darth_ender

Captain Antilles said:

darth_ender,

While I am very interested in this project and would love to voice my opinion by voting, I'm afraid some personal commitments will be keeping me away from the forums for a bit (I'm sort of pushing it just by visiting right now, in fact). I'd be more than happy to participate in the future, but I don't have much time to type up my thoughts at the moment. Anyway, good luck! Can't wait to see how things have progressed once I return.

No worries, Cap'n.  We all have personal lives.  I just wanted to make sure you and everyone knew that your opinions matter.  I want to hear from everyone interested in voting, even those who completely disagree with me.  Good luck with your own stuff.

So I know I'm late on this, but I will begin to tally the votes now.  Two people have said they will vote, but they haven't gotten the chance yet *cough* fishmanleeandvladius *cough*.  I will wait a till tonight to post the vote, but once it's posted, I don't want to have to go alter all the tallies again.  Thanks for everyone's participation thus far.

So here is a list of lines with potential utility from the Star Wars Interactive Video Board Game; every line is Vader's:

Unleash your anger.  It brings you closer to the Dark Side.

The power of the Dark Side will destroy you and your Rebellion.

There are no excuses, Commander.

You respond well to the Dark Side.

Answer!

You are truly evil.

My control over you will soon be complete.

Only a true Jedi can control the Force

Do you not realize that I am controlling you?

The responsibility is yours, Commander, and you know the price of failure.

But I doubt they will help you, nor will your Rebel friends.

Report, Admiral?

I shall make you my pupil.

You shall forget all you've ever known and loved.

They shall be nothing to you.

You shall be mine.

When I call, you shall reply, 'Yes, my master.'

You shall obey me completely.

I am displeased that you failed to apprehend the Rebels.

Address me as Lord Vader!

I see the Force is with you.

Commander, you have failed me for the last time.

The Force is with these Rebels.

But I am master of the Dark Side.

I see a great confrontation with Skywalker.

I shall make him bow to the Dark Side.

Some of these line are hokey.  Trying to see how to work some of these in, it crosses my mind that we had voted to strengthen Vader.  I'm not sure how we would include these lines, but some of them could be used to indicate that Vader is trying to pull Luke's strings.  It makes him seem to take more of the initiative on such things, and might make the tension between Vader's and Palpatine's desire for Luke as the new pupil more interesting.  On the other hand, if Vader seems too strong in the face of his Master, it detracts from the significance of his overcoming Palpatine's grasp when saving his son and throwing the Emperor overboard.  Potential places include conversations with the Emperor (especially when the Emperor is looking out the window in the throne room, where he can be dubbed to match changed Vader lines), when talking with Luke on the Endor platform, prior to the duel in the throne room, or even during the duel.  Also we can possibly make him snap at some subordinates.  And of course, maybe we'll use nothing, but this does give us a little more leeway with how to move the story.  One other drawback is that James Earl Jones didn't make Vader speak as powerfully in this game, sounding a little too nice at times.

Shots that may be useful include Vader staring out a viewport, walking down a corridor alone, and walking accompanied by stormtroopers.  The most useful to me would seem to be his walking down the corridor alone, as there are two places I would find this useful, but we only have one shot of it.  He walks down a hall to the turboshaft as he heads to his meditation chamber to call out to Luke, but he also approaches Jerjerrod when he wants to see the Emperor and Jerjerrod tells him he may not enter.  The second doesn't show a corridor stroll.  What I think could be useful is to use the first deleted scene's walk as Vader approaches Jerjerrod, and use the walk from the game for when he approaches the turboshaft.

Ovan, You might want to touch base with emanswfan.  He is currently the one working on cleaning up the dirt and such.  He might appreciate it if you color corrected scenes and then sent them to him, as that could shorten his workload.  Couldn't hurt to ask.

Iron Door isn't working, but I remember seeing your funeral pyre scene, however it was not in the list. 

Fishmanlee, I forgot to mention that your first music cue ain't working...looks like YouTube caught it.  And I just now remembered that you didn't include the Funeral Pyre alternate in your combined post, which means I forgot to include it in the vote.  I happened to like that one.  We'll have to use it in the next vote.  Any others you want included, please make sure I don't forget them next time around.

Updated the list of those who voted.  A couple of people wrote me and said they still wanted to vote, but I haven't heard from them yet so I'll give a bit more time, probably till tomorrow because I'm such a nice guy.  Please hurry, guys as I don't have lots of time.

Ronster, your mockups look pretty good.  I don't agree with everything you've done, but I'm impressed with how some of it turned out or could theoretically turn out.  And again, whatever ideas we don't use can be used in your own edit.  You've clearly got some good ideas.  I thought the Beggar's Canyon flight was interesting, and I really like the idea of Fett shooting Luke in the hand.  Thanks for sharing, and keep up the good work.

