I did move it up a little more, but I felt like I didn’t want the audience/Rey to hear “Skywalker!” while that merchant was in front of her. I feel like we should see her face when she/we hear it. I’ll see again about moving it up slightly more.
Here is the two-shot test for the puppet show. I made a few changes but I’ll wait and see what people notice. Let me know what y’all think.
👏 Awesome job, RL! Just awesome!
Thanks Poppa! Also wanted to thank you for creating a separate plate just for the bottom half of the shot/stage. Didn’t realize what it was for at first version, but once I did, I have truly appreciated how much work you saved me. 🙌
Just sharing my to do list for the next test:
Am I missing anything? Also, I actually applied a little grain to the puppets themselves, to try and help make the elements blend in a little more (especially in the CU shot, since it is naturally more grainy from being cropped), but I’m not sure if it is helping, so I might remove it on the next pass.
And if people wanted a green saber I could probably change the color easily. But I do agree that I think blue makes more sense.
Thanks again for the feedback and the positivity so far!
Do you need a nice usable 4K shot because I can provide you with one? (4K HDR or SDR)
I’ve gotten covered for this scene, but I may hit you up for other shots in the future. Thanks for the offer!
I think the problem with reversing the footage is that the smoke and the stuff wafting in the air looks sort of weird in reverse.
Roto-ing the hand would be great if you want to try!
And I’ll try to make both puppets bounce a little more the next version.
EDIT:
The two shot is amazing. The cut made after the second puppet shot needs to be at a point before or after the whisp of white dust. That sudden movement doesn’t quite jive with the stillness in the shot of the kids afterword.
Yeah, this was something that was bugging me too, I’ll see about cutting a frame or two earlier.
Love the two shots. The close up really works great. The first shot feels a little flat though. Is there any way to exaggerate the AT-AT walk, like a bob up and down walk like a kid would do? Or like an articular front to back leg movement like a dog walk?
Yeah, I could try that. I didn’t want the AT-AT to do too much, because I didn’t want people’s eyes to be drawn to it and not at the Luke puppet, but a little more movement probably wouldn’t hurt.
Here is the two-shot test for the puppet show. I made a few changes but I’ll wait and see what people notice. Let me know what y’all think.
Further, removing the dialogue doesn’t solve the problem of gathering such a large force so quickly. You would need added scenes to do that.
To clarify, I’m not proposing a better justification for assembling the fleet so quickly. I’m proposing eliminating the very idea that the fleet was assembled so quickly to begin with, but rather that it was already assembled by the time TROS begins. Poe’s lines are a hurdle to this change because, as one of the Resistance’s top leaders (and THE co-General by the time of the final battle), he would presumably have some idea of the fleet’s actual size.
Yeah, this make sense. I honestly expected Lando or Poe would transmit an inspiring message to the worlds much like Ezra or Mon Mothma did in Rebels, asking them to meet Lando at some kind of rendezvous point. Not saying all the people in the galaxy wouldn’t be instantly swayed by Lando’s charm but it feels a bit of a reach to think the Falcon visited the systems one by one (considering most of them were also besieged by First Order forces) in such a short span.
This is the canon answer. He went in person to a few places but he beamed an inspirational message to the rest.
This would’ve been great, if we actually saw that message… At the very least I wonder if we had a shot of R2 start recording Finn and Poe as they give their speech would be enough to imply that it is their speech that is the message Lando and Chewie broadcast when they go to the Core Worlds.
But, I do think the new crawl helps get the idea across that people are rebelling across the galaxy now. I think cutting Poe’s line, “They’ve given up” could potentially help. I mean, if we’re recontextualizing Kijimi to be in the middle of a revolt, it might come off as weird for Poe to say “they’ve given up” when they’re literally watching explosions in the distant streets. So the conversation could go from “Everyone is so afraid” to “Hey, they win by making us think we’re alone…”
With that said, I do think that the new crawl, the puppet show, the potential Kijimi rebellion changes, etc, stuff like this helps sets up that hope lives in the galaxy, and for the fleet to show up in the end, I think.
What a clever idea! It will be cool to actually see the shield.
#ReleasethePuppetExtendedCut 🤣
Haha, almost ready! I finished the close up shot, just need to finish the wide shot
I don’t have a version of Ascendant that I export atm, so if someone else could get that to Faraday it would be much appreciated!
Hey, Sherlock, could you send the Ascendant version of that clip to Faraday? If not let me know.
Could someone send me the scene of the Jedi voices speaking to Rey? Even a streamable link is fine. I just want to send it to Ross (the actor who played Sors) so he can match his performance style.
Still kind of blows my mind you know this guy. You’re full of surpises, Faraday!
Give me a few minutes and I’ll upload that scene for you. Should it basically stop before Palpatine says, “May your death be the final word in the story of rebellion?”
