coinilius

Indeed - trying to assemble the deleted material into a lower image quality edit is still a worthy idea. 

A bit off-topic but I am really in favour of the idea of replacing Jar Jar in TPM with C3PO :P

But more on-topic, I think that the lack of physical interaction made it harder to relate to the droids and aliens in the PT... instead of acting against something physical, the aliens and droids were more often added in later and you can really tell when the actors are just staring in the general but not wuite direction of the characters that are going to be placed in later.

MrInsaneA said:

coinilius said:

In the Lone Gungan Edition of TPM, Yads uses footage from Star Trek: Insurrection and Terminator Salvation to make the invasion of Naboo a little more dramatic. 

 

What footage, pray tell?

Shots of the Baku village at night being shot at while villagers flee (from ST:I) and shots of people being rounded up/herded/transported from T:S.  It really depends on personal preference how well you think the shots are incorporated, but it is a worthy effort. 

In the Lone Gungan Edition of TPM, Yads uses footage from Star Trek: Insurrection and Terminator Salvation to make the invasion of Naboo a little more dramatic. 

After some tinkering with the Phantom Menace I put together a very rough mock-up of a re-staged scene where Nute Gunray tells Sidious that they have lost Padme - I wanted to move that scene from the control ship and onto Naboo, to show that the Nemodians have settled themselves in on the planet. 

Like I said, it's only rough and you have to ignore the presence of Darth Maul - pretend that he has been replaced with another Nemodian or something :P  In a final version I would also like to darken up Sidious's face as well, to play with the idea that maybe Sidious and Maul are the same character.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6e0nZy2VjQ&feature=youtu.be

^I've been playing around with a rough edit of TPM for awhile now, and I used that same idea about Maul arriving during the sandstorm to help speed things up as well and I think it works quite well as a means of speeding up the Tatooine sequences.

Speeding up the entire movie was what I wanted to do, and to that end also cut out the original meeting with Wato - I cut from them entering Tatooine to the Feds talking to Sidious then back to Qui Gon on the radio to Obi Wan asking if there is anything on the ship they can barter with.

I also cut the entire opening down so that it went straight from the crawl to the Fed ships landing on Naboo and heading straight into the palace, but I don't think that idea would be useful for this edit, since the Fed stuff at the beginning is needed with the new Star Forge stuff Spence is adding.

In any event, I'm really looking forward to this edit :D

Rather than have the lights just flickering on and off by themselves, you should just have the lights off but have a 'flash' whenever the lighsabers connect with each other that momentarily lights up the room... might help sell the 'dimmed room' attack and the tension :)  

I always did think Jabba had a sex-face going on in that scene...

What if Threepio was just a droid in Amidala's court?  Maybe he could have been sent out to find the Jedi... or to find help or something at least.

Maybe someone should just remove the episode numbers from the titles and just make the two trilogies into, well, two trilogies. 

Barbar Jinks: Something like that could work - would have to make sure Wattoo and Anakin aren't in  the shot though

shanerjedi: Yep, I just didn't have the skills to attempt removing Qui-Gon calling him Anakin - it would obviously have to go.  Also, I'm with you on the Greedo issue - In an actual edit I would leave the Rodian's unsubtitled so it's easier for him to be a random Rodian 

Also, back on the lightsaber reveal and how to make it work better... maybe if it was cut before Anakin turns around, but somekind of fanfare was added to the soundtrack at that point, like what it has in the theatrical cut  - also let Qui-Gon say his bit like he would in the original cut of the scene as well and add the lightsaber reveal after he finishes talking.

Thanks for the comments guys...

mrbenja0618: I tried fiddling around with the lightsaber reveal footage a bit but it definately still needs work - I tried cutting before he turns around but thought it then went by to quickly, but leaving in the head doesn't seem right either... have to try working with it more.  The lightsaber reveal shot needs to be colour corrected as well, not to mention something would need to be done with the back of the old lady's head in the side of the shot.

