Bingowings

In my experience the moderators step in very swiftly when things get way out of hand, most moderation on here seems to be more informal with people politely nudging a thread back on track when it wanders a bit.

The Mods have a large area to cover and they are more concerned with rule breaking (especially of the kind that brings the site well into the legal danger zone).

The informal nature of the majority of the minor moderation on here adds to the general friendly atmosphere of the place and it would be a shame if it became overly moderated to the point where people became too fretful or nervous to post interesting and potentially useful ideas (and the odd joke here and there).

Not really a suggestion for ESB:R (unless it was an extra and Adywan has enough on his hands as it is) though if Ady likes the idea and can find a way to pull it off ithat wouldn't upset the pacing of the escape it might work in the edit proper.

To justify Lando's cooperation with Vader against Han & Co it might be a shocking addition to the the panic on the streets and corridors of Cloud City if we saw Imperial ships landing and picking off Cloud Cars (maybe even shooting the crowds ala OS Galactica).

It would underline how much Lando had to balance his responsibilities to the citizens under his care against his loyalty to his friends.

A lot of people still think Lando was a coward (Leia certainly gives him a hard time for it) for caving into Vader but if we see some of the consequences of an Imperial take over of the city the audience would get a better idea of what he had to lose.

It would also remind the audience that it wasn't just the Rebels that Imperials were utter gits to.

When we see Cloud City again during the celebrations we would also get more of an impression that their liberation was personal rther than a political abstract notion.

EyeShotFirst said:

TMBTM said:

EyeShotFirst said:

Well according to Luke in ANH there is an Imperial Academy so I could see them as being like the military in the many nations of our world. The Imperial Academy could be more of a high rank kiss-ass facility that gets them ready to be choked by vader when they are on the death star/star destroyers. And the regular storm troopers look like a recruit job. We have military academies here in the US and we also recruit so it could be looked at in the same vain.

 

Does he really talk about an "Imperial" Academy (I have seen ep 4 in french more often than in english so maybe I missed something), or is it just a "Pilot" Academy? Because it's obvious that Luke don't like the Empire and I don't think he'd wish to leave the farm to be part of the Empire!

Well I am including the deleted scene with biggs. He talks about joining the Imperial Academy which Biggs is in and he tells him that he is going to go AWOL and join the rebellion. Then in a non-deleted scene he says he wants to send in has application to the Academy. So even though in the version most people know he doesn't say the Imperial Academy he really means the Imperial Academy.

 

With Luke's piloting skills and Biggs talking about jumping ship I assume the academy is for the Imperial Navy (it could even be a requirement for official merchant pilots which could be conscripted too, Biggs does talk about commerce being steadily nationalised).

As of posting I am a quarter of the way through.

You are proberbly going to hate me for saying this seeing as you have done so much work but I think this idea needs a major rethink if it is going to work.

The strength in the crossing back and forth shown in Godfather II was largely down to isolating two characters, father and son.

Here the cutting back and forth becomes very jarring because it's not telling a personal story (or even a couple of personal stories) it's seems that the articles that are being contrasted are periods of time (the fall of the Republic and the fall of the Empire).

And while there are key areas where AOTC mirrors events in ANH there are also equally strong mirror points between events in TPM and ANH. By largely reducing TPM to nothing more than a prelude you are missing out on a lot of potentially useful material.

It might be possible to balance two character comparisons Padme and Leia and Anakin and Luke but to pull that off you would really need to do two different edits blend them together as seperate entities. They would have to be rather radical edits too.

Be more bold with your scene restructuring, be brave enough to not show us that iconic Star Destroyer shot until well into the cut.

Show us Padme growing from damsel in distress to strong leader and senator before contrasting her with her daughter.

Show us Anakin from slave boy to a Jedi in training before contrasting him with his son.

The explanatory text is very intrusive in style and though the content may have worked with the films as they were originally presented it doesn't really serve the viewer in this new context.

May I suggest that you come up with a single crawl that explains that there was a Republic that fell and an Empire that grew in it's place and how the story of two generations play out across these periods.

Once again look at the simple text intro to The Godfather II.

In a few paragraphs we get all we need to know to alert the viewer that he or she is going to be seeing two time periods telling one story seen through the eyes of two characters.

