ChainsawAsh

Yeah, you've got it.

And I still say the best source (assuming you want the 1977/1997/2004 starfield, and not the 1981-1995 starfield) would be Adywan's AVCHD edition.  It doesn't have the timing changes that the Revisited crawl does, but it does fix the timing problems caused by the 2004 transfer.  (Honestly, does anyone have any idea how the hell that happened?)

Is it, really?  I'll have to check ... *runs to bookshelf*

*returns* Well, there *is* a four-legged chicken, but no one says "I'm glad I ordered the four-legged chicken," which sounds ridiculous and takes me out of the scene entirely (now that I've noticed it).  It's going.  Sorry.

I really should change the name from "The Graphic Novel Cut," as it seems like it's not going to be that simple ...

I was just watching the Director's Cut, and noticed something that I just know will pull me out of the movie every time I see it, so it will be cut:

When Laurie and Dan are eating dinner, one of the patrons says, "I'm glad I ordered the four-legged chicken."  I mean, really?  What the fuck?

Oh, and the Ultmate Cut comes out next week.  As soon as I get it, I'll start working on a preliminary "offline" cut just to get the structure down.

I wouldn't know how to do that.  I'm sure someone else here would be able to, though.

Holy shit, I forgot all about this thread.

http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html

Dark Force Rising notes, pages 117-150 (end).

- Page 119 - I can't tell for sure, but it appears that Leia's lightsaber glow in the bottom-left panel extends slightly into the border of the panel itself.
- Page 122 - Sorry, I just have a huge distaste for these narration-boxes in this comic.  This one, unfortunately, feels like it may be necessary to establish where the fuck we are.
- Page 125 - Okay, now these narration boxes aren't necessary.  They also appear to be very difficult to paint out, sadly.
- Page 127 - That narration box on the top of the page seems unnecessary, and not terribly difficult to remove.
- Page 131 - I'm sure this is how it was originally, but "It's Luke, Wedge," still feels awkward.  I'd change that to "Wedge, it's Luke."
- Page 136 - Do we really need to hear Han say "Never tell me the odds" again?  It's just as bad (to me) as seeing the Ark in the warehouse at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  What if he just says, "That sounds familiar," or something like that?
- Page 137 - Narration text, "Aboard the Quenfig," is VERY unnecessary, since we've already spent several pages bouncing back and forth between the two ships and should know what the hell the Quenfig looks like/who's on it by now.
- Page 140 - "Aboard the Katana" is also unnecessary and should be removed.
- Page 141 - The Imperial officer on the right-hand side swears, but it's represented by "@%#$!"  This is incredibly childish and should be replaced by "Damn!" (since that has a history of being used in Star Wars, and fits well with the dialogue.)
- Page 144 - Neither one of the narration boxes on this page are necessary.
- Page 145 - Luke's lightsaber in the third panel goes outside of the panel frame, and it appears as if it may be slightly crooked on top of that.
- Page 147 - "Aboard the Chimaera" is unnecessary.

Will be starting The Last Command soon.

The first Dark Empire page you posted:

- The Noghri looks good, if slightly out of place given the art style
- His line should be: "It was in Thrawn's possession.  Our brother Rukh took it from the Admiral after he killed him.  He was then gunned down by Stormtroopers ... "
- Text box in the third panel should read: "As the Noghri offers Leia the Holocron, the Princess immediately feels the presence of the Force in the artifact."

Second page:
- Last speech bubble should read "Your research has finally brought you here!"

Other than those notes, it looks very good.  This one seems like it would involve much more intricate, detailed "editing" than the Thrawn trilogy did.  Good luck!

Now to get back to Dark Force Rising ...

Dark Force Rising notes, pages 42-116.  Next up will be 117-150, probably tomorrow.  I need to eat some dinner right now, though.

