GMatias

TL;DR = New test clip available - the end of the attack on Scarif with Poe Dameron + Kylo Ren: https://vimeo.com/687559188

This edit presents the RONE footage as something happening concurrently with the Sequel-era material. So, for instance, the Yavin IV group is another command under the Leia’s larger organization. In addition to just having the story cut back & forth, I have them interact as much as possible. Which is to say, not much on a direct level, but I have worked out a few connections I’m rather proud of. And as you can tell from the title of this test clip, having Poe & Ren participate at Scarif is one of them.

Couple of context notes for the story up to this clip:

• As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve replaced the Death Star in the RONE storyline with the TLJ dreadnought.
• The Rogues are going to Scarif to get the plans for a decoder device they need to bypass the hyperspace scramble shield Tarkin Base is cloaked in.
• When Jyn’s report makes it back to Leia (sometime between the Eadu mission and the Yavin meeting), and then Leia hears the Scarif attack is actually happening, she sends Poe to be a courier for decoder plans. The idea being it’s too important for that info to be in one location; his job is to get a copy and bring it back to her location on Dantooine and then both groups (Yavin & Dantooine) can work at cracking the encryption on the info, etc.
• Poe shows up but, being Poe, can’t hang around waiting while Republic pilots are dying, even though that’s his mission. So he takes part in the fight and manages to stay alive long enough to get the info. (Incidentally, this takes the place of the Dreadnought plan that Leia demotes him for. So I get to keep the slap and the demotion even though I’m using the attack footage… somewhere else…)

All these clips are still works-in-progress, but this one is the most in-progress yet. There are a few VERY placeholder VFX shots and a few places where I still need to either matte out some visuals or finish rescoring/refoleying. I know this. But if the consensus is this edit just doesn’t work as-is, then I’d rather not expend the time sprucing it up.

RogueLeader said:

Hmm, it seems like it would be a lot of work. Is the idea to tie Krennic in with Starkiller (Tarkin) Base? I’m just trying to think if there would be another scene that might could work to convey what you’re trying to do without all of the needed VFX.

I don’t absolutely need the scene, but I really like that it sets up Krennic’s position in the story and his antagonism with Tarkin. I’ve moved the RONE material to the Sequel Era and swapped out the Death Star with the Starkiller cannon and the dreadnought / Star Destroyers.

So Hux&Kylo are chasing after Bodhi, not the Skywalker map. When Hux finds out Bodhi is on Jedha, he sends the Dreadnought to pull a Death Star strike on it. Which leads to this scene where Tarkin says they are giving one of Krennic’s weapons a field test and it better not screw up.

I could build some of this info into the DS viewing room bits before & after where Jedha gets shot (in my version they’re offsite watching a telemetry feed from the Dreadnought making the attack, not onboard the DS), but it would be nice to have this extra scene to let that breath a little. Not a decision I’m making today but getting closer to having to make a choice on it.

Thanks!

VFX opinions needed:

I’m really trying to keep this Tarkin scene from RONE in my edit but the trick is that it takes place well after not only Tarkin is dead but the Death Star is kaput. I feel like I can get around the Tarkin part by having him say he’s a clone and just moving on, but having the DS in the background is much trickier.

Trying to cut out/pan&scan the parts where the DS is super noticeable results in a mess, so I was planning on replacing the window view with a nighttime view of mountainy terrain similar to Starkiller Base (called Tarkin Base in my edit) to hopefully match the light from the view coming in.

I would mask off the windows and track those opacity masks in the various shots to have a lower layer with the new background come through. I’d also try & match the focus & blur of that new background to the surrounding original in each shot.

My question is: does that sound reasonable? Am I missing anything super-obvious?

NeverarGreat said:

We just removed the frames used in Restructured.

That’s what I figured (and given how much work it was just for that, rightly so!)

