Sure you could do all that, but if you draw even more attention to that problem people will wonder even more why the Falcon couldn’t just hover down to land like it does any other time. The SFX shot would have to convey that the blast hit a repulsorlift, making the Falcon lose altitude in that shot before limping out of the hangar.
The shame of it is that these shots are probably complete, just sitting on a hard drive in a studio.
Here’s the flipped shot in action, with more work on the composite to fix foliage issues and give a slight 3D effect to the shot:
https://mega.nz/file/2V1kxaRD#HjN2ffiVlobYz4JkCQjtm2ru56GO5f6mnX9-IbKAlo0
Jedit: Updated 3-30-21 with a few more tweaks to the composite image.
Hmm, flipping the shot actually works well, and the light direction is now consistent. Great suggestion!
Here’s a rough version of the new sequence I’m considering for the Hosnian Destruction. It’s closer to Restructured, but unlike that scene there’s actually too many shots to fit into the music duration.
I love the way you were able to re-order certain moments a little differently to Restructured, as my biggest issue with that edit was Chewie’s long delay before shooting Kylo.
However I did notice in this clip that you still retained the shot of Leia’s reaction to Han’s death in the theatrical as her reaction to the base firing. The problem I see with doing this is that in the context this edit, the entire Resistance base is aware that the Republic is being destroyed, yet in the shot of Leia, people are just chilling around and one guy just strolls past. Obviously it would make sense in the original film, as only Leia knows of Han’s death, but as it stands in that clip, it just sticks out to me as a mistake.Sorry for my rambling, I hope you get my point! 😉
I’ve done quite a few versions of this scene since that test, and I’m pretty sure that the long shot of Kylo is gone after Han falls off the bridge, which should make Chewie’s reaction more immediate.
Yeah, Leia’s reaction is always a bit odd due to the nonchalance of the officers, but if I want to have her react to both events the placement can’t really change. The only solutions are to either crop the shot to remove a couple of people or manually paint them out, and either way would be odd.
The Hosnian Destruction is really the last major sticking point of this edit, so I’ll probably be spending a good deal of time on it soon.
Since I’m working in the Maz’s Castle section, here’s a hopefully final version of the insert shot of the Meson Martinet, now with cleaned up matte, gate weave, and the inclusion of a pirate:
https://mega.nz/file/eF1gwJwS#_zsKdW_b-lu9xfFTaNWQTEnsyOXAATpmWMDc8bpTAcU
I actually found voices for the specific pirates in question in the Lego TFA game sounds (Ithano and Quiggold). They might be a bit too loud here, not sure how noticeable they should be.
…
I’ve also figured out how to suggest that the Falcon had a tracking device which was activated when Rey and Finn first boarded: The device Han later touches on the wall near the turbolaser turret is visible as Finn enters the turret. I simply added a glow and sound effect to indicate that it becomes active as Finn passes through the doorway. Perhaps he tripped a sensor, or it was something Rey did on her way to the cockpit. Regardless, the only other change needed to make it work was reversing the sound effect when Han pokes the device and masking out the light as if he turns it off.
When R2 displays the map to Luke Skywalker, it is revealed that this is merely a map whose route spells out the words ‘Luke Skywalker’.
I’ve color corrected the shot to match the pure forest establishing shot, though it might be a bit bright:
https://mega.nz/folder/GBljAIbZ#l-NefINPNwTPHqUJsNkp-A
One thing that might help the 3 shot succession is speeding up the lava/forest shot. Maybe try 110-120%?
I personally think that Palpatine lying to Rey about her heritage would be totally in character for him and would preserve at least some semblance of logistical reason in the story so that she doesn’t just happen to be on Jakku along with every other important thing in the galaxy.
I don’t think it cheapens anything at all about Rey’s struggle, since she never seems interested in joining Palpatine or replacing him as his heir.
The thing that’s throwing me off is that it goes from the planet to the lava/trees shot to an aerial pan of the castle and then back to the trees before going to Kylo. I feel like it should go planet-castle-lava/trees (with the addition of TIEs), removing the last pure forest shot.
Yes, I remember that one. Would be interesting to see the full deepfake treatment on it, though.
That’s my thought as well, so if nobody has any objections, that will be coming right back out.
Well said, Burbin.
If it came on the heels of TFA, TROS wouldn’t be nearly the letdown it was.
I don’t know if this is where I should ask this, but would it be possible to ‘fix’ the strange TLJ Yoda puppet by deepfaking him with the ESB/ROTJ Yoda?
You can actually display that intext with markdown.
Nev, you beautiful bastard.
Put this on my tombstone. 😃
Another, unrelated, question I had for you. I was reading back through your change list, and it made it seem like there would be two Kylo prayer sequences. Is that correct? I’m curious how you’ll approach that without it seeming like you’re reusing a lot of material.