- Page 43: Luke's lightsaber shouldn't leave the bottom-right panel the way it does.
- Page 70: "The infamous Order 66 ... so long ago ... " feels a bit awkward, but I can't think of any other way to put it.
- Page 71: "No, we can't.  This isn't the Jedi way!" - I'd suggest changing this to "I can't do that.  It isn't the Jedi way."
- Page 72: Due to the change of the last line, "Of course we can." should become "Of course you can."  A few panels later, Luke apparently starts speaking another language ("Non e' cosi' che si fa giustizia.  Bisogna trovare un compromesso."), which makes no sense whatsoever.  Then, C'Baoth suddenly uses Force lightning against the two men, which seems to come out of nowhere.
- Page 99: If there's any way to make the lightning on Luke's lightsaber look more like (God, I hate to say this) Obi-Wan vs. Dooku in Episode II, or Mace Windu vs. the Emperor in Episode III, that would be great.  If it's not possible, I understand completely.  I just think it would look cooler.  Oh, and it looks like, in the second panel, Luke's lightsaber should be behind the rock on the left, which means the glow should be as well.
- Page 102 - Luke's lightsaber needs to look more like it's going *through* the floor, not like it just *ends* at the floor.  Also, is the narration-text in the bottom-left panel really necessary?  It doesn't feel very 'Star Wars'-y to me for some reason ...
- Page 104 - Again, the narration in the first panel feels superfluous.
- Page 106 - Not necessary in the slightest, but I think "I'm a quick study" would work better as "I'm a fast learner."  It could go either way, though - it's a personal preference thing.
- Page 108 - This page is very awkward - American comics read from left to right, which means one would normally read the first three speech bubbles in the first panel, then what's in the left-side panel, then what's to the right of that, which is incorrect in this sense.  Perhaps flipping the top half of the page, so that Thrawn and Pallaeon are on the left-hand side and the crashed ship is on the right?  Like I said before, this comic has always been very badly organized ...
- Page 109 - Bottom-left panel, and the one right after, depict Luke with his lightsaber ignited.  There really is no reason for him to have it ignited (not to mention you haven't given it the same treatment you did on all his other 'sabers in the comic), since Mara's the one who knocks the guards out - I think it could be painted out completely, and the green glow on his hand and the hilt could be altered to make it look like he's just holding the hilt ready.
- Page 111 - Thrawn's text while giving Rukh orders is too small for the bubble.  I'd also remove "We have to block them!" and change the exclamation point in "Get a squad together and move to the hangar bays!" to a period (Thrawn is too calm of a person to yell).
- Page 112 - Luke's lightsaber is lit in the first panel (in theory, for the light it produces), but you haven't given it the same treatment you normally do.
-  Page 114 - Luke's lightsaber glow extends beyond the first panel, when it shouldn't.  It also appears to be a little crooked.  Also, the narration-box in the bottom-right panel is, again, superfluous and non-Star Wars-y.

I thought about getting it, but I still haven't finished the first one (the puzzles get fucking hard!).

I did just trade in my old slim PS2 (I was lucky enough to find a 20GB PS3 on eBay, which has the PS2's Emotion Engine inside it so I can play any PS2 game I want on it - I also got a 320GB hard drive to replace the tiny one it came with), my Game Boy Advance SP and all its games (still have my trusty old Game Boy Pocket!), and several PS2/PS3 games ... all to get Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition and the extra $20 on a gift card.

I haven't gotten a chance to try out the DLC yet (I decided to start the game fresh, since I hadn't played it at all since August), but once I do I'll post a "review" of sorts of the DLC.  And for anyone wondering if the GOTY version has any other differences to it - it doesn't at all.  It's the exact same thing as if you yourself had the original and downloaded all 5 DLC packs, but it's bundled on one disc.

xhonzi said:

ChainsawAsh must be Ric Olie!  He's accusing the innocent (and frankly, incapable) Frink of being Ric to throw us off the scent!

I guess trying to defend myself by pointing out that my first post toward "Ric" was something along the lines of "Oh great, we have novelty accounts here, now?" would just make me more of a suspect, so I'll bow out of this discussion right about now.

Oh, and Frink - I haven't checked the "Observation Thread" since my last post in it (probably August?), so I didn't know that this was common knowledge at this point.  Now I feel like a bit of an idiot.  I guess I can say that I figured it out on my own, though ... kinda ...

Old Skool.

I honestly don't even remember what the Standard Blue style looks like anymore.  I know that I tried it for a time and didn't like it.

TV's Frink said:

I use Standard Blue.

If I were to have a second account, I'd probably use OT Old Skool to help keep them straight in my mind.

I said if.

What's this?  We haven't discovered the man behind Ric Olie, have we?

And with clever editing.  Seriously, check out JasonN's prequel edits - Dooku is changed from a throwaway villain to the only guy who actually knows what's going on and is willing to do something about it, but no one else believes him.  It really makes him a tragic character - I think this change should be a requirement for any future prequel edit.

And yeah, the lightsaber color change helps this idea along quite a bit.

It's my understanding that most, if not all, "prosumer"-level DVD authoring software cannot do seamless branching.  So, yeah, you pretty much can't do it.

On the other hand, I've heard of some attempts being made at branching, but they usually end up with awkward pauses at the branching points.  Perhaps some other, more enlightened members here can help you out better than I can.

I have no idea, but those would be fantastic disc labels ...

Ady, doesn't your AVCHD have the standard 'Episode IV' crawl, without any alterations?  It looked that way to me.

I think he meant that either the AVCHD would have the same special features as the DVD-9, or it wouldn't have any at all.

