NeverarGreat

Welcome to the forums!

This isn’t the most uplifting forum on the internet, but it’s better than some I’ve participated in. I explore the internet to be challenged in my beliefs and be exposed to other attitudes, and certainly this forum can be challenging.

I’ve made some mistakes and bad decisions in my life, but who hasn’t? I know that other people are dealing with their own problems and sometimes that spills out in forum posts, but that’s just human nature. I try not to meet anger with anger, since I believe that you receive what you give. I try to see the best in another person, since I would hope that they do the same, and if they don’t, then I try to move on. Sometimes these tendencies get me in trouble. Sometimes I do get angry with opinions online, so much so that I have to get up and walk away from the computer for a time. It’s not a particularly healthy response, but I’m working on it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about human nature this past year, especially considering our new political reality. I think that a whole lot of people have learned the wrong lesson from this political upheaval, which is that people are ultimately tribalistic, irrational, and can be fooled by anything. While this is a seductive and depressing interpretation, I don’t think it’s true. I believe that people are ultimately unified, imaginative, and reasonable, but our institutions are so fundamentally flawed that we are incentivized to behave far below our potential. Perhaps that’s my idealism showing again.

I have a dream for a better world. In comparison, my life is in such disarray that I feel like I need to start over in order to begin building this world, beginning with myself. I’ve been struggling with feelings of apathy, seeing the far horizon of the road I must walk, but there are moments of fierce determination as well. I fear that some of my choices have permanently damaged me physically, but in some strange way that also hardens my resolve. Similarly to the political trouble on the horizon, the path can become clearer when there is an obvious obstacle to overcome, something to focus my energy. I’ve had some serious anxiety issues over the past year, as well as one full blown panic attack, but since November these feelings have been fading with my newfound resolve, replaced with a refreshing calm.

I’m working on a book of philosophy now. It’s unabashedly autobiographical, about me and for me alone. Nobody else will read it, but I’m starting from the beginning, from first principles. Perhaps from that I will be able to write something good, something persuasive, something that I believe could change the world. The philosophy isn’t new, yet the way I approach the subject hasn’t been done before, at least as far as I know. Perhaps I will persuade no one, for who would listen to someone who has not even ordered their life? Yet there’s a part of me that believes that it could revolutionize both my life and the world of philosophical thought, and that is why I write.

Is that enough self reflection?

About CGI characters:

CGI characters in live action movies has always been a dicey proposition, and one metaphor for this is a pre-recorded magic act. The audience at home wants to be fooled by a variety of magician’s tricks, but they usually don’t want to be fooled by deceptive video editing or people who have been ‘planted’ in the crowd specifically for the trick. In other words, people want to be fooled in some ways but not in others. CGI for me too often feels like a trick of the latter category. Some computer generated elements are acceptable, even expected in movies now, just as flashy lights and graphics in a magic show serve to embellish the theatricality of the act, but when the act itself is a deception, this breaks the unspoken agreement between audience and movie.

That’s just a long winded way of saying that Tarkin and Leia in Rogue One felt like a deception rather than a magic trick. Furthermore, in the case of Tarkin, he distracted from the primary villain: Krennick. Vader is a special case, since he has always been played by multiple actors. As long as James Earl Jones provides the voice, I have no problem with him being a secondary villain.

As far as Leia in Episode IX, I think there are far better ways to complete the trilogy than turning her into a CGI puppet. I would rather watch the movie magic of our new generation of leads than the deception of a corporation with too much money and too little sense.

http://www.forcematerial.com/home/2017/1/1/should-auld-acquaintances-be-forgot

Some historical perspective on resurrecting deceased actors.

I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you.

I’m sure he’s compartmentalized the knowledge of his Sith overlord. As long as he gets a planet destroying weapon, he’s happy.

I for one fear the coming of the Great White Lucasfilm Handkerchief to the OT forums.

I need the shots of the lightsabers in these scenes degrained to match the blu-ray footage, and stabilized so that I don’t have to manually align the SSE frames to the Blu-ray frames. The goal is to rotoscope the SSE sabers into the Blu-ray, since those are so degraded.

As for how much degraining would be required, I’ve gotten good results with Google’s Nik Dfine 2 Photoshop plugin, with degrain settings of 70% contrast strength and 20% color strength:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/195506

However, I don’t know how to automate this process, so I have to do this frame by frame. If someone had an automated degrain process that produced these results, that would be fantastic.

Specifically, every lightsaber shot in the Falcon except for this first one needs to be done, and the last part of the Obi-wan/Vader battle (after ‘Is the ship alright?’).

Cheers, all!

The only resolution that is resolved for me is to hate things less. So essentially, don’t give in to the Dark Side in 2017.

😃

Tobar said:

After the huge shoot out in the hallway there’s no denying her involvement. Captain Antilles and Princess Leia are both just delaying Vader for as long as possible, hoping Artoo can get away and find Obi-Wan. As for the transmissions being beamed. We don’t know if Vader saw that soldier hand off that data tape. His mission as mandated by Tarkin is to mop up the space battle and prevent ships from escaping. So he could have been on his way to try to stop the Tantive from launching. Alternatively, as the Tantive was docked inside of Raddus’ ship, Vader could consider them both just one vessel and as we saw, the plans were beamed up in about four or five chunks simultaneously.

That is all well and good, but it isn’t exactly elegant in terms of explanation. It’s rather a bit of lawyerly technicalities that allow Leia’s speech to work rather than being an organic and believable lie.

It’s much more believable that Leia’s ship was on the edge of the battle for a brief moment to receive the plans before jumping back to hyperspace on her way to recruit Obi-wan. Why they stumbled over this simple plot device is anyone’s guess, perhaps just so Vader can have the fist shaking moment of failure.

You’re very welcome

DuracellEnergizer said:

Since I don’t get many replies in the “Script Writing and Re-Writing” subsection, I figured I’d post this here.

I’ve started writing the screenplay for my Episode III re-write, and here is where I plan on introducing Palpatine. To build up his character, I wanted him to feature in a number of short scenes of him delivering political speeches – speeches which begin as hopeful and stirring, but become darker and more totalitarian with each new speech he gives. The thing is my knowledge on things political is extremely weak; I can’t write politicians.

I figured it would be best to use real-world political speeches as inspiration – speeches given by Hitler or Stalin or even a certain American president-elect. 😉 If anyone could provide links to transcripts or videos of the kind of speeches I’m thinking of, I’d really be grateful.

Here’s a couple:
Hitler Subtitled
Stalin Subtitled
Mussolini Subtitled

and of course:

The Greatest Dictator

There is a reconstructed AOTC soundtrack floating around out there that I occasionally use as background music. I don’t do that with any of the other prequels, so I guess that means that AOTC is my favorite of the prequel soundtracks. It also has perhaps my favorite end credits music (ANH might edge it out though).

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. . . .