Wookipedia says the forest moon of Endor is nearly 5,000 km in diameter. That is stinkin' HUGE! Our own moon is somewhere around 3500 km. So, it just doesn't make sense that they made the Endor moon so large so that the Death Star is about 1/5 the size of it.
-NJM
By way of Wookiepedia,
According to the Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections fact book, the first Death Star in A New Hope was 160 kilometers in diameter. According to the Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy fact book and detailed scaling of the station in Return of the Jedi, the second Death Star was 900 kilometers in diameter. Some Expanded Universe sources state much smaller figures—120 kilometers for the first Death Star and 160 kilometers for the second—however, most of the evidence argues for the larger sizes.
-NJM
I'd like for the scale between the ships and the Death Star to be more apparent. This is mainly because the DS2 is larger than the first Death Star, and if this scale is anywhere remotely accurate, the crashing of the Executor into the DS2 would be nearly inconsequential to the overall structure.
The problem is, they put the Death Star next to a moon which makes it appear quite small. And that's just a moon. Next to a full size planet, it would look terribly puny. Maybe put the Death Star larger in more of the background space battle shots to make it more ominious as if it's overshadowing everything.
-NJM
Doesn't sound like they put the filters over James Earl Jones' voice, but these are nice little treats. Being born mere months before the film's release, it's all new to me.
-NJM
Fuckin' A, I want that on my wall framed and mounted!
-NJM
Yeah, I don't know how that'll be possible. I don't know how one converts laserdiscs to DVD, but taking the dialogue from a laserdisc source with surround sound channels might be the only way. Still, Vader's breathing might still be there in that center channel where they tend to place all the dialogue in these mixes. Either that, or maybe someone with Pro Tools can labor over it to try to isolate Wingreen's voice.
Of course, you could ask Adywan since he's reinstating Wingreen's voice into ESB:R, but I don't know how he's going about doing that.
-NJM
Since I've settled into the community here, I thought it would be well enough to introduce some of my original film work. I've been writing scripts for over 10 years now, and was writing short stories for 10 years before that. For the last five, I have been making my own films under the banner of RavensFilm Productions.
My first serious film attempt was a short action thriller called VENGEANCE. Various production obstacles, and my inexperience lead to its untimely demise. Though, in the years since, I have developed it into a 143 page feature film script. It's now something to keep on the shelf until my career allows me to attract investors to establish a substantial budget.
THE FIXER was intended to be a short film, and even later, only a one hour feature. Instead, it became a 100 minute feature. It is a Michael Mann style neo noir dramatic thriller about a private investigator who helps out desperate people in dangerous situations where the law cannot tread. Though, a graveside vow has been broken, and now, Vic Simmons must try to fix a problem that never should've come to be. The film began production in November 25th, 2006, and post-production has been on going since April 13th, 2008. An incomplete musical score and soundtrack keep it from release. A music video was produced for the film with Chicago metal band HEMI for their debut album's title track "Fire In The Sky." It has accumulated thousands of views all over the internet, and the band has gained an international following just by way of the internet. I've become close friends with the band over the last 2.5 years.
DEAD OF NIGHT is the first film of mine to reach release. It was inspired by the 1986 film MANHUNTER starring William Peterson, Dennis Farina, and Brian Cox as "Hannibal Lecktor." It's a 30 minute black & white noir film about an FBI Criminal Profiler tracking and hunting down a serial killer obsessed with identity, and the destruction thereof. The film was shot in Chicago, and screened at a small venue in Milwaukee, WI in January. It was released on DVD & VOD via Amazon in April, and it also on Vimeo in lower quality. A three part web series is on YouTube and the DVD which was constructed from improvisational and specially shot trailer scenes.
P.I. DANGEROUS is another short film which may end up being longer than expected. It began production last summer, but like VENGEANCE, many production obstacles and scheduling conflicts shut it down. Though, I just released a teaser trailer for it, signalling that it will be completed in the coming months. It is based on a comic book hero I created 20 years ago, and continued to develop through the years. As Red Warrior Dangerous, he was a Batman-like costumed hero until too many years of crime-fighting took its toll. Reverting back to his original nickname, he takes the down n' dirty approach as a trench coat wearing, gun carrying vigilante, but sacrifices none of his solid sense of justice. I was initially inspired to make this film after seeing PUNISHER: WAR ZONE in theatres. This is being shot in full 24p HD.
