Monroville

I was posting replies to earlier posts and just read/got to what happened... jesus christ... (sorry if the 2 posts above come across like I ignored what happened)..

again, take your time... while we all expect a lot from you when it comes to this edit, your family is more important than a movie.  Take whatever time you need and if you need anything you know you can count on us.

InvisibleWolfMan said:

Minor quibble/suggestion here, but is it possible to remove the "Chicken Walkers?"  I just never felt they belonged on Hoth...the AT-ATs are more of an immediate threat.  The AT-STs seem better suited to JEDI where the Emperial forces would have to manuever in much smaller spaces given all the trees in the forest.

Either that, or make their design more menacing somehow....

 

Maybe take some T-rex shots from JURRASIC PARK and throw them in the background eating rebels? >:)

The AT-STs were fine with me because I always considered them there to pick off troops to make sure they didn't do what Luke just did... oops.

I guess what Adywan could do with the AT-STs is not just put a few more in the shots, but actually showing them mow down rebel troops and maybe even doing exactly what I described above: show rebel troops (of course they would look like dots in some of the AT-AT shots) moving below the AT-ATs to follow Luke's lead, but show the AT-STs under the AT-ATs feet shooting down the rebel troops to keep them from "doing the Batman" and throwing explosives into their underbellies.  It would be more along the line of the distant fighting shots on the Death Star in ANH:R, but just a thought...

That way it's not just "throwing more stuff in the picture" but adds more complexity to the battle other than one wall versus another wall; it would show both the Empire and the Rebels reacting on various levels of battle other than the snowspeeders and AT-ATs.  Hell, even showing a fire fight between snowtroopers and rebels on the ground below the AT-ATs (again, they would be mere dots with very small thin beams of lasers shooting back and forth underneath the AT-ATs feet) could be something to mull over.

Rhikter said:

Originally posted by Monroville:

"Not to start some flame war or anything, but Rhikter, someone has to call you out:"

I also don't want to start a flame war, and am a fan of civilized debate (Guess I shouldn't be posting on a forum then. Lol.)

1) The arm on the floor is a "continuity issue" not "canonicity."

2) Aspects of the film soundtrack do not exist in-universe (Save for the Cantina Band of course).  Do you really think that Vader hears the Imperial March being played offstage while stomping through the bridge of the Executor? (i.e. not an Canonicity issue.) Plus we hear it alluded to in the PT.  I think it was added to Revisited in order to connect the two trilogies, as it's kinda weird to hear it in the PT and then never again until ESB.

3) Yeah, that rant about R2's light was not worth the time I spent to post about it.  Good call.

Well, that's what's great about a forum like this; we can have these kind of disagreements but not make a big deal about 'em... you know, kind of like 2 irish brothers who get into a fight and have a drink together an hour later.. it's just a matter of keeping things in perspective.

And the R2 thing was worth the time to mention.. we all have our niggles with the SW movies and this is the place to post them.  Like I mentioned earlier, Adywan doesn't have to do anything that he isn't prepared to do due to respect of the source material or a desire to experiment and essentially do what the SEs were SUPPOSED to do: IF you are going to modify a movie like this, then GO FOR THE GOLD!  That's what makes SW:R so cool!

And I would still like to eventually see what those green AT-AT lasers would look like.  Who knows?  After seeing a rough cut of the Hoth battle with green AT-AT lasers it may not work for me afterall.  But that is what is so great about having the technology to make those changes OURSELVES without being slaves to the mega-million dollar studios.

Peace out Rhikter and KEEP ON POSTING!

I feel the same way, Ripplin.

Either way would work, but one thing to keep in mind Adywan is the "clutter" factor.  While I do like seeing the open areas outside the windows, a lot of the computer effects done for the SEs have a lot of stuff going on, be it things moving around (like the Rontos and flying robots in ANH in Mos Eisley) or just having backgrounds with tons of detail that to some degree don't quite jive with the foreground sets (watch the same scene you have in the clip above and compare that to the SE version: when you see the elevator go up outside the window and freeze-frame it: the outside stuff is super busy compared to the fairly stark white hallway the characters are in).

Consider mixing it up some, by including SOME of the altered shots and keeping some of the original "hallway only" shots, or even taking some of the building structures OUT of the window views to "unclutter" the view so to speak.

