I never thought the broken lightsaber effect was at all convincing anyway, so not showing it is definitely a plus.
It’s been removed.
Been working the past few days on the Starkiller Firing scene, including shuffling the sequence and timing of a few shots, changing the firing shot so that the strong sunlight is no longer visible, and finally adding a new establishing shot to better transition from Rey/Kylo to the Starkiller cue.
Password: fanedit
I don’t think the were meant to be heavy or light per se, just difficult to handle due to the energies involved. I imagine that it would be like swinging a gyroscope.
Keeping part of the droid factory is probably the right call here and most of it feels seamless, except for the bit with Anakin nonchalantly releasing Padme from the cask. I wonder if it wouldn’t be more effective to imply that it was the Geonosians who released her, since they immediately surround her anyway.
Other than that, great work!
Ha!
But yeah, I won’t be changing the ball, it was just a weird idea.
They look good, but have you considered using Frame Compare or something to show the difference from the original?
Just a weird idea I had just now, in thinking about how to show more of Ben’s childhood on the Falcon, that the training ball could now be one of Ben’s old toys:
It would need to be a physical prop filmed and rotoscoped into the shot, but it would turn a moment of fanservice into something which recontextualizes where Han is, mentally, that the memory of Ben and his childhood interests still has such a hold on him. It might also give the Rathtars a little bit of relevance in the larger story.
Probably impractical/confusing/not really worth the trouble though.
That is correct. I suppose it could also be interpreted as ‘Bring her to me…alone’, but that would be kinda weird unless it’s Snoke’s idea of a pun. 😉
It’s a neat concept, and with keyframing and a more subtle glow it could look really good.
The sound on this one is still a work in progress:
Password: fanedit
I felt the scene needed some confirmation from Hux after Snoke’s ‘Prepare the weapon’ line, so I took it from the previous Snoke scene. Now that scene has Hux wordlessly smirk at Kylo as he leaves, which works about as well. Also, Kylo is now hemetless in the final shot.
Although it is tempting to show the story from Luke’s point of view, it’s impossible to do this for the prequels. Therefore, I propose making Yoda the true viewpoint in the story with Luke as the student he views from afar:
Open with Luke seeing a battle in the sky. He goes to see his friends and talk with Biggs, then returns home. The footage begins blurry and indistinct, almost dreamlike, but gets sharper and clearer as the scene progresses. The next day, a sandcrawler arrives with two droids. Luke cleans them and discovers a mysterious transmission. He tells his uncle about it, saying that it might belong to Old Ben, but his uncle dismisses it. Luke goes to contemplate his choices at the sunset.
Two Jedi stare out at the city at sunset. Inside the temple, the Jedi council tests Anakin on his abilities and feelings. Yoda explains that he senses much fear in Anakin, stemming from his fear of losing his mother. Transition to the Naboo palace at sunset, which has been made to look like another part of the Jedi temple, and Yoda declares that Obi-wan is a Jedi Knight and that Anakin will be one as well.
That night, Luke finds R2 has left and can do nothing else until morning.
Cut to the homestead in the daytime. Owen and Beru greet Anakin, and Clieg Lars informs him of his mother’s disappearance. Anakin kisses Padme goodbye and speeds off in search of her.
Cut to Luke searching the desert for R2. He finds the droid and Ben, who tells him all about the Jedi.
Obi-wan voices his concern to Mace and Yoda about Anakin’s abilities, and his emotional connection with Padme. They urge him to trust the boy.
Luke sees the wreckage of the sandcrawler and the burning homestead.
Yoda senses Anakin’s pain, and we see Anakin returning to the homestead with his mother, who is then buried.
Luke makes his decision to become a Jedi like his father.
Amid Anakin’s desolation, R2 arrives with the distress call. Anakin and Padme decide to rescue Obi-wan, the person Anakin considers to be like his father. The ship leaves Tatooine
The Falcon blasts off from Tatooine into Hyperspace.
Anakin and Padme confess their love, are brought into the arena, and Obi-wan jokes about the rescue attempt. The Jedi intervene in the games and Yoda arrives with the clones. Dooku reveals the existence of the Death Star.
Obi-wan senses a disturbance in the Force, Luke takes his first step into a larger world.
Obi-wan remarks on the victory of the clones, but Yoda says otherwise. The Senators watch the ships depart, the beginning of the Empire. Anakin and Padme are married.
