JoyOfEditing

jkimm said:

JoyOfEditing said:

jkimm said:

Sounds like you’ve had quite the career. Your videos definitely have a professional touch to them. I especially like the storyboard part of the youtube vids.

Thought I’d have some fun with the AOTC duel and do a little trimming. Not that there’s anything wrong with what you have of course. Here’s a list of the changes:

•Cut Dooku force lightning Ben’s lightsaber
•Removed a few frames when Anakin lunges towards Dooku
•Cut several closeup shots of Anaking and Dooku duel in the dark
•Cut Dooku saying “you have interfered with our affairs for the last time”
•Cut Dooku looking up toward the ceiling
•Trimmed the back and forth force lightning. Now Yoda just catches the one streak.
•Cut front facing shot of Padme shooting ship
•Cut Yoda force lifting his cane

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-YCr2AzmFeDxDsZrSrDn1IAH213xNfG/view?usp=sharing

All righty. I’m so glad you sent me those changes, because for some reason it made me able to see the correct rhythm for the full sequence for the first time. Technically Dooku is trying to escape, so I re-engineered the sequence to feel that way, and tried to use the cutting style of Empire’s Duel with a bit of Duel of the Fates, and for the first time this baby really sings. I ended up using many of your ideas, and then adjusted them to work in the new sequence flow. All in I made a couple dozen changes from the last version. Here’s the new final (Hopefully): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iNnjVlAVJiM4OBWglNimLfbBLX7ngmBv/view?usp=drive_link

Great work buddy! Thanks for the help!

Whoa! Dooku actually looks like a badass now. Excellent work!

Hope you don’t mind if I nitpick one tiny thing. At 0:23, it looks like Dooku starts to raise his arms and is about to say something. I trimmed off a second to see what it looks like. What do you think?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_H6xBfWlpRX22zi5fLDa8Kguje8i9NvJ/view?usp=sharing

I almost did that too, haha! But I’m too fond off that fencing flourish Dooku does. Since his whole fighting style is based on European fencing, especially his take down of Obi-Wan, I wanted to keep that little detail in. The mouth movement you’re referring to was never a line, that’s just the face Sir Christopher was making, lol!

regularjoe said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

Interesting resequencing.
I chopped the entire Obi-Wan scene, there’s just too much reiteration and nothing really new said…except who the other Skywalker is.
I did some selective cutting when Luke and Leia are talking on Endor to stay in step with this.
Now, just like in TESB where Vader reveals his paternity to Luke, it’s Vader and the Force sleuthing out that Luke has a sister during their duel, he threatens to turn Luke’s sister and that puts him over the edge.
Leia now announces to the audience the brother/sister thing as the she and the Force open up to one another and she connects the dots.

I cut Leia’s reveal out of RotS, so that Ben scene is now the reveal, like it was originally. For the bit where Vader finds out about Leia. . . Hear me out. . . The ideal spot for that is actually during the scene where Luke turns himself in to Vader, specifically the shot where Vader silently stares off into space holding Luke’s lightsaber after Luke has just been put in the AT-AT. If you cut that scene like Vader is talking to himself as he turns away, “So you have a twin sister, your feelings have now betrayed her too.”, it plays exactly like the scene in IV where Vader senses Ben’s presence on the Death Star. The reason I think that works is that Luke just said goodbye to Leia (so she’s obviously on his mind), and Ghost Ben had warned Luke to be careful of his feelings about his sister, because they might betray him. The twin (pun intended) benefit of moving up Vader’s knowledge of Leia is that you can now recut the Throne Room Duel as a single extended sequence with no breaks (Bespin Style), brought on by the Emperor murdering Luke’s buddies with the Death Star laser, and Darth Vader’s final line to Luke, “Tell your sister, you were right.” hits with WAY more punch, because it means Vader was thinking about Leia this whole time, and Luke is just now finding out that his dad knew about his sister.

jkimm said:

JoyOfEditing said:

jkimm said:

Sounds like you’ve had quite the career. Your videos definitely have a professional touch to them. I especially like the storyboard part of the youtube vids.

Thought I’d have some fun with the AOTC duel and do a little trimming. Not that there’s anything wrong with what you have of course. Here’s a list of the changes:

•Cut Dooku force lightning Ben’s lightsaber
•Removed a few frames when Anakin lunges towards Dooku
•Cut several closeup shots of Anaking and Dooku duel in the dark
•Cut Dooku saying “you have interfered with our affairs for the last time”
•Cut Dooku looking up toward the ceiling
•Trimmed the back and forth force lightning. Now Yoda just catches the one streak.
•Cut front facing shot of Padme shooting ship
•Cut Yoda force lifting his cane

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-YCr2AzmFeDxDsZrSrDn1IAH213xNfG/view?usp=sharing

Okay. . . cutting out Dooku’s force lighting of Obi-Wan’s saber is sick as heck! And it really lines up with the tone that I’m going for. Imma steal that one, lol!

I also love the way you match cut the OTS shot of Padme shooting with the laser bolts going past Dooku’s window. It really paces up the intensity of that sequence in a great way. Imma steal that one too!

