Originally posted by: Mojo_LA
Ok, I've watched the first half (I'm waiting until I have friends over to watch it all) and here's my two cents.
First of all, I should preface this by telling everyone I work in Hollywood as a professional visual effects artist, so my comments are biased towards the effects work.
I'll start by saying Ady has done an outstanding job; the highest compliment anyone in this business can get is when people don't even realize you've done anything, and I know many, many changes went by without me even noticing them! And the ones I did know about were, for the most part, seamless and undetectable.
The only scene I felt stood out as being less than perfect is the big establishing shot of the Death Star over the planet with TIEs and Star Destroyers flying left and right. I assume Ady has created this shot by pulling elements from the three movies and recompositing them; from this, the visual quality of the elements look great, but the scene feels a bit like it was cut and pasted, since the lighting and perspective of the elements do not all match, mostly because they were never meant to go together!
But in an hour of watching, this is the ONLY shot that stood out to me (the same goes for a colleague of mine who has seen the previously released clips). All the work of the extra ships in the Mos Eisley escape sequence was fantastic - watching the movie, I felt a much greater sense of jeapordy for our heroes since you can SEE the huge ships coming after them! And that is what effects work should do - contribute to the story. Ady's work in this scene actually creates heightened emotion! THAT is the best any effects artist can hope to do.
I wasn't a big fan of changing ALL the laser bolts to red/yellow; I like them for the ship blasts, but for the hand guns, it looks a ittle overdone - I like them being the simple red bolt they used to be (save the more complex, powerfull looking blasts for the big ships).
The Cantina scene is flawless; I was confused by the arm on the ground simply because there isn't really enough time to see that the "hand" is a flipper. The flipper may be more accurate, but seeing an actual hand helped make the emotional connection to seeing an arm on the ground and therefore more horrifying; the inital reaction to the new arm is "what was that?" but the human arm makes you go "eeewww, he got his arm cut off!"
But the animated creatures look amazing - this is something that should have been done years ago and they all look perfect. Seeing Greedo blink and have facial expression makes him feel more like a real person and therefore the scene feels just a touch more threatening - perfect!
Ady, I hope you plan to either have an audio commentary track or at least a text commentary pointing out every change you made; I really believe this is ESSENTIAL, because everyone is going to want to know everything that was changed!
Also, I think this edition is going to allow you to get a job at any effects studio in Hollywood, so a commentary track explaining what you did for each shot will serve as your resume, too :-) I'm serious about that!
I can't wait to watch the rest with my pals!
When this edit is all said and done don't you think it would be appropriate to post Adywans work in the forum over at cgtalk, http://forums.cgsociety.org/ I personally think it deserves it!
)
