Okay, here is what I was trying to get to:
I know you've been reworking this Ady, so sorry to add more to the plate.
I just think it would be fantastic to have some alien-esque skies over Cloud City to emphasise that it's STAR WARS and that they are floating in essentially a planet like Yavin (or Jupiter or Saturn). Also, if it would be possible to incorporate MOVING clouds - again, they wouldn't have to be zipping around, but just any slow movement (like what you see in Miyazaki films, specifically the opening to CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO) to add some life to the setting shots.
- in this particular shot, I imagine the upper right cloud moving to the left or right as the lower layer moves at a slower pace, as Luke races from the right side towards Cloud City (the sun could be shown behind CC to the left, maybe allowing CC to give off a slight "eclipse" type shadow, or the image could be kept "as is" without any sun effects to keep it from being TOO complicated - in fact, I like it without any sun, since it looks like the sun is to the right off-camera)
- also note how things like background elements can be used to enhance and define depth of space: the placement of that one cloud in the foreground to contrast against the rest of the image depicting large objects in the distance to help add dimensionality.
- I guess that is my wish for re-edits of ANY form is to beautify and add to the existing shots or be creative in the editing and FX to enhance the story without needlessly overcomplicating things to the point of being a distraction, so nix the sun idea.
The main thing is making sure that the FOCUS is still on the proper subject/items in the frame. I guess that was yet another problem with the Prequels is that you never really had any scenes where composition was thought through. Even in BLADE RUNNER you still had a big building in the background to focus your attention on...
On a side note:
As far as the time line of events go, for myself, Han and Leia got there at sunset and spent the night (so Leia's apartment scene could be early morning), so the second day Vader and Co. torture them and Luke picks them up; Luke gets to Bespin roughly at "near-dusk", so by the time he is on the underbelly it is sunset and going onto night again.
You have to take into account that:
(1) the Falcon has no hyperdrive, so it would take a little while to reach Bespin from the asteroid field (which would give Luke the handful of weeks or so for his initial training)
(2) even with Luke's X-wing having hyperdrive, who knows how far Dagobah was from Bespin, so the Bespin events from Han landing to Luke on the bottom would at least have to take about 2 or 3 days, NOT TO MENTION:
(3) Cloud City is essentially the size of Manhattan Island or even bigger, with New York City just on the top (!). That means when Luke lands he has to work his way down a skyscraper, get to the bottom level of the city on top of CC, THEN work his way down hundreds if not thousands of levels to get to the lower area of the CC main body just to get to the carbonite chamber, which still leaves his fight and then fall down the shaft to the bottom of the CC main body. All of that is going to take a lot more than an hour or two to happen.
Also also:
With a bit orange, the levels are more clear. I erased the buildings because they had wrong perspective.( now less orange maybe, or more brightness)
The lighting is good, but you would have to remove a lot of the clouds just so we can separate the foreground from the background. In the previous shot, there is a lot of open sky to separate the two walls, whereas the second shot you lose a little of that delineation. I would almost keep a little more of the original blue in the tint of the hallways just to help them stand out a little more (and that the vertical lighting would cast their own "tint" so to speak)
- on a last note, would it be possible to change the sky color of the daytime shots from the typical Earth-like appearance to the light yellow in the top picture, that way Bespin's sky stands out a little more from Hoth and most of the other SW planets?
Here are some mock-ups:
that's a little bit on the cloudy side, but I was trying to do the original just with the light beige skies as opposed to blue ones.