A lot of the other changes work well, so I’m gonna play around with them a bit, and then reupload my own revised version to same link, so you can take a look.

Great work, bro! Love it!

Thanks!

There are so many bits in the prequels that are unnecessary or just awkward. Even something as simple as removing the battle droid voices makes a huge difference. I’m curious to see how you edited the Anakin/Obi-Wan duel at the end of ROTS. I took a stab at it a while ago but was never quite satisfied. Might make another attempt after being inspired by your work.

It’s funny. The Battle of the Heroes is surprisingly hard to cut. It took me a ton of passes, but I finally landed on a version that I’m completely satisfied with. When I have some spare time, I’ll render it out so you can take a look. It’s closest in overall shape to Hal’s version if you’ve seen that one (He does the whole sequence in a single run), but I did a ton of fine tuning, especially to the transitions, so that it actually feels like it was designed as a single sequence.

jkimm said:

Sounds like you’ve had quite the career. Your videos definitely have a professional touch to them. I especially like the storyboard part of the youtube vids.

Thought I’d have some fun with the AOTC duel and do a little trimming. Not that there’s anything wrong with what you have of course. Here’s a list of the changes:

•Cut Dooku force lightning Ben’s lightsaber
•Removed a few frames when Anakin lunges towards Dooku
•Cut several closeup shots of Anaking and Dooku duel in the dark
•Cut Dooku saying “you have interfered with our affairs for the last time”
•Cut Dooku looking up toward the ceiling
•Trimmed the back and forth force lightning. Now Yoda just catches the one streak.
•Cut front facing shot of Padme shooting ship
•Cut Yoda force lifting his cane

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-YCr2AzmFeDxDsZrSrDn1IAH213xNfG/view?usp=sharing

All righty. I’m so glad you sent me those changes, because for some reason it made me able to see the correct rhythm for the full sequence for the first time. Technically Dooku is trying to escape, so I re-engineered the sequence to feel that way, and tried to use the cutting style of Empire’s Duel with a bit of Duel of the Fates, and for the first time this baby really sings. I ended up using many of your ideas, and then adjusted them to work in the new sequence flow. All in all, I made a couple dozen changes from the last version. Here’s the new final (Hopefully) version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iNnjVlAVJiM4OBWglNimLfbBLX7ngmBv/view?usp=drive_link

Great work buddy! Thanks for the help!

Phase3 said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Hey y’all! In response to a question posed on Adywan’s RotJ Thread about how easy/hard it is for Luke to start on Dagobah, and then go to Tatooine, I posted a link to my version of the opening of RotJ. It seems like some of y’all wanna talk about it, so I’m reposting it here so we don’t derail Ady’s Thread.

Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

Enjoy!

-JoE

Your restructuring flows very smoothly - it’s great! At first I thought how would you get around not explaining why Threepio is already in Jabba’s palace, but then again Lando is already there haha!
I would love to borrow some of your ideas for my own ROTJ edit! 😃

Cheers matey! Take whatever you like! Yeah, one of my main tweaks to Jedi as a whole is to make Threepio a bit more heroic. One of my favorite parts of the recut is when Leia and Threepio look over to at something. In the original it was Boba Fett nodding, but I changed it to a wide shot of Han Solo from the one of cut droid scenes, so that look now reads like: “There he is. We’re almost to the finish line.”

O00ll00O said:

I like the structure of your opening. The sequencing is vastly different in comparison to the original, but it makes a lot of sense.

I actually attempted to make an edit inside your edit. This is the first cut I’ve ever done, so let me know your thoughts. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y5ZUOb6-XaXDjLtnVwtdiNBEZeFayocU/view?usp=sharing

-Start the music a beat after 3P0 says “he agrees!”. I think that feels closer to the atmosphere of the cantina when everyone abruptly moves on after a conflict is settled. It’s also a little more chaotic with Chewy trying to yell over the music.
-Remove Landos helmet bonk on the ceiling
-Remove how long the shot of Lando pulling down his mask is. It’s way to in your face.

Yo! I really like your recut! Great job! It just goes to show you there are 100s of good ways to skin a cat.

I quite like the way you cut around the Chewie sequence. It’s very effective at getting rid of the helmet bonk, and the music cut is pretty smooth.

For my cut I would stick with what I have on all of those points, for sequence balancing reasons (if you pop up to #1633920 on this thread, I explain how that kind of editing works in detail). The back half of that Jabba sequence, I’m trying to throttle down the pace in order to move into a more contemplative Dagobah scene, so the helmet bonk (while a bit goofy), gives me the meta-pace I’m looking for. As a side note. . . I’m almost convinced George worked in a helmet bonk into all six of his films. . . I don’t know where they all are, but there are so many of them, I’m starting to think it turned into an intentional running gag by the time we get to the Prequels (See the Jango Fett bonk on Kamino).

