SpenceEdit

I'm not sure about the HD, but I'm definitely going to redo them. The HD stuff is a little tough on my system, and I think I'll get better results without adding anything I'm unfamiliar with to the mix.

TPM will probably take me 2 months to do, maybe less. Not that I'll be working on it all that time, but with the free time I have available that's probably what will happen. I'm leaving some wiggle room for the voiceovers, as I don't know how intense that will be.

Oh I'm warm to it. I'm so warm to it, I went back to cold to it. Then warm again. But this time, warmer.

By the way, I just finished converting my 1080p blu ray edition into MPEG2. From there it's going to Lagarith AVI and then I can start really getting into this.

As far as Duel of the Fates is concerned, I'm not going to re-do what I have done so far with the better quality transfer, but I will use that transfer for Yoda scenes. I'm putting so much grain and craziness over that video that I don't think it'll make a huge difference.

That's why I find the special editions interesting. It's almost changing the whole story arc to fit the prequels, which obviously is a bit silly as he should've just made the prequels fit with the OT better. They're almost like fanedits made to tie everything together, except they are legit.

I personally wish I could have both versions, the OOT and Special Editions, for this reason. Which I actually feel like I already have, thanks to Harmy's HD versions, but I digest.

Nobody will be braindead in my TPM. Except maybe Jake Lloyd, but that's unavoidable.

I think we lose a little that way. As far as storytelling goes, we gotta get their faces up there pretty quick. I know we don't meet Luke/Han/Ben for a while in ANH, but at least we get Leia-3PO-R2. If the movie goes on too long without a protagonist, people are going to lose interest.

I've never purchased a blu-ray disc and I have a blu-ray player. They just don't seem worth it. I do enjoy avchd discs though. Harmy's AVCHD prequel trilogy, to me, is the best way to watch the Original Trilogy.

I can't wait to get home from work to play with some of these ideas.

Thanks guys! I love my brothers and sisters at fe.org, but Star Wars threads over here always get more "outide of the box." Love it.

That would be really hard to pull off. I do like introducing them through the fog though. That has a bit of the same effect.

TV's Frink said:

SpenceEdit said:

I say nice things about the movies! Can I get an invite to the Ranch?

Where's your traffic? ;-)

 Ever been to Orlando, my friend? I got plenty of it.

EDIT: Good to see the Obi-Wan face palm transition has returned. What you don't know is that 3PO is shouting "NOOOOO!" over that.

I was just going to call them The Seperatists from movie 1.

I say nice things about the movies! Can I get an invite to the Ranch?

Dude, that is a brilliant idea. I may have to steal that. Do you know who I need to talk to for permission to use?

I do quite like the opening if I can get the pacing better. It puts a face on the Federation and our protagonists, and it has the Jedi ending fools. It can be a good opening if the pacing is picked up.

I can tell you that blu-ray transfer looks much much better in motion. It's not perfect, I guess, I didn't see much wrong with it but apparently there is. It looks clean, bright, lots of detail and great colors. I'm pleased.

Maul on the bridge of what?

I don't think I'll introduce Dooku in TPM, I don't see much reason for doing it and it would be a technical nightmare. I'm trying to avoid technical nightmares.

Length wise, I'm aiming for about 1hr.45 to 1hr.55.

Yes! Exactly! I think TPM already works the best as a standalone film, and could easily be the New Hope of the trilogy.

I wouldn't want to start on Tatooine as Tatooine is the slowest part of the movie. At least starting on Naboo, we get some good sword fighting right off the bat. I will be getting to Anakin faster though. Actually, I'll be getting to everything faster. One of the big points of this is a complete pacing overhaul.

I'm kind of in love with this blu-ray transfer. It looks fantastic.

EDIT: I like the fuel source idea, but I was thinking of adjusting the concept of Naboo being a backwater planet. That's a pretty elegant backwater planet. I was thinking of finding something that would make it appear more important.

For instance, in Duel of the Fates, Naboo is right in the middle of five different trade routes. Since the Senate has exorbitantly raised the trade taxes, the Trade Federation has cut off Naboo, pretty much halting all trade in the galaxy.

It's still the taxation thing, which I'm not crazy about, but at least Naboo becomes important.

TheoOdo said:

I've always found the motivations of the Neimodians to be not very credible. If all mention of "trade disputes" could be removed and replaced with some more aggressive motivation (expansionism, a stab at galactic dominance, an attempt to cultivate slave labour etc. etc.), I think the film would mesh more easily with the style of the original trilogy while making the Neimodians more threatening villains.

Would you consider dubbing the Neimodians or using subtitles at all?

How about completely changing the nature of the Federation, their motivations and their origins?

