Timstuff

LOL, take your time then. I look forward to seeing it, but I am patient. :)

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

darthmunky said:

I've never actually noticed any of the flipped shots before. But if they are flipped, they should be un-flipped.

 I'm actually with DE on this. You can't just go un-flipping shots. *Usually* they are done for the sake of screen direction. If a character starts to look towards screen right you can't then have a shot of him looking at screen left. (unless its done with some sort of story telling purpose...but I can't think of any off the top of my head)  my two cents :D

The term we learned in film school is "crossing the axis," which is when the audience's eyes are moving in one direction, when suddenly they are forced to move in another. It's something that we should try to avoid, which is why sometimes a director will opt to flip a shot even if it means inconsistencies. An error like a strap on the wrong side of a character is a minor nuisance compared to how badly crossing the axis takes the viewer out of the experience.

"SWCrawlBody," although "Franklin Gothic Demi (Bold)" works too (but it's really hard to get without paying). The title is a font called 'SWCrawlTitle'.

Angel, your manips continue to amaze!

Cool, I'll try to get my hands on it in the near future. My rapidshare account expired last week though so it might be a while. :(

With Kitten Calendar Edition, I was particularly intrigued that you released a Blu-Ray version of it. Have you considered doing so with Real Effing Deal as well, or possibly even an AVCHD disc like what Adywan is doing with his Star Wars releases? That seems to be a very well liked distribution format for HD fan cuts since most of us don't have access to BR burners.

In addition to making further tweaks to the timing on the opening crawl, I discovered I could get much sharper looking text by doubling up the text layer in After Effects. Yay!

No kiddin'. I mean, if I wanted to put together a montage of 70's and 80's movies, how am I supposed to do that without the original versions of these movies? That very problem has happened before, because George Lucas will only funish footage from the Special Editions when people want to show footage of them, even if it's in a historical context. I think it was the AFI who was doing a by-decades montage of film, and they couldn't use Star Wars because Lucas wouldn't approve of them showing footage from the '77 version. I also saw a documentary about Harrison Ford on TV a while back, and when they got to discussing his involvement with Star Wars, they showed the Cantina scene where FREAKING GREEDO SHOT FIRST! In addition to the shot being offensive, in the context it did not make any sense because they were discussing Ford's career at that period, and that is not how the scene played out when the film released.

Like I said, I am not against special editions of movies. What I am against is that George Lucas has more or less stamped out the original versions of his films from history. It's one thing to want to make a movie more enjoyable to new audiences with better special effects and picture quality, but it's another thing to try and revise history and say "this is the movie that came out in 1977, and don't try to tell me otherwise even if it's not true." And, there are the stupid alterations like Greedo shooting first, Boba Fett's voice and Hayden Christensen as Anakin's force spirit.

And BTW, was there any talk of showing star destroyers docked with the Death Star II? That could potentially be quite awesome.

Avatar said:

rcb said:

Avatar said:

A third test of endor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA6Y-mnlHqA

this idea came from darth venal early matte painting of the emperor's arrival so i tried replicating to the best of my abilities

 it says to me the video has been removed. oh, well. vaderios, keep it goin' on those mock ups. you got a lot of freakin' skill. could prolly go into the movie business and do concept art for the director. ;)

here is the real link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIAbaifWJgw

I think that this video kind of highlights that there is such a thing as going too far with the blue reduction in these movies... In the retouched shot, since the only color in it comes from the green planet in the background, it makes the whole thing look kind of sickly, and I'm not particularly keen on that. It's one thing to reduce the blues to where they don't dominate the image, but I think sometimes people get a bit carried away to the point where it feels like the color is being sucked right out of the image.

I don't really like the idea of making a movie-length review of a movie just because you hate it so much. To me, that kind of crosses the line from "entertaining" the way The Nostalgia Critic and the Angry Video Game Nerd are, to being downright obsessive. It seems kind of like the guy who refuses to stop complaining about his ex, not because she's every bit as bad as he says, but because he's still emotionally attached and can't let her go.

I have a better idea: instead of making a 70 minute movie complaining about everything that's wrong with The Phantom Menace, why not try and fix it? I'm sure that the Phantom Editor could have just made an angry video review of Episode I if he wanted to, but rather than just complain about the movie he actually did something, and helped launch what would become the fan edit movement.

