Star Wars: The Trilogy **PROJECT STALLED DUE TO HARD DRIVE FAILURE** — Page 4

ChainsawAsh, how are you coming along on this? I think I'm going to ditch my edit, I just lost a bunch of work by accidentally overwriting my latest work with older work. I got too many other things I want to get done this summer and I just am not patient enough to work with the software enough to get proficient.

ChainsawAsh,

If it's okay with you, may I take a shot at an episode-less Return of the Jedi?

I don't care, it's not like I have a copyright on the idea. =P

And Janskeet, I haven't really started the full-on work for the edit(s), but I'll be sure to post an update here as soon as I have something to update.  =)

Thank you.  I thought it would be nice of me to ask.  I'll also be giving you some credit like I did with Adywan when I uploaded "Star Wars Revisited" on to YouTube.

Here's the link for the Episode-less ROTJ crawl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3drCbfu0Uw

...And just to help keep this thread going, here's a little something that lets fans of Sebastian Shaw and fans of Hayden Christainsen have a little of both:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNCHbuhFoIY

Just to clear things up, this video "Alternate Anakins" is not an idea pitch for ROTJ:R.  It was for a contest that I was holding on YouTube.  The contest is long over now, but I still welcome random comments.

vaderios said:

i just noticed that lando can be erased easily for the scenario of his death at the end :)

 

-Angel

True, but I'm curious.  Why kill of Lando?

I'll be experimenting with various potential character deaths when I get to ROTJ, but I won't keep any if they don't work.

Boba Fett will still be taken out entirely, though, so there's a character death removal for ya.

Davnes007 said:

fishmanlee said:

...han's feeling of not seeing "her" (the falcon) again

That 'feeling' was supposed to make it seem like something would happen, and make the climax more exciting when they actually made it out alive.

 

There's just something about these "feelings" that make some people think.  Like Obi-Wan saying to Anakin, "Why do I get the feeling that you're going to be the death of me?"  A feeling that (from a certain point of view) came to pass decades later.  And the occasional "I have a bad feeling about this," that is accompanied by the situation somehow becoming worse that it was before.

So while I still like the "happy" ending with the Falcon making it out of the Death Star II before it explodes, I agree that the Facoln's destruction and the death of Lando would contribute to the continuity of the whole "I gotta a feeling..." thing.

I've started official work on this project today!  I know, I know, this thread's been here since February, and I have the new logos and the Empire crawl, but those were all proof-of-concept tests, none of which will appear (in that form) in the final project.

I'll be editing the first post soon to reflect this, but the project has now evolved into my ideal Star Wars Trilogy - while it was originally a preservation of Star Wars as is, of Empire with one change (the crawl), and a massive re-edit of Jedi, it's now more than that.

I'll be using Adywan's Revisited edits as a base, which means for now I can only work on Star Wars - ESB and ROTJ will have to wait until Ady's done with them, respectively.  Why do this and not start my own work from scratch?  Several reasons:

- Ady's ANH:R was nearly perfect - I just want to improve on it so it *is* perfect (to me)
- Ady's work is much higher quality than the GOUT
- Ady has done things I couldn't possibly do that I feel are necessary for this project (to name one thing, the Emperor hologram in ESB)

What's that?  Nearly perfect, you say?  Well, what isn't perfect about it?  Here's what:

- Ady's edits still acknowledge the existence of prequels, which is (to me) unacceptable - after all, the whole point of this project is to remove any and all reference to the fact that any films besides these three exist in the series
- Too many SE additions are still there (fucking dewbacks)
- Prequel music (while the music is the one and only good thing to come out of the PT, see above)
- The bizarre needle-lightsaber-thing

But wouldn't using the GOUT eliminate every one of these problems?  Yes, but then we have other problems:

- Poor quality video
- Bad lightsaber rotoscoping (an SE change that never happened that I would have welcomed)
- Other problems

But how will I get rid of things like the torture droid lightsaber and the excessive SE additions?  Why, I'm glad you asked.  I've kindly asked Dark_Jedi to help me out by letting me use his cleaned-up GOUT for my project.  Anything in Revisited that I'm not particularly fond of (like Greedo's subtitles) will have GOUT video dropped in if the quality difference isn't overly distracting, or a certain portion of the frame will be digitally painted over with the GOUT (something I'm looking forward to teaching myself how to do).

I'm going to be using the GOUT as a guide for this, as well, because I think, editing-wise, the theatrical cut is nearly flawless.  I'll also, as previously stated, be using the mono mix as the basis for this edit.

I'm converting the DVD-9 of ANH:R as I type this to an Avid lossless codec, and will begin work as soon as it's done.  Once I receive Dark_Jedi's cleaned-up-GOUT copies, I'll convert that as well, and the project should start getting done a lot faster than it has been.

