NeverarGreat

RogueLeader said:

Nev, I had a thought regarding how you wanted to have BB-8 not reveal/know the location of the Resistance base (for very fair plot and character reasons). I lamented the loss of BB-8’s cutest moments, but I think there might be another way to keep them.

https://vimeo.com/354551657

I know my “I’ll drop you off at Panima Terminal” sounds bad, but it is just a rough idea. Both of the moments are obviously recontextualized, and may not be as funny as their theatrical counterparts, but I think it would be a fair compromise between keeping some of that humor that makes BB-8 endearing, but also retaining the logic that you’re trying to preserve. I also kept Finn’s line about needing to get out of this system because I felt it flowed better into Rey’s line. Yes, they do jump to hyperspace in your version, but they were only in hyperspace for a minute or less, so it is probably that they are on the outskirts of that system at the very least. Because of how they fell out of hyperspace, I don’t think it will confuse the audience.

I’ve been working on this scene some more, taking into consideration your concept, and here’s what it looks like:
JEDIT: replaced with version sans ‘cute boyfriend’ dialogue:

https://vimeo.com/360410793

Password: fanedit

I’ve opted to keep Finn’s goading of BB-8 to make clear that the droid refuses to betray the Resistance, and Rey just moves on without the information and makes her own plans.

I absolutely love your placement of the BB-8 head turns, so I’ve shamelessly stolen it 😃 Focusing on BB-8 here makes the exchange much more funny. Added to this is the ‘thumbs up’ to show that the two can be friends despite Finn’s revelation.

Hal 9000 said:

Last night I dreamed that it was suddenly revealed that the CGI Jabba the Hutt from the Special Edition was the brainchild of Rian Johnson, causing riots in the streets.

So clearly George was lying when he said it was his idea to film that scene with the intention of filling it with CGI.

It was 3 year old Rian’s idea.

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

Can I ask, how did you go about matching the font? What key words would I Google to look this up? Or is there a good YouTube video to watch?

Short answer is that I used Fontforge and altered a generic NewsGothic Bold font as a starting point. Fontforge isn’t the most intuitive program, but I figured out enough to hack the crawl in a day or two with some googling.

The more involved answer is that I used the camera in After Effects to get a view of the 4K77 crawl in which the letters were no longer distorted. From that render, I took still images of each line as it appeared.

https://imgur.com/HuVf6ry

Then I sharpened each line considerably to get more visible edges.

https://imgur.com/a/psqFSrO

Then isolated the individual letters in Photoshop.

https://imgur.com/a/2ezvF4s

And greyed them out/lightened them so that the Fontforge letterforms would be visible above them

https://imgur.com/a/PzZFGvE

After that it was a process of editing each of the basic letters in Fontforge to match the images, and guessing whenever I ran into a character that had no reference in the original crawl. After rendering the font and installing it, I could try to match the crawl in After Effects. It took about a dozen attempts to get the kerning right for each letter, but eventually the individual words in the crawl could be matched with no letter-by-letter kerning adjustments. Of course, each line had a different overall letter and word spacing due to the fully justified nature of a Star Wars crawl.

I found this helpful when working on it, but I’ll admit that I skipped many steps that would be necessary for a robust polished font: http://designwithfontforge.com/en-US/index.html

RogueLeader said:

That’s good to hear! Starlight already has a lot of radical ideas that you’ve figured out how to actually work, and I also think you’ve gotten to a good point with it.

The only other significant addition I’d thought of was letting Rey have a very brief dream/vision of the island before she jolts awake in the interrogation room. Since Rey has her bigger dream at the end of Starlight, it might be a nice way to prime the viewer for that moment. It also ties in with Kylo “seeing the island”, and Rey saying she saw the island “in dreams”. It could literally just be one shot of the island.

That would be beneficial, I’ll keep working on it.

That idea for giving TR-8R lines is a GREAT idea! I don’t think I’ve heard anyone suggest that before. The scene is weirdly silent, no dialogue or music, so I think dialogue would work well there!

It’s an idea I’ve had for a while but it might have gotten lost in the shuffle until now.

I might be able to grab a voice actor friend who can help with the male lines, and I have audio recording equipment. I think the female First Order Officer would work better if they had an English accent. Maybe we could write up a line list or something.

