Darth Venal

I'm glad we're on the same wavelength.

Stupid Photobucket.

How do you know one or two "Lucas crew" aren't already on the forum?

Whether they are or not, Lucas is unlikely to pay any attention to what we think, even if some of the work people on the forum produce is better than what they give us. Wow, did I say better? Seems I did.

But no, Lucas is not interested in what fan editors do.

Ric Olie :

Darth Venal said:

 

 

If you want to be observant like me, you gotta say more than that.

I'm a man of few words.

First of all, well done on the comparison shots, I always like that sort of thing to show some of the choices that were made regarding the framing of shots.

One problem though, the mattes in the screen themes set are nearly all cropped, which would really limit any use of them to show more. It's quite surprising how much of matte paintings are sometimes wasted anyway in framing, but why Screenthemes cropped everything to 4:3 I don't know, it's very annoying.

I've got scans of some of the original mattes at pretty high res, with the painter's rough work off the canvas still showing, which is quite nice.

Not all of us can do that, Angel, so can you repost with the images stacked vertically (which makes more sense on this forum anyway) or reduced to fit? Thanks!

cap:

Bingowings said:

Ingenious Frinksta, now all I need is a length of tube that can reach to Australia :D

 

I have that.  My girlfriend considers it a mixed blessing.

 

Dinner? :-)

I'm not humouring you because that's patronising and disrespectful. It can be fun and realistic, you know.

Shanerjedi,

Thanks for that. God forbid anyone takes what I'm saying the wrong way, the last thing I'm doing here is insulting anyone on the forum. Quite the opposite really; there is so much enthusiasm here and some very talented people, that I just think a little pragmatism is needed sometimes. As you say, new mattes, dialogue changes, cuts here and there, and some new FX are all possible, as Ady and others have shown. I was just referring to those mock-ups which I have serious doubts about the practicality of achieving.

Ady,

I know you were talking about the attitude, and I agree with the positivity. But positivity should always be tempered with a pragmatic view of what is achievable (or achievable to a level that would be considered an improvement in the case of fan edits).

Bingowings,

I also like those seminal groups of people and it's work they produced which inspired me to do what I do now. But we are not those people here, and trust me when I say there is absolutely nothing we can do with our resources that hasn't been done already. Sure, we might make a creative choice that others may have considered and not pursued, but technically speaking, we have no means to be ground breaking.

With all due respect, Ady, and apologies for what might have come across more negatively than it was intended, but I don't think you can compare where we are now to where Lucas was in 1975. I work in the industry and my ex works for Framestore, so I know as well as anyone what can or can't be done, as do many of us. I'm talking about us here on the forums, with our limited resources, make alterations to these movies. And some things can't be done with what we have now, meaning some of the mock-ups we've been doing.

And as for Lucas not having anyone to do his special effects, and him purpose-building ILM, yes, we know that story. But you make it sound like they invented visual effects, which they didn't. There wasn't a single technique used on the FX in Star Wars that was new; ILM didn't invent a single thing. I'm sure some people will gasp at me for that, but it's a fact. Not matte paintings, travelling mattes, motion control photography, animation elements (eg sabres and lasers) in live action - not one invention. The early ILM fellas, love their work as I have all my life, didn't do anything more than collate all the techniques that had been used before into one dedicated house. Yes, they revolutionised FX, but they weren't masters of invention in that period. Dykstraflex may have been developed more for Star Wars, but motion control was around for a decade before that.

Maybe I oversimplified when I said some things can't be done. I was more meaning they probably can't be done sufficiently well, given the time and money we have to devote to them. New sequences are all well and good, but match-moving is painfully difficult when you're dealing with shots that weren't intended to be FXed afterwards.

Bingowings:

" I don't know, in TPM Amidala signing/not signing a treaty seemed to be very important but we never found out why."

That was a MacGuffin.

I thought Jar Jar put forward the motion and then they will vote on it. You can't honestly expect them to show something like a vote from a Senate that big? I didn't read it as "one vote for all" at all.

