JoyOfEditing

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!

G&G-Fan said:

Do you do anything about the Luke-Leia kiss in ESB? ESB is my favorite movie of all-time and I don’t hold it against the film because of a retcon, but that hasn’t aged well.

The short answer is that I cut that scene entirely.

The long answer is that I retooled Han, Luke, and Leia’s characters across the OT so that they’re now more consistent, which led me to also cut the scene in the Slug-Cave where Han and Leia snog (Han is a still a smart-@$$ in my cut, but no longer an immature creep). By doing that, the scene where Leia kisses Han on the cheek when Han successfully evades the Imperial Fleet is now the first kiss. Basically, if you move the Han and Leia romance to the subtext of Episode V, the “I love you” / “I know” exchange will then land with the same impact as the “I am your Father” line a few scenes away. After that all you have to do, is delete any references to a love triangle in Return of the Jedi, and you have a convincing love story.

The basic logic I went with is that Han likes Leia, because she’s trustworthy (he’s used to dealing with untrustworthy scum from the underworld) but not a pushover (It doesn’t hurt that she’s also pretty, lol). And Leia likes Han because he treats her like everyone else (he doesn’t suck up to her, because she’s a princess), and He’s the one who comes back for her (She can now trust him to act selflessly towards her). If you pay attention to the evacuation of Echo Base, Leia is the only member of the command staff that stays behind to organize the final defense, and Han is the only one who comes back for her. It’s also Han’s skills that allow them to evade the Empire over the next several scenes (Finally Leia can depend on someone else for the answers rather than being responsible for everything). All I did was follow that logic across the full sweep of Empire and recut it as a “Medieval Romance” not a bunch of disconnected romantic happenings. If you do that, you’d be shocked how much more believable/satisfying the “I Love You” / “I know” scene becomes.

Bored at 3AM said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Thanks Buddy! If there’s any topic in particular you want me to cover lemme know. I’ve got the next several episodes planned out, but I’d love to know what some of y’all are most interested in seeing.

cough Han in Return of the Jedi cough 😃

Patience young Skywalker, those episodes are coming. 😉

smudger9 said:

Another great episode. It’s such a fun and informative series.

Thanks Buddy! If there’s any topic in particular you want me to cover lemme know. I’ve got the next several episodes planned out, but I’d love to know what some of y’all are most interested in seeing.

Bored at 3AM said:

These, and RotJ, are the episodes I’ve been waiting for. My students adore Star Wars in all it’s many forms but there’s a 30ish minute section on Tattooine at the start of A New Hope where I can always see my students’s ADHD attention spans begin to chaff under the relatively slower pace of cutting edge 1970s editing.

Haha! I actually like the slow pace of the original in terms of how Episode 4 originally worked as the “first” STAR WARS film, but if ANH becomes the 4th STAR WARS film, it has to get off to a fast start to fulfill it’s new role in the SAGA. Glad you enjoyed it!

JoyOfEditing said:

Hey y’all, if anyone is interested in learning the artform of film editing through recutting all six of George’s STAR WARS films, I’ve started a series on YouTube to do just that! The first four episodes are up.

https://www.youtube.com/@JoyofEditing

Enjoy the Edits!

New Episode Premiering Now! This time we recut the Opening Sequence of A New Hope, and learn how to maintain narrative flow across multiple episodes, and how to maintain intensity in an action set piece. Enjoy the Edits!

https://youtu.be/zZ5JzEvO8Jk

EddieDean said:

Yeah, big points for bringing a new perspective to editing and adding to the discussion here Joy. And your micro-edits within scenes are very impressive too. You might enjoy reading Hal’s Rise of Skywalker Ascendant thread (https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Rise-of-Skywalker-Ascendant-Released/id/71835), that one’s the most impressive project from the perspective of having so much collaboration on it.

I’m so glad someone loves Micro Edits as much as I do! The next episode of the YouTube show is gonna be full of them!

