Broom Kid

If the r/fanedits mods are cool with faneditors posting links to their fanedits, that’s their thing (fanedits are also a super-niche audience that studios don’t regard as a threat at all and don’t care that much about pursuing) - and honestly, letting those links out in the open is probably for the best for the health of that community. But the problem with a couple folks repatriating myspleen’s hoards and dumping it all on the r/fanedits front lawn is that none of those scans are, by any stretch of the definition, fanedits.

Studios being cool with r/fanedits posting the 4 millionth cut of Justice League is one thing. But a 35mm scan of Titanic isn’t a fanedit. It makes zero sense any of that stuff was ever allowed to stay up in the first place, and then on top of that it turns out the guy being a real punk about what he’s doing, is doing it in a place that has nothing to do with any of this.

DigMod said:
I’d like to better understand the claim that some have made that copyright does not apply to film. Can anyone share that info?

No, because it’s a false claim.

Like any fairly insular community, perspective can get warped a little and people can start to believe “facts” that aren’t really facts; but if someone who illegally scanned and further illegally distributed a copyrighted print (setting aside whether or not they fundraised off it) tries to say they “own” that scan, they’re not really correct. Granted, they would in fact “own” the repercussions should any studio decide (against their better judgment) to go after enthusiasts that have spent an exorbitant amount of money on said studio’s official products.

But the legality of “owning” the scan they made is zero. Which is why putting it up for grabs is always a bit of a risk, because it’s out of your control as to what happens to it after that point, and you’re effectively trusting the small circle of pirates in your pirate community to honor the unspoken code everyone’s presumably operating by.

It sucks when someone decides to - effectively - steal from the dealers (you’ve seen this scenario on TV certainly: “what are the dealers gonna do - go to the cops? Say someone stole their stash?”) and get a brief rush or thrill for playing “robin hood” to some degree. But nothing beyond an unspoken community rule actually got broken.

DigMod said:

Lately we’ve started to notice an uptick in 35mm prints. I just got back from a very extended vacation and see that it has caused a major concern… All 35mm print posts have been removed from the subreddit while the mod team reviews and seeks to better understand the situation. I’ll be reading over this thread and most likely posting follow up questions.

I think honestly it’s probably for the best if they never come back. Not for any of the reasoning that’s been cited previously, some of which is better than others, but because your sub is supposed to be about fanedits and nothing being posted even remotely resembles a fanedit. It’s just straight up piracy, full-stop.

Granted, ALL of this is (and it’s a thing places like this have historically tried to soft-shoe around) full-blown piracy. It’s well-meaning, super-niche, extensive, complicated, caring, careful piracy, but there isn’t any real question of ownership and copyright that isn’t pretty clearly answered by “you’re not supposed to be doing this, because none of this stuff is yours.” The people who scan this stuff know it, the people who upload this stuff to long-calcified private trackers know it, the people who keep a healthy ratio sharing it know it, everyone knows. It’s largely harmless piracy (MOST piracy is, fun fact, but that’s a whole 'nother topic) but it’s still technically illegal activity.

Now: everyone seems to - after almost 30 years now of people talking about and distributing stuff through and around here - have FINALLY realized the tiny piracy niche this place (and the communities orbiting it) occupies isn’t hurting the major studios, and the studios have largely decided since we’re not trying to hurt them, or undercut them, that they’ll leave us all alone.

But so far as a subreddit about fanedits is concerned: I don’t see how someone kicking open the door to myspleen and storing every film scan it’s ever had uploaded to it has anything to do with fanediting. It was off-topic spamming in the first place.

100% would not be surprised if that was the case. People at the company have known about all this stuff (and this place) for quite awhile now, and I believe some of them have even mentioned on social media that they’ve used fan restorations (including yours, Harmy) as reference for various projects.

Obvious cuts, bad audio levels, messy music replacement. I would just hate for my version to feel like that.

I get you. All I’m gonna say is - don’t forget to give yourself some credit.

I’ve found a large preponderance of fan-editors are almost entirely ABOUT giving themselves credit. Like, as in, LITERALLY giving themselves credits. Putting themselves in the credits. It frequently seems like people make edits SOLELY so they can put their names in a credit block, because THAT’S the feeling they want more than anything. The edits are just the means to that thrill.

But what I mean to say is that - just because other people aren’t as good at what they do, doesn’t mean you need to second-guess yourself (or triple-guess yourself) in response. Give yourself some credit for having a good eye and a good ear. Don’t start calling your own senses into question because you see that someone else is getting recognized for subpar work.