While it's a feasible orbit, it seems more realistic to me for it to be constructed further out, even simply considering safety issues.  Of course it's a fantasy and it doesn't bother me for reasons of realism.  However, I feel it would also add to the immensity of the station to place its orbit further out.  It won't appear dwarfed by the larger moon, but will instead seem massive in its own right, with the more distant Endor appearing relatively diminutive.

This project has already had several folks come and go already, so you're definitely not too late.  You are certainly welcome to bring what you have.  One of the biggest challenges has been fixing up the deleted scenes.  We've got one person on it, and I'm confident he will do a fantastic job.  However, I suspect he might appreciate a little help, as that is a pretty big task.  However, if you'd rather focus on some other task, that's okay.  I encourage you to skim through the past several pages and get an idea of what changes we're pretty certain we're making, and maybe you can think of something you might want to try.

As for Palpatine's voice, we will definitely need it when he is telling Jerjerrod to blow up Endor if the bunker is destroyed, so we could certainly use you there :)

I think it's fine that the audio is unusable.  We've talked many times about dubbing the lines.  The hope is that we can find someone to do a convincing job.  I submitted some little samples of my own vocals, but I don't know what others think about it.  I think I do a fair job at some actors, but definitely not all.  I don't think I included a Lando sample, but I should have.  I have been trying out a few of his lines and feel like I do a decent job.

Ronster said:

So I've got round to chopping Bobbas head off tonight.... But I still need to remove Han but yes it is all possible to kill him the way I suggested it because I have done most of it tonight... It's only mock up quality but it is most definatley possible

Oh and I fixed Lukes Kick also for it too.... But I moved the guy being kicked rather than shuffling luke over to the left and had to start all over again... So if anyone wants to do this you need to move luke to the left....

Wow, I'm impressed.  I'm really interested in seeing how this turns out.  Looking forward to your videos.

Bingowings said:

RE : Lando and Han vocally patching things up.

If you trim a bit from his thanks to Luke Han could still claim to owe one to Luke (which I don't get because Han saved Luke twice so technically he's still owed one from Luke but I digress) and he could say, "Thanks for coming after me" to Lando, maybe splicing a mention of his name from elsewhere.

In an ideal situation Han would express his undying gratitude to Luke by shrugging it off but with both of them and the audience knowing what Han really means.

So ideally it would be "You still owe me one kid" and Luke would chuckle to himself.

In the sandstorm deleted scene, Han thanks Luke, and I think he says, "I owe you one."  I agree with you, it'd probably more in character to say what you suggest, but as it is the more personal version of the exchange, I'd rather use it, and it might be hard to alter his lines in that case since we'd actually see his lips.  Just my opinion.  As for thanking Lando, I think that's perfect.  Splicing Lando's name in there would be a simple solution to redirect the conversation.  I think Lando should respond with something similar to the line in the script, something about bad luck if he let Han remain frozen.

Harmy said:

I thought most, if not all, the ROTJ deleted scenes were in fact HD? My feeling about this sort of thing is that if you're going to put this much effort into something, you should try to make it at least somewhat future-proof. I mean, look at Adywan, he decided to stick with SD for ANH:R and he's already planning to redo it in HD.

To me, 720p is the best compromise, you get the resolution of an average 35mm print, so it should be presentable on pretty much any size of screen, and yet it isn't much more difficult to work with than SD even on slower hardware and you can upscale SD footage to 720p with reasonably good results. I believe these are the same reasons why Ady decided to go with 720p for his projects.

But it's of course completely up to you guys - your project, your rules :-)

I'm all for future-proofing, but I don't know much of the technical side of things...I'm really more of a stroy-teller/coordinator.  But my understanding was the same as Ronster's  But whatever we are able to achieve as far as upscaling goes, I hope we do it.

And while you so it's our project, I feel we'd all be honored if you joined our ranks.  However, I do know that you are busy with your own project.

Harmy said:

You're making your edit DVD quality? Really? Is it even worth all the effort to produce a DVD?

We're aiming for a better story, which means we'll be including a lot of deleted scenes, which means it's probably not worthwhile to aim for BD quality.

^Strikethrough didn't work, so I changed it to bold.

This is a list of everyone invited to vote.  Those in bold have already submitted a vote:

darth_ender 

Bingowings 

Jaitea 

GoodMusician 

Ronster 

Angel 

aalenfae 

Johannus 

emanswfan 

Sluggo 

timdiggerm 

TV’s Frink 

MrInsaneA

fishmanlee

ray_afraid

doubleofive

Vladius

Fettclone1

Kurgan 

DominicCobb

TheoOdo

perfectlovehere

XyZ

Captain Antilles

greenpenguino

ShepardCommander

Harmy

Ric Olie’s puppet master

I'm really hoping for more votes.  I would like to receive them by tomorrow morning, but if we don't get more, I may extend it.  Those who have been active participants or who are involved in the editing team are especially encouraged to vote.

