Timstuff

I was thinking... If the Z-95s were to be integrated into the prequels, they should be new and shiny looking, similar to the Y-Wings. Instead of dirty gray with streaks of color, they should be largely red and chrome / silver / white, like they're fresh off the assembly line. The traditional gray X-Wing look should be what happens when the paint job fades or the shiny metal gets weathered beyond recognition.

mrbenja0618 said:

Timstuff said:

I'd be all for inserting some Z-95s into ROTS. Also, some Clone Wars era Y-wings would be pretty kick ass too.

BTW, I finally figured out how to get 5.1 audio to work in Adobe Premiere, and so it looks like I might be able to get started on my fan edit soon. This weekend/monday I'll probably try to see about doing some color correction on The Phantom Menace, since that will be an important component to my edit.

What I want to know is if you figured out a way to replace music. But look forward to hearing more about your edit.

I've dabbled a little bit in music replacement, since I had to use it for some of the cuts and additions I've made. It really depends on the footage you're working with, because in some scenes the music is limited to the left and right channels for the most part, but in other parts if you were to try to cut out the music you'd be cutting out too much of the sound, as well.

Probably the best example is when I reinstated the scene with "Greedo" (minus the part where "Greedo's" name is revealed). The shot immediately after that is when Qui Gon gives Anakin his money from the pod sale. Since the music changes, I had to remove the original music from that scene and replace it with the rest of the song that was in the Greedo scene from the soundtrack CD, and timing it out so that it would sync up. In doing so I ended up cutting out the ambient sounds in that scene, so in order to replace them I actually took some of the ambient Mos Eisley sounds from Episode IV and laid them on top of the new music, and the end result was pretty seamless.

Like I said, in some parts music replacement is quite doable, but in other parts it would be more trouble than it's worth or maybe even impossible. The only way to know for sure is to listen carefully to the channels and see what you can get away with cutting and replacing.

It's possible, it's just that it would take a fair bit of work and I'm not sure as to whether or not the results would be convincing.

Kind of a funny choice for an edit, but I'm interested anyway because I like Rat Race and I'm curious to see what you do with it. And I agree, Smash Mouth did not belong in the ending. They're a one hit wonder who couldn't put on a decent live show to save their grandmas.

That new shot looks AMAZING!

Initial editing is DONE! There's still plenty of work to do such as the ADR, cleaning up the image in After effects, and composing a DVD out of it, but the bulk of the work is now out of the way. I've got the movie down from 2 hours and 15 minutes to 2 hours and 8 minutes, including about 4 minutes of reinstated footage (meaning the total time cut is about 10-11 minutes).

At this point in the process I expect that I could potentially have the "canon cut" finished sometime next week since all that needs to be done to make it is reinstate the deleted voices (well, for the most part-- there's still quite a few voice bits I'm leaving on the cutting room floor even in the canon cut, obviously), and do the color correction. The dubbed version will be done sometime in March I'm guessing.

Keep your eye on this thread for future updates! I'm very excited to have reached this milestone, and I look forward to reaching the next one!

Not to mention Princess Leia, who changes accents during the movie. ;)

Production is well underway! If this was a traditional edit I'd probably be considered about 40% finished with the actual editing in Premiere, but that's a lot more generous than the actual number because I still have voice overs and color correction to take care of when the editing is over. I just made it up to the pod race and got as far as Jabba's intro (now without the gargling announces), and I've made lots of little cuts here and there. Overall I'm quite pleased with how this is turning out, and I think I will be able to meet my goal of making an Episode I edit that is visually pleasing and pretty close to seamless. I just hope I don't botch up the DVD, because that is definitely going to be the tricky part.

I'm also thinking about doing two versions of the release: one that has my new voice overs and story alterations, and one that is a more conservative, traditional fan cut that cuts down the annoying elements rather than radically re-imagining them. The "purist version" will exist as an alternative that fits more easily into existing Star Wars canon without altering the backstory or re-imagining the voices of characters like Jar Jar, whereas the regular version will be more the fantasy "What if it had been this instead?" cut. I'm not yet sure which version I'll personally enjoy watching more though, since not exactly the sort of person who loves listening to my own voice.