Rhikter said:

I've already given my lecture about serving the story and not doing something just because you can, so now I'll take a moment to tread that fine line between fan and fanboy *Shudders*:

 

Yes, changing the laser color may seem like a minor, insignificant change (So did Greedo shooting first), but think of the larger picture in terms of canonicity.  Laser color is a marker of what kind of technology is powering the weapon.  If you change the laser color you have, indirectly, change what technology makes up the weapons systems on the Imperial Walker which has been outlined in countless Star Wars tech manuals prior (I think).

Not to start some flame war or anything, but Rhikter, someone has to call you out:

doubleofive said:

professa adyfan said:

just for those who want to see an AT-AT shooting green

for some reason couldn't get it to appear in preview so posted link as well

incidently i'm pretty good with photoshop - but this colour change was a bitch
the filter that changes the red to green also changes blue to red
so where the green of the red of the laser meets the blue of the sky the feathering on the mask is crazily hard to get right
and to do the same on a moving target would certainly drive me nuts - so i think ady's decision to leave alone is a sensible one

i actually ended up wiping the lasers out and redrawing them from scratch

Nice going!  I wanted to take pretty much that same shot and try my hand at the green, but I didn't have the time.

I really don't think the red/green lasers is that big of a deal, but it is an option since Ady is (probably) going to trace over every bolt again anyway.  But if the ships and walkers shoot green, why do all the blasters shoot the same color, especially since Clones shot a different color than Battle Droids in the PT?  Its a slippery slope, it seems, a slope that if Ady was going to start, would have started it in ANHR.

 

Again, changing the color from red to green is not THAT big of a deal for me, just a "what if.." to see what it would look like.

My take was that the hand guns can remain all red, because it could easily be explained that rebels picked off the guns from dead stormtroopers, while the BIG guns on the TIES, AT-ATs and Star Destroyers, etc are Imperial Issue only.  Thus, only the big stuff not held by human hands would need a change to green, short of the speeder bikes (which you would keep red because (1) the gun is small and (2) it needs to contrast with Luke's Imperial light saber) - all the hand-held weapons could perfectly remain all red.

And to comment on the photo, great work!  One: you can selectively pick a color in Adobe Photoshop to get around the "skewing the entire picture" issue when shifting colors, but Two: you pretty much stumbled onto what would be the quickest fix, which would be to photoshop the red lasers out and just add in the green laser bolts from scratch.  While time consuming, that wouldn't be that hard - the hard part would be adding the green afterglow on the AT-AT heads and where the green bolts would connect with other things.

Regardless, appreciate the hard work.  This is still something I would like to do on my own some day...

One last thing,

ImperialFighter has a point; in fact, the same one I made after him (sorry about that IF): just until recently, it just seemed like the asteroid "farted" on its own. 

I would either get rid of the flash (which I know you stated you would not do) or make the smaller asteroid causing it bigger so people can see what is causing the explosion, as well as make the explosion more of a fireball + debris like all of the other asteroid collisions as opposed to a flash.  That way it would be more consistent with the rest of the asteroid chase sequence (regardless of added TIEs, chasing space slugs or whatnot).

re: Adywan,

In your editing, will you be going over the SEs (be it 1997 and 2004) and taking things out that seem extraneous or just plain stupid?  I would have to watch the SEs over again, but after seeing your comparison clip of Bespin on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp-17S3H8s0

I would remove the wierd red thing on the left-hand side in frame 0:02 to 0:05.  I could see taking that shot, removing the cloud elements and recreating the scene with moving clouds and a more realistic cloud city (if you had the time and patience), but even if you kept the same shot, there are some things that seem to have been added just for the hell of it and IMHO really need to go.

Here is a good example of not just differences between the OT and SEs but some of that annoying stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYKp9YaMBpY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8kvuNlA9jg&feature=related

After seeing the beaked sarlacc, I say get rid of the beak - too much like the space slug and kinda stupid looking. If you have to animate it (when the time comes), just have the whole thing come out like some Lovecraftian worm.

Bespin: you know, after seeing some of the redone hallway shots, I would almost consider going back to some of the windowless hallways for a shot or 2; it gets to the point where every shot has to have a window looking out at the sunset - that first redone shot with C3P0 talking to R2 I think works better than the redone one, not to mention a few of those "hallway only" shots instill a little claustrophobia.  A moving skyline (slow moving clouds, no space ships) would help too.

_______________________

On the green AT-AT lasers: I completely understand your POV.  While I disagree on the argument that they wouldn't show up well against a blue sky or a green jungle (Luke's GREEN lightsaber stood out pretty well when deflecting those speederbike lasers in the jungle), the lasers were red to begin with and it would require a lot of work (both in ESB and ROTJ).  I still think it would be neat to do a quickie photoshop or the like just to see how it would look.

