Star Wars: Rise of Lord Vader WORKPRINT NOW AVAILABLE — Page 2

OTification

Okay, so I'm going to be making a workprint available in the next day or so. I'll edit this post to let everyone know when it's up. It will probably be on myspleen and on my streamnation

I'd appreciate if anyone would give it a look. I'm basically looking for suggestions and feedback on specific cuts, general flow, audio editing, plot coherency and character motivation etc. Keep in mind, this version is a workprint, and is thus unfinished, as I've outlined below:

Unfinished Video:

• I have not applied any color correction to the Blu-Ray footage.
• I have not yet applied the grain plate.
• I am going to attempt to make the scene with Anakin and Padme on the balcony appear to be at sunset.
• The Palpatine transformation scene is lifted from Hal9000s edit but I want to redo it myself with the original Blu-Ray footage.
• There are a few shots that need rotoscoping, which I don't have the technical expertise to pull off:

1. a shot of Mace in the arena where I want to rotoscope out lightsabers in the background, this was previously done in SD for Attack of the Phantom.
2. In a few shots, I want to rotoscope on Jango's Helmet, so you never see him helmetless.
3. I want to have Dooku's lightsaber retract as he escapes onto his ship

Unfinished Audio:

• Zam and the analysis droids are currently subtitled with no audio. I want to dub over these characters and remove the subtitles.
• A lot of the audio transitions and music cuts are a bit rough. If people could point out where these can be improved, that would be great.
• The audio is currently downmixed to Stereo but the final version will be 5.1
• I want to remove Droid voices similar to what L8wrtr did in his edit
• I want to remove the Wookiee "Tarzan Yell", similar to L8wrtr
• I'd like to use L8wrtr's Boga voice clips
• I'd like to have a Qui-Gon voice clip when Yoda is meditating, similar to Hal9000's version.
• I'd like to redub Jango's one line "Don't move Jedi" with a voice more similar to Jason Wingreen's Boba.
• Stretch Goal: I'd like to completely redub General Grevious with a more menacing voice, reminiscent of his voice in the 2D hand-drawn Clone Wars series.

Hal 9000 said:

Octorox said:

OTification

 Looks pretty good! What settings did you use to achieve this look, other than grain?

 I've decided I'm going to redo all of the color correction from scratch so I don't have the original project file anymore but the gist of it was increasing/crushing the blacks, desaturating somewhat and shifting from yellow toward magenta in the midtones and highlights to give everything less of a golden sunlight look and more of whiteish look as seen in the OT. I think this shot turned out pretty well but a lot of other scenes I wasn't happy with so I'm going to try some other approach for the final color correction.

On another note, the workprint is now up on myspleen (no color correction or grain yet) For those who might want to check it out but don't have myspleen access, I'm going to upload it to a streaming/sharing site called streamnation, PM me for instructions if you're one of those people.

EDIT: Just realized the Palpatine transformation scene edit is screwed up. Sorry about that, it will be fixed for the final version.

I managed to shave another 20 min off this edit by checking out some other fanedits and Implementing some of their ideas. I also have updated the ani/obi confrontation on Mustafar and I think my current version has less of the dialogue intact than any other fanedit. Will upload a clip soon.

A new cut of the Ani/Obi Mustafar exchange. I tried to cut as much awkward dialogue as. I could but it might feel a bit disjointed now.

https://vimeo.com/100856124

thanks for the feedback Hal.

TPM: I agree. Frankly if people got that impression, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, although I hadn't intended it. I've done some color stuff to the flashbacks in my latest cut that will hopefully make them feel a little more clearly delineated as flashbacks. 

On Jango: no, there isn't any line that explains this. What I ultimately would like to do is rotoscope Jango's helmet on for the few shots that he is unmasked, and redub his single line "don't move Jedi!" With a different voice actor. The rotoscoping might be outside my skillset, although in the updated clip I just posted,  I was able to rotoscope over Obi-Wan's face to remove a line of dialogue pretty succesfully. I'm also toying with removing Boba entirely, which would require reframing a few shots and rotoscoping him out of one or two (possibly beyond my skillset)

thank you on the romance plot, although it's nothing revolutionary. It's pretty much "Attack of the Phantom" with the waterfall scene added back in before the kiss. (It always felt a little rushed to me in the Phantom Editor's version) I think not having them revealed to be married until ROTS helps too. There's 3 years of presumed off-screen romance development.

on Padme: I've gone back and forth on this. I think you patched up that plot hole pretty elegantly in your version, but I'm pretty dead set against including the "No" scene, and I always really liked Padme's "there's still good in him" especially as a lead in to ROTJ...part of me would rather edit ROTJ to patch up the plot hole.

running time: basically I'd like to get it down to as close to typical Star Wars length as possible without introducing any plot holes or jettisoning too much character development. Since releasing the workprint I've taken another look at some other edits included Kerr's and managed to cut another 20 min from the film (his cutting of Bail going to the Temple/Yoda leaving kashykk etc is a real timesaver I hadn't considered), so it's at about 2:45 with credits now. I also cut the Yoda/Palps duel. I was pretty adamant to leave it in, albeit cut down at first, because I feel that the Ani/Obi duel is a slog to get through without cutting away to anything and I also think it would be odd if no one tried to challenge the emperor, but a combination of running time and the desire to see Yoda not use a lightsaber got the better of me.

I will probably upload another work print at some point, but I want to get the dubbing done and the surround mixing done first.

Bumping just to say that this edit is officially dead. Unfortunately I just couldn't get things to work as well as I wanted to. Edit was still coming in way too long and the narrative and character development still felt way too rushed. I think there's only so much that can be done with these films but of course I'd love to see someone prove me wrong.

And...surprise! Final version of this is up on myspleen and will be viewable on my Vimeo page as well (Keith Bress). I wasn't able to accomplish everything I wanted but I decided to bite the bullet and just clean it up a bit and release what I had. Hopefully it can at least serve as inspiration to other editors.

Pretty simple reason. I deleted all of my original files a while ago because I wasn't satisfied with where I was getting and abandoned the project. Luckily I kept a copy of a more recent workprint than the one I had previously released and was able to make some final fixes and cleanup off of that. However, If I wanted to make more radical changes I'd probably need to recreate the project from scratch

I may consider a v2 with some simple changes if many people point something out that needs fixing or could be improved, but nothing radical at this point.

As as for tying Qui-Gon in at the end, I just couldn't do it in a way I was satisfied with. Adding the final scene on the Tantive IV just added too much to the running time (truly only a couple minutes but I was trying to get as close to normal Star Wars length as possible) while adding too little to the narrative.

I will consider it if I do ending up creating a v2

Hey, does anyone still have their copy of this from when I had uploaded it to Myspleen? My hard drive crashed and I lost the original file. This edit was never really ready for prime time but there were a few sequences I wanted to go back and look at for reference.