Darth Venal

"There are no delete buttons here. The best we can do is remove the content of the mistaken post"

(in best Shatnerian)  "No delete buttons? Why the hell aren't I notified about these things?!"

Indeed I did. I'd delete it but I seem to be overlooking the delete post button somehow. Am I going mad?

I already planned it out with the Radio Drama dialogue, and it works perfectly well.

Anyway, there's something of a continuity issue with that scene unless you place it before the opening shot of the battle, which isn't easy. The problem is that Luke looks up and sees a battle, but by the time he looks up, the battle is already over and the Tantive IV has already been pulled inside the Devastator. Sure, it could be concurrent time, but it just doesn't play out like that when you see it.

But seeing as my planned "workprint" was never going to all be DVD quality, I've decided to re-order the scenes slightly and we actually meet Luke before the battle. It's possible, we've already done a rough cut. I might put some a montage up to show you the sequence. As the crawl ends, the title music comes to a rest. The original swelling strings as we pan down to the matte of Tatooine is replace with an edited version of the Binary Sunset Alternate cue, we pan down to the planet from a distance, to desert, eventually finding Luke at work (long shot). He sees the battle, we see a new shot through his macrobinoculars, and then the swelling strings come up and we cut back to space. The other two sequences with Luke at Tosche Station then appear in the originally scripted place.

Bingowings:

It might add to the already high realism of the matte to add just a tad of haze infront of the palace to blend it in with with the background and further the illusion of depth.

I tried it before but it didn't look right. I'm not sure something that close to the POV would really have much of a haze layer anyway, especially in a scape as deep as this.

I think blending the palace in with the background would have the opposite effect to creating more depth, and it's the one thing in the matte that should look like it's not in the background.

Maybe when I've finished the canyon on the left and removed the rock feature I can tinker with the depth layering but I don't think it needs it at the moment.

Whoops, posted this one in the Empire thread by mistake. I'll get the hang of this one day.

I amended my Tosche Station matte; I added mountains to give it greater depth, a larger vapirator and, just for fun, Luke's speeder.

I amended my Tosche Station matte; I added mountains to give it greater depth, a larger vapirator and, just for fun, Luke's speeder.

Cheers. I was saying on the other thread that it's not finished; I need to put a canyon wall on the left, rather than having it a totally open plain, and I'm going to remove the rock feature in the background as I've gone off it :-)

But Star Wars isn't inexplicable, nor is Star Trek. The way all drama works is, if it isn't shown to be different it's the same. That's obviously referring to the structure of the universe of any given movie or book, etc. Implicit readings of plot are completely different, but as for how audiences understand a universe without it being explained to them, that's the rule.

And anyway, most of the things we see on Star Trek or Star Wars are simple to understand dramatically, and so they don't require explanation; Warp speed, or light speed? It just means going really fast and has no other bearing on the drama. Transporter beams? A quicker way of getting up and down from ship to planet. Light sabres? Just swords but made of laser that cuts through things. And so on.

It's not so much that Star Wars is inexplicable, more that it just doesn't need explaining.

(I was told this pic belongs on this thread instead of where I put it...)

This is slightly ahead of itself, but there isn't a Jedi thread and while we're all going full throttle with the matte paintings, here's one I'm working on for Jabba's palace.

I am probably going to put another canyon wall on the left, rather than leaving it as one entirely open plain, and will probably remove the rock feature in the distance. But the right-hand side and sky are pretty close to how I want them.

TK99:

"Something that did occur to me don't Gas Giants have insanly fast rotation speeds.

Jupiter day is like 10 hours and Saturan like 11."

Yeah we were discussing this on an earlier page - the four gas giants in our solar system have the fastest axial rotations of all eight planets, with Jupiter and Saturn (the largest two) being the fastest two. So now I like to think Han and Leia were only on Bespin for about nine hours :-)

I think the rocky plain helps sell it. There is more painted stuff in there than you realise; the sky (borrowed from one of my other paintings) and mountain line are completely new, Jabba's palace is adapated from two of the original matte paintings, and most of the canyon wall is new. The only photo elements I used (for speed as much as anything) are the dry plain, the rock feature in the distance and the foremost rock surface on the right.

I added the moons last off because there wasn't enough going on in this big open space. It still needs a lot of work; the left canyon wall, removing the rock feature (I don't like it now) and I might add some element of a hangar entrance in the canyon wall.

This is slightly ahead of itself, but there isn't a Jedi thread and while we're all going full throttle with the matte paintings, here's one I'm working on for Jabba's palace.

