EddieDean

OK, done. I’ve reuploaded smudger’s five movies. PM me for links. I can’t be uploading these forever so please consider hosting these yourself if you do get a hold of them.

They are:

1: Army of the Republic

• all of the Christophsis and Domino Squad arcs, plus some of Grievous Intrigue and Assassin

2: A New Threat

• all of the Malevolence, Nute Gunray and the early Boba/R2 arc, plus a scene from the Zillo Beast

3: Children of the Force

• all of the battle of Ryloth and Children of the Force arcs, plus some scenes from Supply Lines and the Hunt for Ziro arc

4: A Galaxy Divided

• all of the Geonosis and first Mandalore arc

5: Rise of the Dark Side

• all of the Nightsisters and Return of Maul Arc

What other avenues can we pursue for getting a little more Dooku in TPM?

Anakin Starkiller said:

Tantive3+1 said:

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon shouldn’t be master/student as this contradicts what was stated in TESB but as friends or as two Jedi who work together with Yoda being the one who instructed Obi-Wan or both of them.

I’d rather change the Originals to not contradict the Prequels if the alternative is going through those mental gymnastics.

Agreed. A lot of people tend towards OT Purism, but I think it makes more sense (and less effort) to support whatever piece of conflicting canon has the most evidence in its favour. Qui-Gon is Obi-Wan’s master in TPM, and it’s mentioned in the other PT films and the Clone Wars. Best to roll with it, I reckon.

Which arcs did you settle on covering, in the end? Latest I can see, some were still up in the air.

I can certainly understand the absolute disenfranchisement you must feel after TROS. I remember thinking (and writing on these forums) that it did so much retroactive damage that I wished we had a duology cut, or that at least any worthy conclusion to the trilogy might need to be butchered together from TLJ/TROS.

I assume that you’re scripting your own Ep9 because you need to conclude these stories in a worthy way, in order that you can let the whole thing go.

But that said, your TFA is inspiring, because it shows an approach that was willing to think radically but then apply rationally. Looking across the forums right now, the amount of technical skill on display like the force ghosts finale, the crackling saber, the new voice overs, all-new CG shots, and the things AlaskanSandman’s doing to the prequels, it feels like we have such a library of skill to pull from in order to justify radical thinking for whatever follows TFA.

I’d hope that, after Hal’s light-touch TROS is done, the community turns its eyes to the more radical options for capping off the trilogy, and I’d hope that your ideas would be a major part of that.

What’re your current plans, Nev? You’re most of the way through TFA, and a good way through TLJ, and I’ve seen some decent plans of yours historically. But I appreciate you seem to have cooled off on Star Wars since TROS, and haven’t posted for a while. No pressure of course, but what’re your current intentions?

Looks like someone’s posted the fantastic force ghosts TROS ending edit on Reddit uncredited.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/ihl3yf/this_should_have_been_the_ending_instead_of_how/

How does this differ from Lynch’s Missing Pieces film?

I’m glad to hear your family are getting back towards stability. Wishing you all the best. Fantastic news that you’ll soon be able to return to the project.

Not a fan of that colour grade, but the approach to the Death Star and its improved texture is fantastic.

Genuinely sounds great.

I think you could definitely do with a clone heavy arc though - the Domino Squad arc is very well liked (Clone Cadets, Rookies, ARC Troopers), and features 99, the inspiration for the later Bad Batch (soon to have a TV series). Smudger9 cut the Christophsis and Domino Squad arcs into a good movie, that might be worth checking out. The Order 66 arc is also pretty important to the clones and the finale of this series.

I’d drop Mortis. A lot of people like it, but I think it’s super ham fisted and clunky - to me it doesn’t feature the ‘right’ mysticism for Star Wars. I’d replace that with the Yoda arc (The Lost One, Voices, Destiny, Sacrifice), which does a nice bit of mysticism and also shows Yoda starting to recognise the failings of the prequel-era Jedi order, preparing him for his Dagobah exile, a spiritual clash with Palpatine, and leading nicely into some of the plots of the sequel era.

People generally like the Umbara, Kadavo, Obi-Wan Undercover, and Younglings arcs, though they kind of stand alone and aren’t as vital as the above.

