NeverarGreat

All of those would have been superior to the film.

Has anyone had that moment when they get through the first page and realize they’re reading a mummified thread?

Yeah.

If you know something to be fake, your brain generates any number of reasons that it looks fake, even if they aren’t true or not noticeable to the average viewer.

I thought some of the Tarkin stuff was seamless, despite knowing it to be CG. If motion capture got good enough to capture the micromovements of facial muscles, I would feel a lot better about an actor using a ‘digital likeness’ of another actor (provided the actor or their estate were in agreement). In this case, the actor wearing the digital likeness would be translating much of their performance to the screen, even more than an actor with layers of prosthetics on their face.

Kind of like this?

Just a quick sketch, going for something canine/feline that looks alien but not downright evil.

I posted this in my project thread, but since that tends to get buried quite fast, I’m looking for some stabilized and denoised shots from the SSE - in particular the lightsaber shots on board the Falcon and the final section of the Obi-wan/Vader duel, where they are in the doorway to the hangar. It would be super helpful to have these shots for lightsaber replacements on the Blu-ray, so the denoising would need to marry into that footage.

Carrie, you will be missed.

My attempt from the RO fanedit thread:

ROGUE ONE

It is a time of galactic tyranny.
The once venerable democracy
has fallen to a despotic Empire,
which subjugates the star systems
of the defeated Old Republic.

A few brave souls dare to defy
this oppressive regime, and
whisper of forming a strong
REBEL ALLIANCE, now
their only hope against the
relentless Imperial machine.

With the resistance still
fractured and in disarray,
the Empire moves swiftly to
complete its ultimate weapon,
one that will spell destruction
and death across the stars. . . .

I’ve only seen RO once, but from what I recall the music in it was a bit distracting. It even felt a bit desperate at times, such as when our heroes escape the rain planet. It just builds and builds and builds and the composer is clearly wishing the scene would end so he can stop writing triumphant Star Wars music. Other moments were quite nice though, and I may develop an appreciation for it later, but perhaps 3 weeks isn’t enough time for more than a musical rough draft.

The music for TFA, on the other hand, feels very sure of itself. It doesn’t intrude on the experience or draw attention to itself for much of the film like RO does, and has a sophistication that I’ve grown to like, despite not being impressed on the first viewing. One part in particular, the destruction of Starkiller Base, struck me as especially impressive. I tried to replicate the theme by ear on the piano, and found that it took more hands than the typical 2 to complete merely the melody. The fact that Williams was able to divide the simple Force melody in three blew my mind. Williams is just showing off with these new movies, and being very subtle about it.

DominicCobb said:

I really don’t give a shit about Starkiller Base, it’s dumb but it’s also such a relatively small part of the movie. There are other little things that bother me but they don’t amount to much with the overall story as satisfying as it is.

I think it’s a problem that the largest superweapon in the Star Wars universe to date can be accurately described as ‘a relatively small part of the movie’.

That is one of the most baffling departures from continuity in a film that otherwise bends over backwards to fit with ANH.

oojason said:

NeverarGreat said:

All good ideas for crawls. Here’s one that incorporates several of those ideas:

ROGUE ONE

It is a time of galactic tyranny.
The once venerable democracy
has fallen to a despotic Empire,
which subjugates the star systems
of the defeated Old Republic.

A few brave souls dare to defy
this oppressive regime, and
whisper of forming a strong
REBEL ALLIANCE, now
their only hope against the
relentless Imperial machine.

With the resistance still
fractured and in disarray,
the Empire moves swiftly to
complete its ultimate weapon,
one that will spell destruction
and death across the stars. . . .

Impressive, clear and concise. The word ‘subjugates’ may have a few people reaching for the dictionary - though that isn’t a bad thing.

The end line ‘and death across the stars…’ - would ‘and death across the galaxy…’ scan/sound better?

Either way, that is one quality crawl that, feels and comes across like it could’ve been the actual Rogue One crawl had they used one - nice one 😃

Thanks!

