Spence's PT Edits Round 3 (V2 of AOTC Released) — Page 4

I’m playing with the idea of removing Darth Maul from every scene after Tattooine until he shows up for the duel. I think it’s kind of a neat idea to sort of forget about him for a while and then those doors open. It makes him showing up a bit more epic. All he does in the other scenes is stand behind Nute Gunray anyway.

SpenceEdit said:

I’m playing with the idea of removing Darth Maul from every scene after Tattooine until he shows up for the duel. I think it’s kind of a neat idea to sort of forget about him for a while and then those doors open. It makes him showing up a bit more epic. All he does in the other scenes is stand behind Nute Gunray anyway.

Agreed

SpenceEdit said:

I’m playing with the idea of removing Darth Maul from every scene after Tattooine until he shows up for the duel. I think it’s kind of a neat idea to sort of forget about him for a while and then those doors open. It makes him showing up a bit more epic. All he does in the other scenes is stand behind Nute Gunray anyway.

That’s… actually very interesting, might work really well. We don’t exactly forget about him for that long though, because Qui-Gon and the council do openly discuss him and the sith, or do you plan to cut all of that as well?

PsyGemini said:

SpenceEdit said:

I’m playing with the idea of removing Darth Maul from every scene after Tattooine until he shows up for the duel. I think it’s kind of a neat idea to sort of forget about him for a while and then those doors open. It makes him showing up a bit more epic. All he does in the other scenes is stand behind Nute Gunray anyway.

That’s… actually very interesting, might work really well. We don’t exactly forget about him for that long though, because Qui-Gon and the council do openly discuss him and the sith, or do you plan to cut all of that as well?

No I want to keep that. I just feel like seeing him stroll around with Nute sort of dilutes his scariness. I like the idea of only seeing him when he’s an immediate threat.

SpenceEdit said:

I’m playing with the idea of removing Darth Maul from every scene after Tattooine until he shows up for the duel. I think it’s kind of a neat idea to sort of forget about him for a while and then those doors open. It makes him showing up a bit more epic. All he does in the other scenes is stand behind Nute Gunray anyway.

You could just cut those scenes all together. That’s what I did for my (vanity and amateurish) edit. They kind of diminish Sidious as well.

Leovfz said:

SpenceEdit said:

I’m playing with the idea of removing Darth Maul from every scene after Tattooine until he shows up for the duel. I think it’s kind of a neat idea to sort of forget about him for a while and then those doors open. It makes him showing up a bit more epic. All he does in the other scenes is stand behind Nute Gunray anyway.

You could just cut those scenes all together. That’s what I did for my (vanity and amateurish) edit. They kind of diminish Sidious as well.

I’m keeping one, where they inform Sidious about the Gungan army. Pretty easy to cut around Maul in that one and I needed at least one scene away from the heroes for pacing.

I’m reaching out to see if anyone can assist me with a few shots. I’m trying to adjust the end of TPM so that after Jar-Jar releases the large bouncing balls, the Gungan that picks him up on the horse is actually Tarpals. That way, I can bypass the whole silliness of him juggling the bomb and hanging from the tank. However, the Gungan that picks him up is clearly a more yellow hue than Tarpals, who stands out because he’s purple.

I’m not sure what the best method of recoloring this one specific Gungan is, and my experience with effects and masking isn’t great.

So I’m seeing if anybody has any ideas or would otherwise be able to help me with this. I’m not looking for perfection or anything here, as there’s so much movement in the frame and characters that it doesn’t need to be a full replacement. I basically just need the yellow guy to be purple.

Here are the three shots that would need work done to them. Please let me know what you think!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BmiEVRrf2zp6CodxJ5MySVfYj2H7e7Vi/view?usp=drive_link

Here is the sequence as it will appear in the final edit (ignore the audio editing, it’s nowhere near final)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EvmiUrk4p262yXOxjxDLsEsNEr5mb3uD/view?usp=drive_link

StarkillerAG said:

When it comes to that scene, I remember Hal’s edit removed Jar Jar releasing the “big boomas” completely, but kept in Jar Jar landing on the droid tank with a couple trims. I think that would be the best solution: not only does it prevent you from having to recolor that one Gungan into Tarpals, but I think the droid tank works way better as a moment of levity than the “big boomas”.