It might be nice to split the screen down the middle and show the slave quarters at Mos Espa with a wind effect and the sound of a baby crying on one side (signifying Anakin's birth) as the text is displayed on a blank card on the other side (just an idea)

As for dealing with TPM look on it in the same way that Coppola does with the young Vito.

Isolate a few moments where we need to see Jake's Anakin and Queen Amidala and build them lead them into their AOTC versions.

We don't need to see the whole of Episode One or Two to get a feeling for these characters, just the key moments that will later chime with what happens with Luke and Leia.

And I hate to say this but some of the music changes really yank these ears around instead of guiding me through the story (the over powering Imperial March when we first see Vader particularly stands out in this regard.)

Remember most people who watch this version will already be familiar with the order of events shown in AOTC and ANH so don't be too afraid to bend the rules a bit and remix the sequence of events a bit more to tell the story in a new way.

I shall report in more as I get through this.

Ripplin said:

Yeah, there was a pretty big campaign about it, actually. I used to have a full-page add for it that appeared in the Toronto Star newspaper. I remember wanting to go, but never did.

But does something being shown in Imax theaters automatically mean it was shot in a higher resolution than 1080p? Could they have done better than that back in 2001 or whatever? (I don't really know a ton about such things)

I've still only seen one Imax/Omnimax film so far: Ben Burtt's "Special Effects: Anything Can Happen." That was a while ago. :p Too bad we can't see it again.

I've only seen stills from that, the recreation of the Star Destroyer opening from ANH would be useful for fiddling about with in these projects.

I am right in thinking that was the IMAX film with the Star Destroyer bit in (or did I just dream it)?

Try putting "Star Wars: Renascent" into the search engine of your choice, I'm sure you will get there eventually.

Nuts! I used to wear an outfit just like that (I just sent the jacket and waistcoat off to the charity shop where no doubt some nuWho fan will construct an 11th Doctor costume).

The TARDIS has had a make-over too (no pictures of the inside yet but the exterior looks more like a Police Box now) :

http://blogtorwho.blogspot.com/2009/07/series-5-filming-begins.html

I'm looking forward to the Moffat/Smith era, I've not really enjoyed what RTD has done since 2005 on the whole (the odd moment of brilliance surrounded in a sea of hmmm...with the occasional turdberg of awfulness).

It's only really an issue if you want to make edits that fit in with the EU a large number of the people on here don't care or actively dismiss the EU for being too restrictive but there are some who would like to.

If you want to show Anakin and Padme captured why not cut to the chase and just show them being captured, you don't need the the droid factory at all just Anakin and Padme entering the lair and then perhaps Jengo and the battledroids coming to capture them and replace it with the deleted conference table scene and trial.

That way you don't have to balance a bad CGI Threepio head swap against footage which shows a physical Threepio missing an arm appearing in the same cut (the two hardly resemble the same character).

The droid factory sequence adds nothing to Luke or Anakin's strands of the story in this new context, we already know their are droid factories on Geonosis when Obi-Wan is investigating them.

The conference interogation conveys that they are captured, what the Seperatists want and that they are to be put to death for not joining them.

It would be unwatchable on any television but I shall be watching it in a small window on my laptop.

I think we are all familiar with the source material enough to know what has been moved around to not need to put it on a telly to make an accessment of it as a work in progress.

If A-M was going to do colour correction or adding new effects it would be a bugger because I wouldn't be able to pass judgement on what was added but seeing as it's coming from the DVD versions of AOTC and TPM mixed in with ANH-R as soon as something flashes infront of me I know what I'm seeing.

As I said for a 4hr cut to arrive in a few hours with hardly anyone seeding it and with a middle of nowhere UK connection that was all I need to see to say "No, no, NO. THIS one goes THERE, THAT one goes THERE. ..."

And that's all you need for a work copy of an edit of this kind.

none said:

Thanks for the comments. Will gladly replace the trailer voice when another version can be created. But had to work within a limitation and time frame. Had problems recording the dialog, tried it in a garage one morning, but a crow kept chiming in as I approached the last few words of most of the takes. Ended up using takes from a one a.m. recording and some others... I wasn't happy with the opening line, which is partly why it got drowned out by the stretched horn. This world is only media saturated for a minority. (if the concept is even possible) didn't figure out something better so left it in/behind. Curious to see if people pay attention to the 'quote' even though there's no direct audio mentioning it.

none / %20

It might be fun if you used a vocoder or a ring modulator to Robo your voice up and add to the anonymous oddness of the whole thing.

