NeverarGreat

That we can agree on.

Here’s an idea - Use part of the Kylo prayer scene between the interrogation and the rescue. The reasoning is that during the interrogation, Kylo might have picked up on Poe’s memories of Leia. There could even be some dialogue of her from the deleted scenes: “Poe, if they get to Luke first we don’t have a chance.”

Then just have a couple lines from the prayer scene, keeping the helmet reveal for later: “Forgive me…I feel it…the pull of the light. Show me the power of the darkness.” Then the vision of the Starkiller would be here instead of in the interrogation, along with the First Order theme music making its first appearance.

This would also explain why Kylo felt the need to give Hux the responsibility of going after the droid instead of doing it himself.

RogueLeader said:

Hmm, I don’t think there are enough shots to really make this work. Plus, the additional Rey dialogue doesn’t really sound like it fits into the ambiance of the environment. I understand what is going on based off of your explanation, but I think it wouldn’t be totally clear without that context.

I wonder if you could do a similar thing as you’ve done in a past attempt, where you went from:
Rey’s Intro
Poe Interrogation
Rey Meets BB-8
Finn Rescues Poe

You could try that order again, but have Rey meeting BB-8 occur the next morning, which could be established with some kind of dawn establishing shots and a different color grade.

I continually get excited by this ordering until I remember the reason I don’t use it, which is that introducing Rey without her meeting BB-8 leaves her as an inexplicable presence in the film. That whole sequence of introduction and meeting the droid is close to perfect.

I know I’ve probably suggested this before and you probably had a good reason for this not working. But I wonder if you could just combine Poe’s Interrogation and Finn’s Rescue, and since we’ve removed Kylo’s line, “I leave that to you”, we could now have Ren say, “We have what we need” or “We have what we need from him”. And maybe add some sinister music over that line and Hux’s expression. That way, when it cuts to the stormtrooper entering and say Ren wants the prisoner, it leads the audience to believe Poe is about to be executed.

I’ve tried to connect those scenes but it feels so sudden. Maybe if there was any extra footage of Finn in armor debating about what to do.

That idea is interesting though. It would probably be necessary to have a more explicit threat, maybe having Kylo say “Dispose of him.” or “Terminate the pilot.” The reason is that this makes Poe’s imminent destruction more immediately important than anything else, justifying the next scene not cutting to Rey. “We have what we need” feels like a shorthand for moving attention away from Poe, not toward him.

Also, if the trooper says “Kylo wants the prisoner” we already know something is up. In the original cut this wasn’t an issue because of the intervening scene but here it’s a bit of whiplash. Maybe if Finn said “It’s time” or something a bit more sinister. Or maybe “I’m here for the prisoner.”

dgraham414 said:

For the static shot of inside Reys house having some flickering lights or the light coming in through the door adjust slightly over time would really help that shot

These images are really placeholders, if I were to commit to this route there would be a lot of dynamic effects to make these feel like real shots.

This was years ago, but a friend had some people on speakerphone and they started laughing so hard at some joke that the connection started breaking up. Naturally I turned to him and said “Listen to them, they’re dying Artoo!”

I’ve been chasing that high ever since.

I thought the show and the movie were pretty similar from a story perspective. They’re both very simple, bare bones if you will, with the show having more characters to alleviate this issue. But I don’t think the story is the draw for Dark Crystal, we’re here for the artistry.

I’d sure like to see it!

Sure there’s a big gap, but all events are trending in the direction of the status quo at the beginning of the movie.

It’s rather like going from Attack of the Clones straight into A New Hope. The Republic was becoming an Empire, its armies were being made, Anakin was practically evil by this point, the Jedi were on their way out, etc. Sure, there are questions about how all these things happened, but it’s more interesting to speculate than to fill in all this history with imagination-destroying answers.

All this to say, I would have watched another season. All I’m getting at is maybe there’s a silver lining.

“You have failed, your highness. I am a clone, like my father before me.”

I wasn’t aware that there were any plans for another season, since the cliffhanger set up the events of the film pretty well. It was a fun show to a good movie, but I’m not sad it’s over.

Yep. In contrast, the LOTR fandom is based on the writings of a single author, so even if the adaptations vary in quality there is no serious disagreement with the underlying stories.

Jumping around some more, one of the biggest holes in this edit has been between Poe’s interrogation and his rescue. The workprint has a couple shots of Rey’s house at night, but in order to make it more of a real scene I thought it might be neat to see her in the morning trying (and failing) to send BB-8 away.

https://vimeo.com/460445377

Password: fanedit

Placing Rey’s dialogue here instead of in her first scene with the droid actually makes her seem a bit more blase about the droid’s fate, and grounds her a bit more in a selfish mindset. It’s only in this scene where she really relents.

If this new concept shows promise, I will adjust the wide speeder shot to differentiate it from the previous one and perhaps add the twin suns low on the horizon.

Rh_2002 said:

21C Peasant said:

I’d love to check out your workprint. I’ve done a couple edits of The Force Awakens myself, but yours sounds like it has something new to offer.

A link would be most appreciated.

Id also love a link to the workprint! If you don’t mind me asking when do think you’re gonna wrap up the edit entirely, and do you plan on making edits on 8 or 9?

PM Sent!

I don’t mind, but I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that…there will be a version 1 when I’m satisfied that everything feels complete. That may or may not include removing timecodes, but we’ll see.

There are threads for 8 and 9, but until this is finished I’m not giving them much thought.

Thanks, it’s nice to see it in a fuller context. It would have been interesting to see how people would have interpreted Finn’s motivations if we had this scene instead of the dying trooper, since it would have shown that he cared for the innocent civilians in the war rather than his fellow troopers. In this context, his later actions make a lot more sense.