_______________________

Also, during the inside room shots with Leia, would it be possible to add a moving or non-moving sky with clouds outside the upper window to replace the flat blue (from 0:22 to 0:44)?  While you do have the cloud car fly over at 0:31, it still looks like a set and not a room in a building floating 10,000 ft (or more) in the air.

_______________________

On a final note (for now), have you thought about emailing some of the other FanEdit.Org editors and getting multiple editors to work on sections of the film?  After you do the color correcting and any other overall picture fixing, you could section off either scenes or timed sections (like one editor take on the first 30 minutes, another take on the next 30, etc) with you co-ordinating the extra corrections and changes.  That would definitely speed the process and take some of the load off your back.  You think FanEdit.org would bite?

Janskeet said:

Adywan, what celebration sequence do you plan on using for ROTJ? The special edition celebration at the ende on Endore or the original theatrical celebration?

re: Adywan:

Personally, while the extraneous "celebration" scenes were neat and all, I would keep it strictly on Endor.  Those scenes seemed a little too Phantom Menacy and a little goofy.  The rebels celebrating their defeat of the Emperor is one thing.. but the Empire is a lot bigger than the Emperor and to have everyone singing and dancing and not getting lined up against a wall by other Grand Mof Tarkin types just pushes it over the Frank Capra syrup point.

adywan said:

Originally posted by: teharri

I don't think that Luke should have the sith eyes though. He never turned to the dark side so wouldn't have had them.

Ah, but I would disagree.. when he goes at Vader for threatening his sister, he is pretty mad to say the least.  The idea that he was beginning to give in to the Dark Side (which could explain how he overpowers Vader so much, considering Vader's strength in EMPIRE) and then regaining his control would be a good edit.  Remember, the whole fight is about corrupting Luke to begin with, and to have Luke "that close" to going over and then when he turns to the Emperor and tells him he failed would make the point even more in that the Emperor was so close to turning him and truly did fail.  It would turn Luke's emotional outburst and following beat-down more significant in something more than an just an outburst.

Regardless, its something to think about and maybe play with (it shouldn't be too hard to have his eyes dark yellow and turn back to blue as he looks at his hand and put it up as a test shot to see how it works).

Ziz said:

Monroville said:

Another thing to think about; after watching your ESB Revisited comparison shots, I noticed that the Snowspeeders engines are not lit up.  Not that they have to have any particular coloring,other than white, that may be something to play with as well (just a thought, being that it is kind of hard to fly when you're engines are off).

Modern airliner jet engines don't have flames coming out the back and they seem to work just fine.

 

-  Heh, heh, true, true.. >:)  But it's STAR WARS!  Light-up engines are what SW is all about!  You don't ever see the MF, X-wings, Star Destroyers or TIEs fly around without light-up engines...

You know, maybe there needs to be an engine on the Cloud City.  I don't see how it could stay up in the air without some CGI engine stuck on the bottom shooting out a fireball or something.. hmm, I wonder what else could be improved with a rear-end glow? Maybe add engine glows to the rears of the Taun-Tauns?  Or is that just too silly?

(PS: it's not flames coming out the back per se, but simply having the engine nacelles glow the same way the X-wing, MF, Star Destroyer and TIE engines glow and "don't" shoot out flames.  Again, a very minor thing considering the Snowspeeder engines are made up of 8 to 10 VERY small circular openings around a conical object, and it would be a very small thing regardless)

Another thing to think about; after watching your ESB Revisited comparison shots, I noticed that the Snowspeeders engines are not lit up.  Not that they have to have any particular coloring,other than white, that may be something to play with as well (just a thought, being that it is kind of hard to fly when you're engines are off).

The problem is that there is NOTHING that hits the asteroid making that little explosion.  Again, if you watch the video between 2:04 and 2:05, you can see the flash and nothing goes into the crater.. not a small meteor, no lasers, nothing.

- okay, never mind.  After watching it about four or five times, there is a dot of a rock going into the crater.. it is damn near a split second shot.  I still think that spot is a bit off because it still looks like the asteroid is giving off gas on its own.

Monroville said:

Hello,

First time on the site and of course love what you've done with ANH.  I have read your proposed changes and thoroughly agree with your ideas, though there are a few other issues you may want to consider:

(1) all of the imperial craft shoot GREEN laser bolts with the exception of the hand-held blasters.  It would be more consistent for the AT-ATs to shoot green lasers as opposed to the Rebel-associated red lasers.