Or even more oddness could be gleamed from sampling the words of your trailer from words spoken in the project (sort of like the audio version of a blackmail note made out of pasted magazine print).

Deckard2 said:

I am not a writer so please pardon the grammar and spelling.

Jabba’s Palace

They infiltrate Jabba's palace and when leia tries to free Han, she finds out that he has died from being encased in carbonite. Chewbacca goes into a rage after losing Han during the sail barrage scene and Chewbacca has a major role helping Luke defeat Jabba's men on the sail barge. Then Chewbacca is sedated and sent to a medical frigate.

Boba Fett is in Jabba's palace but is not on the sail barrage and is not killed. I would like to keep Boba Fett a mystery not really showing up in many scenes. Maybe he helps the Empire in tricking the Rebels into the Emperor’s trap.

Endor

Leia is the leader of the stirke force on Endor. Darth Vader is part of the Empire strike force on Endor and does some bad ass killings of the rebel’s strike force. Vader takes Luke to the Death Star to the emperor. Ewoks are wookies of course. Chewbacca returns from his medical stay and convinces the wookies to help the republic blow up the shield generator.  The wookies escape but the rebels are captured. The Wookies with Chewbacca frees the rebels on Endor(night strike).

At the end they have a funeral for Han's death. During Han’s funeral Luke and Leia see Anakin, obi wan and yoda.

ROTJ feels like all of the main actors are winking at the camera and not really taking the movie seriously. The other 2 films seemed much more serious.

It would have been an interesting twist if Han was perminantly blinded by the freezing process but began to see through the power of The Force (it would be a total inversion of the training scene in ANH).

Han going from a cocky pirate mocking Luke for using a mystical energy field to deflect blasts from a thing he can't see to being a blinded rebel who can only see through the same mystical energy field has a nice mythic symmetry to it.

dark_jedi said:

All I can say is WOW!

I have seen ALOT of fanedits,and this is just terrible,I cannot watch it at all,but if I send you the CD that I burned it on can you autograph it?

Ripplin is it true that you do indeed have a waaaay better version that is watchable? or is he blowing smoke up our collective arses?

 

In all serious though to you Ripplin,I cannot believe you uploaded that,you should have been able to see how bad that was from the start,work print or not,that is NO way to preview a new fanedit.

By the way,what do the folks at FE think about it,that should get very interesting over there.

 

Come on, be fair, sure even as a work copy it would have been a bit more sensible to up the picture quality a tad but it is just a work copy, it can be followed, you can see were the edit points are and access it to the point where constructive suggestions can be made.

I agree offering to autograph copies and all that jazz was an unfortunate display of peacockiness but A-M never said that this current incarnation was meant to be a DVD quality finished product, it's a rough illustration of a work in progress.

One benefit of the low quality was that for a cut that runs in at 4hrs it sure came down fast (even with my crappy connection speed) and it's rather brave to stick the whole thing as it currently stands out to be turned over for inspection (most editors just post the odd scene here and there at this stage).

Ripplin helped out a fellow board user and he should be applauded for doing that, what I love about this place is that people do go out of their way to help people out.

Now if this was put up as the finished product I'd be just as miffed, especially with all the earlier comments but it's clearly marked Work Copy and I can see enough to make comments and suggestions and that's what A-M posted it for.

Peregrinus said:

Oops. How do I delete this?

You can't (as yet) what most people do is just delete the body of the double post (as you have) and just type "double post" or something like that.

I haven't had a chance to watch it fully yet but the quality is sufficient to follow in a small window.

I will make time to have a good look at it and deliver my comments later but from what I can see it's not really a revamp of the Reborn idea as I understood it because the flashback material doesn't follow Anakin's story to contrast and compare Luke's journey in the same manner that Godfather II does with both generations of the Corleone family.

There is a golden opportunity here to remove the worst of the PT and some of the fat of the OT and make something that sits well as new telling of the story.

So what you need to ask yourself is how much of the PT do you really need to give the backstory of Anakin and the rise of the Empire and how much of the OT can you afford to remove to make way for it?

Do you need the majority of the droid factory and Threepio's head swap from AOTC for example, does that really add new insight into what happens to Luke? Does it explain much about what Anakin later does or how the Empire rises?

If you look at the flashbacks in Godfather II they largely follow in a linear fashion, we see Vito as a child, then a young man and how he rises to the position we finally see him in the first film.

