Neerb

So for the Battlefront 2 Ajan Kloss shot, Ed Slushie revealed that it’s the defeat animation of the smaller game modes. You can see the one he used here: https://youtu.be/sJiHOWXwDAc?t=668

The one he shared is 1080p 60fps, so if someone could somehow get a really good rip of the Youtube footage, or recreate it at home, that would solve the issue of choppiness. A 4k version would be better, but scouring Youtube (and lacking the tech to do it myself) I’ve only found this one: https://youtu.be/u2_A7QiAA6o?t=899

That second link is 4k 60fps with max settings, which is great, but unfortunately it shows the AI still fighting in the back shooting occasional laser blasts, plus it has the guy’s computer stats in the top left. So, unless someone feels confident enough to edit those out, this particular clip is likely not an option. Still, it gives a better idea of what we theoretically have to work with.

DominicCobb said:

For the continuity nerds/sticklers/what have you, who’s to say that Vader is the only one with a TIE advanced?

I was curious so I checked Wookieepedia:

The Advanced X1 was a prototype that wasn’t mass-produced, but multiple were made. The current status of Vader’s ship in Canon is unknown. In Legends, however…

It was later stowed aboard the Executor and was apparently vaporized when the ship collided with the second Death Star during the Battle of Endor, though at least one TIE Advanced x1 was involved in the space battle over the sanctuary moon.

There’s no real source cited there, so idk what the context is. But, taking the Wookiee at its word, it can be presumed that Vader’s own Advanced, and possibly others, was at Endor and its fate is technically unknown in both continuities.

How about no vehicle and it’s implied he sprinted there?

Shuttle makes most plausible sense to me, but it’s such an implausible scenario already, and TIE Advanced looks so much more iconic. Hard to decide…

I think on the mobile version you can still hold your finger on the chain link icon to pop up a menu with “copy link address” as an option.

If you go to your post history, each post has a link url that leads to it in context. You can also right-click the chain link icon at the top right of any comment in a thread and click “Copy link location” to copy the link to that specific comment.

As for the detail standing out too much, I didn’t really notice a problem with it, but then again the whole video is kinda blurry on my screen (possibly due to watching the clip in Google Drive instead of downloading it).

Movies Remastered said:

I posted both a whole ago. The final castle shot is on my The Last Hope thread. Not sure how to link it on here.

https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1407005/action/topic#1407005

Looks good to me!

That plus krausfadr’s suggestions I think could all definitely make it more viable than it may seem right now. The stormtrooper landing was axed previously, but only after it was edited and tested several times, and mainly because it had jarring camera movements and CGI people running around (and added nothing of value that the new establishing shots don’t add already). A slow pan of CGI rock and metal could almost definitely be made to fit okay if we have high enough quality footage to work with.

The problem is just whether we can actually get that footage or not. I haven’t been able to find anything online that looks quite like the shot Ed used (though it’s only been like 13 hours since they posted, lol), and I’m not sure anyone here has game tech good enough to try to capture their own footage.

The next time Ed Slushie gets back on, maybe they can give us their source to work with (or maybe they’re working on it themselves).

Maybe we need to see a demo to be sure, but it sounds like blurring it would be best. Better to make it believable than in-your-face fanservice, especially since we’ve got the way more in-your-face shot earlier.

Make sure the lights are off, though. Maybe if it’s too unrecognizable without the lights, that would be a problem? But the audience should be focusing on Kylo and the wayfinder anyway.

Well the music isn’t an issue. Ed Slushie had that music in his upload, but we can literally just put any audio there.

As for the visuals, I think with some more tweaks it can become passable enough to be worth what it adds to the setting. It will always look CGI, but there are already way uglier effects in this movie.

Quick 2am low quality tweak on Ajan Kloss: https://vimeo.com/508304128

Some thoughts on why the original transition might not look right for some people (and why maybe these ideas could help):

• The original is very brightly colored with sunshine, which is a giveaway for CGI in general but especially in the generally blue-green TROS. Here I’ve dulled it a bit, specifically with some blue to easier transition into the next inner-cave shot. Might clash a little with the previous shot, but maybe it could indicate some time has passed on Rey’s hike back.
• Some people mentioned it should cut instead of wipe. While that does help keep the BB-8 scene from being cut awkwardly short, I think it also helps in that you don’t see the video game plants and movie plants on two halves of the screen at the same time. You barely see the video game plants at all now, as I think they were one of the faker-looking parts.
• The original I think maybe lingered too long on the video game shot, giving your eyes too much time to process it. Now it starts just a bit later and ends a bit sooner. Ending sooner is especially important because I noticed that, in the original, you can see the very top of the ship still rendering extra bits into the game at the very end of the clip, so now you won’t see that.

Framerate on the video game part is still iffy though, especially in my even-lower-quality render. A real fix would need the best quality of whatever the source was, which I’m not sure of.

