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Dat_SW_Guy

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28-Jan-2016
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19-Mar-2024
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Post
#1571192
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

And another one!

Here’s the reworked Death Star explosion to match the new Alderaan explosion VFX element to match closer to its color and “intensity” than the last one, I’ve decided to keep the praxis ring on the explosion as I figured it would make way more sense as the Death Star is a very different beast than a regular planet, as it is a literal space station full of chemicals that would hypothetically make it’s destruction look like a nuclear bomb explosion. I also find the praxis ring impactful in selling the narrative climax of the film, giving a visual indication of accomplishment to the audience.

Rosy wording aside, heres the clip in question! I’d like to know your thoughts about it, as I mainly did some grading work in Resolve to shift the colors to a yellowish hue, similar to the Alderaan explosion element, then added extra explosions, and zoomed in the shot a bit to tighten the frame composition.

(Note that the audio is not final and will add extra explosion SFX to visually sync with the ones on here)

https://streamable.com/2stju2

Post
#1571070
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Thank you Hal!

Another change I’m going to add is a new “enhanced” matte of the interior shot of the Rebel hangar base, as I find the original theatrical version to be too grainy and soft, while the SE version is shorter by about 50% as it makes room for the new additional scene of Luke reuniting with Biggs.

The process of doing this was time-consuming as I first had to stitch the SE matte to fit the original matte in Photoshop (the SE version of this is stretched as the roof is way lower than the theatrical version, I had to zoom in to compensate), after which I did a weird combination of blurring the matte to match the already blurry shot, then stabilized the gate weave and aggresively DNR’ed the shot which made it more soft and painterly, then sharpened and added grain onto it.

I may definitely have to redo this shot tommorow to tone down the obnoxious DNR, but here’s a proof of concept of this matte:

https://streamable.com/2mer0t

Post
#1571017
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Thank you for your appreciation towards my edit! Although I’d clarify that this edit still contains a fair bit of the 90s Special Edition CGI material (Battle of Yavin, Mos Eisley but without the annoying and distracting bits, Corridor hall extension) but my goal is to make everything as visually consistent as possible.

The one thing that always griped me about the SE was how everything was “tacked on” without care or nuance to the visual aesthetic of the film, like someone would put a 3D Model of a UFO abducting people over archival WW2 16mm footage.

However, upon discovering the 35mm prints of the 1997 SE online and skimming through it, I always thought that the CGI actually meshes well because of the natural film grain, color grading, etc. which was basically the inspiration behind this edit, that it was still possible to integrate the SE but less intrusively.

While I do greatly enjoy the other edits on here (especially Adywan’s Revisited) a constructive critique I always have is that his edits push the movie to look more “modern” and while that isn’t really a problem to the majority, I feel like they still stick out in its own way, which is still WAY less intrusive than the SE.

I want to be the bridge between the overly intrusive Special Edition, the Theatrical version and Adywan’s Revisited in terms of drastically fixing continuity changes and errors, keeping the film’s feel as “old” but not “dated” if you get what I’m trying to convey here, haha.

Think of movies like Independence Day, Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, their CGI isn’t as modern as today, but it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb either like the SE version of Star Wars. There’s actual care and competence put in it and the 35mm film elements mesh well with the 90s CGI and VFX.

So overall, this edit sort of pushes Star Wars to look like it was shot in the early 90s with all the analog film goodness, but still keep a level of competent CGI and VFX that a rushed and overworked LFL, Lowry and ILM weren’t able to do in 1996.

Post
#1570075
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Oh, I didn’t expect to see you here! I graciously thank you for your kindness and generousity in volunteering for my edit!

Here is the other take, where Vader says “they had just escaped our fighters” instead. I think I’m starting to grow on this take since it’s short and simple, whereas the other one was kinda lengthy, and the dead air kind of works because your eyes then gravitate towards Tarkin’s reaction afterwards.

https://streamable.com/zuoraq

Post
#1570071
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

I feel like adding the implication of hyperspace jumps would needlessly over complicate the flow of the scenes of Death Star Escape -> TIE Fighter Shootout -> Heroes rest (and talk about important character-driven exposition)

I feel like tying in hyperspace jumps feels like an addition to add in lore that shouldn’t be there at the point in what the audience is fed, because as mentioned the progression is pretty linear and easy to understand, and adding that hyperspace jumping line would probably make them confused as to the mechanics of how that would work, whereas they should rather be focused on the scene immediately following it, where we see dialogue that is integral to Han’s character development.

