I joined because I was (and still am) doing a TFA edit and volunteered to help Hal 9000 here with his TFA edit. I don’t remember how I found the site, but it likely had something to do with interest in Star Wars Revisited or perhaps Despecialized.
On a different note, you can also do this with potatot chips.
Don’t worry, he’s all right now. I hear he directed the new Spider-Man movie, which is good.
darthrush said:
[Handman] You can cut pretty much all but one scene from Canto Bight, where DJ’s character is first introduced.Or you just have them leave for Canto Bight, and we see them next on the way back already with the codebreaker when Poe calls. No need to see anything of Canto Bight.
Is that what you guys are planning to do? Cut Canto Bight but keep the codebreaker? Are you going to have the scene where DJ is telling Finn about arms dealers or will you cut right to Snoke’s Star Destroyer?
I was thinking about keeping the initial visit to Canto Bight where they look around a bit, they see the real codebreaker, and then get arrested. No preaching about animal cruelty and bad rich people. I’m debating whether or not to cut the scene after DJ picks the lock and then they go right to the escape ship.
That’s a good proposition. Keeps Canto Bight, but to a strict minimum.
Suggestion: when they escape prison, cut straight to DJ’s ship. No chase, no shenenigans.
That’s the best idea, would there be any way to create a different reason they got in prison in the first place other than a parking violation? It feels comical in how such a frivolous action had such a large effect on the sequences Canto Bight
An editor could possibly do the old trick that was done on some of the PT edits: Scramble the alien’s lines and add subtitles. But… what could the new lines be?
Breaking the dress code. 😛 Ironic. They come looking for a code breaker but end up breaking a code themselves.
Go with the crawl you like best and use keyframes for the music sync. I’m doing crawls for Hal’s prequels and he pointed out the way he wanted the end of the crawl to sync with the music so I inserted an extra key frame for the end of the last paragraph. You want sync for each paragraph though, so maybe it’s harder to cheat in that case.
You can also make a difference with the way you format the text. You can reduce or increase the number of lines in a paragraph by changing the letter and word spacing and even the letter width to fit more or fewer words on a line.
At some point I assume this thread turned into the “link to a catchy typo some guy made”-thread but I’m just gonna ignore that and post some bad pun names and such.
Fucking potatots, messing with my brain…?
Maybe it’s a Google Chrome thing?
I have it too, on Chrome mobile. Looks neat. Like the RotJ logo.
This makes me wonder when potacco will become a reality and if potacco flavored chips just taste like tobacco flavored chips with less tobacco.
Potatots are much like tomatots. I hear they are closely related, and potatot plants can produce some sort of uneatable potatot tomatots. I suggest crossing these two plants to make one plant that instead of producing one crop well produces two crops in a half-assed manner. You could call it a totatot plant. It could save space.
I’d settle for Expanded Universe, but thanks.
Something you can do with a potatot is to bring it to Sweden, which would turn it into a potatis. Potatis sounds a bit like latin, but it’s not. 'Tis a root. People rarely bring potatots to Sweden. Someone did in the 15th century (when they were still known as potatoes), thereby giving birth to the first potatis of Sweden, but these days we make our own. Not by giving birth to them, though.
The usual thing for us to do with a potatis is to eat it, when time is due. But sometimes, when Swedes are small, we cut a potatis in half, carve a pattern into the cut surface and use it as a stamp. And other times, when Swedes are small, we do not cut it in half but instead stick four matches into the potatis like legs and pretend it’s an animal.
On rare occasions potatoes have been animals for real, like a horse for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoooooooo
You would think that this fact alone greatly increases the number of things that can be done with a potatot. If the potatot was a horse, you could ride it and feed it and take care of it, you conclude. But naturally that can be done with all potatots, not only the horse variety.
My favorite variety of potatot is the almond potatot, which is grown in the northern parts of Sweden. It is very tasty and has a nice oblong shape and just the right size. Of course, no size of potatot is wrong, but this one is particularly lagom. Lagom is the preferred state of things in Sweden.