CaptainFaraday said:

Obi-Wan has dropped down to take Grievous by surprise, quipping and joking because he thinks he has the upper hand, then Grievous pulls out not one but four lightsabers and tells him he’s been trained by the guy Obi-Wan couldn’t defeat twice, and Obi-Wan is thrown into a difficult fight.

The problem is that it really isn’t a difficult fight. Just on the basic math of having one blade to block four simultaneous ones, Grievous should have been able to chop Obi down even with zero training, let alone with training from Dooku. But that nerdy nitpicking aside, even in the scene Grievous is clearly incompetent and Obi-Wan never seems to act threatened, smiling and treating it like a game until the fist fight later on.

In Hal’s commentary on the movie, he talks about how his editing of Grievous leans heavier into the reality of Grievous being the opportunistic coward that he is, rather than pretending he’s still the badass killing machine of the Genndy Tartakovsky cartoon. Removing that line here appears to be part of that philosophy, with Grievous just briefly trying to defend himself before running away almost as soon as he’s losing.

I think the best example of that approach, one of my favorite subtler edits in Hal’s version, is in Grievous’ first encounter with the jedi. In the original movie, when he shatters the window and flies out into space, he says “You lose, Jedi!” Then when he’s escaping in the pod, he says to himself “Time to abandon ship.” Both of these are pretty lame lines; the first because obviously Anakin and Obi aren’t in any real danger in the opening sequence of the movie, and the latter because it’s just stating what’s happening on screen. In this edit, however, the former line is now replaced by the second, so that he says “Time to abandon ship” as he shatters the window and flies out. This is a huge improvement, not only because it’s now actually kind of a clever one-liner, but also because it’s playing up Grievous as a sort of “Starscream” character who is perfectly aware and even proud of what a weaselly “survive at all costs” villain he is.

Octorox said:

To be honest, I like the transition on Ajan Kloss as it is. Not everything needs an establishing shot, and I don’t think adding more of them really addresses the film’s pacing problems.

I mainly think it helps because we never get a look at what their base actually looks like in the movie. There’s no sense of location in Ajan Kloss, it always just feels like they’re on a set somewhere that’s sometimes dark blue and sometimes bright yellow. This one shot gives you a better idea for the rest of the movie of where exactly they are in the inner-base scenes. It may be the most obviously cgi shot in the movie if we use it, but ironically it may help the Resistance base feel more like a real place and less like the awkward fake location that all of the recycled TFA Leia scenes have to be contained.

Also, I really do think establishing shots can go a decent way in at least making pacing more bearable. I’m reminded of seeing Batman v Superman in theaters and getting whiplash every time they cut to a new interior location, vs watching the extended cut on home video and thinking “oh, there’s all the transitional shots; guess they cut them all to make more time for nonsense dream sequences in the theatrical.” And Rise of Skywalker definitely gave me some BvS vibes in the theater (though probably for several reasons).

Brewzter said:

Ed Slushie said:

Neerb said:

Also tbh we’re kinda killing time while stuff like Rey’s blade and Luke’s hair are worked on.

Well if that’s the case, speaking of ways to slow down the movie’s pacing: here’s a small edit I made that adds an establishing shot of the cave on Ajan Kloss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVGEK6ENDiQ&feature=youtu.be

I like the concept but I don’t think it would work since it’s clearly a game render and would be a bit jarring

It might be passable, since there’s no weird camera movement or people in the shot. Maybe if the movement could be smoothed out a bit (or maybe there’s just something off with the framerate of the youtube upload), and perhaps some sort of filter over it to make it grainier and better match the color of the previous shot (in Hal’s recolored version).

Even as-is though, I like it. Honestly it looks like it could be a shot out of any Prequel, but maybe that’s not a compliment.

RogueLeader said:

I think it’s cool to see how much effort the community has put in to make the Mustafar Minute work, but at the same time, I hate how much effort has had to be put into it. I feel like half of the Ascendant thread is about the Mustafar Minute.

Yeah, it was sickening like a hundred pages ago and now has come back.

The problem is that it’s the opening of the movie, and the theatrical is super rushed and set a terrible precedent for the several scenes (arguably the movie) that followed. This scene’s going to make a big impression no matter what, so it’s important to make sure it’s a good one, or as good as is practical.

Also tbh we’re kinda killing time while stuff like Rey’s blade and Luke’s hair are worked on.

I guess it could partially come down to whether having a barren castle is even more jarring than either tree option.

One thing that may be tricky about adding the trees, besides the technical aspect, is that the trees in the overhead forest shot look nothing like the ones in the Kylo fight.

With just those two scenes, I haven’t thought it’s that big a deal so far, as it goes by fairly quickly and in a real movie could just be one of those technical inaccuracies you gloss over the first time you see it.

