Sepharih

A quick rough mockup to illustrate.

haraldo23 said:

I'm all for dubbing aliens and Jar-Jars in the prequels, but I really don't think that alien languages is the answer.  Cause alien languages mean subtitles. And subtitles mean bunch of jibberish that puts you out of the film.

I mean, seriously, Jor-El spoke English on Krypton and no one complained. Odin and Thor both spoke English in Asgard and no one complained...

Besides, those prequel movies are already cold, inhuman, fake and unrelatable-looking - so, why add an unintelligible language and alienate, say, Nemodians even more? 

MagnoliaFan did an outstanding job dubbing Jar-Jar (in that YouTube video). And, personally, I think that's the way to go.

I think it is possible to find someone who could redeem the character.....but I honestly think I prefer Jar Jar's original voice to that clip.  I mean no offense to magnoliafan as his edits are currently my favorite reedits of the prequels.....but it doesn't do much to help the character.

Also....It's true that if you're reading subtitles you're not paying full attention to the visuals of the film.......but maybe in Jar Jar's case that's actually a good thing.  Anything to draw attention away from the overly cartoonish antics is probably a welcome thing.

Holy......the execution and presentation needs some work....but this idea is actually quite brilliant.  I agree with having the lights off permanently (and I would add in a VFX shot of palpatine closing the window blinds) and having the strikes of the sabers light up the room, but I would go even further by using some digital lighting and rotoscoping to reveal bits of the scene as the lightsabers by......and by having palpatines TRUE face appear in this scene as the lightsaber passes by him....which would be much more doable with quicker shots and restrictive lighting.

The effect would add more tension to the scene, would hide the poor choreography and cgi mcdiarmid, and would also clarify that Palpatine *is* hiding his appearance and it's not sith lighting that messes his face up.  It would make him appear more threatening and scary and would even add something to Mace's decision to just straight up kill this guy when he has the chance, having seen his true nature.

Bingowings said:

There is a bit of a problem with having the Gungans the Feds and most of the people on Tatooine speaking 'alien'.

The other Star Wars films only had a few subtitles with good reason, if you are reading subtitles you aren't looking at the picture.

It would make much better sense to dub most ofthe lines (or new ones) into more sober English without the ethnically worrying accents.

The only really problem is removing the existing lines and maintaining all the other parts of the soundscape.

That still is much more difficult than some people would have us believe.

You are of course correct on all counts.

Still......while changing Jar Jar's voice would certainly help.....i'm doubtful there's a voice actor on this earth who could deliver a line like "meesa called Jar Jar Binks!" and make it sound at all passable.  It's admitedly a trade off.....but I ultimately will take the subtitles as the lesser of two evils.

Ideally, I'd actually like to remove Jar Jar entirely and be done with it, or maybe replace him with an entirely different character....but that's quite a tall order for a lone and/or small visual effects team.

The neimoidians are definitely better contenders for this though.  Mostly it seems the effort to change their voices stems from desires to change plot points in the movie......which is not a bad goal necessarily.  Considering the animatronics in the movie, it would be easier to get away with dubbing them over with english while still tweaking their dialouge.  This is probably worth exploring by someone with the means to do it.

Also....as far as removing dialogue goes.....I don't mean to suggest it's easy peasy.....but isn't most of the dialogue in the center channel on the soundmix?  Granted, there's a lot of new sound effects you'll need to remix in here and there........but it's not impossible............I think/hope. 

mrbenja0618 said:

Seems like there was an edit that used dialogue from Passion of the Christ for some of the Neimodians. Can't remember for sure.

 

Fascinating....i'd be interested to see that.  Anybody remember which edit it was?  Ideally I think real world languages should be avoided....but maybe they could be edited to a point where they'd be unrecognizable.

Hell.....maybe I could even look at Avatar.

Good idea on the Mass Effect stuff too. But honestly if I'm going to go to that much trouble to change the language, it might be easier to do redubs.

I completely agree that would be ideal...but that kind of depends on the resources/talent/experience you have access too.

I'm kind of in a position where i'm enough of an audiophile that I can get pulled out of a story because of a poor or inconsistent recording when I hear it(something that drove me crazy on the DVD of ANH) but not enough that I know how or have the means to make my own from scratch.  Soooo....I'll have to try and cobble something together for other sources.

Something I see a lot of people doing in fan edits is removing the more embarrassing dialouge and replacing it with alien languages with subtitles (particularly Jar Jar and the gungans)....a unique solution that Star Wars is exceptionally well suited too.

The problem I have is that the fan edits I've seen (FAR from all of them) usually go the (comparatively) easy route and just reverse the audio track.  As I'm in the planning stages right now....I'd like to opt for something a bit more difficult and find some actual alien language audio to dub in so it's not quite as obvious.

Maybe there's already an edit that does this, in which case i'd be interested to see what their sources for the audio was.  Ideally you'd get totally new and unique original audio....but while I can manipulate audio, I lack the equipment or experience to get brand new voiceovers.

It seems to me that the ideal source for the audio would be videogames since it would be much easier to rip the audio and not worry about overlapping audio.

