Hal 9000

Interesting idea, and I agree about Anakin practically turning to the dark side at that point. And Padme’s character is shot as soon as she goes along with Anakin after knowing what he did. As I was working on V1, I initially planned to have Schmi already be dead when Anakin arrived on Tatooine.
That’s an interesting idea, though I don’t think it’ll be good for my edit in particular.

I’m skeptical of that coming across well, to be honest. I’ll be leaving that scene transition as it has been all along for this project.

Nah, I am going to leave that as it is, for the reasons I did so originally.

Agreed. It would have been great to have, but I can’t imagine rescuing the existing footage we have.

I joined at 13 in 2003 and I’d probably cringe myself inside out if I were to read what I posted back then.

I think that’s not that bad, not far from what I ended up doing before. I also desaturated the colors somewhat because at night that information isn’t really observable. During at least one shot the gradient around them makes them appear to be angels.

Which might be fitting? lol

And I would very much appreciate a sunset mock-up to give that idea a try.

That’s an awesome idea, just had to say.

NeverarGreat said:

The settings would need to be adjusted for each shot.

Sunset would be an easier time than night for sure, but since I just finished it, here’s the final video for the scene at night:

https://mega.nz/#!2JNmTaYK!F7r_Ozv2KWMkxPJVSXdPquFV6G32ApoA0kL8QDD0GJI

Not a bad attempt, though the outlines around items and people are very pronounced. I wonder how it’d look, though, brightening general areas rather than tightly targeted items, with a very large gradient. There is a lot of contrast between these objects and the background. And obviously I am okay with the footage stylistically being twinged blue to telegraph, perhaps too strongly, that it’s nighttime.
Looking forward to DominicCobb’s, then we ought to be able to think about sunset vs twilight vs night vs whatever.

All very cool ideas, but as hokey as the scene is in ROTS, it’s absence feels off to me.

And, Mala, I don’t have time at the moment to respond to each, but many of your suggestions for Ep2 will be either attempted or implemented. Not the droid factory, though. 😛

I haven’t been able to download your edit, but was curious about the droid torture scene. Then cutlist suggests the gonk droid doesn’t scream anymore, but I wonder if the sound has been replaced with something else or simple removed.

I give the 2008 Clone Wars series a “practically unwatchable 4/5 of the time” stamp. There is occasionally something interesting, but the whole thing is ugly and annoying.

I do really like the 2003 microseries, though it’s all style and nothing important. Almost the inverse.

Rebels was okay at first but I got sick of it partway through season 2 and gave up. I think the last thing I saw was a space whale jumping to lightspeed, and I don’t think it was a hallucination, either. I can imagine enjoying Rebels as a way to spend time with a kid or something.

JEDIT: Oh, and hopefully the Solo movie doesn’t suck.

Sweet, dude, congratulations!

I rather like the sunset approach. Would the settings you used for your TFA Starlight clips be applicable to this?

Twilight sounds about right, ideally, so I am looking forward to DominicCobb’s approach. I hope to be able to spend a little time actually working on Ep1 tomorrow, now that I finished actually recreating V4.2 in my NLE over the course of a few hours. Tedious, but at least nothing was truly lost. Hopefully Ep2 and Ep3 aren’t similarly affected. I’m going to convert Ep3 to ProRes overnight, since I couldn’t really do that while I was working in my app.

MalàStrana said:

Hal 9000 said:

I will still keep the underwater sequence out of the edit […]. It’s the Canto Bight of TPM. 😛

Ouch! That’s mean to Johnson… or is it mean to Lucas ? (I really don’t know 😄)

Lol, there’s a good Rorschach test for ya. Wasn’t trying to be insulting to one over the other, just that they are roughly analogous.

^ DominicCobb, I will play with your idea for the apartment scene! That might be a good way to do it.

I’m not holding my breath, but if something better than the existing ROTS Death Star scene is presented, I’m at peace with leaving it at that. When in doubt…

And thank you, Dominic and Neverar, in advance for working on the colors for that. That’ll be the single biggest improvement, I’m sure.

Work on Episode I took on a frustrating wrinkle, as I’ll manually have to piece together most of the video stream for an unknown reason. Doable, but will take time. But I’m on it. Hopefully AOTC and ROTS aren’t similarly affected, but I will find that out later. I only really have good disk space to let one movie’s worth of junk be converted to ProRes at at time anyway.

Yeah, I know it’s far from ideal, but the Death Star will have to stay for the final version. See above for the former footage featuring Coruscant, and please feel free to overlay it for yourself. Nothing would even be thrown out of sync, just re-mux and enjoy!

Without going into too much detail, I agree about the “entire planet” line and “the situation has become much more complicated.” The rest… no thanks. 😃

Please do, however, send me the samples you mention. I don’t think I’ll use the one about Jar Jar and the “secret place,” since we wouldn’t have seen their underwater home anyway. I will still keep the underwater sequence out of the edit, for the reasons I took it out to begin with. It’s the Canto Bight of TPM. 😛

EddieDean said:

Hal, your 4.2s are my archival versions, and I love everything you’ve suggested for 4.3.

The only thing I’m just not sure about is the Emperor, Vader and Tarkin looking out on a prototype Death Star, especially one with the dish on the equator.

Firstly, a prototype Death Star has exactly the same issue as the real one - that it’s just part of the slideshow where pieces are put into place to line up with the OT.