I think those three changes were good ones. I think you employed them well. But I also think if you seriously trust your own instincts (aside from whether or not you compare your abilities to that other TikTok cut) and you believe it’s ultimately better to leave it alone… you know what you’re doing.

I appreciate that, but my concern is mainly that I won’t 100% sell it and it’ll feel too “fanedity”

I get that, and again - that’s a thing 99% of all fan-editors DON’T do, so that your concern is there is why your edits work as well as they do, and I wish more (WAY more) folks were willing to apply that level of discernment. But as someone who looks at these things with that eye (and ear) I think you HAVE cleared that bar in this instance.

I’m leaning toward maybe keeping the quiet bit while they stand off, then pivoting to the original music when Kenobi says “I will do what I must”.

I gotta say, I really like what you have as you’ve posted it. I don’t think the original music works that well there, how you’ve mixed that version of Battle of the Heroes maybe only needs the tiniest of nudges downward at most, and probably not even that. It’s not a subtle piece (it isn’t a subtle fight) and the fact you’ve managed to make it fit this sequence as well as it does is quite a feat.

For what its worth, as a person who REALLY keys into the music choices and music editing, I think you’ve done a good job here with your choices, and how you’re executing them.

SpenceEdit said:

Yeah, that one would take some tweaking to get absolutely right. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s worth the effort.

I think it’s absolutely worth the effort considering how well you’ve gotten it there already (the hallway cue is from The Last Jedi, right?)

I also think Jkimm’s little tweak posted directly above is a good one, too!

No PM necessary (although I answered it) - if I’m putting ideas out in the ether like this, then you don’t need an okay to use them! Take them, refine them, improve them, dustbin them - once they leave the keyboard, they’re basically anyone’s to do with as they will.

I’ve only really got the two shower ideas anyway, LOL - this duel-end reformat we both landed on (I think at least one other fan-editor also landed on a similar version of the concept), and the Episode II flashback/rescore being used to set up that redone duel (the flashback more or less becomes Anakin rewriting history as visualization to finally REALLY “beat” his Master)

I also just like the notion of Anakin’s Theme in a flashback finally resolving into the Imperial March full-stop as Vader gets suited up, LOL.

Dat_SW_Guy said:

• The fade-in to the womprat shot is very un-Star-Warsy. It needs to be a hard cut to that, then you have to extend it by around 5 - 10 beats before the Womprats get in the frame so the audience starts to get invested and ease in better into the film.

This is the only real note I had for that intro too (everything else about that intro is spot on, I think) - maybe you don’t have to do any extending or anything, just bring up the sound effects of the womprat moving into its held position and then hard cut to it there from black. Or instead, replace the sound effects with just wind and sand? But I think you can just go from full black without a fade in by letting the sound effects come in first before the images follow.

Another sound editing idea (this is apparently mostly what I have to offer, haha) would be regarding the Muppet Man Leia smuggle across the hangar, which as it stands is ridiculous, and there’s no way it’s not ridiculous. I think at that point you have to almost lampshade the ridiculousness like would often happen in the OT, and the best way I can think of to do it is to maybe insert some close-up shot/reverse shot between Obi-Wan and Leia as he picks up the big coat to highlight that this is… a bad idea. And then cut to the idea in action, and it IS, in fact, a bad idea. But score it with the droid motif from Empire Strikes Back (there are some interesting variations on it in that score that should allow for transition from the beginning of the hangar to the cover being blown)

It doesn’t fit, textually of course, but I feel like the tone of that piece is the only way that scene gets sold as being intentional instead of accidental. Williams would often use pieces that didn’t make textual sense but the emotion of the cue would carry the scene (He did this a couple times in Empire, in fact!) and I think basically swapping out the music from serious/tense to acknowledging this is not going to work, and then transitioning to action music, would get a lot of the way towards selling that.

Phase3 said:

I posted this in NFBism’s thread, but also wanted to get other people’s thought on this:

I was thinking about the following:
During the second duel between Obi-Wan and Vader, instead of Obi-Wan walking away, getting into his starship and going to Tatooine, what if it’s Vader leaving Obi-Wan for dead, and leaving the planet first?