Here the flashbacks jump around a bit more which can make the story a bit difficult to follow.

I would also consider changing the Journal Of The Whills quote as at no point do we hear of a "son of suns" (other than an allusion to Tatooine).

If this mythical saviour was "he who walks the sky" or something like that, it would tie in with the story as both Anakin and Luke (and indeed Leia) are Skywalkers.

As I said earlier I will give a more detailed response when I've had a chance to give the work copy the attention it deserves.

I was thinking about the shots of the Gungans emerging from the mist in TPM, it might add something to the battle if some of that mist carried over to the battle field itself.

I was watching a documentary about the making of Ran and the shots of armoured warriors on horseback in the mist were striking.

It might also go some way to making the CGI look less cartoonish.

Ripplin said:

No offense to A-M, I think I should have talked to him first and asked why it is so pixelated and such before I made the torrent. I just figured I don't have any control over the video quality side of things, so just put it up and tell people it's rough.

Maybe he could still make a more watchable copy to distribute. To that end, I dunno what to do now. I think people over at the Noid are gonna hate me when they see it. :p (not understanding the concept of rough drafts and such, y'know?) No matter how much I say it's not my fault, as Adywan and I have said, people will shoot the messenger.

I don't think anyone here will, I also don't think people will shoot the message if they can follow it in a small window and get the basic idea of what the current state of play is.

I think it's more the side issues of asking for donations and the like which gives more cause for concern.

You offered a service to a fellow board user and you should be applauded for that and A-M has put effort in to revive interest in a brilliant idea (possibly the next stage of evolution for Star Wars edits if it was done successfully).

Who cares if people don't understand the idea of Work Copies?

If the edit reaches a successful conclusion it will open up a whole new set of options and will take it's place in the must see list of fan-edits.

The idea of fans adding new life to films has moved from basic editing, to changing the story, through to adding new special effects and elements to editing a whole sequence of films to tell the story in a different order.

It's exciting stuff and hopefully if A-M controls his urge for self promotion the work he does will do that for him.

It might add to the impact of the full force of the Imperial legion entering onto the scene if we saw them actually arrive in large numbers with support vehicles and the like.

In the current version the Rebels sneek in and when they are captured and lead outside we see a medium force of troopers with a few AT-STs and a few bikes (not really that much more than would expect would have been at the base in the first place going by the size of the buildings around the landing pad and the nature of the project they are protecting.

If while the Rebels were in we had a sense of the approach of a thousand strong deployment of previously hidden troops and the associated equipment it would underline the threat in Palpatine's boast. Imagine the impact of seeing a large army crunching down the forest on their approach to finish off the "pitiful little band" of Rebels and match that with the excitment of having an equally surprising counter attack.

That coupled with evidence that the Ewoks were planning to attack the Imperials before the Rebels turned up (by showing they had already killed some troops) so the traps don't magically appear overnight and adding some evidence of the Rebels using equipment they brought with them on the Tydirium (which could be more if the ship was a captured Imperial transport ship and not just a shuttle). It would add tension, drama and credibility to the ground battle and enhance the mood of the other battles rather than detract from them.

It might even be fun to have a few more Wookees in the strike team by pinching a few from ROTS (Chewie can't be the only Rebel Wookee and it would be a nice nod to the original intent of the battle).

The ground battles in the other Star Wars films had approaches which cranked up suspence (ESB, TPM) and large reveals of the forces involved (AOTC, ESB).

Something like that in ROTJ would really raise the bar for the finale of the saga.

Ady I don't know where you get your energy from.

There is I imagine, a bit of a crossover (if you clean up a HD version of the post DVD cut making a version of the Theatrical cut is, in theory, made easier) and both will possibly help you eventually when you come to do your TPM:R.

But it's still work on work on work.

As grateful as we all are please don't burn yourself out.

"Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not widely reported"

I don't have a problem myself with watching a low quality proof of concept cut in a small window to access and comment on to aid coming to a better quality version along the line. It does seem a bit strange however that it is this rough (even at this stage) as is asking for donations for what is essentially a straight edit (no new elements created as in projects like Ady's).

It would be a crying shame if the central concept of this project goes into hybernation again as it is such an elegant idea.