My preferred state of a potatot (aside from lagom), is the deep fried state. Potatot chips or french fries. I find them very tasty. Finding potatots is a nice thing to do. At least when you expect it, maybe not when you least expect it. Imagine suddenly finding a potatot in your bed. A potatot in bed with your loved one, even. If you have one. A bed and/or a loved one.
But that might not be so bad, now that I think about it. Having a bed, a loved one and a potatot is all you need, really. In fact, all you need in life is a potatot. Because it’s quite clear that you can do anything with a potatot. Yes. You can do it! You can fulfill your dreams, with a potatot.
A thing on timelines here: The two main storylines in TLJ start at different times. The escape storyline starts a week after the events of TFA; the Ach-To storyline happens immediately after the events of TFA.
The bomber: People complained about how the bomber thing was unrealistic because there’s no gravity in space. That pedantry is inaccurate. The bombs fell due to the gravitational force of the Star Destroyer underneath the bomber. This is the same reason that Star Destroyer falls into the Death Star in ROTJ.
I read in the visual dictionary that the bombs used magnetic tech as well.
Yes, and that is unnecessary. The artificial gravity within the bomber is enough to give the bombs an initial velocity once they are released to propel them towards the target, as Mrebo already pointed it out.
That’s how real space works, but Star Wars space is special. Star Wars spaceships apparently need to keep their engines/boosters on at all times just like airplanes. If “initial velocity” was a thing in Star Wars then spaceships would only need engines for accelerating and turning. Maybe there’s some kind of air in Star Wars space that creates resistance. The force is supposedly all around, so maybe even the vacuum of space is filled with midichlorians, eh? 😉
And we have to assume that initial velocity isn’t a thing or some plot holes would pop up. If the bombs didn’t use magnetism and could rely on initial velocity then the bombers could be much further away to reduce risk of being attacked. And ships wouldn’t have to worry as much about fuel which is a big plot point in TLJ. In a space chase in zero gravity and zero resistance it would still be beneficial to keep the engines running, but this would lead to constantly increasing speeds which doesn’t seem to be what’s happening.
Midichlorian “air” resistance is going to be my head canon now (“that’s not how the force works!”), but it’s probably best to not worry too much about Star Wars physics.
It’s true, but then again, I originally came up with the initial velocity defense to defend the film when arguing with colleagues who nitpicked the whole bombing scene. I didn’t really think through the ramifications it would have. Anyway, the midichlorian space resistance theory is really elegant one. 😃
Haha, it’s something, at least. That would make the midichlorians a useful idea. Or perhaps it’s the force energy field that somehow affects everything.
A thing on timelines here: The two main storylines in TLJ start at different times. The escape storyline starts a week after the events of TFA; the Ach-To storyline happens immediately after the events of TFA.
The bomber: People complained about how the bomber thing was unrealistic because there’s no gravity in space. That pedantry is inaccurate. The bombs fell due to the gravitational force of the Star Destroyer underneath the bomber. This is the same reason that Star Destroyer falls into the Death Star in ROTJ.
I read in the visual dictionary that the bombs used magnetic tech as well.
Yes, and that is unnecessary. The artificial gravity within the bomber is enough to give the bombs an initial velocity once they are released to propel them towards the target, as Mrebo already pointed it out.
That’s how real space works, but Star Wars space is special. Star Wars spaceships apparently need to keep their engines/boosters on at all times just like airplanes. If “initial velocity” was a thing in Star Wars then spaceships would only need engines for accelerating and turning. Maybe there’s some kind of air in Star Wars space that creates resistance. The force is supposedly all around, so maybe even the vacuum of space is filled with midichlorians, eh? 😉
And we have to assume that initial velocity isn’t a thing or some plot holes would pop up. If the bombs didn’t use magnetism and could rely on initial velocity then the bombers could be much further away to reduce risk of being attacked. And ships wouldn’t have to worry as much about fuel which is a big plot point in TLJ. In a space chase in zero gravity and zero resistance it would still be beneficial to keep the engines running, but this would lead to constantly increasing speeds which doesn’t seem to be what’s happening.