I actually don’t want it to be a total “moment of levity” I’m trying to make it so Jar Jar releases the big ones on purpose, but underestimates the fact that they’re going to roll down hill at him. I’m trying to make him purposefully heroic in a clumsy way, as opposed to fumbling his way to heroics.

SpenceEdit said:

I’m reaching out to see if anyone can assist me with a few shots. I’m trying to adjust the end of TPM so that after Jar-Jar releases the large bouncing balls, the Gungan that picks him up on the horse is actually Tarpals. That way, I can bypass the whole silliness of him juggling the bomb and hanging from the tank. However, the Gungan that picks him up is clearly a more yellow hue than Tarpals, who stands out because he’s purple.

I’m not sure what the best method of recoloring this one specific Gungan is, and my experience with effects and masking isn’t great.

So I’m seeing if anybody has any ideas or would otherwise be able to help me with this. I’m not looking for perfection or anything here, as there’s so much movement in the frame and characters that it doesn’t need to be a full replacement. I basically just need the yellow guy to be purple.

Here are the three shots that would need work done to them. Please let me know what you think!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BmiEVRrf2zp6CodxJ5MySVfYj2H7e7Vi/view?usp=drive_link

Here is the sequence as it will appear in the final edit (ignore the audio editing, it’s nowhere near final)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EvmiUrk4p262yXOxjxDLsEsNEr5mb3uD/view?usp=drive_link

Fwiw that’s pretty similar to how I cut it in my edit and somehow nobody has pointed out that it’s not Tarpals. I agree that a color change would help sell it though.

here’s a rough cutlist for TPM:

• Replaced 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm logos with the old 70’s versions (I do this on all my Star Wars edits)
• Removed Nute’s "As you know, our blockade is perfectly legal)
• Removed Nut’s first “WHAT?!” before “what did you say?!” to the protocol droid.
• Removed some of Qui-Gon being brough tea for pacing.
• Cut straight from Palpatine’s “Kill them immediately.” to the ship being attacked.
• Removed some battle droid dialogue.
• Removed some of Nute’s dialogue before the destroyer droids show up.
• Removed some stilted dialogue from the Amidala video chat.
• Cut straight to the army arriving after “a communications disruption can mean only one thing: Invasion”
• Trimmed Jar-Jar’s introduction to make Qui-Gon purposefully tackle and knock Jar-Jar to the ground instead of Jar-Jar jumping on him and being ridiculous.
• Removed “exsqueeeeze me”
• Removed some of the business of getting to Gunga city.
• Tidied up dialogue throughout Gunga City. No Boss Nass ticks save one irritated jowl shake, and no mention of the planet core.
• Removed planet core sequence.
• Move Jar-Jar’s explanation of being banished because of his clumsiness to just before they arrive at the city.
• Generally removed all of the “now there are two of them!” “we shouldn’t have made this deal!” “A Sith, here?!” nonsense at the end of the Trade Federation scenes.
• Removed Jar-Jar stepping in poop-eh and his ruckus in Watto’s shop.
• Removed Anakin’s “all my life” response to being a pilot. Just always sounded silly to me. He’s 9.
• All of the Anakin’s yippees, whoooahs, and oopses have been removed.
• 3PO has been completely removed from this film, as with AOTC.
• Toned down Jar-Jar’s reaction to Qui-Gon grabbing his tongue at the dinner table.
• Removed the sequence where Anakin’s crappy friends come by to be crappy to him.
• Cut straight from Watto and Qui-Gon’s chance cube scene to the racecourse.
• Trimmed up the intros and pageantry at the podrace to get to the action faster.
• Ben Quadrineros’ pod no longer stalls out in addition to Anakin’s.
• Lots of little nips and tucks to the podrace for pacing, including adding a portion of one of the deleted scenes.
• Inserted the scene where Anakin beats up Greedo, but removed the explicit mention that he is Greedo.
• Created a new transition shot of Shmi’s door to get out of that scene.
• Inserted the deleted probe droid sequence.
• Removed "Master Qui-Gon, I’m tired.
• Lots of small cuts to the Coruscant section of the film for pacing. It’s an important section of the plot, but it grinds the movie to a halt. Need to get in and out of there as quickly as possible.
• Midichlorians are gone, obviously.
• They no longer test Anakin by asking him what’s on their etch-a-sketch, which to me is a supremely stupid way to determine if someone should be a jedi.
• Maul is not shown again until Duel of the Fates, so the audience can forget about him for a little while till that reveal.
• Made everything Anakin and Jar Jar do a bit more deliberate throughout the ending so they’re not “accidentally heroes”
• Used Hal’s structure of moving the Queen capturing the Viceroy to after the control ship is destroyed.