I think it's a waste of time to invest that much time and effort into a movie that you claim you despise, only to come out at the end saying you still despise it. Likewise, why should I spend 70 minutes watching a movie whose only reason for existing is to tell me why I shouldn't like another movie, when I could spend that time watching a movie that I will enjoy? I hate Jar Jar Binks as much as the next guy, but I can think of plenty of better ways to spend 70 minutes than watching someone angrily dissect a movie.

I like the fact that it looks like this movie is taking a balanced look at the Star Wars fandom and not just picking one side, because the great fan divide is a very complex issue. I myself often get pushed into the "Lucas supporter" category, but my own feelings about the franchise are a lot more complex what that that label represents. Pretty much everyone despises Jar Jar Binks and agrees that Episode I is the weakest movie in the entire saga, and I agree with the notion that if Lucas wants to fix something, it should be the prequels and not the OT (not to mention that the OOT still needs a high quality restoration, which Lucas seems to have no interest in doing at present).

I was made a fan of Star Wars through the VHS cassettes, and thus I suppose my view on things is a bit different from older fans who actually saw the movies in theaters the first time. The Star Wars I grew up with looked like crap, but I liked the movie in spite of this, not because of this. When the Special Editions came out, I know a lot of people berate the changes Lucas made, and I agree that Greedo has no business shooting first and that the additional "George Lucas humor" was out of place. But still, that was the first time I saw Star Wars in a theater, and it left a huge impact on me. I went from watching a fuzzy VHS tape on a 20 inch screen to seeing the movie in a theater with incredible new special effects, looking like it was shot yesterday. As an 11 year old kid, it blew my mind.

Even Jabba the Hutt, which looking back I do not think belongs in my regular viewing copy of the film was a great treat, because the scene was one that me and my friends had always been obsessed about seeing, not unlike how King Kong fans venerate the lost Spider Pit scene. Even if it doesn't mesh well with the film and doesn't contribute to the plot the way the Biggs scene did (the latter of which I feel was a worthy addition), it was still a great extra for people who had seen the movie a million times before and were curious about what got cut from the film, as was the case with me and my friends.

Having said all that, I think that there should be a co-existence between the special editions and the original, unaltered trilogy. I'm hopeful that at the very least George Lucas's next run of special editions will provide some good fodder for fan edits with their new effects shots and HD transfers. With OOT, I think needs to be preserved since it's an important part of film history, and because there are many people who refuse to watch any other version, and shouldn't they be able to watch the film the way they prefer, warts and all?

Obviously, I could go on for pages and pages about what things I do and don't like about how Lucas has treated Star Wars, but at the end of the day I am a Star Wars fan. Like most of my generation I prefer the original trilogy, but I am not conceptually opposed to the Special editions, and I also get a lot of enjoyment from the prequels even though there's a lot of frustration that must be dug through to find it. I suppose that's how I could describe Lucas-- he frustrates me at times, but at the end of the day he's the guy who makes Star Wars, and the reason he keeps making more is because we keep asking for it.

Rushed as in it moved too fast, or rushed as in it looked crappy? :P

I created the text in Adobe Illustrator, but it would still be pretty easy to provide an AI document with a piece of example text provided that can be edited as desired. Maybe I'll upload my templates later today, after I've gotten some shut-eye... :P

BTW, I have made finished-looking title crawl based on what I want to do with my Episode I edit! You can watch it on Youtube. And remember, this was all done in Illustrator and After Effects-- no recycled footage from the movie here (except for the star field, which was ripped from Episode I for consistency's sake)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJWrwwBVbJ8

There we go. :)

^ True on both Crawford and RR. And on that note, would you really want to be branded as the man who took away Master Mofo's favorite lightsaber? ;^)

Anyway, after tinkering with after effects all night, I've finally been able to create a opening crawl template that is close enough to pass for the real thing. It look a lot of trial and error to get the timing and the angle of the text just like it was in the movie, but I think the results were worth it. Now that I've successfully re-created Episode 1's opening crawl, I can actually do the fun part and replace it with the text that I'd prefer to see! :)

Also, I'll probably make this available for ether FE'ers to use in the near future. After all the frustration I went through of trying (in vain) to find a suitable pre-made template, I'm sure someone out there will appreciate it. :P

Exactly. Mace having a rare colored saber says something unique about his character, so I would not want it to go.

Sorry about that. It's fixed now. You really shouldn't be using Explorer anyway, though!

Anyway, I've come across a bit of a problem with the opening crawl editor. Apparently whoever programmed it accidentally made the typeset on it too big, which causes some problems if you are trying to make a typical length opening crawl timed to the John Williams theme since it means that the paragraphs will be longer, and take longer to move across the screen.