In space, Imperial ships gather. Vader is summoned, and sees the rebel base on Hoth.
Luke collapses in the snow, and sees a vision of Obi-wan telling him to go to Yoda.
He leaves immediately and finds Yoda, but in the meantime his friends must flee Hoth.
Luke senses that his friends are in danger, but can do nothing.
Anakin has a dream of Padme dying in childbirth.
Luke faces the Dark Side Tree.
Anakin has visions of the future, but Yoda cautions him against acting on them.
Luke decides to leave. Yoda cannot dissuade him.
Anakin sits in the Jedi council chambers, torn between the Jedi and love.
Luke faces Vader alone. He fails, but he is rescued on the Falcon. They escape Cloud City.
Here follow several scenes of Episode 3, starting with Anakin comforting Padme after the Temple massacre. Obi-wan enters to discover where he has gone, and we see Vader killing the separatist leaders. Padme confronts him, then Obi-wan. Yoda waits on the asteroid awaiting news, and Bail arrives telling him of Obi-wan’s arrival.
Luke returns to Dagobah, and Yoda tells him all about the mission ahead. He dies.
After this there are some flashes, distorted voices, strange noises. The image of a throne room appears, a door opens. Luke and Vader meet the Emperor on the only Death Star to be introduced in this edit. Their confrontation leads to the death of Vader and the Emperor, but as Luke stares into the funeral pyre, Yoda’s words echo – ‘Pass on what you have learned’.
There is a vision of a temple, Luke confronting a student, the temple in ruins, Luke hiding on an island. There is darkness, but then Rey comes to Luke’s door, bearing his old lightsaber. Some of the scenes from the island in TLJ are played here, and eventually Yoda appears to Luke to give him one final lesson. Luke then becomes a legend, dying in front of the binary sunset.
I’ve watched the previous version of this edit, and although there’s a lot to like I don’t think the Scarif scenes work very well as a high-octane ‘prologue’ to the film. I think the problem comes down to the sequence being too long to avoid getting bogged down in a battle on multiple fronts.
So my suggestions:
Keep the ‘A Long Time Ago’ text before the Scarif scene, but lose the Solo-esque text. All the description we need comes in the crawl.
Keep the battle focused on only the ships above the shield - it would be simple to just cut the ships that got through and imply that the shield closed successfully before anything got through. It would also help to edit this footage for legibility, for example showing the massive TIE assault then immediately cut to Red 5 being overwhelmed, and showing the ships taking out the Star Destroyer’s shields and then cutting to the Y-wings knocking out its power.
For the end of the Scarif sequence, it feels strange to simply cut from the ship going to hyperspace to the opening crawl, since it implies that they made a clean getaway. There’s no ‘hook’ to draw the audience into asking what happens next. It also makes the Empire seem weak for getting completely bested in this battle. For this I think the way to end it is to keep Vader’s assault on the Rebel fleet as well as his boarding of the flagship. This way we introduce the plans as a physical item and hint at what they contain (due to the outline of the Death Star - I think it’s a mistake to show the real Death Star this early anyway). End the scene on the shot of Vader watching the fleeing Tantive IV, since even though it’s somewhat of a continuity issue with the next scene it establishes that Vader is personally hunting this ship. In fact, if you wanted to avoid this issue it would be simple to cut some of Leia’s expository bluffing and have Vader cut to the chase:
‘Darth Vader. Only you could be so bold. The Imperial Senate will not sit still for this.’
‘Don’t act so surprised your highness, you weren’t on any mercy mission this time.’
‘I’m a member of the Imperial Senate…’
‘You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor. Take her away!’
Leia’s strategy should merely be to to use her influence as a senator to dissuade Vader since she knows a bluff is useless.
I think moving the Vader lightsaber action back to the prologue amps up the suspense when the ship is boarded in the next scene, and it’s a bit of a rug pull when Vader holds back and lets his troops do the work.
Anyway, just my 2 (or 20) cents.
The cut on the line, “We still can save him” feels a little weird initially, maybe because it cuts away as she is starting to talk. I know you’re kind of limited on how you can cut it, that’s just the one thing that stood out to me at first.
That’s been the toughest line to work around since the camera is on Han when she says it originally. Maybe if I cut to Han when he says ‘there’s nothing more we could do’, then have her say her line, then cut back to ‘You…me’.
