Octorox

Why does Attack of the Clones look so bad color-wise, is it just oversaturated? I'm attempting something similar to what you're doing for my own edits of the prequels but I'm kind of at a loss when it comes to what to do with the color of these movies. I want to remove the "cartoony" look of Episode II (and III to a lesser extent). I tried a pass that was mostly crushing the blacks and desaturating, and it certainly looked more "real", but it didn't look like the OT, which never had a dingy, dark look but were for the most part, bright and colorful.

Ah, I saw Back to the Future, Aliens, Django Unchained and Stoker in the dome when I was interning in LA. Good times

So my Ewan MacGregor was not as good as I thought but my Christopher Lee is okay. Here's a quick test

OTification

pitpawten said:

flanneltie said:

pitpawten said:

flanneltie said:

Hello everyone!

I saw the 11-minute 'making of' on Youtube and found the links for the SW DE on tehparadox.  Seems like I'm only 1 part away from seeing this magic in full form, but my unarchiving software (Mac) is saying that part 81 is corrupt.  The DL link says the file is 91.5MB but the DL file is 96MB.

I know a lot of people have successfully DL'd this movie, so I'm hoping someone has some thoughts on what's gone wrong with my attempt.  Any help would be appreciated!

 I've only gotten it via torrent (see here) so not sure about the multi-part archives.

 

I registered for that before I found the links in tehparadox.  Frankly, I don't really understand how that invite process works.  I've made the request but I don't understand why I need to be invited to a torrent or how the information comes to me if they accept it.  Since you've gotten it that way, would you mind explaining?

PM inbound to keep the thread on topic

You'll be watching soon enough :)

 At risk of derailing the thread, I'd love to piggyback off that...

So has anyone ever attempted prequel color correction before? I really dislike the color timing on AOTC, I think it looks oversaturated and soap-opera-y with too many oranges and cyans. I'd like to look at any work others have done before taking a stab at it.

EDIT: Here's a new clip from AOTC with color correction and a grain plate added. I based the color palette on Star Wars 1313 concept art which itself I believe was inspired by Blade Runner.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/we503b56auijldg/toxicdart.mp4

experimenting with a grain plate:

Pic 1

Pic 2

Pic 3

Pic 4

Jesus christ you guys are picky. The OT was full of silly looking muppety creatures, that's part of the charm imo.

This could be a nice resource. I'd like to see screencaps as well.

I'm sure Ady has his reasons for not including Battle of the Heroes in ANH:R HD but I just thought I'd point out that there is a less bombastic choir-less version done by the flemish radio orchestra if the chorus was part of the reasoning.

TV's Frink said:

Octorox said:

New clip:

https://vimeo.com/97185098

 Not bad.  But what font is that "3 Years Later"?  It's...ugly.

 It's an English Aurabesh font. I could try something different, but I want it to be distinct from the other fonts like the "long time ago" font, subtitle font and crawl font. I'm open to suggestions.

New clip:

https://vimeo.com/97185098

I would keep all of the end celebrations in ROTJ except for Naboo. Match it to the 97 version.

This is really cool.

I think this is a really good idea although I'd prefer they at least loosely be based on the prequels films/novelizations/supplemental material that exist, rather than wholly original stories, although if original stories were to be done I would love to hear a script based upon Belated Media's treatments for better Star Wars prequels.

...also I can do a pretty mean Ewan MacGregor as Obi-Wan impression :P

Brief update. The working title of this project is now "Star Wars Episode V.I : Rise of Vader." I'm going to be starting with an SD workprint taking bits and pieces from other fan edits and then once I'm satisfied with the movie's flow, I'll redo all of the edits from scratch myself with the Blu-Ray footage. I'm currently shooting for around 3 hours with a 15 minute Phantom Menace prologue, about 40 minutes of Attack of the Clones and then a full 2 hours of Revenge of the Sith, which will be the meat of this edit. Stay tuned for updates.

Great clip. I doubt anyone will ever be able to do this but one thing I've always wanted to see in a "Special Edition" version of the Star Wars movies is realistic reflections on the windows of Millenium Falcon/X-wing interior shots. You can tell that there's no glass window panes between the interior of the ship and the exterior and it's something that's always bothered me a little bit. Obviously this is something that would be very difficult to do so I'm not neccesarily asking for it but it would be cool to see.

One thing I'm mulling over. Can anyone think of a convincing way to imply in ROTS that Anakin thinks Padme is cheating on him with Obi-Wan? Yes, I normally hate love triangles as well, even fake ones, but I really feel there's not enough there to justify him turning so completely on Obi-Wan and Padme at the end (I don't think "he turned to the dark side" is really a sufficient explanation).

Hal 9000 said:

And I rather like what you've done for a prologue. It's rough, as you said, but I like the duel as a frame. 

It might be cool to (this phrase should prompt you to ignore what follows) have the Obi-Wan/Luke dialogue play over the opening logos as you did, then have it get quiet during the ALTAIAGFFA title card. Once the audience expects the opening logo and musical blast, kick in abruptly with the duel of the fates score. 