I want my edit to be as vanilla as possible in terms of changes. In fact, this might be the most revisionist change I’m adding (similar to Adywan’s “There’ll be no escape this time” line for Threepio) as I’m completely changing a character’s line and context whereas the other changes I usually add visual changes and fixes that tidy up the movie to a better looking version of the Special Edition thats my own perfect blend of the Theatrical and CGI additions.

I’d also like to mention that the voice actor basically did this for free and I feel too embarrassed to pester him even more or use his generosity too much.

Also I’ll cobble together the other alternate take later today where he says “They had just escaped from our fighters” and you guys can vote to see which one sounds better.

Post
#1570065
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Hello guys! I think it’s time for another update/addition:

I recently got into contact with RyanGoldenVO, a voice actor who sounds EXACTLY like James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader (watch his AMAZING voice over to repalce JEJ’s old voice in Rogue One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmRRzpJDDv4) and I asked him if he could provide one line to fix a continuity error in A New Hope that, until now, could only be fixed by doing heavy VFX compositing and rotoscoping.

After the scene where Han and Luke destroy TIE fighters using the Falcon’s turrents, we see a cut-away of Vader and Tarkin aboard the Death Star, in which Vader mentions to Tarkin that “they had just made the jump into hyperspace” although the next scene clearly doesn’t show them in a Hyperspace Tunnel.

For years, the solution was always to just heavily re-composite the scene of Han and Leia’s conversation on the Falcon to add a blue tint and add a spinning Hyperdrive tunnel outside the cockpit, which has been done in Hal9000’s Custom SE and Adywan’s SW Revisited, but I always felt like it looked off and didn’t really match the visual aesthetic of a movie that was shot and filmed in 1976.

So I thought the easiest solution to avoid the unneccesary VFX work is to just swap Darth Vader’s line to instead imply that they had been intercepted, and shot down their fighters, removing any unnneccesary mention of them “jumping into hyperspace” to escape.

Thanks to RyanGoldenVO for doing the lines, and helping in distorting the audio to match the theatrical mix (which unfortunately severely degraded JEJ’s vocal quality), here’s the clip below!

I also have similar variants of this line, which instead he says “They had just escaped from our fighters” but I felt that there was too much dead air between Vader and Tarkin.

https://streamable.com/ly0w0v

Post
#1563798
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Another thing, I’m thinking of revamping the cut list by alot to incorporate more visual changes than “making it fit canon-wise” like other ANH edits.

(still torn apart between using the original crawl or the 81 crawl)

However, I’ve been thinking about reinstating Biggs’ scenes from the SE (and the “Biggs, Biggs!” radio part) as I do wonder if George’s reinstatement of the scene was really effective helping the audience sympathize with the Rebels alot more, and thus care for their deaths when they do die during the Battle of Yavin. Thoughts?

Post
#1563754
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Hello there! I finally have the time to push forward with this edit with a potential V1 or workprint release sometime early next year.

This project was literally years in the making as it was mainly hindered by my inexperience in editing (I was literally in high school when I started this edit in 2019, lol) and lack of equipment (which I do now have)

However, work on this will be quire slow as I’m doing this in my free time as I’m currently studying in college as of the moment and can’t give too much time on this project.

Hopefully, if I’m lucky, I’ll probably do a V2 of this edit and lean towards more “fixing” changing Revisited-style than doing a normal SE fan edit, but thats in the future.

Overall, this project taught me alot about waiting for the right time, and it took alot of patience to get where I am. So I’d like to thank all of you guys for sticking through this edit that’s clearly 5 years too late!

Post
#1519646
Topic
<s>The inaccuracies in &quot;How Star Wars Was Saved in the Edit&quot;</s>
Time

Oh I see. I didn’t fully finish the video when I made the post, so I didnt get to the part where he was talking about fan preservations. I guess he probably took it too far. Do I delete the thread or something?

