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Slumberland

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Join date
18-Aug-2004
Last activity
29-Jul-2007
Posts
51

Post History

Post
#278560
Topic
<em><strong>The &quot;9000&quot; Saga Edit</strong></em> (outdated thread)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/278560/action/topic#278560
Time
I say snip it. I sort of wish I had done it in my version. The battle is gratuitous and pandering... but slightly beautiful, too. Mileage varies in that regard, I suppose. Although Lucas did want to do a wookie battle back in the day, so maybe he's being true to himself, and it isn't pandering. I go back and forth on this stuff.
Post
#263606
Topic
Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side (the TM edit) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/263606/action/topic#263606
Time
Fascinating. I like it. The only problem I see with the transition is that the very beginning is a bit warmer-sounding than the replacement track, which pretty much the only thing that gives it away. Which movie are you taking the first part from? ANH or ESB might work better, if you're currently using the one from AOTC. The horns were a lot 'blattier' in the old ones... ANH especially.
Post
#259558
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/259558/action/topic#259558
Time
I love, love, LOVE that Greedo scene. Seriously, it might be the coolest thing I've ever seen done on these esteemed boards, and that is saying a lot.

The only thing I don't really buy is in the desert/sandcrawler scenes, with the sky replacement. The composite borders look far too blurry to be realistic. Is that just a feathering setting that can be backed off of a little bit?

Great work!
Post
#257447
Topic
Episode II: The Gathering Storm
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/257447/action/topic#257447
Time
Thanks a ton for the feedback, Infodroid! Glad you liked some of the changes. I banged my head against that "weesa goin' home" for a long while.

Hal, as for my Episode III changes... let's see, it's been a while. I remember cutting a lot of what I thought were silly lines during the opening battle. I removed the business in the elevator on Grievous's ship completely. The scene with Palpatine and Windu after the crash landing is removed. All the scenes between Anakin and Padme are shortened, but two in particular were removed. The balcony scene and the one where he accuses her of sounding like a separatist. There were things I liked in the latter, but overall I thought things worked better once it was gone.

Mostly it's a lot of little stuff. I didn't do nearly as much to Episode III as I did the first two. My main beef was that I felt like it took too long to get going, so most of my changes are in the first half. I did remove the part from the Anakin/Kenobi duel where Anakin says "from my point of view the Jedi are evil!" as it seemed like thematic notes from the script margins somehow got mistaken as dialogue... it's just too pedantic. And lines like "only my new powers can save you" had to go, in my estimation. Ugh.

All three of my edits are somewhat conservative, in that they don't try and fundamentally change or re-order the story. But I wanted to attempt a more complete "de-awkwardization" than I'd seen attempted in other versions.

Again, thanks for the taking the time to check these out, folks.
Post
#257265
Topic
Episode II: The Gathering Storm
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/257265/action/topic#257265
Time
Glad you liked it, Andy!

Nothing else I'm working on at the moment, besides a comic book project of my own. The only thing I have thought about doing further with these is perhaps a dual layer version with some tiny little fixes of mistakes that got through, mostly because of my inexperience in working with video. It'll probably have to wait until I have a new computer though... doing test renders of mpeg2 video on a G4 is a maddening experience.

Definitely looking forward to Infodroid's project, though.

Post
#254043
Topic
Episode II: The Gathering Storm
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/254043/action/topic#254043
Time
Thanks for the feedback, Miasta, and to Rikter too (naturally!). When and if you watch ep. 2 all the way through, I think you'll see a lot of similar choices made between my version and Attack of the Phantom. One in particular, in the re-instated dinner scene with Padme's family, there's a reaction shot of Anakin to Padme's "he's not my boyfriend" line that I was shocked to see was handled in an identical fashion, having seen his version only after I'd completed mine. He goes a bit farther in certain areas, removing the asteroid chase (unless I'm mistaken... sometimes it's hard to keep all these edits straight) and simplifying the search for Kamino, while I think I overhauled the love story a bit more than he did.