Also, do you want the theatrical version or Ascendant version?
@rpvee Yeah, someone mentioned that earlier I think! I wonder what instigated that change.
I’ll see about trying to upscale the plate later today/tomorrow, but if anyone else wanted to have a go at it, here is the Google drive link Poppa provided awhile back for the clean plate.
Hey, I found a few minutes! Uploaded the 4K backplate for the puppet show from sherlockpotter’s source to the same link. Thanks, sherlock, it is sooo much sharper. Honestly, it makes me want to remaster the film in 4K (hehe, in about 5 years).
I had to tweak the color slightly to better match the HD version we’ve been working with and got it in the ballpark, but it may need some refinement (and Hal’s LUT ultimately).
The trick to using sherlock’s MKV (which is great because it’s right from the disc, no conversion) is to use an app called TSMuxer to demux the mkv into just it’s video component, which was a .264 file. The .264 actually works in After Effects, but it’s a bit slow. I only needed a few frames so I just used it as-is. But you can also use (sorry MR!) ffmpeg to change the container from .264 to .mp4 using the code posted by sade1212: “ffmpeg -i inputfile.264 -c:v copy outputfile.mp4”. There would be no conversion so it’s incredibly fast and without any quality loss.
Poppa! This is great, wasn’t expecting to get this so quickly. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule!
I actually just redid the scene for the two shot version using the mp4 version of Sherlock’s source he provided, and it looked fine to me. But I might try to convert it in one of the ways you mentioned.
but you could argue they’ve had a set change since they started talking. What do you guys think?
It was talked about when Poppa and I were working on the clean plate. The first one is debatable but the second definately could be a set change. I can try to remove them if you’d like though.
I think the only shot that I think would be worth the trouble would be that second one. The first one, and the one where we see the stage before the puppet show, could be cropped from a 4K source, since they’re both on the edge of their frames.
While I was playing around with the two shot idea (I think it’s going to work!) I did notice that we do see the puppet stage from a side angle two more times after Rey kneels down to speak to the alien girl.
The first one would be easy enough to crop, I think. I’m debating if that second shot is worth messing with. The yellow alien entering left of frame walks past it, so you only see the stage for two or three seconds. I could try covering the gold thing with the walker puppet, but you could argue they’ve had a set change since they started talking. What do you guys think?
Yes, RL, amazing!!! Maybe I’m a little sentimental right now, but it’s frankly adorable. I agree that having a second shot would be nice, and that yes, cropping into a 4K clean plate would be the best option.
I did try frame interpolating in After Effects a while back to slow the shot down instead and found the results unsatisfactory. It is because of the dust, as DominicCobb said.
The source file given to me was 1080p so that’s what I worked with, but it’s a completely non-destructive AE file, meaning I should be able to simply swap in the 4K source sherlockpotter and turn on continuously rasterize in the precomps. When I can find time… MR I may take you up on that and send you my AE file! We can PM the details.
Thanks for the compliments poppa! And thanks for providing that plate. If we could replace/upscale the plate to a 4K version, that would be great. I’ve been messaging MR as well so hopefully we can figure something out!
In the meantime, I think I’ll play around with retiming the scene to fit two shots .And then maybe see about extending the shot by 4 or 5 frames, just so we can squeeze as much out of this moment as possible!
(I’m pretty sure the general idea originally was suggested by someone else. I can’t remember who, but I don’t think I’m clever enough to have thought of this on my own.)
Lol, I love the proof of concept. Can we just put this into an edit?
I’m pretty sure I was the person, or one of the people, who suggested that idea. I would probably have one shot of Kylo and Luke just having a stand off, and then in the second shot Kylo takes a swing at Luke, who ducks below the stage, and immediately pops up behind him, making the children laugh. This would be fairly easy to do, if I had a Kylo puppet. It’d be much easier to time this than the timing of that damn fireball! But I think people at the time had some good arguments for why it should be the AT-AT vs Luke rather than Kylo vs Luke. If there was enough demand for it, and Faraday had time to design a Kylo puppet, I wouldn’t mind putting something together.
Thanks, Sherlockpotter. I’ve already got the full movie in .mkv but it’s the codec that screws everything up. If anyone knows how to convert to .mp4 without ruining everything please let me know. Handbrake doesn’t work and I’ve tried to use ffmpeg but really don’t wanna risk messing up my computer with more terminal stuff.
Funny that you mention this, because I went down the same rabbit hole with Handbrake and ffmpeg and I still have the same problem too!
Now, I had seen people on here mention that the pregnant pause in dialogue in this cut was unfortunate, and some wishing that it ended on “You are nothing” so that it’s clear that Rey is responding to THAT specifically. So I let the Sith voices do the talking during that pause. Honestly, I’m pumped about how this is going, but I need everyone’s ears. Does this rule? Or does it suck?
