I’ve currently been interested in the period of Romanticism lately, and I decided to read Rafael Sabatini’s “Scaramouche.” I’m about 100 pages in, but it’s been a great read, and one that’s left me highly entertained so far.
The Birds (1963) is a seriously overrated film. There are many other classic Hitchcock pictures from both before and after this film that are better than this film.
Glad I’m not the only one who felt this way. I can understand how the concept of a bunch of our feathered friends going rogue could be intense, but for me, the characters kept the movie from ever taking off. I don’t remember liking any of them except for maybe the old lady who lost her husband. And I’m about to commit blasphemy for saying this, but Tippi Hedren’s character was way too much of a goody-two-shoes character for me to care about her. In fact, when she got ambushed near the end of the movie, I was rooting for those birds to peck her to death.
So, no. I’ll just stick to rewatching Vertigo for the hundredth time, thank you very much.
I got diagnosed with severe sleep apnea back in February, and I had been freaking out over it due to my fear of going to doctor’s offices mixed with my fears of dealing with health insurance. I went through a titration study a couple weeks ago where I got to sleep with a CPAP machine for the first time. The result was a sleep so good, that I was disappointed when I had to wake up. The study went very well, and I saw a lot of improvements with my sleeping patterns afterwards. I will be getting my own personal CPAP machine within the next 10 days, and if I use the machine for more than 90 days (which seems likely due to my diagnosis being labelled as severe), insurance will pay, and I won’t have to spend a single penny on the machine.
Currently at the podrace on the subtitles.
Fantasia is the better than any movie from the Disney Renaissance.
I’ll take it even further and say that it’s the best Disney movie ever made.
Night of the Living Dead. I tried watching it a couple days ago, but it has aged horribly. The protagonist is a “helpless screaming blonde” of the type that was unfortunately common in old Hollywood…
I’m pretty sure the protagonist was the black guy, Ben, which was a big deal in the 1960s due to the racial tensions that were going on at the time of its release.
First 25 minutes of subtitles are done.
Just a small announcement for some of you out there. I’m working on the English subtitle track. Just completed the first 15 minutes as a matter of fact. Hopefully, uploading the actual track isn’t gonna be too challenging, as it usually is just a tiny file I can upload with relative ease.
Make this the official ending to Episode IV:
Doing one last hurrah on the film grain, and if this doesn’t work, I’ll just stop fidgeting around with it altogether. On my version of Resolve, there is an offset setting that, when adjusted to the lowest settings, makes the grain visible only in the bright (or white) levels of the image and almost completely invisible in the dark (or black) levels of the image. This adds more realism to the grain, as it’s never really noticed in the darkest parts of the image. I’ve decided to demonstrate how it looks by testing out two scenes. The first test is the same one as the last three: The decoy assassination scene. However, because this scene is mostly bright, I decided to throw in a more dimly-lit scene as well to show just how close to grain-free the darker scenes are. Hence test 2 is the scene where Anakin and Obi-Wan are acting as bodyguards while Padme sleeps. As usual, I recommend watching both tests in 1080p for best results:
Film grain test part 4:
https://vimeo.com/809649643
Film grain test part 5:
https://vimeo.com/809652165
Feel free to let me know your thoughts.
I personally prefer the previous version. The noise on the newest one feels a bit too overbearing imo.
Very well then. I hoped it would make the film look grittier, but looking back, it suffers from looking like compression artifacts instead of grain. I’ll see if there’s another possibility out there (Perhaps a better export setting than GoPro Cineform, for example), but for now, I’ll just take it back to what it was before. Thanks for the input, Dri0ds.
I’m sure I’ll keep making fanedits at some point in the future; I used to be a film editor, it’s in my blood forever. It’s just a time management issue.
There’s really only two or three things left to do on this edit, and I think for the single VFX shot I need, I might actually front up some money and hire someone to do it properly. I think this edit is probably my magnum opus and I want to be able to point to it and say “this is finished and I’m satisfied with it.”
You’re alive!
It’s good to see this thread again, even if the project is heading toward the end. I hope it is as good as you say it is.
I don’t know if I’ve softened up to the film grain feature on Resolve, but just for kicks, I decided to go ahead and reset the film grain back to the default settings. The only setting I decided to change, however, is the x/y grain axis to stretch it horizontally 2 to 1, giving the grain an anamorphic look. I feel that I didn’t give readers a fair idea of what the film grain looks like because of how low the setting was in the previous test. This new test shows a pretty rough estimate of what counts as “normal” to DaVinci Resolve. The results do look very grainy, and perhaps it suffers from too much compression. However, this second test does a good job of silencing those who complain about Episode II looking too clean, and I like the much dirtier aesthetic shown here. However, I’ll leave it to the rest of you to decide which one is better. For the most accurate results, I strongly recommend watching them both in 1080p, since that’s the closest to what the original file looks like at present.
Here’s the new test I’ve been entertaining:
…And here’s the previous test.
Let me know which one you like best.
Will the Princess deliver the plans to Tatooine in time? Will the Empire win? Who are these mysterious droids? Who build them, where were they manufactured? What is, a Star War? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z
Same bat time! Same bat-channel!
