SpenceEdit

Yes, I'd like to see if I can get permission to use that as well, but I'd like to see what the results look like.

Oh dude, there will be a whale of a commentary for Duel of the Fates, trust me.

haha yeah thanks for listening to the commentary. There's a lot of little cuts that I point out, and it also gives you a little bit of an idea of why I did some of the things I did. My whole goal was always to be able to back up my choices, even if not everyone agrees with them.

Hmm... thanks for the advice. I'll see if I can get in touch with any of them.

Thank you for your review.

However, may I pose a question? Do you think your opinion on my changes was heavily, heavily influenced by a hatred of the prequels? Because that what it seems like to me.  It's just interesting to get that point of view, as  I edited from the angle of someone that enjoys the prequels.

I have actually toyed with doing TPM entirely in narration, but there's a few things I don't like about that.

1. I like the lead-in of Vader intercepting Leia's ship above Tattooine leading to him thinking about Tattooine which leads us into the story well.

2. I don't want to lose Darth Maul/Qui-Gon. They are important to the story.

I'm going to start playing with some rotoscoping ideas. I don't know how that will turn out, I'm terrible with effects programs. But it's going to  make the edit that much better.

Well this is really messing up my Zen. I feel weird moving on to Part II and III full steam without figuring out this Jar Jar business.

As far as what I have done of Part II, removing Kamino/Jango as the Clone model is working really, really nicely. Basically, Obi-Wan takes the poison dart to the droids in the Temple (a deleted scene from the movie) and a new voice over has the droid identify it as a poison native to Geonosis. Obi-Wan flies there to investigate. I also think it helps Jango's character a little by having him just be a random Bounty Hunter working for Dooku. This also means I've removed Boba from the movie as well. Jango is the silent badass just like, funny enough, Boba Fett was!

That would be a cool fanedit!

Yeah, it's all cool ideas. The problem is, as it was with ROTJ, that the material to make it into what I want is very limited.

Yeah, but I don't know how I could create a scene of Jar Jar contacting Sidious/Maul about it.

What I'm hoping is that what little remains of Jar Jar can be rotoscoped. Basically the wide shots are the problem, specifically as they are walking into Mos Espa. Those shots have a bit of camera movement that might make it extremely difficult. But I could always find a way to remove that shot.

Any brave rotoscopers out there?

What if Qui-Gon hires Jar-Jar as a guide when they reach Tattooine? Jar-Jar leads them to Watto's shop. Later, Jar-Jar sells them out to Sidious, and stays on Tattooine, never to be seen in the story again.

It gives him a story purpose for existing, and gives Sidious a reason to send Maul there. I don't know how I can make it work, as I'll need to create a scene where Jar-Jar sells them out. Hmmmm...

There's only two ways I can see Jar-Jar functioning in this film:

1. The idea described above, where I try to manipulate it so that Jar-Jar sells the Jedi out to Sidious.

2. Somebody helps me rotoscope him out of the shots I can't crop and he just gets cut altogether.

I don't know how realistic either idea is, but that's all I've got right now. I know that I don't want what I have right now, which is a random character walking around with the main characters not saying or doing anything.

I don't have much success with Roto so far, haha. Anybody good with that that can do it rather painlessly? I'll crop/edit him out whenever possible. He really isn't very present. That would be the best end result, to remove him entirely.

Any updates on this? The Tron blu-ray comes out shortly which I assume will be very useful for this!

I'm really looking forward to this. If you have any more clips or concepts that you want to talk out, feel free to PM here or on FE.

I honestly had a lot of fun doing that commentary track. I hope it was informative rather than just me being goofy, but that will always be a part of it with me I think. I think I will continue to do them for my edits, or at least the major ones.

And if you liked the commentary track, Duel of the Fates will have one. Just think, you get to listen to me for 3+ hours, you lucky dog you!