I pitched something VERY similar in another Kenobi Fan-Edit thread, I think maybe I thought it was this one, haha. Getting old sucks.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/KENOBI-A-STAR-WARS-STORY-RELEASED-2th-of-July/id/94684/page/16#1490252

I had another idea spring to mind while showering (I have heard this is an amazing spot for inspirations, such as it is)

The Episode II flashback:

When Obi-Wan is on the ship, and he whispers Anakin’s name, and it cuts to him in the bacta tank, and the camera holds and slowly pulls away from him, HARD CUT to that flashback. And let the flashback run uninterrupted there (would need extensive sound effects re-working, obviously, as well as the deepfaking) but the major change here would be a scoring one: Set it to Anakin’s Theme. Maybe the concert arrangement, maybe a different performance of the concert arrangement, I don’t think it got used much in Episode I but I think the sort of wistful/forlorn mood of it would fit here decently - back-time it so that the big swell at the end of the piece that resolves into the last few notes of Imperial March comes JUST as Anakin knocks the saber out of Obi-Wan’s hand, so that the descending notes of the march are playing as Anakin smiles, and when that shot is at its end (hopefully, so that the final note of Anakin’s Theme is ringing out, hard cut to Vader getting his suit put on as the actual Imperial March plays. (maybe the intro/ostinato part over the suit up bits and the melody hits on the first real shot of him in the suit).

For a little extra zazz, maybe have the last 20 or so frames morph his eyes to sith/yellow, just long enough so you’re like “What the hell was that” before the cut to the next shot.

By cutting out the ending of the fight where Obi-Wan demoralizes him with another “humiliating” lesson, the flashback becomes Anakin’s completely, and more like a misremembered daydream version of that flashback. He’s lying to himself about how good he really was, and it also helps as motivation to make him feel like he could do that to Obi-Wan again if they ever meet up.

Also I feel like we never got an actual moment of Anakin’s Theme legitimately transforming into Vader’s, and this would be a pretty unique opportunity to do that.

I was wondering - it’d probably necessitate some VFX work alongside some sound effects reconstruction and flipping some shots for continuity/180-degree rule - if there’s a way to reconstruct the duel so it ENDS with Ben getting buried, Vader walking off, and Ben escaping the hole and leaving the planet.

Basically, duel starts as normal, when we get to the part where Obi-Wan tries to topple a pillar and Vader catches it, throws it at him, cut to the 2nd half of the fight where Ben is out of the hole, they clash again, Obi-Wan throws him, then throws all the rocks at him and cuts his helmet half off. They talk, Obi-Wan says “Goodbye, Darth” and then after Vader screams “Obi-Wan” then have him slap the ground and send him into the hole?

It’d be tricky (aside from shaving some shots down carefully and re-using one or two from earlier in the duel - and might necessitate generating sparks from the helmet and/or some head replacement of cracked helmet Vader) but it honestly seems like that’s how the fight SHOULD go. Vader literally “leaves” Obi-Wan (When I left you…) and thinks he’s dead, and walks off. Obi-Wan escapes with nobody knowing he’s gone and heads back to Tatooine to watch over Luke (who is in that vision that inspires him to push all the rocks out of the way and jump out of the hole)

Once he’s out of the hole just cut to the ship leaving the planet.

DominicCobb said:
It’s not at all about adding a “cool trailer moment” or whatever the hell. Come on we don’t need to degrade legitimate ideas with snark like that.

Nothing about that comment is degrading or snarky. It’s just plain old criticism.

I certainly don’t think people disagreeing (or ignoring) my criticism is an act of degradation, either, FWIW.

Oh yeah, no, I totally get where you guys are coming from; I’m just trying to justify adding the lightning in my own edit, you know? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

If its your own edit you don’t have to justify it to anyone but yourself, nor do you need external justification for it!

But if the idea’s getting put out there in the open, criticism is probably going to come back! And the reason I disagree with your interpretation is because it really only works in the context of that scene alone. Taking the rest of the movie (and the prior movies) into account, it doesn’t really work. Which is why I said it’s more like a trailer beat than it is a storytelling one, because as a trailer shot, it does what it needs to - it’s very “cool” in an explicit way. But I don’t think it fits all that well there, not for what she’s done in the film up to that point, and not for what happens afterwards, either. It’s lily-gilding, I think.

There are a TON of edits all over fanedit.org (and here - the two spots are basically like two rooms on the same house at this point) that only exist because Hal’s edits are the base 😃

Any lightning coming out of, or appearing on, her hands, would at that point cause her to react extremely poorly, and there’s simply no footage of her after that point that would fit with that. “I almost electrocuted Finn with the same lightning that blew up a whole damn ship earlier” is too big a deal to go unremarked or un-reflected upon.

In that moment, and that moment only, removed from the context of the rest of the movie it might be “cool” to juice the scene by having lightning show up on her hands or even shoot out of her fingers. But that’s an impulse that again, is too similar to the “throw it in the movie whether it fits or not” ethos that caused the movie to be a pileup of “cool” moments crashing into each other that needed such heavy re-editing by the community in the first place.