I was really looking forward to (as were a lot of people here) the Reborn project proposed by InfoDroid and TJDavis1138 http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-REBORN-The-Complete-Saga/topic/6871/

It was a bad day for all involved (especially ID and TJ who had already put in so much work) when they were forced to abandon their edit.

Looking at the downloads for this rough work copy the interest in this incarnation of the concept is very high.

The call for donations and the over-dwelling on things like ident-logo design needs to stop.

It's a fan-edit that a lot of people want to see and mudding the waters with things like this set back the possibility of seeing this concept (and variations of it) from seeing the light of day.

Peregrinus said:

Bingowings said:

short of reshooting the films how could your ideas be converted into dialogue, footage and slipped into the material that already exists?

Stealing and re-purposing footage from all three movies in the PT and tweaking them as needed to fit (de-greying Obi-Wan, or adding a beard, losing a Padawan braid, etc.)... CGing some meat puppets with synthetic nervous systems to fill in action scenes and whatnot. I was rattled by the fact that, in ROTS, I empathised more with the Clonetroopers than the flesh-and-blood actors. I also know plenty of people in the Rebel Legion and 501st who would be delighted to shoot new footage to insert, as well. Degree of technical hassle would need to be addressed for each scene in turn.

With most of the changes suggested here there are possible technical solutions to putting those dreams onto the screen.

That was my thinking. Dream big, and then see whether it can be done, how easily, etc.

--Jonah

 

Keep dreaming big!

I thought it was one of the more impressive aspects of the PT that I too managed have an empathy with the Clone troops (I've described them elsewhere as brainwashed slaves) you can see how they both bonded with their Jedi generals and turned on them both down to a pre-programmed loyalty to the state that created them.

I know that the EU would have us believe that the Clone Troopers were eventually phased out and replaced by career non-clones and conscripts. I don't buy that myself. If the Emperor has a pre-existing and proven weapon (in the form of totally loyal and mass produced armies) why would he surrender that for troops who may change sides against him?

I'm actually more surprised that he didn't start to replace the population of the Empire with equally brainwashed drones.

There could be entire planetery populations of civilians and military bred and programmed like robots to serve the Empire (not to mention droids themselves becoming less and less like droids and developing individual awareness and loyalty).

The mess left behind by the two trilogies would make a worthy sequel trilogy in it's own right.

Peregrinus said:

Episode III probably tomorrow...

--Jonah

These ideas may work but and they are radical but how might they be done?

Don't let that question put you off thinking or indeed posting your ideas but short of reshooting the films how could your ideas be converted into dialogue, footage and slipped into the material that already exists?

It would be interesting to hear other postees reactions to this too.

With most of the changes suggested here there are possible technical solutions to putting those dreams onto the screen.

skyjedi2005 said:Are all the Tom Baker episodes going to ever be remastered and released?

That was the Doctor Who i loved as a kid, the one they used to show on pbs around the mid to late 1980's.

Yes he wears a funky scarf and is dressed like a hippie, but this show was really cool when i was a kid. I used to pretend time travel based on this show, using a telephone booth because that is what the doctors time machine looked like, lol.

I still find it funny that Peter Cushing aka governor tarkin played dr who in a movie. Which i read somewhere not entirely sure that it was not canon.

Cushing is awesome in those old hammer horror films as DR Frankenstein, Van Helsing etc. Also funny how Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) played Dracula.

The DVD releases have been through various restoration processes (as were the VHS ones back in the day).

http://www.restoration-team.co.uk

They are released in a rather piece-meal fashion (you can't get all of any of the Doctor's adventures yet other than McGann and Eccleston).

There are still many missing episodes (sadly most of them from the Patrick Troughton era and I love Pat's Doctor) some of them turn up now and then.

Here is a list of what is missing (as original video though some has since been returned in other formats) :

http://www.lostshows.com./default.aspx?programme=d6488108-4abb-42c8-810e-8f98536258e5

The soundtracks for all of them exist (thanks to fans who taped them of the television back in the day) so there are fans working on animating the missing episodes :

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2008/09/who-recon/

The DVD set for The Invasion was completed with animation from Cosgrove Hall (of Dangermouse fame) and works really well.

There have been some fun attempts to add colour to some of the monochrome episodes :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YhTGyfLDU4&feature=channel_page

Wendy's last role is soon to get an airing (along with the swansong of Ken Campbell).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8154224.stm

The Superbattledroids look particularly impressive here (you can almost smell the machine oil).