vader's mask. He takes the top off...

CUT TO: Wedge flying out of the DS2. He's safe, but what about everyone else?

CUT TO: Luke pulls back the final piece of helmet (only need the last bit of this footage) revealing Vader's face-- they see eye to eye and talk. Vader tells Luke to run. No, says Luke. Vader dies.

CUT TO: Lando flying deep in DS2, flames coming fast behind him. They eat the TIE fighter behind him.

CUT TO: Luke's ship in the hanger, moving as the hanger falls apart.

CUT TO: Ackbar orders his fleet to move back.

CUT TO: Luke flying out of the DS2 (Maybe lose his last "sigh of relief" which is strangely unconvincing).

CUT TO: Lando completing his death-defying escape from the DS2

CUT TO: DS2 from a distance-- it explodes.

MAYBE: after the explosion is the place where we should see Luke's "sigh of relief"? I don't know. If it were a better performance, I would say we need it. But I just don't know

That would feel a lot more tense and sensible. In the original cut, it takes longer for Luke to load dead Vader into his ship than it does for Lando to destroy the main reactor and navigate all the tunnels out from the heart of DS2.

Plus, to me, it will add emotion to Luke/Vader's scene when we see how they're risking death to have their final moment together.

What happened to the sample? :(

I can't download it.

I managed to download, but I've been too busy to watch very much. It looked great and my only comment was to come up with a new crawl to match this new order of things.

I couldn't download the last clip, I think Rapidshare had a limit to how many downloads were allowed for free or something. Maybe Erik ran into the same thing here.

Briefly avail-- here is the crawl I quickly came up with. (More thorough reply later):

Shaken by his disastrous battle with DARTH VADER,

young LUKE SKYWALKER flies to Degobah to seek

guidance from YODA, his Jedi Master, before rejoining

his friends on Tatooine. But Luke's friends desperately

await his help to rescue HAN SOLO from the

clutches of ruthless gangster, JABBA THE HUTT.

Little do they realize... (etc.)

Well... I hope you learn how, because the current crawl makes no sense. Luke's not on Tatooine in your version.

I see there's an error message for the download: Unassigned file limit of 10 downloads reached.

Is there any way to increase the number of times this can be downloaded?

Making crawls is a resident pastime here-- I can help point you to someone if no one who knows how volunteers to help.

Nice grasp of the obvious timdiggerm.

Sluggo said:

I'm trying to upload the file again so others can watch it.

EDIT:  Here you go.

Thanks, Sluggo!

Awesomeness indeed.

Hey Possessed.

Had a chance to really look at this and loved it. What an emotional build-up this all has before we even get to Jabba. Now that Jabba scene is going to feel so much more meaningful. This is so much more a movie about Luke. 

I did notice a lot of editing in the Yoda and Ben scenes, but did not recognize the esb source. I was thrown by the edits myself, so I screened the clip for my wife who is an editor that doesn't really know Star Wars shot-for-shot like the rest of us. She was less thrown, but still had a couple issues. The biggest issues were that Yoda seems off when he "confirms" that Luke is a Jedi and that the transition to Tatooine seems too abrupt.

She was first going to suggest cutting out the matte of the ships because she couldn't really see the x-wing so it got confusing when we cut from the Falcon to R2. She asked, "so was that not R2 with Luke?" and I had to show her that Luke's x-wing was in that long shot.

The solution we ended up liking was to suggest you extend the timing of the two transition shots and cross-fades as much as possible while "aiming" your zoom on the matte shot at Luke's x-wing and (most important of all) using Luke's musical cue (the main Star Wars phrase) to really bring the transition home. That music more than anything would tell us "Luke is now on Tatooine".

As for fixing the Yoda beat, I beg you to put back Yoda's original reaction and instruction that Luke must face Vader first.

Though my wife was not bothered, I was thrown by Yoda's reference to Luke's "Father's Fate" BEFORE Luke asked about his father. It could work, theoretically if Yoda is referring to the lie Ben told of Vader killing Luke's father as Luke's "Father's Fate" but that's pretty extreme. We haven't heard that story for two movies now, so to reference it in a throw away line seems confusing. 

I also found the re-edited Ben scene to be hard to follow, but my wife didn't complain.  I didn't see the need for the re-edits, but maybe you'll say what you were really going for?

Anyway, those are all the complaints. I have to say that seeing the two DS2 scenes so close together really worked for my wife and I think it's a key to really completing the set up of this whole movie. Seeing the Emperor for the first time, seeing how much he has planned for Luke-- it's a suspense building technique that pays off big here. Now we know Yoda and Ben are right-- Luke is in grave danger and has no idea of just how much.

Possessed,

The Ben scene is not "hard to follow", I used the wrong words. I found a couple of edits jarring, especially when you cut to Ben seated without showing him sit down.

But that's my problem for knowing the original so well, most likely. As I said, my wife didn't mind.

I know what you mean about the difficulty of this. It's time consuming and frustrating. I think you're doing great and that if all you did was add Luke's theme to the transition you've got then the whole piece would work fine.

I can't thank you enough for going down this road. I'll understand if you have to abandon it, but I think you've done a brave and valuable thing here.

Thank you TML!

Man, let me tweak my own awful writing there if I may-- 

LUKE SKYWALKER, shaken by his disastrous 

battle with DARTH VADER, flies to Degobah to seek

guidance from Jedi Master YODA. But Luke's 

friends desperately await his help on Tatooine

where they plan to rescue HAN SOLO from the

clutches of vile gangster, JABBA THE HUTT.

Little do they realize... (etc.)