It’s a trailer beat - not a storytelling one.

Dex analyzed a dart in 3 seconds when the plot needed it analyzed for Obi Wan 😃

Interesting factoid I learned recently from the Art of Rise of Skywalker Book - at the time of the book’s original publishing deadlines - the lightspeed skipping scene was cut. That book apparently went to press (before getting delayed and delayed and delayed) under the assumption the theatrical version of Rise of Skywalker would NOT have that scene in it.

It’s an interesting point because: The Lightspeed Skipping being cut from this cut didn’t have a whole lot of theory being applied to it in a vaccuum to explain why or why it wouldn’t work from a storytelling perspective. It just didn’t feel like it worked, and so it had to be removed, and then the rest of the movie had to conform to that change as best as it could, and either it worked for the pacing, timing, and FEELING of the film, or it didn’t.

It ended up being a VERY good cut to make, so good that in fact it turns out at one point it was THE OFFICIAL CUT - at least, it was before the mad scramble of post-production and Abrams’ inability to stick to a single throughline and follow it, instead of basically trying to do all the cool things because they were cool and fitting them in whether they work or not.

I think there are a lot of changes being made on this edit that ironically, are being done in the exact same Abramsian spirit. They’re attempting to fix his big mistakes by using the exact same ethos: Looking at the film more in the abstract, as a theoretical exercise, and making decisions from THAT POV, rather than thinking of the film AS IT IS, making effective changes, and watching to see if they actually fix the film’s problems AS a film.

Basically - there are a lot of fixes being done whose concern starts and stops at the scene in question, and if it makes that one scene “seem” better, it’s considered a good idea and worthy of all the work being done towards its inclusion, despite the fact it’s not really helping the overall film, and now the overall film is just as busy and distracted as it originally was, only now in newly post-produced ways.

krausfadr said:

The three main formatting options for a ZSJL edit would be to keep it as-is in IMAX format (1.33), crop to 2.39 to match Batman v Superman, or crop to 1.78 to fit a standard widescreen tv. I personally would opt for the 1.78 because this leaves as much of the original picture intact as possible on a standard tv, while not having black bars on the top or sides. It would also not be jarringly different from BVS should someone wish to watch BVS and ZSJL back to back.

For what it’s worth, both Snyder and the Director of Photography have repeatedly gone on the record in pre-production AND production that they storyboarded and framed the movie for 1.85:1, and if you literally do nothing more than hit the zoom button on your TV (thus cropping the frame down to 1.78:1) you’ll see that roughly 95% of the film’s composition works perfectly. There are a handful of shots that seem too tight however, and those shots would be the ones you’d need to manually move within the 1.78 frame (meaning instead of being center-framed, as most of the movie is, the 1.78 is top-edged or bottom-edged.)

Essentially: The film was pre-planned, blocked, and shot to work first and foremost in 1.85:1. The “IMAX” thing is an after-the-fact conceit Snyder applied to the film in the Snyder Cut’s post-production. The movie was meant to be seen in 1.85 when they created and shot it. Cropping it back down to that aspect ratio (or 1.78, in this case) is honestly getting it closer to its “original version” than the Snyder Cut is.

FWIW: I think Diana foiling the terrorist thing could go - I like the idea of her introduction into the movie following the Amazonians firing the beacon arrow. The idea that the death scream leads straight into the Amazonian fight is a very good idea too.

I don’t think the Superman vs the League fight should go - although it’d honestly be so much cleaner if he shot up into the sky, hovered there, and then just left. You could imply Lois saw him, figured it out, and met with him at the farm later, thus sort of inserting SOME agency to her character. But if the fight is staying, I think the Whedon version of it is honestly better, especially with regards to Batman having brought Lois there as opposed to Lois just kind of having her weird ritual with old Jimmy Olsen interrupted with her dead boyfriend’s resurrection.

sherlockpotter said:

For what it’s worth, I’m absolutely in love with RogueLeader’s reinterpretation of the film - rather than making the film all about Rey’s past, it would be reinterpreted to being about her future. It would emphasize the internal conflict she has about accepting or rejecting the vision of her falling to the Dark Side. To me, it’s the interpretation that feels most in line with TLJ’s themes of Rey letting go of her past; and it also feels like the cleanest direction to take the film out of the different versions discussed.

Also, RL’s hangar scene is just…*chef’s kiss*

I second all this. And third it too, for good measure.

leftshoe18 said:

So Star Wars Biomes came out on Disney+ today and has a nice landscape shot of Mustafar. Any chance something like that could be used for an establishing shot to help slow down the beginning of the movie a little?

