RogueLeader

I’m a little nervous too but I’m trying to be more excited and just enjoy the ride. I already know people will be wanting to do edits for IX, but on the bright side will finally have the whole picture in the context of the entire saga, so any edit ideas won’t be up in the air like, “Well, let’s wait and see if the next movie changes things.” I actually think it’d be interesting if after IX came out, a group of editors did a little podcast and discussed ideas for edits in the context of all nine films.

I’m sure people will want to do edits of the post-IX films, but I’m feeling we’ll want to leave those for the next generation of editors!

To help differentiate the First Order and their extremism more from the Empire, what if during the opening battle of The Last Jedi, you had two TIE pilots kamikaze the Resistance bombers in order to save the dreadnaught? The first time being the crash that causes the chain reaction that destroys three bombers. The second time could be when the TIE shoots the cockpit of the last bomber, but you could cut it in a way to make it seem like it just flies into it.

For both instances you could insert an interior shot of the TIE cockpit and add some dialogue that you could pull from Battlefront 2. I think adding more dialogue to First Order soldiers/pilots in general could help demonstrate how brainwashed they are to this cause they were raised for.

Hahaha, I never knew I needed that until now!

If you wanted to cut out the head gag, you could just reuse one of the close ups of
BB-8 looking at whatever he is working on, add some flashes from the left side of frame to imply he is working on it, some spark noises and maybe some BB beeps, then cut to the internal shot of the cockpit showing he fixed it. Then you’d need to cut the shot of the electricity covering BB-8 as he comes back up.

To me the head gag didn’t bother me as much because I can believe he just did that to temporarily complete the current so Poe could fire. What I found silly was how that one appendage could have so many smaller appendages attached to it. I think cutting that shot and maybe giving BB-8 a more glitchy sound effect rather than the “Wow!” might help make it work better.

What doesn’t really feel right to you about it?

To me an edit that just cuts out the shot with the multiple little appendages would almost be enough for me. The first two don’t really bother me as much. Maybe if BB-8 made a different noise when he smashes his head into it besides, “WoooOOOOoooow!!” could help?

Hal 9000 said:

I’m pleased to report that our very own Sir Ridley and snooker have just provided me with the final three FX shots, enabling me now to commence an encode of a release candidate.

You could try to go back and do version closer to your original test, but cut out the “rather talkative cargo pilot line” and the “time and ally of the Rebellion” line. Cutting those lines can help from repeating those shots as much as possible. But you would still need to change the background of the Krennic shot, or at least remove the panel where we can see the Death Star in the background. Enough to show that it might just be the other side of the bridge windows.

If you just had to have another insert for that second Tarkin scene, maybe you could use another angle of the technicians pressing buttons that is from the scene that you removed after the Jedha test. You kept Tarkin’s lines but removed the scene, but there might be some extra insert shots you could pull from there. Otherwise you need to crop around Krennic turning to create a more appropriate background as he turns.

Well there reason I suggested cutting that scene sooner where he asks if the plans are on Scarif is because the multiple wide shots are awkward partially because how the officer keep slowly swinging his arms as he is standing there because of how you reused the shots. If you could make just make that part of him a still image it might be less noticeable.

I was thinking you fade from the white screen straight to the shot of the Tantive IV flying away from the battle, but that might work too. Or since the camera is moving left to right during shot of seeing the explosion from space, you could just cut to the Tantive IV flying away in the original left to right direction so the momentum is going in the same direction. Or flip the shot of the planet explosion and havebit back right to left.

I wrote out some more detailed thoughts for you, hope you don’t mind!

I had an idea for the first scene that I think might help make it feel a little more seamless:

As Tarkin turns to deliver the line about the “rather talkative cargo pilot”, this is when you cut to the shot of Krennic smirking. This could be interpreted as Krennic showing forced amusement at Tarkin’s choice of words, if you kept that whole shot.

