PaulisDead2221

<span class=“Bold”>Introduction:</span>
I know a lot of people love ADM and Magfan’s edits of the prequels, and I know we all are greatly looking forward to “Shroud of the Darkside” with cautious optimism. But I wanted to try a hand at this kinda thing. The Phantom Menace was my favorite of the whole PT trilogy, still felt the most like Star Wars for me. Anyway, I’m completely done with the actual editing process and the film comes in at about an hour and a half, all I need is to encode it, work on some special features, work on the DVD menus, get help with some “problems,” buy a dual layer DVD burner, etc. Mostly I wanted to use this release as a means of “trading” for other people’s DVDs that I can’t download onto my already cluttered hard drive.

The whole editing process from beginning to end took about 3 or 4 days. How cool am I?

<span class=“Bold”>Sources:</span>
-Retail DVD of The Phantom Menace
-Phantom Menace Soundtrack (not complete) so I could fill in some audio gaps that came from reordering certain scenes.

<span class=“Bold”>Here’s some general stuff:</span>
-Worked on cutting out cheesy stuff.
-Worked on trimming Jar Jar’s screentime, leaving some of it so his dumbassedness can be well-established for his “Adolf Binks” contribution to Episode II.
-Cut out C3P0, if I do the other two prequels I will cut him out of the PT alltogether.
-Burnt in subtitles directly onto the image to preserve a theatrical experience. Font was Franklin Gothic Medium Condensed.
-The opening is kinda complicated. I’ve pretty much done away with the first act before they get to Tatooine, while using what I could to tell a sort of new story with the footage. In the complete changelog I go more into it.

