NeverarGreat

Sounds good! I’m trying to shorten the line while keeping all the meaning, so perhaps:

“Sir! Phasma has ordered a lockdown search of the entire cell block. She won’t escape us.”

“Sir, Phasma has ordered her troops to search the prison block until the girl is found.”

“Sir, Phasma’s elite unit has been deployed to the cell block. Are we facing a Jedi, sir?”

This is if I want to cram as much exposition as possible into the scene in order to help justify Finn’s plan. The other option is to go into the personal place that Kylo’s lines imply. Something like this:

“Sir, about the girl. They say that she’s dangerous, that she has powers like yours.”
“She’s just beginning to touch her powers. The longer it takes to find her, the more dangerous she becomes.”

This feels more natural to me, since it frames Kylo’s words as a de-escalation of the trooper’s fears along with a threatening encouragement to do their job. It also speaks more directly to the overall theme of the edit, that of implying a similarity of Force between Kylo and Rey. And keep in mind that the reason this scene was originally cut was due to the perceived escalation of Rey’s power, so any lines would have to reframe this somehow.

All of the sounds at that moment are from the theatrical version.

All good points! Kylo’s line getting cut off when sensing Han sounds fine to me, but several people have identified it as an editing mistake even though I didn’t change it at all for V1. This time I figured he would say his entire line so people don’t get confused.

I did intend the dialogue to be a bit funny, but it could be more mission-oriented.

Since the scene of Rey looking startled comes right before this, perhaps I could place the sound effect of a blast door closing. Then:

“Sir, prison level is on lockdown, and Phasma’s troops are searching every cell. Is she that dangerous?”

This could fix a lot of issues. It separates Phasma from her troops and relocates these forces in a locked-down area, shows that Rey has already escaped this area, gives Finn justification for believing that Phasma’s troops won’t bother them, and gives him a reason to be scared when he finally does attempt to blow up the blast door leading to the prison block.

That’s correct. And I’m sure we can manage to make the line volume work, but no need to worry about that until we have a recording that Eddie is completely happy with.

Focusing now on the surrounding scenes, I have had a bit of a rethink about them. I was never too happy with the Kylo update scene where he says ‘put every hangar on lockdown, she’s going to steal a ship to escape’, because he is immediately distracted by Han’s presence and then in my edit he goes to the Falcon and ignores the lead on Rey. Essentially all of the dialogue in that scene would have to be removed except for his ‘Han Solo’ moment. It is also weird to have a dramatic establishing shot in that scene which would come after another establishing shot of the mountain or of Rey in the halls. Essentially there’s nothing about the first part of the scene that works here.

So I deleted it, and replaced it with another cut scene. I think this has much more promise.

“Sir, I saw the damage to the cell block. Is she really that dangerous?”
“She’s just beginning to touch her power. The longer it takes to find her, the more dangerous she becomes.”

That Kylo update scene was originally cut for several reasons. One, it feels like Kylo oversharing, and two, it increases the stakes in the wrong direction - we should be feeling like the villain is a greater threat at this point, not the hero. Now, however, Kylo’s dialogue is well-motivated and his warning about Rey is really a thinly-veiled threat directed at his underlings. And now that he has no lead on Rey, he is free to pursue the only lead he has, which is Han.

EddieDean said:

Just a couple of thoughts “from the outisde” now, Nev:

In the “one-shot Kyber cannon” scene, I feel like my line needs to be just a fraction earlier, for better lipsync.

(Though I’ll also definitely record new and alternate lines once we’ve compiled a list.)

In the “senate has voted” scene, I think my voice needs to be pulled a little deeper, to better match your “kyber cannon” line tweaks. I’m a little high-pitched by nature and the deeper voice better suits that actor’s face, I reckon.

Also, I’m just wondering if there’s any other reading that might best lipsync to the delivered line.

The original is “The Jakku village was wiped out”, and the most clear lip movements there are “aa-oo-ee-ws-wap”. The letters ‘w’ and ‘p’ have similar movements to ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘b’, and ‘t’, and some of the vowels are similar, so maybe for the part where he’s on screen, the best fit would be “A senate transmission”. (Try voicing it yourself over the muted clip, it matches well.)

“General? A senate transmission. They’ve voted to mobilize the fleet, but are hours from launch.” -perhaps?

Or “General? A senate transmission. The Republic fleet is mobilising, but is still hours away from launch.”?

Both of those variants sound good to me! Though I imagine that for such a brief scene, the more simple the better, and since ‘transmission’ is a difficult word, removing ‘mobilizing’ may help comprehension:

“General? A Senate transmission. They’ve voted to send the fleet, but it is still hours away from launch.”

Here is the latest Senate Response scene with Eddie’s new recording and more sound editing. The First Order officer line has yet to be added.

As far as the flow of the scene, I think it works well. However, it does require the use of the mountain establishing shot which was deleted from Starlight V1 but was not deleted from Restructured. Any attempt to add this deleted scene to Restructured would need to contend with this difficulty, either in cutting directly to Kylo’s update or finding another unused establishing shot.

I could do that.

However, ‘one-shot’ or a variation on that line could refer to the fact that it can’t move and thus can only absorb a single star to be used for one or two attacks.

Perhaps “some kind of single charge Kyber cannon.” would make everyone happy.

Alternatively…perhaps we could play up the fact that this weapon is experimental and unstable:

“An extremely unstable Kyber cannon.”

or

“A massive, unstable Kyber cannon.”

or

“Some kind of unstable Kyber cannon.”

