Mithrandir

Sincere condolences Adywan.

 Once Lennon said that life's what happens when you're busy making other plans. Without any doubt, you knew when to stop "making other plans" and focus on what matters, as john would say. And this makes me glad indeed across the ocean, and I don't even know you; so be sure of this, it made your father both glad and proud to have you aside his last days.

It speaks of you as a sensitive, caring, and loving guy. 

We won't lose sleep if ESB:R is out december 2011 or may 2012, or even if it doesn't ever come out. However, I'd be (and I think I could say we'd be) ashamed of ourselves if by our fault you felt any pressure to finish the edit in time in spite of your personal and familiar grief.

So take your time, and please, feel free of whatever bargain we might signify for you, in every way and sense.

Best wishes from Argentina, for you and your family; and my deepest condolences.

Mmmhm, I got something in mind. Don't get me wrong it's excellent how you edited it so far. But since you said you are receiving ideas/suggestions...

First the things blow up, while hearing the screams - cut to padmé and obiwan... padme dying - cut back to Coruscant.

Vader gets risen up, Palpatine (who's a little afraid of Vader, considering how the things started to blow up during the surgery):

-"Lord Vader, can you hear me?"

-"Yes master"

-"To cheat death is a power (...)"

- (Vader interrupts palpatine) "She no longer means anything to me master... now (...)"

So why does palpatine start telling vader all that text about cheating death? He's just scared about what Vader in physical pain did.

Love what you achieved here cutter. Though just to be nitpicking, a few suggestions to make it even better:

Change "it" for "she" or "that" (if possible, though someone pointed out you might have done it on purpose).

When Vader says that he now knows the power of the DS the camera starts to shake, though... it cuts too fast to the things blowing up. Keep the shaking a little bit more just to make it feel not so abrupt. (you could add a persuasive "yeeeeeeesss" of palpatine here).

Nothing to say about music, it's amazing. Infact, it's amazing to have an actual composer as a fan editor :)

Congrats 

Cutter, even if you don't share some criteria with Bob, I think it could be an interesting exchange of material (if both you and him agree) between your edit and his.

For what I've seen so far, you try to get the movie the closest possible to the OT in terms of humour and dialogue... and musically of course. Lately Bob is doing an effort to achieve the same visually. Don't know if you have seen what he did replacing some movement mattes for some old shool static mattes, or with the holograms of the emperor. Anyway, I'll leave you the links here.

Hologram Test

http://www.youtube.com/watch?=LJ0rrilAXtM&feature=channel_video_title

Senate Matte replacement

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=DpCJZrfWujs&feature=channel_video_title

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Now that I see your really into the musical side of the edit... I always wondered about the imperial march and Vader first strike to the Jedi (the jedi slaughter)... I always thought that could be the ultimate moment for using the crescendo of Darth Vader's theme (ESB OST), which hasn't been used anywhere else in the whole saga. I know you already placed the Imperial march in that scene, though I think it'd fit even better if you place not just the clasic melody of the march but the part that starts at 2:00 in this vid, or a variation of it in order to fit the footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oZTQYsqSGc&feature=fvst

Bingowings said:

We are all the sum of our memories.

Experiments funded during the cold war used electroshocks and LSD to remove all but the basic functional memories of some patients suffering from mental illness and the result was to essentially kill the person they once were and create a new person from scratch.

Threepio may still have the same voice and character traits but he would not have any recollection of his past.

If this happened to a friend of yours you wouldn't be happy.

The edited Vader Birth scene is less ridiculous but it's still silly.

I'd lose the cuffs and just have him stand.

Palpatine could start to explain that Padme is reported dead but Vader would still be stuck in betrayal mode and just shuts down the conversation.

"She no longer means anything to me", is more Vader, he might have turned to the dark side to save her but once he is there he claims not to care.

The good man he should have been is buried under scar tissue, technology and self loathing.

He kills his former best friend and mentor and is happy to do so in ANH, Padme would be as dead to him alive as she would be if she had physically died.

Besides Padme needs to stay alive for a couple of years anyway so that Leia can remember her (not unless Vader's rebuild took a long time).

Vader is to Palpatine what some employees at LFL are to GL: the yes men.

P: You killed her.

V: Yes Master.

I think that could be more accurate, it's Vader accepting anything palps tells him, and it could be Vader accepting he killed padme on purpose.

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This last sentence I've written made me wander...

Why on earth would Vader blindly accept any order and comment, and never talk back to Palpatine if that's all what he did to his former Jedi masters...?

Dark side, or Light side, vader is still anakin... we see it in ROTS... Darth Vader IS Anakin with Padme. Why wouldn't he have that particular change of temper??

Best wishes from Argentina Ady, for both you and your dad.

I think it works vey ver well, though it's very loud, it almost masks ObiWan. But as far as music concerns, it's 10/10, and don't know why, I'm not surprised, considering all you've done to audio in your edit ;)

Don't know how far you intend to go visually with it, but if you want, you could always remove that silly 21st century colorful oval hologram and put some old fashion 1970s buttons xD.