I was coyly trying to put the words ‘death’ and ‘star’ in the final line. 😉

And yeah, the first paragraph is too heavy with the thesaurus.

All good ideas for crawls. Here’s one that incorporates several of those ideas:

ROGUE ONE

It is a time of galactic tyranny.
The once venerable democracy
has fallen to a despotic Empire,
which subjugates the star systems
of the defeated Old Republic.

A few brave souls dare to defy
this oppressive regime, and
whisper of forming a strong
REBEL ALLIANCE, now
their only hope against the
relentless Imperial machine.

With the resistance still
fractured and in disarray,
the Empire moves swiftly to
complete its ultimate weapon,
one that will spell destruction
and death across the stars. . . .

Very interesting. I created some custom mattes for certain shots in my recreation (some I didn’t even end up using), so they might be useful in a project like this.

Here’s my ranking of the films (videos in the case of Eps 2 & 3) on a scale of inventive to safe:

On the Inventive Side:

1: Star Wars - A giant personal risk by Lucas, and an unparalleled combination of genres that launched a franchise.

2: The Phantom Menace - Jar Jar and a Leave It To Beaver Anakin Skywalker make this an arguably suicidal gamble for Lucas, in terms of credibility. Regardless of its success, it was remarkable.

3: Empire Strikes Back - A radical departure from the plot structure, tone, and focus of the first film that succeeds in being at least as good as the original.

4: Attack of the Clones - After the divisiveness of TPM, Lucas had every reason to retreat into what worked for the Original Trilogy, yet he made the first major motion picture to be shot entirely digitally. Also making a digital Yoda. That is some major chutzpah.

5: Rogue One - The first Star Wars film without a lightsaber duel, one that focuses almost entirely on normal people in the Star Wars universe. A war movie in a fantasy franchise is gutsy and breaks new ground.

On the Safe Side:

6: Return of the Jedi - The film that has been called on these forums the ‘contractual obligation album’, it is an attempt to end the saga in one movie rather than the planned 4. Another Death Star, a return to Tatooine and Dagobah, and filming in the redwood forest for bugetary reasons.

7: Revenge of the Sith - A continuation of the poor cinematic choices of AOTC, Revenge brings almost nothing new to the table, and ends in one of the most overly explanatory ways possible.

8: The Force Awakens - Our heroes crash land on Not-Tatooine, escape in the Millennium Falcon to Not-Dagobah, the Not-Empire fires a Not-Death Star at Not-Alderaan, then Han, Leia, Chewie, and C-3PO all go to Not-Yavin 4 to plan an attack against the Not-Death Star and Not-Luke fights Not-Vader.

This is only one metric for determining the quality of the films, but I think this is one of the main reasons that the 3rd film in a trilogy hardly ever reaches the level of the first.

/thread

People keep on bringing up the idea that the characters in Rogue One are worse than those of TFA, but I think that these movies present two very different ways to create a character. In the case of TFA, the characters for the most part are larger than life, all of them at least idealized, at most mythologized. Everything they do is part of a larger destiny, and they cannot die in vain. Even Han Solo’s death was played on a huge, dramatically lit stage surrounded by other figures of destiny who will surely avenge him.

Contrast this with the characters of Rogue One, who are often subdued, restrained, ordinary. They are not figures of destiny, and even the one who has genuinely magical powers is treated as no more important in the story than the grunts in the Rebellion. It is the story of everyday people coming together to achieve a goal that will be largely unsung in the annals of history and overshadowed by the achievements of Chosen Ones.

To say that one interpretation of character is better than another is to misunderstand how TFA and Rogue One are fundamentally different movies. One is about heroes of destiny, the other about people acting heroically.

The first post of this thread has pretty much everything you’d need to know about the project. Short answer is yes, this is ‘just’ a regrade, and it is going to be the basis of Harmy’s 3.0.

@Stotchy: What Towne said. Though I’m thinking of keeping some of the inconsistency of the film sources in the preliminary grade of Reel 2, since some of my final grades are extremely consistent across scenes, to the point that it looks like a modern movie. Star Wars was always inconsistent from shot to shot, and perhaps Reel 2 should reflect some of that.