As I've stated before, The Phantom Edit is providing a lot of inspiration for what I'm doing in my edit, but I'm not following it beat-for-beat. There are some edit ideas from TPE that I've taken a step further, and I've also got ideas of my own. The "Regular" version will have a bit in common with the Magnoliafan edit, since it changes characters' voices and re-imagines their personalities and motives. Both versions will probably have an alternate opening crawl, although the "purist version" will be less modified since the background story will not be changed.

Boba Fett does not even need Morrison's voice to be plausible as a Jango clone, anyway. When Episode II came out I assumed that the reason they chose Morrison was because his voice sounded close enough to Boba Fett's except with a Kiwi accent. Boba Fett has been separated from his father for 26 years by the time ESB takes place, so why would he have the exact same voice? Wouldn't he have probably picked up a different accent during his travels, especially since he was still a kid when his dad died (and kids are able to ditch accents a lot more readily than adults)?

Seriously, the change was totally unecessary and it detracted from the character. Morrison literally phoned in that performance, and it does not sound like Boba Fett. It sounds like Jango Fett, and I do not want Boba and Jango to be treated like they're the same character. The connection between the two characters worked fine before Lucas started mucking with it, and I'd prefer to think of the Morrison dub as an unfortunate accident that we're all best off forgetting ASAP.

OK, screw that, now I am converting the whole file into an MOV encoded with the Apple DV codec at 100% quality. I'm guessing that this file is going to be a beast in terms of HDD space (it's currently converting, slowly), but from what I understand that's the best option to go with. I'm still new to all this and understanding how to make an efficient work flow is something I'm still learning, but right now it's looking like DVD Decryptor > MPEG Streamclip > Premiere > After Effects > Premiere > DVD editor (not sure which one to use yet). I'm also going to have to "obtain" the Dolby plugin for Premiere at some point so that the 5.1 audio which I fought so hard to import will be in tact.

OK, from what I can tell after trying to get this to work on the school's computers, the problem is that the video file is so friggin' big that the Adobe programs are somehow getting overwhelmed. I think that the solution is going to be to break the video file up into several chunks and then reassemble them in Premiere, because it seems to accept shorter MPG and M2V files. The question is, how small do the files have to be? I've already tried cutting the film in half and that was still too big, so now I'm trying to see if a 30 minute chunk will do the trick.

Lucas promised us years ago that there'd be a six movie boxed set when all six films were done, and he still hasn't followed through on that. It makes me mad, but on the other hand I hope that when it finally happens it's because he actually bothered to take his time and give all six films the optimal image quality and bonus features. If Lucas released a six pack consisting of just the existing 2-disc sets that have already been out for quite a while, I probably would not buy it, as much as I would love to have a big fancy sleeve to keep all six movies in.

Production is underway! I'm probably going to be working on the project mostly from school computers since they are more tolerant of the high-stress rendering needs of Premiere and After Effects, and because I can more easily use my Windows-only portable HDD to store data (at least until I can afford to get a new one for my Macbook). Today, I began the task of transitioning the project into a Windows environment, and I also did some voicework for a trailer I hope to have out sometime soon, with new voicework for Nute Gunray, Jar Jar Binks, and a narrator (I'm not sure if the trailer will have a narrator, but I'm keeping my options open). I'm also probably going to ditch the Celtic-sounding accent on Jar Jar that was in my prior experiment, since I discovered a way to convey the voice without needing a "foreign" sounding accent to make it sound unique.

Also, I think I have decided on a title for the edit, since it all comes back to what this whole project is about: "Redemption." At its core the Skywalker story is about redemption, and this since this project is a chance to redeem the movie from some of its weakest elements I'm hopeful that the title will prove appropriate.

OK, I'm at school trying to import the .MPG file into after effects CS4 on one of the school PCs, but instead of the problem I had on my Macbook Pro where it would look crappy when imported, on the school PC it seems like After Effects just plain freezes up when I try to import it.

Am I going about this the wrong way? I was under the impression that color correction should be done to the footage before editing starts, but I heard that there are other people who will do the editing first and then take care of everything in After Effects afterwards. This would certainly solve some problems for me, since After Effects seemingly refuses to load the MPG files correctly, but they work fine in Premiere. If I did the editing first and then saved the color correction for later, that would save me a lot of trouble (although I am a bit worried about the footage being re-compressed too many times if I accidentally do this in the wrong order).