No, but seriously, congratulations. And it's always nice to see both ROTS edits are moving, Bob's and yours.

Yeah, after posting I checked it was stewie's. Anyway, it's amazing how you can build a wall of connected suggestions for an edit using different people's bricks

It looks beautiful Ady, as usual, although I feel there's something quite not right with the tansport scene. Aesthetically it's amazin what you've done, but, may it be the transport moves too fast?

I mean, from the PT (and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the PT just because, even if it looks fake, some CGI-models behave more realistically in PT than in OT) we get to see that big ships land or take of with a rather strong effort compared to fighters such as X-wing or Jedi Fighters. The transport takes off quite fast, easy, as if it had little inertia for such a huge mass. Compare it to the star destroyer taking off in ROTS.

Anyway, take that or leave it, it certainly won't affect the amazing job you are doing ;)

Cheers

I think it's pretty evident they know and follow what Ady's doing in revisited. I mean, people who work on SW-related projects in LFL are very often geeks like us, and it's expectable that they are at a point well informed about what's happening here...

Who could know about revisited?

a) Someone who likes SW and the OT

b) Someone who's interested in editing, and cinema.

People working at LFL fullfill both A and B requisites. Besides, you know for good the guy who played Tarkin at CW follows and supports revisited (in facebook at least), so he might share his experience within LFL, or he might have been introduced to revisited by people working at LFL.

A whole different thing would be wether GL himself knows (or even more: has seen) revisited

This stuff Bingowings has posted about astrodroids could be a great chance to make something characteristical of the separatists. I always liked the idea of Adywan of putting some old battledroid in the Sandcrawler, it gives nostalgia and makes you feel like the galaxy hasn't yet forgotten the clone wars. That battledroid there is something that takes you back to the PT and gives consistency.

So, in line with Bingo's suggestion, why don't you establish that some specifical astrodroid (let's say the cubic-headed) were the separatists astrodroids, while the round-headed, like artoo, were the republic's? So that when you get to the OT and see them all mixed up you think "hey separatist astrodroids are civil goods now", or something like that.

There was also another idea hanged here in OT.com, it was actually gonna be in some ANH edit, of Artoo intentionally attacking the cubic headed astrodroid in the sandcrawler (the one that explodes when Luke and Owen pick it). It'd add another feeling to that idea if artoo attacked it because he recognized it as an old foe from the clone wars (unlike threepio, he's never been re-programmed)..

I actually never got to fully understand what the cave was.  Somehow it always made me think it was a place under an old tree, under its roots, somewhere not man-made. On the other hand it looks like a structure (with no entrance but a hole under a tree?), but never like in Return of the King when Aragorn recruits the dead. I think it's mostly because, basically it looks like a corridor, not like a cave or room. Infact I always wondered what was on the other side of the corridor... If Luke entered by one side, he went out by the other side?

Bingowings said:

^Not really as the Endor sequences could be set on Endor, the forest moon of Coruscant which serves as a sanctuary for the Death Star shield.

However would it make sense?

That would be like having the Manhattan Project built in Manhattan in terms of Galactic secrets.

Would the Alliance fleet be able to survive a direct attack on the capital planet even without a Death Star (or Two) being there, with the normal level of security?

It makes less sense than Luke's rescue plan of Han.

That way in an eventual ROTS edit, it'd be a nice reason to set a constant Star Destroyers patrol around Coruscant. Right after Palpatine establishes the Empire.

Actually, you could add some eccoed voice for palps before the stunted slime line. Like he's thinkin "say it right, say it right!", or practising "stunted slime in my sight".. and when it comes to pronouncing it, he messes up and says it wrong... and everytime he says it wrong have the "wrong" sound from TV trivias (and laughters from sitcoms would rock)

The problem with the battle in ROTJ is mostly the same problem of the entire movie, it seems to be done without enthusiasm.

ROTJ should be ESB-ROTS (in terms of pesimism and masiveness based on the historical importance of the facts that are being shown) till the very end when everything is solves well. Exactly the same for the battle, it should look like a giant battle where the rebels are being wiped out.

Instead of that we've got an optimistic movie (humor  in Jabba's Palace, love without tragedy (unlike ROTS), sillyness with the ewoks a general lack of masiveness (Jabba's Palace is way too quotidian to be in the same movie that tells how the Empire fell... compare the order 66 scene, or the "I am your father scene" with basically all the bullshit that happens in Jabba's), and a non massive battle with always the optimism that the hero-ship (the falcon) provides in all its fancy shots. So yes, the star destroyers (which are supposed to be how many, fifty? maybe a hundreed?) barely get into the battle, so a little less dog fight and more capital ships might be good.