Labels are silly, and a day isn’t lived until I’ve overthought something, yet words are still supposed to mean things. Words are labels for other words and somewhere down the line they hopefully describe some sort of reality. To label oneself a Star Wars fan, one must define these words. The fact that so many people have different definitions for these things seems to erode the meaning of the label, in the case of Star Wars more than other properties.

My ultimate point, if there is one, is that there are no Star Wars fans, since there is so little agreement on what constitutes Star Wars.

Why not go the Marvel route with the Luke scene and put that at the end of the credits?

That Saw picture is a bald-faced lie.

Life has yet again gotten in the way, and forced me to take another break. I have made some more progress, but the droid auction is still in its preliminary grade. I just went back and checked it, and I definitely added too much yellow in an attempt to counteract the magenta. That scene is next on the roster.

Here is the approximate status of the reels:

Reel 1: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 75%
Reel 2: Preliminary Grade 90% - Finalized 20%
Reel 3: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 90%
Reel 4: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 100%
Reel 5: Preliminary Grade 100% - Finalized 93%
Reel 6: Preliminary Grade 80% - Finalized 80%
Total Preliminary: 95% - Finalized 76%

The biggest bottlenecks for me are the lightsaber composites. If those were done, Reels 3-5 would be 100%. In fact, if someone more knowledgeable about image stabilization and degraining could prep the SSE lightsaber shots, that would go a long way to helping me finish. This is one of the downsides of working in Premiere, it’s simply not set up for complicated effects work. I only need the lightsaber training on the Falcon and the hangar section of the Vader/Obi-wan duel.

However, the end is in sight!

I agree that it boils down to the other person’s perception. If I were talking to someone of my parent’s generation, then I would have no problem labeling myself a Star Wars fan since they usually give the originals much more weight. If I was to talk to someone any younger than myself (I’m a filthy millennial), there is a good chance that their impression of Star Wars would be Episodes 1-7 with each one weighted the same in their mind, and now Rogue One. Since the majority of those films are mediocre-to-bad in my opinion, perhaps the best idea is indeed to say I’m a fan of the ‘originals’. Yet even then there’s a good chance that they have only seen the downright ugly Blu-rays, and so their definition of the originals is different than mine as well.

We live in different categorical worlds, we Star Wars-ites!

Oh I’m definitely a ‘fan’ of the OT, or at least ANH, ESB, and some of ROTJ. However, I think it’s disingenuous to say that therefore anyone who only likes the OT is a ‘Star Wars fan’, since the Star Wars universe is vast and ever expanding and much of it is of dubious quality.

For comparison, I consider myself to be a fan of the Tolkien mythology, in book and film form. This is despite the decidedly poor-to-mediocre Hobbit Trilogy (which I’d like to fanedit) since the majority of the mythology is excellent.

My point is that if you’re not a fan of the majority of something, it sends the wrong message to say that you are a fan of that thing. Star Wars is like anime in this regard. I really like some of it but most is not to my liking, so it makes sense to say that I’m not an anime fan.

Now if the Star Wars universe were to be expanded for a hundred more years, with most of the added material of brilliant, high quality content, I would happily call myself a fan of Star Wars.

I assume he was just looking through the negatives which were unused in the final film.

Haven’t heard this brought up yet, but beginning in TFA and now especially in Rogue One, the end credits music simply does not fit with the tone of the final scenes. It’s incredibly jarring to have just sat through the killing of all the main characters and a brutal murder-spree by Vader only to have the music ramp up for two seconds to a fun, adventurous crescendo.

If I were to re-edit it, the Tantive would only belatedly enter the battlefield to receive the transmissions and then jump out of system, apparently free from pursuit, to continue its mission to retrieve Obi-wan. We wouldn’t see Leia’s face at all. Then, as others have suggested, we would end with the Death Star firing on Scarif and the deaths of Jyn and Cassian. Fade to white. After a few seconds of silence, begin subdued music more in line with the tone of the ending.