Last thing: (Brace yourself this is gonna be super pedantic) The reason I personally wouldn’t tighten up the music cue the way you did, is because a Jazz (Jizz?) song of that type starts with a silent count, because the opening notes begin before the first “1”. So instead of “1-2-3-4-Bummmm-budum-budum-bum-bum” (Jedi Rocks from the Special Edition), it’s “1-2-3-(4)budum-(1)BumBum”. If you watch Max Rebo’s hand, he’s doing the silent count so the band can start on “4”. The silent beat that you cut is the beginning of the silent count. Basically, there’s no way a real musician could start that song as quickly as you cut it and have everybody come in on time.

PS Thank you mom for all of those stupid Clarinet lessons in High School. . .

Hey y’all! In response to a question posed on Adywan’s RotJ Thread about how easy/hard it is for Luke to start on Dagobah, and then go to Tatooine, I posted a link to my version of the opening of RotJ. It seems like some of y’all wanna talk about it, so I’m reposting it here so we don’t derail Ady’s Thread.

Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

Enjoy!

-JoE

.Mac. said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

So back on topic for ROTJ:R, personally, I’m always up for reading and seeing what all ideas people would like to share about it, so share anything about it you wish here, Joy! I’m sure Ady won’t mind any extra potential ideas/concepts, especially if they’re video clips where we can actually see how it looks and feels. I am one who believes this movie needs as much of our ideas together as possible, and from there Ady will pick what he feels is the best and most appropriate option. Btw, I hope people don’t get me wrong, I still very much like ROTJ and it will always have a special place with me (and through the hard work of preservationists, we’ll still have the original), but if we look at this film objectively and compare it to the previous two films of the trilogy, at least imho, it isn’t quite on par (for various reasons), which is why, if Ady is wanting and willing, I’m a proponent for some bigger changes and not just VFX updates that ESB:R only needed.

Ugh, and of course “it’s late, I’m in for it as it is!” as it’s a work night for me. TGIF though! I’ll definitely be checking out the above clip as soon as I get the chance and let you know what I think, Joy!

Hey! Glad you’ve been enjoying the videos! My cut doesn’t give a scruffy nerfherder about the canon (because I’m working from the perspective of being the editor who is setting the canon), so some of cuts are probably a bit too radical for the kind of thing Ady is doing, which I’m super excited about, especially for the B-Wings, baby! But any time any editor wants to use one of my changes, I’m always happy to help out.

My general take on RotJ is that I completely agree with HAL-9000 that RotJ is the first “Prequel”. All of the editing and storytelling problems present in the prequels are already on display in RotJ. However, I also agree with Hal that it has the potential to be one the best if not the best of all of George’s STAR WARS films. Basically, you have to completely overhaul Jedi’s structure and then delete a bunch of the minor story points to make the film feel focused like A New Hope. If you do that, Jedi really sings!

An example of what I’m talking about is in the clip I posted. If you recut the Tatooine sequence as a heist film, where you’re coming in in the middle of a plan in progress, the whole sequence suddenly works. Then if you use that structure to rework a bunch of the characters: Make Jabba more Godfather-y and competent, Threepio never gets “captured” he and Lando have been working in the background to take jobs close to Jabba. Han has full eyesight during the Sail Barge Brawl, so his shot on the tentacle is Han Solo being dope, rather than goofing around, Artoo also never gets capture and sneaks aboard the Sail Barge of his own accord (Threepio’s dialogue in that scene shockingly makes complete sense of that change), and if you completely overhaul Luke’s lightsaber skills with the editing techniques developed for the Prequels (think Arena Battle), he suddenly feels like a Prequel Era Jedi Knight like he should at this stage.

The terrible thing is my whole rework of the opening sequence is just so I can cut directly from the Emperor’s Arrival on the Death Star II to the Rebel Fleet massing near Sullust. That one change COMPLETELY overhauls the tone of Jedi, and gets the hype train rolling for the greatest of all Space Battles. That specific change would probably work really, really well with the incredible stuff Ady is going to do.

O00ll00O said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

I like the structure of your opening. The plots points are vastly different in comparison to the original, but they honestly make a lot of sense.

I actually attempted to make an edit inside your edit. This is the first cut I’ve ever done, so let me know your thoughts. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y5ZUOb6-XaXDjLtnVwtdiNBEZeFayocU/view?usp=sharing

-Start the music a beat after 3P0 says “he agrees!”. I think that feels closer to the atmosphere of the cantina when everyone abruptly moves on after a conflict is settled. It’s also a little more chaotic with Chewy trying to yell over the music.
-Remove Landos helmet bonk on the ceiling
-Remove how long the shot of Lando pulling down his mask is. It’s way to in your face.

Hey! I’m glad your giving editing a go! Tell ya what, lemme go ahead and repost this clip on my thread and we’ll chat over there. I don’t wanna sidetrack Ady’s Thread. 😉 When you see the repost, copy this response, and I’ll reply to that.

O00ll00O said:

JoyOfEditing said:

O00ll00O said:

Hey Joy, how’d you go about editing/editing around the Obi-Wan Vader duel in ANH? I’ve seen some people increase the playback speed, make quicker cuts, etc. You do anything like that? Or do you somehow remove the fight all together? I’d enjoy watching your take on that

I’m still fine tuning that sequence, but the short answer is cut it out entirely.

There’s several reasons why for me that’s the right answer, if like me you’re trying to do a recut of all six of George’s films.