Similarly, there are episodes which add ‘connective tissue’ to a lot of other SW media, like some of the Boba Fett/bounty hunter arcs, the Citadel arc with Tarkin, Onderon with Saw Gererra, and episodes which show Padme’s political competence, but again, I don’t think they’re as vital as the ones you’ve picked.

I really should get on this. I’ll make some Google Drives to upload them to. Bear with me.

It’s a good video but it certainly highlights the value of seeing the in-cockpit shots of the pilots! It makes me all the more exciting that that’s what Adywan’s doing. But it’s a great showcase of how accessible good CG has become.

Sounds amazing, please PM!

That broken scene is now fixed and rendered - it should be uploaded by the time you read this!

I’m calling this version of all my episodes the full version 1.0, totally ready for viewing.

I’ve just checked all of the edits in the final render, and have spotted one ~5m scene in episode two, the arrival at Rivendell, which hasn’t come out right. The rest of the cuts and the quality seems to have worked great, but I’ll need to revisit that second episode, which’ll take a couple of days.

Aaaaaand that’s all eight episodes complete, uploaded, and available. I’d love your feedback.

Here’s another major change, the last one of my own changes on top of the edit I’m using for a source.

In the original, the scene where they arrive at Mirkwood has two topics. Firstly is that Mirkwood is bad, and that Gandalf should go off and do some investigating. And secondly is that Bilbo almost tells Gandalf that he has the ring, and then in a major failiure of character that foreshadows his fall to the ring, and the ring’s power, he decides not to.

Since my episode 3, ‘Riddles in the Dark’, features Bilbo’s discovery and first usage of the ring, I wanted to end on the moment where he decides to keep it a secret. But since my episode 4, ‘The Return of the Shadow’, features the Mirkwood exploration (which is quite long), I felt that the exposition about Mirkwood belonged with the episode in which they explore it.

Therefore, I decided to chop it into two scenes - one where they arrive and Bilbo fails to tell Gandalf about the ring, and one where Gandalf explores it then decides to leave the dwarves to explore it alone.

So, originally, it played out like this:

• The party arrive outside Mirkwood
• Bilbo fiddles with the ring as the ring whispers
• Gandalf peeks in a little, and identifies their path
• Bilbo says the forest feels cursed, Gandalf says they have no other option
• Galadriel warns Gandalf that something’s afoot
• Bilbo gets a little ‘ring shock’ as Gandalf explores
• Gandalf announces he’s leaving
• Gandalf notices something’s up with Bilbo, who fails to tell him about the ring
• Gandalf warns the party about Mirkwood and leaves
• The party enter Mirkwood

Now, episode three ends like this:

• Bilbo discovers the ring
• Various other things happen
• The party arrive outside Mirkwood
• Bilbo fiddles with the ring as the ring whispers
• Gandalf notices something’s up with Bilbo, who fails to tell him about the ring
   - I extended this scene a little, especially the last shots, also adding a zoom and a more ominous audio track, to let this moment have a little longer to land.
  (I think this works nicely, because the first thing that happens to Bilbo upon arriving at the location where Sauron is, is that he starts to feel the pull of the ring. It wants to be found. This scene also makes Gandalf seem more shrewd - he notices something is up with Bilbo immediately.)

https://vimeo.com/441827596

And episode four begins like this:

• Thorin/Gandalf flashback (unrelated to what I’m telling you about here, it’s just what happens in this episode)
• [Implicitly here, time may have passed while they searched for the path]
• Gandalf peeks in a little, and identifies their path
• Bilbo says the forest feels cursed [now implicitly having been near to it for a while, or having felt the pull of the ring], Gandalf says they have no other option
• Galadriel warns Gandalf that something’s afoot
• Bilbo gets a little ‘ring shock’ as Gandalf explores [reminding the audience of the events of the last episode]
• Gandalf announces he’s leaving
• Gandalf warns the party about Mirkwood and leaves
• The party enter Mirkwood

https://vimeo.com/441828979

These are definitely the trickiest cuts I’ve had to do. Luckily, the score during these scenes is very jerky and mysterious, with lots of cuts to the forest as if it’s spying on them, so I think I’ve managed to make these cuts as clean as possible while maintaining coherency.

That’s episode 2 now available. 3 is uploading and 4 is nearly complete. (If these seem quick this is because I’m duplicating existing work - all of the episodes are already fully planned out and pre-built.)