The best way to “slow down” the beginning of the movie is to get rid of Mustafar entirely and just skip to the nebula jump-in. The movie feels slower and more evenly paced while simultaneously starting the actual plot faster. It’s also much more in keeping with tradition (such as it is) with Star Wars openings.

Thanks so much for the prompt and direct response! Very much appreciated.

Hello everybody. Apologies for the following, since I’m sure versions of this have happened (and keep happening) over the course of this edit’s life. I’ve been away from the site for quite a bit, and saw a YouTube video essay the other day by Royal Ocean Film Society, specifically about the phenomena of Fan Edits (I recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a very measured and interesting “outsider’s” take on the stuff that’s gone on here and at fanedits.org for over a decade now) and I don’t remember if he specifically name-dropped this project, or just implied very, very strongly that he was talking about this project, but I thought I’d come back to see if it had actually released, and lo and behold, it has… and it hasn’t! The revisions are still ongoing, and it looks like I exited stage left somewhere around page 270 or so, and have returned to page 4(k)77!

I went through a LARGE amount of these pages, and saw some very cool and interesting revisions to the revisions of the revisions in that time, but I couldn’t necessarily find any concrete answers, so I figure I’d ask them here (hence the apology at the beginning) and see if I just flat out missed them in my crawl, or if the answers weren’t there:

1. Is Rey Nobody a forthcoming revision of this project, or is it a separate edit that will be using this as its base?

2. All respect to everyone who worked on the mountain of additions that went into rehabbing the Mustafar Minute, but is there a version of this edit that just cuts to the chase (literally and figuratively) and opens with the tilt down to the nebula with Kylo’s Interceptor jumping into frame?

Thanks!

StarkillerAG said:

Yes, you did.

No. I really didn’t. My posts are all right there, man. I’m not gonna keep doing this.

Sorry.

I think the red lightning looks cool, the glow it provides is cool-looking and the overall effect of the red lightning hitting a purple and blue lightsaber provides a very distinctive frame, visually. It makes sense that this “all the jedi vs all the sith” symbolic throwdown contains virtually all the colors (we’re missing green, but maybe some of that can shine out when he explodes)

StarkillerAG said:

You were the one who started with the whole “what we need in Star Wars right now” thing

No, I didn’t. Please stop doing this. It’s not a large thread, the posts aren’t hard to find, they’re all right there.

I just don’t see why redemption stories are always bad, or why villain characters shouldn’t be allowed redemption.

I never said either of these things either. Just that I would like a Star Wars movie where this wasn’t a key aspect for once. There was never anything on my part that said “redemption stories are bad” or “villains shouldn’t get redemption.” I’m not dismissing redemption stories entirely, I’m saying I, myself, would like to not see one in Star Wars for awhile, even just for the novelty of not having that aspect play such a big role.

StarkillerAG said:
But I could also argue that in a time of such heated political debates, with both sides seemingly willing to start a second US civil war at the flip of a switch, I don’t know if a movie that says “your enemies are beyond all hope, kill them all” is what we really need right now.

This is twice you’ve tried to make what I said into a completely separate thing and I still don’t understand why you’re doing it.

Lord of the Rings and other fantasy related stories get away with it because they’re good stories executed well, which is all any story needs to “get away” with almost anything. I legit don’t understand why a Star Wars fan would immediately, automatically, reject the notion that it would be nice for a new Star Wars movie to NOT be so hung up on a redemption narrative.

And yes, Darth Vader’s Redemption in the OT was mostly unsatisfying dramatically. The satisfaction in the OT’s end wasn’t Vader’s redemption, but Luke’s success. Return of the Jedi is the least satisfying of the three and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s the one that became a story about saving Darth Vader. Luke’s success is what made it work, not Vader’s redemption. The two are interlinked, but they’re not the same thing. Kylo’s arc was bad because it was poorly written, executed poorly, and in the end, the focus on his arc at the expense of almost everyone else’s story made that story unsatisfying. Which is why I said It’d be nice if there was a new Star Wars movie that wasn’t so focused on redeeming the genocidal idiot bad guy for once.

I don’t get how your argument ever really addresses my suggestion that a Star Wars movie not focused on a “redeem the bad guy” narrative could be fun to watch, and that giving the “redeem the bad guy” narrative a rest is a valid option they could pursue. I simply would like to see that again. It worked pretty well back in 1977, for example. Star Wars doesn’t only have to be the one kind of story, and I’d like to see a more simple good v. evil story in this fantasy movie.

I don’t see what’s so wrong with that.