NeverarGreat

Another attempt at the crawl:

https://vimeo.com/354343958

Password: fanedit

The crawl runs 81 words now, pretty ideal considering the OT crawls.

The term ‘Jedi Knights’ I feel is appropriate when referring to the group as a whole, even if Luke isn’t technically a knight anymore. Simply referring to Luke as a Jedi leaves the distinctions up to the audience.

Dr. Krogshöj’s verbiage concerning the combination of forces could serve as a good explanation for how the Imperial remnant could gain so much power so quickly. I like the idea that the First Order is a hybrid of disaffected New Republic systems and Imperial holdouts, which is explored a bit more with Canto Bight.

The reason the First Order hasn’t outright attacked the Republic becomes more clear when you take into consideration that the two sides in the battle are more interconnected than it seems, and an attack on the Senate would naturally cause problems with systems leery of the Empire’s more ruthless methods.

I’ve made the weapon more vague again, simply because it does feel too specific for something that won’t be seen until almost halfway through the film. The tricky part is to ride the line between intriguing the audience (which actually wouldn’t be good since it is revealed to be very similar to just another Death Star) and spelling out that it is just another Death Star, which also isn’t true.

Basically, I want to include everyone’s ideas, so I try and it leads to a wordy crawl which must be reworked and simplified so much that it loses the ideas that made the effort interesting. Sigh. It’s getting better though, right? 😉

Dr. Krogshöj said:

An evil warlord has unified
the supporters of the fallen
Empire under the banner of the
FIRST ORDER, and resolved to
build the deadliest weapon the
galaxy has ever seen.

This paragraph in particular I quite like. Very punchy.

Hmm, I’m in the process of learning that one too, my forte is Premiere.

What software are you using to render?

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha

Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-07/star-wars-is-struggling-to-win-over-the-marvel-generation

What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?

Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.

I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.

And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.

The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.

Counterpoint: Luuke

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

An update!!! Sort of!!!

So eventually I will get to actually starting this edit for real. I’m still using a laptop and I don’t have Adobe CC yet. Hopefully in the not too distant future this will all be remedied!
However, I did start the 7 day trial of After Effects 2019 and Photoshop. I’ve used earlier versions before but I wanted to just play around and test out a few VFX ideas.

I’m hoping a few experienced members here can help me out with some answers. I’m a noob at a lot of this stuff!

With the amount of visual manipulation I plan to do in my edit, I should really be working in 720, yes? I ripped AOTC using MakeMKV and it is of course 1920x1080 at around 30 or 40 GB. I shrunk it down to 1280x720 to around 11 GB.
Does this seem about right? With certain shots I plan on manipulating (and in some cases, zooming in) should I be using the 1080 file? Is there anyone here who is working at 1920x1080 and doing effects heavy work?

As I watch the original file (the one I shrunk down to 720) it looks fine to me. It has the “black bars” when I watch it in full screen mode. However, when I rendered out some unfinished tests, something about the aspect ratio seems off. The film is stretched out to fill the entire screen (no “black bars”). My composition settings are in 1280x720 with a 16:9 ratio…(I didn’t adjust any settings in the composition settings)…so what am I not understanding?

Another question: When I watch Adywan’s ESB, there are no “black bars” when not in full screen mode. How is this achieved? And for what purpose?

I sure would appreciate some help…or at the very least, maybe a link to some place that may have answers?

Thanks!

For most gaming/video editing computers these days, 1080 shouldn’t be too difficult. If the computer can handle 1080 at all and have at least 8GB of RAM (though 16 or more is ideal) and a decent graphics card, Adobe Premiere has a ‘proxy’ setting where you can use a lower quality source for basic editing and switch to the full 1080 source for detail work and final rendering. I’ve used that on my TFA edit while working on a laptop and it worked well.

As for the aspect ratio, anything I render in 1280x720 is in square pixels because the black bars are part of the picture information, e.g., not anamorphic. If I render that size in 16x9, the program is going to add more black picture information on the sides of the image to ‘fill out’ that 16x9 ratio. I don’t know how you’re getting an image that stretches to fill the screen on top and bottom, but I’d recommend just doing ‘square pixels’ unless you actually want a true anamorphic image.

The mockup was mostly to test whether the timing could work with each paragraph, and for that I made every paragraph as long as possible. They will definitely be less wordy in the final version. I’m aiming for something that is no more than 90 words in length. I like the brief crawl StarkillerAG! It’s good to see the ideas can be condensed so much. And RL, I feel like Luke already is understood to be the greatest threat to the First Order since it is only his absence which allows it to rise to power. But maybe not since they took pains to establish this in the original crawl. The first paragraph is as long as I can make it though, while still fitting the music. The crawl for TPM actually uses a four line opening paragraph as well, probably for a similar reason of fitting the music, though that crawl doesn’t do that particularly well.

