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Star Wars: Serialized (WiP) — Page 2

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Well that was a really quick 7 months!

I’ve updated the first post with some new release information and bits about the overall structure.

Aside from a break around the holidays, work has definitely continued since my last post. But with a project of this size, I find it easier to maintain enthusiasm by jumping from interest to interest than working one specific ‘film’ until it’s done. And with all this material, there are sooooo many interest spots to jump to!

I do have the next sample video release planned for this weekend - the meeting of Kylo & Palpatine. It has a potential spoiler in it, but I’ve mentioned that twist a few times in other posts on OT so I’m not too worried about it getting out early.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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May I have a link to the workprint?

I have altered Lucas’ visions. Pray I don’t alter them any further.

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Everything I have available so far is linked in the second post. I should have the next sample video ready to post this weekend and I’ll definitely send a link to it your way!

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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GMatias said:

New sample clip available: https://vimeo.com/682548733

Curious to hear feedback!

Man does this make me excited for the Sequel part of this edit but also the project as a whole! I thought the Rey and Kylo clip was crazy, each clip just gets better and better!

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T-202 said:

GMatias said:

New sample clip available: https://vimeo.com/682548733

Curious to hear feedback!

Man does this make me excited for the Sequel part of this edit but also the project as a whole! I thought the Rey and Kylo clip was crazy, each clip just gets better and better!

Thanks! Glad you dug it!

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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VFX opinions needed:

I’m really trying to keep this Tarkin scene from RONE in my edit but the trick is that it takes place well after not only Tarkin is dead but the Death Star is kaput. I feel like I can get around the Tarkin part by having him say he’s a clone and just moving on, but having the DS in the background is much trickier.

Trying to cut out/pan&scan the parts where the DS is super noticeable results in a mess, so I was planning on replacing the window view with a nighttime view of mountainy terrain similar to Starkiller Base (called Tarkin Base in my edit) to hopefully match the light from the view coming in.

I would mask off the windows and track those opacity masks in the various shots to have a lower layer with the new background come through. I’d also try & match the focus & blur of that new background to the surrounding original in each shot.

My question is: does that sound reasonable? Am I missing anything super-obvious?

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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Hmm, it seems like it would be a lot of work. Is the idea to tie Krennic in with Starkiller (Tarkin) Base? I’m just trying to think if there would be another scene that might could work to convey what you’re trying to do without all of the needed VFX.

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 (Edited)

RogueLeader said:

Hmm, it seems like it would be a lot of work. Is the idea to tie Krennic in with Starkiller (Tarkin) Base? I’m just trying to think if there would be another scene that might could work to convey what you’re trying to do without all of the needed VFX.

I don’t absolutely need the scene, but I really like that it sets up Krennic’s position in the story and his antagonism with Tarkin. I’ve moved the RONE material to the Sequel Era and swapped out the Death Star with the Starkiller cannon and the dreadnought / Star Destroyers.

So Hux&Kylo are chasing after Bodhi, not the Skywalker map. When Hux finds out Bodhi is on Jedha, he sends the Dreadnought to pull a Death Star strike on it. Which leads to this scene where Tarkin says they are giving one of Krennic’s weapons a field test and it better not screw up.

I could build some of this info into the DS viewing room bits before & after where Jedha gets shot (in my version they’re offsite watching a telemetry feed from the Dreadnought making the attack, not onboard the DS), but it would be nice to have this extra scene to let that breath a little. Not a decision I’m making today but getting closer to having to make a choice on it.

Thanks!

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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TL;DR = New test clip available - the end of the attack on Scarif with Poe Dameron + Kylo Ren: https://vimeo.com/687559188


This edit presents the RONE footage as something happening concurrently with the Sequel-era material. So, for instance, the Yavin IV group is another command under the Leia’s larger organization. In addition to just having the story cut back & forth, I have them interact as much as possible. Which is to say, not much on a direct level, but I have worked out a few connections I’m rather proud of. And as you can tell from the title of this test clip, having Poe & Ren participate at Scarif is one of them.

Couple of context notes for the story up to this clip:

  • As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve replaced the Death Star in the RONE storyline with the TLJ dreadnought.
  • The Rogues are going to Scarif to get the plans for a decoder device they need to bypass the hyperspace scramble shield Tarkin Base is cloaked in.
  • When Jyn’s report makes it back to Leia (sometime between the Eadu mission and the Yavin meeting), and then Leia hears the Scarif attack is actually happening, she sends Poe to be a courier for decoder plans. The idea being it’s too important for that info to be in one location; his job is to get a copy and bring it back to her location on Dantooine and then both groups (Yavin & Dantooine) can work at cracking the encryption on the info, etc.
  • Poe shows up but, being Poe, can’t hang around waiting while Republic pilots are dying, even though that’s his mission. So he takes part in the fight and manages to stay alive long enough to get the info. (Incidentally, this takes the place of the Dreadnought plan that Leia demotes him for. So I get to keep the slap and the demotion even though I’m using the attack footage… somewhere else…)

All these clips are still works-in-progress, but this one is the most in-progress yet. There are a few VERY placeholder VFX shots and a few places where I still need to either matte out some visuals or finish rescoring/refoleying. I know this. But if the consensus is this edit just doesn’t work as-is, then I’d rather not expend the time sprucing it up.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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I think it works pretty well, but I wonder how are you gonna put Kylo in the Hallway scene?