Midichlorian “air” resistance is going to be my head canon now (“that’s not how the force works!”), but it’s probably best to not worry too much about Star Wars physics.
The reed is maybe the best/most important joke in the movie from a character/story perspective.
Close second is the lightsaber toss.
Interesting. I feel like the reed joke goes on a bit too far at the expense of Rey, making her look stupid and making Luke look mean as he says “wow, you must be really strong with the force”. I would want to shorten it a bit. What are your thoughts on it?
I don’t think it makes her look stupid at all. She legitimately doesn’t know what the force is or how it works (and I don’t blame her, considering). Luke doesn’t seem mean there (to me at least), he’s just teasing a bit.
I see, thank you for clarifying! I still think it could be trimmed a bit without losing the purpose behind it. And I would argue that in a way Rey knows some of what the force is and some ways to use it. She has heard stories about the Jedi and the force, and she instinctively used the force in a couple of ways in TFA.
Pretty close to Frank’s list:
The reed is maybe the best/most important joke in the movie from a character/story perspective.
Close second is the lightsaber toss.
Interesting. I feel like the reed joke goes on a bit too far at the expense of Rey, making her look stupid and making Luke look mean as he says “wow, you must be really strong with the force”. I would want to shorten it a bit. What are your thoughts on it?
Has anybody mentioned removing the opera singer? Because that’s seriously my only issue with the movie.
Haha, I forgot that one. I might. A redub could work too.
The problem with that is that every faneditor will remove different jokes.
Less is more in this case. Cut only the jokes you are absolutely certain that are ruining the flow of the story at that point.
The your mom joke comes to mind here, this scene is supposed to be TENSE, but it… isn’t, mostly because of that terrible joke. It even manages to lessen the stakes of Rose’s sister’s sacrifice right after.
But you know, fanediting a movie is about making it what you believe it should be like, so yeah… ultimately, the choice is everyone’s 😃
Right. I don’t want to cut jokes because I hate fun, I want to cut the specific jokes that for me personally took something away from the movie. Jokes that are distracting or don’t fit for some other reason. I saw the movie with a friend who laughed at almost all the jokes and personally I found most of the humor funny as well so I want to keep most of it.
Just 13?!?!
Lol.
Too few? Too many? : P Those are the ones that stood out to me after two viewings.
Good idea, but if the only thing we know is that Luke got his saber back we’re gonna wonder why he doesn’t have his saber.
In Force Awakens, we never see Luke accept the lightsaber. Even in The Last Jedi, we know from watching that Luke throws it and Rey picks it up again to practice with later. Perhaps the saber toss scene is not needed. Rey just holds onto the blue one.
As for the humor, it doesn’t feel right to remove every joke, quip, sight gag, and gesture. The movie should be tonally consistent with moments of levity, not a joyless slog.
I think the saber toss might be needed if you keep the end of TFA as it is. She so desperately stretches the saber towards Luke that it might seem odd to just have her keep it with no explanation. I’d keep the saber toss.
As for jokes, I would personally remove or trim about 13 of them. Poe tooling, BB-8 head smash, milk face, seen your routine, everything you said, tickling Rey (trim), coin shooting, two Finn lines from the fathier chase, iron, Finn’s reaction to BB-8 AT-ST, cowl, big ass door. I think that still leaves most of the fun intact.
It bugs me how many people want to strip all humor out of Star Wars.
Yes, The Last Jedi had some attempts at humor that went too far. But instead of completely taking out those lines, perhaps just trim them a little. For example, the infamous “your mom” joke that Poe makes was too much in my opinion, but I was okay with him joking for a moment saying that he was on hold for Hux. Cut it there.
I didn’t mind “big ass door” or Luke winking. I will say that I thought his brushing off the shoulder wasn’t really appropriate, but again — don’t take out all humor. Give us a good balance.