Sounds good! Hopefully the new lines don’t go through as many revisions as the crawl 😉

Speaking of, I’ve been hard at work on recreating the original '77 crawl font, and though I’ve had to guess on some characters it’s basically complete. Here it is in purple overlaid with the original crawl:

https://vimeo.com/359372926

Password: fanedit

https://i.imgur.com/gWmQXvr.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/PrrYbjy.mp4

Maybe the issue is that there is nothing to concretely establish a sense of scale, since none of the figures have human features. Another issue is probably the frame rate of the video this still was taken from, since the cloaks have no motion blur and thus look motionless and staged.

I haven’t really thought about TLJ through the lens of postmodernism, but it makes a lot of sense. It seems to me that the primary aspect of postmodernism is a rejection of established ideology and absolute morality/truth. In this way, TLJ is absolutely postmodernist and it doesn’t really matter if Luke ends up affirming the Jedi myth or not in the end - this critical attitude permeates every aspect of the story.

Keep in mind that Yoda, the preeminent authority on the Force in this universe, dismisses the foundational texts for his religion as ultimately irrelevant when urging Luke to take action. Luke is not being castigated for failing to follow the Jedi way - instead both he and Yoda seem to be in agreement that the Jedi as an institution and set of doctrines no longer serves a purpose except as a way of inciting the masses. Nevertheless, Luke decides to reaffirm the authority of the Jedi while not refuting this critique.

The Finn/Rose storyline introduces a character whose sole purpose is to question the villainy of the First Order and the heroism of the Resistance, and his character is rewarded for doing so - and he’s the only character of this storyline who materially profits from it. Nevertheless, Finn proudly proclaims his loyalty to the Resistance and is ready to give his life for this institution, even knowing that it may be built on a corrupt financial foundation.

The Poe/Holdo storyline does its best to criticize the very idea of leadership, as it dispenses with all the established leaders of the Resistance and replaces them with one character who goes to cartoonish lengths to demonstrate her ineptitude. Nevertheless, Poe comes to accept her leadership after learning of her plan, and returns to his role as a leader himself within the Resistance.

The Snoke/Kylo storyline is the epitome of the postmodernist take of course, with Snoke’s unceremonious departure illustrating a complete disdain for both established authority and grand theories of its reason for being. Kylo is the only character in this story who accepts the postmodern take and runs with it.

I appreciate all the ideas, though I’m getting to the point where I’m fairly happy with the overall structure and changelist. I’m continually implementing small changes as they come, but If V1 of the project is going to get released any time soon, I’ll need to start finalizing the changes that are already made. That isn’t to say that radical ideas are unwelcome, but I probably won’t include any more in this release.

To that end, the biggest changes to be made are now the instances of voice acting. There are several scenes so far that need voice work:

Male Stormtrooper (TR-8R) - Finn’s fight scene on Takodana - Several lines establishing the trooper’s history with Finn and his mercy when ordered to bring him in, now turned to betrayal as Finn has taken up arms against his comrades. Intended to reveal the fanaticism of the average trooper while retaining the humanity which remains buried under decades of violent programming.

Resistance Officer (any gender)(off-screen) - Resistance Starkiller Briefing - One line to replace Snap’s muffled line ‘Any word from the Republic?’, to which Leia replies ‘No’.

Female First Order Officer - 15 minute Starkiller update - One line changed from ‘Weapon charged in 15 minutes’ to ‘Silent alarm triggered in area 47’ to show that Phasma still retains some loyalty to the First Order.

I like your idea about the Hosnian system, so:

Female First Order Officer - Weapon charging shot - change line from ‘weapon charging’ to ‘Targeting Hosnian system’ or add new line from off-screen to that effect.

JEDIT: The Hosnian system could be mentioned in the Starkiller briefing: ‘Any word from the Hosnian Senate?’ 3PO’s ‘Without the Republic fleet we’re doomed!’ line would clarify that this is referring to the the Republic itself.

I have no experience with voice work, so I need to reach out to people in the community who wouldn’t mind helping out in this regard but I really don’t know where to start. If anyone has any ideas or thinks they could do these lines, please let me know!

Good ideas! That restructuring was one I hadn’t considered, but it does make sense. My current scene placement is for the first to serve as a break between the Falcon map scene and the Falcon’s arrival at Takodana, and the second scene to happen directly before 3PO informs Leia of the incomplete nature of the map.

