Kexikus

Glad to hear that xD

There is a small typo in the chapter selection screen of the preview at least: Chapter 43 says Force Lighting instead of Force LightNing.

Everything else in the preview looks absolutely amazing 😃

Hal 9000 said:

I may as well show you all the rough attempt at showing the fighters react to SKB firing. It’s obviously slowed down, and sort of looks like hot garbage. I do not plan on using this.
https://vimeo.com/171935900

To be honest, I’d say that it isn’t even that far from working^^ If the shots were longer and not stuttering as much and the Star Destroyer shot reinserted I think it would improve the scene compared to not having them. So maybe there are some other shots that could be used or a skilled VFX editor could use frame interpolation or something to smoothen them. But if that’s not possible, leaving them out is not ideal but certainly better.

Great changes, both of them. New music would probably improve the last scene even more but that’s probably too hard to do.

Jackpumpkinhead said:

Hal 9000 said:

Anyone up for a workprint viewing? I’m pretty happy with how this has shaped up, and the only things that we know are still necessary are:
FX shot to remove Hux walking away during fist shot of (new) first Snoke scene
Finished FX shots of TIEs coming in towards Maz’s castle
FX shot to insert Kylo Ren’s face over his mask as he and Hux talk with Snoke

I hope there are a few small things that workprint viewers can find to make this even better, but I’m pretty excited about where it stands now. With those three bits of FX material incorporated, I think we’ve got something pretty solid.

i am getting ready to do the work on 1, and 3 actually! i am a little confused as to what you would like done about 2 though. what finishing would you like for me to do on it?

I’d guess he’s referring to the fact that you only ever showed screenshots of the latest version and nothing else.

I like that version very much. It also solves the problem of the unknown target I mentioned in my last post.

And I even think that this scene can be used without VFX work. It’s quite hard to notice that Kylo has his hood up in the few shots where it’s visible.

Hal 9000 said:

Here’s a clip showing all the necessary changes to pull this off.
https://vimeo.com/170400167

For the clip with Finn and the TIEs, I used the most recent in-progress FX shots from Jackpumpkinhead, so these aren’t nailed down yet. For the audio, I couldn’t find a selection of music that fit in better than what was already there, since it would need to fade back into the music that ends the scene and begins the next. I just brought the sound down so you could hear the TIEs, and not feel like the music was too dramatic for what was onscreen.

Please, register feedback so we can improve what’s here.

Just watched all the edits (and your newer video), so here’s my feedback:

The music in the TIE scene is fine, but I think the TIEs themselves are too loud and the crowd is not loud enough.

In the scene where Hux reports that the weapon is ready and is instructed to prepare it, it sounds like their target is the Resistance since they only refer to their target as “them” and not as “the Republic”. Not sure how this can be improved but I think it should be made clearer than it is at the moment.

If I may ask: What was changed in the briefing scene and the next one?

And in the latest video the music cut after “Give it everything you got” is quite noticeable.

Everything else seems fine but there is another scene that needs work I think: The SKB explosion and Resistance fleet leaving scene. The music and pilot reactions are too happy for the restructured plot. The latter can be cut but I fear this scene needs new music which might be quite hard to pull off.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I tried earlier (expect for the cut shots in the end) and I think it works way better this way compared to R2s random awakening in the original cut.

@Jackpumpkinhead:

I didn’t see your second post when I commented on your latest video, so what I said probably felt out of place… Anyway, as I said, I don’t think the additional TIEs would have been necessary but I like their addition. Great work 😃

Jackpumpkinhead said:

Kexikus said:

Really looks great now! I would have placed them even further away but it’ good as it is too. I think there should be more TIEs though, the fleet in your shots seems quite small compared to what we see later in the Rey scene. And I would maybe try and make them a little brighter. I don’t know if that makes any sense but I feel like it could look better.

it seems as though everyone wants to see them further away, which i may try, idk. as far as there not being enough in the fleet, i think you are wrong. if you re-examine the shot where rey sees the fleet, we really dont see that many ties. besides, why would you send a huge fleet of ties to take our one little castle of seemingly unknowing and off guard bar patrons, and the same applies to the trooper transports. at least thats the way i see it. i will try making them “brighter”. i did try to give them a bit of a sky color tint so as to seem like they are in the distance somewhat.