The latter three films have their own Facebook pages, and have official websites at ravensfilm.com. You can view trailers and/or clips from these films at my YouTube Channels:
Official RavensFilm YouTube Channel
NickMichalak's YouTube Channel
These films I have made so far have been mainly dramatic and emotional with varying degrees of action, and hints of humor here and there. Some of the scripts I'm writing now are more comedic along the lines of "Beverly Hills Cop" or "Bad Boys." I'm also heavily urged to do supernatural horror after years of developing characters in the genre. The whole trick is what I can creatively pull off without a budget, and I think I've done well so far by the graces of the talented and resourceful people I've surrounded myself with. The actors I've had the fortune of working with have been of immense potential, and some that are even well seasoned professionals. The lead actor of P.I. DANGEROUS, as well as one supporting actor, are members of the Screen Actors Guild. I feel I am at a point where I can really make some impressive films in both the technical and artistic areas.
And as would seem apparent, I do all my own editing. I started video editing 14 years ago with QuickTime Pro and Adobe Premiere splicing together fan made music videos, and later, movie trailers. Final Cut Pro is where I do all my work now, and it suits me just fine. Just need to get a higher grade Mac one day to boost my video rendering and compression speeds.
-NJM
I believe it's the rebel style assault rifles hanging on the back wall.
-NJM
KKKKKKKHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!
-NJM
If one watches the blue screen BTS footage from Empire of Dreams or From Star Wars To Jedi, you will see that the Falcon is generally a dingy white.
And like I've said before, there's no sense in you damaging your health to get this done sooner than later. As I say while working on my films, no one should have to get hurt in order to finish the movie. I know it's not easy pulling yourself away from the work once you get started, but probably best to limit how much time you put in every day (or week). Basically, just relax more, or take an hour nap during the day. I hope things turn around before too long, Ady.
-NJM
I think when Padmé starts taking an ill reaction to Anakin's political statements, he starts to backtrack on it. What started out as a serious statement is now something he's trying to pass off as a joke so she doesn't start NOT liking him.
-NJM
My thoughts, stated in my own fan edit thread, is that I can't imagine Padmé falling in love with a guy who thinks like that. That's not even to mention the mass murder confession. She is an intelligent person, and very clear-minded one with passionate opinions. Padmé is very much like Leia in that she has strong principals, and stands by them to the very end. Anakin has opinions, but they're not very well informed ones. He is also too arrogant and foolish to really take the time to understand the whole picture, and come to an informed opinion on the matter. Anakin, to me, comes off like some 12 year old kid talking about politics.
Even laughing it off, it's still something that would stick in her mind, and probably make her feel very uncomfortable. How can she be married to a man with these unsettling political viewpoints? She is a peaceful, mature, and diplomatic person while he showcases nothing but violence, anger, rudeness, and tyrannical ideals. They are stark opposites of one another. By all rights, their relationship, as Lucas presented it to us, should fall apart like a bad blind date. I believe removing anything that creates turbulence between these two should be minimized as much as possible. It diminishes their supposed romance. That way, when thigns start going awry between them in ROTS, it's more impactful. It basically comes down to how you want the characters to be portrayed, and where you want them to go by film's end.
-NJM
I know where Brash is coming from. Cutting down the meadow scene dialogue makes the scene too short on its own. What's more is that, because it's so short, it lacks substantial emotional punctuation before cutting back to Kamino. Basically, it gets lost in the mix, and feels like an awkward edit. It becomes forgettable.
While I hate, absolutely HATE the second half of the scene (based simply on the horribly designed animals), you have to split hairs. If you want the love story to progress in even a somewhat believeable fashion, you'll have to retain every possible scene to help move their relationship along (which the original film does horribly), and bite the bullet by keeping the crappy following scene. The other option is cut it all out, and hope the remaining scenes are enough to make it work.
The problem with the Phantom Edit of EPISODE II is that it dumps so much of these scenes. It jumps from a scene where Padmé denies that Anakin is her boyfriend to them kissing, and then, implying they slept together all night. It's too bare minimum. With some ingenuinity, you can make most of the scenes work almost beautifully. Plus, you can shuffle the scenes around to fit whatever progression you choose. Unfortunately, in the meadow scene instance, it is a splitting hairs situation.
As for your Dooku scene? Nicely done. I'm sure in the 100s of films Christopher Lee has done, you can find him saying whatever you need him to. Making it all seamless is the only obstacle.
-NJM
I don't have the knowledge or skill to do computer effects work, let alone the time to learn. So, anything requiring painting something or someone out, or re-rotoscoping is out of the question.
