SpenceEdit said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQigbmX4hwg&feature=player_embedded
This is better than I'd expected. I recommend you trim just a little bit of footage, so that the music ends right after the catwalk falls.
You know of the rebellion against the Empire?
This is amazing. This is the white elephant of the OT. I have always felt like Spence says-- that ROTJ is the worst of the SW movies. But it is also the one that has the most to gain.
I think the ideas here cover as much as can be covered. Every idea that I have been harboring is covered here and taken even a step farther. I can't wait to see it.
This is like waiting for the original release.
Have you done box art? Here's a great piece that I suggested in another thread, but no one's used as far as I know:
Thanks! I'm glad you're looking forward to it. I'm going to start working on cover art and DVD menus this weekend, so I'll see if that fits.
Honestly, I can't see the image since it's blocked and I'm at work, but I'll check it out when I get home.
SpenceEdit said:
Well I looked at it, and the problem is that we can see Luke's hilt very clearly in his hand. its beyond my abilities to switch their sabers, but I may still have Vader with both of them at the beginning.
perhaps you could just edit it not to show Luke's hilt. If changing the colours of the sabres is the problem, Bob has experience in that field, he could you how to do it. He's done impressive stuf with Anakin/ObiWan duel in his ROTDS edit
No that's not the problem, doing a new rotoscope is time consuming but not that hard. Basically I'd have to crop a lot of the shots toward the end, after Luke beats down Vader. I don't really want to do that, it's some very iconic imagery. I don't think the edit really needs it either, it should work fine the way it is, though it's a cool concept.
Of course, it's your edit, your call. Still, we never see Luke's hilt in any other scene of the saga (with that precission), since it's a new sabre; and honestly I don't think people has Vader's hilt that in mind so as to notice the fake.
If you finde this last suggestion annoying or heavily insisting, I apologize, far from my intention to be so.
No it's fine, I understand. But as a huge Star Wars fan, I know exactly what their hilts look like, and I think a lot of people will as well. I don't want that to be something that sticks out as wrong in the edit. It runs the risk of changing "Awesome! Luke has Vader's saber!" to "Why did Luke's saber suddenly turn red?" very easily.
I consider myself quite knowledgeable regarding the Star Wars saga,being there in May 77 and loving it since. It took me a bit to realize the Prequels are really not in the same league as the Original trilogy but they have many good parts. I'm new to this site and have admired many of the Restorations and such,but you are just HACKING up these movies with a meatcleaver! I watched several clips you have posted on youtube and was like "HUH"??? Unlike Adywan's brilliant work on Star Wars revisited,what your doing is like a bad autopsy and is just plain bad.
How about you do something better, lordsidi?
Got nothing? Thought not.
You say you're new to the site. Do you think the way to make a good impression is to insult well respected members? There's constructive criticism and then there's what you're doing - insulting his work without ACTUALLY explaining why it was......
lordsidi said:
HACKING up these movies with a meatcleaver!
or makes you go
lordsidi said:
"HUH"???
or the, oh so eloquent,
lordsidi said:
like a bad autopsy and is just plain bad.
But I guess this next quote demonstrates the intellectual level you're operating at:
lordsidi said:
It took me a bit to realize the Prequels are really not in the same league as the Original trilogy
I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you can't say anything nice...
In response to brash styker,no I am not an editor and I have no movie edits to add to this forum,but I've looked thru the site at many people's work. My use of the work "hacking" or editing as you call it might have been harsh ,but after watching many of the clips reedited I just could'nt comprehend the changes in music ,especially the beautiful piece from ROTJ when Luke attacks Vader...its one of the best cues in the series,plus all the switching to other scenes during the saber fight. I find the scenes in the throne room some of the best in the series. As far as my "intellectual level" goes,I am no genius...but like a lot of fans I really wanted the prequels to be at least on the same level as the originals and I guess I was fooling myself and defending them when others downed them. I still think Phantom has some good qualities,Attack of the Clones as well,and RotS is definitely the best of that trilogy. I find it ironic that early on Lucas said " its not the SpFX that make the movie good and many moviemakers just try to make their movies on how many FX they have ,it's the story that makes the movie" however Lucas,,,who should have let others direct,crowded his new series with as many computer fx he could,which he did'nt have to do...more subtle is better. To SpenceEdit,I apologize for being harsh....and to each his own.
These forums are a way for fan-editors to show us what they're up to - they do like to recieve comments on what people think of their work.
but at the end of the day, this is Spences project so its up to him what he does.
I agree with your comments about the prequels but they really belong in another thread "General Star Wars Discussion".
tho i will say, I hated the prequels originally, for too many reasons to go into here but what ive realised after seeing some really good fan-edits of them is that there is a good story there its just hindered by poor editing choices.
