During the duels on Naboo, there are several instances where the Lightsaber blades become slightly translucent, with Maul’s blade having a pink colour, and Obi-Wan’s blade having a pale blue colour, with one shot having almost no white core at all.
I’m adjusting the blades and restoring their colours:
The shields in option A look more visually appealing to me.
Keep up the great work.
Thanks for your kind words!
I love the shield implementation!
I’m glad that you like it!
The shields draw visual attention away from the Queen’s Starship, so option B seems like the best one.
I was also leaning towards Option B, as I wish to direct the eyes of the viewer to the Queen’s starship.
Actually, I think that the shields are a bit too bright in both applications of the concept so far, to the point of distracting the eye.
Neverar is correct. Though you might be tempted to think shields look cool, the current mock-up is way too bright and eye-catching.
These are work-in-progress shots – these are not yet finished, and don’t have the final colour correction, or the final luma / brightness levels either. 😃
The final versions will match what is seen in ROTS.
But actually I’m not sure you need the shields. It’s a hangar staffed entirely by robots. They don’t need atmosphere.
This is something I’m doing purely for fun, and to add some visual interest — it’s all totally unnecessary haha!
In one section, I was going to add in new shields on a Trade Federation starship, but also thought that closed hangar bay doors would look good too.
I’d like to get the input from the SW community on this – which do you think looks better:
Option A: shields added in
Or:
Option B: hangar bay doors closed
my god that is so cool. I’m so looking forward to this
I’m glad that you liked it! 👍🏽
I want to see more of your version bro!!
Thanks very much! I will post more pictures as I go along; there are some VFX shots to do prior to releasing the edit, however all is going smoothly.
A quick update:
I have animated the shield and ship, to create the illusion of the ship passing through the shield:
love that added shield! great choice!
Thanks very much!
During the duel on Tatooine between Qui-Gon and Darth Maul, their Lightsabers appear to be very dim. Even with all of the sand being kicked up, their blades are still much more dim than they could be. I’ve updated the blades for both of them:
Something that I wanted to do mainly for fun: to add in shields to some of the starships in TPM, similar to what is seen in ROTS.
I don’t think they are ever hot in the OT. Plus wouldn’t the hilt get too much to handle after a while, if they were?
The hilt likely wouldn’t conduct the heat, much like when you hold the handle of a frypan.
Of course in the Phantom Menace we see lightsabers melt through a set of strong looking metal doors in the first five minutes of the movie. Compare to Luke cutting the hatch on an AT-AT, which should theoretically be sealed better than “a space door.” *
In a fantasy adventure film, it’s about doing what is in service to the story, and to maintain a certain pacing in the film. In TESB, Luke had to find an opening in the AT-AT, in order to plant his explosive. Taking 5 minutes to cut open a hatch would have been ridiculous, and greatly slowed down the pacing of the scene.
It’s less about what is “realistic”, and more about “what looks cool and will keep the audience interested?”.
The heat has also been used to explain why lightsaber wounds aren’t horribly bloody… (Someone please tell Ponda Baba)
That particular shot (of the arm on the ground) wasn’t filmed by George Lucas - from memory it was done in the US by the second filming unit (I don’t recall the exact details off the top of my head).
It’s relatively easy to adjust that shot though – I think that Adywan’s edit changed the arm. This is something I’ll do for my own edit.
Remarkably, in Return of the Jedi, we see Luke’s saber acting like a baseball bat against Jabba’s thugs. Not sure if it’s hot or not.
During filming of ROTJ in 1982, Lucas had a baby to raise, and stated that he wanted to make more of a child-friendly film, which means the film’s violent shots were reduced or removed, and the film became more cute and happy. Aside from that, if there were limbs being lopped off, and lots of visible wounds on Jabba’s cadre, the film wouldn’t have gotten a PG rating back in 1983.
*Ok I guess it’s not just a space door; the room must be sealed if the Jedi are to be poisoned, but who has poison cannisters in their AC system?
The production team did two things:
#1 Took inspiration from some real-life office building safety systems: fire suppression systems that activate when there are fires in certain rooms (such as a CRAC unit or Server room). This gas is poisonous! These systems lock the doors, and flood the room with fire suppression material.
#2 Did things to push the story forward – as mentioned above: doing things in service to the story. The Neimoidians want to get rid of the Jedi, so they activate their version of an internal fire suppression system, which in the case of this fantasy adventure film, is a type of poisonous gas.
phase3 I kept thinking about your Darth Maul edit. I really didn’t understand my own reaction. Blood spray? Blood, uh, powder? No blood at all?
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Are-lightsabers-hot/id/138722
For the purposes of this fan-edit, the Lightsabers are intensely hot, so there would be instant cauterisation of the wound (and no blood spray!). 😃
Another update: I wanted to revise the colour of Darth Maul’s Lightsaber during the scenes of the duel with Qui-Gon on Tatooine. For several frames, the blade is translucent magenta, and for the majority of the duel the colour is more orange than red.
This isn’t the final colour grade, but this is to give an idea of the changes to the blade:
For those who haven’t seen it:
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1620853/action/topic#1620853
I looked into using the original footage, but restoring the Jedi – as in, changing them from invisible / partially invisible in a few frames to fully visible throughout, then adjusting the speed for a “normal” running speed.
