RogueLeader

One of the new TV spots also has a cool shot of some Tusken raiders walking through the desert. Just a random guess, but this might be a flashback too. These could be the Tuskens that find Boba and rescue him.

Wild speculation, but I’m guessing that Tuskens were the one’s that found him after he escaped the Sarlacc, and maybe he has been living with them to some extent over the past few years, which explains his robes and skills with a gaffi stick.

I also wonder if we’ll find out that Boba got amnesia after being rescued. This would explain why Boba waited so long to try and get his armor back. Maybe Fennec knew Boba from before and helped him remember who he is whenever he saved her.

I’m also guessing that shot of Boba in the bacta tank isn’t from when he was initially rescued from the Sarlacc, but it’s something that he does at the beginning of the season to explain why he no longer has the facial scarring like he did in Mando S2.

I’m not Hal but I’m pretty sure that is a hard no.

Nev, I can’t recall but is there is some kind of sound that goes along with the activating/deactivating of the tracking device? I also wonder if the light could blink rather than stay static.

People might have one preference over the other but honestly Sherlock’s also sounds super natural. I don’t think people would think anything is off with it.

Congrats on the long-awaited release of your project! Can’t wait to see if I can find your hidden additions.

Yeah, I believe I was given a version of the film/edit that had already been color corrected. It looks like the first few shots of that video are the film’s original color.

EDIT: Can’t believe you both thought of Steamed Hams.

Bigger Luke, meet Longer Anakin.

I just talked to Chase last night so I’m sure he can share it later. I think it is still early morning for him right now.

EDIT: Also, were any of those extra shots from the BTS considered for giving the film more time to breathe a little?

sherlockpotter said:

I’d rather just remove her parents entirely. Come to think of it, if we remove her parents sparing her from Ochi, would it be better to just outright remove the implication that Ochi was hunting Rey at all? I think the only other time it would be mentioned would be the scene with Finn and Poe - “He was sent to find a little girl on Jakku” or whatever. Could that scene be reframed to just be D-O has the data on Exegol because Ochi was involved with the Sith?

Don’t get me wrong, I also would prefer to remove her parents entirely. I was just thinking what could be done with minimal changes. The least amount of effort. It’s been two years since release and we still have very few Rey Nobody edits. Plus, if you take out her parents, you have to cut out a lot of the stuff regarding Ochi and the ship, as well as heavily change the Force bond duel, since it revolves around what happened to her parents.

If Hal feels like a whole other edit would be necessary, then I think you could make these changes, but it seems like Hal would still prefer to keep the changes minimal.

Again, I think the big thing that needs to be figured out is the Force bond duel scene. If all focus was put on figuring that out, then I think the rest of the changes will come down to trimming/cutting different bits and pieces. I think for it to work well, Kylo needs to be talking about Palpatine killing the Resistance/her friends. A part of my issue has been getting the dialogue to work, but also having to do the hard work of readjusting all of the audio tracks the echo Kylo’s original dialogue.

I wonder if Old Man Luke has any dialogue to say basically, “I know your folks were losers, but we’re not defined by our parents. Some things are stronger than blood.” Probably easier just to cut it entirely though.

It probably would be easier to cut it. So much of Luke’s dialogue during that scene is on Rey, and not showing Luke talk at all, so it would be a shame to have to cut one of the few shots where you see him talk, but I think it would make things simpler.

sherlockpotter said:

While we’re talking about the new saber VFX, did anyone have any thoughts on doing that “flicker out” effect on the Death Star? I was looking into it, but I don’t trust myself (and my complete lack of any experience) at all.

If I have time to do the remaining crackly saber shots, I’ll put this idea at the end of workload. It isn’t necessary, but it would be cool to see.

MR, if you could send me you AE project files and whatever useful info you might have, I would appreciate it. At the very least you could explain what you did generally if I can’t use your files.

Interesting changes Anakin! Some of your changes sound like they could be useful.

This is an idea in relation to Ascendant, but I don’t want to bog down the thread with Rey Nobody talk.

Even though I personally would prefer more extensive changes to a definitive Rey Nobody edit, I’ve still been wondering if we could potentially come up with a version of Rey Nobody that would allow people to choose Rey Palpatine or Rey Nobody audio track.