My rationale for keeping this placement is that while pushing the reveal of Snoke back to practically act 3 is good from a logistical perspective, this also pushes back the on-screen introduction of the Starkiller until after it is discussed by Poe, Finn, and Leia. They discuss it as if it has been introduced, after all. I suppose the same can be said for Snoke as well - elements like the Emperor 2.0 and Death Star 3.0 should be established early to set expectations, otherwise the final third of the movie feels much more derivative due to backloading it with these bog standard threats.

But still, I do like what you’ve suggested.

Small update, just redoing the Rings of D-Qar:

https://imgur.com/a/woegC3g

Old

New

Both of these are before the additional grain, so you can see how the original starfield was too grainy from the start.

nl0428 said:

Here’s a question I’d like to throw at you, Hal. Let’s just say that Anakin makes an appearance as a Force spirit in The Rise of Skywalker, with Hayden Christensen reprising the role. Even though it may or may not happen, if it were to happen, would you keep the Special Edition change made to the end of Return of the Jedi, or would you restore Sebastian Shaw like everyone else? I still prefer the older Anakin, but I’m curious what you would do with your edit of Return of the Jedi if it does happen in Episode IX.

In that case, I think that we’d just have to accept that this is how Anakin is portrayed now and move on.

Sorry, I mean we would need to remove him from Episode 9. Obviously.

The matte painting approach is interesting, however even the OT often had many things happening in a single shot - consider the Ewok celebration:

There are several areas of movement within even a static matte painting. So I’d suggest adding a few other ships in the distance, entering or leaving the clouds.

Toodleoo everybody!

RogueLeader said:

I’m sure Nev will eventually chime in but I don’t think there really is a way to achieve this exactly, especially because of the scar issue like you mentioned. I think you could either just make Rey scarring Kylo happen quickly after she connects with the Force. Or, just find ways to emphasize Kylo’s injuries more, to clearly express that Kylo isn’t at the top of his game when he fights Rey.

Nev I think is also approaching it like Rey is tapping into the dark side to get the edge over him, so she beats him, but it is sort of ominous because we know that she is on a precarious edge. She has yet to learn how to differentiate the light and the dark, which would raise the stakes for her to learn from Luke.

This is exactly right, and somewhere I did a mockup of the traumas of her past bubbling up when she draws on the Force. To this add the sinister whispers I added to Rey shooting the Stormtrooper at Maz’s castle and her successful escape attempt, and it should serve as a fully-developed concept. Rey is being seduced by the Dark Side, even if she doesn’t recognize this easy power.

It’s been a little bit, so time for an update. I continue working mostly on audio, filling in bits throughout act 3, but I did manage to move 3PO’s ten minute countdown dialogue to the scene where Leia reacts to Han’s death. Now 3PO exposits and Leia completely ignores him, as is tradition with the character.

The issue with moving this dialogue is that the Resistance update scene was cut quite short, so as I was rummaging through the TFA Lego game audio for something I found some Poe dialogue that would help explain why the X-wings suddenly decided to leave the oscillator and go into space:

https://vimeo.com/356563017

Password: fanedit

It also allowed me to repurpose a shot or two that had previously been deleted from the X-wing battle.

FreezingTNT2 said:

Here’s a suggestion:

In the novelization of The Force Awakens, we get more dialogue from Snoke, and at one point (I think?) he explains how he saw the rise and fall of the Empire. So my suggestion is to re-arrange parts of existing audio of Snoke that sound right and repurposing it into new dialogue (similar to Despacito 2 having remixed audio from Despacito) explaining how Snoke saw the rise and fall of the Empire and formed the First Order. What do you think?

It would be far easier to record new dialogue for this, and while it would be helpful I don’t know whether it would justify the effort, at least for this edit. It’s definitely something I’ve considered though.

ziggyonice said:

Okay, I had to have my own attempt at the crawl:

Luke Skywalker has vanished.
In his absence, the fledgling
REPUBLIC has been threatened
by the sinister FIRST ORDER,
born from ashes of the Empire.

Lead by a mysterious shadow,
this faction of evil vows to
annihilate all in its path
until Skywalker, the last Jedi,
has been destroyed.

Determined to defend the
vulnerable Republic, General
Leia Organa leads a RESISTANCE
to stop the rising foe and find
her brother Luke before they do…

It’s an improvement to the original crawl, but there’s a lot of stuff that I’m intentionally leaving out of this crawl such as Leia’s involvement since it is unnecessary and deflates the later (small) reveal.