1. The scene is unsalvageable. I don’t know if you saw my recut of the Empire Duel that I posted a while ago, but both that duel and the RotJ Duel can be brought into pretty close alignment with the Prequel Duels if you use the same editing techniques that Ben Burtt and his team used in the Prequels. There is no way to fix SC38 like that.

2. The scene is unnecessary. There is no essential dialogue or information delivered in that scene. Furthermore, the dialogue seems odd considering how the Battle of the Heroes ended. That duel is a fight between brothers, whereas the dialogue in SC38 feels more like a detached teacher/student relationship. This misalignment is another reason I would argue to cut it. Ironically Vader’s conversations to himself and Tarkin about Obi-Wan’s presence, and the look on Obi-Wan’s face when he draws his lightsaber while he’s sneaking around tell a much better story on their own without SC38.

3. I reworked the whole action around SC38, so that we don’t know that Vader and Ben are dueling until Luke does. If the whole sequence is restructured as a surprise reveal for the duel, the result feels shockingly natural and intentional from a filmmaking standpoint.

4. The new sequence actually makes MORE sense and to my mind is WAY MORE interesting without SC38. Vader tells Tarkin that “Escape is not Obi-Wan’s plan.” . . . Then what is Ben’s plan? I think Ben’s plan is to draw Vader into a duel to stop him from stopping Luke and his friends from escaping. Ben knows this will work because Vader wants revenge for what happened on Mustafar. I think Vader knows that this is Ben’s plan and doesn’t care because he hates Obi-Wan that much. That’s why he tells Tarkin that he must face Ben alone. He is determined to kill Obi-Wan himself. The smile on Ben’s face as he sacrifices himself, could now be read as Ben realizing his plan to use Vader’s hatred against him has worked, and he might also be basking in the irony that Vader’s son is slipping away right under his nose.

Does that all make sense?

2. Makes total sense. I agree, if you’re watching the movies in order, than most of that dialogue is redundant and a bit disconnected from what we just saw at the end of the prequels. I think that’s a really smart way to approach it with how you cut it. I imagine you’d trim Luke’s reaction to Obi-Wans death to be a little tighter too?

Yeah, I’m gonna try to cut it tighter.

1. Yeah I thought your Empire duel was fantastic! I liked a lot of your changes and mentioned I liked how much more intense Vader came out on the bridge among other things. Couldn’t ever find that one re-composited shot in the sequence for the bonus points though 😕 I actually just watched that cut again and thought the part where Luke falls in the carbon freezing chamber was done so much better. The original looks way more clumsy.

Cheers! There are like a million micro edits throughout that sequence to tighten it up. My theory is the main reason that the Prequels have tighter fight editing is they were edited on computers which allowed Ben Burtt and his team to try tons of cuts quickly until they landed on the perfect frame. One cut can often take me 15 guesses before I find the exact frame I’m looking for, and I can’t imagine I could be that precise on a KEM or a Moviola. . .

Watch the shot where Vader tosses the widget that kicks Luke out the window very carefully 😉

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

O00ll00O said:

Hey Joy, how’d you go about editing/editing around the Obi-Wan Vader duel in ANH? I’ve seen some people increase the playback speed, make quicker cuts, etc. You do anything like that? Or do you somehow remove the fight all together? I’d enjoy watching your take on that

I’m still fine tuning that sequence, but the short answer is cut it out entirely.

There’s several reasons why for me that’s the right answer, if like me you’re trying to do a recut of all six of George’s films.

1. The scene is unsalvageable. I don’t know if you saw my recut of the Empire Duel that I posted a while ago, but both that duel and the RotJ Duel can be brought into pretty close alignment with the Prequel Duels if you use the same editing techniques that Ben Burtt and his team used in the Prequels. There is no way to fix SC38 like that.

2. The scene is unnecessary. There is no essential dialogue or information delivered in that scene. Furthermore, the dialogue seems odd considering how the Battle of the Heroes ended. That duel is a fight between brothers, whereas the dialogue in SC38 feels more like a detached teacher/student relationship. This misalignment is another reason I would argue to cut it. Ironically Vader’s conversations to himself and Tarkin about Obi-Wan’s presence, and the look on Obi-Wan’s face when he draws his lightsaber while he’s sneaking around tell a much better story on their own without SC38.

3. I reworked the whole action around SC38, so that we don’t know that Vader and Ben are dueling until Luke does. If the whole sequence is restructured as a surprise reveal for the duel, the result feels shockingly natural and intentional from a filmmaking standpoint.

4. The new sequence actually makes MORE sense and to my mind is WAY MORE interesting without SC38. Vader tells Tarkin that “Escape is not Obi-Wan’s plan.” . . . Then what is Ben’s plan? I think Ben’s plan is to draw Vader into a duel to stop him from stopping Luke and his friends from escaping. Ben knows this will work because Vader wants revenge for what happened on Mustafar. I think Vader knows that this is Ben’s plan and doesn’t care because he hates Obi-Wan that much. That’s why he tells Tarkin that he must face Ben alone. He is determined to kill Obi-Wan himself. The smile on Ben’s face as he sacrifices himself, could now be read as Ben realizing his plan to use Vader’s hatred against him has worked, and he might also be basking in the irony that Vader’s son is slipping away right under his nose.

