NeverarGreat

Exceptional.

That can’t be real.

Wonderful!

The problem with using the Hux shot during the firing sequence is that there’s clearly a star in the sky, so it would be really hard to fake it being underground like the the other shots.

Here’s the video:
https://mega.nz/#!jJtEVZzK!pNYvB7_9_XhAK9YxfGFlzKAr-NyxJj2vz155azm9Wn4

I had also grayed out Hux’s hair somewhat in the beginning of the shot to make it less obvious that it was him. However, it would probably be easier to remove that part of the shot anyway, starting it from when the camera starts to pan right.

ImperialFighter said:

NeverarGreat, Just throwing this out there - would REVERSING the 2 shots in this later sequence take the edge off the duplication? - so that your music would be the SAME in the background, except we’d see the female operater shot FIRST this time (‘reversed’ to turn towards her monitor in this instance), BEFORE we then see the male operator, just before the weapon fires.

I tried this reversal on the female operator shot, pulling audio of Hux saying ‘Fire’ to match the guy’s mouth movement. It works fairly well, but if you’re really paying attention the backwards footage is noticeable. I do like the ‘Fire’ dialogue change in any case.

Hal 9000 said:

Yeah… I don’t think those earlier FO control room shots from the ‘weapon charging’ scene can be removed, unless someone wants to rotoscope out Gleeson from this shot:

https://ibb.co/i2czHa
https://ibb.co/mTPPiF

As long as you crop out his face, the shot could work:
https://vimeo.com/221226748
Password: hux
It would probably work better if you just used the last five seconds.

Don’t forget the ugly sideways ship that Leia arrives in!

Very well. The delay would be retroactively justified with the Starkiller targeting the Resistance, implying that it’s fine to fire again. I guess the only problem remaining is the two control room shots.

Would the star draining sequence work with just a hard cut from the First Order salute to the sun being drained?

Indeed they did, but it doesn’t completely blow until Poe’s attack. Han and Chewie believe that the charges may cripple the weapon, otherwise they wouldn’t bother, so there’s an expectation that the charges could be the difference between the weapon firing and the weapon being unable to fire. The way it has been in the original movie and the edits is that Chewie fails to act immediately when Han dies. In the original this wasn’t a big deal since the weapon was 2 minutes from firing anyway, but here it matters. Unfortunately, placing Chewie’s attack before or simultaneous with the Starkiller firing ruins the feeling of despair at the plight of our heroes.

One way to mitigate this problem is to use the DominicCobb idea of having the weapon target the Resistance base directly after the Hosnian destruction. Then we understand that the only useful purpose of the charges was to allow the X-wings access to the Oscillator.

So…no luck so far on finding a replacement for the Starkiller control room shots.

This version of the firing (and basically all the versions so far) have the issue of pausing time to see the destruction of Hos, which isn’t very Star-Warsy. Another problem introduced in Restructured is the fact that Chewie apparently waits until after the Starkiller fires to detonate the charges, an out-of-character mistake and one that potentially led to the deaths of millions. In V1 in fact, we are never told that the Oscillator is still functional after the detonation, so it’s a reasonable assumption that Chewie is indirectly responsible for the destruction of the Hosnian system!

With that in mind, I tried to make a version where Chewie shoots Kylo and blows the charges before the weapon fires, but since it’s all set to the Starkiller cue, the beginning is too rushed. The end works well, since it cuts right from Leia’s reaction to Rey and Finn escaping the damaged Oscillator. The music is allowed to finish and blends the scenes nicely. Also good is cutting away from the wounded Kylo quite quickly in the Oscillator, so that it’s more unexpected when we see him menacing our heroes in the woods.

Essentially I have two versions of the firing sequence, one with a good beginning, the other with a good end, and both incompatible.

Blast.

There’s also the deleted scene which needs to be done, which is rather essential for the whole Republic subplot.

I’ll see what I can do about getting some different footage for the firing sequence. As it is right now, everything barely holds together to allow for the entire cue, and it really feels off to truncate the music in the beginning like that.

Oh right. I thought those had been excised as well, but looking at it again, there they are 😛

Thanks all!

Hal 9000 said:

Approved! Haha. I’m going to see if I can’t comfortably excise the ‘control room’ shots from earlier in the movie.

I believe that the Leia shot is the only Resistance base shot from eariler in the movie, and that is accompanied by the now excised ‘it would take a miracle to save us now’ line. The other two shots are from the later scene which has already been cut. 😃

DigMod said:

Well that was just about perfect. 😃 do you have a lossless version?

Here 'tis:
https://mega.nz/#!vVUnEDqI!Og-cqgUgtFCfE2FcofnzAmCJyUEwGRcsZcha3OgHa-E
Music only (except for when I used the Hosnian planet surface audio)
https://mega.nz/#!6QMkHSIY!ayFfIHfMYoJujB1xf1L1vta8JP4OWsHO9sHeVOmr3EY
Sound effects only: https://mega.nz/#!KJNwzLBL!iOBYunhvOZh9oStZho76gcSXJOg1qxIezNPsxt1s88U

I’ve made a few more tweaks, and I’m happy to call it done, leaving it to a more audial individual to add further sound effects and complete the 5.1 mix.

