Starting work on screencaps for the color grading. Not to brag or anything, but I think the comparisons are gonna be dazzling.
Suddenly, I realize Poe would make a perfect host for SCTV’s Celebrity Blow-Up.
I’m getting old, aren’t I?
Just tested the edit and realized that the 5.1 audio track had a few hiccups (2.0 stereo is the default track on my editing program, DaVinci Resolve, so my mind didn’t register that the audio transitions sound different in 5.1). I’m gonna work on the sound editing for the 5.1 surround track and fix those issues over the next few days. Otherwise, everything else is looking good.
I guess I’ll throw this in, even though I think it’s already been mentioned before in the worst edit ideas thread. An oldie but a goodie:
Sounds like I’ve got a consensus. I think I’ll start testing the edit sometime in the future.
After Maul falls down the pit, dub in echoing dialogue sourced from TCW to indicate he’s still alive down there and is going to find a way off Naboo to get some robotic spider legs.
Or better yet, take a page from Austin Powers. As Obi-Wan is talking to Qui-Gon, have Maul yell out, “Someone help me! I’m still alive, only I’m very badly sliced in half! Hello there? Anyone? Can someone call an ambulance? I’m in quite a lot of pain!”
It took longer than expected, but I finally got those screencaps! I’ll try to keep this short and sweet, but you know the drill.
After CaptainFaraday’s suggestion that Starkiller base’s snowy weather looked better in blue, I decided to see if I could tweak the orange look that I had already done before. Here’s a screencap of the orange film look I did:
I decided to try lowering the reds and raising the blues just a little slightly, giving more of a bluish hue than the previous grade. Here’s a screencap of what’s new:
Finding screencaps that showed what’s different was hard. Hopefully, that’s a sign that I’ve done my job. There are still differences though, and I’ve tried to find screencaps that showed the biggest differences. Some of them are good. Some of them not-so-good. Jakku looks a little more faded this time around. Starkiller Base still looks mostly white, just with a hint of blue. However, I think this new one is a good all-around sort of grade. But I’ll let you be the judge of that.
As usual, the examples are down below in the spoiler tag:
My new monitor just arrived! I’m currently working on calibrating it and making sure that everything looks good enough. I’ll see if I can get the screencaps in either today or tomorrow!
Add a small little Yoda type creature to this shot….
GROGU! NOOOOOO!!!
EddieDean said:
4) The structure of the ending. It has to deliver the lowest lows followed by the highest highs, which is mainly an issue of ordering. (And personally I’d treat the Gungans as the least important plot there, so maybe cutting that down would be my second major trim.)
I personally like l8wrtr’s approach to the ending, although I think a few things needed better timing (Such as the way Padme’s failure is handled, which I feel should’ve been moved closer to the finish). Naturally, I tweaked it for v3 of my edit and divided it into its own three-act structure, complete with a lowest point followed by a highest point. Here’s my arrangement for those who want the rundown:
Setup
Gungan army intro
Palace siege intro
Space battle intro
Gungan battle begins
Darth Maul intro
Destroyer droid obstacle
Lightsaber battle begins
Anakin enters the ship
Conflict part I
Gungan battle continues
Lightsaber fight continues
“We don’t have time for this, captain.”
Anakin enters the battle
Jedi get separated
Conflict part II
Gungans retreat
Padme gets captured
Qui-Gon dies
Gungans surrender
Anakin gets hit
Obi-Wan fights Darth Maul
Padme meets Nute Gunray (With Padme’s comeback deleted)
Ending
Darth Maul dies
Anakin destroys the control ship
Gungans celebrate
At the end of TLJ, Luke faces the First Order. He pulls out a pair of digitally added maracas. Then, Cuban Pete plays in the background. Luke Skywalker shakes those maracas to the beat and starts singing…
To really cut to the chase and centre the movie around Anakin, you could begin on Tatooine, with the party having just met him. In order to pull this off you’d need to substantially alter the opening crawl to convey the events of the now-excised first act. Perhaps something like this:
EPISODE I
THE PHANTOM MENACE
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy
far away, Naboo was under an attack.
And I thought me and Qui-Gon Jinn
could talk the FEDERATION in to
maybe cutting them a little slack.
But their response, it didn’t thrill us.