I know Hal has already cut some things from Ascendant that would help with this. For example, I think he is already cutting the line “for my grandchild to come home”. He might be cutting the Empress Palpatine line, but if he isn’t, you probably could cut “Palpatine” and get away with just “Empress” since it is in a wide shot.

• “It is your birthright to rule here”

This audio could be changed to, “It is your right to rule here”

• “It is in your blood, our blood.”

This one that you might have to cut. At the very least, you could cut the shot of him saying “our blood”, and just make him say, “It is in our blood.” He says that line in a wide shot, so you could just remove it for the Rey Nobody track.

Palpatine calling her weak like her parents, and then her saying her parents were strong and saved her from him wouldn’t have to be cut, since it doesn’t necessarily imply she’s a Palpatine. I hate this line, but it can be kept depending on how her parents are handled. It’d be nice if she could just say, “They saved me from you” if you had to keep anything.

• “Luke Skywalker was saved by his father. The only family you have here… is me.”

This line could be addressed with a slight trim. For the Standard Ascendant, you could trim it so when he says, “…is me” it has already cut to Rey. For the Nobody version, the line is cut, and the line is recontextualized. He says, “The only family you have here…”, pauses, then looks up, revealing the Resistance (her family) fighting for their lives. Palpatine even calls them her new family a few lines later, so this implication works well.

• Luke: Because you’re a Palpatine.

I actually think Hal said he changed this scene so you probably don’t have this line anymore. But I’m not sure if he cut him saying, “Some things are stronger than blood.” I feel like this line would need to be cut too. Maybe you have Luke say that line as he is sitting down if you felt like he needed to say it.

Or, you could just cut Luke’s Palpatine line, but in the the Nobody version, Luke says, “Leia saw it, too.” Now he is referring to seeing the vision of her on the dark throne, rather than knowing she’s a Palpatine. You can keep Luke saying that Leia saw her spirit and heart. And now when Luke says, “Some things are stronger than blood”, you could interpret that to be him saying that Rey and Leia’s bond was so close, that it was stronger than blood and she understood Rey completely, like a mother would understand her daughter.

• Kylo: Your parents were no one. They chose to be. To keep you safe.

“They chose to be” is the key line here. Without making any cuts, maybe you could change the line to, “Your parents were no one. But they chose to keep you safe.”

• Kylo: You’re his granddaughter. You are a Palpatine.

Not to toot my own horn, but Kylo’s dialogue could be changed to something like the two tests I have here.

RogueLeader said:

Here’s a rough test for their hangar interaction: https://vimeo.com/447063673

And here’s an alternate line read for Kylo near the end of the scene, keeping closer to the original line: https://vimeo.com/447069546

After going back through this, I feel like this ends up being basically what Dom had planned for his TROS workprint.

So in this version of the film, Palpatine basically saw a vision of Rey usurping him in the future, and sent Ochi to find/kill her. Rey’s parents turn out to still have some love for their daughter and they don’t tell them where she is. It’d be nice to not contradict the “filthy junk traders” characterization from TLJ, but I think Hal has already done some work to keep it from being overly contradictory.

So really, you end up with maybe 7-10 audio changes, and maybe 5ish small video trims.

To add, I have played around with applying the saber effect plug-in before and creating key frames to adjust it’s size and position. So I know how to do that already. I guess I need to know the exact plug-in and effect that is being used, and any other adjustments that have been made to it. That way I can remain consistent with the shots we already have.

And thanks Chase, I’ll PM you!

If someone could give me all of the necessary assets, files and instructions so I can do it on After Effects (which I have access to), I could set up my desktop and just try to chip away at the actual work a little bit each day. I have the necessary equipment to do the work, and I just need someone with the knowledge to help me stay consistent with what has been done.

Like someone could make a Google Drive that has a word doc with instructions, the individual shots at the right resolution, and a project file(s) that has the right settings plugged in, that would allow me to just do the time consuming part that no one has time for.

EDIT: I can’t make any promises, but this is also something I would like to see completed too so maybe I can figure out a plan.

For those who check here regularly regarding updates: I would assume no one is actively working on a Rey Nobody edit. Seems like many of the people who made some of these test videos are busy with life or have moved on.

I would like to work on this more, but I just don’t have the time to sit down and make any progress.