Does that all make sense?

honestabe said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Bingowings said:

Years ago I proposed that the film started with Luke on Dagobah completing his training by creating his lightsaber telekinetically. Yoda dies, having trained Luke and not just in mid sentence. Luke returns to Tatooine only to discover that in her inpatience Leia has already attempted to rescue Han and failed. Luke then has to rescue the rescue. It means shifting some scenes around and construction of new shots. But the technology to do so is almost upon us.

You actually don’t need new shots (If you assume Luke has been training the whole time and built his lightsaber sometime between V and VI). That’s pretty much how my cut runs. You just need a new crawl that says Luke is now a full Jedi Knight and will soon leave Dagobah to join Leia in a daring plan yada yada. If you wanna see that section I can render it out and post a link.

*It looks like you posted thus multiple times by accident.

I personally would love to see how you worked this out.

Oh man, my Internet went BANANAS for a sec, lol! I’ve asked Jay to Attack the Clones, so hopefully they’ll go away soon.

Sure thing I’ll Render it out right quick. Stand by.

Bingowings said:

Years ago I proposed that the film started with Luke on Dagobah completing his training by creating his lightsaber telekinetically. Yoda dies, having trained Luke and not just in mid sentence. Luke returns to Tatooine only to discover that in her inpatience Leia has already attempted to rescue Han and failed. Luke then has to rescue the rescue. It means shifting some scenes around and construction of new shots. But the technology to do so is almost upon us.

You actually don’t need new shots (If you assume Luke has been training the whole time and built his lightsaber sometime between V and VI). That’s pretty much how my cut runs. You just need a new crawl that says Luke is now a full Jedi Knight and will soon leave Dagobah to join Leia in a daring plan yada yada. If you wanna see that section I can render it out and post a link.

G&G-Fan said:

What’s the difference between balanced and unbalanced pacing?

Balanced pacing is “Balanced” to the needs of the specific sequence type. So for example a chase scene has different pacing needs compared with a conversation in a coffee shop. If you use the wrong pacing system (Coffee Shop pacing during a Chase Scene), the sequence looses balance.

For example Obi-Wan fight with Grievous’ ideal pacing is a duel moving into a chase and then moving back into a duel. However in the middle of the Vanilla Version, the pacing switches to “standard battle scene pacing” when the clones arrive, which throws the whole sequence off balance. That “standard battle scene pacing” is absolutely fine a few scenes down the road when we’re watching the end of the Utapau battle after the death of Grievous.

The other aspect of Balance vs. Unbalanced Pacing is when you are pacing out a sequence with multiple intercuts, like the End Battle of the Phantom Menace. To balance a sequence like that you have to also think about Internal vs External rhythm. Internal Rhythm is the pacing within one section of the sequence, and external rhythm is the pacing between different sections. You balance the Internal Rhythm like the Utapau example I gave above, and the External Rhythm is balanced by when you decide to “Take Breaths” to give the audience time to digest the action. I generally find that the most balanced place to “Take Breaths” in an intercut action sequence is in the front third or the back third of an individual scene. For example, in my cut of the end of the Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon telling Anakin to find a place to hide is the “Breath” in the first third of the Assault on the Hanger, and the N-1 slowly crashing into the plane is the “Breath” in the back third. Those two “Breaths” allow me to cut from and to intense action in the Gungan battle without it feeling jarring or disorienting.

Make Sense?

EddieDean said:

That’s really awesome. Definitely seemed like you were more than amateur! St. Andrews is a lovely town- great beaches if they’re not full of jellyfish! I’m an Edinburgher, currently on holiday at Loch Tay, so I know the area! 😉

It’s good to have you with us, I think the community would agree that we’re really enjoying the fresh eye you bring with your videos. Star Wars editing, especially of the prequels, has gone through a couple of phases, each growing on the last, over the last couple of decades. I’d argue we’re in the third phase of that right now with AI voice lines and so on being available, and a lot of your cuts are novel even in this fertile environment.

Your goals are interesting - also novel, they’re a bit more aligned to the mythological/poetical narrative language than we’re used to - but I think it’s likely we’ll see edits stealing many of your scenes in future. Something a little more aligned to canon, perhaps Hal’s detail + Spence’s pacing + your scenes + elements of restructuring from all three, with a dash of new CG and AI voicelines, could be very appealing here.

Whahey! An Edinburger, eh? I hope you’ve got Tay FM blasting away as you drive around the ol’ loch! Can’t say enough good things about your wee country, mate, except how Scotland performed in this last 6 Nations. What were our lads doing!?! In all seriousness, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to St. A’s for taking in a public school student from South Carolina and providing a world class education at a price I could barely afford. There was no chance I could have afforded a degree like that in the States.