Lets return to Jedi!
You can never go home again, but i guess you can shop there.
Hi all. Joined this forum so that I can thank Spence.
The last time I watched ROTJ, I fast forwarded through the teddy bear scenes, which rather spoilt the flow.
I watched the Spence Edit v2 a couple of weeks ago, and I must say, a vast improvement. Thank you very much.
I'm generally a bit of an High def snob, refusing to watch films unless they are on bluray or in HD on TV, however, I obviously had no choice with this edit.
A question for Spence. The original trilogy are released on Bluray this year, will you make HD versions of your edits ? and, will you be able to use your cut points on the HD versions, or is it not that easy.
Thanks again
Spence you said a copuple of posts before that ROTJ is the weakest of the saga; and blamed its lack of tension for it. I think lack of tension is one of the issues, but a direct consequence of a bigger one. ROTJ has IMO, a lack of grandeur; not speaking vissually, but in its story. ROTS though being a regular-bad movie, achieves that.
(It's gonna sound stupid but I can't find another words to say it at this time in the morning) D'you know that feeling when you are entering the highway... you just end going up the ramp, and then it's like everything accelerates and the car is on it's own? Well that could do a good figuration. ESB is the climax of the saga. Right after that, things should have to start accelerating, and let the story be on its own; having not everything to depend on the main three/four characters. ROTS was basically about how a coup d'Etat took place and it needed several elements (characters) here and there (even the clone commanders had their roles) to make it more or less armonic and believable. Having aside Luke (like Anakin in the PT), Leia, and Han could have had minor characters, or have them mixed with other characters who also are engaged with that huge and compromising task that making the Empire fall is.
What I say is "OK, EPVI the last one, now things get massive and hopefully one or two of them will survive, this is gonna be pure adrenaline.. well wait, 40 minutes wasted on Jabba's palace in a rather minimal story compared to the Empire plot". So hope you can do your best, Spence or whoever wants to make something good out of ROTJ, and give us a better movie.
That's all stuff I've had in mind since I started this edit. The Jabba stuff is really an excuse to show Luke has graduated to the status of Jedi, and we get done with it by the 25 minute mark. The rest of it's all Empire stuff. I think changing up the pacing will help improve things.
freelancer, I'm glad you enjoyed my other version of Jedi, and I hope you like this one even more! You should also check out the "Dan Edit." An editor/friend of mine called yads did that one, and it's a very good cut of the movie as well.
lordsidi, my reaction to your comments wasn't as much about the comments themselves, you can feel however you want to about my edit. Again, if you don't like it, don't watch it. It had more to do with the fact that you are brand new to the forum, come into the "Fanedits" forum and start flaming a project that I and many other people have worked very hard on and many people are excited about. You also didn't give much reason for why you made such harsh comments, which is in no way constructive to me. So, for appearance sake, you just kind of showed up to my party that I didn't invite you to and started being a dick.
Now, I feel like maybe you don't understand the purpose of "Fanedits" especially if your only experience with them is Adywan's Revisited projects. Those are an entirely different animal, and nobody else has done or is trying to do anything else like that. Ady is very talented, and it's a fantastic project.
Most of the time, Fanedits are people either trying to improve a movie to their tastes or trying to put an interesting spin on a movie. Sometimes it's to present it from a different perspective. My goal is not to replace Return of the Jedi, or tell everybody that this is a better version. I would hope that people who don't necessarily agree with my point of view would still find the concepts interesting, and maybe enjoy it as an alternate cut, a curiosity, or a "What if?" This whole thing came about when I read an interview with Gary Kurtz about how Jedi was originally going to be before George Lucas changed it up, so I tried to edit the existing material to be a bit more like that description. It might be better, it might not, but it's still interesting.
Hopefully now that you're aware of what we're doing, you can add some constructive comments to this and other threads, and maybe watch and enjoy a few fanedits. But if you're going to continue to be an ass, kindly leave. Thank you.
^HOWEVER, Ady has confirmed he'll be making much more radical changes to ROTJ than with his prevous edits, so lordsidi might be disgusted with that too, when the times comes.
Well, then the GOUT should be fine for him. Or he could do his own version. Fanediting is fairly easy to start up with.
MTHaslett, I looked at that image when I got home, and it was the exact one I was planning on using for my cover art haha. I'm using a few more of Mondo's posters for art as well.
freelancer I forgot to answer you on this, but I'm not intending on redoing this in HD unless there's some seriously good deleted scenes I want to add in. Right now I'm not set up to do HD editing, and I'm also not a big HD buff, so I personally don't have much interest in it. I don't even have a blu-ray player yet, and I'm getting one solely for Star Wars when it comes out.