Reese said:

Big project 😃
About the crawl, it’s just like the original EP7 crawl, in that you are using the wrong typefaces.

Timing it with the music isn’t too difficult. Recreated crawl from scratch(recreated the 1977 fonts for the crawl body and logos): https://vimeo.com/196999184

I have seen your recreated font and like it, is there any way you could share? I was planning on recreating the typefaces as well, but if you already have them on hand… 😉

Shopping Maul said:

Mocata said:

I don’t know if they showed a new planet, but it looked vaguely like place where Maz Canata lived. Maybe she had a bunch of other Jedi junk lying around. Then again maybe it’s just a generic forest world.

I assumed it was a vision as soon as I watched it and I suspect most people did. Not really a slip up on the official discussion leak.

It didn’t stop all the evil clone discussions.

I thought it might be Endor. The hippie festival Rey and co. come upon looks like it could be an Ewok thing?

Didn’t some of the early concept art for Ep 9 show Yavin 4? That would be my guess as to where the ‘new’ Resistance base is, and where Rey is training with the probe.

YESSSSSSSS!

If he doesn’t say ‘you probably didn’t recognize me because of the red eyes’ I’m out.

Also the red eyes clearly symbolize the fruition of Sidious’s generations-long plan to transfer his consciousness into a machine to achieve immortality.

utsnia said:

I once dreamed that I came across a special restored cut of A New Hope that included never before deleted scenes that completely changed the movie.
-Lando shows up. Turns out he’s an old friend of Luke this whole time. They went to the Jundland wastes to rescue R2 and there’s a big shoot out with the Tusken Raiders.
-The shootout attracts the attention of the Imperial fleet, who arrive with black Gunndam-like mechs to disrupt what they imagine to be rebel terrorism.
-Darth Vader shows up too. Not only because he feels the stolen plans are there and wants to find the droid personally, but because ”These mechs have 26 different transformation stages, and I want to be the first one to see them all!”
-By the time he steps into one of them, a passing Imperial rover drives over one the arms/wings, rendering it useless.
-In his anger he force-throws a bunch of Stormtrooper pilots out of their cockpits.
-Finally the rebels actually show up hoping to fight, but Darth Vader is actually doing the most damage, so they just sit and watch. Luke and Lando are already gone by this point.
-Later on, there were test shots of Carrie Fisher’s stunt double inside the set of a damaged Death Star. Although dressed as Leia and even had the hair, the double looked a lot like Leonardo DiCaprio

These weren’t CGI shots, nor were they filmed twenty years after the fact. All of these were filmed in 1976 and were merely cut for time and narrative pacing. Apparently Harmy used various sources to put all this together as part of his new side-project.

The runtime was about six hours long.

This is brilliant.

You said before that you were zooming the image in the export step, is that by any chance still on? Other than that, I have no idea.

crazyrabbits said:

The movie was 90% CG, and 85% of it blew. Watching this movie 5 or ten years from now (why anyone would do that I have no idea) is going to seem like Special Effect Amateur hour.

ADigitalMan said:

Dancing Pete was knee-jerk funny, but it won’t hold up as time goes by.

I actually watched this less than a week ago, and even though the CGI is goofy in places it is still wonderfully absurd fun, and Dancing Pete stands the test of time more than everything else.

Thank you for the necrobump.

I’d like to have it done by the release of Episode 9, but who knows whether that will happen.

RogueLeader said:

I’m really liking this one!
That addition of ‘in the New Republic’ flows really nicely in my opinion. I don’t know if ‘noble’ is necessary, or if ‘legendary’ was better, or if it should just be ‘last of the Jedi Knights’. Not saying you should do anything, it does work, but maybe play with some other adjectives too?

The second paragraph isn’t bad. I’m wondering if you could use a different world than ‘suffering’, or just say ‘hundreds of worlds’. Suffering is just a little vague. Why are they suffering? Are they suffering under the Republic? Under the First Order, which has forced them to join their cause?

Some experimenting with paragraph 2:

In his absence, an evil warlord has unified the supporters of the fallen Empire into the FIRST ORDER, while secretly constructing the deadliest weapon the galaxy has ever seen.

also

In his absence, hundreds of worlds have allied with the remnants of the Empire to form the FIRST ORDER, which has constructed the deadliest weapon the galaxy has ever seen.

