NeverarGreat

Acbagel, do you mean what was changed from V1 of the workprint to V2? If so there are quite a few changes and tweaks not all of which I remember at the moment, but most of the total changes for the project are kept up-to-date on the first post of the thread.

Speaking of the new workprint, I watched through the whole thing last night and took notes on what still stood out in terms of issues:

-Include deleted scene of Finn and the villager (Optional, probably not for V1).
-Insert a shot or two of Unkar Plutt in his first scene with him still not speaking.
-Finesse Leia’s audio during Poe Interrogation.
-Darken the sky when Finn wakes up from crash – more sunrise pink.
-Slightly darken some of the Falcon on Jakku shots so they aren’t blown out.
-Integrate Hux better in odd shot of first Snoke Scene.
-Change Obi-wan’s ‘Rey’ to audio of Luke saying her name.
-See if there’s an acceptable shot of Rey on the big wall to place before the troopers walk past.
-Remove timecode from Kylo Falcon scene.
-Put another shot of Han and Kylo gripping the saber after the sun goes dark.
-Quiet some of the sounds of the Starkiller firing.
-Tweak shot of Rey and Finn looking at Starkiller beam.
-Delete casual Resistance officer from Leia’s mourning.
-Make more definitive musical transition between Leia’s shot and Oscillator.
-If good audio is found, have Poe interject that he wants to ‘get even’ with the FO after the attack.
-Add Sith eyes to Rey after her Force trance.
-Remove timecode from deleted scene of Rey.
-Add sinister whispers in Rey’s final dream, as well as the shot from her vision with Artoo and Luke.

The bold items are things that will probably take at least a day of work for each item, but the other things should be fairly simple or trivial. A handful of things are due to changes not having quite enough time to linger on screen, but if not fixed they would still be fine.

Let me know if anything else stands out to those who have watched the new workprint. 😃

Great! I actually changed it a bit yet again.

This project is getting very close to a full release. I’m uploading another workprint right now so if anyone wants to check that out just ask. There are quite a few new changes from the first workprint, from beginning to end, literally. The new crawl is included, as well as a whole new piece of music in the end credits.

The only major things left to do are the timecode removals. Other than that, it’s just some finessing of the present changes. Off the top of my head, I’d like to work more on Poe’s interrogation, the Hosnian Destruction shot that was brought up earlier, the Sith eyes, and swapping out the TLJ footage in Rey’s final dream/vision for more TFA appropriate imagery.

I’ve cut the cliff scene together in a way that seems ideal, keeping more of the action but only hinting at the cliff which I’ve always found to be over-the-top. Rewatching that scene and the entirety of act 3, I feel like there should be an extra indication of Rey’s darkness. Should I go a subtle Sith eyes route in that dark Force cliff scene?

On another note, in thinking about how to indicate the Resistance knowing about the Starkiller without drawing attention away from the map, I am more and more skeptical that any lines can be added to work. Leia’s words in the interrogation already need to establish the quest for Luke and the importance of the droid, and adding this Starkiller business just seems too much.

This is why I feel like as much as I don’t want to, the information has to go into the crawl. Here’s what it looks like right now:

The New Republic is in
crisis. Luke Skywalker,
last of the legendary Jedi
Knights, has vanished.

In his absence, leaders
from a thousand worlds
have forsaken the fragile
Republic in favor of the
IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER,
which has vowed to return
strength to the galaxy
through the designs of
the once mighty Empire.

Fearing another civil war,
the Senate mobilizes a
covert Resistance to
locate the missing Jedi
and repel the sinister
shadow now spreading
across the stars…

And here’s a possible replacement:

The New Republic is in
crisis. Luke Skywalker,
last of the legendary Jedi
Knights, has vanished.

In his absence, the fragile
Republic has quailed
under threats by the
IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER,
which claims to have
constructed a weapon
greater than any built by
the once-mighty Galactic
Empire.

Fearing a direct conflict,
the Senate mobilizes a
covert Resistance to
locate the missing Jedi
and repel the sinister
shadow now spreading
across the stars…

So here the Republic knows of a vague threat by the First Order but can’t substantiate the claims. Nevertheless, it can’t afford to take any direct action due to this threat so it forms this Resistance to find Luke and tip the scale in its favor.

This crawl also de-emphasizes the agency of the Senate, so that it’s not expected that they would be too active in the story.

I’ll try a version with the beam going all the way out of frame instead of going through the clouds, since that doesn’t really make sense anyway.