However, if we add trees to the castle shot, that’s going to draw a lot more attention to it depending on what trees are added. If the castle trees look more like the trees in Kylo’s fight, then will the overhead shot of a totally different forest in the middle stand out too much? Or if the castle trees look more like the trees in the overhead shot, is that longer exposure going to make the Kylo fight stand out more and make it clear that the previous two shots are fan-added?

Question for Hal: if the fly-by close-up shot of Vader’s Castle in your last preview ultimately isn’t able to be improved by anyone here (through aging the building, addition of trees, smoother effects, etc), would you still want to add it to v2 as is? Or would you just stick with the forest flyover?

CaptainFaraday said:

Hire Gilbert Gottfried via the website Cameo to record one line of dialogue for a Rise of Skywalker edit.

Palpatine: “I have been every voice (Snoke) you have ever heard (Gilbert Gottfried) INSIDE YOUR HEAD!”

Ooh, BIG fan of this one.

I’m not sure this discussion belongs in this thread. Hal’s been on board with using Leia’s purple for a good while, and replacing either blade with Luke’s RotJ hilt and blade is a lot of work that would frankly just result in narrative confusion and unnecessary fan service with little thematic meaning (as mentioned, she’s already taking one of Luke’s blades to Exegol regardless). It’s also pretty late in the game to bring this up, considering editors are finishing up the unstable blade effect for Rey’s blue blade and the effects for Leia’s purple have been done and implemented for months.

Unless Hal specifically comes in saying it’s a great idea, or someone is already able and willing to make a demo, this would probably be better suited to the general Sequel Edits threads.

Octorox said:

Great video. Probably not for this edit, but I wonder how feasible the idea of having C3PO translate the dagger on Pasaana and completely cutting Kijimi from the movie is. I think the biggest issue you’d run in to is Chewie. I don’t know that it’s feasible to completely remove him from the rest of the movie.

I think too much happens on Kijimi to get cut entirely. Lame fetch quest aside, this is the first part of the movie where things almost slow down enough for us to get some characterization for our main cast, for them to reflect on what’s happened so far (including a mention of Crait, which is some much-needed continuity and as much setup as we’ll get for the fleet at the end) and what lies ahead. Then after that, we get Kylo and Rey’s confrontation, which is easily the most visually interesting and memorable part of the movie. This is also where Hux gets his send-off and we learn the identity of the spy from the movie’s beginning, and while the sequence is certainly rushed, its absence would definitely confuse audience members as Hux is just mysteriously not in the second half of the movie.

And that’s all without even getting to the biggest point of the scene: the whole “Rey Palpatine” thing, where, Rey Nobody or not, we need a scene that explains why Palpatine wants Rey and why Rey will struggle with her emotions against Palpatine later.

Oh, yeah, and if you cut all of Kijimi, the movie becomes laughably short compared to the other Star Wars movies.

Hal 9000 said:

Since you reminded me, I went ahead and replaced the DOTF snippet with the actual OST in higher quality. I put it in place where it was, and extended it backward to the beginning of the track.
What do you guys think? Too heavy?

https://vimeo.com/506528635

Haven’t responded in a while, but just wanted to say I really liked this here. Anyone arguing Sequel music would fit better thematically for Rey and Kylo’s final duel than a Prequel reference is totally fair, but if you’re okay with “it’s a reference to the cancelled IX script” or “the chronological final duel rhymes with the chronological first duel” or even just “I want to hear DotF dang it,” I think it works really well here. It’s dramatic and menacing and different enough from the Phantom Menace version that it doesn’t feel like… well, a fan just ripped it from another movie and threw it in. And as for “too heavy,” I think it wasn’t heavy enough in v1. Now it’s long and loud enough to leave an impact, where as in v1 it was so quiet and short that I wouldn’t have noticed it was there if I hadn’t been following this thread.

Also, watching/listening again, I think this new music helps in a way I hadn’t considered before: it’s so full of dread, it feels like the whole fight is just something bad happening, rather than a battle of good vs evil, which I think works. If you could say that music is “from a character’s perspective,” this music is from Finn’s perspective, thrown back violently and helpless forced to watch as Rey gives in to hate.

It looked pretty good as is to me! It goes by so fast anyway, it’s just a nice little detail to make the viewer realize that what’s happening is a transformation. They might catch a glimpse, go “wait what?” then see his full image come out of the dark for “unlimited powaaah!”

Hey Hal, I know I’m a few weeks late to these updates, but if you were interested and it’s not too late, I thought I’d throw in a small addition for your consideration:

Back in May, user sade1212 posted a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transformation animation for Palpatine in the Prequel Radical Ideas thread. You can see the clip here, although they may have a newer version available elsewhere: https://streamable.com/yll8kr (approx 10 seconds in)

This has stuck with me since I saw it and I feel it could really add a nice bit of theatrical polish to your take on Palpatine’s transformation in LoE, if you’re editing it again anyway. sade1212 appears to still be active if you’d want to contact them about the clip.