For the Gungans....i've been thinking of the Selkath from Knights of the Old Republic.....but I'm not sure if there's enough unique tracks to stretch out an entire movie with......even if you cut jar jar down to a bare minimum (or entirely for that matter).
Thoughts?

I am, however, convinced that i've found a perfect base replacement for the Battledroid audio in the Geth from Mass Effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV0iMGgHlLw&feature=related 

Should help give them a more mechanical and intimidating feel without making them completely mute.

jonathan7 said:

It's an interesting idea although, I would like to point something out...

I don't know how many of you have done any sword fighting; I've done a bit in Aikido, and I actually think the ANH duel is actually far more realistic than the Prequel Trilogy fights. (I'm not claiming to be any master or special... So if anyone knows better I'm happy to be corrected). Here's a video of Kendo; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh2TNO5CGXQ Also found a video of longsword fighting here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8PGRo61rCQ

As such although the Prequel fights may look more impressive, they got more and more OTT in my opinion. The Maul fight I think was really well done, but the later fights I find a bit meh. This may partly been because for Episode 3, I'd pictured Obi-Wan really regretfully taking Vader apart piece by piece.

Realistically speaking, sure, the Obi-wan and Vader fight in episode iv is probably the most practical and realistic of the duels.

Still......I personally feel like the over the top bombastic swordfights of the PT more befit the epic space fantasy world of Star Wars.  They feel more at home to me amongst things like their overblown starship fights.  This ultimately is just something that boils down to how you interepret Star Wars personally I think.

mrbenja0618 said:

At first I thought this idea was stupid no offense, but the more I contemplated it, it sounded more interesting to me. Is it wrong to cut the majority of the duel? If you can cut it in such a way where you still keep those lines, then you still maintain the emotion of the two meeting again... The more I think about this, it actually could make more sense... He's come to the understanding that fighting Vader himself isn't the answer. That's why he says what he says. Why fight at all if you're going to give yourself for the greater good. It could be said, and is probably true that he was waiting for the right moment.. The moment being when he knew Luke and the others were back on the ship...But why not cut to the chase?

I have to think about this.... With your permission, this might show up on my edit.

Absolutely no offense taken. The first time it entered my head I wrote it off pretty quick as a stupid thought as well. Then as I started thinking about it more and more.....and it actually started to make a bit of sense to me. Don't ever worry about asking permission from me for ideas though. I totally get asking permission for using someone's edit as a base for their own, but ideas and suggestions I figure are something that should be to promote discussion and inspiration. Any of my ideas are free game.

I think there definitely needs to be some VFX to make the scene work though. The biggest problem with this edit in terms of the technical aspect would probably be that it would look too much like Vader and Ben are just standing around with their sabers for 10 minutes not doing anything. You would need to edit it and paint out some shots to avoid this, as it would look rather silly.

I see what you mean...but I don't know if its even necessary. Can't and won't both already imply a plan I think.

Also, I understand people who will disagree with this....but I would just remove “darth” entirely. Simply have him say “You can't win” and leave it at that. It changes the delivery I know.....but it just seems more straightforward to me.

There's some undeniably cheesy lines that permeate the Obi and Anakin duel in episode III.....but you really think there's more emotion in the epiv duel?

I don't know.....I feel it's extremely and (again, in the context of no prequel trilogy) wisely understated.  These characters were both fairly mysterious and their histories were spoken of very vaguely.  It would have been out of place for an overly dramatic and emotional fight to take place.

To me, the drama and emotion from that scene comes much more from look obi-wan gives luke, who then proceeds to watch his master fall to vader.

Hello all.  Long time lurker.  Well, with the upcoming blu-ray release of Star Wars coming out I've decided to enter the discussion to get some ideas for my own personal saga cut I've wanted to do for some time.

So......this is definately a bit of a radical idea, but I wanted to see what other people thought of it.  There have been a lot of attempts to try and reedit the obi-wan and vader duel into something more like the energetic and flahsier fights of the PT....but in the end reediting can only get you so far because of the limits of the choreography.

Has anyone ever thought, maybe, about just cutting the duel entirely?  Within the context of the original trilogy or the film on its own this would be almost blasphemous...but within the context of all six movies, I wonder if it would actually be more effective.

Almost any lightsaber fight that could have been done or redone wouldn't have the same drama or emotional impact as the fight from episode 3 anyway, and perhaps it says more about obi-wan's experience and how much he's learned, and adds more shock, by him not dueling at all.

The way i see it working is this:

Obi-wan see's vader, who walks towards him, lightsaber not ignited.

VADER: "I've been Waiting for you obi-wan....".....etc. etc.

OBI-WAN: "You can't win.  If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

TheIR sabers ignite and the stormtroopers move in to watch, luke and the others sneak around to get the falcon.  Vader and Obi-wan remain poised....as if waiting for the other to strike.  Luke see's Obi-wan, who in turn see's luke.  Vader moves in to make the first strike, begining the fight.........and obi-wan makes no attempt to parry, choosing instead to meditate.

Just a thought.....what say you all?