Yeah I have to say, whenever someone on YouTube gets a bit cross about how I mess up the canon, I laugh a little bit, because the whole point of my cut is that the canon doesn’t exist yet. Since in filmmaking the “writing” process extends into the editing, I really wanted to practice that aspect of editing, which meant I couldn’t be precious with the canon. All that being said, if anyone wants to steal anything I’ve been doing, I’m more than happy to help out with other more “canon-aligned” cuts if the need arises. A lot of my best sequences don’t mess with the canon at all (I’m particularly proud of my version of the Arena Battle), and I recomposited several shots across the saga, so if anyone needs those just gimme a shout! There are also quite a few cheeky work arounds that I’ve come up with that I don’t think anyone else has (I found a novel and very effective way for Artoo to get captured on the Invisible Hand), so if you or anyone else has run into a dead end on their edit, feel free to PM me. I may or may not have a solution.

jkimm said:

Sounds like you’ve had quite the career. Your videos definitely have a professional touch to them. I especially like the storyboard part of the youtube vids.

Thought I’d have some fun with the AOTC duel and do a little trimming. Not that there’s anything wrong with what you have of course. Here’s a list of the changes:

•Cut Dooku force lightning Ben’s lightsaber
•Removed a few frames when Anakin lunges towards Dooku
•Cut several closeup shots of Anaking and Dooku duel in the dark
•Cut Dooku saying “you have interfered with our affairs for the last time”
•Cut Dooku looking up toward the ceiling
•Trimmed the back and forth force lightning. Now Yoda just catches the one streak.
•Cut front facing shot of Padme shooting ship
•Cut Yoda force lifting his cane

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-YCr2AzmFeDxDsZrSrDn1IAH213xNfG/view?usp=sharing

Okay. . . cutting out Dooku’s force lighting of Obi-Wan’s saber is sick as heck! And it really lines up with the tone that I’m going for. Imma steal that one, lol!

I also love the way you match cut the OTS shot of Padme shooting with the laser bolts going past Dooku’s window. It really paces up the intensity of that sequence in a great way. Imma steal that one too!

A lot of the other changes work well, so I’m gonna play around with them a bit, and then reupload my own revised version to same link, so you can take a look.

Great work, bro! Love it!

EddieDean said:

This is all excellent, Joy. You have a great eye. What’s your editing background?

I starting goofing around with a mini-VHS camcorder when I was 11, and then taught myself how to composite, stop-motion animate, and a bunch of other stuff. Because of all that I got accepted into a special high-school film program that’s part of the public school system in my hometown and was probably the best program of it’s kind in the country during the time I went there. After three years of that course, I had a college-level grasp of Editing Theory, After Effects Compositing, and Film History. I’ve always been really good at the visual side of Filmmaking, but I STUNK at the storytelling/writing side, so I decided to round out what I was bad at in college by taking an English Lit degree at St. Andrews in Scotland (Think Oxford or Cambridge. We’re no.1 in the UK, baby!). That degree kicked my butt! But by the end, it had achieved it’s purpose by teaching me how to research and write properly as well as how to tell a story clearly to an audience. While I was doing that degree I took two years off in the middle to work, so I could get out without any debt. During those years, I worked professionally as an Editor, Animator, and Motion Designer. I did some work for Discovery Channel, and I designed and animated the GIANT 360 boards at the Carolina Panther’s NFL Stadium.

When I got out of College, the high-end editing/post production industry collapsed in my neck of the woods, so after several years of trying to make a go of it, I started doing other work professionally, and in my own time I began writing graphic novels, because that’s the cheapest way to make a movie, lol! Hopefully in the next several years, I’ll be able to publish those, and long term I’d love to turn them into features, if they do well (Finding a good illustrator to work with has been really hard for some reason, but hopefully I’ll eventually be able to track one down). The reason I started recutting STAR WARS was actually to stay in shape so to speak, haha! The stuff I’d like to do eventually is as complex if not more complex than George’s SAGA, and I wanted to get as good and fast at cutting as possible, so that if I ever got the chance to work on a project of that scale, I’d be as prepared as I could be.

One of the reasons that I started doing the editing show was to make the knowledge and expertise that I got from my education and professional experience more accessible. (Film School is way too expensive, yo!) Back in the day, I was able to work professionally as an animator/compositor because of Andrew Kramer’s free AE tutorials at VideoCopilot.net, so I thought I’d try to do the same kind thing for Film Editing, so other poor folks like me could learn for free, if they’re keen.

Hardened1337 said:

Here’s a link to my recut of the Attack of the Clones Duels. Pay close attention to how I reworked the beginning (similar to how you cut the extra Anakin lines), and How I recut Dooku’s kill shot on Anakin (Similar to your rework of Ben smoking Maul): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-GJ1VlEvPO5XlQALDODDeZdWrGEH_ZHP?usp=sharing

Bottom line! Great Work! And I’d love to see more! Keep it up!

I think the AOTC duel works better like this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/157a6pMCVCYktaJfK9sfcpKof7mvmXhbx/view
Having that few seconds showing that Obi-wan’s in pain makes no sense to me. Obviously a little color correction needed but that’s all.