They locked the doors and tried to
kill us. We escaped from that gas,
then met Jar Jar and Boss Nass.
We took a bongo from the scene,
and we went to Theed, to see the
queen. We all wound up on TATOOINE.
That’s where we found this boy.I’ve been managing to watch like, twenty minutes of the movie a day but keep getting interrupted. Once I finally finish I’ll post something that’s not a stupid joke.
This is perfect for the worst edit ideas thread.
Interesting!
And I like that idea a lot, Eyepainter.
While we’re on Maul, I wonder if it’s worth replacing his one line of dialogue? The Sith only reveal themselves to the Jedi insofar as it’s a secondary thing that happens in his pursuit of the Queen, and no revenge is had. The Clone Wars has a dearth of possible Maul lines we could work with, and it’s arguably his more canon voice since he’s got hundreds of lines in that as opposed to the single one here.
I personally deleted that scene in my edit, and my reasoning is because it didn’t offer much to the film aside from looking pretty. I may have to watch the scene again, but from what I remember, most of it is pretty much bad guys saying saturday morning cartoon lines. I think the reason it was kept in (theatrically) is because it’s one of the few moments where we see Maul and Palpatine together, but most of the exposition isn’t all that important in the long run. Do we really need to know so badly that Darth Maul will find the jedi quickly? Or that he’s after the queen? Or that he’s well-trained? For me, that stuff is explained already in other scenes, so it comes across as repetitive.
Change Darth Vader’s suit color from black to pink, and then digitally add painted rainbows and unicorns to his suit as well.
Well, I’m late to the party. I guess I’ll throw in an idea from my own edit (or at least from v3 and beyond).
One thing I did to fix Episode I’s structural problems was pull a switcheroo. In the theatrical version, we had two scenes that threw the second act off. The first was Amidala’s final conversation with Palpatine on Coruscant, and the scene after is the jedi council’s rejection of Anakin. I decided to switch these two scenes around. Anakin gets rejected first, and Amidala decides to leave for Naboo next. This makes Anakin’s rejection by the council the film’s lowest point. However, it does come with a bit of a caveat: the nighttime skies aren’t very consistent anymore. First, you have the extremely dark blue night during Anakin’s rejection. Then, we go to Amidala’s conversation with Palpatine, where the sun is only just setting. Finally, we arrive back at the landing pad, which is extremely dark blue again. I think there might be a way to fix this through color grading, but I suppose it would be interesting to ask someone who might be more of an expert on this than I am.
I liked your second, not-blue grade from the 18th January post the best. It is quite warm, but that warm look + green shadows reminds me of technicolor prints of the original movie, like 4K77.
I agree, Sade. And hopefully, the differences between that grade and this new one will be minimal. The main reason I’m fixing it up some more is so that the snowy weather over at Starkiller Base is more blue than white, As per Captain Faraday’s suggestion.
Which leads me to some bad news. A friend of mine cracked my monitor while I was away. Fortunately, he’s generous and offered to pay for a new one. I’m gonna have to wait until the new monitor arrives, though. My hope is that it won’t be too long thanks to the evil empire known as amazon.com.
And yes, this is why the screencaps are taking so long to be uploaded.
While I’m still accumulating screencaps, I have to throw in an update to the editing changes.
I’ve removed another piece from my edit, and this one is painful, but I think it’s necessary for the direction I’m going with this.
One issue that I have with TFA’s execution is that it’s united around the search for Luke Skywalker which, for me anyway, was more epilogue than climax. The real ending of the film, IMO, was the moment Rey snatched Luke’s lightsaber away from Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base. So, I wanted to place more focus on uniting the film around that instead.
Which leads me to the difficult choice I’m about to make. I’ve decided to cut out the late Max von Sydow’s opening conversation with Oscar Isaac. The main problem with this scene is that it orients the film around finding Skywalker too much. It also gives off the implication that only a jedi can solve this problem, which throws things off for Finn, who isn’t a jedi but gets a lot of screen time along with Rey. One dynamic I find interesting about VII is that we don’t know who the main character is. A risky decision, especially since the prequels tried that and failed, but it worked in this film’s case. It kept you guessing who was going to lead the charge against the First Order. It could’ve been Rey, Finn, or possibly even Han. But by having Max von Sydow’s character say “Without the jedi, there can be no balance”, it kinda foreshadows things too much in Rey’s favor. I don’t want to cut this scene out, especially since Max von Sydow was a ridiculously talented actor, but I think it has to be done in order for the edit to work.