I just checked the whole sequence again and you are right. There are only 10 TIEs in the shot where Rey spots them just like in your new shot. There are however at least 22 TIEs seen in the shot directly after Poe says: “Don’t let these dogs scare you.” Some of those additional TIEs probably arrived together with Kylos shuttle, so I guess 10 is fine 😃 Although there could be a few more since we might not have seen all of them in the Rey shot.
And to continue being nitpicky: There are at least four troop transports coming to the castle. One is seen taking of shortly after Kylo lands and three more are leaving at the end, but I guess that doesn’t exactly matter 😉

TL;DR You’re right^^

Really looks great now! I would have placed them even further away but it’ good as it is too. I think there should be more TIEs though, the fleet in your shots seems quite small compared to what we see later in the Rey scene. And I would maybe try and make them a little brighter. I don’t know if that makes any sense but I feel like it could look better.

I agree with you, the TIEs should come from the stardestroyer in the background and also be far away so that it makes sense for the patrons not to run away. I would actually make them even smaller in that first shot of Finn looking to the sky. I would even go as far and make them really tiny white spots coming from the Stardestroyer and then about as big as they are in Telecines version for the second shot when Han and the patrons look up. But there also need to be some transports and in Telecines version they seem too ordered, which kinda makes them fake-looking I guess. I don’t really know how to fix that but I think some more variety in their movement/position could help.

I really like A_New_Hope’s suggestion of having a BD25 for each despecialized movie with the best video and audio quality as well as all the subtitles available and then have secondary discs for the bonus material.

The improved image quality and the easier updating process would certainly favor this option, and I also feel like this is the better option for a Despecialized Blu-ray release. Don’t get me wrong, I like your choice of special features but I don’t think they’re necessary for a blu-ray set like this, except for the “documentary” about the Despecialized sources and maybe a trailer collection and I’d rather use the extra space for better video quality and more audio options.

Agreed. R2 hearing that the map is needed after all that happened is probably the best explanation for why he wakes up. My main problem with his storyline is how 3PO claims that R2-D2 certainly won’t have the map and then he has it. Just cutting that line makes it a lot better already and as I described in an earlier post, having BB talk to R2 before he wakes up could improve it even further by implying that BB somehow convinced R2 that Luke has to return and thus R2 shares the map.

I would love to get those too. They look really amazing, great work.

Thank you very much 😃

May I ask what font you used for the top of your Despecialized Edition boxes? I really like it and would love to know what it is^^

As far as I know they had some server issues. But they seem to be offline for a very long time for a simple server issue.

Fantastic post indeed. I definetly agree with you that the crawls have to follow some rules in their structure as well as in their content. The biggest struggle I had with my early crawls were that they ended up being far too long with about 90-100 words. And you have a very well written crawl there.

Also, I’ve been thinking about the ROTJ crawl lately too and you do have a very nice version. But the paragraphs seem kind of unconnected. But I think that’s a problem with ROTJ crawls in general since you need to mention Lukes quest to save Han which would naturally be the third paragraph but it can’t be the third since the movie starts with something else.

I’ve been reading through this thread again (not finished yet) and there are some things that came back to my attention of being in need of fixing in some way.

The first one would be R2s miracle recovery just when he’s needed. We can probably all agree that this is a really cheap plot device and there have been some suggestions in this thread how it could be improved. I think that a good and easy way to make it somewhat better would be to cut 3PO saying that R2 probably doesn’t have the map. Then I’d also suggest adding some more shots of BB-8 talking to R2 just before he wakes up to imply that BB-8 has been trying to wake R2 up for some time now and finally succeeds in the end. Doing this would require reusing some shots from the first droid scene, but I’d say that’s fine. And while this solution doesn’t fix the problem with R2 having the rest of the map it does improve it somewhat in my eyes.