There isn’t enough visual information in either the 35mm scan or the Blu-ray for the rotoscoping to work unfortunately.
Does anyone know of any good behind-the-scenes footage or photographs for this scene which show them running?
If so, I could rotoscope the footage, create a new composition with a corrected running speed, and share it with Hal9000 and any others who may want to use it.
Correcting a continuity error:
Here are some shots where I have removed Threepio:
For this shot, I removed both Threepio and Jar Jar; this was done by using portions of photography done by an ILM artist – no AI image generation!
Note: this is not the final colour grade.
I have removed the scene of the children talking to Anakin whilst he is building his podracer. I didn’t want to have Kitster magically appear in a few shots, so I have added him into a few of the earlier scenes.
Seriously how the hell does someone do that. It’s amazing.
It feels like magic to me. What do you do? Photoshop it frame by frame?
I’m glad that you like it!
I mainly use After Effects for these shots. Each scene has different requirements, however they usually have a few things in common: rotoscoping, creating clean background plates, then replacing / adding / changing footage. The new footage has to be tracked to the original footage, so that it all flows smoothly.
Nice stuff, my friend!Excited to see your reedit!
Thanks for your kind words!
Another shot completed: Jar Jar no longer jumps down with the Jedi to rescue the Queen.
Thanks to @JoyOfEditing for letting me use his VFX where he removed Jar Jar from this scene!
I’ve also removed the Battle Droid saying “D’oh!”; unfortunately the SFX-only track retained this dialogue, which meant that a full audio rebuild was required, in order to add in the correct SFX…for only a seconds of footage haha!
I’ve finished changing the Lightsaber blade colour from green to blue for Obi-Wan, plus I’ve also added in Lightsaber hilts for both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan:
I’d personally love to see one, as well. Link me up, if you please, brother.
Yes mate I’ll send it your way too!
This edit gives me the impression that it’ll be up there with The Phantom Edit and Cloak of Deception, which are my two favorite TPM edits. I’m especially intrigued by the entry into Theed – I’ve always loved that shot.
Thanks for your kind words! I hope that I’ve made an enjoyable edit.
Have you finalized the title crawl?
Yes! That was the one of the very first sections completed.
I think test clips of those changes regarding the fall and lightsaber would be interesting to see if everything flows smoothly.
Also, taking away Maul’s blood is a nice touch.
So far I’m happy with how it flows; I’m hoping to finish up the rest of the VFX changes for that scene today (including adding in Qui-Gon’s Lightsaber hilt on the floor), and can send you a test clip if you like?
In my edit, Obi-Wan never falls down the energy core shaft, and doesn’t lose his Lightsaber. Therefore, he no longer needs to use Qui-Gon’s weapon.
To accommodate this change, I’ve altered the colour of the Lightsaber blade, plus made the core a more bright white colour.
hi does anyone have phantom menace streamlined by phase3
That edit is currently being re-done; I don’t have the old version to share sorry!
Well, seems for your version 2 you are really combing the desert of errors this movie has, spaceballs style. 😄
Hahaha hopefully in addressing a few errors, the edit will still be as much fun to watch as Spaceballs!
Nice work! I always interpreted the spray as the hot blade’s cauterizing effect turning blood into a momentary dust of blood. And since the blade is cutting through the whole torso instead of a hand, it hadn’t been seen earlier in other movies… Sometimes there seems to be a small puff of smoke when the limbs are cut but pretty inconsistent. So it’s everyone’s preference to remove or add those in their edits.
I agree that a fine mist of blood would look realistic for that kind of cut, however I was aiming for consistency between films, plus the speed at which Obi-Wan cuts him, along with how incredibly hot the blade is, lead me to the conclusion that the entire torso section would have been instantly cauterised, and not leave any time for a fine mist or blood spray to occur.
You’re absolutely right though - it’s down to each person’s preferences! 😃
I’m digging your colour grade tests! Helps with Tatooine especially that seems to have reddish dust in the air at all times in the original footage. Now the sky looks clean and pure again.
Thanks very much! I found that in that particular scene, there was a much stronger magenta tint than anywhere else in the film. Removing that helped to bring back the lovely blue sky.
Thanks to JoyOfEditing for the suggestion to use the 35mm scan of TPM to bring back the colours in the sky for scenes on Tatooine. I was able to adjust the colours, which means there is no need to do a full background or sky replacement.
There is a lot of dust, dirt and scratches in the 4K99 v2.1 video, however in this scene the damage is fairly minimal and will be easy to remove, so it won’t take long to do a complete restoration on this scene.
Here are work-in-progress photos on bringing back the blue sky:
One section I wanted to alter was the blood spray when Darth Maul gets cut in half. I’ve seen some edits where the editor cut footage around the blood spray, which to me is a low-quality way of revising this shot.
I’ve removed the blood spray from the entire shot, so that all of the available footage of his demise can be retained.
To note: this is a work-in-progress, and the final colour correction has yet to be done.
I have replaced the background with a section of the power core panels from a different side of the room - this was done as it was faster and easier to replace the background rather than use the original shot, which would have required a lot of time and work in order to create a clean version.
