Hal 9000

Y'know, if they are following the germ of the (cursed) GL story treatments, I could picture the Luke-as-villain thing happening. George reportedly loved Dark Empire when it came out. For the record, I'd much prefer Luke to remain 'good,' though a gritty moral streak at the end (as rumored) would be okay.

When the Disney sale was news, I described a scene in my head of the final pieces being put in place. George is about to sign on the dotted line, and he hands Bob Iger the treatments. Iger is smiling and using his executive charm to politely send George out the door. As soon as he's gone, Iger tosses the treatments in the trash without looking at them.

I was about to suggest playing it during the next scene, as Anakin runs through the theater to reach Palpatine. That is, until I realized that scene doesn't follow the nightmare scene in the original film, only in my own edit.

I got the chance to sit down and watch the premiere last night, and I was mildly surprised by how decent it was. 

That's not exactly a glowing review, but I think this show might actually be somewhat enjoyable for me. I can picture myself taking the things I don't like in stride, rather than giving up on the show as I did with Clone Wars. 

I will say that this premiere was enjoyable, whereas Clone Wars' was not at all. 

I doubted they were. Thanks for the answers.

This thread may be pretty short if the answer is no.

Do the prequel DVD deleted scenes have any alternate language audio tracks, or are they only in the original English?

If you want to do a prequel viewing with a different fan editor for each film, you could use Seciors' Ep1, L8wrtr's Ep2, and my Ep3. (Ep 2 and 3 could be swapped.)

Mixing and matching like this is always problematic for continuity, though. Someone should really make a compatibility spreadsheet. TV's Frink has been a lazybones the past several years. Lazybones!

Erik Pancakes said:

HAL 9000 v2 the whole way for me. Seciors' Ep I is also a good alternative if you prefer deeper cuts (no Sidious in his version).

I would have preferred the production team had respected the broad strokes of the EU fans have interacted with for decades, but that would be a very messy situation for everyone. I'm still mildly disappointed we haven't gotten a list of a few story-group-approved EU novels to form a bedrock for the new canon, even if all post-ROTJ material has to be let go. 

I do feel bad for fans who have digested and enjoyed the EU for years. I know, "It's all fiction anyway," but they are having to move all their knowledge from the EU into a different realm and brace themselves to accept new continuity that overrides the old.

I've said it before, but I cite the mini-episode of Doctor Who "Night Of The Doctor" as an example of the kind of care I like to see for a franchise's spinoff material. Part of the fun of a "subcreation" world like that of Star Wars is making it all fit together with in-universe explanations. Massive retcons like this can be frustrating. That being said, it's for good reason: a slew of Star Wars feature films.

Even as I'm continuing to encode and upload v2 of Labyrinth Of Evil, I'm preparing small changes for the eventual v3 release featuring Emanswfan's regraded video source.

Because my cut does away with the duel between Palpatine and Yoda, I revisited the scene where Obi-Wan and Yoda find the security footage of Anakin slaughtering Jedi. It plays out very similarly now to Kerr's edit, removing dialogue about killing the Emperor and Vader. The way it plays out now, we do not get any indication that Yoda intends to do anything proactive other than to bide time. Obi-Wan, rather than tracking Anakin on a hit assignment from Yoda, now finds Anakin in order to confront (though not necessarily to kill) him. This, along with the change described next, eases the discrepency a bit between ROTS and Vader's line in Return Of The Jedi, "Obi-Wan once thought as you do."

Another related change will be to reinstate the dialogue between Obi-Wan and ANakin during the latter part of their duel. Allow me to offer an apologetic for this. I think their exchange has value. Obi-Wan tells Anakin he has failed him, offering a small hint at the regret that Ben expressed to Luke in Return Of The Jedi. Anakin retorts with, "I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over." In the theatrical ROTS this line was jarring because it didn't jive with Lucas' re-edit that played up Padme's impending doom as motivation for Anakin to turn to the dark side. In Labyrinth Of Evil, this line has context in which to function to cement the viewer's perception of Anakin's reasons for his turn. At least at this point in the story, Anakin seems to have forgotten about saving Padme and clung to the other reasons he had. Anakin's next line, "From my point of view the Jedi are evil," demonstrates that he has internalized Palpatine's teaching and is acting with a perverse sense of integrity. (Again, as opposed to the jarring way this dialogue played out in the theatrical cut.)

