Hal 9000

Use an AI voice clone to have Finn say to D-O, “What’s your story, roundy?” (Instead of, “So, where you from?”)

Might be the power of suggestion, but Hayden looks more like Sebastian Shaw nowadays.

timdiggerm said:

It would have been nice to save the lightning for the end of ROTJ, in as much as it makes Palpatine’s attack on Luke all the more crazy and horrific if you’ve never seen it used before. It would have been far better, IMHO, if Palpatine had never been involved in any combat at all until ROTJ.

To be fair, you could say that about a lot of things.

I’d like to request a variant that doesn’t explicitly make it a “one-shot” because my project and perhaps others would need one in order to use this change.

You’re saying that you see Rey’s moment post-hangar as her realizing that when she completes the necessary, galaxy-saving mission they’re on she’ll be corrupted in the process and become evil? I guess that’s a fair read, but isn’t fed to the audience real clearly.

Sherlock, I’ll try the order of scenes on the destroyer you suggest and see how it plays. Same surrounding Ach-To.

I did not apply LUTs to this workprint, as I have to do that last. But don’t worry, it’ll look the same as the regular version. Also, I don’t actually have a fixed version of that one shot from poppa. If he does send me one I’ll use it but otherwise I’m not bothered by it.

And editing these subtitles is going to be glorious fun with how haphazard and jumping all around I’ve handled this…

It wouldn’t be the only unavoidable hiccup of the idea, and I did minimize the gap so it’s less like she’s mesmerized by the ship and more that she noticed it and then they’re all surprised by the remaining trooper. Also, I think it’d important to keep the whispers associated closely with the knife itself, in order to continue to get away with the compass removal while propping up the corpse of the legitimacy of the plot device.

And welcome!

Hey, I like that! Totally works for me. Almost want to replace the Rey Palpatine version, but it’s probably better to leave it about her parents.

I figured the Luke snippet would offer… something… to the “I will earn your brother’s saber one day” line.

This is a super simple alteration, just dropping two short snippets in place of what’s there in the main version of Ascendant. It does not reinvent the wheel.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AlSM2HL3qXIR-PUxnxHCdHlgVqwQQqd3/view?usp=sharing

All good ideas. For what might literally be three seconds of time to fill, I’m sure there’ll be something that’ll work well enough.

Wow, Nev, I’ve been a slacker on keeping up to date with this project lately but that Senate idea is compelling. Really hoping it turns out. It’s just what is missing from Restructured, as you highlight. The idea would be that they did “listen” to Leia’s emissary, but it was too late. We see their amassed ships be destroyed along with the Hosnian system overall, but a few could have launched to be there by the start of TLJ.

Would you mind sending me the most current version of that, Nev? I’ll play around with adding an extra like 5 seconds to that vision and see what I can come up with.

Ah, that’s important!

Thanks!

The blue lightning I would just chalk up to artistic choice and palantir-ish misdirection.

I could see about tightening Rey’s reaction shot as you describe and see how it plays.

And I’ll see about Rey’s lips during that moment. Could probably just use less of that shot and more of another, but hard to say until I can sit down to look.

Anyone who has the current link to my SW stuff now has access to the workprint. It’s at the root level of the Star Wars folder.

Looking to make sure it’s coherent and nothing was missed. Not really looking for big ideas, but the implementation and content of affected scenes. It’s not a V3, just an alternate version. Thanks in advance.

Nev, it’s great to see you keep improving this. That R2 clip was super good.

Rendering out a workprint for the Rey Nobody alternate version of Ascendant, thanks largely to Spence.

It’ll just be a low quality, non-color graded video to be able to see how the pieces fit together. Once it’s finalized, I’ll proceed to reapply the LUTs manually to the entire film and sort out the jigsaw puzzle of all the subtitle files that’ll need to be synced up again.

Here’s the change list:

• Thanks to Sir Ridley, a different version of the same crawl is used in order for the title font to match TLJ (hugely important)
• The hint about Palpatine’s ability to possess (certain?) people is moved back out of the opening sequence and where it originally belonged, for clarity’s sake given that Kylo no longer has an ace in the hole of knowing Rey’s parentage
• Removed Rey sensing her parents during her first Force vision where she sees the Sith throne (could perhaps use a bit more, but it’s serviceable)
• During Kylo and Rey’s Forcetime conversation right after Rey meets the village girl on Pasana, removed a line or two that are moved to the duel in Kylo’s quarters
• Removed Rey saying she’s sees Ochi’s ship before
• Yellow lightning, to add a little distance from what was intended (in-universe logic aside) to tie her into Palpatine (using work by skenera two years ago)
• Used Spence’s version of the duel in Kylo’s quarters, and restructured the lead-in from Poe and Finn similarly (used Spence’s literal audio from the sequence as he provided it)
• Used Spence’s version of the hangar revelation scene (again used lifted audio from Spence)
• Removed Rey’s lines, “He killed my father… and my mother” (last instance of using audio right from Spence)
• Restructured one scene around the Ach-To sequence, also removing Finn sharing his inference that Palpatine was seeking Rey as a child
• On Ach-To, removed dialogue about Rey’s Palpatine heritage
• Removed several lines of dialogue as Rey and Palpatine converse, following Spence, though also removing line, “She will take her revenge.”

The ending will not be altered from the regular version of Ascendant. It’s the same ol’ Ascendant, just that Rey is never established to be descended from Palpatine, and that her parents presumably are as TLJ describes them and don’t factor into this story.

Icecream2448 said:

Please don’t cut Rey’s ugh.

Okay.

I don’t think messing with that would make for a seamless result and it’s not a big deal.

And to clarify: this isn’t a V3, just the Rey Nobody alternate version.

The blue lightning has an overall heavy blue cast even without the blue lightning so I think it fits okay as a vision or even misleading implication that it’s the huge blast we see put right after it.

And for the opening vision I had just snipped out the first bit about her parents so that it is just her “vision about the throne of the Sith and who was on it.”

Heh. I guess it goes without saying!

And I try to stick loosely to official versions of shots without having a good reason to deviate, because otherwise where do you draw the line?

I’d love to use Adywan’s version of that X-Wing shot, make no mistake.

And I’m open to ideas about Mos Eisley, although I like what’s in my current version. It’ll depend on what Dat_SW_Guy presents to work with, too.

Yeah, it at least leaves room to wonder about such things because the sabers are two different colors at all. Good read on it.

The primary reason is to help clarify the saber in the third act when two blue sabers are exchanged and tossed all around against a heavy blue backdrop.

Especially with the inclusion of Leia capping off the sequence of ghostly voices, the purple color makes it clear whose saber Rey wields.

Carrie had indeed expressed a preference for that color when asked, when Leia’s lightsaber was merely a hypothetical.

Also, from a saga-only perspective at least, this saber was introduced and dispatched with in this film. Given the history as shown, it would seem there’d be minimal squinting required to have this change cohere well enough with future media.

I thought maybe this would be a fan edit done with a tiny time budget. Something like, “I prepared the source but only did 30 minutes of NLE work before exporting.”