Silverwook: What Bingowings said, basically :D It seems an interesting way to get the story going more quickly, plus there is a certain iconic-ness to it - or at least the idea of it - that seems appealing. Qui-Gon is like a gunslinger wandering into a small frontier town and breaking up a fight between the local boys, briefly flashing his piece so one of them recognises what he is... it also immediately presents a relationship between Qui-Gon and Anakin. 

But I think it needs to be seen in the context of other scenes as well though, to really see how it holds up.  I really like the idea of using some 'hey wait up' dialogue - would help explain why Anakin is following along so closely behind Qui-Gon at the end - although I still think that maybe the Sebulba/Jar-Jar scene might still need to be there, or some dialogue and footage cribbed from it to further help sell the intro...

Bingowings: Spot on - but this was inspired by an earlier post of yours after all, so yeah - I always love reading the more radical ideas you put forward, they can be very inspiring

DF Shadow/Angel: Thanks - there are few audio problems and the lighsaber footage still needs to be worked on, but that's what these rough mock-ups are for, right, to get the ideas out there and see how they work :)

BarBar Jinks: Yeah conveying the idea that they don't have anything to trade with is something I was thinking about with this edit - if you go straight from them entering Mos Espa to them meeting Anakin to them going to his house, it doesn't seem like they have done any 'shopping around' to find out about the scrap merchants being greedy... although I think that might also be one of those points that the new faster pace would help gloss over

I think it sounds good and works really well when put to footage - I got a greater sense of feeling from the Anakin/Obi-Wan relationship with that score attached

Heard back from Yads and he was fine with it so I have gone ahead and uploaded a very rough mock-up of what I was discussing earlier on Youtube.  Thanks for all the tips too guys - much appreciated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09brn4FDReM

Changing the order of the fight so that it occurs just after they enter Mos Espa isn't that difficult a task - I used the same sort of trick that others have used to have it occur instead of the Sebulba/Anakin scene.  What I'm unsure of is whether or not the lightsaber reveal could be massaged into working here, in this scene, or not.

Any audio issues are my fault as a result of playing around with introducing the fight sounds as well as trying to synch up the lighsaber reveal to an appropriate point in Qui-Gon's dialogue.

Thanks for the tips Bingowings - I sent Yads a message just in case :)

Looking at the Greedo/Anakin fight scene some more, I'm back to playing around with the idea of having Anakin see that Qui-Gon has a lightsaber in this scene - with some massaging, I think the reveal could work, but it might be tough... I currently have it so that Qui-Gon reveals the lightsaber while saying 'fighting will not change it' with Anakin then looking around and giving a dumb expression - the main problems then are that there needs to be some colour correction done and that there is a big old human woman's head in the shot which either needs to be cropped or else try and cover it up with the back of a rodian head :P

Well, I was looking into the idea more and started playing around a bit - I actually ended up cutting even more than I was originally thinking, transitioning straight from Qui-Gon and friends entering Mos Espa to them spotting the fight and Qui-Gon intervening, using a similar technique to what others have used by having the sound of the fight be heard over a shot of Qui-Gon looking around.

The problem with this scene, though, is that Anakin follows Qui-Gon at the end very quickly, which is pretty strange in the context of them being complete strangers to each other.

Anyway, a rough timeline would be that 1: we see them enter Mos Espa 2: Qui-Gon breaks up Anakin's fight 3: Anakin follows along behind this guy that he has just met because he is intrigued or whatever 4: the Sebulba intro would play out as well - it is needed to cement how Anakin gets integrated into their group 5: fruit stand scene, Anakin sees Qui-Gon's lightsaber and tells them to come to his place to ride out the sand storm.

The dinner scene explains how they need to get money for parts because the scrap merchants are charging too much, but I don't know if that would be enough of an explanation - with this set up, they haven't been shown talking to any scrap merchants, but maybe the story would now go along quickly enough that this wouldn't be a concern...

