So what do you want to see? The original explosion is frightfully unconvincing, always was, and it's far, far too brief for an entire planet supposedly exploding.
Maybe something like this?
http://darthvenal.deviantart.com/art/Alderaan-Composite-457179943
.Mac. said:
I'm imagining a shield generator sitting there and the sand recolored to look like snow... that would indeed be a perfect explosion for the shield generator!
Wouldn't it be possible to contact that fellow in the vid and ask for his permission to use his video as a source? (and add his name to the credits for supplying the explosion)
If he has any love for SW and/or the work Ady is accomplishing, I'd imagine he would be more than happy with that (I know I would be perfectly fine with it if I were he) - this way it helps save time and, whenever possible, it's just always best to do practical effects ;)
I agree with Captain Antilles and add to that...
Darth Hade said:
Luke is surprised/shocked to see Vader, but we all know he shouldn' be since he saw exactly what he wanted to see. Making it look more in line with what I would would call a "dream-like" sequence would have been a better choice...
That's totally wrong. At no point is it said that Luke is in control of what he "takes with him" into the cave. I think you're missing the very point of what the cave test is for. It manifests the subconscious, it's not a Holodeck.
adywan said:
Placing flashbacks into any of the Star Wars films is not something i would ever consider.
*wipes brow*
Phew.
Is it even possible to rework the prequels so much to preserve things like the big reveal at the end of Empire without totall undermining the whole structure of them?
But the Wilhelm Scream is so horrendously overused, I think it should stay as it is.
adywan said:
All this talk of re-framing and zooming shots to make them "more interesting" is madness and plain pointless.
..And that's why most modern movies are crap. Just overblown music videos. You say that the OT cinematography is boring and needs to have all these weird re-framings etc to make it more like modern day film making, well no thank you.
You over-think something and it can turn into a turd. Sometimes the simplest option is the best.
And sometimes it isn't. Unless you're saying that all the cinematography in Jedi, for example, is fine? And don't you have big changes in mind for Jedi? Why so? Just because Angel said something looked crap (as did I) makes no difference ultimately to what you're doing, which is fixing things you consider to be problems. It's all a matter of personal taste. You say reframing a shot that he considers unsuccessful is pointless, for example, and yet you change the most minor continuity errors, many of which most viewers never even noticed, or cared about if they did. Slightly hypocritical there, Ady.
And this is why i could never work with you on any of my edits and why 99% of your mockups i would never even consider, Vaderios. We have a totally different mind set. I'm also quite surprised at just how defensive you get if someone says they don't like one of your mock-ups. I think it's very disrespectful saying someone else's work is "crap" just because it wasn't done with today's technology. The matte work on the Star wars films was very good . It looked great and very convincing in the cinema first time around. the problem is that some have gotten use to the computer done mattes of today and forget that back then everything had to be painted by hand, with a brush and not on a computer.
Why is it disrespectful to say something, the Dagobah matte in this case, looks crap? Okay, how about "it fails to achieve what it's supposed to". Semantics are irrelevant. You yourself wouldn't be changing anything if you didn't think it was inadequate and you also add things that others might not feel need adding. Also, the reason it looked great in the cinema the first time around is because you were seeing a relatively blurred presentation. With HD displays now, old matte work doesn't stand up. As you know, I love traditional matte painting. I actually prefer it to digital, sincerely. But that Dagobah matte, for one, looks terrible. It's nothing personal, there could be all manner of reasons during production that a shot isn't as successful as it could be, but if it looks crap, it looks crap. You can dress it up in polite language but the bottom line is the same.
In response to Jaitea:
I haven't spoeken to him harshly and it certainly wasn't meant to come across that way. And i didn't say anything about him not being or not wanting him on these boards either. I think you have read something into my comments that weren't there.
Then he wasn't the only one who read something that "wasn't there".
And to show I'm being as balanced in my response as you were, I will agree 100% about Michael Bay. Utter crap, for the most part. I'm sure you don't mind saying his work is modern crap. Oh wait, you already did.
:-)
vaderios said:
Still a mockup for the bad vignette effects...
Matching the continuity and the lightning of the previous shots this shadow area should not be present. Not only apears on the sky but it embraces the fog of the lake too.
Ady fixed some of them in hoth battle, hopefully he might try these too
This is another sort of alteration I'm in favour of. It doesn't interrupt the edit, it doesn't stand out as a change to most people, and there are no changes in the elements in the shot. But what is different is great... the re-composition of the whole thing is very subtle; removing the blandness from centred shots like this helps maximise the effectiveness by re-focusing the eye on the important element in a more dynamic way. Basically, it gives the shot some shape, where the original has none.
In fact, I'd say Angel could have gone further with it. Jedi is replete with totally unimaginative shots like this, far, far more than Empire (which is generally very well shot indeed) and there is some real improvements to be made especially at the compositional level.
AuggieBenDoggie said:
You bug Ady constantly about changing pointless detail.
..I really hope notoriety is not the real motive behind your ideas.
Oh come on, that's unfair. Sure, Angel is one for detail, maybe more than the rest of us, but that's only because he's got a passion for getting things right, and he's a brilliant artist. He's better than most of the professionals I work with, believe me. Notoriety is nothing to do with it.