Alderaan said:

NeverarGreat said:

Her weakness is very explicitly her naivete.

This is not a weakness in the film. It could have been, but it wasn’t. When she goes to the front, she is told she cannot cross No Man’s Land. She doesn’t understand the kind of modern artillery firepower she is up against. She does it anyway and succeeds. She’s told there is a gas that can end civilization and kill millions of people. She has probably never encountered something like that before. She walks right into a cloud of it and lives anyway.

At no point did her naivety cost her anything. It was a nice storyline that I was digging, but it was never a weakness.

NeverarGreat said:

Like Superman, her weakness is mental, not physical.

Not sure what else to say here, other than to reiterate that she’s not supposed to be threatened like a normal person is threatened by violence, she’s above that. It’s her childlike sense of good and evil that gets her into trouble. For example, if she wasn’t hellbent on destroying Ares at the gala she and Steve might have been able to thwart the gas attack. That gas attack costs her a great deal. Then, her insistence on killing Ares instead of helping Steve and friends stop the plane put the entire armistice at risk.

I have a hard time imagining that they will bend opposite to a normal human elbow.

Her weakness is very explicitly her naivete. Like Superman, her weakness is mental, not physical. Superman in the classic movie is often incapable of understanding how a criminal mind works which leads him to underestimate villains, and Wonder Woman similarly must overcome a simplistic view of the world as heroes vs villains.

Here’s an updated version:
https://vimeo.com/221136104
Password: leia
I was able to recover some frames by rejoining the Resistance shot that I had previously split, and this allowed me to lessen the slow motion effect on most shots. I also placed the laser going through space between Resistance shots to break up the monotonous sequence of reactions somewhat, and to emphasize Leia’s reaction through its separation from the others. The timecode shot now has a patch and better colors.

Thanks for the input. The time-code would be removed from that shot of course, but it is rather rough anyway. It might be that it could be further cleaned up, but right now there’s just a basic color correction on it.

I’m certainly fine with the slightly slowed shots in the sequence so it’s nice to see someone share that feeling. However, it seems we’re in the minority on this. I can understand the reasoning - slow motion is usually not part of the Star Wars ‘style’, with I believe the only exception being the Dagobah tree. So while it might be a more ‘epic’ feeling to slow things down, it would be more in keeping with Star Wars to simply find another shot to put into the sequence.

Well that’s the real trick now isn’t it? And it’s going to require something extra. Another shot perhaps, though I’ve pulled just about everything I can from the available footage.

There could be a shot inserted between the laser destroying the first planet in the Hosnian system and the live action shot on the planet surface, consisting of a still image of Hos animated by the illumination of the approaching laser:

Alternately, there could be another shot of the pilots reacting to the laser, though I don’t know where I would find such a shot, or of the Resistance base, perhaps a wide shot of chaos. Again, not sure what shot I could use. Any thoughts?

You know what would be really cool? If the ‘gorilla walkers’ were actually manufactured during the height of the Empire for a specialized combat situation and have been heavily used by the First Order since. I could see them in formation with the more ubiquitous AT-ATs and AT-STs, and this would answer the question of where the First Order gets all this new tech. It could be the case that since the Empire and the Rebellion fought on many battlefields beyond those seen in the films, the Empire could well have a vast array of unique ships and vehicles as-yet unseen, just as Rogue One has shown.

TV’s Frink said:

I’m pretty sure most of these have already been posted before at this point.

Yeah, but who wants to CTRL-F through all 8 pages? It takes at least 15 seconds.
😉

Yeah, I think there are too many random reactions in the Resistance bit but they are in just to make the music fit. The Hosnian sequence does feel long after all that, and I think the Resistance shots are the issue.

Spock’s death makes The Wrath of Khan unassailable in my opinion. No other scene in the original crew films comes close. There’s also the Genesis device, which is genuinely inspired writing.

The Journey Home is probably a close second, since 'thar be whales in ‘ere!’

After those two, it’s a toss-up, as I probably enjoy the rest of them about equally. The Final Frontier has the worst story and execution of the lot, but the best ideas and intentions so it gets a pass.

Apparently you can use either. I would have gone with screenshot.

This graphic may not be particularly good persuasion if their goal is to show how balanced mainstream coverage of the event was. To see the NYT with an unchanging stripe of anti-Trump stories, one could be forgiven for thinking that the New York Times had an agenda, regardless of the fact that Breitbart is a beautiful quilt of handwoven lies.

Also, ‘screenshotted’ doesn’t look like a real word when it’s written out.

“I’m NOT getting in there!
…
I’m going to regret this.”