The Star Wars fandom is approaching 50 years old, there’s been a lot of time for division to take place. Off the top of my head, in chronological order, there’s:

SW vs ESB
SW and ESB vs ROTJ
The OT vs TPM
The OT vs the PT
The Lucas Saga vs the Saga+EU
Lucas vs Disney
The EU vs NewEU
The Lucas Saga vs TFA
TFA vs TLJ
TFA+TLJ vs TROS
Episodes 1-8, the Old EU, the NewEU, the Holiday Special, Jaxxon, The Bigger Luke Theory, Every Fan Film, etc… vs TROS

So yeah, the fandom isn’t so much a unified group so much as it is a loose confederacy of groups with precious little to unite them.

I haven’t seen a simple TFA extended cut, nor have I seen anyone flawlessly remove the timecodes of any deleted scenes except for SirRidley’s work on the Leia scene for Restructured. A user named Telecine did a version of Kylo on the Falcon, but that’s the only other attempt I’m aware of.

At some point I’ll at least attempt a timecode removal for Kylo on the Falcon and Rey being comforted by Kalonia, at least if nobody else has tried.

PM sent!

Just FYI, the latest changes haven’t yet been applied to the workprint.

Children of Dune

I remember quite liking this book the first two times I read it, but the latest time it felt rather lacking in plot. Most of the book is mired in a swamp of introspection which often teeters on the edge of full-on Randian rant. I really want to still like this book and it still has its moments, but they’re getting fewer and farther apart as I get older. 7/10.

Jurassic Park

Speaking of rants, I had no idea that Ian Malcolm was the John Galt of this story. This is a rare case of the movie being better than the book. Maybe you could appreciate this book if your interest was computer science in the early nineties or the vagaries of Chaos Theory, but I’m a simple man who wanted a story about dinosaurs but got fifty diagrams of computer menus instead.

I’m just happy that Malcolm died at the end. 6/10.

The Lost World

“Somehow, Malcolm returned.”

The film is trash, so I had high hopes that this was merely a problem of the story being lost on its way to the screen. I still haven’t finished the book, but from what I can tell, the book is trash as well. It’s a different type of trash than the film, but equally worthless. Nobody in either telling has a good reason to be on Dinosaur Island Version 2 and they all deserve to die. I keep reading out of morbid curiosity, hoping that at least the raptors get a good meal. 1/10.

Mistborn

Just finished re-reading the first book. It’s pretty great. An engaging magic system, parts of which remind me of Attack on Titan, and characters that don’t make me want to punch dry-wall (Lost World, I’m looking at you). Overall, it’s a very solid 8/10 up until the last sentence of the epilogue, when that line drops the entire book to a 7/10. I’d recommend striking it from the page with a Sharpie marker, you’ll lose nothing by it.

I would still heartily recommend the three-part series, however.

When Obi-wan is fighting Vader on the Death Star, near the end he escapes back into the hallway and summons a Force projection of himself to stand against Vader in his final moments. He causes his projected body to disappear when it is ‘struck down’, then causes the cloak to disappear some time later.

Then Obi-wan escapes the Death Star while the Rebels are attacking and telepathically communes with Luke before escaping.

He then projects himself to Luke several times after this such as on Hoth and on Dagobah, which is why his visage continues to age.

Yoda does the same thing when he ‘dies’ on Dagobah.

Anakin feigns death on the second Death Star and ditches his armor on the shuttle while Luke is distracted during flight. And, you guessed it, all three Force Lads meet up on Endor and give Luke a Force projection send off before piling into Obi-wan’s ship and retiring on Canto Bight.

Alec Guinness talks about Darth Plagueis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz8Ll6DQnTc

dgraham414 said:

NeverarGreat said:

dgraham414 said:

My only gripe is Kylos’s hood/robe thing coming on and off between shots.

Which shots are these?

Kylo watching the base charge,
Kylo walking down the corridor towards Rey
Kylo destroying the chair
Those shots we doesn’t have it and then he does

Huh, you’re right. I hadn’t noticed that before. However, this continuity error was present in the original film.

Here’s a rough version of the new sequence I’m considering for the Hosnian Destruction. It’s closer to Restructured, but unlike that scene there’s actually too many shots to fit into the music duration.

https://vimeo.com/459828124

Password: fanedit

My initial impression is that it’s still too rushed. Unfortunately, the scene on the Hosnian planet needs to stay in that place unless I opt for a complete rescore of those shots. Also, If Hux orders the firing before Chewie detonates the explosives, it would give that motivation a bit more clarity. Alternately, I could cut back to the Oscillator while the weapon is firing to see Rey and Finn decide to leave, which probably needs to happen on screen. That would allow for the weapon to reach the planet without feeling too abrupt, maybe. There also needs to be some recognition from the pilots…

Does this direction show promise?

dgraham414 said:

My only gripe is Kylos’s hood/robe thing coming on and off between shots.

Which shots are these?

Unfortunately, it was like that in the deleted scene so unless I broke up those shots with other cutaways it will have to stay as it is.

JEDIT: I also still haven’t found a good replacement for the muddled ‘Ship clear’ line. If anyone knows where to find a similar trooper line I’d be super grateful.

Thanks! The lights were new. The Workprint just had some sounds of machinery added, but I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a feasible way of making this hangar ‘come to life’ and realized that hiding elements of it for later reveal would be much easier than adding new elements. The trooper chatter and announcements helped with these scenes.

The one area that I’m still not entirely happy with is Kylo’s interaction with the officer after the Falcon crash. ‘Captain’ doesn’t gel quite right. This was taken from the LEGO game. Does anyone know of a line he says while masked in the films that could be used instead?