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 (Edited)

I had a longer bit of the hallway scene where I use cutting & cropping/zooming to give you more of a sense of Kylo making his way down the hall towards the door, but right before uploading this I pulled it back to basically just what you see here.

  • You know he’s there by hearing him speak and his saber noise & light

  • You can see bolts being reflected

  • You see the soldier pounding with a saber slashing in the background.

I feel that’s all you really need. In my edit that’s not the Tantive IV, so Leia’s not on board & they don’t escape. So we go from that cut to black at the end to fading in on an M80 cruiser where Leia slaps & demotes Poe.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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T-202 said:

I think it works pretty well, but I wonder how are you gonna put Kylo in the Hallway scene?

I’m in the middle of reading Edward Dmytryck’s book, “On Film Editing.” The most recent chapter I’ve read has a rule to cut for proper values rather than for proper matches. To quote the book:

“If the cut is dramatically correct, it is remarkable how often the bad match will be completely unnoticed by the viewer. The important thing here, as in so many areas of cutting, is to know where the viewer will be looking. The mismatch which the cutter sees so clearly on the moviola is probably far from the viewer’s center of interest.”

I have altered Lucas’ visions. Pray I don’t alter them any further.

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 (Edited)

That’s what I’m hoping! Fingers crossed!

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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New test clip: the Hosnian destruction and Holdo’s Escape Redux!

https://vimeo.com/691641417

Right before I made the thread for this project, I did a mockup for the idea of having Holdo and The Raddus barely escape the destruction of Hosnian Prime. This would, in my edit and in most Sequel edits I think, introduce a glimpse of the character before her appearance in TLJ material and tie things together slightly more than before. This clip is the updated version of that idea now slotted in with the rest of that material in the current edit. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Like the previous clip, this is more of a test than even a workprint version, so there are things to fix/change/finish at every level. But it helped me work out some pacing issues, start testing Force-tinting again, and made me come up with a hopefully simple solution for the idea that Hux broadcasts his “last day of the Republic” speech to the galaxy before firing the weapon.

As for the workprint for THE NEW ORDER as a whole - my spreadsheet tells me I’m 86% done with it. Getting the workprint done would probably be a score of 95% or so, so that 86% feels kinda about right. I’ve got three or four more sequences to lock down before I’m ready to start sending things out: (1) the Senate report, (2) Rey’s extended flashback, (3) Galen’s explanation of how this new threat works, and (4) the weapon firing & post-fire debate from this clip. Probably sounds like a lot, but everything already has a mildly rough edit in the timeline, and I have notes/thoughts for each one that I just need to implement. So without screwing myself by mentioning an actual deadline for this, I’ll say ‘getting sooner every day’ and leave it at that.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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Aside from a few technical glitches, I think it looks great! I’m not sure what’s going on, but that’s probably my fault for not paying attention all the time. I trust that it’ll all come together when the project is complete!

I have altered Lucas’ visions. Pray I don’t alter them any further.

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GMatias said:

New test clip: the Hosnian destruction and Holdo’s Escape Redux!

https://vimeo.com/691641417

Right before I made the thread for this project, I did a mockup for the idea of having Holdo and The Raddus barely escape the destruction of Hosnian Prime. This would, in my edit and in most Sequel edits I think, introduce a glimpse of the character before her appearance in TLJ material and tie things together slightly more than before. This clip is the updated version of that idea now slotted in with the rest of that material in the current edit. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Like the previous clip, this is more of a test than even a workprint version, so there are things to fix/change/finish at every level. But it helped me work out some pacing issues, start testing Force-tinting again, and made me come up with a hopefully simple solution for the idea that Hux broadcasts his “last day of the Republic” speech to the galaxy before firing the weapon.

As for the workprint for THE NEW ORDER as a whole - my spreadsheet tells me I’m 86% done with it. Getting the workprint done would probably be a score of 95% or so, so that 86% feels kinda about right. I’ve got three or four more sequences to lock down before I’m ready to start sending things out: (1) the Senate report, (2) Rey’s extended flashback, (3) Galen’s explanation of how this new threat works, and (4) the weapon firing & post-fire debate from this clip. Probably sounds like a lot, but everything already has a mildly rough edit in the timeline, and I have notes/thoughts for each one that I just need to implement. So without screwing myself by mentioning an actual deadline for this, I’ll say ‘getting sooner every day’ and leave it at that.