I agree, but then again everyone would take out different bits. I like the shoulder brush, for example.
Btw, here’s something I said on fanedit.org but I think is worth mentionning here also:
Why is everyone feeling the need to open the Rey+Luke sequence exactly where TFA left off?
We don’t need to see Luke toss the saber.
We don’t even need to see the immediate results of Rey meeting Luke in TFA.
The first time we see Rey and Luke since the end of TFA can be… well any scene really. It can be inside the falcon. It can be at the hut. It can be anywhere. We’re not forced to show what happened when Rey gave Luke the lightsaber, it can definitely happen offscreen.
Rey gives Luke his saber, we already know that from watching TFA. Now what’s next? We can open anytime we want. If the Luke lightsaber toss bothers you… don’t show it! And don’t even show any shot from that scene, period! Just Skip it!
Good idea, but if the only thing we know is that Luke got his saber back we’re gonna wonder why he doesn’t have his saber. Maybe it can still work somehow, but I’m not sure.
Personally I’d keep most of that anyway.
Illustrator is probably not a bad idea once you know how to format everything. I did it inside After Effects just so I could tilt and edit the text on top of the real crawl and line everything up.
So, specifics. My text is in a separate 4K composition where I do all the movement (excluding gate weave, getting to that later) and fading of the text. Apparently my focal length is 50mm. Don’t know how I ended up with that number, but it works. Although I have to stretch the text layer about 200%. Maybe 23mm and no stretch works just as well, but this is what I ended up with. 36mm film. Aperture 25,5.
The angle is -79,8 (for matching the TFA crawl). Since this composition is where I edit the text I also keep a guideline layer to see how wide the paragraphs should be. And on the text layer I have a bunch of effects. A yellow Glow, to make the text a tiny bit thicker. And then a Refine Hard Matte which makes it a bit thicker again and smudges out some details when it goes blurry in the distance. And then a 0,5% Camera Lens Blur which doesn’t do much. And then a Set Matte which adds that little gradient fade in the distance of the text. A Simple Choker which makes the edges a bit less soft and more contrasty. A soft red Drop Shadow which makes the edges of the text warm and cozy. And finally a Fast Blur that just softens everything a bit. Now, all this may sound like nitpicking (and it is), but have a look at this with/without effects image and you can see it’s not completely pointless: https://i.imgur.com/SvKgO9O.jpg
And then on to the composition where I put everything together. I scale down the text layer to 50%. And then for the gate weave I put a Transform effect on the layer (you could use the built in Transform property, but this way it’s easy to turn on or off). Alt-click the stopwatch for Position and type in the expression: wiggle(6,0.5). This gives the text a slight jittery motion. Aaaand that’s it. Sprinkle some film grain on top if you want.
I thought it was Fake News Gothic.
It’s real. The News, the Gothic. All of it.
Well…this is helpful! What version of after effects did you use? Also I was under the impression you also added a chromatic abrasion, and lense distortion effect to the crawl as well? Ive been tweaking the project I made in blender to mimic Adys crawl, (but his is also more of the PT style) and also give it that OT feel as well. But this helps to see your exact method. I may try and apply some of these principles to my project just so I can make a template that is more universal and accessible to the community.
I have the Adobe CC subscription, so it’s “the latest one”, not sure about the exact version number. It should be doable in most versions though. I didn’t add chromatic aberrasion and no lense distortion other than what the standard AE camera produces. I could make an After Effects template as well.
I guess the point is that it was very very unlikely to find someone with the needed skill set by chance, especially since Maz made it sound like the Master Code Breaker was the only one who could do it.
Maz said that he was the only one she could trust to do it, not the only one that could do it. It was established that Maz herself could have done it, but she was unable, at the beginning of the transmission.
Good point. I guess it’s hard to say exactly how rare the code breaking skill is, based on what we see in the movie. In fact we see three very different characters who could have done it, so maybe it’s more common than one might think.