This is a high level list, there are small trims, lines removed, shots rearranged, etc. through every scene. Again, I’m not doing anything revolutionary with this one, as to me this is still the best and most functional of the prequels. Just trying to smooth it over and remove some annoyances. It’s about 90% done, which means its time to start on ROTS.

Sounds great! Are you going to wait to release them all at once or release them whenever they’re finished? I’d love to check them out.

hinventon said:

Sounds great! Are you going to wait to release them all at once or release them whenever they’re finished? I’d love to check them out.

I think I’m leaning toward all at once, as then I can keep tweaking each one as I work on the others. I’m open to making early versions available for feedback in a limited capacity, but the full release is going to be all together.

I haven’t gotten all the way through yet, but here are my thoughts on the first half of the AOTC workprint. I think the overall pacing works really well and doesn’t need tweaking so all of my comments are specific nitpicks:

-There were some establishing shots I found a little wonky with the new scenes they were attached to. For example, The establishing shots of Sheev’s office and the senate building ought to be swapped in order to make sense with their respective scenes (I think this is a change Hal made in a late version of the Approaching Storm). There’s also an establishing shot of the Naboo palace that’s pulled from Phantom Menace and I don’t think it really works, since the scene it precedes doesn’t take place in the palace. I would consider maybe reshuffling the order of events so that the establishing shot isn’t needed.

-The cgi in some of the deleted scenes is very unfinished. I realize that you can’t do much about that, but I thought some other edits I’ve seen do a better job of at least cutting around it. For example, there are some pretty distracting shots of JarJar in the senate deleted scene, which I think could be easily cut around.

-There are a couple instances (from the original movie) where characters seem to talk “at” each other instead of actually holding a conversation. A good example is when Yoda tells Padme that “seeing (her) alive brings warm feeling to (his) heart” and Padme seemingly has no reaction, instead launching into talking about something else. Another example is when JarJar tells Anakin he’s happy to see him and Anakin launches into his own concerns about Padme. The latter can arguably be considered a character choice but the Yoda example I think is really jarring since we’re supposed to think of Padme as a kind and caring person. I think this is easily solved by cutting Yoda’s line

-I don’t think all the transitions between Anakin and Obi-Wan’s storylines work in this cut. Maybe it’s due to familiarity with the original movie or other edits, but there were a couple of moments where transitions felt jarring.

-I would cut Padme’s line in the family deleted scene “our relationship is strictly professional”. If she just said “Anakin is a…friend” it leaves more ambiguity about their relationship and it makes her quick falling from him feel more gradual and believable.

-When Lama Su gives Obi-Wan numbers of clone units, I think it is playing the reveal too early, and it detracts from the later scenes when we see more and more clones. I would cut out this mention of numbers.

-The goofy cgi villain roundtable when Obi-Wan is spying on Dooku has always bothered me, and I’ve seen other edits cut down each leader pledging their allegiance to the count. Similarly I’ve seen other edits cut Nute Gunray saying he wants Padme’s “head on (his) desk” to just “I want her head”. These are just moments of camp that I think go a little too far. Obviously it’s your decision to make based on taste, but they are little moments of friction with the movie for me.

To give some positive feedback, I believe you handled the opening of the movie better than any other edit I’ve seen. The first meeting of Anakin and Padme is also handled better here than anywhere else imo.

Octorox said:

I haven’t gotten all the way through yet, but here are my thoughts on the first half of the AOTC workprint. I think the overall pacing works really well and doesn’t need tweaking so all of my comments are specific nitpicks:

-There were some establishing shots I found a little wonky with the new scenes they were attached to. For example, The establishing shots of Sheev’s office and the senate building ought to be swapped in order to make sense with their respective scenes (I think this is a change Hal made in a late version of the Approaching Storm). There’s also an establishing shot of the Naboo palace that’s pulled from Phantom Menace and I don’t think it really works, since the scene it precedes doesn’t take place in the palace. I would consider maybe reshuffling the order of events so that the establishing shot isn’t needed.