Give Jar Jar agency, like this:
“Naboo has no Queen, Naboo needs no Queen”, the line of the Queen is broken, instead elected monarchs rule the planet. The last of the royal bloodline roams the swamplands of Naboo. To the local residents he is known as Strider, but to the people of Minas Theed his name is Jar Jar, son of Jam Jar. He is found by Qui-Gon the Grey, after the invasion of the ring-ships. They seek help from the Gungan, who retreated to Gunga Deep, intending to persevere the attack of Dooku the white, ringmaker (yes, he would replace the Viceroy). After they made their way to Minas Theed the parody falls flat, so they destroy the ring (-ship), Jar Jar is crowned and Qui-Gon the Grey returns to Coruscant.
Don’t forget Anakin Baggins. Without him, Jar Jar would not have gone very far.
Mash up all the scenes of Rey training in TLJ into a “cheesy 80s action movie” style training montage, complete with an original synth-rock song about believing in yourself and becoming a champion. In order to fit the montage with the rest of the movie, rescore the entire soundtrack with more cheesy synth-rock.
Insert Randy Marsh from South Park fighting a bunch of people into this montage. At the end of the montage, Randy yells out, “I thought this was America!” while the cops take him away.
If there’s interest! Happy to take suggestions for topics.
Makes sense to me that Episode II should be next. After all, if we’re starting with I, we might as well go straight for the next movie. I know the Episode VI thread is already out, but I’d rather take things in a certain order than do it all at random.
Personally, I feel sort of uncomfortable using AI voice clips for fanediting. The fact that we can now create new movie dialogue out of thin air, with no input from the original actors at all, feels sort of soulless to me. Call me a Luddite, but AI in general is a Pandora’s box that I’m not really comfortable opening.
If we’re going to change Jar-Jar’s dialogue, I think the classic “foreign dub with new subtitles” route is the best way to go about it. Sure, Jar-Jar does appear in later canon material, but you can just assume he learned English in between movies (which would explain his dialect).
That’s fair. I also agree that replacing all of a character’s dialogue with AI feels weird, and if someone were to go the route of redubbing Jar Jar, it should be with a real voice actor (just like a foreign dub of a movie).
Personally for me, I think AI should work as a tool to make possible things that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. For example, JJ had a bunch of deleted scenes of Leia from The Force Awakens that he wanted to use in TROS but probably couldn’t because the dialogue didn’t work with the new plot. If a line of AI dialogue would have allowed that scene to be used (along with shots of Carrie’s real performance), I imagine that JJ would have done it. To make a deleted scene work in Restructured/Starlight, I ended up mashing together several of Leia’s lines with new mouth movements, but that allowed for the inclusion of my favorite Leia character moment in all of the sequels, one that absolutely deserved to be in the movie.
So yes, AI is a tool, and it is up to us to use to use it to enable more human performances and storytelling, not to impoverish them.
I… Mostly kinda sorta agree with this. On the one hand, I think there is a benefit to utilizing AI voices. I watched a fan mix called Three F—ing Bears, which utilizes a Sylvester Stallone AI for the narration of the edit. I enjoyed it a lot, and I recommend it to any Rambo fans who want a good laugh. For me, that edit is a good example of AI done right.
On the other hand, I also get where Starkiller is coming from, and I think AI voices are best used sparingly. It’s the same way I feel about CGI. Movies that keep CGI to a minimum (like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2) often come up with incredible CGI that still holds up to this day. But often times, the temptation to overuse and abuse CGI is strong. So it is with AI voices. I suppose if there’s a way to utilize an AI Jar Jar that works well, then so be it. But at the same time, I wouldn’t recommend AI as the end-all-be-all solution to the problem.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the most boring and unwatchable Quentin Tarantino film ever made. It’s a film that’s nothing more than 2 hours and 5 minutes of setup followed by 35 minutes of payoff. The only reason people like it is because of those last 35 minutes and that’s it.
Almost done commenting my way through the nice, happy, family-friendly scene at the mansion, meaning that I’m now more than halfway through recording the commentary track.
I know I said I was done with the color grading, but I have one more idea. I decided to play around with the Fusion features in DaVinci Resolve and see how they worked, and as it turns out, there’s a film grain effect on there. Naturally, I couldn’t resist. Plus, the film grain is customizable too. I was able to increase the size of the grain by about 25% to accommodate the film being shot in Super 35. I was also able to change the x and y sizes, so that the grain looks like anamorphic grain, too! The only downside is that the grain is easy to see. I had to reduce the strength down to roughly 0.35/5.00 in most clips. Even then, there’s a possibility that it’s too noticeable. I have uploaded this sample clip of the opening to give everyone an example of what the film grain looks like so far. Keep in mind that this feature is customizable, and I’m able to change the size, strength, roughness, and offset of the grain, so none of this is final. I recommend watching the video in 1080p for best results.
EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure there’s a deleted scene with a handful more lines, so that should help some.
You are correct!
It’s a little choppy (so many cuts, especially noticeable before the action starts) but it’s a definite vanilla-like improvement.
I’d still like to see some of the more radical openings come to fruition.
I can fix a lot of the choppiness simply with some audio crossfades, especially since I made a few of those cuts already in my edit of Episode I (namely the Jedi lightsaber fight scene).
Commentary track is now a work in progress!
I think I like it. AotC is a better film for the symbolism than it is for the story and the colour grading helps with that.
Glad to hear you like it, Artan! 😊