Much to consider…

I’ve been playing around with After Effects today, learning the basics, and mocked up the crawl using the timing of the original crawl from 1977:

https://vimeo.com/354131654

Password: fanedit

There are some changes to the wording, and I’ll continue to work on both the wording and the technical aspects of course, but I’m happy with how it syncs to the music.

stevepaynter said:

Made a few minor changes. Let me know what you think.

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, last
of the legendary Jedi
Masters, has vanished.

In his absence the evil
FIRST ORDER has risen
from the ashes of the
Empire with a weapon
more deadly than the
dreaded Death Star,
able to destroy any star
system while hidden
in the depths of the Unknown Regions.

With the Republic held
hostage by this deadly
threat, they dare support
only a small Resistance
to locate the long-lost Jedi
Master and defeat the shadow now
spreading across the galaxy…

Don’t think I didn’t try to work the Unknown Regions in there, but it has proven too wordy to fit so far.

As for the Jedi Master, it always felt a little prequel-y. The prequels established the apprentice-knight-master hierarchy, but the OT actually had a different system. Obi-wan is never referred to as a master in the OT, just a former Jedi Knight. Yoda is a master, but in the 80’s Lucas specifically meant that to mean that Yoda had a teaching role in the Jedi religion, while the Jedi Knights were the warriors. That is not to say that Luke couldn’t transition into the role of master, but to me that would imply forsaking the title of Knight and dedicating himself to a code of nonviolence. One could argue that this describes Luke in TLJ, but the rest of the galaxy expects Jedi Knight Luke, so announcing him to be a master like Yoda in the crawl of TFA feels premature.

BTW, random thought: Watching the Resistance Season 2 trailer, I noticed that Phasma’s line ‘I will see to your execution personally’ would have been a great line to say to Finn in TFA somewhere.

https://youtu.be/JkJtdJKCVto?t=53

An update to the ongoing saga that is the crawl:

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, last
of the legendary Jedi
Knights, has vanished.

In his absence the evil
FIRST ORDER has risen
from the ashes of the
Empire with a weapon
more deadly than the
dreaded Death Star,
able to destroy any star
system while hidden
in the depths of space.

With the Republic held
hostage by this deadly
threat, they dare support
only a small Resistance
to locate the long-lost Jedi
and defeat the shadow now
spreading across the stars…

For this to work, I’d have to delete some of Hux’s dialogue in the Snoke scene to imply that the weapon has been ready to fire since before the start of the film, and presumably has fired as a demonstration of its threat to the Republic.

The crawl has strong echoes of ANH’s crawl which sets expectations in terms of the plot, and it establishes the Starkiller as the massive threat that it should be. The Starkiller becomes the reason the Republic is unable to take action, which is more simple and direct than discussions about treaties or a corrupted Senate. It also allows this story to explore some previously unexplored territory in having a superweapon which has presumably worked as intended for some time. Finally, it ends with language used later in the film as well as tying visually into the Finalizer’s appearance a few seconds later.

Awesome.

jkimm said:

Are you removing all countdown references of the weapon charging? If so, good to hear. It’s so eye rolling when 3P0 says “and their weapon will be fully charged in 10 minutes. It would take a miracle to save us now”.

If the re-dubbing of the Hux update scene is successful, the 15 minute one will be out by default which IMO is the silliest one. I don’t know if taking out the 10 minute reminder would make the Resistance scene too short, but it’s something to consider. The two minute update, which is now exactly two minutes before the weapon actually fires, I think works really well as a reminder and will be staying.

How do you feel about removing Finn saying “yeah they do” after Han asks if there’s a trash compacter? It seems like he’s in on the joke by having that response and it’s not necessary.

I’m okay with interpreting Finn’s reaction to be satisfaction at literally disposing of his superior, and it needn’t be interpreted as anything more than that.

Also, trim Finn saying “why are you doing that?” when Han is nodding.

That is the way Hal cut the scene in Restructured, but after incorporating it into my edit it felt too rushed with all of Finn’s dialogue removed.

RogueLeader said:

it raises the question of why the X-Wings don’t pass through the shields the same way the Falcon does.

I’d assume for the same reason the X-wings don’t also exploit the hyperspace loophole - both methods would be almost suicidal even if your ship is as tricked-out as the Falcon. No way Leia would risk the entire fleet like that, and probably wouldn’t have even agreed for Han to try if he had told her beforehand.

I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at here. Unless I’m missing something, cutting the shield aspect would have to be done in tandem with the retrieval of the map to Luke, otherwise Han has no reason to go separately from the main fleet.