Okay, that is a fantastic fix! Can’t believe I missed that, because I used the same shot-combo-trick to stitch together two Qui-Gon shots from the same angle in the Duel of the Fates. (Timecode 9:40 in the link a few posts above. I used a flash frame to hide the stitch.) Great work!!! In fact, I liked your change so much, that I did the same thing to the Obi-Wan portion of the duel by cutting out one of Anakin’s reaction shots, and then before I knew it I recut that whole dang section to make Dooku more skilled. The new version implementing your change has replaced the last version at the same link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_iGmOFLvu-TE-YzHQqzj408MTRmpji4f/view?usp=sharing

Great work!

Phase3 said:

JoyOfEditing:
I really enjoyed watching the videos on your YouTube channel, and I hope that they inspire more people to do some editing of their own.
As I mentioned to you via PM, I especially love what you did with the Probe Droid scene on Hoth; I will definitely use that for my own edit! 😃

Cheers! That is my main goal of the channel. It’s an editing show that happens to be about STAR WARS, since it’s a film series most folks have seen. Hopefully it’s useful for folks that wanna pick up the craft and can’t afford overly-expensive Film School. It kinda cracks me up that so many folks in the comments wanna argue how STAR WARS should be cut, when that’s not the point. The point is to use STAR WARS to teach you how to cut, so you can go off with the know-how to make your own adjustments. At least my man, jkimm gets it! I’m still laughing at how brutal his recut of Ben’s take down of Maul is. Great work, buddy!

Glad you enjoyed the Probe Droid recut! I did not realize how controversial the number of Probe Droids that landed on Hoth was (check the comments on that video. They’re hilarious!).

Speaking of controversy, the next video (hopefully out next week at this stage) will probably be the most controversial change I’ve made to date, and I’m really looking forward to your thoughts as to whether it worked or not. Today, I’ll be working away at that thingy we’re PMing about, so hopefully I’ll have a file for you soon.

jkimm said:

Oops, all links should be available to view now.

I actually adjusted the scenes using your edit so that the order of each remains the same. I completely understand if you’re locked into what you have and wouldn’t expect you to make any changes. I’m really excited to see more of your work

Huzzah! It worked! I LOVE these!!! The main hope I had when I started doing the YouTube show was that folks would wanna try their own version of those scenes and in doing so get better at editing, so this is great! I really love the in-sequence kill of Darth Maul! “Brutality! Ben Wins!” HAHA! Fantastic Job! And you’ve got good instincts on all the other cuts, I actually tried out quite a few of them myself when I was cutting the sequence.

The reason from my point of view, that you need to keep the bit where Ben falls into the pit, is because George is creating a visual mirror between Duel of the Fates and the Bespin Duel from Empire Strikes Back. Luke loses a fight, falls into a cylindrical hole, and gains a father he doesn’t want VS Ben wins a fight by jumping up out of a cylindrical hole, and Anakin gains the wrong father in Ben, because Qui-Gon, the father he needed, didn’t make it. With that in mind I restructured the whole end of the duel to match the flow of the Bespin Duel in order to make the mirror shine better.

I personally wouldn’t make any of your other cuts for this reason: All of those cuts work in isolation and would work if the you’re not dealing with a sequence that’s intercutting 4 subsequences (Gungans, Padme, Duel of the Fates, and the Space Battle). This is what I was hinting at in my last post. You’re cutting a bunch of moments when the action is dragging (The Gungan Button, Qui-Gon talking to Annie, Panaka’s excessive force against a window, ect), and you’d want to cut those kind of drag points, if you were doing a straight scene with no intercuts. But! When you’ve got a 4-Way intercut, you actually need a few drag points just like rests in a fast piece of music. That’s why that starfighter takes forever to hit the ground, it’s creating a breath before we charge into the next section of the battle. The long shot where the battle droids unload from the MTT is another example of that kind of musical breath.

SO! If you were say cutting a version of Duel of the Fates, where you never cut away to the rest of the battle most of your cuts wouldn’t just work, they’d be exactly what you’d want to do, like how you trimmed down Obi-Wan’s falling all over the place. For example I used the exact sort of cutting techniques that you used on Duel of the Fates to recut the Duels at the end of Attack of the Clones, because those flow in a straight sequence without ever cutting away.

Here’s a link to my recut of the Attack of the Clones Duels. Pay close attention to how I reworked the beginning (similar to how you cut the extra Anakin lines), and How I recut Dooku’s kill shot on Anakin (Similar to your rework of Ben smoking Maul): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-GJ1VlEvPO5XlQALDODDeZdWrGEH_ZHP?usp=sharing

Bottom line! Great Work! And I’d love to see more! Keep it up!

jkimm said:

Hey JoyOfEditing (JOE),

I really like what you’ve done with the final battle! Especially chopping out all of the Gungan fighting. The overall pacing is soooo much better. There are still a few things that kinda bug me though. I made some edits of a few scenes and am curious what you think?

Hey! I’d be happy to take a look, but those links require permission to view, so if you switch it to “anyone with the link”, I’ll take a wee peek. I’m gonna warn ya though, that in most every case I would probably stick with what I’ve got. I’ve tried a bunch of the edits that you’re suggesting, and while many of them work in isolation they cut against the flow or logic of the scenes that they take place in as a whole. I done about. . . I dunno 20-30 full editing passes on that sequence (The only scene I spent more time on was the opening/closing of RotS), so what you saw is pretty much a lock for me.