See the reply that I wrote to Jar-Jar Bricks for a response to the second part of your post.

I think the best way to summarize what you’re saying here is that the sequels take random bits and pieces from the original 6 movies without understanding exactly why they worked in the first place. I’d agree with this assessment, but this doesn’t discount the fact that there certainly exist theological elements in the sequels. It just means that they are present there because of where they originate from, and the writers only put them there subconsciously at best.

As EddieDean said, I’d highly recommend at least checking out some edits of the sequels that exist here. Hal’s Ascendant edit and TFA: Starlight in particular. The debatable topic here is whether or not a skilled editor’s hand might be able to take the disparate elements in the sequels and create a more uniform framework between them, and the saga at large. I’d argue that we are very close with these edits on this forum.

Yep, I agree with all that, and Hal is the man! His Prequel edits are masterful, even though mine are drastically different. I have seen Hal’s Force Awakens recut, but my feeling after seeing it was, “Just like I thought. It’s unfixable, but Hal fixed it as far as it could possibly go.” You’ve piqued my interest in checking out Hal’s Ascendant Cut, because if anyone could pool the community together to make something workable, it’s Hal. Great edits are always the product of good collaboration. Anyone who says otherwise is nuts!

Essentially, I have no interest in ever trying my hand at recutting the Sequels, because I can fix a Software Issue (George’s SAGA), but I don’t have the patience to fix Hardware. I honesty didn’t change a single one of the major themes, story points, or world ideas that George was aiming for. I just reworked their execution when it was getting in the way of the story George was trying to tell. Like George, I HATE writing, and I only have the patience to do that in my own original work. To attempt to recut the Sequels would mean rewriting them, not just rediting them, and that’s too much work for me to put in on a project that I’m not getting paid for, haha!

The other problem, and this is the MAIN problem with recutting the Sequels is that there isn’t enough footage. In George’s case, I think his films all work best right around the 90 minute mark (Except for RotS which works best at 75mins [That’s still feature length, baby!]). That means in a film like Empire I can cut 40 minutes without even worrying about it. When I saw Hal’s TFA cut, I became drop dead certain that there was no way to fix it, due to a lack of good footage. Think about it, you can cut the WHOLE GUNGAN CITY SEQUENCE from the Phantom Menace, and still have three unique planets, a land battle, a space battle, a sick lightsaber duel, a pod race, and hundreds of new characters/vehicles/props. So even when you cut something major out of a George film, you still have that whole big world in the background at any given time. That’s just not the case for the Sequels.

Last thing. I can’t make the George’s Poetic Mirror Network extend to the Sequels. I have a degree in Medieval Literature, so I know EXACTLY how George’s narrative structure is supposed to work. Basically, the Visuals are the “poetry”, so as long as I keep the Visual Rhyme Scheme in step, I know my cut is working. In the Sequels, I’d have to come up with a Rhyme Scheme (Writing) and then make it musical (Editing), whereas with George I just have to retune an instrument that fundamentally works. A lot of folks don’t realize that the Meta-Structure of George’s 6 films is Two Inverse Trilogies with a Negative Center. . . which is the exact Meta-Structure of the Bible [Creation-Fall-Exile]-(500 Years of Silence)-[Exile-Crucifixion-New Creation] or [I-II-III]-(Interwar Period)-[IV-V-VI]. I is inverse VI, II is Inverse V, III is inverse IV; and the two trilogies meet in the negative center. This is why I had to re-edit all six films at once. There was no other way to balance them out and maintain George’s Visual Poetry Scheme. The only way I could work VII-IX into that scheme (assuming there were enough visual mirrors to do so), would be to film an entire mirrored prequel trilogy to the current prequel trilogy in order to maintain the negative center, lol!

Bottom line, y’all are more than welcome to talk Sequels here. I love it! And if y’all are working through a problem on one of your sequel edits that you think I can help with, feel free to drop me line, but I’m not gonna take a crack at a full sequel edit myself. I’ve got way to much writing/editing on my own stories to work on.