I am probably going to put another canyon wall on the left, rather than leaving it as one entirely open plain, and will probably remove the rock feature in the distance. But the right-hand side and sky are pretty close to how I want them.

Doubleofive:

Between Darth Venal and Vaderios, we have some amazing matte work on this board!  I love every shot.

*blushes*

Somebody fan me. And fan my computer while you're at it, with today's heatwave in the UK it feels about 50C.

A couple of quick mattes of Cloud City at sunset. And yes, more health spas! Sorry, I love 'em, McQuarrie just captured something with all this Bespin stuff...

These aren't finished, and they're oversaturated (even if it might be that bright at sunset) but you get the idea...

And the alternative, which I prefer...

Vaderios said:

Bingowings said:

You mean sort of like this? (nuts Skydrive has desaturated it AGAIN!)

yes sort of. we can use the detail of this matte and reduce/eliminate the shadows and the sunlight because its snowstorm ;)

 good work there Bingo :D

 -Angel

The thing is, if it's a snow storm, you wouldn't be able to see the mountain line, so applying the other plate sort of undermines what you're trying to achieve, doesn't it? Removing shadows and sunlight is the right approach, but adding distance is contrary.

Totally agreed with that. The original shot is just bland, the blue circle behind them doesn't really achieve anything except look like they couldn't afford a better background. A sunbleached backdrop works very well. I still want a hanging basket outside though.

Bingowings, thanks for the garden. I was hoping for a hanging basket or two, but maybe that's just me. ;-)

And to the person who whined about this being "MS Paint thread", I think you'll find most of use Photoshop (or one of its variants) or Corel. MS Paint doesn't get you results like these fine works.

I think I might do a spoof SE edit of Empire. Outside every window on Bespin I'm going to have an entirely different background. Remember Danny DeVito's phone call in Throw Mama From the Train..?  :-)

While I post this as a joke, I am actually quite intrigued by the idea of alternative window replacements as opposed to just more views of the other buildings, or new display units etc... hm. Maybe a garden somewhere?

Okay let's leave it. Obviously where you live clouds don't block out the sun. Last time I checked, a Terran sunset was a gradual fading process, too. At least you concede the revolutionary idea I put forward of a planet having nighttime.

:-|

I don't think it matters too much whether it's sunrise or sunset either, but your physics on gas giants are completely wrong.

Bespin if far from mostly oxygen. It has a habitable zone 30 miles deep, according to official information. And anyway, gas giants just don't work that way. They are far too dense when you go deeper into them, the gases become thicker until they become liquid. Some gas giants will have a solid core. And light would NOT go through even if it were all oxygen. The duration of sunsets and sunrises has nothing to do with the composition of the planet (in the way you suggest), and everything to do with its rotation. The only reason both might be longer is if the planet rotates on its axis more slowly than Earth does. And while you might assume that would be the case, as gas giants are so much bigger than human-habitable planets like Earth, that's not true either. Quite the opposite in fact. Jupiter has the shortest "day" of all eight planets, at about 9.9 hours, and Saturn's is second shortest, followed by Neptune and Uranus. So, days on Bespin are actually likely to be shorther than a standard (Earth) day.

Sans_fi:

If we are going to get technical... There SHOULDNT be night on Bespin, since the planet is all "clouds" you would only see a dark "sunset" half of the day.

I'm sorry... what?

I don't like to use adjectives of a cerebral nature, but that's absurd.

Are you saying when the sun is positioned at the diametric opposite side of the planet to Cloud City that it won't be nighttime? Whether you mean because Bespin is a gas giant or something else, you're quite mistaken. First of all, gas giants aren't just whispy gas clouds all the way through, and even if they were, they sure aren't translucent beyond a mile or two of cloud thickness.

Or we could open a window and all get some fresh air and care a bit less...

but why would we wanna do that?

I'm inclined to agree with that. While, as you say, nighttime on Dagobah doesn't in anyway have to correlate with nighttime on Bespin, it helps the film dramatically to have it play that way. It's just easier for the audience to accept that flow, because our own very simple clocks work that way.

And let's face it - and there is obviously no empirical information in the film to support this - but it just looks and feels like sunset, not sunrise. In the theatrical version, yes, the pattern does seem to indicate sunrise, then bright daytime, and then ending with the escape at sunset, but it just doesn't feel like sunrise.

It shouldn't be too expensive, all the UK PAL videos are available from sellers pretty cheap on Amazon.co.uk

And if you want to preserve the best quality of each one possible, you can re-edit the DVDs back into seperate stories for the most part.