EDIT: I finished the video and yeah… there are some things that kind of make it more like a sensationalist hit-piece than an unbiased take on RocketJump’s video. Although he does point out the inaccuracies and ““narrative””(?) RocketJump is making, from the perspective of Nerdnonymous? I honestly think he’s done more bickering than actual evidence.

I edited the post and post title to reflect my current thoughts.

Post
#1519610
Topic
<s>The inaccuracies in &quot;How Star Wars Was Saved in the Edit&quot;</s>
Time

You all may be familiar with the famous RocketJump video of their discussion as how “Star Wars was saved in the Edit” which painted a very specific narrative about Lucas and his editors, and how the editors basically saved Stat Wars, which wasn’t actually the case and is more complicated than the narrative told in the video.

Furthermore most of the claims made by RocketJump seem to have vague basis to actual truth, and the video itself is not all that objective of the information.

Just recently, I watched a video by “Nerdonymous” debunking some of the claims from RocketJump, and although the overall tone of the video seems to be a bit “ad hominem” in making fun of RocketJump, he actually makes fair points and assumptions based from sources such as Rinzler’s ebooks, Making-Of books and other material.

I suggest you guys to give it a watch, its 2-hours long (mostly due to the editing of how Nerdonymous likes to hone in on RocketJump’s use of words) but its worth a watch:

EDIT: Upon further watching of this video, although Nerdnonymous did point out some inaccuracies and errors in the way RocketJump simplified certain event lines and general misinformation, they are few and far between the amount of actual ad hominem that he constantly does and the amount of contradiction he makes to the point of hypocrisy in terms of misrepresenting information, I think the video dives moreso on mocking the channel, rather than actually providing an objective, unbiased view of the video itself.

I shouldn’t have made this thread while watching the video, as I first made it within like 10 minutes of his 2-hour long rant when he actually brought up a point of the mix-up of RocketJump and J.W Rinzler’s information of Brian De Palma’s involvement in the creation of the crawl, and which crawl was which in the shooting script, third and fourth drafts and the final version. The further I went on in the video, the more confused I became, especially as he tried to convince the audience about how the “Rough Cut” was better than the Theatrical cut, because that was Lucas’ vision, but that isn’t the case apparently because it was edited wrong and the final version is Lucas’ Vision?

He also tries to defend the deleted scenes, and only apart from the conference scene, which only kinda vaguely works in introducing the Force first before Obi-Wan does it, the majority of his opinions are wrapped up in layers of contradiction solely to belittle RocketJump and make him look wrong at every turn.

On the topic of who “really saved Star Wars” it is a complicated question to answer in and of itself, as every producer, editor, propsman, could’ve helped in contributing in the success and/or failure of this experimental sci-fantasy film and was a combination of Lucas, the editors, the producers, and even the actors themselves on fixing the wooden dialogue on the script, that Star Wars became… Star Wars.

Post
#1518173
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Well, I think your asking the wrong person about that lol. In my opinion, I guess it’s hard to remove the ret-con in ANH unless some A.I exists that clones Alec Guinness’s voice. And I think that the ROTJ explanation, although a bit “obvious” to clearly fix the discrepancy with the “certain point of view” thing, atleast provides an explanation to the audience, which at the moment, I don’t really have any problem with.

Post
#1517583
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Happy New Year!

I have finally gotten the courage to finish this edit, and I am going to re-do the master cut on Davinci Resolve instead of Premiere to better take advantage of the color grading, node compositing and advanced stuff rather than Adobe constantly crashing on me. The expected release date of this edit will be on “May The 4th” or May 25 (Original release date of A New Hope) and the changelist will be hardened and finalized within this week to begin doing the more VFX-heavy changes.

As a quick teaser here is the recomposited version of Sky_'s speeder shot with a more visually accurate shadow that matches the surrounding shadows of the surrounding people and droids, and added the SE shuttle at the end to tie it in better to the rest of the sequence which will heavily borrow from the SE version. Note that this is still WIP as I didn’t color grade it to match the other shots, and the detail on the guy’s legs are a bit hazy since it’s sourced from 4k77.