Watched about half the Interactive Game this morning.  Will finish in a bit.  There are actually several lines that potentially could be useful.  When I'm done, I'll put them up.  The video quality is certainly VHS and 4:3, but I honestly think it might be worthwhile to try to expand it for a couple of seconds.  Like I said, Vader walking down the corridor is useful, and there is a point where he's also looking out a viewport.  I imagine someone with the skills and software could easily put it at the right aspect ratio, and if it requires digitally adding scenery, the scenery is bland and repetitive and would simply require duplication.

Everyone who wants to vote, please get me your vote before tomorrow, or tomorrow morning at the latest.  It makes it easier for me to tally on a day when I don't have school or work.

I don't know if anything could really be done with this, but it occurred to me that there might be something to be done with Boba Fett.  I'm not exactly sure what, but at least consider that there are a few brief seconds in Return of the Ewok where we see Boba aboard the Death Star II, and that those brief seconds happen to be higher quality than the rest of the film.  Perhaps there is some slight subplot that could be worked around his presence there.  Again, it would require some serious fixing of a low-quality video source, and I don't know what else could be done beyond that, but perhaps you guys can think of something.

http://vimeo.com/16472287

Around the halfway point is Mr. Fett.  Again, I don't know if it's salvageable, but if so, perhaps further special effects (e.g. removing Wicket) and a plot can go with it.

Mmmmm...nothing like a good Mexican sopapipa.

I want to say that whoever yesterday's troll under the bridge truly was, I honestly don't believe it was Angel.  Maybe I'm wrong, but his spelling mistakes were not of the nature of Angel's, and his English grammar was far better, even if not quite native English.  I don't know whatever bad interactions may have taken place before, but I truly don't believe he would do that here.  I think Bingo's hunch felt at least closer to correct, though it may not be true either.

Make the AT-ATs skip to my lou towards the Rebel base.

I know, I'm overwhelming the thread here, but I've been gone all day, and I have a final comment for now, as I'm about to put the little clonelings to bed.  I'm currently downloading the Interactive Board Game movie.  Hopefully it's got something good.  Should be done in about three hours.  I'll have to wait till tomorrow to watch it I'm sure.

Sluggo said:

Who's xhonzi?

You know...that guy with the face, er, without the face.

xhonzi said:

timdiggerm said:

Isn't part of the point of ROTJ that you're supposed to worry about Luke? If you don't, there's no tension in the Emperor's offer.

Luke's dance on the dark side at the end of RotJ is so convincing to me... that had Anakin's been remotely like it- had we seen something very similar, but one thing had gone another way... it would have amped up the tension for RotJ.

I'm sure Anakin turned to the dark side because he started doing a few bad things (wearing black, kissing his sister) but was still doing them for a greater cause (saving the galaxy, sounding like a separatist) to the point that no one, not even himself, was that aware of how vulnerable to the seduction of the dark side he had become.

That is how you should worry about Luke in RotJ.  Luke's arc is like Orpheus- descending in to Hades to rescue a loved one without getting stuck there himself.  And Vader is struggling with whether he will let Luke save him (can he be saved?) or go through with converting him. 

When Luke lunges out at Vader and taps into the dark side long enough to defeat him, we shouldn't be too clear on who won the spiritual battle at that moment.

I very much hear what you're saying, but I think a compromise can be made between the emotions you wish the story to convey and the logical following of the plot...in fact perhaps it can be increased, and it largely relies on the music.

Yoda tells Luke as he's dying, "Don't underestimate the powers of the Emperor.  Once you start down the dark path, etc. etc."  Perhaps appropriate music at the right parts ("Vader.  You must confront Vader." "Once you start..."), the music can infer that Luke is filled with bitter feelings.  Similarly during his conversation with Ben, though that might take more restructuring.  That could be dark foreshadowing for Luke's later entrances.  If we include the Vader/Luke mental contact with appropriate foreboding music, as well as his entrance to Jabba's Palace, it may very well indicate Luke is drifting to the Dark Side.  Heck, even other points, like after Luke says, "I'm with you too," and Leia asks, "What's wrong?"  Or on the shuttle when, "Vader's aboard that ship."  I mean, the music can take things up a few notches, but it can all begin on Dagobah with Yoda's warning.  Hopefully GoodMusician is still with us, though I haven't seen him for several days.