Acbagel said:

Just jumping in to say this has been a very interesting discussion and I love the theological side of Star Wars, and also Joy I have been REALLY enjoying the YouTube series. It’s helping me as an editor too, appreciate the time you take to explain your mindset and ways of thinking for framing whole segments.

Thanks man, I’m so glad you find it helpful! Honestly the fact that series involves STAR WARS is incidental, the main thing I’m trying to do is teach the editing principles I learned in Film School and my Literature Degree, because I couldn’t find a good free course teaching that skill. Back in the day I learned how to use After Effects by watching Andrew Kramer’s tutorials on VideoCopilot.net, and he did a great job teaching how to think like compositor/animator. Because of that training series I was not only able to learn AE well enough to work professionally as an animator, I also learned how to well. . . learn, lol! My hope is that my series will do something similar for folks who wanna learn how to think like an editor.

I’m now working on the next episode, where we’re gonna cut 50% of Episode’s 4’s opening sequence, from the opening shot to the droids’ arrival at the Lar’s Homestead, so hopefully you’ll enjoy that one too! It might even involve some digital magic: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-1x6VCG9Drp3GiZMgKXlOllfIvOGvOVA/view?usp=sharing

Just tell me if you’d rather not discuss this any further and detract from the other great stuff you’ve got going on here (love that ESB duel btw), I’ve just never had an opportunity to discuss the sequels under this lense on this forum before lol.

Rey’s arc throughout the trilogy is anchored in her feelings of inadequacy, much like Kylo Ren. She grows up her whole life thinking her parents abandoned her, and even though she finds out this isn’t true, she then thinks Luke, Leia, and all of her friends will abandon her because of her dark heritage/tendencies because that’s what she subconsciously expects. This is quite similar to how you can be offered salvation, but believe that you are unworthy of it because of your past transgressions or who you feel that you naturally are. Oftentimes, this is indeed because of a biological parent who is an awful person and you just don’t want to turn out like them. Rey accepting the name of Skywalker at the end of the movie makes sense because she spends a good chunk of it convincing herself that she doesn’t deserve to belong with anyone because she’s a monster - thus why she tried to abandon herself on Ahch-To. She is finally accepting her salvation/redemption in the end by declaring herself a Skywalker.

The serpent cave scene in TROS is actually a metaphor and foreshadowing of this. Rey represents the injured serpent - spawn of Palpatine (the deceiving serpent) and traumatized by her past. While appearing to be evil on the outside, once the serpent is healed from its trauma, it is kind and helpful to our main characters and helps them escape from the tunnels. Kylo Ren holds a similar belief to Rey: his parents shipped him off to his uncle because they didn’t know how to deal with his dark tendencies, only for his uncle proceeding to (from his perspective) nearly kill him. He sees himself as a monster because of his family being scared of him from the jump, and admits this to Rey in TLJ. So he leans further and further into this persona because nobody ever expected anything different out of him, despite the fact that being evil isn’t fulfilling to him. His water baptism back into Ben Solo occurs on the Death Star II wreckage because his mother wanted to let him know she still loved him even at the cost of her own life (another sacrificial archetype).

Rian Johnson didn’t actually burn the Jedi texts - if you have a keen eye you’ll notice Finn opening a drawer on the Falcon with them at the end of TLJ. Rey studies them in TROS to learn about the Sith way finders and Force healing. Yoda was simply instructing Luke to not be such a fundamentalist Jedi. There is great wisdom in the sacred texts, but if you get so hung up on understanding every single little detail (and why they might not make sense given modern understanding), you’ll forget how to actually put your faith into practice in your life. Yoda reminds him to focus on the here and now, “the need in front of your nose”. That need is to pass on what he has learned to the next generation, including his failures, so that they might live a more peaceful life than he did. This is actually a really beautiful scene that I’ll give TLJ credit for.