Well I'm cutting most of the antics. This is where it's becoming tough, As of right now Jar-Jar says maybe 2 words the entire movie. He's just... there. He doesn't have a role in anything. And maybe that's my problem, I haven't him anything to do, but there isn't really anything for him to do. I've removed all of the other gungans and their battle at the end, so his purpose is gone. It's like the edit suffers from him having nothing to do, but it will suffer if I put things back in.

I wish there was a way to just totally remove him. I do have an HD source, but I don't think its feasible to crop him from every single shot.

I'm struggling with something right now that I'd like to get an opinion on.

Jar-Jar. Jar-Jar is a problem. If I could totally remove him that would be fantastic, but I can't. So I need to establish who he is for this edit.

The problem is, I don't really know who he is for this edit, as he has no purpose. Once I get beyond TPM, he's more or less completely removed, but while they are on Tattooine I can't get rid of him.

As it plays right now, the lead into TPM is a narrated piece that sums up what has been going on. The seperatists have invaded Naboo, Padme asks two Jedi to help her escape, and whammy, the ship flies away from Naboo. It works great and gets us into the important action quickly, but we have this weird frog guy wandering around with our Jedi. Because everything involving the Jedi getting to Theed has been removed, he's just kind of there when they reach Tattooine.

I've been toying with mentioning in the narration that he is a senator, or an aid to Padme, or an aid to the Jedi, but I don't really know. I can't think of a good way to make him work for this edit. Anybody have any ideas?

I've decided to split the edit into chapters, similar to what is done in recent Tarantino edits. They are as follows:

Part 1: Prophecy of the Force
Part 2: The Clone War
Part 3: Duel of the Fates

Obviously these chapters relate to the prequel that they contain. In addition there is also an overture, prologue, and intermission. There are two bookends of ANH era Vader. So basically the timeline jumps around a lot, and I feel having these chapter cards helps keep everything flowing right and reduces confusion. I mean in the first 15 minutes alone we go from The Sith was to 1000 years later with Vader in ANH era and then back to 40 years before that to the beginning of TPM. I don't want it to get too jumpy.

I'm going to post a rough clip of how things flow into TPM this afternoon, maybe that will help with my Jar-Jar conundrum.

A couple cool tidbits, things that usually aren't cut that I'm able to do through the style of this edit:

No Queen Decoys

No Gungans other than Jar Jar

Zam Wessel is not a "changeling"

No Kamino subplot/ Jango is not the basis for the Clones.

No General Grievous

No Bail Organa other than Senate scenes.

Heavily reduced Kashyyk battle.

No birth of the twins/Jedi going into exile. That's not saying that it doesn't happen, but Anakin doesn't know that it happened, and this is all from his point of view.

New pics:

If you guys want to start editing, Womble is very simple and will do the job. It's a good place to start.

If you want to get really in-depth and have a lot more control over everything, get Sony Vegas. It's the same price as Womble. It's got a bit of a learning curve, but it's well worth it.

I won't be going back to fix those things, as I don't feel they need to be "fixed"... all the cuts came out exactly the way I wanted them to. Version 2 will just be a tech glitch fix.

It is always interesting to hear what people would've done differently. I dare you to try some of those ideas, because trust me, just about everything that's been said here I did try. If you can make it work I'd be highly impressed and quite happy to be proven wrong!

MTH I tried both of those scenes that way but for one reason or another didn't like how it turned out, so I went with what I had. That doesn't mean to say you guys wouldn't like it that way, but I prefer what I went with.

For instance, if I put Leia and Wickett right after the speeder bike chase, then what goes inbetween the next two Han/Luke scenes? Again, material was very constricting on this edit.

Out of curiosity, what are those two things?

Oh and to reply to musicman, the idea was to give it an old school epic feeling, but the actual content of the movie has taken more of a life of its own since then. One of the biggest inspirations for me has been Metropolis by Fritz Lang as far as look and music. the 1930's Dracula and Philip Glass' music for it have also been a big inspiration. So it feels almost like a dark epic similar to those films, but obviously it isn't silent. It's familiar in its classic stylings, but with a completely original feel.