Darth Venal

Well, 10% was a rather rounded up, I didn't want to sound really nerdish by quoting the speeds we use at work (oh, we have sodding guidelines even for this!). But actually, you'd be surprised how much time compression does go on. And believe me, it's more than 4%. Producer/director Sean Cunningham is a big believer in it (not that many of his movies are particularly good) and he actually speeds up his footage by 8-10%. Seriously, he does. You can hear that from the horses mouth, and also from the poor directors whose footage he's speeding up who don't want it done!

10% sounds a lot, and obviously not all footage will handle it, but I have no reason to believe just enhancing the speed of Ben's twirl a bit isn't feasible.

I can't say I feel anything in the duel in Empire needs altering, other than minor cosmetic tinkerings. The actual duel itself works just fine.

I also never liked the angry slashing Luke does in Jedi. It's not that I don't like him being angry - after all that's exactly what he's supposed to be - I just think Mark Hamill looks rather unconvincing the way he handles the sabre. In the same way that someone who doesn't smoke might act how they think it looks cool. You can do the moves, but not the style, something like that. Luke could have chopped Vader's arm off with anger AND style, but Mark Hamill doesn't pull it off. (And as much as I think he's a very limited actor, I don't blame him particularly, as Jedi was very poorly directed where virtuall all the actors are concerned).

Well, it could just be speeded up a percentage. We're not talking Harold Lloyd here. If you increase the speed of the shot by a small percentage it's perfectly feasible to make it work better. In fact, you could speed up most of the action shots in the duel by up to 10% and most people wouldn't notice it had been tinkered with, and it would move faster, as required.

I did actually already reply to that post:

[I] should have been a little more articulate and said the prequels had much more complex choreography, rather than better. Lazy of me. And I absolutely agree, they really do look contrived, rehearsed and choreographed. Some work better than others, but it definitely feels like a dance rather than a duel.

Yeah, there does seem to be something of a competitive element going on, when really we should all be allowed to just discuss any and all changes made already, or that we'd like to see, without being accused of knocking Adywan. We've all got our ideas, so let's discuss them.

Well there's no debate over the answer to the first part of that question. Yes, other things CAN be done to ANH after Adywan. In fact, Adywan himself is revisiting it again. And a quick browse of the posts in this thread will bring up many ideas that Adywan didn't execute, or things people didn't like or thought should have been different in some way.

As for the second part, who is going to do it, well, that's not so easily answered. I am incredibly busy with paid work to give too much time to my own edit at the moment, but I for one am definitely working on it. And other people surely would like to be doing it but don't have the resources and/or time. But the will is surely there, and while that remains, then ideas for what can be done will continue.

Removing Rontos? As in using the best available footage of that scene without Rontos in it in the first place? Not exactly removal, rather reversion. I'm not disputing his stirling work on the colour correction. In fact, every time I think about it it just keeps making me wonder just what on Earth Lucas' people thought they were doing. The blue tint that we're all dumbfounded by, I mean, was that deliberate? I can't see why it would be, but then you have to wonder who signed off on those masters.

Oh, and I'm not disputing the thread title for a second! Adywan has without doubt made the most significant Star Wars fan edit so far, and the thread is a great way of focusing discussion on what can or might be done after Revisited.

That's quite true, although coloquially people just refer to matte paintings as mattes.

My last off-topic comment and then I'll get back to it:

EyeShotFirst:

Now Blu Ray has been out for what 4 years and he can't even release the god awful special editions or his horrible prequels on blu ray. It is a shame that many star wars fans get shit on every 5 years. 1080p is the standard today and the only way I can see the OUT is in 480p.

Well, let's not be silly about this. He didn't release the DVDs of the original trilogy SEs immediately either. Blu-ray became commercially just over three years ago (June 2006), and there are thousands of movies not yet released. This is not something to criticise Lucas alone for. He didn't release ANH until six years after DVD was launched. I agree, it's incredibly annoying that he won't release the original theatrical movies at a good image level, but who is to say we won't get them later? After all, he is working on yet further-revised editions, so perhaps we will get a deluxe Blade Runner: The Final Cut treatment.

Speaking of further-revised editions, that skilfully brings me back on topic :-)

Bingowings:

nobody else as yet as attempted to do the sort of restructuring of the SE that he achieved.

Well, restructuring is a bit inaccurate. Adywan hasn't really restructured anything. He reordered the scene in Ben's house, with mixed results, and he's added new shots here and there is an extended battle at the end, but none of this actually restructures the movie. It still functions exactly the same as before; dramatically, nothing has been altered and most of the changes are superficial. Don't mistake this as being negative, I honestly respect Ady's work and I know very well just how much time and effort he's dedicated to it. But as fan edits go, I've seen far more significant restructuring done to other movies, although most of them don't work very well. I'm sure Ady never had any intention of actually restructuring Star Wars, and I'm sure most fans would argue that the theatrical edition didn't really need anything doing to it beyond a decent restoration (which Ady did far better than Lucas).

Very well expressed. Adywan really has created a fan edit of the highest order. It's a labour of love, and it shows. But it doesn't top Star Wars in its theatrical form, and no fan edit ever really can. To consider such things is to wipe out the colossal cultural impact Star Wars had, unblemished, for 20 years. No fan edit should be able to do that.