I’m not sure Maz is supposed to represent anything significant, but Snoke is actually a pretty good representation of the “principalities and powers” concept. There are rich and powerful people who believe that they are in complete control of everything, and so they will do terrible things for their own gain - little do they know that they are merely a puppet for a dark force that will cast them aside as soon as they are no longer useful for an even more sinister takeover. The power Snoke had in life was never his, it was given unto him by Palpatine. In real life we might say these people “sold their soul to the devil”.

No man, you’re good! Theological Editing is still editing, lol! I’m planning on doing a episode wayyyyy down the road on how to edit/design theological narratives because Harry Potter, Dune, STAR WARS, Lord of the Rings, and a bunch of the Ghibli films all use Theological Editing techniques, and I’m not aware of any courses out there teaching how to do that. Frankly, until now I didn’t think anyone would be interested, haha! The only thing I’m trying to avoid is discussions of Theology by itself (discussions I love to have BTW just not on this specific post).

To your sequel trilogy point, based on that breakdown, I’d watch the snot out of a Sequel Trilogy written by you haha!, but to be honest I think you’ve put 500 times more thought into the theological editing than Rian and JJ did.

I’m also gonna be honest, and say I haven’t given the Sequels a whole ton of thought, because I have no intention of recutting them. But I’d sum up my impression of why I don’t think they theologically jive with George’s six by quoting one of Jesus’ two pronged questions from the gospels: “What is the law? And how do you read it?” I think Disney often gets the “law” right, but “reads” it wrong. That Jesus quote is in reference to a Teacher of the Law who wants to be good with God, but stay a racist. Jesus’ point is made by telling the parable of the good Samaritan where the law fulfills it’s purpose by making the Good Samaritan love his neighbor regardless of his race. The Teacher of the law knew the law said he needed to “love his neighbor”, but he didn’t want to define Samaritans as his neighbors so he could still hate them. Jesus’ two-pronged question is calling him on his BS. The law is fine. It’s the “reading” that’s whack. (BTW I’m not calling Disney STAR WARS racist, I’m just explaining the principle of “law” vs. “reading” LOL!)

Basically, I think Disney threw together a lot of references (law) to the Original Trilogy and the Prequels without understanding the original purposes of those references, and because of that break down, I don’t know how I’d be able to fix it, because the purpose of the setup is deleted by the payoff. Just like how the Teacher of the law redefined “neighbor” to justify his racism when the law’s purpose was to end racism. An example would be the book burning you mentioned. If you pay attention to the Prequels. Qui-Gon is the only one who explains the religious side Force to Anakin. Obi-Wan never really does, and frankly the Jedi are so preoccupied with the political machinations of the Senate, they don’t really seem interested in becoming “one with the Force”. When Anakin finally goes to Yoda for advice in Revenge of the Sith, Yoda can’t help him, because all of Anakin’s religious training has been coming from Palpatine (this is Obi-Wan’s great failure. He never taught Anakin how to “read” the “law”). Fast forward to the OT, and Obi-Wan’s first instruction of Luke involves explaining what the Force is, followed by Yoda’s expansion on that explanation in Empire Strikes Back. Suddenly Yoda and Obi-Wan are preoccupied with the Mystical Side of the Force, which means their repentance has been genuine. The way Lucas was setting up the his version of the sequels, Luke was going to renew the Jedi Order with the worship of the Force (not power and politics) at it’s center. I can see how Yoda burning “most” of the books can serve as a reminder for Luke to keep the main thing the main thing, but that is not where the story was leading. George was setting up his version of the Book of Acts, where Paul is brought in to explain how the New Covenant aligns with the purpose of the Old Law, by “reading” it correctly. If the purpose of the law was to end racism and discrimination in all of it’s forms, then to quote Paul “There is neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor Free, Male nor Female,” all humans are made in the image of God and are of infinite value. Paul is a master “reader” and because of that he is a master “liver”, his reading leads to a well lived life. Lucas was setting up Luke to be that kind of character, because he is also a master “reader”. He sees through the Emperor’s trap, and refuses to kill his father, because the will of the Force is not that Luke kill Vader and continue the cycle of violence, it is that he redeem him, and give birth to a new world of balance. When I saw the Last Jedi for the first time, I have to admit I was furious. The idea that Luke would be able to see through Palpatine and confront the darkness in himself in order to stay his hand, but then revert back to worse than his starting point, made no sense to me. Luke’s role was going to be like Paul’s. He was going to be tasked with building the New Temple. In short, I think Disney got the key “laws” that were present in the other STAR WARS films, but they couldn’t “read” it well enough to continue the compelling parable George was telling.