I also played around with the Hosnian Prime destruction some more. I tried to intercut SKB firing and Poe making his final attack run so that the Resistance is really really close to succeeding but still fails. But that doesn’t work at all… The scene is probably best right after Hans death.

And I also thought about my crawl and came to the conclusion that I’ll replace the first sentence with the “Luke Skywalker has vanished.” line and also slightly edited the beginning of the third paragraph. I’m not 100% sure if this change is a good idea, but I think it makes sense because Luke is who everyone is looking for in the movie and so he should also be mentioned more prominently in the crawl. The old version was better structure-wise, but the new one fits better with the rest of the movie and also has this very very cool first line.

Imhotep said:

Your crawl is good, it seems more coherent. I thought I’d miss the “Luke Skywalker has vanished” line but I prefer your take.
In the “With the Jedi gone…” line it sounds like you’re referring to order 66. I like the tie in with the prequels, just wondering if that’s what you meant?

Actually, no that’s not what I meant, but now that you mentioned it I like this tie.
The line was actually added right when posting my crawl here. Originally the second paragraph started with “With the government slow to react…”, but then there was no mention of Luke/the Jedi missing until the last paragraph and that felt weird to me since most people probably assumed that Luke had rebuilt the Jedi Order in the 30 years after ROTJ. It’s not as personal as the “Luke Skywalker has vanished” line but still gets the point that Luke is apparently missing across.

bigjinks said:

Can anyone recommend a service where I can put my images. They’re not showing up at the moment because the traffic exceeded my allowance from my own site where they were stored. Ive also got the files ready to share. Sorry about the delay for those who messaged me. The only thing I can’t share are the VHS and widescreen outer covers because they were done by other folk on these boards (and are probably still available from them - just need to do a little digging), but the slip cases and all the inside sleeves, disk labels and inserts are ready to go, as well as the full set of laserdisc type designs.

Any chance I could get a link for your cover sets? They look amazing!

I know I’m super late with this, but I’ve had this crawl floating around in my head for months now and I’d really like to know what you think about it:

The state of the galaxy
remains in a fragile balance.
The sinister FIRST ORDER has
risen from the ashes of the
Empire and is threatening the
New Republic.

With the Jedi gone and the
government slow to react,
only a small but brave
RESISTANCE, led by General
Leia Organa, stands against
the forces of evil.

Desperate for help, Leia has
sent her most daring pilot on
a secret mission to Jakku,
where an old ally has
discovered a clue to the
whereabouts of the last Jedi…

My goal was to get it in line with the other crawls in that it starts with the galactic situation and then focuses more and more on the main characters and what’s going to happen. That’s why I removed the “Luke Skywalker has vanished.” line even though I really like it.
I’ve also been thinking about including that SKB is a Sith weapon but in the end I decided against it. Wouldn’t be hard to add that to the first paragraph though.
Earlier I also had “young Republic” instead of “New Republic”, but I wanted to add the New and “young New Republic” sounds weird.

And I think I got the first line from someone in this thread, but I don’t have the time to check who it was right now.

Let me know what you think.

Sheepish said:

Kexikus said:

Something I’d love to see is Dooku being added to the funeral scene in TPM and possibly even to the scene of the Jedi (and Palpatine) landing on Naboo. And while doing that, you could also replace the horrible Samuel L. Jackson double who looks nothing like him but plays Windu in that scene.

These things are probably quite hard to do but I thought I’d throw the idea out there just in case.

My edit of TPM (“Shroud of the Sith”) has Dooku added to the funeral scene. I haven’t released it yet (still working on a few things), but I have a link to preview the Dooku funeral scene somewhere in the thread for my edit. The preview is a bit more rough than the final version, but you’ll get the idea.

That’s looking really good, but it’s not quite what I imagined. I was thinking that he’d just stand between the other Jedi and guests and is not in the focus of the scene.

Something I’d love to see is Dooku being added to the funeral scene in TPM and possibly even to the scene of the Jedi (and Palpatine) landing on Naboo. And while doing that, you could also replace the horrible Samuel L. Jackson double who looks nothing like him but plays Windu in that scene.

These things are probably quite hard to do but I thought I’d throw the idea out there just in case.