The Force Awakens: Starlight (V1.1 Released!) — Page 73

I can’t express how excited I am for V2. V1 was an incredible achievement on making the most of of TFA.

Nev, it’s great to see you keep improving this. That R2 clip was super good.

Thanks! And now that I have a better handle on motion tracking in After Effects (can you believe I used to do everything by hand in Premiere?!), the process of finishing these R2 scenes should be far quicker.

Up to this point last year I had really only done the crawl in After Effects, so the effects for the entire alternate ending, for example, were hand-tracked frame by frame in Premiere.

I’ve been tinkering with the Senate Response scene a bit more since I’m not entirely happy with its integration in the film. The falcon landing leading into ‘The Falcon has landed’ works a treat, but it feels like it breaks off at the end without leading into anything else. Some version of Rey in the hallway and Kylo looking for her must come after this scene since Kylo’s scene must precede Han and Finn’s scene. Therefore, I must come up with a way to segue into Rey.

Here’s what I’m thinking.

“Black Leader, the Falcon has landed!”
“All fighters clear for takeoff, all fighters clear.”
“All teams, altitude confirmed, hold for jump to Light Speed.”

“General, the Senate has voted to mobilize the fleet! They expect to launch within the hour.”
“They haven’t got a chance.”
“Oh my, without the Republic Fleet we’re doomed!”
“And General, if our advance team is…destroyed…nobody can save us.”

-Cut to Rey.

Just a little dramatic foreshadowing with a double meaning for Rey Nobody fans out there 😉

Really digging the shift to how the New Republic is depicted here, less overtly cowardly, just overwhelmed because they didn’t listen to Leia in time.

I think it helps clean up the storytelling significantly. Looking forward to v2!

Thanks, and I agree. This is probably the single most important part of this edit for the greater story and trilogy.

BTW, I just updated the link above. I realized that there was an establishing shot of the Starkiller prisons that I had cut from the first version which would help the flow of this scene.

I’m not sure what to put for that final line.

“And General, if the advance team is destroyed…nobody at all could save us.”

Or

“And General, unless that shield is destroyed…nobody can save us.”

“And General, until that shield is destroyed…not even the Force can help us.”

I think the first or 2nd personally.

“Black Leader, the Falcon has landed!”
“All fighters clear for takeoff, all fighters clear.”
“All teams, altitude confirmed, hold for jump to Light Speed.”

“General, the Senate has mobilized the fleet! They’re launching within the hour.”
“They haven’t got a chance.”
“Oh my, without the Republic Fleet we’re doomed!”
“We need to destroy that shield… if not, no one can save us.”

Then cut to “no one, from nowhere” Rey

Good one! However, I’m constrained by the mouth movements to put the word ‘destroyed’ at the end of the phrase, so perhaps:

“And General, without that shield destroyed…nobody can save us.”

NeverarGreat said:

Good one! However, I’m constrained by the mouth movements to put the word ‘destroyed’ at the end of the phrase, so perhaps:

“And General, without that shield destroyed…nobody can save us.”

What about “And General,” only reason I didn’t have that was because it was repetitive. Also lets the scene breathe a little between C-3PO’s line.

That’s fair. I just included it because it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it 😉

Which one is the second line? I realize now that numbering would help.

And yeah, Threepio’s arm movement is just so bizarre in that scene. I originally tried to cut away from it but there’s so little footage that I can use, it will probably stay in. There must have been more to his behavior at one point. It looks like he’s remembering something or has been alerted to some activity. Maybe a couple of people have just dumped R2 in the corner and he is going to check up on it. Guess we’ll never know.

As for ‘within an hour’, yeah that makes sense. That’s why I originally put the line at ‘launching in 0200 hours’, but we can do several versions of that to see what works best.

JEDIT: And I might not even end up needing a final line after 3PO waltzes out of frame if I transition right to the snowy establishing shot, but it would be nice to have a line just in case.

Wow, Nev, I’ve been a slacker on keeping up to date with this project lately but that Senate idea is compelling. Really hoping it turns out. It’s just what is missing from Restructured, as you highlight. The idea would be that they did “listen” to Leia’s emissary, but it was too late. We see their amassed ships be destroyed along with the Hosnian system overall, but a few could have launched to be there by the start of TLJ.

I hope so too.

RogueLeader said:

I think we’re both referring to, “And General, unless that shield is destroyed…nobody can save us.”

Maybe another off screen rebel could be calling for 3PO, needing his help. Or some droid beeps. It could just be a subtle background voice/sound, but something like that could provide some logic to his action.

Ask and ye shall receive.

It’s funny, but also kinda brings the scene together.

That looks pretty great! Leia’s new line works nicely, the dash of humour doesn’t break the tension or drama, if anything it kind of adds to it? Sort of a “Yeah we REALLY don’t need this right now 3PO” vibe. Never knew there were so many deleted scenes for TFA till now!

Also, I recently showed Starlight to my brothers, and they loved it! In their words, it was like watching the film for the first time again. We’ve collectively grown more and more jaded to the ST over the years, but this edit made us all enjoy Star Wars together for the first time in a long time, so thank you for that! (Tbf we were still constantly roasting TFA/the ST itself but the accomplishments of the edit were met with great praise)

I have a couple quibbles with the current version but they’ve mostly already been mentioned or you’ve already begun work on: Han’s leftover line when he orders them out of the Falcon compartment, Rey’s Sith eyes could pop more, some still-gold sand on Jakku (though having a bit of experience with colour grading I get that it may just not be possible to change the sand in those scenes without affecting skin tones).

One thing I did note (not sure if this has been mentioned) is that the sound when TR-8R slams Finn back with the riot baton is pretty muted under his “Pathetic!”, which dampens the moment. Could the sound be raised again without messing with the intelligibility of the line? That said, my brothers really enjoyed his new dialogue, and though I was sceptical the first time I saw it I liked it quite a bit more on this second viewing!

I just wanted to pop in and say this scene is coming together really nicely!

With that said, I don’t think Leia cutting off 3PO’s line works. I didn’t know it was coming and once I heard it, it threw me way off and I had to go back and rewatch it. Now, if you had a way to cut to her saying the line, that would be different. Without seeing her say the line, I think it’ll just be confusing as to what is happening.