In short the concept of “Law” vs. “Reading” doesn’t just apply to interpreting scripture. It’s also a key concept whenever you’re editing someone else’s writing. Whenever I edit someone else’s story, I spend most of my time trying to figure out not “what did they write?” but rather “what are they trying to say, and is there a way for me to make that point clearer to the audience?” If I’ve done my job well, my edit of George’s six films should be as true to his ideas as possible. At least that was my aim when I recut them.

O00ll00O said:

All right buddy, here’s the “Prequelized” version of the Bespin Duel: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1D71gfooBPieEGCXGnD414-IpcRnD_PGu?usp=drive_link

I smashed the three duel sections together, and the color is the ungraded HDR footage, but it should still give you a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

Great edit! I was never a fan of how Luke looked when stuff was being thrown at him, so I was glad to see that cut. And I loved how fast Vader comes out the door to the bridge fight. It was a much more aggressive tone after that which was done really well. Also cutting the hammed up Luke acting before he fell played better than I expected. Thanks for the fun watch!

Cheers! Glad you enjoyed it! Fast/Aggressive Vader is the best Vader in my opinion, haha! I had a lot of fun recutting all of the duels especially Duel of the Fates.

Bonus points if you can find the one recomposited shot in the Empire sequence. There is one shot in my sequence that doesn’t exist in the theatrical cut, and was made by combining elements from two different shots in the original duel.

Fair point that the name giving usually derives from the higher power, but in the case of the Force I’m not sure how it could have been executed much better than it was. When attuned to the Force, it only communicates to you through feelings and instincts. Who’s to say she didn’t feel the Force telling her in that moment it was proper for her to take on that mantle? It basically did, after all, since Luke and Leia show up as Force ghosts (who are one with the Force). Ben too, if you’re watching Ascendant.

Okay, hear me out. . . The Rey name thing is kinda a bad example for what I’m getting at. The basic thing I’m saying is that I had no idea what JJ Abrams was trying to do in that scene, or why Rian Johnson burned all the books, or the point of Maz or what Snoke stands for. I simply don’t get it. In George’s case I’ve read a lot of the same books he has, and bless his heart, he’s super consistent in his themes across all six of his films, so I have little trouble re-editing them to be a little truer to his original vision. If I can’t understand what you’re trying to do, I can’t fix it. Someone else might be able to, but I’m not clever enough, haha!

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I can kinda see your angle there. Most of the problems are in TLJ, personally - best exemplified in Snoke’s line from TLJ: “Darkness rises and light to meet it”. In the Biblical worldview, darkness/hell is simply being separated from the absence of God’s light. This is similar to how in Star Wars the dark side is a corruption of the Force, and it being balanced is there being absolutely absolutely no dark side (contrary to popular belief). These aren’t supposed to be opposite forces that are kept equal to each other in power. The dark side is a cancer.

And you can’t say it’s just that Snoke has a misunderstanding of the Force, because Luke says the same thing to Rey: “powerful light, powerful dark”. I think the only way you can retcon this line is that Luke is referring to the potential a powerful person can have to either do good or bad things. The real world answer is that DOTF was originally going to make the dark side an amoral thing, and you should tap into both sides of the Force (yuck!). I don’t understand the people that enjoy that leaked script at all.

