Hal 9000

‘Scuse me a second, I just need to vent.
Working with FCP7 has become a nightmare. I have many nested sequences which evidently wreak havoc. I can barely launch the app and open the project files for these things. I save compulsively, and have managed to get Ep1 ready for output aside from waiting for the crawl.
I’ve tried copying only what is needed from the project files into new ones, but that isn’t any help since the things I need are exactly the culprit: heavily nested sequences. I had a few hours today but I wasn’t able to accomplish anything because it crashed 90% of the time I tried to open up the project.
Once I get the right moonlight, I can accomplish a few things, so I’m willing to put up with this in order to output this final version, wait a short while to make sure no glaring errors made it past me, and then use the Force to burn it down. The actual work to be done is fairly simple, but enormously frustrating. I don’t know, it’s like trying to put together a bicycle from a kit while the house is burning down. Or yelling at a rock to get it to sing.
Be patient; this may not get done before I need to be away from it for a considerable time, but it’ll get done when it can. My goal is to at least have everything configured for output before then, even if I’m waiting for crawls and other stuff. (I need to manually recreate all the visuals for Ep2 the way I did for 1 and 3 already, which is okay but time consuming, provided the app will cooperate.)

LordZerome1080 said:

listen to RU 08.

Well, what did he say?

The balcony scene isn’t looking too good. It doesn’t work to be placed between Grievous speaking with Palpatine and the nightmare, because Anakin and Padme already should have a rift between them by this point. Which means the only place it can really go in this edit is right after they have their conversation about her being pregnant. However, the transition into the scene is a little awkward since we transition from them to them. And the transition out of the scene is very awkward since there’s no nightmare to dramatically fade/octopus-wipe to.
If it weren’t for the necessary restructuring to meet LOE’s goals, and the basic structure were intact, I would agree with you guys about including it.

That being said, it seems I could at least borrow some of their chuckling to include over another scene, ala NFBisms. What do you guys say to including the necklace scene in Episode I, knowing full well that it never shows up again? (Anyone want to try rotoscoping it around Portman’s neck in the Boleyn footage?)

Here’s the balcony scene to prove I’m not making things up:
https://vimeo.com/250727175
password: jump

Should not be a problem, though I honestly don’t know when I’ll be able to get to it with everything going on in my world at the moment. It WILL get done, HOPEFULLY this weekend. I APPRECIATE your help VERY much.

I think that looks pretty good. The only problem is that you can see some heavy artifacts in their faces during their close-ups. There’s really not much to do about that, I suppose. Perhaps the BluRay would be a better source than the schorman HDTV preservation. I’ll get that scene ripped as soon as I am able to; hopefully it will have less video noise and therefore less artifacting as we mess with it.

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