Here’s an important cut. A lot of people hate the cartoonish physics in the Hobbit, and one such scene is when Bilbo and the dwarves fall down the mountain into the goblin halls. They bounce around, when realistically they’d be bludgeoned to death. Since it’s necessary to the plot to get them into the halls, movie cuts tend to leave this shot in. However, since I’m cutting for TV, I have a few more options.

So here we have the end of my episode two, ‘An Unexpected Journey’, where the dwarves fall. Since it’s the episode end, I get to cut to black as soon as we see their initial fall into the tunnels, and just leave some far-less-egregious and far-less-drawn-out sound effects which give us the cliffhanger of a fall.

https://vimeo.com/441813664

Then, here’s the start of my episode three, ‘Riddles in the Dark’, where we fade the sound effects back in, and fade the video in on the shot where the dwarves land, straight into the action.

https://vimeo.com/441813888

This way, we get all of the plot of the fall, with none of the horrible visuals, and a whole lot less time spent falling. And, as a bonus, it’s a nice little cliffhanger, and an episode beginning which launches us straight into a bit of action.

Episode 1 is now available.
Episode 2 is uploading now.
Episode 3 is rendering now, and will be uploaded right after
Episode 4 I’m working on now, and should be finished today.
Episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8, are all now available.

Episodes 1 and 2 are nearly complete. (For those keeping count, that’ll be 1,2,5,6,7,8 out of 8 all done.)

Here’s an edit from my episode 2, ‘An Unexpected Journey’, which I’m particularly proud of: Bilbo getting captured by the trolls.

I believe the trolls scene should stay in my series, because it shows Bilbo’s first attempt at burglary, and while his attempt fails, he demonstrates some good smarts, and it begins to endear him to the group. It’s also in the book, and it’s referenced in the Lord of the Rings movies.

However, it’s full of snot jokes, and slapstick, which to me feels like unwelcome bad humour.

If you keep the trolls scene you do need to have Bilbo get caught with a sneeze, since that’s the moment that moves the plot forward and he’s also covered in snot later. So we have to accept that element.

However I’ve been able to cut the whole scene down to under half the time, without any of the other snot or slapstick, with Bilbo’s journey making visual sense, with the background audio making a full conversation, and with the audio matching with the video where lipsync or SFX are needed (except one visual sneeze which doesn’t have a sound effect, because to be honest the sound was egregious, and I’m happy to not draw attention to the visual).

I also flipped one shot from the original film, where Bilbo sneaks right-to-left, when the rest of his actions in that part are left-to-right.

https://vimeo.com/441678578

Hey! Thanks for your interest! I’ll be sure to send you a link when it’s done!

TheAlaskanSandman said:

EddieDean said:

It definitely wouldn’t look out of place in the movie!

One thing I’ll recommend/request, given that you’re going the CG route, is that you base as much of your CG elements like glows, monitor graphics, etc, on OT and ST sources, because the PT deviates a little far from the established aesthetic. I’m not talking anything radical about ship design or anything, but I feel like these movies should feel ‘Star Wars’ standard as opposed to ‘modern scifi’ standard.

IF you could give me some more detail that would help. I think the Ot and St look quite different imo. I think Rogue One and Mandalorian are much closer in aesthetic and tone. The ST, imo brought them much more into the modern scifi standard.

I was planning to make what ever edits i did with the cg ships, look like the ones they filmed for the PT. Anything else would require redesigning the ships, and replacing original shots. Best i was going to do was to make the ships in ROS look more like the originals in coloring, as those ships resemble them in design.

This shot and test is just about getting the Cg ships to look like the model ones they filmed though.

Yeah, to be fair, my comment wasn’t very helpful. I think I’m mainly reacting to the fact that your ship looks GREAT, and all the colouring is fantastic, but to my eye the moon and the thrusters on the ship look maybe a little ‘too sharp’? Too good? It’s hard to put my finger on, sorry.

It definitely wouldn’t look out of place in the movie!

One thing I’ll recommend/request, given that you’re going the CG route, is that you base as much of your CG elements like glows, monitor graphics, etc, on OT and ST sources, because the PT deviates a little far from the established aesthetic. I’m not talking anything radical about ship design or anything, but I feel like these movies should feel ‘Star Wars’ standard as opposed to ‘modern scifi’ standard.

Yeah, if people are passionate about fanedits, they’ll find us. It’s not wise to promote the community too widely.