The flaws are primarily a problem of the two main characters, and begin in TFA:
I would say Finn’s defining trauma is that of being a Stormtrooper realizing in his first battle that he’s not a killer. However, he immediately starts killing his own mates when the story needs him to, and this aspect of his character is never explored again.I have seen a few people comment exactly the same type of thing, but they have misinterpreted that scene, even when it’s explained later in the film:
[FINN:]
But my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn’t going to kill for them. So I ran.
So it’s NOT that he isn’t a killer, he just refused to kill innocent civilians and that is the moment he sees them for what they are and decides to run. Slaughtering innocent unarmed people and killing during battle are two completely different things.
I realized right after posting that I had overlooked the larger problem in favor of that point which indeed is technically rationalized later (although I’d argue that him killing his own people without a qualm feels wrong regardless of his reasoning). The larger issue is that neither Finn nor Rey act in ways one would expect considering their lives up to that point.
There’s some impressive attention to detail here, despite the concessions for heavy traffic.
I think instead of intercutting the scenes at the very end when the ties are coming with Kylo then Rey then hux I would do them one after the other. The energy of the scene is just too frantic for what feels like it should be a scene of suspense.
In other words less cutting when the ties arrive
Though I’m still pretty happy with that bit it might be worth another look. I was trying to give the scene more energy via cuts but maybe less is more.
Continuing with scenes about Ben’s past, I’ve taken another stab at the Han/Leia discussion:
https://vimeo.com/339205661
Password: fanedit
My first attempt at an edit was to cut the scene after Leia says ‘That’s when I lost you both’ to give it a more dour tone, but it’s important to show the difference between Han’s attitude and Leia’s. With this version I’ve cut the unnecessary explanation of why Han went back to smuggling, which means that the weird re-introduction of Ben could be cut as well (‘We lost our son…forever’). Most importantly, no Snoke.
Buzzfeed just reported that a script has been completed for a KOTOR movie.
Don’t trust Buzzfeed.
How so?
I think there’d be too many expectations from a lot of people that’d potentially ruin the films whichever way they go.
I’d be all in for more personal stories set during the Clone War, I think it’d really do wonders for that time period. We get some of it from the TV shows, but nothing actually good.
But yeah if they want to stay away from the main saga at all costs I think the old republic era is definitely the most logical pick. I really don’t want it to be a Jedi story though, I think it’d be cool to see more Rogue One-like films.
You say there’d be too many expectations, but the Clone Wars has an even greater chance of “offending” people as it is directly connected to the films. And while I love the era there are many OT fans who don’t want to return to the PT, and I respect that… TOR is a fresh start for everyone.
I think about it like the MCU. You have a ton of comics/books/games on the era, and the producers are now free to tell their own story. Most complaints regarding the ST from fans has been towards inconsistent writing (agree or disagree). But by adapting characters you would be more in an MCU position.
Man, the MCU is a lot of things but I don’t think I would ever say that it has “consistent writing.” The less SW can be like the MCU the better honestly (and I love the MCU).
Well, one thing you have to admit is how happy and united the fandom is. A consistent vision is my stab at the answer to that. While any piece of new SW material will divide people. I was convinced Endgame would divide people for providing a definitive ending… but that’s not the case.
I couldn’t care less whether the fandom is divided or not. I care about the quality of the movie. People love Endgame but that’s because they created the film in such a way that their main goal was fan service/not making fans mad. I think that’s a poor way to approach a film when it’s at the expense of the story (which I’d argue is the case with that film). But anyway, fans don’t care and eat it up. That’s why it’s well received, not because the MCU has a “consistent vision” which is a claim that has no basis in reality.
The big reason Endgame worked for me is that most of the characters got resonant, consistent conclusions to their arcs. I guess that could be called fanservice, since it’s something that fans of the characters wanted to see. This is in Stark contrast to, for example, the final season of Game of Thrones. Since the showrunners were supposedly working off of the author’s own notes I can only assume that the story beats were what Martin intended when he handed them off, but the rushed execution resulted in character arcs which became incoherent or dropped entirely by the end of the show. It’s the case of story over character, and it is much worse than the Endgame approach of character over story. I think the ST so far also has this problem (with TLJ being the worst offender so far) to the point that almost every major character is uncoupled from their defining flaw or trauma when it is convenient to the story.