Character regression is an entirely different discussion. I do think it’s possible to slip back into old patterns and habits in life, so there is some interesting narrative potential even within the context of a Christian framework. You are supposed to remain constantly vigilant or else the dark side (devil) can devour you like a lion. There’s a solid story there to be told there, and it reminds me of Voldemort’s return in the Harry Potter series with the ministry denying his return and not doing anything about it (New Republic vibes). I just don’t find the way they did it with Luke all that believable. He nearly killed his father because he’d threatened his sister; we are never shown exactly what Ben would do according to his dream. And there wasn’t much payoff for Han or Leia’s regressions besides redeeming their son in TROS.

For the new main characters, I think they did actually end up adhering to what the Force wanted them to be. It’s why I like Kylo’s character so much. He reveres his grandfather to an unhealthy degree, and keeps pursuing the dark side because he thinks that is who he truly is and will satisfy him. But this just makes him more and more miserable. It’s only when he becomes Ben Solo again that he feels peace and love. As for Rey, yes, I can see why you might think that her taking on the Skywalker name is a denial of the truth the Force created her as, but I simply see that as an example of the good that can be made out of bad. George refers to Palpatine as the devil himself, so it’s hilariously ironic how his machinations end up being as own undoing. Adoption into a new family and being given a new name are also solidly Biblical concepts.

I genuinely believe there are plenty of concepts within the sequels that can align with these ideals, just not within the idea that the end of ROTJ is supposed to be the second coming.

Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything you just said. From the character regression side, I totally agree that can be a compelling narrative and that it works within George’s and a Christian framework. Pretty much all of the main characters regress across the Prequels. I was simply arguing that George set up Luke, Leia, and Han not to regress, based on where his system was leading. I actually see Return of the Jedi as the “Crucifixion/Resurrection” point in STAR WARS narrative, with Lucas’ planned Episode IX serving as the “Second Coming”. I also agree that Kylo is a really great character/idea in principle, and you’re correct that he does fit into George’s system very nicely.

As for Rey, I was simply making a joke about the mechanics of her name giving. In the Bible it is usually God who renames someone to reroute their destiny/identity, like when Jacob (Deceiver) is renamed Israel (Prince of God). In Rey’s case she renames herself based on who she identifies with, putting herself in God’s place as the identity giver. In that way, Rey calls herself what she likes, but isn’t being “called” to a task. Her main “journey” isn’t so much to save the galaxy, but to find out who she really is, at least that’s the way JJ Abrams framed it. She ends up right where she started on a desert planet with a stick and a random old lady, lol! Again, nothing wrong with that. Disney is making a modern story where the hero must create their own identity, and Lucas was telling a story from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

JoyOfEditing said:

potty meister said:
I love this explanation so much

Oh good! I’m glad that made sense. If you want to know why all the Disney STAR WARS stuff hits different, that is the reason why. Disney abandoned the spiritual narrative framework George was using to link the original six films together, probably because they never realized it was there, haha!

Just curious. What changes do you think they could have made to the sequels to make them align within this framework?

Technically, TROS ends with two sacrifices of love. Rey gives her life to stop Palpatine from killing her friends, and then Ben gives his life so that Rey can have hers back.

The short answer is that the Sequels simply cannot be aligned with George’s original six.

Here’s the long answer in two parts:

1. The POV changed. The sequel trilogy has been reframed from God’s POV to Rey’s POV. When you study medieval literature and history one of the first things you run into is the “God’s POV” system. In other words, God (In STAR WARS’ case the Force) is the main character binding the story together and observing/passing judgement on the events. The reason Lucas used this Medieval POV framework is so that the deeds of the Jedi and the Senate in the Prequels could be “judged” by the Force. Every character in the Prequels does not live up to their own ideals, and in the OT, all of the characters cast aside their initial ideals to align themselves with the Force’s ideals. Luke stops chasing adventure, and faces his sacrificial destiny, Vader casts aside his power to save his son, Han gives up his shifty ways to become a hero his friends can depend on, Yoda sets aside the grandeur of the Jedi Temple to embrace the swamps of Dagobah (His natural environment), Obi-Wan becomes Luke’s spiritual father to make up for his failure mentoring Anakin, Princess Leia transforms from a feisty Rebel into a wise and just political leader who can build the New Republic, and so on and so on and so.