Something I just realized that is interesting about watching Empire Strikes Back, if you are viewing the saga in chronological order, is that your first impression of Yoda in ESB is "oh no, he really let himself go, didn't he?" LOL. I can imagine a first-time viewer actually believing that after spending 20+ years in a swamp Yoda has gotten a bit eccentric, especially since his once pristine Jedi robes are now fraying rags.

The story goes that the S-foil design proved to be more versatile and allowed for more firepower, so the Z-95s was eventually replaced by it. I think a real X-wing kind of mitigates the notion of technological escalation from the war in a way, but I do think Y-Wings make sense because they are supposed to be pretty old in Episode IV, and the only reason they keep them around is because they were built so friggin' tough that they're managed to last 20+ years of service.

Also, after poking around a bit it sounds like this problem has been fixed in newer versions of AE. My school's copies are probably much more up-to-date than mine, so I'm hoping I can get the color correction all squared away at school since that means I won't have to add an extra round of compression to my edit (which is particularly important to me, since one of the goals of my edit is to improve the picture quality over the official release).

VOB and MPG are actually the same thing, it's just that the name of the container file is different. Most programs don't read VOB, but if we rename it as an MPG then we can trick it into reading the contents. It's the same story with a demuxed M2V file, and unfortunately, that means that demuxing is not a way to escape After Effects' wrath. I'm gonna have to go over there to render the file anyway, since my laptop would fry trying to do it.

I really don't get this. If I make a small clip of the file, depending on what part of the film it's from, After Effects might except it. For other parts of the film though, I get the same problems, and if I try to import the whole film then the whole thing looks pukey. I can't figure out what variable is causing this to muck up, which is very frustrating. Maybe I should try doing this on one of the computers at school tomorrow.

Oh, and before someone jumps in and says "Convert it to DV!", I'll get it out of the way right now that I don't want to use DV because there's no way to export a DV file at 23.98 FPS using MPEG streamclip. My only option is 29.97 FPS, which would cause me all kinds of problems.

OK, here's the deal: I ripped Phantom Menace using DVD Decryptor, and then duplicated the VOB file and re-tagged it as an MPG. I also trimmed down just a little bit of the VOB using MPEG Streamclip and renamed it as an MPG and tested it in After Effects, and it worked fine. But then, when I imported the fill movie, it looks like crap. Compression artifacts, grain, every problem up the wazoo. I have no idea what the problem is, since theoretically the only difference between the big file and the small one is size.

Anyone know what could be the culprit here, and what I can do to fix it? Like I said, when I used just that small clip earlier it looked fine, but when I worked with the full movie it looks worse than Youtube quality.

I'd be all for inserting some Z-95s into ROTS. Also, some Clone Wars era Y-wings would be pretty kick ass too.

BTW, I finally figured out how to get 5.1 audio to work in Adobe Premiere, and so it looks like I might be able to get started on my fan edit soon. This weekend/monday I'll probably try to see about doing some color correction on The Phantom Menace, since that will be an important component to my edit.

Spending 23 years in a swamp smokin' Dagobah green can do some mighty harsh things to a man's body, especially when he's only 2 feet tall. ;)

I was thinking about the possibility of making the Emperor's shuttle look fancier, like making it look really clean and having a grand looking emblem on the side of it, but on the other hand would that really be what the Emperor would want? It would make him an attractive target to any nerdowells who are around, whereas a standard, weathered looking shuttle is inconspicuous.

Oh dear... Now I've gotten myself on a train of thought that I'm having trouble leaving! :(

Palpy could use some pink around his eyes. Other than that, good mockups!

The movies were tinkered with vastly before they were even released, as we saw in Deleted Magic. Episode IV is not the movie Lucas shot, but rather what came out of the editing room after a serious re-evaluation of what he wanted out of the film. I think it's a shame that Lucas didn't save Episode I in post the way he did with Episode IV, but looking back at what Episode IV came out of, I think there's plenty of hope for the prequels. I already enjoy them even though I consider Episode I to be inferior to the originals, with Episode II being somewhere between that an Revenge of the Sith (which I hold to be of similar quality to the OT), but I think that with a bit of re-tooling they could be pretty darned close to where the original trilogy was at.

Ripplin said:

Yes, and if Ady has worn it in public yet. :D

Ady, I had better not hear any reports of a wampa at Anthrocon! >:|