And yeah, I’m reverting the Starkiller Destruction closer to Restructured. Believe me, I didn’t come to the decision lightly after all the work that went into the prior version, but after taking that long break and revisiting the project I had to admit that it just wasn’t as effective as Restructured. The issue was primarily because in Restructured and the theatrical version, Leia and the Resistance leave the film after the Oscillator scenes and only return after the final destruction. This focuses the film on the new characters of Rey, Finn, and Poe. With my workprint plot there is far less focus on the new characters, to their detriment I believe.

If there’s interest in the old version, I could render out that section alone since it was fairly well-realized.

I’m still debating how I want the final minutes of the Starkiller Destruction to play out. I would like to keep the darker version of Rey tapping into the Force, but it might make sense to include the cliff in that scene. It also might flow better to revert the scene of Snoke back to its Theatrical location.

Anyway, that’s where I am right now.

If it’s just a clip of your proposed change, I don’t see why not.

Well it is one of the newest additions, and really is more of a proof of concept to see if it works at all. If people think it shows promise I can try a more finished version.

I second that testimonial, CatBus. You_Too was a big help in my early days on this forum doing color correction work on ANH.

I’ve sent a little money his way and hope others who can, do.

Chase Adams said:

Seeing as to how that shot of Leia breaks my immersion every time I see it relocated in a fan-edit, my vote would be that it’s worth the effort. However, after watching the clip again, I would suggest that the only person who actually needs to be removed is the one guy that strolls past, everyone else should be fine to leave as is.

I’ll see what I can do 😉 I agree with most here that there’s not much issue with the background extras, just that one casually strolling through.

EddieDean said:

Watching this reminded me of a personal annoyance that just gets me every time, and since I first saw it I now can’t unsee it. In the room where Kylo kills Han, the balcony/entrance that Rey and Finn stand at has a railing, and on that railing are lights. The lights have a red light on the left and right of the fixture. But really annoyingly, the lights just look clipped on to the railing, and one is offset. I don’t know why, but that’s always taken me out of the scene, even though it’s not even really that egregious, possibly not even an error.

I have noticed those lights, but never considered that it’s an issue that one is off-center. I figure that there would probably be a lot of that on a base as large and hastily constructed as Starkiller.

Oh, I had another idea for the Reconnaissance briefing, which I think Hal would be interested in as well:

https://vimeo.com/533027544

Password: fanedit

I managed to put a reference in there to the Senate and link it to the Hosnian system, which solves the issue in Restructured of never actually knowing what planet was destroyed. It also arguably does a better job of conveying this information than the theatrical version, since we are given the info before the planet is blown up and not twenty minutes after.

I did have to sacrifice Snap’s line about contacting the Republic, but I think it’s a fair price since that line wasn’t working too well anyway.

There’s also the oddity that Leia says ‘the Senate is their next target’, but it can easily be interpreted that she’s referring to the escalating series of First Order attacks throughout the film.

I’ll see what I can add back into the Poe interrogation scene in terms of audio.

In terms of progress on Act 3, the major thing is of course the Hosnian Destruction. I decided to use the entire music track this time in order to fit all of the important characters reacting to the destruction, including Rey, Finn, and Kylo:

https://vimeo.com/533003587

Password: fanedit

There are of course audio issues to sort out. The actual destruction scene had to be practically silent due to moving the music around, though I kind of like it.

It may be possible to remove the Resistance officers from around Leia in that final shot, but would that be worth the effort?

As far as getting a V1 of this project out there, I feel like it’s getting pretty close. There’s some stuff in Act 3 that is still outstanding, but Acts 1 and 2 are now basically finished.

However, there is still something that would be nice to figure out, which is an issue which has never been solved since Hal’s Restructure, and that is of answering how the Resistance knows about a First Order superweapon. The sudden attack in the theatrical version answers this question but now there’s no indication the Resistance knows about the weapon until Poe and Leia are talking with Finn about it as if they knew all along.

I tried to fix this by giving Poe the visions of the Starkiller in act 1, but now that this is gone I wonder if there’s any other way to convey this information. Maybe there can be some Leia dialogue in Poe’s interrogation suggesting that there’s a mysterious First Order weapon and they need Luke to save them, or something along those lines. Or maybe we could find some dialogue from Max Von Sydow from another movie where he says words that we can fit into a weapon context.

Thoughts?

I hear listicles are a thing.

That is equal parts hilarious and terrifying.