As for the the shield angle diagram, are you suggesting Scenario B is Han’s plan, in order to stay under the radar the entire time? If so, It’s a neat idea, but I don’t know if the extra effort would justify the change since the handwave about the shields and hyperspace remains unaddressed.

It’s definitely more of an ‘if someone with greater ability wishes to do this’ situation.

Anakin probably wishes his comprehensive education only cost him an arm and a leg.

Here’s a bit of a crazy idea, might be too effects-heavy, but whatever.

Cut all references to hyperspace in the Falcon approach to Starkiller (or add a line after ‘we’re making our landing approach at light speed?’ where Han says ‘Not exactly’ or something to that effect). Then the Falcon exits hyperspace right next to the beam of sunlight being sucked into the planet. The viewport is totally filled with light, blinding everyone. Han turns the ship so its underside is towards the beam, but the light is still blinding. Chewie roars.
‘If I get any higher they’ll see us!’
Suddenly they’re through, and the ground rushes up to meet them. Continue with the current version of the crash from the edit, though with the addition of steam rising from beneath the Falcon and maybe a reddish glow that starts to dissipate through contact with the snow.

This could go a long way towards fixing one of the biggest handwaves in the entire movie, since now the Falcon’s larger size and beefier shielding would be essential to surviving this mission instead of an arcane and troubling weakness of shields to hyperspace travel (Additionally it bugs me that old man Han is able to do this while the first draft of TPM established that only Jedi reflexes could pull this off). Finally, this makes use of a necessary weakness in the Starkiller’s design while highlighting something that makes this location totally unique in all of Star Wars.

RogueLeader said:

I noticed it, but I don’t think the klaxon delay is a bad thing. I think having the menacing music start in that scene works, but like I mentioned before, maybe have it cut out temporarily during the head-turn shot, and see how that feels.

This might be a stretch, but I wonder if something could possibly be put together using Unreal Engine. Using the Phasma model from battlefront, and some kind of console model, you could make a quick insert shot of her pressing a button. Having her activate a silent alarm would make her seem even more intelligent than just sounding a regular alarm, and it might be clearer that it was intentional rather than just a side effect of the shields going down.

Obviously that might be difficult but it might be worth trying. Something like a button underneath the main console, or even a button on the top that blinks after she presses it or something. Hmm, I might do more research on this.

I think not having the klaxons blare during that scene though for the sake of the dialogue being clear is a good reason. And if you don’t think “Lower the shields” would work I don’t think it is a deal breaker. The shields being lowered seems to be implied by the screen behind her anyway.

JEDIT: I think redubbing is a great idea! I think offscreen dialogue is my go-to plan for a lot of my ideas too!! And it’d be a lot easier than animating something.

The trickiest thing, whether an insert shot or the Hux update idea, would be to make it clear that Phasma is relaying more information with the silent alarm than would potentially be gleaned from just the shield going down.

Considering Hux being updated with some information, maybe this sequence of events:

Finn: ‘Solo, if this works, we’re not gonna have a lot of time to find Rey.’
Han: ‘Don’t worry kid, we won’t leave without her.’
Officer: ‘Sir!’
Hux: ‘Report’
Officer: ‘Receiving an order for all troops to block 24.’
Phasma: ‘You can’t be so stupid as to think this will be easy. My troops will storm this block and kill you all.’
Then have the garbage chute, Kylo update, and start of the alarm.

Additionally, removing the 15 minute ticking clock makes me happy because it was so transparently impossible for even the events of the original film to happen in such a timeframe.

ChainsawAsh said:

But anyway. Willow. TV show, movie, prequel, sequel - what are we thinkin’ here, folks?

I vote sequel TV series.

A sequel is almost always superior to a prequel, so that part is obvious (though I am holding my breath for that Dark Crystal show). And for small-scale fantasy, TV makes a lot of sense.

I vote sequel miniseries.

Glad y’all brought up the klaxon delay since I had meant to ask about that. The intention behind moving it was indeed to have Kylo respond to it, with the added bonus of some cleverness on the part of Phasma: she pressed the silent alarm, which allowed her to not be immediately killed by Finn and co, and which quickly turned into a widespread alarm. This is probably too much of a stretch, since for this to be clear we would need a shot of her pressing a button under the computer console before turning back around. In lieu of this I tried using the music to imply a hidden menace to her actions before the alarm proper starts, though it seems that it’s not enough/weirdly implemented.

Finn’s line is weird as well. I’ve tried to take out just the bucket bit and leave the ‘lower the shields’, but it feels off that way.

And you’re right on both counts about the delayed klaxon, RL!

JEDIT: Thinking about it some more, it might work to place the Hux update scene right after the shield lowering scene and redub the officer to say something like: ‘silent alarm triggered in section 237. The shields are down!’