And I agree that my preferred version of a Rey Nobody edit would keep her parents as desert scumbags.

The scene that I think is the hardest to make work is the Force bond duel in Kylo’s chambers. At least for me, it’s hard to replace dialogue because of how Kylo’s lines echo into the other channels. You could just cut the dialogue and let the fight play out in relative silence, but I also feel something has to be said here.

For what I have tried to do in the past, I wanted Kylo to basically tell Rey that Palpatine will kill her friends/the Resistance. Instead of setting up Rey wanting to kill Palpatine because he killed her parents, you set up Rey wanting to kill Palpatine because he will kill her new family.

I also haven’t found a dialogue combination that I’m really satisfied with, and I don’t want to use an AI voice or anything like that.

Lol, Kylo be extra like that.

I think if you went with a TIE Advanced, it would be nice if you just stuck one somewhere in the Death Star wreckage.

EDIT: Not an important thing to do at all. Just would be a nice set up/pay off.

Over on the General Discussion threads, Stardust1138 has been talking about GL’s ideas regarding his version of the ST and the Whills, and it got me thinking about them. GL is kind of vague about what the Whills are exactly, and it seems his idea regarding them changed over the decades.

I was thinking of ways how this idea could be mentioned or hinted at within the context of a fan edit. An obvious addition would be that one could find a place where someone could mention “the Whills”. Though creating such a mention would require the invention of such dialogue (obviously you could use the word ‘will’ as a basis for some kind of frankenbite) that actually sounds natural and would make sense in the context of a conversation.

Even if you couldn’t explain them, perhaps one could add in more moments of Rey hearing the mysterious whispers that she hears when she is near the island tree. At the very least, when the whispers are heard, you could add in subtitles that refer to them as whispering of the Whills.

Originally I had this idea where you could add in more moments of these whispers that Rey hears throughout the trilogy, and then in the climax of TROS, when she calls on the past Jedi to be with her, we would hear those whispers slowly become the coherent voices of the Jedi that we hear in the climax. So this would reveal that the whispers that have been guiding her on her journey were past Jedi/Force ghosts all along.

These two separate ideas made me consider the thought of combining the concepts. What if the Whills were simply a more official name for Force ghosts? George has at one point or another described the Whills as immortal, observant beings, but also that they were comparable to the concept of the actual “will of the Force”. Sure, this idea doesn’t necessarily fit into the “microbiotic world” George described in his interview with James Cameron, but if the Whills are the Force’s will made manifest, and the midichlorians commune with the Force, then it would explain Jedi voices’ advice to Rey about the Jedi living in her.

This idea would basically make the Whills equivalent to the idea of Buddhahood, where one reaches enlightenment and then guides others along that path. Force ghosts and Buddha already share the similarity of being people who reached spiritual enlightenment, achieve some semblance of immortality, and retains their individuality after their physical death. The word ‘Whill’ also is reminiscent to ‘will-o-the-wisps’, which are basically “ghost lights”. The Force ghosts are “ghost lights” too if you think about it. Plus, if Force ghosts are essentially servants to the will of the Force, it is fitting that their official name would be a homonym to ‘will’. I also think it simplifies things if the Whills end up being a concept we already kind of know about.

While not relevant to an edit, I would imagine The Journal of the Whills within this concept would simply be a physical journal written by someone who can commune with the Whills, and they share their stories and wisdom from the past. Perhaps Rey could even be the one who writes the Journal, or at least adds the Skywalker Saga to it.

So as far as actual changes go, the simplest thing would be the changes to subtitles. So, the subtitles for the whispers in TLJ is just “indistinct murmuring”. I would suggest changing it to “whispering of the Whills”. You could argue that additional information shouldn’t be included in subtitles, but the Jedi voices include the names of each Jedi speaking, which I would argue is additional information, since most people likely wouldn’t have been able to identify many of those voices anyway.

Perhaps when Rey is talking to Leia about her training in TROS, she could say…
Rey: I’m starting to think it’s impossible, hearing the voices of…
[cuts to Leia]
Rey: the Whills
Leia: Nothing’s impossible.

Or maybe the term never has to be mentioned, and the new subtitle for the whispers can just be an homage to George’s original treatment. Maybe you could add in the voice of a new Exposition Jedi into the voices sequence who could literally say, “We are the Whills. The Will of the Force”. Haha, or at least something more elegant.