Secondly, there’s nothing in the films that suggests a prototype was ever created, so I think it adds something new to the world without adding anything new to the plot, or any meaningfulness to our characters.

Thirdly, I think the reveal of the Death Star is really beautifully done in Rogue One (and well set up in Rebels, for those that watch that), and that seeing it early takes away from that.

For these reasons I think either of your initial ideas work (leave it, or replace with Coruscant) - personally favouring Coruscant.

EDIT:
One question though - while you are revisiting your edits, could you please consider releasing identical versions but retaining the original titles of the films in the crawls? I respect your right to put your mark on them, and to recognise them as significantly changed movies - plus I’m not a huge fan of the original titles - but personally I’d like to pretend that yours are the master versions as originally released. (I hope you take that as the compliment it’s intended as.)

As much as I like the idea, I don’t think Coruscant works. The Death Star is for the best, unfortunately.
This, and the crawl thing, could be easily remedied if you are not opposed to doing a slight bit of editing on your own.

Here’s the Coruscant footage:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2lsYRKXLjL9VDBENFBydVJBck0

And here are exports of the prior versions of my crawls with original titles:
https://mega.nz/#!k5RgySRK!TC1avnNyi4-S_4qFuxIoqaY_f83Hm7bBcWmGLP9R4Fc
https://mega.nz/#!tk5XAJ4S!K3rRiBe-RuluoUQmYapJ_yWH3iJcplpNQ2mX7SvXglc
https://mega.nz/#!M5AxkJJI!Hf7fMMi1T5kooHf-tNsCu1S3wOd_LSNI8uwzw4URC0Q

Mala,

• I’ll see about Obi-Wan’s jumps. No promises, but when I get to that point I’ll give it another chance.

• I will experiment with placement of the balcony scene, though keeping it in its original place wouldn’t be a bad thing if that’s the best place to leave it.

• Apartment scene. Doing it the way you suggest would have us transition awkwardly from Anakin to Anakin. I think that scene will probably remain omitted.

DZ-330,
That’s an interesting idea, but I am not sure there’s a good gap there to place such footage. One thing that would be absolutely incredible, though, is if someone is able and willing to add the necklace to the Boleyn footage.

Here is the nighttime scene for anyone to take a stab at. I’ll edit the prior post to include it:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ijkUtOTbBsQu3OChi0hRm9FMjU3tdq0K

Absolutely, yes.

^ The weird G and Y should be fixed by a new crawl, and I’ll make sure to check before including them. 😉

Thank you for the suggested rewording, but it’s actually a quote from the back cover of the book Labyrinth of Evil. I think it’s be very believable it could have been in a theatrical crawl.

Thanks, DominicCobb. I just looked up your clip and I think that should work pretty well.

Mala, let me take each of those in turn:

• Obi-Wan jumping out of cockpit. It’ll probably stay out, since its so cartoony. I think it’d only be missed due to having already been familiar with the original.

• I think I edited the elevator sequence like that but felt it was too abrupt without something to cut away to in between.

• Balcony scene. Well… I suppose the balcony scene could work. It would be a way to include a very subtle appearance of the necklace, and enhance the tragic aspects of Anakin’s story. It would come at the cost of slightly undercutting a powerful cut from Palpatine’s “…a new apprentice…” to Anakin’s nightmare. I’ll think about this one, but it might be a good idea if I reinstate the necklace in Episode I to let that scene feel solid.

• Opera scene. Sure, why not. Lucas gets back in. I can’t remember why I removed it, but it was probably just because I could. That’s a theme throughout this V4.3. 😉

• Apartment scene. I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure where else the third rebellion deleted scene would go and that scene’s second half would have to be removed anyway. I think it’ll need to remain out.

• Boga and Grievous. As much as I like Kerr’s edit I think mine will stay as it is in this regard.

• Palpatine still alludes to Anakin’s fear about Padme, capitalizing on (maybe) planting nightmares and stoking them. What’s important is that Anakin doesn’t mention it to his friends, or even Palpatine in his pledge scene. By removing Palpatine’s mention of Padme in this earlier scene, I think we risk muddying the waters too much.

• I think it’d feel abrupt to remove that much of Mace and Anakin’s conversation over Palpatine. This dialogue lets us see ‘principle photography Anakin’ advocate for his idea of justice before acting on it.

• I can’t quite picture the scene well enough without having it in front of me, but I will experiment with removing he lines about the senators. I agree with you in principle; just need to see if it can work practically.

• Not sure how well it would play to have just the first shot of killings in the Temple and a closeup of Anakin. I will play with this. Maybe it would work being placed between Padme crying and Bail arriving there.

• “YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE.” I’m open to persuasion on this point, though I like omitting it in order to keep things personal, and I’ll likely keep it that way.

• Removing Mace’s “…putting them together.” Hmm… not sure what the payoff to this would be, or a reason not to. I’ll try it and see how it does. Might do it.

• Padme will still name both kids, since this is a prequel.

I have another request (and I’ll edit this into the prior post).

If anyone can take the following shots and bridge them together near-seamlessly, I’d use it. I wanted to do it this way before but couldn’t blend their very close ending and beginning. I’ve joined them together in the clip below, and you can clearly identify the frame at which the second shot begins. The precise sync should not be a problem when joining them. (A few frames can be added or, not as great, removed.)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gb5tAvq2HVSA5N70QXP6idaTOVJNybVn

Here’s Alderaan, for reference:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1W6YkwC494f0SD9OSh6ZHzR_LgUFdkByV