-NJM
Well, if Anakin were to start fighting against Fett & the Destroyer Droids, what about Padmé? She doesn't have a weapon to defend herself, and Anakin just saved her from imminent doom. Does he put her back into imminent danger by attacking instead of surrendering? He's not going to do that because they're likely to just kill her (which is what the Geonosians end up wanting, anyway). Their mission here is to rescue Obi-Wan, and prevent an all-out interstellar war. Continuing to fight through every obstacle in their way isn't what Padmé wanted.
And dark_jedi, I use Final Cut Pro 5.1 on a Mac G4 running OS 10.4.11.
-NJM
It does baffle me that Lucas created THX to set a high standard for movie theatres, and later the home theatre only to put out so many of the Star Wars films with such embarrassing transfer problems in both audio and video. The mix for TPM is MUCH lower than AOTC or ROTS. I have to max out the volume on my computer just to hear the dialogue tracks for EPISODE I while editing it.
Seriously, THX exists to create an optimum clarity of sound and vision for the presentation of motion pictures. They created special branded speakers for movie theatres to be on-par with those at Skywalker Sound where the tracks are mixed, and creating the THX Optimizer for DVD to get the most out of every viewing experience. Yet, the first Star Wars DVD released, THE PHANTOM MENACE is really not of that standard. The audio mix should be higher, the video itself isn't as clean or rich as it should be, and as Adywan has shown us, the coloring is plauged by this pink hue. I also don't get the obvious flm grain. Is it just the film stock they used? Because it shouldn't look this way. The original trilogy films on DVD don't have so much grain or appear so flat, and they're 20 years older. It's just a bad transfer that THX should be ashamed to have their name attached to. I so wish I could have new, clean HD transfers of these films to work with here.
Whenever TPM is released on Blu Ray, there's a lot of clean up they should do with it, including much of the CGI. It's all very dated in quality and lack of detail. Several shots are so bad they look like ILM never finished rendering them.
-NJM
My puzzlement isn't why Fett would take the job, but why would Jabba need a high priced bodyguard? Who is he so afraid of that he needs one? And if Fett isn't the most badass hunter in the galaxy, why would Jabba skimp on the protection factor if he did need a bodyguard? This is my confusion.
-NJM
Would you happen to have the actual font used for the "WIDESCREEN COLLECTOR'S EDITION" and "THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION" text? I'd very much like to obtain it for a very small project. Essentially, a one-time use thing.
-NJM
And those overly orange daylight glow stills on page one - forget 'em! I've gone the opposite direction, and begun the more muted tones idea. I've also taken some out a little green from the image in an effort to retain better skin tones.
-NJM
Just depends on how you want to look at it. Just take it as it was when the film was released, or coupled with all the EU stuff. If it's the latter, then Fett is proclaimed as the best bounty hunter in all the galaxy with Bossk, supposedly, right behind him (which Bossk conceits to). So, if you take it that way, then, yes, Fett is an expensive guy to put on the payroll. If you just take the films at face value, then, it's just whatever you want to make it. Still, Fett could be out grabbing another bounty, and getting paid for it instead of lurking around Jabba's palace. Considering he's there in all his armor and weaponry, it's unlikely he's there for a vacation.
-NJM
As you can see, it's just a subtle change. I'm gonna try to bring out Ewan's flesh tones more, but there's not much color information to work with.
-NJM
I meant from a general draining of the color standpoint, not the saber effect.
-NJM
fishmanlee, I wish mine looked that good. Give me a little while, and I'll post a comparison screenshot. While I have the tools for rotoscoping a lightsaber, I just don't have the time for it. Knowing me, it'd take about three times as long as it should due to nit-picking the quality and consistency of it all.
-NJM
I'm toning down the blue in the Kamino exteriors. It seems to make the planet appear more grim and foreboding. This started with the Jango / Obi-Wan fight on Kamino because it is the longest exterior sequence. I did attempt something more radical as in Brash's Cut where he was making it where Jango leaves Kamino at dawn as a mirror of Boba leaving Bespin at dusk in ESB. However, I would've had to re-rotoscope Obi-Wan's lightsaber, and all the blue trim on Jango's armor would've mysteriously disappeared.
I added a real fix to the sequence, though. When Obi-Wan does the tuck and roll after Jango goes to the air firing the blasters, I've added in the sound of Kenobi's saber turning off and back on.
-NJM
It's because you're a free user. You want high speed, you have to pay to become a premium member. A 30 day membership is only about $10 US.
-NJM