Ellie Sattler is actually Holdo who was esploded through hyperspace in a million drops of blood and one of these was slurped up by a mosquito on ancient Earth and trapped in amber, then grown in a test tube by Hammond as his first experiment after which she was adopted at an early age and by happenstance took an interest in paleobotany and had the opportunity to visit Isla Nublar. This is the opening crawl to TROS, the rest of which has been replaced by Jurassic Park. Thus it comes to be that Spielberg directs a Star Wars movie.

Keep in mind though, the half-script stops after Rey’s first meeting with the knights, which hadn’t yet been transformed into the darker versions. It’s one of the reasons I stopped where I did, and I intend in the new version to introduce the knights much sooner.

I hope you like the unfinished version though, I believe there’s a lot of good there that will be carried over to the new script.

I actually did blink and miss that shot the first two times I saw the movie. Might have had an effect on my opinion.

Yaeh, that’s another area I changed to fit better with existing lore. Now the Knights are Luke’s former students who have bought into Kylo’s (and Luke’s pre-TROS) ideology of letting the past and the Jedi die. I am now concieving them as growing even more extreme in their thinking than Kylo himself, to the point that they could be easily swayed to ally with Hux to destroy Kylo, who is quickly becoming the last vestige of the Skywalker legacy.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I like the idea of having the Sith eyes goggleable.

Everyone seems to rank Riven as the best Myst game, but they’re wrong. The best is Exile, then Riven, then Myst, then Revelations. There are no other Myst games.

If you think that novel is wordy, you should see my notes 😉

The reason Thrawn was included in my first and second drafts was due to him fulfilling a specific need in the story - I felt the story needed a ‘cold’ antagonist to contrast against Hux and Kylo’s ‘hot’ antagonism. However, as I continued to develop Hux I saw that he could have a cool, calculating side. In addition, the Knights of Ren could be written however I wanted them to be, so putting Thrawn in the mix was overkill. It’s a shame since in theory he’s my favorite character of the lot, but if he doesn’t fully fit the story he must go, especially since there are so many other characters that need our attention.

Hal 9000 said:

Do you two mean you like V1 of this project or the theatrical presentation of the dagger?

I think if we do go with the 3PO redub and related changes it could make sense to remove Rey’s line about “horrible things”.

I just don’t have an issue with the Goonies style McGuffin quality of the dagger leading to a super specific location. Sure it’s silly, but what isn’t silly in the ST? I just like maps and following clues and whatnot in movies. I don’t really know what was changed in V1 since I haven’t seen this movie in any form for a year.

As for the current ideas of making the dagger more meaningful to Rey’s Dark Side plot, I’m all for it even if it means the removal of the protractor bit since characterization and theme is better than McGuffins. The Dark Side turn for Rey is actually something my TFA edit leans into heavily, so this version of TROS would actually play rather nice with it.

Among the multitude of issues I have with this movie, the dagger is surprisingly not among them, so I’m just going to make some popcorn and sit this one out.

fmalover said:

Snoke is nothing but another one of Abrams’ empty mystery boxes, and Johnson saw right through it.

I’ve noticed that many of the flaws in the ST were set up by Abrams, yet I hardly ever see any criticism directed at him.

Pretty sure many of the people who have massive issues with JJ’s take on the ST simply don’t engage with the ST at all. The only people that both dislike JJ’s take and engage with the ST are those with a masochistic or obsessively Star Wars completionist streak, such as myself.

RogueLeader said:

• Add graffiti to one of the walls of the Kijimi streets. Rebel symbol, crossed-out stormtrooper helmet, or Luke posing like the original Star Wars poster, with lightsaber overhead.

If we had some graffiti images, this would probably be a fairly simple change:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ToPGhr_muI

So it’s common knowledge that the Scriptwriting section is not the most popular category on the site, but I wonder if a change in placement could help that (for totally non-self-serving reasons, of course 😉).

Currently the categories for fan projects read:

Star Wars Preservation
Star Wars Fan Edits and Other Projects
Preservation of Other Properties
Fan Edits and Projects for Other Properties
Case Covers, Disc Labels, and Fan Art
How-To’s and Technical Discussions

and way at the bottom

Script Writing and Re-writing

My question is, would it not make more sense to have the Script Writing section grouped with other fan projects? It’s kinda weird that it’s hanging out down there past the tech discussion.

My suggestion would be to either move it right above the ‘Case Covers’ category since that keeps it grouped with general fan projects, or to place it between the Star Wars Fan Edits and the Preservation of Other Properties, since the writing section intersects both Star Wars and non-Star Wars material.

Just my two cents!