This is probably a huge reach, but for the added scene with Leia & Snap on D’Qar (I think its from Jakku Message?), did NeverAr & Sir Ridley happen to take out the timecode for the whole scene or just the frames used in TFA:R?

T-202 said:

GMatias said:

New sample clip available: https://vimeo.com/682548733

Curious to hear feedback!

Man does this make me excited for the Sequel part of this edit but also the project as a whole! I thought the Rey and Kylo clip was crazy, each clip just gets better and better!

Thanks! Glad you dug it!

As someone currently eyeball-deep in TROS editing (no pun intended), seeing them without that sickly green tint AND not too red is a nice palette cleanser!

New sample clip available: https://vimeo.com/682548733

Curious to hear feedback!

SpenceEdit said:

I think you’re right. I love that Falcon shot form HAL’s edit, but it may not be fitting here particularly well.

I just updated it to make that change. It definitely works better. Eliminating the Falcon stuff make it a more powerful ending.

https://vimeo.com/681559817

I like that much better. I’d even think about taking out the duplicate shot at 00:16-00:20 to keep from diluting the final shot impact in even the slightest way. Maybe drag the following shot back to start at 00:16 and either let it run the extra 4 seconds to cover?

Everything I have available so far is linked in the second post. I should have the next sample video ready to post this weekend and I’ll definitely send a link to it your way!

Really looking forward to this project; I’m a huge fan of your ROTJ edit!

I personally think ending on Rey & BB8 in front of the twin suns is the stronger of the two sun visuals, so I would drop the Falcon shot and move the silhouette shot to the end.

JEDIT: Watched it again.

Not sure how to describe it, but I keep feeling a bit of a disconnect between Rey after she sees the Force ghosts and the Falcon shot. It’s like she has three emotional beats in this sequence but we’re only getting closure for two of them:

1: Lighting the saber
2: Seeing the Skywalkers
3: Seeing the binary suns

Yeah we know she’s in the Falcon, but I don’t think we make the same emotional connection to it as we do when we see her silhouette in front of the suns.

Plus it mirrors the original Binary Sun beat closer without the Falcon.

Well that was a really quick 7 months!

I’ve updated the first post with some new release information and bits about the overall structure.

Aside from a break around the holidays, work has definitely continued since my last post. But with a project of this size, I find it easier to maintain enthusiasm by jumping from interest to interest than working one specific ‘film’ until it’s done. And with all this material, there are sooooo many interest spots to jump to!

I do have the next sample video release planned for this weekend - the meeting of Kylo & Palpatine. It has a potential spoiler in it, but I’ve mentioned that twist a few times in other posts on OT so I’m not too worried about it getting out early.

I like it! The main thing I’m responding to is it now brings back more white into areas that my brain says should be whiter than what the grade was giving me before (mostly on the ships & ship interiors and the Crait saltland).

I vote for ROTJ as well.

Definitely keep these threads going, they are incredibly helpful and thought-provoking!

To me, almost all the blue shots feel less like a choice of color grade than the application of a blue filter, as opposed to the red feeling like a reddish grade choice. So I’d go with the red choice of these two, pulled back a little bit like Faraday said better than I did.

(Sorry if this has been brought up before on here - my thread searching fu is weak…)

This is probably less a radical change instead of just a noticeable one, but you could change the Death Star cannon color from green to red.

I can see why they wanted it to be a different color than the blasters to stand out more, but if you want to acknowledge the idea the Death Stars are powered by kyber crystals, then it’s not too much of a stretch to think of them as moon-sized Sith Lightsabers of Damoclese and therefore be red instead of green.

You might even be able to use that as another reason for Palpatine to be on the DS2; he’s the only Force user powerful enough to convert/bleed that large of an amount of kyber crystal to work for the laser.

And that might be more of a justification for Palpatine to keep building these things after they get blown up. Like Dr. Evil - “I want a friggin’ moon with a friggin’ lightsaber to strike down my enemies!”