I‘m liking the third too! Maybe consider replacing ‘dire’ with ‘hidden’ since that angle sorta got lost in this version? I like how you used ‘the Senate’ in this iteration too. Not saying I think this would be better, but you could use ‘fearsome’ rather than ‘fearful’, and I also think you could cut ‘now’ from ‘now spreading’. Do you still feel the reinserted deleted scene works within the new context? I think it does.

Also, did the ANH crawl fly away to the horizon that fast towards the end? It feels fast but maybe it is just me. Anyway, as far as content I think this is one of my favorite so far.

The words will change, dire was a last-second decision.

The crawl in the '77 Star Wars did accelerate at the end, but I don’t think the later, 'standardized crawls do. The original crawl moved at a slow, almost stately speed, then moved away more quickly when the words started to become unreadable. And of course the paragraphs synced with the music, something I’m determined to replicate here.

Off topic but I wanted to mention something else on my mind.

One of your ideas I love about your edit is having Poe fail at blowing up Starkiller base like he does in theatrical version.

Yes, Poe also fails to blow up Starkiller base before it destroys the Republic in Restructured, but the trench run stills ends in the same result as it does in A New Hope. But with your most recent version, I could see how a hypothetical audience could be surprised with what happens.

In a way, I think it turns Poe’s trench run from pretty simplistic plot/imagery repetition into intentional parallelism that is meant to subvert audience expectation in a clever way. Anyone who has seen Star Wars knows what the trench run means. I think it is one of the weakest points in the theatrical film, because I imagine a lot of fans were like, “Really? Seems like a pretty on-the-nose rehash.” But in your version, when Ackbar says it didn’t work, I could imagine audiences raising their eyebrows and thinking, “Oh, it didn’t work?”

In retrospect it makes the Resistance being able to come up with a plan to destroy it within minutes actually work. At that point the audience is like, “Okay, I know where this is gonna go.” But, their impromptu plan didn’t work as planned. Yes, they still succeeded at destroying Starkiller, but only at the cost of the thing they were trying to save.

I know subverting expectations has become a somewhat controversial phrase, but I think this is actually what we want in this case. Not only does it surprise audiences, but it also surprises the characters within the story. Poe and the Resistance know the story of Luke and how he destroyed the Death Star in the nick of time. They’re emulating the Rebellion just as much as the First Order is emulating the Empire. They think they’ll be able to pull of the same thing, and we do too, but it is interesting when we, and they, turn out to be wrong. It also helps prepare the audience for The Last Jedi, which does a lot of the same thing. Poe’s semi-failure can also add to what compels Poe to do what he thinks is necessary at all costs, like he’s trying to compensate for that failure at the end of TFA.

I know you know all this, just wanted to reiterate my support of it! Obviously the BIGGEST critique of TFA is its similarities to ANH. This is what you’ll hear from even casual fans. While fan edits can try to eliminate the parallels, I think if an editor can come up with ideas like this that turn those parallels on their head, it can actually transform TFA’s weaknesses into its strengths.

Indeed, I hadn’t considered all the ramifications of this change when it was made but you’ve laid them out very well.

RogueLeader said:

Nev, I had a thought regarding how you wanted to have BB-8 not reveal/know the location of the Resistance base (for very fair plot and character reasons). I lamented the loss of BB-8’s cutest moments, but I think there might be another way to keep them.

https://vimeo.com/354551657

I know my “I’ll drop you off at Panima Terminal” sounds bad, but it is just a rough idea. Both of the moments are obviously recontextualized, and may not be as funny as their theatrical counterparts, but I think it would be a fair compromise between keeping some of that humor that makes BB-8 endearing, but also retaining the logic that you’re trying to preserve. I also kept Finn’s line about needing to get out of this system because I felt it flowed better into Rey’s line. Yes, they do jump to hyperspace in your version, but they were only in hyperspace for a minute or less, so it is probably that they are on the outskirts of that system at the very least. Because of how they fell out of hyperspace, I don’t think it will confuse the audience.

I like it! I don’t think anyone would think twice once the audio is finessed a bit more.

An ideal edit of this scene would have Zam’s speeder pull up to the window, doing away with the droid entirely. That way she just tries to shoot into the room herself, and when Anakin leaps out of the window he lands on the back of her speeder. After that there’s an extended bit of him trying to hold on to the speeder, and when he drops his lightsaber Obi-wan catches it in what could be a bit of audience cheer moment.