Then you cut to the shot of Tarkin walking past Krennic, back facing camera. You could keep showing Tarkin’s face briefly as he turns to face Krennic when he says, “flock to the Rebellion”, or you could have Krennic interrupt him before he finishes his line, and cut to the shot of Krennic saying, “The Senate should be of little concern…” I personally think you could make this his first face shot, but it is still at a distance and only shown for a second or two.

I think you could briefly show Tarkin’s face as he pauses before his next line, “When has become now director Krennic, the Emperor will tolerate no further delays.” (place the entirely of this line in the following OTS shot, or have him start his line briefly then cut to the OTS). To me, it almost feels forced that we never see his face, but maybe we can see it very very briefly in one or two wider shots so it doesn’t feel like you’re trying to hide it. We don’t overuse his face, but we show just enough so the audience knows what he actually looks like.

Cut the “You have made time and ally of the Rebellion.” line and shot.

You can jump cut between the OTS shot of Tarkin approaching Krennic and then shot of Tarkin speaking into his ear, “I suggest we solve both problems simultaneously…” In this instance the two problems are the talkative pilot and the delays the Emperor can no longer tolerate. Two birds with one stone.
I think the jump cut would work best when Tarkin’s shoulder is as close to Krennic as possible, then cut to the next shot (maybe when Tarkin is blocking Krennic from camera to help the cut feel less jumpy), skipping Tarkin’s close-up.

We can slightly see Tarkin’s face as he finishes the line, “-with an immediate test of the weapon.” But since it isn’t a direct close-up and his face is pretty obscured in darkness, I think it could still work as is. You also could possibly artificially blur that shot to malr him out of focus earlier than it actually loses focus.

Then, after Krennic turns to face Tarkin, you could cut to the close-up of Krennic that you slowed down. “I will not fail.”

And maybe the last shot of Tarkin, maybe you could tease his face a little more before he turns around?

It is pretty different from your current version, but I don’t think that scene can realistically work as excised as you currently have it. But I do think you can still cut around his face quite a lot while still generally keeping the blocking of the scene in order to avoid awkward continuity.

For the next Tarkin scene, I don’t think you really need the extra shot you added in that has continuity issues. I honestly think you could jump cut from the shot of Krennic stepping forward to the shot of him turning around and it wouldn’t feel that strange. I at least think it would be better than if you kept that additional shot that is from an entirely different scene.

I like the way you had Tarkin’s following dialogue in the next scene as VO. I think it works well here.

The scene where Tarkin wants to speak to Krennic, I think you should just end that scene with Tarkin asking if the plans are on Scarif and the officer replying yes. Ending the scene there would be enough to infer what he is going to do, and we don’t need to know that he is “informing Lord Vader”. Vader can just be a surprise at the end of the film. Another reason to do this is because you’re forced to overuse that one wide shot and it is noticeable.

If you keep Leia’s face concealed (Broom Kid made a very fair point about it!), maybe you could add the sound of R2’s wheels getting closer to Captain Antilles, which will help the audience assume that he is right there with him and Leia when she delivers that line. Even better, you could place R2 right behind Captain Antilles in the shot of him handing the plans to Leia.

Also, I don’t think you need the quick shot of the rebels pulling the plans back out and saying, “Let’s go!”. Just showing the plans transmitting (and hearing it say ‘transmitting’) is enough to know what is going on. I just assume those are some rebels on the Profundity who don’t make it off alive, and they’re transmitting it to the Tantive IV.

I don’t know if you’re using wipes throughout, but I think having the fade-to-white just fade back onto the Tantive IV flying away from the Profundity would work as well if you decided not to use wipes too. It just feels a little out of place there to me because wipes typically imply time is passing, and you don’t really have wipes in the middle of battle.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to give you some feedback!