Me too, as long as a fix works. That's the subjective part. I saw an interesting Q&A with Ridley Scott talking about Blade Runner: The Final Cut and one interesting thing he said was that, when they were sitting down to go through a very thorough list of continuity errors and FX errors and every other type of error, he was rather surprised by just how important people felt some things were. In the end, he said all the major issues were corrected, but probably 80% of the minor things were just ignored. When he was then asked why, he said, in his usual pragmatic way, "they're just not important". I've got to agree with that.

Gussied up. LOL Whenever I hear that expression I think of Marge Simpson gussying up her kitchen curtains.

I know what you mean about not being able to "unsee" things! But hey, dare I say it, it's only a movie.

Well, I think anyone who would say ANH:R surpasses even the 1977 version can only be referring to whether Adywan has restored the movie better than we have so far seen it. In that sense, it's a valid question, but if you mean he's made a better movie, then absolutely not.

TK99:

I just notice one problem with the shot.

No glowing plantary core fragments.

Well, two things to remember. This is a snapshot of about two frames per second of the actual sequence; the green energy dissipates during/after the explosion, so that glow is meant to be gone.

Plus, and I presume you mean no glowing planetary core fragments as in a molten core; well, you're incorrectly assuming that all planets have a molten core. That's really not true. We have eight planets and currently five dwarf planets in our solar system, and the majority of them do not have a molten core like the Earth. So there is absolutely no reason to assume that Alderaan should have one, and hence, if there are problems with the sequence, that isn't one of them.

I could add glowing fragments but it would take a massive amount of time, and for the reasons stated it isn't necessary. And also, there is the risk of over-complicating FX sequences. A New Hope doesn't have very complex FX sequences, and the last thing I'd want to do is add anything that doesn't work stylistically.

Thanks indeed. I just showed it to a good mate of mine (also called Ady) and he just loved it. One or two niggles, naturally, but he loved it. He's always loved the cantina so the facial animations made him giggle like a girl.

Whereabouts? I used to live in San Francisco. Going back there next year, and hopefully by buddy at ILM will get me in the back door! What a dream that would be.

LOL. How restrained! Are you an Englishman, too?

TV's Frink:

"One small note, however.  The shot that shows the new Tie reveal says that it features "GC Tie's" rather than CG."

Well, at the risk of being pedantic, that should be CG TIEs, no apostrophe.

1anakin:

"I never noticed that it was two driods in that shot until Adywan's edit. Begs to question was it so noticable? now an audience member asks, "Why is R2D2 red?"

Well, exactly.

Yeah, I should have been a little more articulate and said the prequels had much more complex choreography, rather than better. Lazy of me. And I absolutely agree, they really do look contrived, rehearsed and choreographed. Some work better than others, but it definitely feels like a dance rather than a duel.

Oh, I know, I said that earlier, I was responding to some of the comments trying to persuade the idea that it wasn't. It clearly is two robots used for the turn, and it's not very well timed, so I understand why you wanted to change it. But my thoughts were that it's almost impossible to change because the framing just screams that it's R2-D2.

Maybe since you guys have seen the original ANH a billion times, your memories interfere with believing the altered shot?

I wouldn't say that. You don't need to have frame-by-frame recall of Star Wars to see that it's clearly R2-D2 and C-3PO. There's just no getting around it, because of the way the shot is framed, around those four characters. Even if you manage to make R2 look like a very different droid, you just look at the shot and ask why there's another droid where R2 should be next to C-3PO. All respect to Adywan's amazing work, it's just with that shot I don't see what the big deal was. By all means, try to fix anything you don't like, after all, isn't that why most of us are here? But if the change fails in other ways, has it really accomplished anything?

The green mockup definitely looks less like R2D2, but you're wrong about it not being R2 in the original shot. It is. And I'm sorry, but no matter how many times anyone tries to tweak that shot, the fact that it's Ben, Luke, C-3PO and R2-D2 is inescapable. It is clearly framed that way, unless you're trying to say that Gilbert Taylor framed three of them and some other random droid that just happens to look exactly like R2-D2?

And the alternate shot is not in the movie. There are simply two R2-D2s on set to shoot the turn.

Oh, I know it's impossible to remove him, which is what I was saying before. It's an incredibly difficult continuity to fix. I'm on your side with it, I just think I would've left it, as it's not a major problem, and I don't think changing R2 to another droid works because of his position in the frame.

The actor that played Dr Evazen was English and not tanned so the hand shouldn't be a tanned hand either.

Well, the actor is English, but the character lives on Tatooine. Although, if his face isn't tanned, why would his hand be?

Bingowings, the inescapable problem in that shot is that the R2 unit, whatever colour it's painted, just looks like R2 D2. It's riding alongside C-3PO and there are only four characters being focused on in the frame, Ben and Luke at the front and the two droids behind.

I just don't see how it is ever going to work while R2 is still in the fram there. It was shot that way for a reason, so to expect the shot to look like it's focusing on Ben, Luke, C-3PO and "some other R2 unit" is a bit unrealistic. I understand where Adywan's coming from, stickler for continuity that he is, but that shot doesn't work.