Great job amobex! I was planning on including some of that TLJ dialogue when Rey was starting to heal Kylo’s lightsaber wound, but it certainly works just as well here, if not better. And I like the visual snippets as well to go along with it. The whole thing makes it much more grounded in her journey.

Same.

CaptainFaraday said:

First of all, why bother doing that? Well, I think that it helps drives a few points home. It shows us the disparity between Qui-Gon’s ethics and those of the Jedi Council, instead of simply having Obi-Wan tell it to us later on Coruscant. It makes it clear that (in Mrebo’s words) “she is left behind because the Jedi don’t make allowances for parents tagging along,” but also that Qui-Gon is the kind of person who would free her anyway, while still understanding the difficult position it puts them in. All of this supports the thematic idea that Qui-Gon would have been the right person to train Anakin successfully, because he isn’t as dogmatic and black-and-white-morals minded as the Jedi Council. Anakin needed understanding and flexibility, which the Jedi didn’t offer - but Qui-Gon certainly seemed like he would have done.

It also means that Anakin’s frustrations with the Jedi arbitrarily forbidding him from seeing his mother in AOTC serves to highlight the whole “Qui-Gon and his lackadaisical approach to the Jedi Code was the right way to do things” idea, by absolving Qui-Gon of being (in retrospect) a complicit arm of the Jedi Council when it comes to Shmi, and Anakin’s attachment to her.

These are really good points!

This sounds like a great idea…

I would say, one thing that I think I probably should encourage in the threads is staying on target and avoiding the particularly radical ideas. I’m talking things like comedy versions, black and white, heavy metal, replacing the language with an alternate track and doing it all as subtitles, etc etc.

…up until that part 😃

(I kid! I kid!)

It’s still a really great idea! And I’m sure a lot of these topics & spinoff discussions will still be beneficial for us radicals, even if we aren’t working on something directly related to that particular idea. Sometimes a change of pace or line of thinking can get you seeing something else in a new light. I’m looking forward to taking part!

Good luck with the move!

I think the regrade looks great. The orange look really helps bring out the details in a lot of places, a lot more than I expected.

Been away for a bit and missed the V2 release, but I’ve had a chance to catch up now and I echo the rest of the folks who find themselves in awe of what that release accomplishes.

Even if you aren’t a fan of the theatrical release, I don’t see how one could argue ASCENDANT doesn’t do a fantastic job of helping the film get out of its own way and be the best possible version of the story. You could even say it’s better than the best possible because I don’t see how anyone could have expected something as fitting as jonh’s Force Ghosts to be fan-sourced, for instance. Or the new puppet show, which might be my favorite addition. I’m still stunned over how seamless its integration is.

I’ll get to the commentary in a second, but someone mentioned in it (SP?) how the way this edit came together mirrored the arc of the ending fleet battle, and I couldn’t agree more. Seeing all this come together over the months I’ve followed this thread absolutely informs how I feel watching this edit, and positively so. In a weird way, this is now my favorite SW edit because so much was done by so many, guided & curated by Hal9000, against such an imposing obstacle.

And the new commentary is the icing on the cake. As someone who still listens to every fanedit commentary they can, I always appreciate new releases and what I can learn from them. And this one is no exception. But Hal9000’s also have the effect, when all 6 taken as a whole, of being their own story and having a kind of arc to them as well. Which makes this new commentary especially gratifying to hear because he shares it some of the major players for ASCENDANT and it just fits this especially collaborative project that much better. It was wonderful getting to hear Hal, MR, RL, SP, and PS (live via tape) talk shop about a project that came together as well as this one did.

What a fantastic gift this whole experience has been. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen!

hinventon said:

The exogol regrade looks pretty good. I like the Teth idea but sometimes the color bleeds into Rey.

Yeah, there are also some noticeable patches of green in the first few shot backgrounds. So if your intention is to not have the foliage be multi-toned, that’ll have to be tweaked, obviously. But I really like the effect in general and think it does exactly what you’re hoping for.

Congrats!