I did a very rough edit from the arrival at Mos Espa up to the end of the Greedo scene just as a mock-up, but I used Yad's Lone Gungan edition as a source (simply because I had it on this computer). I'm not sure about protocol in this case (since I used someone elses edit as a base) so I won't put a link up to it (PM me if anyone is interested?).

A word of warning though - it is very rough and Qui-Gon still calls Anakin by name so part of the illusion of this being there first meeting is lost there lol  Also, with changes like this I think a lot of it is dependent on the changes to the scenes around it as well, so it doesn't really seem like much by itself.

Thanks for that link, Bingowings - it doesn't sound like it goes as far as I was thinking, but it should be a good start to see how the idea could work.  I was thinking along the lines of cutting the entire sequence in Watto's shop where Qui-Gon is looking for the parts - instead Qui-Gon could have shopped around and gotten a bum deal from everyone, contacted Obi-Wan looking for things to pawn, then gone back out into the street where he sees Anakin fighting with Greedo.

Ah - should have known someone would have come up with that idea already lol  Any particularly good examples of it that you can suggest to check out?

That T-16 idea is an interesting one - too bad the entire podrace sequence couldn't be replaced with T-16 canyon racing instead - it would jive better with Anakin being a brilliant pilot and with him flying the star fighter at the end.

Getting back to an idea Bingowings brought up earlier, about cutting Anakin's original introduction and having him meet Qui-Gon at the market - could the footage of Anakin seeing Qui-Gon's lightsaber (o-eer, that sounds dirty :P ) be spliced into the 'Greedo/Anakin fight' cut scene - so Qui-Gon sees some kids fighting and goes over to impart some unsolicited Jedi Wisdom (tm), Anakin spies the lightsaber hidden under his robe (got to get my mind out of the gutter...) and then decides to follow him to the fruit stand.

Wow, really enjoyed that clip Fleabite - the music was superb and the '70's' style film quality really helped give the footage a new, strangely more 'realistic' feel

I've been following this edit over at Fanedit.org and I have to say that it is really looking like a good, interesting edit *thumbs up*

OzoneSherrif said:

but then wouldn't the movie be like 1 hr long after more cuts?

Funny you should say that - one of the edits that started me thinking about starting TPM off with the invasion under way was Nightstalkerpoets 'the Phantom Hour Edit' since his was the first one that I had seen which removed all the Gungans (except Jar Jar).

Adding to what I wrote before - the first bit of dialogue could also be the exchange between Nute and the droid (via hologram) where he says to be on the look out for the Jedi on the planet.  This would help establish the idea that the Jedi are already there, so that when they are introduced sneaking around later it might not be so out of the blue (obviously they would be mentioned in the opening crawl as well).

I was thinking about ways to punch-up the opening of TPM and it struck me – why not just start with the invasion of Naboo underway, skipping over all the faffing about on the control ship and Amidala talking about invasions and legalities?  The edit could go straight from the (re-written) opening crawl to the shot of the Federation ships descending on the planet, and then it would be a straight run from the ships landing and disgorging troop carriers to the Federation army advancing on Theed.

This would also mean that the first bit of dialogue in the movie would be when Nute Gunray is walking down the stairs with the captured royal court and the talk about ‘processing’ them, etc.  It would be a lot quicker and more action-oriented, and with a suitably re-written opening crawl it would hopefully be enough to set up who the characters are even though there introductions would be much more ‘on the fly’ as it were...  for instance, if the crawl already sets up a ‘young Queen’ then the shot of Padme looking solemnly out her window at the Fed army invading her city, it would hopefully set up who she is for the audience fairly well (and without having clunky exposition lines like ‘it is Queen Amidala herself!’).  Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan would first be seen sneaking through Theed and jumping out at the droids.  It would also work well with a Gungan free edit, as all their opening stuff would be cut, and Jar Jar could just be established as some ‘stray’ Qui-Gon picked up on an earlier adventure.   

Sorry, wasn't sure what Luke's focus was supposed to be on - the fleet or the Death Star, but have now read up more and know what's going on *looks sheepish*