You might be able to do without the "fear leads to anger" scene. I think the key beats to keep in your TPM prologue are Anakin's difficulty leaving his mother, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's (identities, and) relationship with each other, the idea that the Sith are out there, and some clue as to why they are fighting a lightsaber duel in the first place. You hit almost all of these on the head, so I look forward to what else you'd come up with. 

Going the route of a single film would allow for more creativity than a three-film structure. Among other things, you might be able to use ROTS for the majority of the film, and make it seem as though Anakin really was an all around good guy until the latter end of the Clone Wars. 

Nice idea, and good work so far! I'd love a good go-to single film as a stand-in for the prequels for a machete viewing. No offense intended to anyone, but I personally haven't cared for any of the prior attempts at crunching the prequels into a single film. But coming at it with the intent on viewing it between ESB and ROTJ make just make it work.

Hey, I updated the prologue clip with some of your suggestions. It's at the link in the OP. I think they're a big improvement. I also removed all the prophecy talk (not 100% sure on this yet) and cut out the scene with Obi-wan and Yoda because I felt it was superfluous. Obi-wan says at the funeral that "the council granted him permission" and that's all we really need to know.

That might work, I'll play around with both ideas. If I did Episode II-III rather than the flashback structure you suggested, I'd probably try to cut down Episode II much more aggressively than III, so it only makes up about 45min-an hour of the film.

My main reservation around the flashback structure are the ones brought up in the original Machete order post:

You might be wondering if it’s worth skipping II and only watching III, just to establish young Anakin in time for Jedi. I don’t recommend this, every character you need to know for Episode III who was introduced in Episode I is reintroduced in Episode II with a quick line of dialogue, but Episode III just assumes you know who everyone is. Ham-handed as it is, Anakin’s love for Padme is the ultimate reason for his fall to the dark side, and Episode II has most of that. Additionally, without seeing the Clone Army being created in Episode II, seeing the Jedi fight alongside them in III would be extremely confusing, since they look almost exactly like Stormtroopers in III.

Hal 9000 said:

I'd say if you're abandoning the titular "Episode I, II, then III," just make it one prequel film for the machete viewing order. That'd be a logical parenthetical flashback between ESB and ROTJ, given that the episodic numbering is being interfered with either way. 

 Good call. That would also probably put me at the 2:30-2:45 mark which I consider more acceptable for a Star Wars film than the typical 1:30 prequel edit.

I also might drop the idea of the Episode I prologue. It was a fun idea to test out but I don't think I'll be able to execute it professionally enough to make sense and feel seamless in the final edit.

However, my only concern with this approach is that the transition between between II and III will be disorienting. My current plan is to cut from Yoda's line "Begun the clone war has" to the opening battle of ROTS, with an accompanying "3 years later" graphic. I'm just hoping that new viewers wont be disoriented by the fact that the chancellor has been captured and the Jedi are trying to rescue him, since there's no crawl to explain that or who General Grievous is.

EDIT: The workprint is now up on Myspleen, if you don't have Myspleen access, PM me on how to get it.

So, this is going to be a cut I'm working on inspired by two things: the fabled Topher Grace prequel edit and the Machete viewing order, which suggest the films be watched IV, V, II, III, VI. I haven't decided whether or not this is going to be two seperate edits: one for Episode II and one for Episode III, or if it is going to be one combined edit of Episodes II and III. Either way, before Episode II there will be a short prologue summarizing some aspects of the Phantom Menace. Here is a very rough sample clip showing how this might play out in a sort of flashback structure.

The source for the rough clip is the Phantom Edit and Attack of the Phantom, simply because I had files of them on my computer. The real version will be sourced from the Blu-Rays and obviously will have a real crawl, not the Phantom Editor crawl.

I would appreciate any feedback or ideas, but keep in mind the clip is meant to be more of a proof of concept than representative of the real cut.

So I watched Kerr's EPIII edit. Some things I really loved and other things I didn't. Personally, I would have left in most of the Yoda/Palpy duel and the lack of Padme naming the children makes this edit not work so well for the machete viewing order. That said, I loved his take on Anakin's turn and all of the cuts were very seamless. I don't know if I could call this my preferred version but there was a lot that was done right. Next I'm going to move to watching L8wrtr's trilogy. I may end up making my own Hybrid II/III edit designed specifically for machete order (i.e. to be watched after V but before VI) if those don't completely satisfy me.

I've seen some other edits of Episode I and II and I haven't found ones that I enjoy. I'll look into L8wrtr's and Kerr's EpIII but are there any others you would recommend? My main issues are that a lot of editors are either too aggressive with their edits and the movies feel gutted and clearly chopped up (particularly with Jar Jar, having him never say anything at all feels weird) or they're not aggressive enough in places and try to salvage scenes that really aren't needed to tell the story (most of the Padme/Anakin love scenes in Ep II, several action scenes that don't really advance the plot).

So a few of the prequel deleted scenes that were present on the DVD releases have been invaluable to fan editors trying to improve Lucas’s movies. However, since the release of the Blu-Rays and the advent of HD edits, these scenes stick out like a sore thumb next to the Blu-Ray footage. I’m consistently amazed by the work people have done up-scaling the GOUT and was wondering if anyone has tried applying similar methods to the Prequel deleted scenes. Unfortunately, this is something that is beyond my capabilities but I would really appreciate anyone else taking a stab at it.