Basically, the short answer is: Many of the changes you’re suggesting could be successfully made if you sat down and recut the end battle from scratch and repaced it to accommodate those ideas. My cut is quite fast (on purpose) so a lot of the bits that annoy you are where I intentionally allowed it to drag a bit to reset the flow, so that the pace wouldn’t outrun the audience’s ability to keep up with the action. Everybody has different tastes, and I quite like a lot of the changes you’re suggesting. The bottom line is: there’s no perfect way to cut a scene, only balanced and unbalanced ways. My end scene is balanced against itself and my entire recut of the Phantom Menace (the overall pacing and flow/how all the characters were reworked). I really like your ideas, and I think they could totally work in different cut, but systematically I couldn’t use them in my cut. Make sense?

Hardened1337 said:

I’d like to see a full version of TPM. So far it looks fantastic

Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of Phantom Menace content planned for the YouTube Series. If you wanna see how I recut any individual sequence, PM me. The only sequence I haven’t finished yet is the Podrace (I’m going over it one last time), but other than that, she’s all done except for half of the color grade.

One of y’all asked to see my version of the Final Battle from the Phantom Menace, and since I rendered it out, I thought I’d post a link here for anyone else who’d like to take a look:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16r3MW3PH6K1T_fnF-jCrwa2P1lUa91_r?usp=sharing

And here’s a bit of the logic behind the changes:

In my recut of tPM I reworked all of the main characters (Especially Qui-Gon, Padme, Anakin and Jar-Jar), so that the movie now feels like it has three protagonists (Padme, Qui-Gon, and Anakin in that order of importance), and Jar-Jar now fills the Chewbacca role of an interesting side character who is at times funny, but never annoying.

The main idea behind my recut of the final battle was to better match the sequence flow of Return of the Jedi’s final battle, which though flawed itself is closer to the mark. The two main flaws in Return of the Jedi’s final sequencing are too much Ewok footage and the pace-killer that is the Throne Room Duel. These two flaws carried over into the Phantom Menace, because both the Gungan Battle and the Duel of the Fates are the primary problems with the sequence flow.

The way I fixed the Gungan battle was to never cut back to it after it achieves it’s purpose (drawing the droid army into a large scale battle that they cannot pull out of). This tactic is clearly laid out in the battle plan scene, just like Han destroying the shield generator on Endor. We don’t need to know the precise outcome of the land battle, because that becomes obvious when we see Jar-Jar and Captain Tarpals at the victory celebration. The main Tone-Killer of the final battle is Jar-Jar’s antics, most of which take place in the second half. I also cut the scene where Boss Nass makes Jar-Jar a general. In my cut, Jar-Jar’s participation in the battle entirely voluntary as an average soldier defending his home. Jar-Jar was also never banished and is on good terms with Boss Nass and Captain Tarpals from the beginning.

As far as the Duel of the Fates goes, it’s sequencing is way off in the original, and the whole energy door sequence is a worse Pace-Killer than Vader and Luke’s game of psychic-hide-and-seek in the Throne Room. . . With that in mind I recut the duel so that only Obi-Wan gets stopped by the energy door, and Qui-Gon goes straight in. Both Qui-Gon’s noble end, and Obi-Wan’s final exchange with Maul have been overhauled to make them more intense, and I fixed several action cutting errors by using the techniques used to cut the sword fights in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The way I rewrote Qui-Gon’s character (I focused on how kind he was and cut every scene where he’s grumpy and cross), the audience should really care about his death, and by combining Obi-Wan and Maul’s final exchange with the scene where Obi-Wan creates his own high ground, the pacing now matches the end of the Bespin Duel from Empire Strikes Back.

As far as Padme goes, I recut all of the gun battles to feel more like the firefights from Episode IV, and I made it clear that her plan to capture the Viceroy succeeded, because according to George, she’s the primary protagonist of the Phantom Menace (He’s right, because when you recut the whole film with that in mind, it works like a dream).

Lil’ Annie has been overhauled so that every decision he makes is intentional. He’s also much more serious throughout the film than the vanilla version. I recut the fighter sequences to match the pacing and feel of the space battle from Return of the Jedi, and these sequences took the most work to get to. . . well work. . .

All in all this sequence has a hundred+ changes, so I hope y’all enjoy it! If all goes well I’ll finish the next episode of the YouTube show by next weekend, so until then enjoy the edit, and I’ll see y’all next time.

G&G-Fan said:

I respect the approach. I personally think that Han being immature and pushy is an intentional character trait (and is why I think it’s 100% in-character for him to act the way he does in ROTJ; he was always insecure, that bravado was his way of hiding it) which fits the flawed hero he is, but I also understand if one prefers to make him more mature.

Hear me out. . . Technically Han isn’t immature and pushy in A New Hope the way he is in the other two. For my money Episode VI Han is the best Han, so I cut out all of the “non-IV” Han moments from V-VI. It’s all a matter of taste, but if I can have the funniest/coolest version of Han Solo, then that’s the one I want!