chyron8472 said:
You know, I always wondered about the scene where Luke's hand falls from underneath Cloud City. It always seemed to me as though his severed hand was not seen lying at or near the place where Luke stopped at after sliding through the tube when falling away from Vader. The "floor" underneath him opens up and then the hatch on the underside of the city opens to expel him; Luke grasps the antenna and then the camera cuts downward to let us see his hand and/or lightsaber falling, but we never see it falling or resting at any place before it is seen under the city.
It always made me wonder where it came out, and if it did come out at the same place Luke did at the same time Luke did, why we didn't at least see it falling out when the city's outer hatch first opened.
It may (perhaps) have taken a slightly different route than Luke did, but given that he sees it directly below him, it obviously ended at the same place, so why isn't it seen falling from the outer hatch (or perhaps being dislodged from the antenna)?
chyron8472 - The issues in your recent post were brought up a while back, and although the item that fell outside wasn't Luke's severed hand or lightsaber...I remember that adywan reckoned they could have both just bounced somewhere on the surface at the bottom of the chasm...
That's very plausible, and is the simple solution I like best...but I'd still like to speculate on a couple of things to do with this sequence, at this point...
Firstly, although the hand/lightsaber fell from a totally different spot compared to where Luke himself fell almost 2 mins. afterwards...I guess it's *possible* to believe that they could have both ended up going directly down one of the 'vent' openings in the shot below, like Luke did...although I'm not sure it would have necessarily been the same one as he did...
Alternatively...they *might* both have ended up lying somewhere nearby the 'vents' instead...after bouncing close to them at the bottom of the chasm - and considering how far away the 'vents' are from our viewpoint at this point, it's easy to just 'imagine' both the hand and lightsaber lying on the surface somewhere down there in the shot above...as they'd both be too tiny for us to see properly anyway...
Although that's the scenario I prefer to believe, I suppose adywan could even add either or both of them somewhere to the 'close-up' shot of the particular 'vent' below, if he wished to. The effect would be very subtle, as they would still be very small in this 'close-up'...but it might be a possibility to indicate them here, I guess - perhaps only visable at the last moment on the bottom left of the frame, when we pan down to the last screenshot shown... Just a thought.
Alternatively...whether or not the hand and the lightsaber seperated during their tumble down, or on hitting the surface...perhaps one of them then ended up bouncing off the surface and then into one of the 'vent' openings...while the other just bounced nearby, and is lying unseen somewhere 'offscreen' from the 'close-up' shot above...
...but *whichever* way you wish to 'imagine' it...even *if* either or both of them ended up going down any of the 'vent' openings at the bottom...I reckon there was plenty of time before Luke fell down (as seen in the 2 shots below), for it/them to tumble down and exit outside through the 'outer hatch' in the same way, unseen by us...
...that's *if* the 'outer hatch' happens to open and close quite regularly, of course...which I like to think it does. But personally, I'll continue to 'imagine' that they're just lying on the bottom of the chasm somewhere...
Which brings me to something else I'd like to speculate on too...
For a while, I used to assume that the piece that *supposedly* 'breaks off' the 'vane' when Luke lands on it, had been attached to the bottom of it initially...but since there's a red 'light' at the bottom tip of the 'vane' prop (which I've arrowed below)...this seems to indicate it's actually still intact and not 'broken off' there, after all...
...so what part of the 'vane' broke off?...and how big was it?
Well, since the bottom tip of the prop is intact, I guess it's safe to assume it *might* have been an attachment from one of it's thinner, horizontal 'arms' instead...and was *probably* on the small-ish side...as judging by the example below, all the other 'vanes' nearby are quite spindly too, and don't have any substantially large attachments on them...
...however...rather than 'breaking' the 'vane' in any way when he lands on it...the actual footage *could* even be 'imagined' to show Luke seeing a 'random' piece of falling scrap garbage that's just been dumped out of some other 'outer hatch' on the understructure, when he looks down...*despite* what the 'script' says!
But I certainly prefer to go with the notion of him *supposedly* 'breaking off' a small-ish, unseen 'vane' piece from somewhere on one of it's spindly arms.
Which leads me to another little issue concerning the falling item...
Firstly, Cloud City is an enormous structure with many 'skyscraper'-sized buildings on top...so the scale of it's long 'stem' underneath must be massive, as seen in this example below...
...however, although I like the overall effect it gives, I reckon the shot below kinda makes the falling item look huge, due to it's seeming close proximity to the gigantic 'stem'...and the fact that we can still clearly see it falling in the distance when it seems to eventually reach all the way down to the massive 'ball' section at the bottom of the 'stem'...
...which shouldn't be the case from the viewpoint shown here...because if this *was* meant to be just a small-ish sized piece from the 'vane' that was falling, it would have disappeared from our view long before it reaches the 'ball' that's a great distance below us...
Here's the shot from beginning to end -
...but I guess this is probably an 'optical illusion' caused by the 'forced perspective' matte...and I'll just have to 'imagine' that the 'stem' is actually meant to look as if it's a far greater distance away from the side of the falling item, than how it seems...and that the falling item hasn't really reached anywhere as far down as the 'ball' yet during the shot!
Still, I reckon the shot above might have given a more effective illusion of the massive scale of the 'stem' in relation to the tiny size of the falling item in the foreground...if it had shown the *presumably* small-ish 'broken' piece of 'vane' entering from the top of the frame in 'close-up' to us initially...before quickly disappearing from our view altogether.
Here's a rough 'mock-up' of the kind of thing I'm getting at -
The shot could have started off something like this perhaps ...
...and the small-ish piece of 'vane' would rapidly get smaller...
...and then completely disappear out of sight around this point...long before it would seem to reach anywhere near the 'ball' at the end of the 'stem'...
...and for a few moments before the end of the shot, we would see only the 'stem' now and hear the sound of the wind...
...but I'm certainly okay with the original footage being an 'optical illusion' as I say.
And just another little thing...although I like the additional detail they give to the 'stem', those 3 red lights must be absolutely enormous in scale...
No real reason why they shouldn't be, I guess...but maybe they'd seem slightly less so, if they were placed at their current size, further up the 'stem', closer to the top of the frame where it's wider...as I've shown in my 'mock-up'.
Also, I'm not 100% sure about this...but it seems like there *might* be 2 more, less discernable red lights further down the matte of the 'stem', and another on the 'ball' itself...but the colour is a little dark on the SE, and I don't have the GOUT at hand to compare. But if there *are* 2 or more lights down there, perhaps they could be made to look a tad brighter...
These are no biggies, by any means, but I've added them to my 'mock-up' of the shot to see what you think anyway.