To clear up some confusion, as lordsidi seemed to not get this, but most of those clips on youtube are of concepts and ideas. That does not mean all of that is going to be included. In fact, not a single one of those clips represents a finished product. I'm not using the idea of putting other footage into the saber fight anymore and I'm keeping the original music, as I wanted to elevate the edit from "bad autopsy" to "okay autopsy."
ROTJ's "lack of grandeur" -- what a good way to put it.
My thoughts on this have led me to this: the real problem is the lack of a personal story.
Anyone can tell you ROTJ is the story of Luke facing Vader and getting Vader to redeem himself by defeating the Emperor. But that's not entirely accurate. First, that story doesn't begin until 1/2 hour into the movie after the Jabba stuff. Secondly, it isn't established in any clear way until Luke suddenly takes it on himself to surrender to Vader in a gambit to appeal to Vader's good side.
If only we were in on Luke's story from the beginning, we'd feel a building tension about what he's going to do when he meets Vader again. If only it felt like the appeal to Vader's good side came out of the themes being built in the story-- if only his final pleas to Vader felt like the dying gasp of the true Jedi race.
That would bring grandeur to the story. In trying to create it through editing, it comes down to how we key in on Luke through the movie. How can we get to Luke and Yoda right away? How is that scene handled? That sets the stage for everything. Done right, then even the Jabba sequence should be about Luke preparing to face Vader-- honing his confidence and pulling off his first victory since ANH.
Blah blah. I'm excited about this edit because it seems to have approached all these ideas from a cool angle.
Something about seeing the Death Star out the Emperor's window says "grandeur" to me.
Well that's part of what's nice about starting with the yoda scenes. Luke is told he is finished training and must defeat Vader. the goal of the movie, the personal story is set up right away. The excursion to Jabba's now feels like Luke proving to himself that he is a Jedi, so that scene becomes an extension of his personal story. Luke has to save those he cares about, and use his new skills to do so. A lot of what you said I've had in mind as I cut this. This isn't a "cut the bullshit" fanedit, the entire feel and through line of the story has been changed. The story is the same, but told in a new way. The story telling related cuts are the ones I'm happiest with. The emotional beats are what I wanted to improve the most, and every change I made was to change how we, as the audience, feel about the story we're being told.
For instance, I didn't just change the ending to remove the Ewok stuff that I hate, I changed it to create a moving and cathartic conclusion. Sometimes, scenes I would like to cut were kept. For instance it'd be nice to remove the SE planet celebrations, but if we need grandeur, and we need a cathartic release, then we need more than just teddy bears dancing and Luke burning Vaders armor and everyone happy and smiling at the end.
Shit. I just teared up watching your clip of the last 5 minutes. Beautiful job bringing the whole saga to a close. The prequel music is so welcome in this movie-- this is the first "Prequel movie" in a way because it's the first movie they made knowing Vader would be a "good guy" and that everything comes back to that. Until ROTJ, it was two movies about Luke. With ROTJ it became 6 movies about Darth Vader. So excellent job making that work.
I thought you were going to put Vader's death after the DS2 explodes. I'm not sure I want that, but one thing that always bothered me is how fast Lando gets out of DS2 compared with how long it takes to get in.
Have you tried putting Vader's death right after Lando shoots the core and starts his escape? Then after Vader dies, it will feel like Lando has been escaping the appropriate amount of time and he'd better get out fast or die.
EDIT: I also want to say I really appreciate the thought you're putting into this. Keeping stuff you don't like to make the emotional story work is exactly the right attitude, I think. The impact is already showing up in the clips you've done.
I thought of trying out the Death scene after Lando blows up the core, but I don't know if it's a good idea to change the tempo right there. We might lose the tension of Lando escaping by cutting to the Vader stuff. What I might do is make Lando's trip inside a little shorter.
I'm glad you're enjoying the clips so far, and I'm glad the edit is sort of fitting in with what you've been talking about. My biggest problem with the edit right now is the length. It's only 90min. It feels complete, and that's exactly how long I need to tell the story the best way possible, but i just wish there was more that I could put in. Especially the saber battle toward the end. I wish that had about 5 minutes extra that I could add in. Oh well. Maybe it'll be on the blu-rays.
I see what you mean. Another idea I had once about that sequence was to perhaps separate Wedge from the Falcon-- follow Wedges attack, swing around and exit completely-- leaving the Falcon in the core-- then cut away to something else (The Vader death scene)... and then pick up on Falcon's attack/exit.
That way Wedge could fly out of DS2 long before Lando got out and tension could mount more Lando's narrow escape.
This would actually raise tension across the board since everything would remain at the climactic moment for longer.
Maybe the Vader scene is too long for this, though.
If its too short you could always add some footage of Jar Jar or put some ewoks back in :p
You can never go home again, but i guess you can shop there.