This would not only set up the plan later in the scene based around destabilizing the weapon, but it would explain the First Order’s behavior as well. Only Hux seems eager to use the weapon and his last dialogue in the film practically implies that he expected the weapon to be destroyed. It also explains why Snoke is nowhere near the Starkiller at any point in the film, and why such a weapon isn’t just a power-crept Death Star.

Yeah, Eddie liked that idea because it tied the Illum planet’s history to the weapon, and for casual viewers it’s just some in-universe jargon that won’t matter either way.

I’m still working on the Senate Response scene, but Eddie also provided line variations for the character’s other speaking role in the film. So here it is, hopefully making some more sense of the Starkiller weapon.

While yes, a desert can be striking and beautiful, there is at least a thematic reason why Tatooine is so drab in Star Wars, that being Luke’s angst at his backwater nothing planet.

I’d like to see a desert planet in Star Wars that actually is stunning. Pasaana tries to do this but it isn’t fully there.

That would be awesome! I’ll send you the clip.

There’s another line in this edit that could use replacement, and it appears in the mockup videos. A First Order officer tells Kylo ‘Sir, she was not found in hangar 718, but all troops are on alert.’

For the edit, Rey hasn’t yet entered hangar 718 so I truncated the line to ‘Sir, all troops are on alert.’ However, it still feels a bit strange to have that gap in dialogue, so I thought it might be good to kill two birds with one stone and establish the players of the upcoming scenes:

‘Sir, Phasma is in full command of base security, and all troops are on alert.’

This reminds everyone that Phasma will be important in a few scenes as well as establishing that she would have the clearance to deactivate the shields. An audience member could then guess what Finn is about to do instead of throwing up their hands with an ‘I guess!’ when he does it.

Anyway, it should probably have a different voice actor than Eddie since the scene is so close to the ones he’s already working on. If anyone else wishes to volutneer as tribute, I would be inestimably grateful.

Speaking of audio, the Starkiller destruction sequence has never felt right to me due to the constraints of the music forcing me to delete the ships jumping to Hyperspace. I’ve revamped that entire sequence with a modified musical cue that removes the upbeat section back on D’qar and replaces it with a single ending note. Now the ships jump to Hyperspace on this finale and the scene on D’qar begins with no music whatsoever, better fitting the somber tone of Restructured and Starlight.

I like it!

Great!

Story time, I was working through the comments on Starlight V1 and a few people were noticing that audio that should have been surround or stereo were sounding very mono. Taking a closer look at my timeline, I realized that a few of my audio tracks were indeed forcing stereo tracks into mono. This has been fixed, which means that quite a few effects and scenes throughout the film now sound a lot more dynamic, noticeably deleted scenes and the Starkiller firing sequence.

This is why feedback is so vital, so thank you everyone who pointed this out!

I actually noticed that as well, RL, so we’re going to try splitting the sentence like that.

And as you say, I’m thinking the extra shots are just not worth the trouble, especially since most of them are too short anyway.

^ I have gone through the documentary in search of extra shots and have a bit of a library, but the primary use of the documentary to my knowledge has been in finishing the Han dice hanging scene. Other than that, there’s not too much in the way of useful footage that I recall.

The Last Jedi documentary actually has more of this sort of thing going on.

…

So it’s quickly become clear to me that the audio for the end of the scene is unlikely to sync up well with the mouth movements, so I’m making the decision to cut that part of the scene and end it with a wipe that partially obscures Threepio and his weird exit. This actually works fairly well now that it wipes to a neutral mountain shot.

This is only the first real attempt at making the line work, but I’m happy with how it’s turning out. I hope to further adjust the takes to really nail the line, but even as-is I think this could work in the edit.

I’ve just got some great line readings from him now, so I’ll be busy going through and editing them. But in the meantime, an important test.

I hope so too.

RogueLeader said:

I think we’re both referring to, “And General, unless that shield is destroyed…nobody can save us.”

Maybe another off screen rebel could be calling for 3PO, needing his help. Or some droid beeps. It could just be a subtle background voice/sound, but something like that could provide some logic to his action.

Ask and ye shall receive.

It’s funny, but also kinda brings the scene together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u62ao6_xYHc

That’s the second time we’ve seen him gliding in an unpowered spaceship towards Coruscant.

Which one is the second line? I realize now that numbering would help.

And yeah, Threepio’s arm movement is just so bizarre in that scene. I originally tried to cut away from it but there’s so little footage that I can use, it will probably stay in. There must have been more to his behavior at one point. It looks like he’s remembering something or has been alerted to some activity. Maybe a couple of people have just dumped R2 in the corner and he is going to check up on it. Guess we’ll never know.

As for ‘within an hour’, yeah that makes sense. That’s why I originally put the line at ‘launching in 0200 hours’, but we can do several versions of that to see what works best.

JEDIT: And I might not even end up needing a final line after 3PO waltzes out of frame if I transition right to the snowy establishing shot, but it would be nice to have a line just in case.

Sure!

That’s fair. I just included it because it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it 😉

Good one! However, I’m constrained by the mouth movements to put the word ‘destroyed’ at the end of the phrase, so perhaps:

“And General, without that shield destroyed…nobody can save us.”

It could work even if someone watches the theatrical film, since this could be Rey doubting her intentions from the beginning and believing that she has always been evil.

Funny enough, I just gave the Sith Eyes scene another pass to make them more prominent.