In the case of this particular Dagobah matte, Angel's right. It's crap. Sure, we have no idea how Ady is going to enhance it, and personally I'm patient enough to wait and see and I've yet to see Ady give less than 100% to any aspect of his work. I have faith that it will turn out just fine, but as a matte artist myself, the one we're discussing is probably best just replaced. I prefer it darker when I can see less of it, too.
I don't get the criticism that Yoda should always be looking at Luke. He isn't looking at him all the time in every other scene so what's the difference, just as actors divert their eyes to elicit a certain meaning. It's perfectly fine as it is.
Jacen said:
Just noticed something.....
..but wouldn't it make more sense for the shuttle to be moving forward in relation to the POV camera at a slightly slower pace than the SD, before it makes it's descent and turn?
It would make more sense, as clearly the shuttle must've reversed hard to achieve the effect that Ady has. But, intentional or not, it actually creates a bit of tension in what is a very short shot, as it looks for a second like it isn't going to clear the other side of the ventral port. For that reason alone I think it's great. It's not really necessary, but it works really well. And technically it's flawless.
And you ridiculous Brits and your "Happy Christmas".....
No wonder us Yanks moved away and fought you off with sticks! It's "Merry Christmas". Or "Merry Christmas, eh!" if you're part of the 51st state.
We DO say Merry Christmas as well. But we Brits do love Americans telling us how to speak our own language, so thanks. I'm sure Ady will fix that when he releases RAISING XWING: REVISITED. :-)
Those were the days...
But the colour timing is closer to the theatrical presentation, no? It wasn't retimed or anything at that point, or am I confused?
Because the OT wasn't HD...
haraldo23 said:
Dude! Awesome! Almost like the theatrical version, but with more detail!
Is that a joke?
Ady's quite awesome at what he does, but let's not forget the vast, vast majority of what you're going to see in ESB:R isn't his work. Colour timing and new FX etc, sure, and I'm 100% certain it will be gorgeous, but please, he's not reinventing the Star Wars wheel. He isn't adding any detail whatsoever to shots like this, all he can do is bring out what was already there.
Well, in fairness, Ady did make plenty of changes in Star Wars that others might deem totally unnecessary, so other people suggesting new or longer shots shouldn't be a problem. Let's not forget that a vast amount of criticism aimed at Lucas over the special editions was for doing precisely that, changing things many people didn't feel needed or "should" be changed. Fan edits are no different to the special editions when put in context against the original movies. The only difference is whether the new stuff works or not. Some of the Special Edition stuff really does work, otherwise Ady would have removed it all from ANH:R.
DarthJarJar said:
I suggest we should leave physics out of it. SW is fantasy not hard sci-fi. For example, in reality, asteroid fields are very sparse with millions of kilometres between each asteroid. Nothing like the one in ESB. I suggest Ady should do what looks good. Judging by SWR he will.
You're right. "Everyday" physics, as most people generally understand them, usually make perfect sense in a movie and for dramatic purposes they need to so that it doesn't fall apart. It needs to be a universe that we see working in a way we won't feel is out of the ordinary, so that the rest of the plot can happen. Asteroid density, light sources, gravity and so on are things that are pretty much irrelevant to the plot so long as they don't upset it. Although an asteroid field could very easily be as dense as the one in Empire; there is absolutely no reason to assume all asteroid belts are like our own Martian-Jovian belt or the Kuiper Belt.
Physics in sci-fi has always been an interesting point... basically, you don't need to know HOW it works as long as you understand what it does. We all know what a forcefield does, how a transporter beams people to and from places, yet how they work doesn't matter.
What honours were you meaning?
Maybe it's because the model has a simple geometry and that's the best way to show the difference between planes? It seems the obvious way to highlight it to me.
Those two shots are very similar, like Angel said, but then how many ways can you shoot that model from the side?
What mess? Is this something to do with Flipper still? Somebody should shoot that dolphin.
I can hear Roy Castle playing his trumpet and singing just for you Ady. And I mean that sincerely, not taking the piss.
I agree. But given that Vader's reveal at the end of Empire, and the conversation that he and Luke have in Jedi, it would be rather difficult to write the prequels without it spoiling the reveal. You would still have to establish Anakin as a character, in order for the reveal to mean anything. It might have worked had it been written that way, but personally I agree with what Lucas did, which was write it for an audience that already knew what happens later. It wouldn't have made sense to do it any other way.
A few decades down the line if people come to them totally new, it might have worked better had they been written how you suggest, but you can't write things in that way. You have to write for the people who are going to see it on release. And we all knew who Anakin Skywalker was.
Please, don't resist using such technical terms with me, I'm sure I'll cope. My point, and you should know this if you're a designer, is that, bottom line, a shot has to work. If it doesn't you change it, regardless of what real atmospherics dictate. So in this sort of shot, if those rebel transports don't look like they're in the background, you do whatever is necessary to make it work.
I don't agree at all. We all know Episode IV only became such after the massive success of Star Wars, and there was never such foreplanning on Lucas' part.
As for "true" prequels, that's nonsense. They were earlier installments which followed an already-revealed later story. They are prequels. You either watch them in order and accept that Vader's reveal at the end of Empire is not going to surprise the audience (it still works but in a different way) or you watch them in production order.
Anyway, we're clearly not going to agree on this, so good luck with that idea, but I think you're totally wasting your time.