It's a nifty option for people who are working with limited resources or don't need that extra bit of accuracy, but sadly, it's an imperfect option for people who need a full length prologue.

I stumbled onto a program that generates customizeable Star Wars opening crawls last night, and have been fooling around with it. In addition to being a fun novelty, the results it delivers are top-rate and pretty much indistinguishable from the real deal. I highly reccomend it! It is a mac program though, so those of you still bound to the Windows Empire may need to ask some of your hip artsy friends to run it for you. ;)

http://alienryderflex.com/crawl/

I like Clone Wars.

Ah, I forgot about that one. What would we hardcore fanboys do without DVR? ^_^

Like I said before, I think that the scenario Zahn created would serve well as a backdrop for a TV series. It gives an overarching plot but allows for plenty of side stories to happen in the meanwhile, much like the Clone Wars cartoon series. You've got your big bad (Thrawn) and disposable lackeys (Imperial Remnant forces), and you've got main characters with motivations worth giving a darn about. The sky is the limit.

The other possibility is to do a show set between episodes 4 and 5, however I think that post-ROTJ has a bit more potential since the characters and plot have more room to grow. With ESB we'd get Vader and Palpatine with the Empire at full strength, but we'd also have a bit of inevitability and predictability since we know where it's all going to end up (not to mention that Luke's force abilities are on part with a Youngling at that point, and cannot improve without contradicting Episode V). I'd be happy with either though, as long as it means seeing Luke, Han, and Leia back in action.

I already posted this in my project thread, but here's my alternate take on Episode I's opening crawl (inspired largely by Magnoliafan's, but with bits of the original and the overall format maintained to a degree):

*deleted due to glitching*

I agree, going overboard with edge enhancement can kill an image, and in many professional DVD reviews will result in a point loss for picture quality. Not everything in a movie has to look razor sharp!

Good job on the matte, anyway. It gives the shot a lot more depth!

In the spirit of this being a fan-edit, I decided that rather than write a completely new prologue crawl for the movie, I'm going to try and stick with the format of the original, and integrate bits of it into my own. Take a look see:

*EDIT* Apparently my copied-from-MS Word-text was bugging up some people's web browsers, so I deleted it. It doesn't matter though since I'll have a video up pretty soon anyway *EDIT*

As you can see, I plan on borrowing Magnoliafan's plot element of the Trade Federation dealing in slavery, which is both the reason for their conflict with Naboo (which in the original is very ambiguous), and it also raises the stakes. Also, the whole thing ties in a lot more with the events with Anakin on Tattoine, since he also gives a face to the slavery issue that the plot now revolves around.

Oh yeah, another thing I've been toying with the idea of: one problem that I've noticed is somewhat inherrent with some of the more extreme edits of the prequels is that if you are not watching the entire set (like say, you watch one edited film and the other two films unedited), there's a lot of plot holes and inconsistencies. This can be particularly annoying if an editor never finishes their trilogy, or you simply want to mix and match because you prefer some cuts of the film over others, and there's also the issue of how the cuts fit in with the greater canon. With my edits though, I'm hoping I can somewhat avoid that.

I've been thinking about what I want to do with Jar Jar Binks' voice, and there are a couple options I can take with it. One option, which I've done expiriments with was to completely discard his "canon" voice and make up whatever one I wanted. I liked the results, especially since it meant I wouldn't need to cut his dialogue as drastically, but there is a bit of concern about whether or not casual viewers will accept it.

The other option I've considered is to simply have Jar Jar and the other Gungans speaking in Gunganese throughout the movie, but unlike in other edits I would actually record myself speaking the dialogue in a vocal tone similar to the original characters, so that if you were to jump from my Episode 1 edit to the unedited Episode 2, the transition wouldn't be quite as jarring (although that's kind of inevitable, given how annoying un-altered Jar Jar is). It's possible that I could also release more drastic cuts that discard the larger canon and merely focus on exploring interesting new edit concepts, but I'm thinking for my first time around I'll try to keep things fairly simple, and focus on making the story better, cutting the annoying crap, and possibly doing some color correction (amongst other minor effects tweaks).

As for the Neimodians, I intend to leave much of their voicework unchanged, and I'll be re-recording it when the story necessitates it (this will probably mean dubbing over Nute Gunray and his associates completely for consistency's sake, but I'll be mimmicing their original voices).