-The cgi in some of the deleted scenes is very unfinished. I realize that you can’t do much about that, but I thought some other edits I’ve seen do a better job of at least cutting around it. For example, there are some pretty distracting shots of JarJar in the senate deleted scene, which I think could be easily cut around.

-There are a couple instances (from the original movie) where characters seem to talk “at” each other instead of actually holding a conversation. A good example is when Yoda tells Padme that “seeing (her) alive brings warm feeling to (his) heart” and Padme seemingly has no reaction, instead launching into talking about something else. Another example is when JarJar tells Anakin he’s happy to see him and Anakin launches into his own concerns about Padme. The latter can arguably be considered a character choice but the Yoda example I think is really jarring since we’re supposed to think of Padme as a kind and caring person. I think this is easily solved by cutting Yoda’s line

-I don’t think all the transitions between Anakin and Obi-Wan’s storylines work in this cut. Maybe it’s due to familiarity with the original movie or other edits, but there were a couple of moments where transitions felt jarring.

-I would cut Padme’s line in the family deleted scene “our relationship is strictly professional”. If she just said “Anakin is a…friend” it leaves more ambiguity about their relationship and it makes her quick falling from him feel more gradual and believable.

-When Lama Su gives Obi-Wan numbers of clone units, I think it is playing the reveal too early, and it detracts from the later scenes when we see more and more clones. I would cut out this mention of numbers.

-The goofy cgi villain roundtable when Obi-Wan is spying on Dooku has always bothered me, and I’ve seen other edits cut down each leader pledging their allegiance to the count. Similarly I’ve seen other edits cut Nute Gunray saying he wants Padme’s “head on (his) desk” to just “I want her head”. These are just moments of camp that I think go a little too far. Obviously it’s your decision to make based on taste, but they are little moments of friction with the movie for me.

Thanks, this is all really helpful!

G&G-Fan said:

I’m against cutting the Yoda “warm feelings” line. We needed more lines like that to show that the Jedi aren’t the cold unfeeling assholes people like to portray them as. Might be cheesy but if you ask me the nicest people are also usually the cheesiest.

I’m not sure about that one either.

Here’s an extended clip from TPM. This features some 3PO removal, masking, music replacement, moving shots around, cropping and panning, etc. Pretty much every trick up my sleeve.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F89lT9WHKJ7EcEYZyW3sVW2iCcHF6Egk/view?usp=drive_link

Here is the podrace in full. I replaced the music and sound effects at the beginning so I could remove some of the racer introductions and Jar Jar shenanigans, removed the whole flag parade part, removed Quadineros’ pod not starting, added some deleted scene stuff, removed the sequence where Anakin’s engine becomes detached, cut some reactions/dialogue, etc. A ton of work went into this, and hopefully you won’t actually notice any of it.

This has always been one of my favorite sequences in all of Star Wars, so it was really fun playing with it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11bIVCqc3NkYLT-_toejDHALcXjPcnj-o/view?usp=drive_link

timdiggerm said:

SpenceEdit said:

Here is the podrace in full. I replaced the music and sound effects at the beginning so I could remove some of the racer introductions and Jar Jar shenanigans, removed the whole flag parade part, removed Quadineros’ pod not starting, added some deleted scene stuff, removed the sequence where Anakin’s engine becomes detached, cut some reactions/dialogue, etc. A ton of work went into this, and hopefully you won’t actually notice any of it.

This has always been one of my favorite sequences in all of Star Wars, so it was really fun playing with it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11bIVCqc3NkYLT-_toejDHALcXjPcnj-o/view?usp=drive_link

Have you ever noticed that the part Sebulba breaks/bends-down is prominently visible, intact and in its original position, in all the subsequence shots during his convo w/ Ani?

Yes. Because I think he originally broke the piece after speaking to Anakin and they (correctly) moved it around in the edit.

I can probably crop it out.

SpenceEdit said:

Here’s an extended clip from TPM. This features some 3PO removal, masking, music replacement, moving shots around, cropping and panning, etc. Pretty much every trick up my sleeve.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F89lT9WHKJ7EcEYZyW3sVW2iCcHF6Egk/view?usp=drive_link

The 3PO removal is pretty well done!

I personally would remove the jar jar antics though. At least heavily cutting it down to him getting his tongue numb. Him getting his hand stuck feels like the bit sorta dragging on far too long, with no real payoff.