This is really cool! Maybe I’m a little biased but I like it. It’s subtle, but adds to the moment. The echoing “nothing” whispers was a clever way to get that idea across with Rey, too.
It sort of makes me think of the way Palpatine’s voice is in this ROTS scene, when he knights Anakin as Darth Vader.
It’s so weird and wild seeing my puppet designs actually fabricated, put into motion, and put into the movie. I feel like I got to do the fun bit and RL did the hard work. I’m absolutely floored by the result, and I’m very proud to be part of it all.
I’m glad you’re happy with how it turned out! Honestly, your enthusiastic message offering to help with the puppets is what really gave me the push to do this. I would’ve been stuck on the puppet designs forever if wasn’t for you!
A one shot alternative might be slowing down the plate as much as possible before it looks weird, they laying the puppet show in. If we could see it for even just a few more frames it could help registering what’s going on more.
Not a bad idea, and this could potentially be applied to both a one or two shot version. I wonder what the limit would be before the slow motion became noticeable? I’m not really familiar with the best methods of extending shots. That was something you did with a few moments in TROS, right?
Topaz Video Enhance AI would be your best bet for getting 4K footage out of a 1080p source. You’d only need to upscale the puppets and the cleaned background, right, because the rest is the same as the theatrical and could just be matted back in from the 4K source.
Sade, you clever bastard. And I actually filmed the puppets at 4K, so all that has to be upscaled is the cleaned background.
I’ll see about trying to upscale the plate later today/tomorrow, but if anyone else wanted to have a go at it, here is the Google drive link Poppa provided awhile back for the clean plate.
Jesus, Nev. That is nuts. I think someone who is actively looking for what you did would struggle to find the seams. I know I can’t. Tremendous work!
The plate I used to was from poppasketti, and it was just 1080p I think.
It would be great if the plate was 4K, but I feel like it probably would’ve been a pain to clean, and there wasn’t an expectation to crop the shot initially.
There is an effect on After Effects called Detail-Preserving Upscale, so I’m hoping I could potentially crop the shot for a second zoomed-in shot, without it looking super noticeable.
Also, for the the OTS shot of Rey looking at the children and the puppet show, I just zoomed in to not show the stage from an angle. Trying to do anything with the stage from that angle was a pain in the ass. It would be nice to get a 4K source for that shot, at least, but I might be able to use the previous mentioned effect to help maintain its quality as well.
And you might be right, Sparky. At the very least I might screw around with the two shots idea and see if it works or not.
And thanks for all the responses, everyone! I appreciate all of the feedback and the compliments.
I showed the scene to my girlfriend who wasn’t clued-in beforehand, and it took three playthroughs before she figured out what was happening.
So I think we should definitely look at slowing it down a bit, though even if it was unchanged it would still be a dramatic improvement to the film.
Watching the scene again, I think it would work to simply duplicate the theater shots, and put one after the establishing shot of the children that shows Luke simply facing the AT-AT, then show the closeup of the children looking in rapt attention, then the existing shot of Luke deflecting the fire followed by the children laughing.
I appreciate you showing it to her! I always like to think of the hypothetical first-time viewer when making certain edits, so it’s great to get that perspective.
And that idea is sorta what I have been thinking. Maybe I could slightly scale the shot up so it looks slightly different (or scale up the fireball shot), but as far as the action goes, just have Luke and the AT-AT literally just standing there. At the very least, Luke could step forward a little or something. But the important thing is that the minimal-to-no action might help the audience register what the puppets are. Because in the fireball shot, your eyes just sort of follow the action of the puppets, rather than focusing on the puppets themselves. If that makes sense.
And I’ll also make it clearer that Rey is reacting to hearing “Skywalker”.
Cool, thanks for the the feedback! That was definitely the idea, but I’ll try shifting that back more to make that clearer.
Here is the puppet show! It’s very short, but hopefully people will think it’s worth all of the effort. I’m sure I’ll need to tweak it some more, so I’m just gonna share a streamable link until it’s finalized.
Also wanted to note who all contributed to this very small edit.
I may be wrong, but I believe DZ-330, Cinefy and DominicCobb all had this idea at one point or another.
Proof of Concept by Cinefy
Clean Stage Plates by poppasketti and MoviesRemastered
Puppet Designs by Captain Faraday
Alien Dub by ThisIsCreation
Produced by RogueLeader
Awesome to hear! I know it must be a pain in the ass, so that’s a big accomplishment.
This was a really quick, dirty edit, but I messed around with Captain Hux line and came up with this.
The line is in every channel, with different levels of reverb, so I tried to duplicate that effect with the Captain line, and then cheated with the music a little. I just did it quick but I bet you could sell it even more with a better line read and cleaner audio editing.
Going to sleep for now, but I’ll have something else to share with y’all tomorrow…