When I say Endgame priotized fan service over story, understand that I consider character to be at least half of what makes a story. I would actually say Thrones is a perfect comparison to Endgame, where the conclusions make sense for the characters in a broad sense but none of the legwork is put in to make them feel earned or satisfying. The only glaring difference being that the MCU has never been all that invested in consistent and clear character development, whereas Thrones has always been very granular and gradual in that regard so descending into mostly spectacle only ends up feeling wrong for one of them (the other difference being that the MCU conclusions are crowd pleasing).
I’d say they both make TLJ seem like a masterpiece of character work in comparison (which is not necessarily something I would call it). TLJ is the only of the three that actually seems to take any interest in putting time into coherent character progression.
Agreed. TLJ’s fatal flaw to me is that I can’t, no matter how hard I try, get behind Rey. It’s of course due to her very unearned and unbelieavable force powers, IMO. It’s the only major problem I have with the movie - which I’ve come to the conclusion is the consequence of two things: the lack of a time gap between the TLJ and TFA (RIP suspension of disbelief that’d always been there for the saga to make us believe in off-screen progress throughout the years) and TFA’s portrayal of her. Sure TLJ took it even further, but it all started in TFA.
Still, her character progresses. One thing I’d understand people criticizing TLJ on is that it re-utilizes some of the very same arcs from TFA. Rey’s works very well, especially due to so little time having passed between the two films and the expansion on the ‘belonging’ aspect of her character. Finn’s character arc, for me, works well too. In TFA, he grew from running away to fighting for something bigger than himself - his friends. In TLJ, he goes from fighting for something bigger than himself but still something that mattered ‘only’ to him to fighting for something bigger than every one person can be - a cause. Poe’s arc in this movie is wonderful, and it’s the only part of the film where I don’t understand so many anger towards. I mean sure you can pick it apart, and criticize military strategy or whatever, but… ah whatever. Rose had a very nice character arc as well, going from the naive girl that believes in the black and white world to someone that finally sees grey and the reality and sadness of war, understands the cost and yet still believes in good. Unfortunately her character is part of a scene I dislike very much (“Not fighting what we hate - saving what we love”.) due to me believing Finn would’ve been able to take down the cannon while sacrificing himself and fulfilling his character arc, but oh well. He does have to be alive for the sequel, I guess.
Luke’s character arc in the film is definitely the cherry on top. I’m not really a fan of how it was set up, and I don’t fully buy what happened between him and Ben, but Hamill’s acting sells it enough for me to be able to fully enjoy the deconstruction of his character to his very core and the arc’s eventual fulfillment, in the most beautiful shot of the film.
Despite TLJ being far from a favorite of mine, I do not see where in the film do any characters “lack their defining flaw because plot”. I’d love to hear you expand on that, NeverarGreat. I don’t watch GOT so I can’t talk about that, but I saw Endgame as the ‘perfect’ ending to every one of the characters, Tony being the highlight due to being the best developed MCU character by a country mile. Cap also had a great sendoff and I quite liked Thor in the film, except for how some of the humor around him worked and all that. The other characters aren’t really worth mentioning I don’t think, because nothing really big happens to them. Maybe Black Widow but she didn’t really change that much in spite of everything that happened.
Edit: I probably derailed the thread pretty bad. Sorry OP and mods.
The flaws are primarily a problem of the two main characters, and begin in TFA:
I would say Finn’s defining trauma is that of being a Stormtrooper realizing in his first battle that he’s not a killer. However, he immediately starts killing his own mates when the story needs him to, and this aspect of his character is never explored again. Rey and her powers have been discussed enough, suffice to say that if her powers came from a dark place based on her hard life it would make infinitely more sense than casting her as a paragon of goodness and light.
Anyway, back to the subject of the thread.
Buzzfeed just reported that a script has been completed for a KOTOR movie.
Don’t trust Buzzfeed.
How so?
I think there’d be too many expectations from a lot of people that’d potentially ruin the films whichever way they go.
I’d be all in for more personal stories set during the Clone War, I think it’d really do wonders for that time period. We get some of it from the TV shows, but nothing actually good.
But yeah if they want to stay away from the main saga at all costs I think the old republic era is definitely the most logical pick. I really don’t want it to be a Jedi story though, I think it’d be cool to see more Rogue One-like films.