This is an interesting idea! I don’t think it is really seamless, but I think limiting the amount we see Tarkin’s (and Leia’s) face helps add a bit more mystery to their characters. I wonder if you could possibly find some kind of middle ground. For example, it is really hard not to show Tarkin’s face in that first scene, but what if you instead you just try to limit how much you show his face? For example, I think it is more obvious when he speaks and you see the way his mouth moves, so maybe you could keep shots where he doesn’t talk, and also keep other speaking shots that maybe aren’t as noticeable.

I like the idea of seeing R2 and 3PO at the end! I think some of the shots with continuity issues could work if you were to replace their backgrounds, possibly. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I believe there is a deepfake of the Leia shot on YouTube that might could work better than how it is in the film. Just something to consider!

Nev, considering how drastic the structural change is for this edit concept, I’m wondering if you had major radical ideas for Episode II and III as well.

This is really cool! While I don’t know if this restructure can totally work (it would make the runtime rather short), I hope you continue working on this so we can actually see what it looks like once it is all laid out that way. That’s the only way to know for sure.

I’ve always been on the fence on redubbing the aliens but I think it works here, and honestly it is perfect for a radical edit, because you can utilize it to fill in the logical gaps that a heavy restructure might create.

One suggestion: could you change “Capital” to “Coruscant” in their dialogue? At first I thought you just meant Theed, and not the capital of the Republic. If that is what you’re going for, at least. It could also help if her location is mentioned in the opening crawl.

I could talk more about this idea but honestly just keep it coming! If you need opinions or thoughts I’m definitely here for that.

That’s a pretty creative placement for that line! That definitely might be something worth fiddling around with more.

Yeah, I don’t think that ‘training’ line is particularly necessary at the end of the film. While I think his training in TLJ is more about Kylo’s resolve more than his abilities, regardless of that Snoke doesn’t really have to mention the ‘training’ bit in TFA. It doesn’t mean Snoke isn’t manipulating Kylo’s emotions in order to train him in TLJ, but again, we don’t need TFA to really set up that.

We don’t have to get deep into a political conversation now, but I wanted to bring it up for those editors who might be approaching editing these films in the future that it might be worth looking at the story’s politics from that angle during their process.

On another note, in the TLJ documentary, we get to see an alternate take on the Luke and Leia scene, and I really like Carrie’s performance there. Leia has been so strong throughout these films, and I think getting to see her breakdown in front of the people that have followed her to the end, looking to her for strength, while the tragedy of everything hitting her when she thinks all hope is finally lost. Do you think it would be possible to get clean audio of Carrie saying, “This is the end, isn’t it?” I just really like the vulnerability of that question. Not sure if it could even fit into an edit, or if it should, just curious.

I think those thoughts are totally warranted, and I think we’ll have better idea on that as we start getting more non-Skywalker content and see how much it can be different from what came before it.

That looks nice! Honestly that first shot is so quick I don’t think it is really necessary, unless you wanted that attention to detail.

MalàStrana said:

adywan said:

stickydixon said:

BedeHistory731 said:

It’s nice commentary on where Adywan thinks the Prequels belong (a large, junk-collecting tank). I’m happy that it’s the only real prequel reference, unless there’s a skeleton of a prequel species in the rancor pit.

Yo, Ady, could you replace the Rancor with an Acklay? That would be GREAT, thanks!

I’m pretty sure that there isn’t a Rancor in episode IV. 😉

But could you add a Rancor in ANH ? 😄

And then replace it with an Acklay??

I actually think Jon Favreau may have wrote the script originally about Boba Fett.

He mentioned that he started working on the story as soon as he heard about the Disney acquisition (in order to pitch it to them). We also know Josh Trank was set to direct a Boba Fett anthology movie. So since a Boba Fett film was already in development, Favreau went back and decided to make it an original character. But he was still a Mandalorian, since Boba’s connection to Mandalorian culture may have played an important role in the original story and they wanted to still explore that. [Boba Fett’s ambiguous state as a Mandalorian in the new canon may have also influenced this change.]