To be honest, I forgot that this project started back all the way in 2019, and how COVID + Lockdown + Lack of Motivation just really hit me like a brick wall in terms of forcing myself to make this edit as clean and visually appealing as possible, which caused the long hiatus due to personal issues, as well as technical issues in my lack of literacy in VFX and slow hardware. But now I have the tools and the laptop necessary to finish this edit so I can finally put this 4 year old beast to rest.

https://streamable.com/evvfwv

Post
#1516689
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Hello, its been a while.

I’m conflicted as to whether or not I’ll continue this edit, as I feel that it is redundant compared to ANH: Devastator’s Edition, ANH Revisited and Hal9000’s ANH edit. Especially since I’m basically doing the same thing as Devastator and Revisited but less extreme.

It’s also been challenging to port over my Premiere Pro files from the old PC to the new laptop, as the PC keeps turning off every 10 seconds due to overheating and faulty RAM and I can’t find a way to transfer the files directly from the hard drive itself, which forces me to re-do the master cut again.

I hope you guys understand, and let me know if there is a place for my edit in the endless void of SW edits.

Post
#1505517
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope DEVASTATOR EDITION (V.1 RELEASED)
Time

I don’t know, it doesn’t look quite right and you can kind of tell that its the binary sunset background.

Also, the new background contradicts the position of Threepio and Luke, as the camera in the original version shows that they were facing to the right of where the binary sunsets were earlier.

I suggest you keep the original version of the shot.

Post
#1499725
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

I suggest you to just do a 2D reconstruction of the guy’s legs, it’s a bit easier puppetering it rather than doing a full CG model, although an alternative can be to project the leg texture to the CG model, which can be difficult. Also I suggest to match the speeder shadow to the surrounding elements, and some of them do periodically “light up” which you should match to retain consistency and shot believability.

Also I think you should base the SE shadow as reference, and if you can, also trim down the speeder a bit to make it thinner like it is shown here:

Post
#1499695
Topic
Star Wars A New Hope: DSG Special Edition <strong>(V1 NEARING COMPLETION)</strong>
Time

Sky_ said:

Here you go Dat_SW_Guy… I still need to Roto out the guy at the front as you can see he disappears, and still a few bits that need doing in this clip, no point explaining them as you can see it… anyway just an update dude

alt text

Looks amazing! My only issue with it are some parts were kinda lagging out, and the shadow color looks a bit too grey and not sandy-colored but other than that its amazing!

Post
#1491776
Topic
Making the Obi-Wan &amp; Anakin training session (From the Kenobi series) work in an AOTC edit.
Time

Personally, I feel that it’s like trying to cut in the SC38 Obi VS Vader fight to the original 1977 version. The cinematography is too different, the camera and lenses are too different, and the dead giveaway would be the global illumination due to the background literally an encapsulating volume of LED lights, while back in 2002 they used green screen and reasonable yet outdated compositing to try and the Coruscant background in AOTC.

Post
#1491528
Topic
Obi-Wan Kenobi Redux Ideas Thread
Time

NFBisms said:

I was one of those suckers who was actually really excited for Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) because Deborah Chow and Kelley DIxon’s work on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad fuckin’ rule. Needless to say, that was a bit misguided.

So I took a crack at editing the show to be closer in tone and style to what I expected out of BB-verse alumni.

I don’t think I’m going to do the whole show, but it was just a fun little experiment. The edit isn’t supposed to be like BB/BCS fwiw, just approaching the material with some of the storytelling philosophy I learned from them.

At the very least, Deborah Chow’s sensibilities as a director were still conducive to being arranged in this way so at least some of my excitement wasn’t unfounded

I love the visual storytelling here, but theres a few nitpicks I would like to add:

  • 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.

  • The zoom in from Obi-Wan’s back looks fake and digital. Keep that locked in I think.

  • I think the intro goes on for too long. To sell the repetition of the work and make it go faster is to cut a bit more and speed it up so that the audience can get the idea of same work over and over again without the baggage of it being long.

  • The flashbacks thrown into the sleeping scenes right next to the work scenes are so jarring. I’m not sure what you’re trying to do or if this is intentional.

  • If you have the VFX skill, try and match the flashbacks to the ones from ROTS, and also try and mute the colors from the Prequels to match the already mute tone from the show.

I’m going for a “faster and more intense” route that Lucas wanted for ANH, but at the end of the day, its completely up to you.