(2) when the asteroid chase first begins, there is a peanut shaped asteroid that has a small, mysterious explosion inside a crater that occurs for no reason right before the MF and Tie fighters come around the right side of it.  This could be removed.

(3) as you stated before, it would be cool to see 4 or 5 star destroyers with blinking lights or no lights at all when Luke leaves Hoth to show further ships hit with the ion cannon clearing the path for the escaping rebels.

(4) it seems you agree that the less of the Wampa the better; I would excise the "munching" scene and the very silly "wailing" scene and keep it as close to the original as possible.

Other than the 2 issues above, it appears you have a very special edit in store and I look forward to its release.  The real challenge is going to be editing JEDI into something far more serious to fit better with EMPIRE.

Thanks for all the hard work and effort,

 

Sincerly,

Christopher Seay

I will have to make a screen capture of the scene in question (in regards to the asteroid chase sequence beginning). 

- Okay, here is what I am talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rnyWNoFb58

From 2:04 to 2:05, there is a flash inside the crater with no lasers or objects hitting the asteroid; it's just like the asteroid "farted" for lack of a better word.  This could easily be edited out (yeesh!  Didn't realize how white the MF engines are)

As far as the AT-ATs go, a simple test would work enough to see if green lasers would work visually (though I do understand that the red lasers ARE what we are used to and were in the original); something akin to what Adywan has already done with his above/below comparison clips between the revisit cut and the 2004 cut (say a few sequences of the AT-ATs firing with the scenes above being green and the ones below being red).

- if someone could take this video clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWjj8EKTkWE&feature=related

and simply go over the AT-AT lasers to make them green (regardless of how well it blended in) and posted it on Youtube, I think it would work well enough to get a general idea of what the overall effect would look like if the change was made.

You may want to also consider playing with the lighting of the models during the Hoth attack.  Some of the shots are so bright that they give away the fact that they are models.  Maybe the possibility of a moving sky/clouds in the background, darken the models a little and smooth out the motions of the stop-motion AT-AT shots.

Sevb32 said:

adywan said:

I have been thinking about adding a very subtle snippet of the Emperors theme to the hologram scene but the music is so great for that scene as it is it would only be a very short sample.

- remember that was one of the biggest gripes viewers had with the ANH revisited was the added music that seemed out of place (like the slower paced EMPIRE theme during the Death Star TIE reveal).  Personally, I would keep the same exact music ques as you can to keep it as less detracting as possible.

The FX are going to have a clean-up. I'm hoping to do something with the Matte paintings. the main ones would be the cloud city ones. Some you can really tell that they are paintings. Not sure how to pull it off yet (well i have a few ideas but i'm not going to do any tests just yet) .

Couple thing I wanna say about those paintings, the cloud patterns are the exactly same in some different mid day (non sunset or non sunrise) shots of Cloud City, which of course would be impossible, one is a reverse negative of another shot (The one with the Tibbana Gas refinery added in the SE.
And in a couple of falcon and Slave I platform shots the background buildings/painting clouds are the same.

Try EXECUTIVE DECISION with Kurt Russell; there are tons of shots of clouds during sunrise/sunset.  Also, TOP GUN may have some cloud scenes that can be used too.

Hello,

First time on the site and of course love what you've done with ANH.  I have read your proposed changes and thoroughly agree with your ideas, though there are a few other issues you may want to consider:

(1) all of the imperial craft shoot GREEN laser bolts with the exception of the hand-held blasters.  It would be more consistent for the AT-ATs to shoot green lasers as opposed to the Rebel-associated red lasers.

(2) when the asteroid chase first begins, there is a peanut shaped asteroid that has a small, mysterious explosion inside a crater that occurs for no reason right before the MF and Tie fighters come around the right side of it.  This could be removed.

(3) as you stated before, it would be cool to see 4 or 5 star destroyers with blinking lights or no lights at all when Luke leaves Hoth to show further ships hit with the ion cannon clearing the path for the escaping rebels.

(4) it seems you agree that the less of the Wampa the better; I would excise the "munching" scene and the very silly "wailing" scene and keep it as close to the original as possible.

Other than the 2 issues above, it appears you have a very special edit in store and I look forward to its release.  The real challenge is going to be editing JEDI into something far more serious to fit better with EMPIRE.

Thanks for all the hard work and effort,

Sincerly,

Christopher Seay