In the Sequel Trilogy Rey writes her own adventure and decides to be a Skywalker instead of a Palpatine, rather than becoming the person the Force purposed her to be, because Rey is the Force, lol! The sacrifices Rey and Kylo make are part of a “cycle”. They do not lead to the creation of a new world, which brings me to the second reason.

2. The Sequel Trilogy abandoned Lucas’ Christian Apocalyptic Framework, and turned the SAGA into a Pagan Cycle. So if you think of the Norse Saga’s they loop endlessly like the turning of a wheel. The Christian viewpoint is that God is not bound to cycles (Fatalism), and He can and will make “all things new.” The end of Revelation in the Bible doesn’t end with everything in the past being destroyed, instead it ends with the resurrection and glorification of Humanity and Nature with “Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation” peacefully living together in the “New Heavens and the New Earth”. This is why our Heroes in Return of the Jedi are adopted into the Ewok Tribe, because the Force being brought into balance is not a redo of the corrupt Old Republic, it is the harmony of “Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation.” In the Sequels it’s all about our main characters finding out who they are by burning the past, instead of realizing the part they were created to play within the story of the Force that leads towards the balance of all things. I would have done the sequels the way George was planning them, by focusing on the way Luke, Leia, and Han work together to build a just society through the New Jedi Order and the New Republic (New Heavens and the New Earth), rather than Disney’s take which is to cycle the “New Republic” into the same bureaucratic nightmare that the “Old Republic” was. Apocalypse in the Christian sense means “unveiling”. In George’s SAGA all of our character were “unveiled” so that we could see who they were meant to be. Disney threw all the veils back on and cycled Luke, Han, and Leia back to the point where we met them in A New Hope. I have no problem if someone likes one storytelling system over another, but I sure as heck cannot make a Pagan Cycle line up with a Christian-style Apocalypse, because the Apocalypses in the Bible were actually designed to challenge the Pagan view of the Cosmos, lol! Does that make any sense? George’s main idea for STAR WARS was “What if ancient Celtic Animism became institutionalized like Christianity?” All lot of the “Theology” George created for the Force is pantheistic/animistic, but the storytelling system George used was distinctly Christian. Probably why he jokingly referred to himself as a “Buddhist Methodist”, lol!

G&G-Fan said:

JoyOfEditing said:

I smashed the three duel sections together, and the color is the ungraded HDR footage, but it should still give you a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

This was an interesting watch. I prefer the original version, a lot more was cut then I like (the 3rd “act” of the duel is actually my favorite; “It is useless to resist” is an all-time shot), but the edit isn’t bad.

Yeah, it’s an all time great line. I just didn’t want Luke to roll around on the floor like a goober, lol! In all fairness, even I wouldn’t say my version is “better” so to speak. It’s playing by a completely different set of rules than the original cut. Personally, I like my Darth Vader as lethal as possible, and I tried to make Luke a little more naturally gifted (which in turn makes Vader more intimidating). More than anything I wanted see if the new cutting techniques Ben Burtt and his team used for the Prequel Duels would work, and I was shocked at how well they did!

G&G-Fan said:

JoyOfEditing said:

If you’d like to see my prequelized version of the Empire Duel, that’s ready to go if you’re interested.

I’m interested.

All right buddy, here’s the “Prequelized” version of the Bespin Duel: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1D71gfooBPieEGCXGnD414-IpcRnD_PGu?usp=drive_link

I smashed the three duel sections together, and the color is the ungraded HDR footage, but it should still give you a pretty good idea of what it looks like.