<span class=“Bold”>Here’s a complete change log:</span>
1-Changed beginning. Now starts with Queen trying to escape while two random ambassadors who aren’t Quigon Jin and Obiwan Kenobi (they are now “the Queen’s Jedi” or something) attempt to settle “the conflict” (more on the conflict later). I might rework it so she tells the viceroy “he’s gone to far” and that whole scene before she attempts to escape.
2-after the Queen escapes, the scene where Sidious says “I will make it legal” goes and instead of Nute Gunray saying “and the Jedi?” he says “and the ambassadors?” in a delicous feat of audio editing. Now Sidious is putting them in too deep by saying to kill the ambassadors. This scene follows with a cut to the inside of the ambassadors’ ship demanding to board.
3-Nute says "Yes of course, we’d be happy to receive the ambassadors (without the “our blockade is legal of course”) and the ambassadors enter the hanger, the gun turret reveals itself and blows them up.
4-This scene is followed by the invasion from the beginning, cutting out any reference to finding the Jedi, because they already escaped in this edition.
5-Okay, things kinda get normal in terms of the timeline now. R2D2s commendation scene is now a scene where the Queen wants to be updated on where they’re going with no fuel, starting with the line “Continue, Captain.” This cut helps because now the Queen’s decoy isn’t ordering her to clean up a dirty old droid. She basically does it by her own free will I guess, passing time while she’s undercover or something
6-Cut out Jar Jar stepping in crap of course.
7-I still have some reworking and reordering to do, but I think I’ve got the “Are you an angel” crap gone.
8-Changed the shopkeeper’s subtitle “that costs seven wupiupi” to “give that back you little thief!”
9-Changed the dialogue between Anakin and Sebulba in the subtitles.
“careful sebulba. He’s a big time outlander. I’d hate to see you buried alive up our at Boonta Eve”
“Next time we race, they’ll be burying YOU…(Sebulba flings the thing that fell in his soup at Anakin, which gives the “YOU” emphasis that line needs)…If you weren’t somebody’s slave, I’d save the trouble and do it now!”
—So the way the dialogue plays now, it’s much better, the rhetoric is much more connected and they actually “retort” with one another. All things must flow within one another.
10-Oh yeah, C3PO is GONE. It’s just plain wrong that he was “created” by Anakin. It didn’t happen, and the thing at the end of Episode III about his memory being erased? That’s just them catching their idiotic mistake. Did they erase Owen Lars memory too? “Hmmm what’s your name? you look familiar…Oh I have no need for a protocol droid!”
11-Reordered the dinner scene at the Skywalker residence. It’s a little complicated to explain, but it starts with “I can’t believe there’s still slaver in the galaxy” and plays out until Jar Jar sticks out his tongue for the fruit on the table. We then cut the footage so it looks like Quigon catches his tongue the first time instead of later. This then prompts Annie to ask “You’re a Jedi Knight, aren’t you?” Then we move on normally until Jar Jar says “and no nutten mulah to trade,” which prompts Anakin to ask if anyone has seen a podrace, then this introduces the element of podracing to the discussion. I can’t actually remember why I reordered it like this, but I’m sure there was something stupid I was cutting out. It’s much better now.
12-In this same scene, Anakin doesn’t give that little kid soapbox “Mom, you said the biggest problem in this universe is that there’s too many Gungans getting jobs just becuase of affirmative action” (or something like that, I can’t remember the line.)
13-“He can help you” is all Shmi says, instead of following it up with “He was meant to help you”
14-For no reason at all, Watto says “I hope you didn’t kill anyone I know for it.” It didn’t make sense, so I cut it.
15-Changed Watto’s subtitle from “Your friend is a foolish one, methinks” to “Your new friend has some misplaced faith in you, I think.” It’s much better because it alludes to Anakin’s eventual fall to the dark side, ostensibly making Quigon’s faith that he will bring balance to the force wrong. Also, Watto doesn’t say “methinks” he says “i think.” He never said “methinks” in english. I don’t know why nobody was watching for that consistency.
16-Cut out Shmi’s description of how Anakin’s birth was a virgin birth. All she says is “There was no father,” which means he can be simply interpreted as a bastard child. This can also hint SUBTLEY (something completely missing from the PT) at the Jesus connection.
17-Cut out the kids talking to Annie while he’s working. They suck at acting.
18-To quote ADM: “NO FRIGGIN’ MIDICHLORIANS”
19-Took a line from Sidious earlier in the film “I want that treaty signed!” and put it over the intercom on Maul’s ship as he lands on Tatooine.
20-When Quigon is talking to Watto about Sebulba and Sebulba’s getting all up about his man-crush on Sebulba, I cut out Jar Jar’s quick “OH NO!!!”
21-Basically reworked the race so there’s only one announcer, or one announcer voice anyway; sorry Greg Proops
22-Basically reworked the whole race to focus a little more on the race rather than have the silly reaction shots from Greg Proop’s alien and the others.
23-Cut out Jabba the Hutt. He sucked.
24-Cut out the exchange between Anakin and Sebulba before the race.
25-Cut out Sebulba’s last line “Poodoo!” (translated from Huttese: “Oh fodder!”). The way it is now, it kinda looks like Sebulba may have died, which is kinda cool
–basically the race is the same as per the DVD release, I didn’t try to recreate the theatrical edit or anything.
26-Cut out Obiwan’s line “Why do I sense we’ve picked up another pathetic lifeform,” because without the plot actually showing them pick Jar Jar up, the line doesn’t work as well as it should. Too bad.
27-Quigon tells Anakin he’s no longer a slave, the scene plays out normally until Shmi says “now you can make your dreams come true. You’re free” and the scene ends. I was trying to get rid of the “Yipee”
28-Left in Anakin’s “Hi” to Obiwan, but cut out the extra crap: “you’re a jedi too? pleased to meet you der dee der!”
29-Cut out that stuff about Naboo being a “democracy” between the Viceroy and what’s-his-face. I’m willing to believe Naboo is a constitutional monarchy, but with the absence of any scenes of a parliment, we’re left to believe the Queen makes all the decisions, making it a simple monarchy.
30-The way the scene from 29 plays out now, we simply wipe to the Naboo palace at night, and a droid informs the viceroy that they’re searching the swamps for “rumored underwater villages” and such. It works to give the Gungans some mystery before we find out they’re all a bunch of useless perpetuating Gungan stereotypes.
31-reworked the landing at Coruscant so as to leave out the line “the entire planet is one big city”
32-Cut out Jar Jar’s line “Pretty Hott!” from the extended air taxi sequence.
33-During the Senate scene, I cut out anything referring to Naboo as a democracy. In the single most greatest accomplishment in audio editing history, I reworked the Queen’s speech so she says “I will not defer. I’ve come to resolve this attack on our sovereignty(sp) now. [I will] not watch my people suffer and die while you…”
–The “I will” was lifted from a few seconds earlier. I’m not sure if any other fan edits have done this to rework the “Naboo democracy” issue, but I was real super proud of myself.
34-I cut out Mace’s line “the code forbids it.”
35-As per other fan edits, I cut out Boss Nass’ weird shaky thing he does, but I left in the clicky thing.
36-Cut out the “Roger, Roger” from the fight with the droids.
37-Cut out the “cease fire” line from the Gungan and Droid battle.
38-Cut out the “Ouch time” line and most of Jar Jar’s antics during the Gungan battle. First Jar Jar doesn’t cowardly hide under the “Big Boomahs” and instead just latches onto the back and sets them off, trying to look as intentional as possible. Then when some explosion propells him onto the tank barrell, he instead is propelled to the shot where he’s rolling on the ground much later as per the Phantom editor I think.
39-Cut out some of the “oops” and stuff from Anakin from this point and on in the film. The autopilot stuff is gone too. Plus his stupid “let’s try this trick” crap.
40-Also cut out the “take this” “and this” crap from Anakin when he gets his ship moving again.
41-Cut out the line “We didn’t hit it! der dee der!”
42-Cut out Anakin’s first “Whooooohooooo!” as he leaves the hanger.
43-Cut out the line “They all brokey”

<span class=“Bold”>Here’s how some of the subtitles look:</span>

<span class=“Bold”>Here’s things I’m still needing help with!:</span>
-Need new title.
-Opening title crawl: writing and rendering. I have a blank starfield after the logo disappears all set to go if someone wants to help.
-Opening few seconds: I need help because of the multiangle feature for the DVD switching from angle 1 to 2 to 3 and simply cutting out 2 and 3 doesn’t work because I suck. I need an avi of the Star Wars logo receding, and the ambassador’s ship heading toward the blockade if anyone can cut it better than I can.
-I need the music from the Queen’s escape from Naboo to fill in this little snag in the audio. It’s not on the soundtrack I have.
-I need help with the avisynth export plugin so I can encode with TMPGEnc instead of Mainconcept. I’ll put a thread up at Doom9.
-I’m thinking of doing an isolated score for the film, nobody ever does it for the PT, and if somebody had the two disc set of the complete Phantom Menace score then maybe I could put it together. Meh, I might not do it depending on the time.

Anyway I’m leaving for Seattle for a week or so, so I wanted to put this up before I left. That way, people could ask questions, make suggestions, critique, or whatever. There’s computers where I’m going so I can defend, refute, or generally just respond and make the final changes when I get back. Some time this summer I’ll be going to China for three weeks so I hope to get my ass back to work and finished before I leave.