I don't know what you're doing with this scene, but here's an idea. As Obi-Wan walks toward Yoda from the security camera footage of Anakin, he could say, "I have seen a security hologram..."

'The Unarchiver' on my Mac. I can send you a myspleen invite if you'd like to get it that way.

It extracted fine for me. Is there another utility you can try?

I'll pull the zips out of moth balls and try unpacking them too.

Erik Pancakes said:

FYI - the v2 DVD5 that's up on MySpleen now is incorrectly labeled as "1080p." Thought you'd like to know.

 Thanks very much! I salute you.

*Gulp*

I shall double my efforts.

keep us appraised, and I hope it was just a fluke.

Please let me know if anyone else has this problem. I'll re zip and upload if the problem is with the files themselves.

Here's another vote for the brighter settings.

Sorry, I end up posting more at FE.org about this. 

That's weird about the stuttering with the audio. I don't know why that would be, or what to do about it. If I remember when ~v3 comes around, I'll re-encode it into whatever format the mkv's audio was. 

I have indeed worked with L8wrtr for a few things. He was very helpful in instructing me how to do the "lights off, lights on" effect for the Palpatine reveal. I also borrowed a few bits of his audio for the opening of Ep3 to remove droid voices. I don't remember the specifics, but I know I attempted to do what you suggested, and use bits of his audio in a few places. Rather than dig everything back out, I'm going to trust that I was diligent at the time. 

About the master deletion. My usual method of exporting is to use FCP7's "Share" feature. When that mysteriously stopped working, I took the internet-at-large's advice of exporting a self-contained mov at native settings, and then crunched that file down into the various release formats. So version 2 of LOE was exported in this way, and then I deleted the source ROTS file. This morning, my 720p encode finished, and it looks much better than it did before. There is still some slight aliasing, which would be there regardless. I'm happy with it and will be releasing it shortly. DVD5 and 1080p versions will follow. And when Emanswfan's sources are made available, I'll re-export my edits and treat them like gold. 

I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed it! The audio issue you mention is known to me, and is an unfortunate casualty of removing the battle droid voices. I think I was able to improve it somewhat for v2. 

I was regrettably hasty and deleted the master source file for ROTS, and it would be a big hurdle to reobtain it. I exported the full sized mov of the finished edit and am trying a few different settings to see what looks best. I may have overdone the grain and noise a bit for v2, but I plan to utilize Emanswfan's regraded source when it's available for a ~v3. 

Has anyone listened to v2's commentary tracks?

http://cosbystrikesback.ytmnd.com/

An oldie but a goodie.

I appreciate that approach. Some people would prefer to have them look as much like the OT as possible, and others not. For my fan edit project, which works under the philosophy that these are indeed prequels, it would be more appropriate to use the first version. I'm maintaining their prequel nature, so all I'm after is a filmic look. 

The buzz droids in that last clip is my favorite part. They look like they belong there, not like a CG addition.

I'm still very much looking forward to encoding my fan edits using these. Looking ahead, do you have an ETA for Episode III? And what are your plans for what's next? Would you do AOTC or TPM next? 

These projects never correspond to predictions of timing, but I hope I can have the trilogy ready for viewing in time for June of 2015. 

That looks gorgeous! It's full of movie magic, and a leap ahead of what you've shown before. I don't notice anything to complain about. I can be hasty at times but I'd say, "Cut! Print!"

What are you going to have the "long time ago" title card look like? Perhaps a dark blue like the OOT?