Sifo Dyas said:

NeverarGreat said:

I think it’s safe to assume that any planet not in the Hoth ‘solar system’ would take years to reach on sublight engines

RoccondilRinon said:

I think the official explanation is that the Falcon (and most ships) had a backup hyperdrive, designed only to get you (slowly) to an inhabited system for repairs.

My preferred explanation is that it’s a fairly dense area of space, such that systems are closer together than in our region, and that it still probably took several months to get to Bespin. This, of course, aligns with Luke needing more than a few days’ training with Yoda.

Well I don’t know how a hyperdrive is slow, but a hyperdrive is a hyperdrive.
And if Han has it, he would use it, in a situation like that.
He didn’t even try.
The only explanation for that, that there was no backup hyperdrive. Or he is stupid, but I would dismiss that probability.
Therefore he only had sublight engines.

Which made me do the math, and it turned out that it is possible to get to Bespin from the Hoth sytem in a couple of months, using only sublight engines.
I tried to calculate the least possible distance between 2 neighboring solar systems, based on our universe.
I was thinking about possible max. speed, to calculate time needed to cover that distance, but actually it is the fuel that limits max. speed, as you can accelerate in space until you reach lightspeed.
Also a reasonable accelaration rate is needed, that makes dogfight still possible.
I calculated that they can accelerate to 5 million km/h in 38 hours at max acceleration.
Yeah, that is a lot of fuel, but with no info about it, we don’t know how much fuel they burn. Since max speed depends on fuel, which can not be calculated, therefore 5 million km/h is an educated guesstimate, but is needed to create something to calculate with.

The outer limit of the Cuiper belt, which is considered the edge of our Solar system, is 50 AU from the sun.
This distance would be a bit more than 62 days with the calculated max, speed. Still there is acceleration and deceleration, but it is around 2 months.

Our sun is not the smallest possible yellow star, so for size of solar system calculation, it needs to be taken into account, that the size of the sun of the Hoth and Bespin system, that is still a yellow star, can be smaller.
Based on data, I think 40 AU system edge is reasonable, but of course suns could be even closer, but it is good enough for rough estimation.
So a 40 AU trip with 5 million km/h would take about 50 days. Double that and we have a 100 day trip between Hoth and Bespin.

I checked the Falcon, and it has everything to accomodate a long journey like this.
And it gives Luke enough time to train on Dagobah.

It doesn’t matter how close the systems are to each other, it’s a simple matter of plot convenience.

A two-bit smuggler can’t reasonably expect to find one of his most notable compatriots in a desolate, 40 AU radius.

A vague acquaintance maybe, just not another owner of the Falcon.

exitzero said:

The antenna is kinda scraggly though, maybe replacing it with a shiny new one wouldn’t be a terrible change.

Doesn’t help that it could be mistaken for a crack in the wall, but whatever.

The Rebels barely scrape by and have to use second hand equipment. Give this guy a shiny new antenna, and some rebel soldier somewhere will have to go without a food ration. Is that really what you want?

Seeing as the helmet antennas are probably decorative, let them eat rations.

Obviously some of the effects shots are incomplete and some sound effects are still absent, like Kylo walking through the snow and the launching of the TIE fighters as Rey hides. I’m pretty happy with the order of scenes now, but if you had thoughts about the structure or the music (another work in progress) they are of course welcome.

The whispers are from TLJ when Rey first senses the Jedi tree. Since they have a sort of sinister feel I’ve incorporated them into several scenes throughout the film to highlight the idea that the Force, and more specifically the Dark Side, is calling out to her in these moments and offering her quick and easy power.

The ‘Ship’s clear’ went through a denoising pass in Audacity to remove the music, but agreed that it feels rough. If you happen across any stormtrooper dialogue that would work better that would be excellent, since I haven’t found a suitable replacement yet.

I experimented briefly with replacing the background of the Kylo shot with the Oscillator but it felt weird to have the Falcon within visual distance of the base, so my current plan is to have some subtle flashes on the underside of the clouds as if the battle is happening behind one of the closer mountain ranges.

ray_afraid said:

YeOldeFool said:

Is it possible to shorten or remove the antennae from the shot? I realize I’m probably the only one this bothers, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask.

That would create a continuity error with the other troops. The same kind of small errors that these edits are great at fixing, not creating.
Anyway, it’s not actually a mistake in the film, so I don’t think anything needs to change here.
And now that you know what you’re actually seeing, it shouldn’t be an issue anymore, right?

The antenna is kinda scraggly though, maybe replacing it with a shiny new one wouldn’t be a terrible change.

Doesn’t help that it could be mistaken for a crack in the wall, but whatever.