So now, the only bit that remains is Poe’s “Well, she certainly is that.” when BB-8 barges in and alerts Poe to the upcoming First Order assault. This gets us into the opening action sequence more quickly. I suppose the drawback is that it might make the opening even more like Episode IV, but I think getting into the opening battle sooner does a good job of drawing you in more. On the bright side, Max von Sydow’s conversation with Adam Driver is still in (although edited).
Just gave it a try. As expected, it didn’t work. However, I’ve come up with another idea. I took the orange film look and made it just a little less orange-y. That is, I lowered the reds in the color wheels slightly and I raised the blues in the color wheels slightly also. The difference between the two is small, but noticable. I’ll post some screencaps when I find the time.
Hey, guys. It’s me, the real Yoda. ‘Sup?
Yousa not the real Yoda. Meesa the real Yoda! Meesa teach you the ways of the force!
I like the orange look for Jakku, but the second option looks better for the non-Jakku scenes.
I understand why. I will say again that the blue film look is my favorite, and you can see part of that look in the hybrid grade during the non-Jakku scenes (In fact, I’m going for the blue look on both VIII and IX, but that’s a different topic). I’m just not sure it works well for a movie like TFA, which arguably has the warmest color palette in the sequel trilogy. I also want to honor Artan42’s suggestion on keeping Jakku orange to distinguish it from Tattooine and Geonosis, and I feel like the blue look is getting in the way of making Jakku look right (unless reddish tinted sand counts as orange).
I’m entertaining the idea of lessening the blue look so that the orange look is dominant, but I worry that it might look like an inferior version of the orange look. I suppose I’ll give it a try, but I wouldn’t expect too much from it.
C-3P0: I would much rather have gone with master Luke than stay here with you.
R2-D2: Oh, yeah?
C-3P0: I don’t know what all this trouble is about, but I’m sure it must be your fault.
R2-D2: Well excuse me, Mister Poopyhead!
C-3P0: You watch your language!
Thanks guys! Glad it looks good.
I’m gonna try one last idea before I say the color grading is complete. Here’s the orange film look again:
I wanted to try combining the orange and blue looks together. So, I started by making a node for the orange look using the curves in Resolve. I raised the red levels and lowered the blue levels like so:
Then, I made another node for the blue look. I used the curves again, but did the opposite of the orange look. I raised the blue levels and lowered the red levels like so:
Finally, I added a parallel mixer node to combine the two looks together:
My hope was that the combination would improve on perfection, but honestly, it wasn’t quite the grade of excellence I was hoping for. I suppose the faded red look that you will see in this newer combination might look good on some other movie, but not for TFA. I’m not sure the faded red suits Jakku (especially in comparison with the orange film look), and it seems like the addition of the blue makes the image look more desaturated. Still, I’ll let you be the judge. If I don’t get any responses, I’ll stick with the orange look and leave it be. But if you want to provide a defense for this newer grade, feel free to do so.
As usual, I’ve placed all of the examples under the spoiler tag below. Let me know what you think.
Handman, those are clearly two different people.
Anyway, I wanna bitch about how hard it is to make any social connection irl and get a girlfriend. Dunno what to say about it, but there it is, that’s my bitching.
I don’t know if it’ll make you feel any better, but my first crush died a long slow painful death from a car accident when I was 13. That makes relationships hard for me, because most people, when they go on a date, want to make everything as overly happy as possible and pretend that nothing is wrong. Either that, or they get their dating advice from far too many rom-coms. You may be having a hard time getting a girlfriend, but look at the bright side. The only problem you’re facing in romance is just being alone. You don’t have to deal with both loneliness and trauma like I do on most days.
Foolish, I am, for posting in this thread. Resist posting in it, I cannot.
I found out I was trans last week, and admitting that has helped me a lot these last few days. I’ve been surprisingly optimistic, and I’ve been willing to be more compassionate to both my co-workers and customers when I’m at work because of it. I’ve also been handling the move a little better than I expected. I’m still busy, and I’m still in the process of unpacking, but it’s crazy how well I’m holding up since finding out.