Oh, and to alleviate some of the technical problems I seem to have encountered in my tests, I'll be rendering all my effects (crawls, new credits) at HD resolution, then downscaling in Avid to SD (Avid allows for different resolutions in the same timeline, which is how The Dark Knight was edited), per Ady's suggestion.

To ADYWAN and DARK_JEDI:

If either one of you have a problem with me using your work as a starting point for mine (both of you WILL be credited in my new set of end credits), please just let me know and I'll be more than happy to just go back to my original plan of using the GOUT exclusively for this project.  No hard feelings if you'd rather me not use your work, I'd totally understand.

Ripplin said:

Once you get to ESB, will you use Adywan's AVCHD so you can put Clive Revill in?

I don't think that's the point of this edit:

ChainsawAsh said:

- Ady has done things I couldn't possibly do that I feel are necessary for this project (to name one thing, the Emperor hologram in ESB)

ChainsawAsh said:

- Other problems

Ack, those other problems! The bastards.

ChainsawAsh said:

But how will I get rid of things like the torture droid lightsaber and the excessive SE additions?  Why, I'm glad you asked.  I've kindly asked Dark_Jedi to help me out by letting me use his cleaned-up GOUT for my project.

Wouldn't it be easier to use Ady's colour corrected AVCHD? (for scenes like the one with torture droid that is)

I'm downloading the AVCHD right now, but as I work on a Mac, I don't know if I'll be able to convert it to a format I can use.  Otherwise, I'd love to use that for those scenes.

But I will need Dark_Jedi's cleaned-up GOUT for other scenes (like restoring parts of pre-SE Mos Eisley).

Alright, I'm going to be posting progress updates as I work on this - mainly this is so if I fuck something up, I have a list of everything that I've done so I know exactly where the problem went wrong.

- Updated Avid to version 3.1.3 (while 3.5 is out, I have the education version of 3.0, which can't upgrade to 3.5 apparently)
- Mounted the ISO of the NTSC DVD-9 of Revisited, then converted it using MPEG Streamclip to an Avid 1:1 (lossless) codec - resulting file is 124GB, so a little less than 1GB per minute
- Imported file to Avid at 1:1 resolution (lossless) - this creates new Avid media files, which means I now have two 124GB copies of ANH:R on my hard drive, one that can only be read in Avid, one that can be read by anything.  I'll most likely delete the original MPEG Streamclip file to save space, but I'll save it for now in case Avid causes me any grief.
- Created 6 bins within Avid:
   AUDIO MIXES - will contain the WAV files of the 1977 Mono, 1977 Stereo, 1985 Stereo, and 1993 Stereo to work from (Revisited audio is included in the video file)
   DJ GOUT - will contain 1:1 lossless copies any footage needed from Dark_Jedi's GOUT (to save space, I'll only convert what I know I'll need)
   EFFECTS - will contain things like the new opening crawl and end credits
   REVISITED - contains the 1:1 lossless ANH:R
   SEQUENCES - contains the sequence for my edit (though nothing's on it yet)
   SUBCLIPS - where all the subclips will go (though I'll probably make separate bins for each scene)

And that's where I'm at now.  Next, I'll be importing the audio mixes, then subclipping Revisited.

I don't know if other editing programs do this or not, but subclips are something that you can do in Avid - you set an in point and an out point in your master clip (which is stored as multiple MXF files - there are 3 for Revisited), and make a subclip out of it, which doesn't actually create any new video.  It's a very good way of separating individual shots without having to actually cut up the master clip, or create any extra files.  It's a pain in the ass, though, which is probably why I won't really start doing that until I get more weed.  It helps with subclipping a lot.

Oh, and I'm not going to put my real name or ChainsawAsh on this - since I'm going to school for editing, and plan on working in the industry, I'd rather this not come back to bite me in the ass in the future, so this project will be done under the name "Charlie Barnes" (that's what I'll be putting in the credits, anyway).

More updates as they become available.

--edit--

Screenshot of my editing setup for those who are curious (this will look a lot more interesting when I'm farther along in the process).

Nice. I'm a final cut person, but the avid interface looks very slick

Update:

- Ripped my anamorphic GOUT to an Avid 28:1 (highly compressed) file (around 5GB for the whole movie) - this is just so I can more or less match up Revisited to the theatrical cut
- Created individual bins for each scene's subclips (still nowhere near done subclipping Revisited)
- Added a video track for my compressed GOUT underneath the video track I'm editing with (this lets me easily turn off the upper video track so I can see if the Revisited video matches the theatrical cut)
- Imported mono audio mix (uncompressed WAV)
- Dropped mono mix into the timeline
- Began editing!

Now I'm partway through the stormtrooper/rebel fight aboard the Tantive IV ... and I had no idea how much Ady changed the editing of this sequence.  I quite like his cut, but I prefer the original - unfortunately, a lot of shots have sections missing from them!  I may have to forgo the repainted lasers and just use the AVCHD SE for this sequence (since it would be color corrected and the original cut) so it isn't a jumbled mess of Revisited and the SE.