And as I mentioned earlier, I would make the Force whispers more of a character by adding them into more places throughout the trilogy, like when Rey is “called” to the lightsaber, when she mind tricks the stormtrooper, etc.

To maybe play around with the microbiotic world, or at least ethereal plane of existence George apparently wanted to play around with, I also think it would be fun to play around with the TROS climax a little more. When Rey looks up to the Sky and hears the voices, we sit on a shot of a star field for awhile before cutting to Rey’s face looking up at it. I don’t know if this would actually work or even look good, but I thought it would be a cool, small change to make an interesting transition between these two shots. We zoom out from Rey, the battle, and the planet and just see the darkness of space and the stars dotting it. We begin hearing the voices, and then we zoom out from the star field and see the star field is within the pupil of her eye, and it continues to zoom out until we get back to the normal close-up short of Rey. Kind of trippy, but it ties into the idea of each person being one with the Force and the universe, the Jedi living within her, and each person being a vessel for the Whills and he Will of the Force, as George described in his Cameron interview. Even if the zoom in/out wouldn’t look good, I think it would also be cool if you saw the star field within Rey’s pupils. It’s a little more subtle than the original idea. Also, I like the idea of the star field being a black void at first, and then the stars began appearing as we start hearing more and more voices.

I’d be interested in hearing some thoughts on this, as well as hearing other ideas of blending some of George’s original concepts into the Sequel Trilogy. Another thing I have been interested in is adjusting the political/war plot to fit a little more with what George said about his ideas.

If you are going with the idea that Ben’s first saber was Anakin’s, maybe in the TFA Force vision, you could add the saber somewhere on the ground. Perhaps it could be laying right in front of Rey’s face when she falls in the dirt near Luke and R2.
Also, some other general suggestions that might help with the flow of the shots, I wonder if you could do a match cut of R2 in the rain to a shot of dormant R2 in the Resistance base. Then, you could create a fake whip pan (just like what was used between the shots of Rey and Luke/R2), from dormant R2 to Leia handing Maz the saber. The extra shot might help emphasize the idea that R2 was the bridge between Luke and Leia’s possession of the saber. I wonder if you could also use that whip pan effect to exclusively use that shot of Luke from the teaser, that way you don’t have to try and match the two separate shots.

This thought has crossed my mind before, but when you lay it out like this it is soo good. It also would carry some weight into TROS for those who like it, with him reclaiming it at the end.

With how brief the shots are of Ben’s saber, I don’t think it would be too insane to replace it with Anakin’s saber. I’ll go throw some suggestions for the TFA Force vision in the TFA thread.

I don’t think it is a big deal to just assume that they’re being a little figurative here.

I think if one wanted to remove this apparent contradiction between RO and ANH in an edit, you could add some new off-screen dialogue during the first shots of Vader on the bridge, where we hear some Imperial officers say something like:

Officer 1: Sir, the rebel flagship is sending a transmission.

Officer 2: Track it!

Then, when Jyn and Cassian die, you fade to white and that is the last we see of Scarif. When we fade back in, it would be the shot of the Tantive IV somewhere in space. Now we can just assume the rebels beamed the plans to them from an unknown secondary location.

I like this idea, but I can already imagine people being like, “So you removed the best scene in the movie?!”

Faraday, collaborating with you on the puppet show has been one of my favorite experiences as a member of this site. If it wasn’t for your enthusiasm and your art, I probably would’ve never worked on it.

Hope you pop in when you can still Faraday!

How convenient! I was wondering if we would get scenes that would be useful to any editing endeavors. Sort of serendipitous that this just dropped right in the middle of you working on that scene.

Not really a radical idea, but I would like to see the duel between Luke and Kylo Ren play out without any score. Just let it play out with the sound of the wind blowing, and the sabers crackling. Maybe you could slightly extend certain shots to help it play out a just little longer.

Wow! That’s a lot better than I expected to see in like 24 hours. I could see how maybe a little more work after a decent break and a fresh set of eyes could probably help, but I could see how putting some scratches or glare on that spot could help sell it. Either way, I think it is almost good to go.

This is some incredible work, Nev. I can see the face being a big challenge, but I know you’ll figure out a way to make it work.