He's going to do the prequels, but not until after ROTJ:R.  So we won't be seeing any PT:R for quite a while, I'd say - probably not until 2013 or 2014.  Which means he probably won't be done with the whole "saga" until 2020-ish.

I'm interested to see what he's going to do with them, but I don't really care too much, to be honest.  I don't think they can be made into films worthy of the Star Wars name, no matter who's fixing them.

But hey, if anyone can do it, Adywan can, right?

I'll get back to the proofreading tomorrow - I just need to pick up where I left off.  I (should) still have the files on my hard drive.

VincentSmalls said:

And finally... Return Of The Jedi. Hmmm.... it's a shame McQuarrie didn't do any real poster work for Return Of The Jedi as the stuff out there just doesn't seem to be quite as interesting as what I got for the other covers. I simply went for battle-tasticness instead of the artwork we've seen countless times on covers before! Just edited an odd poster I could only find in diminished res. Anyone got a hi-res version of this pic? Front may change if I come across something really special and logo on front my change to original classic type too. Anyway... I'm beat now. Enjoy all...

I'd use the vintage Times New Roman logo for the front, and a different overall color scheme (it feels too similar to ESB's color scheme).  Other than that, this (and your Star Wars cover) looks fantastic!  I assume you'll be doing the prequels, as well?  (Though we don't know yet if Ady will keep the titles the same or not ... )

And for the ANH cover (and later the others), I'd use the actual special features from the DVD-9 (that is to say, English 5.1 Surround, English & Spanish subtitles, isolated score, "Revisited Fixes & Changes" trivia track, ANH:R trailers, deleted & extended scenes, multi-angle special effects breakdown, and the ESB:R teaser trailer) on the back, instead of listing ones that don't actually exist.

Oh, and ANH:R's runtime is 127 minutes, not 120.

That might actually be a cool extra feature.  Not a bad idea.

Yes, this project is still in the works.  It's on hold for the rest of the semester - Editing II is really kicking my ass.  I'm working on an all-Spanish short ... and I don't speak Spanish.

And it doesn't really matter to me if other people don't like the alternate ROTJ opening idea, I highly prefer it, which is the whole reason I'm doing this.  I'm sharing them because I feel others may be interested as well.  I won't, however, be doing any alternate/"purist" editions of ROTJ.

Basically, if you're looking for an ultra-purist Star Wars: Revisited, that's pretty much what my Star Wars edit is.  My Empire edit will be the same, but with the new Episode-less opening crawl.  If you don't want that, it's not a hard thing to replace - I'll be using the same starfield Ady uses, so you could easily just cut in his crawl.  Same goes for Star Wars if you want the Episode IV tag.

Jedi will be an entirely different matter.  If someone else made an ultra-purist ROTJ: Revisited, that's cool (but Ady's call, not mine), because I don't foresee ROTJ:R being welcomed by purists, and I don't think Ady will do a purist version.  But if that's what you're expecting with my ROTJ because of the way the first two will turn out, I'm warning you now that my ROTJ will go further edit-wise than ROTJ:R, mainly with the restructuring, removal of Boba Fett, and the elimination of the Leia/Luke relationship (and the possibility of new character deaths).  If someone makes a purist ROTJ:R and then uses an episode-less crawl to make a "purist" version of my trilogy set, that's cool with me too.  But I won't be doing that.

Sorry for the mini-rant, I just wanted to be absolutely clear on this issue.

I just realized that the Game of the Year edition of Fallout 3 (with all 5 DLC packs included) comes out this week.  God, I wish I had a job ...

Why do you need Windows XP?  I have Mac OS X (Leopard), and when they first added the "instant streaming" on Netflix I couldn't use it, but a couple months later they added OS X support.  I'd try it out just to make sure - maybe you can use it now.

Of course, you have to have a Netflix account.

Octorox said:

Ripplin said:

Bewy said:

Ripplin said:

Do the green screens need to be real studio green screens? Wouldn't painted cardboard work? :p

It's gotta be a special paint to make a real greenscreen, and it's not cheap...

Actually, I do remember hearing that somewhere before, now that I think of it. Thanks.

I know that borrowing things can be a sticky wicket (yub nub!), so it gets more understandable the more you think about it.

Not true. Paint a wall a good lime green and you're good to go. it just has to be well lit.

Color doesn't matter, as long as the subject in front of the green/blue/orange/whatever screen has very little of that color in it.  Keying software can key out any color you want.

And Octorox is right, the background you're keying out needs to be lit as uniformly as possible.  Ideally it'd be exactly one color with no variations, but this probably isn't possible, so you'll just have to get as close to that as you can.

(We've been doing a lot of work with keying in my Motion Graphics II class, in case you were wondering where I'm getting my information.)