How you do it is something that doesn't really bother me. I'm not against CGI, computers are a wonderful tool for those who know how to use it. Look what Bob Garcia and Angel are doing with ROTS without building any model, and yet it sells OT aesthetics very very well. So if you are against all the fancy flybys and the flying camera that basically makes all the battle of Coruscant confusing that's a different thing that being completely against CGI models, which can give you certain advantages, like a balanced, good and believable illumination of the models matte lines, or even colour stuff (look at the Executor reveal in ESB, how the TIEs that fly all around look horrible due to illumination issues)

Great Bingo! Master Yoda has a bad feeling about this, Jar Jar binks has a bad feeling about it too, you could always put obiwan referring to a third person bad feelings xD

How could the PT be rescored? I've been hearing some OST lately and I just realised that unlike the OT, PT mostly lacks of leitmotivs, which made the OT so particular. So while I was hearing, I thought well, there's a lot of material there, why not to just set it up in a different way:

Duel of Fates could be the Good vs Evil theme.

Battle of the Heroes is way too monumental for a duel, it could be the Jedi Order's theme (and in a minor way, ObiWan's theme)

Across the Stars well, it already is the love theme for the PT

Reccuperate the SW main title's melody as a leitmotiv inside the movies (It was mainly used in ANH, like in the bridge scen in the Death Star)

The Emperor's theme should be more present

Establish the Imperial March only for the Empire (cut it from AOTC)

Republic/Senate should have a theme (not a march).

And once you have it all organised in your mind, start experimenting with the music. Like the choral part of battle of the heroes in the order 66 scene, or even leaving some scenes unscored (someone posted a video of how would the duel of Anakin and Obiwan look if it was musicless

TV's Frink said:

Mithrandir said:

Mithrandir says it would be cool if you left darth sidious hanged with "sight again", then cut to a Jedi scene, and then when you come back to viceroy and sidious, he's still trying to make the tongue riddle out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSqCubiPVnY

In this case, the longer scene you put in the middle, the more ridiculous effect you get when you get back.

Much, much better frink, thanks for trying it

It could be something you see al througout the movie... In coruscant, when he's in the balcony scene with Maul ("at last we will have revenge"), havin him still be practising (stunted slight sight) in a very soft voice, like he's stucked there, could be hilarious... classical though... the bad guy practising to be a bad guy.

Mithrandir says it would be cool if you left darth sidious hanged with "sight again", then cut to a Jedi scene, and then when you come back to viceroy and sidious, he's still trying to make the tongue riddle out

I meant that even if perspective crashes a bit on the sand crawler, it's almost imperceptible

The speeder and that metal dish seen in the very foreground are clearly out of scale according to threepio's scale and I think that was what called my atention. You could remove them and yet be getting a great image of the lars residence. There's also something with the colour saturation between the sandcrawler and the dome, far more saturated than the vehicle, but of this things, Angel our professional illustrator could tell you better, I just don't have the means for telling what feels a little out of place with colours, I just perceive it.

Of course, don't take this as bumming, I'm just trying to help you get an unnoticiable way for introducing your changes, which are very promising.

There's something that doesn't feel quite right in the sandcrawler video. Maybe in the perspective of the speeder, on in some point of the foreground.

The sandcrawler, on the other hand, matches the image without problem. thumbs up stewie!

Maybe I got it wrong, but I think that british high rank officers during WWI were the last to use chainmaille.

I like the idea that very high rank officers (Grand Moff, for instance) have a gala uniform based on the stormtrooper armour. Pretty much like the ¿classical? image of Obi Wan in both Clone War cartoons. While changing only one guy's costume is easier that altering every extra's; this character has lines, and don't know how Ady could approach (if he tries to) to mantain the character.

Anakin is still the tragic figure. Vader is still the badass we get to see in the OT. We never get to see how the score in the inner match they're playing inside the robosuit. Only Luke feels it.

Anakin as the most powerful of Jedi, and this "ancient" sith, Vader, as the most powerful of Sith... nice metaphore of the balance of the Force, don't you think?.

PS: There are some great ideas in the Revenge of the Cut edit. Not radical, nor very plot-based. But some dialogues have been really enhanced; like Grievous giving reputation to the name Skywalker or the dialogue between anakin and obiwan just when they arrive to Coruscant. It reminds me a little of Han/Luke conversations in Hoth.

I've been thinking about giving a WTF moment to the PT, and considering some suggestions Bingowings has made of Anakin having a double personality ala Jekyll/Hyde... What if Anakin was, only in a way, a host for something? Implicitly suggesting of course, that the same prophecy the Jedi have, the Sith had it too. Rather easily established, this way you would be separating Anakin from suited Vader in a rather curious way, and making Vader stop being "an asshole in a suit".

"The end of the war is near, General. I sense Lord Vader is close"

"Have you ever heard of the tragedy of Darth Vader the wise?"

So we don't know who this Vader is, but we get the impression the guy is very important as a weapon, until the end when we see him in action.And it is a very good pretext for editing some non Vaderish dialogue in ANH just to leave "you're powers are weak old man. you should not have come back" (erase every reference of ObiWan and Vader knowing each other. Ben lies to Luke in Tatooine because he just can't tell a teenager "hey I fought against your father and left him to die in a lava river" if he wants Luke to join him). They know who Vader is by the Force