Looks really great, love the red, and I think the Holdo escape was done really well!

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Eyepainter said:

Aside from a few technical glitches, I think it looks great! I’m not sure what’s going on, but that’s probably my fault for not paying attention all the time. I trust that it’ll all come together when the project is complete!

Ha! That’s fair. The audience would have heard/seen Galen’s explanation about what the weapon actually does before this point. So what I’m trying to show here is:

  • Hux is broadcasting his speech, as Samuel L Jackson once said, as some cold-blooded mess to say before you pop a cap in someone.
  • Tarkin Base shoots the cannon, and the beam enters hyperspace on its way to Hosnian Prime. Which is essentially what Disney said was happening in TFA but they didn’t film any material to give the viewer that impression. I’m trying to rectify that.
  • As it is in hyperspace, Leia’s people (and one would assume the inhabitants of Hosnian Prime as well) start getting readings of the hyperspace distortion this massive about of raging energy is causing as it prepares to fall back into regular space. Leia knows her Senate colleague Holdo was there voting on the Senate resolution to impose sanctions on the Empire (which we’ll kinda see before this), so we imply that she makes a desperate call to try and give Holdo & crew any warning, even tho Threepio confirms everyone there is screwed.
  • Holdo was already about the leave the system anyway. so she escapes but stays long enough to see the beam coming in because I just love the visual of her staring it and the Empire down.

The red tinting, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is from the idea that in the B&W version, things that are connected to the Force are given color. So the Force Duels are in full color, and things like lightsabers, DS beams, hyperspace, and kyber crystals should have some tint to them.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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GMatias said:

Eyepainter said:

Aside from a few technical glitches, I think it looks great! I’m not sure what’s going on, but that’s probably my fault for not paying attention all the time. I trust that it’ll all come together when the project is complete!

Ha! That’s fair. The audience would have heard/seen Galen’s explanation about what the weapon actually does before this point. So what I’m trying to show here is:

  • Hux is broadcasting his speech, as Samuel L Jackson once said, as some cold-blooded mess to say before you pop a cap in someone.
  • Tarkin Base shoots the cannon, and the beam enters hyperspace on its way to Hosnian Prime. Which is essentially what Disney said was happening in TFA but they didn’t film any material to give the viewer that impression. I’m trying to rectify that.
  • As it is in hyperspace, Leia’s people (and one would assume the inhabitants of Hosnian Prime as well) start getting readings of the hyperspace distortion this massive about of raging energy is causing as it prepares to fall back into regular space. Leia knows her Senate colleague Holdo was there voting on the Senate resolution to impose sanctions on the Empire (which we’ll kinda see before this), so we imply that she makes a desperate call to try and give Holdo & crew any warning, even tho Threepio confirms everyone there is screwed.
  • Holdo was already about the leave the system anyway. so she escapes but stays long enough to see the beam coming in because I just love the visual of her staring it and the Empire down.

The red tinting, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is from the idea that in the B&W version, things that are connected to the Force are given color. So the Force Duels are in full color, and things like lightsabers, DS beams, hyperspace, and kyber crystals should have some tint to them.

Okay, that explains enough. All I have to say is that this looks like it’s going to be fun!

I have altered Lucas’ visions. Pray I don’t alter them any further.

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Quick update: taking a few weeks off working on this to do some non-SW stuff, but should be back at it by the end of April.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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 (Edited)

Thanks for checking in!

And I have!

One of the reasons for the break was computer upgrades, which got held up about an extra month thanks to supply chain issues. But that has now been resolved and work has started up again.

I’m holding myself to a very soft July 1 deadline for putting out THE NEW ORDER’S workprint.

  • The only real FX work is the basic masking of the Tarkin scene mentioned above, which is 6 shots I’m about 20% thru right now. (And let me take this opportunity to again say how bullshit rotoscoping is. Every time I feel like I had a good run of adjusting keyframes on a mask, I play it through and realize I forget a whole section of the shape for half the runtime…)

  • The next heaviest load is making or setting audio for 3 scenes I’ve rewritten dialogue subtitles for. Part of that is manipulating audio from named characters (Galen in one scene & Maz in another), while the other is an extended version of the “droid stole a freighter” scene from TFA with different context. That should be easier if I can squeeze out audio from an online translator service. Fingers crossed.

  • Last is a general cleanup pass for subtitles, title cards, jump cuts, bad audio fades, etc.

So fingers crossed for a July 1 (or thereabouts) for a release!

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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One other thing I’m doing with the full film releases is having chapter breaks with title cards where the serial episodes would start & stop.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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Nice! Glad to hear it’s still coming along. Can’t wait to see the final product.