At some point it is possible that Favreau and Filoni decided to shift the show into a story about new characters rather than old ones. Maybe IG-88 was in the original story, but after they changed Boba to the Mandalorian, they also changed certain characters (like IG-88) into new characters. I’ve also heard that IG-11 gets mistaken for IG-88 within the story itself on a few occasions, which would be a tongue-in-cheek way to address that issue.

So, even after the Boba Fett film was canned, Favreau and Filoni decided to keep the original characters, perhaps because they fell in love with how the story had developed.

But this is all speculation. And maybe if we get a Art of Mandalorian book or something we’ll learn more about it.

When you bumped this thread back up I went back through and looked at some of the different ideas you had.

There’s definitely a few I like, but there were some that were just ideas but didn’t have solid ideas for how to actually implement them yet. Coming back to it with fresh eyes has given me some ideas for at least two of them.

First, you had this idea about making Holdo a surviving New Republic Officer. No real simple method of implementation, but something like this could possibly work:

Poe: That’s Vice Admiral Holdo? The ‘Battle of Chiron Belt’ Admiral Holdo?

Alien Pilot: [subtitled] A Republic hero.

Poe: Not what I expected.

Alien Pilot: Poe…

This could be a simple approach that doesn’t require any set up edits within TFA. Definitely in the vein of how you have subtitles to the alien pirates in your TFA edit!

Another idea you had was to make the reason why the First Order doesn’t find a quick way to destroy the Resistance be primarily because of Snoke. Snoke wants Kylo Ren to complete his training by killing his mother. But once Kylo forms a connection to Rey and brings her before him, Snoke decides killing her instead will be a worthy enough sacrifice in order to complete his training, allowing Hux to destroy the remaining Resistance transports.

Here are some of the changes I thought of that could help imply this idea:

• When Kylo fumes in the elevator after his conversation with Snoke, have Snoke’s line “complete your training” echo in his mind, either right after we cut to the first shot of him in the elevator, or right before he smashes his helmet. Or you could have him hear it in his ship after he senses Leia on the bridge.

• When Hux recalls Kylo back to the Supremacy, change his line to something like, “I have orders from Snoke, we can’t cover you at this distance, return to the fleet.” His line starts during a wide shot of Kylo flying past the Raddus, so you don’t have to worry about Hux’s mouth lining up with the new dialogue if you start it early.
You can take a part of the line from earlier in the film. Hux, “I have orders from Supreme Leader Snoke himself…”

• Cut Hux asking his officer why they can’t destroy the fleet now. Just cut it shorter to something like, “Well, keep up the barrage. Let’s at least remind them we are still here.” Or even shorter to just “They won’t last long burning fuel like this. It’s only a matter of time.” Keeping the barrage line might help show Hux being a little frustrated that Snoke is making them wait.

Yeah, I’m liking your newest crawl Nev!

Also in your crawl, like I asked you about, it is implied the New Republic approved of the Resistance in order to counter the First Order indirectly. So another general question I have is regarding the pros and cons of the New Republic mobilizing the Resistance themselves, or the Resistance being an independent organization Leia made after being frustrated with the Republic’s inaction.

Great response! You can see how this is sort of the angle the films are already taking, so maybe the way the New Republic is referenced in the opening crawl could be a way that idea could be emphasized more. I think there have been several crawl ideas on here that have been along these lines.

This is somewhat related to discussion regarding the opening crawl we’ve been having on Nevarar’s TFA thread, but I wanted to move this conversation over here since it isn’t necessarily just about his edit. I wanted to have a conversation regarding how the politics in the films reflect real-life politics, and how this perspective can affect one’s approach to editing the Sequel Trilogy.

The political situations in the previous films seem to reflect real-life American politics in very general ways. In the OT, the Empire was America. Nixon was the Emperor. The rebellion was like the Viet Cong or the objectors/protestors in America, like the hippie movement.

