NeverarGreat

The sequels have some excellent visuals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWUrl7FpkAo&feature=youtu.be

Exciting times! I will watch your career with great interest.

I’m happy to call the game table scene locked, so it’s on to the next one!

Now the discussion flows from one discrete topic to the next: Starkiller, Rey (the awakening), and finally Han. Any talk of seduction is kept strictly in the Rey category, which feels a lot less weird than when they were talking about Ben’s dad.

https://vimeo.com/360707670

Password: fanedit

RogueLeader said:

In the newest Episode IX trailer, it looks like Rey is training against a red(?) training remote. Maybe it could be recolored to match that one. So when Finn pulls it out it is a training remote, but not the same one from 40 years ago.

That’s a fun idea!

I could go either way on that as well, but for the moment it’s still in.

Okay, I’ve reverted back to the deflected gaze shot, and dealt with the weird ‘so’ by shortening that section even further:

https://vimeo.com/360583522

Password: fanedit

BB-8 also has more worried beeps when asked to reveal the map, which I believe fits with his more cautious nature in this edit.

Excellent, then I think that scene’s a lock.

Moving right along to another Falcon scene, I’ve taken another stab at removing the game table shenanigans:

JEDIT: Updated and deleted

One thing that’s still an issue; Han’s ‘So…’ needs more work to fit with his mouth movement.

FreezingTNT2 said:

Sir Ridley made an edit in which Kylo’s scar is changed to be consistent with The Last Jedi. Do you plan on adding that change?

Yes, since this edit uses and expands upon the changes from Restructured v3.

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

ziggyonice said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Love it! Still don’t like the boyfriend line, though. 😛

I’m okay with it. A little humor is totally okay in Star Wars. And of all the forced humor, that single line is far from the worst.

I think what’s slightly off-putting is when he repeats himself and adds the word ‘cute’.

Agreed. I tried to remove the entire ‘boyfriend’ dialogue but it felt a bit strange for Rey to pop up like that so soon. Removing just the repeated ‘cute boyfriend’ is much better imo:

https://vimeo.com/360410793

Password: fanedit

Mea culpa, I’ve been focusing all my efforts on Starlight in trying to get it done before Episode 9. But this is still definitely in the works, and while I’ve been holding out some hope for the final bits from Harmy, if they don’t come by December I’ll finish it regardless.

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!