I actually decided to move the entire scene up to after the Poe interrogation due in part to the problem of reusing material. The place it was in my workprint works…fine without it, though I might try and finesse the music transition a bit more. The original place for the scene in the theatrical cut is bridged by a cutaway to the band, ANH style.
I just feel like we relented and are just trying to see the positives of the story they gave us, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I guess I wish there was more recognition of the fact that maybe this wasn’t the best direction they could’ve gone in.
People will eventually accept the bars of TROS’s storytelling cage just as they accepted the limitations of the prequels in order to continue consuming new Star Wars content.
As for me, I’m still salty as Crait about it.
I don’t doubt it was a last second decision. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a warranted one.
I think both of you are forgetting that at its core Star Wars is a fairy tale. It’s for 12 year olds. Nev, your argument for how it should have been about the systems that subvert democracy would definitely work in a political drama or some movie that is for a much older audience. It definitely works as an underlying message in the prequels or TLJ, but I don’t believe it should be the overall message of the saga.
I respect that the story of the OT is more of a fairy tale, but like you said the prequels changed that message. That Pandora’s box was open since 1999, and any Star Wars movie that doesn’t incorporate that message feels like a regression (TFA, I’m looking at you).
I much prefer the mythical good guys v. bad guys side of things, and the struggles that the good people go through to resist the evil side.
I feel like a good conclusion would have both. It would have Resistance against First Order with a Big Bad like Hux or Thrawn or Kylo, but it would also have the undercurrents of that corrupt system argument which the Resistance (and perhaps Kylo himself) is trying to destroy.
No, Palpatine did not need to be brought back. Returning the Big Bad just to knock him down again is the easy answer to the difficult question of how to bring peace to a galaxy fractured by war. It implies that the only thing truly wrong with the attempts at peace was one dude who was always behind everything and if he were to die everything would be all unicorns and rainbows.
In the end, it isn’t individual people who are a threat to peace, not really. It is much more the systems that subvert democracy and the twisted incentives prioritizing armed conflict over negotiation. TLJ was on the right track with this necessary argument, despite how poorly it was implemented. Palpatine’s return, along with his magic fleet, throws this necessary perspective in the garbage.
Yep, I whipped up that drawing last night. I figured something scratched in metal would look scratchy like her other marks on the wall.
I was thinking of more ways to make the island vision fit, like placing some Star Destroyer wreckage in the background that sort of looked like the shape of the island and morphed into it, the sunlight being a reflection off of the wreck, that sort of thing.
But here’s the question, as RL suggested: if I just removed the vision in this scene and left the drawing, is any more foreshadowing of the island necessary?
If the vision were to be removed, that would leave only the drawing and Kylo’s mention of the island before her dramatic vision of it at the end of the film. In that case the drawing would be pulling a lot of weight so I would probably extend that shot a bit to make sure that nobody blinked and missed it.
…Moving backwards in this case.
When planning a scene of Rey’s house at night, I considered placing a drawing of the island on the wall to hint at her reference to the island in her dreams later. Now that this scene isn’t happening and I’m returning the daydream/vision scene from before, I thought it might be neat to have that drawing as well. So here it is:
https://mega.nz/file/mZdDHCIA#QsSH_MKuQF35XZlHaVdkoggimio46rzPunza0ErEWGs
No worries, if it’s good enough for everyone else then it’s good enough for me 😃
Time to move on to the next part…
https://mega.nz/file/rdMD0KLA#jdDvpvnGc2nIesQbszpXc9MWue8V1qN09hunDjAwWQU
The Kylo Prayer scene with ‘I will finish what he started’.
I think it would be a more difficult line even for Adam Driver, much less my audio-cobbling skills, but maybe it sounds good enough.
If someone wants to send me the ‘Vader’ line from TROS, I can see if that works.
Fair.
Though you’re talking to someone who has spent far too much time thinking about this stuff.
The twenty years between Anakin’s fall and ANH is really set in stone.
That’s actually an interesting point, because if you use carbon freeze/relativistic time dilation on Padme, you can really fix a lot of the issues with the timeline. If in Episode 3 Anakin was in his thirties along with Owen and Beru and Obi-wan was in his forties, you could simply have the twins be conceived then put Padme on a ship at sublight relativistic speed for a while. When she returns ten years have passed for the galaxy but for her it’s been less than a year, whereupon the twins are born. The Clone Wars could take up to ten years longer, the Jedi would be practically extinct for an extra decade, Anakin would have given up hope of Padme’s return…and Anakin would believably be in his sixties by ROTJ.
No, I’m trying not to let anything from TROS influence this edit and merely focus on getting the ideas I have into some presentable form.