In the prequels, George made parallels between Nute Gunray and Newt Gingrich, Bush and Vader and Cheney and Palpatine. Seeing a democracy become a dictatorship. “You’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists”.

In the sequels, what could that parallel be?
The rise of nationalism and the alt-right?
The election of Donald Trump?
So, which angle to handle the New Republic would fit most appropriately with a contemporary American political analogy?

American politics seem totally divided between two sides. The idea that the Republic has been split into two parties, one allied to Old Republic ideology vs another that wants to restore Imperial strength, would seem to reflect the total division of the Democrat and Republican parties today (in a more extreme away obviously). The “death” of the New Republic could parallel the democrats losing the 2016 election and leading to the political upheaval we’ve see on a daily basis the past few years.

Not trying to say this interpretation is fact. George openly made liberal parallels with his films, so I figure it would be appropriate to strengthen similar parallels that are in the sequels as well.
And you can make parallels between the GFFA and the US, but the rise of nationalism globally has been a major talking point in recent years, so the ST fitting with that in a general sense fits too.

So I guess the question boils down to how the opening crawls could be worded (or things in the films themselves) to match this metaphor? Should the First Order be an open “nationalist” movement or be something hiding in the shadows and then striking from the cover of darkness? Should the Republic be trying, but struggling, to deal with this movement, or are they not taking it as seriously as they should be? I’d like to get suggestions that consider the real-life parallels.

What makes the most sense for the ST, in regards to how the OT and PT also reflected the real-life politics of their times?

I’m liking the way Nev is currently leaning with his, but I just wanted to carry that discussion over to here in order to talk about it more generally.

Maybe First Order ships have to have line of sight of a ship entering hyperspace in order to track it. Since Finn was still unconscious during the battle, Finn didn’t know they witnessed their escape and thought it was impossible for the First Order to track them otherwise.

I felt like I read somewhere that you will be able to talk to your crew on your ship in between missions.

With the rise of prequel memes, it has made me more reluctant to want to remove some of the more cheesy lines because now people like/expect those moments almost.

That wouldn’t be bad either! But yeah, it would be hard to do both with the structure as-is. That is partially why I had the idea of just replacing it.

The thing is, you could cut out the Separatist leaders leaving Utupau, we can see Grievous talking to them, then Kenobi jumps down. Presumably the Republic fleet is already there since the clones repel down just a few moments later, so it would’ve been unlikely for them to escape anyway. Their story could end there.

And I think it would fit better if Mustafar was Anakin’s first “hunt” (not counting the massacre of the Jedi temple), because that sequence is intercut between Obi-Wan and Yoda witnessing the aftermath of the temple slaughter, Obi-Wan asking “who could’ve done this?” and hard cutting to Anakin killing more Jedi. It also intercuts with Palpatine elaborating on the Jedi’s “betrayal” and how the remaining Jedi will be hunted down and defeated. So we would literally be showing Anakin doing just that as Sidious talks about it.

Also, I personally think it would be more visually interesting. Slaughtering the Separatist leaders isn’t a challenge at all for Anakin, but taking on a group of Jedi, like 5 to 1, would probably be more entertaining to watch.

To do it, this would be what you would need:

1. Some kind of CG model of the control room to use for the background.
2. Maybe about 5-6 actors to play Jedi and a hooded Anakin. Either local actors and buy costumes, or maybe contact cosplayers and cover their travel to film the shots.
3. About 10~ shots of: Anakin entering the room, the Jedi grouped together acknowledging Anakin, and various quick fighting/killing shots.

My local university has a nice green screen in their studio, which we could use as an option to film these shots. It would take some effort but I think it is comparable to some things Ady’s doing, so not impossible.

One radical I’ve had is to change Anakin slaughtering the Separatists leaders on Mustafar to a few Jedi that have regrouped there. So we actually see Vader “hunt down and destroy Jedi” on screen. You would need to film new actors in costume though and film them in front of a green screen, which would take a budget and a bit of work.