I think the wiggle scales down so adding it to a comp is a good idea. I also did a logo zoom the other day (I originally used the TFA logo) and I noticed how the speed is hard to get right since it’s not linear, I ended up having to do a lot of keyframes. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make the logo recede in 3D instead of just scaling it down since I assume that was originally done with a camera move as well. It was also tricky to make the logo look right as it scales down, it’s supposed to blur in a certain way, similar to the crawl.
At the moment I don’t actually remember if I scaled or did it in 3D, but honestly I’m not sure if it’d make that big a difference (probably more so for the lens effects I suppose). That does make me wonder what technique they used for the logo back in the day. Anyway, the trick, with the timing, is to use the ease functions and then mess with the curve on the graph until it’s just right (or in my case, close enough).
I’m pretty sure they must have filmed the logo in a similar way to the crawl, by just moving the camera away from it. That would also explain the timing of the motion, since it would appear to move faster when the camera is close and then slower as it gets further away. I’ll have to take a look at the graph, I haven’t learned how to use that properly, haha.
https://medium.com/@goddammitstacey/star-wars-the-last-jedi-has-a-writing-problem-a19897a9c8b9
Underneath the JGL article is this even better (IMO) article on the writing of TLJ. This one pretty well sums up why the Holdo plot was a mess…
I agree that finding DJ by coincidence was weird, that’s her best point.
Haven’t read the article, but is it? They weren’t looking for DJ, and even when DJ offered they said they were good and went their separate ways. They only go with DJ because he saved them and he’s a better option than none I guess. You could say they were lucky they actually did find someone who could get them into old man Snoke’s boudoir, but they’re equally unlucky for being in league with a guy who ultimately sells out the rest of the Resistance.
I guess the point is that it was very very unlikely to find someone with the needed skill set by chance, especially since Maz made it sound like the Master Code Breaker was the only one who could do it. The likely thing would be to end up in the same cell as some drunk little alien, yet they got a cellmate who could get them out, steal a ship and break codes. It’s a bit too convenient, but then again unlikely things can happen and it’s not exactly the first time unlikely things happen in Star Wars either.
Yeah, I don’t care too much about conveniences in SW, but in this case especially I don’t know. In general I don’t think you can really call it a convenience if it’s ultimately detrimental to the heroes.
Also, for the Maz recommendation, perhaps what she meant was “this is the only guy who can do it that I trust.”
I’d say it was convenient for the plot and not necessarily for the characters involved.
Either way I’m happy about your way of seeing the good sides of some of the problems some people have with this movie and I agree with basically all of the things you’ve written in this thread (that I’ve seen). It’s easier to enjoy something if you give it the benefit of the doubt and think about possible reasons for something happening rather than getting stuck on the reasons for it not to happen. The movie is what it is and complaining doesn’t make it better (unless you fan-edit it).
https://medium.com/@goddammitstacey/star-wars-the-last-jedi-has-a-writing-problem-a19897a9c8b9
Underneath the JGL article is this even better (IMO) article on the writing of TLJ. This one pretty well sums up why the Holdo plot was a mess…
I agree that finding DJ by coincidence was weird, that’s her best point.
Haven’t read the article, but is it? They weren’t looking for DJ, and even when DJ offered they said they were good and went their separate ways. They only go with DJ because he saved them and he’s a better option than none I guess. You could say they were lucky they actually did find someone who could get them into old man Snoke’s boudoir, but they’re equally unlucky for being in league with a guy who ultimately sells out the rest of the Resistance.
I guess the point is that it was very very unlikely to find someone with the needed skill set by chance, especially since Maz made it sound like the Master Code Breaker was the only one who could do it. The likely thing would be to end up in the same cell as some drunk little alien, yet they got a cellmate who could get them out, steal a ship and break codes. It’s a bit too convenient, but then again unlikely things can happen and it’s not exactly the first time unlikely things happen in Star Wars either. I guess it’s a bit like walking into some shady bar looking for a ride to Alderaan and finding some guy who later ends up saving the day on multiple occasions.