 Yes on all accounts. Still figuring out exactly how to do all that, but yes. I definitely would like new voice dubs, and a bigger threat. I don't know what that threat is going to be, but it will not be a "tax dispute."

Mainly I'd like it to just be simpler. All the taxation fuckery is just too complicated. It needs to be more of the "This is the Trade Federation, and they are evil" variety.

Wow, I thought they might finish post on a few of the deleted scenes, but it sounds like they're all in rough shape so far. Very diasppointing.

I've been quietly working on this in tandem with Duel of the Fates, and I wanted to get a discussion topic out there as I always get great ideas from that.

Here's the basic bullet points so far:

-Remove Jar Jar and Gungans completely.

-Minimize focus on Anakin. He is a supporting character to the two main Jedi. Qui-Gon is the main protagonist.

-Remove any scene that is not exciting, fun, or pushing the story forward.

-Darken Sidious’ face, so as to make it less obvious he is Palpatine.

-Trim down all action to be at its purest and most exciting.

-Get off of Tatooine as quickly as possible.

-Remove C-3PO completely.

-No midichlorians.

-Speed up Coruscant to make the senate scenes more exciting and the Jedi scenes more intriguing.

-Anakin does not accidentally do anything. Everything he does in the final act is purposeful.

-The film ends with Qui-Gon’s funeral, with a sweeping musical track to fit. The final shot of Palpatine is removed as well. Less obvious that he is sidious.

I'll be using the Blu-Ray as my source, so the new Yoda and better picture quality will be part of it. I would like to release this one in hi-def AVCHD as well.

The main goal is to turn this into what it was meant to be: A swashbuckling adventure flick. Build the mythology, but always make sure the pacing and fun are the most important thing.

So that's the basics. What do you guys think? is there anything that you've always wanted to see in a TPM edit that you've never seen done before? Throw out some ideas!

fixed version is going to happen eventually, but it might be a little while. I plan to rerelease all of my SW edits in HD with new changes and added deleted scenes from the Blu-Rays. I also intend to include my first try at TPM in that run.

So, not soon, but yes it will be coming. There are some things I want to change, the music over Vader's death will go back to the original version, and some of the changes I did I will redo so they are executed better. And again, I'm going to use HD quality, probably Harmy's despecialized edition if he's cool with it.

I think George thinks he is right, and doesn't really see enough of the fanbase reation to realize he isn't. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly malicious in it. We're a pretty small group of fans that are unhappy about the non-release of the OOT, the majority of people don't care about it. Remember, he sees these as upgrades, and most people do as well.

Now that there's been a notable uproar about the blu-rays, maybe he'll start to get it.

Pacing, to me, is the biggest issue. The pacing on all 3 is horrendous except for probably the second half of ROTS. There's some interesting stuff going on in the plot, but Lucas can't hold your interest long enough to get invested in it. It's all very overwritten, there's scenes that seem to exist solely to get the running time to 2 hours in all of the prequels.

Greatly exaggerated. In fact, I've been working on a straight up TPM edit as I've been doing Duel of the Fates. A lot of the ideas and concepts I'm working on are actually going to work well with standard prequel fanedits.

Duel of the Fates is a huge project for me, one that will take a while to complete. What may end up happening is I continue to work on that in the background while releasing TPM and re-releasing my other Star Wars edits, with fixes, addition of new deleted scenes, and HD picture quality. This includes the revised version of ROTJ. I got some pretty cool ideas at play here, and I may be able to make my perfect version of the prequels now. The one that won't change much is probably ROTS, I'm pretty happy with that as is with some little changes.

I know there's a lot of talk about DNR and other such technobabble, but I perused the Blu-ray transfer of TPM today, and it looks pretty darn awesome to my eyes. The clarity is great, the colors really pop, and the new Yoda fits right in. It went from the worst looking of the series to possibly the best. The colors in the Darth Maul battle are breathtaking.

I love how on topic this has remained.

In all honesty, as much as his reluctance to release the original versions irks me, this guy was responsible for Star Wars and Indiana Jones. He kind of shaped my childhood. I find it really difficult to hate him because of that.

Yes, he had a lot to do with Crystal Skull and the way Star Wars is now, but I really just can't hate him. Look at all the books, soundtracks, games, TV shows and awesomeness he's given me. Some of my favorite experiences with my Dad involved a movie George Lucas was involved in. My fondest memories of my friends are from going to see the prequels, or attending Star Wars Celebration, or playing the Star Wars RPG.

Honestly, George Lucas is one of my favorite people ever.

And King Conan would be freakin' sick.

I'm currently in preproduction for an independant film I'm making which is sucking up most of my editing free time. I have pretty much completed my TPM section, which does not have a gungan in sight.