Well, each to their own. :-)

Well, I'm all for having big ideas, maybe I've been doing this long enough to know what most of us can do with our "non-professional" resources. Sure, some excellent changes can be made, Adywan proved that already, but some things suggested are just not going to happen. Being realistic shouldn't be conflated with being a killjoy, that's not my intention, I just think so much of the talent around here could/should be focused on achieving things that are feasible.

Octorox:

"If someone could matte Theed in the distance in some of the wider forest shots one could imply that it wasn't improbably far"

Ooh, sounds like a nice thing to have a go at doing. I'll try putting something together when I get home, if nobody else has tried before then.

I definitely would prefer to cut out or minimise the Ota Gunga (or however it's spelt) and the planet core stuff. Always hated that sequence, it's just filler. And I still don't get how they get from a deep ocean to being in a river running by the palace (which becomes a waterfall, so they couldn't have come up that way). Dumb. But I also feel totally removing Jar Jar has too great an impact on the rest of the movie. Either that or I just care enough to alter it so radically. Meh.

What I do care about is painting mattes, so I'll stick to that and leave the Exorcism of Jar Jar Binks to you. :-)

Well it is kind of important considering that vote is the reason behind the entire opening of the movie. But anyway, what about The Phantom Menace, how are you getting the Jedi from the forest to Theed? Just having them hitch all the way on the transport and cutting the entire sequence with Jar Jar and the Gungans? I'm asking out of interest, not challenging you.

But how do you plan to have the narrative make sense?

And how will that impact on the second movie? Jar Jar makes the crucial proposal that Palpatine wants in the Senate.

SSWR:

"Angel, those pics of 3PO in Jabbas palace are stunning! It's feels more like ESB as far as the cinematography goes...could this be achievable in ROTJ:R? I sure hope so..."

Don't we all wish it were achievable. But not the level of enhancement Angel has made. Those changes would have to be made to every single frame, match-moved, etc. It's incredibly difficult, and virtually impossible to get right. The lighting, contrast and colour of a shot can be tinkered with and greatly improved much more easily but when it comes to specific elements being changed frame by frame, it's nigh impossible. I think Angel's mock-ups are really great, some of the changes are beautiful, but they stand as more as a "Look what could've been" rather than what can be done.

tehwallaby:

"It'll then be a simple matter of taking his audio out of the scenes."

 Hehehe, that's pretty funny.

Bingowings:

"It looks like by the time we are all through Star Wars will be a series of nice backgrounds with no one in them :-D"

I kind of thought that of the prequels already, if you know what I mean.

There's nothing really new in those pics though, and there are plenty of better images of Saturn to use if you want to. I'd prefer to make my own planet, as no matter what you do I just think you can always tell when it's Saturn.

I don't have that option either. Hm.

As for the Dune Sea, Bingo, I think we shouldn't overdo it. It is meant to be an endless ocean of sand, so maybe we just need to find a way of creating that more successfully. Exotic rocks are all very pretty but are they appropriate? I think opening up some shots to extend the landscape is better. I'm working on a much wider establishing shot of the Sarlacc scene that really places it in the middle of a vast desert, rather than all those horrible tight shots which feel studio-bound evenb though it's on location!

Damn, those things really don't comply with health and safety, do they? I mean, what good's a seatbelt?

Midichlorians.

It looks nice, but would the Scoutwalker head really explode like that? It's not hit by a laser blast, it's just crushed in, so I don't think it needs an explosion.

Agreed Bingo, Arizona was never going to look like Tunisia, yet they didn't even make the most of what they had there. I can only blame Marquand for that, and Alan Hume for bizarrely substandard cinematography. But it's easy for us all to criticise now, when back in 1981-2 Jedi was having production issues and movies were becoming frightfully expensive to make. And during that period Lucas was also going through his divorce from Marcia Lucas, which cost him $44 million. So there were problems.

Sure, the film is very flawed, but I can forgive a lot of it. And we can try to fix the rest ;-)