You say there’d be too many expectations, but the Clone Wars has an even greater chance of “offending” people as it is directly connected to the films. And while I love the era there are many OT fans who don’t want to return to the PT, and I respect that… TOR is a fresh start for everyone.
I think about it like the MCU. You have a ton of comics/books/games on the era, and the producers are now free to tell their own story. Most complaints regarding the ST from fans has been towards inconsistent writing (agree or disagree). But by adapting characters you would be more in an MCU position.
Man, the MCU is a lot of things but I don’t think I would ever say that it has “consistent writing.” The less SW can be like the MCU the better honestly (and I love the MCU).
Well, one thing you have to admit is how happy and united the fandom is. A consistent vision is my stab at the answer to that. While any piece of new SW material will divide people. I was convinced Endgame would divide people for providing a definitive ending… but that’s not the case.
I couldn’t care less whether the fandom is divided or not. I care about the quality of the movie. People love Endgame but that’s because they created the film in such a way that their main goal was fan service/not making fans mad. I think that’s a poor way to approach a film when it’s at the expense of the story (which I’d argue is the case with that film). But anyway, fans don’t care and eat it up. That’s why it’s well received, not because the MCU has a “consistent vision” which is a claim that has no basis in reality.
The big reason Endgame worked for me is that most of the characters got resonant, consistent conclusions to their arcs. I guess that could be called fanservice, since it’s something that fans of the characters wanted to see. This is in Stark contrast to, for example, the final season of Game of Thrones. Since the showrunners were supposedly working off of the author’s own notes I can only assume that the story beats were what Martin intended when he handed them off, but the rushed execution resulted in character arcs which became incoherent or dropped entirely by the end of the show. It’s the case of story over character, and it is much worse than the Endgame approach of character over story. I think the ST so far also has this problem (with TLJ being the worst offender so far) to the point that almost every major character is uncoupled from their defining flaw or trauma when it is convenient to the story.
Wow. I’ve long thought the officer uniforms in Jedi were green. Neat!
Yeh. The material they used was Feldgrau (Field Grey). Which looks grey in some light conditions, brown in others and even a slight green tint in others.
That seems to be a misrepresentation of what the color actually is. Feldgrau (which was used for German uniforms during WW2) is grey-green. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldgrau
Here it is translated for displays:
Here it is unmodified as the bar on the right, and with a brightness adjustment to approximate the darker lighting of the uniform:
It looks to me like the Blu-ray actually has the uniform color about right.
Every time C3PO sees Luke he calls him master Lucas but then calls him Luke to everyone else.
Accidentally did this in the TFA edit, and rendered it for amusement.
I feel like there has to be an easier way to clean a static starfield.
Since the automated dust cleanup presumably erases stars, have you considered stabilizing the shot, running the cleanup, and layering it over the original on ‘darken’? Then if you had just a single frame manually cleaned, it could be overlaid on top of that with the blending on ‘lighten’, which would return the accidentally erased stars.
Good points all. The sequential version feels like it needs Rey waking up and being in that final map scene, but since I don’t have such a shot of her waking up, and since her costume changes back and forth for the map scene (among other reasons), I am leaning towards going back to the parallel version like Ziggy suggests. Definitely going to go further with the dream distortion in any case.
I’ve decided to leave this scene for the time being and come back to it when I can judge more passively.
In the meantime, the deleted Kylo on the Falcon scene needed some work:
https://vimeo.com/337922444
Password: fanedit
Just as Rey should be going down a darker path as the film progresses, this felt like an opportunity to push Kylo’s character in the direction of being more conflicted and tempted by the light. The laughter hopefully reads as a contrast to the anguished screams Rey hears in the castle.
Here’s a version with most of the Luke scene and the dream effect applied to the rest of the shots:
Password: fanedit
I’ve also gone ahead and applied the final piece of the map to R2’s projection, now all that remains is to erase Rey from this one shot and she will be gone from the scene.
It still feels incomplete though. Maybe parallel editing wouldn’t be so bad if it was applied near the end of the two scenes. I’m imagining Rey meeting Luke, then cutting to R2 waking up and in place of the Leia scene having the final bit with Rey offering the lightsaber, then the map reveal.
Could we maybe have a before/after for these? I find that’s helpful in seeing the changes.