Glad you liked the elevator scene being cut in ep. 3. That was one thing I was a bit nervous about, thinking it might be too abrupt. But while I enjoyed the elevator scene when I first saw it in theaters, there's something about it that doesn't stand the test of repeated viewings for me, and they already spend time vivisecting tons of battle droids in the hangar, and the elevator scene is pretty much just more of the same. The hardest thing for me with ep.3 was trying to remove Palpatine's mention of midichlorians in the opera scene... I've seen ADM's edit, but I forgot how he did that, and didn't have it around for reference. I eventually was able to grab a bit from before one of Anakin's responses and use it as a reaction shot to mask the edit of Palpatine's dialogue. Sometimes all that slow paced talking comes in handy.
Post
#251893
Topic
Episode II: The Gathering Storm
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/251893/action/topic#251893
Time
Originally posted by: Marvolo
Slumberland, what all have you done to Episode I?


Let's see... offhand, from memory:

New title and new crawl. Lots of trims of lines and moments I never liked, such as "are you brain dead?" and stuff like that. Hardly revolutionary, I know. I tried to trim up the whole opening, including Qui-Gon and Kenobi's long walk over to the window, which in turn meant I had to trim Obi-Wan's "you were right about one thing, Master..." from later, which was fine with me because I thought the improvement in pace early on was worth the loss of the funny later. Which wasn't that funny to begin with.

I left Jar Jar somewhat intact, but did whatever I could to remove any utterance of his which smacked of modernity or over-colloquialism and whatnot... 'crunchin', 'moolah', even when he says "any help here would be hot", I dubbed in my best Jar Jar impression so that he says "any help here would be nice". I give Lucas props for pre-figuring the use of "hot" by Paris Hilton, however. No one ever said he wasn't a visionary. Overall, the trip through Otoh Gungah is very quick. "Yousa in big doo-doo this time" got excised. The trip through the core isn't seen either, beyond the departure shot and then later, when they surface.

Some of Sio Bibble's lines are cut. It goes straight from "a communications breakdown can mean only one thing... invasion" right to Panaka telling Amidala this is a dangerous situation.

When the Jedi rescue Amidala, Jar Jar's "yousa guys bombad" is cut. Some Panaka and Bibble in the hallway gets dropped, too. Then there's pretty much a direct lift from Magfan's cut when Qui-Gon goes whoop-ass on the battle droid with less pleasantries exchanged.

No Jar-Jar bumping into R2 units in the Queen's ship. When the Queen thanks R2, it's a short scene, without Panaka's announcement of R2's name. I didn't think Panaka ever earned the right to introduce such a wonderful character.

Let's see... without getting bogged down in details. On Tatooine, I was able to remove the pod race announcer and Jabba's appearance completely. The focus is entirely on the race now, and I like it better. The intro to the race is also shorter, and shows fewer wacky racers. The music swells in a different place as a result, when Anakin waves to the crowd, but I think it works. I didn't add any new score to the race or anything. Oh, and before that, I took out "mom, you say the biggest problem in the universe... etc." Just too much talking.

I think I managed to get "I get to go with you in your starship?" line out, if I remember correctly. There are other cuts that most people have made... no yippees, no midichlorians. The probe droid scene is back in. No 'balf' children. No Jar-Jar getting stuck in the engine.

Coruscant has some trims... a bit from the beginning of Palpatine in the office, and the scene where Anakin tries to visit the Queen is gone. "Weesa going home" is also out.

The briefing in the woods is much shorter. I just could never stand how disinterested Portman looked in that scene. She must have been having a bad day. Nass never makes Jar-Jar general, either. It's just assumed that he fights alongside his people. So there's no fainting joke. Fainting jokes are for the French (who I love, by the way).

Lots of trims in the final battle, mostly Jar Jar, though some of his less offensive schtick stays, which really isn't bad at all when you've taken out enough to minimalize the ill-will towards him that normally has built up to that point.

I so wanted to get Panaka's "I guess you can kiss your trade franchise goodbye" line out, but just couldn't figure out how to do it. Drove me nuts. Panaka's just a miserable screen presence. One of my friends and I had a running joke where we would apply Panaka's negativity to everyday events. "This is a sandwich I do not think will be delicious."

The final change, and a big one, is that the funeral scene has the 'Funeral Pyre for a Jedi' cue from ROTJ over it... the scene ends on the shot of Palpatine, crescendos via a pitch-shifted snippet from the overture to ESB, and takes it directly out to the credits. No parade.

There are other things I haven't mentioned, most likely because they're now standard practice for fan-edit-excision, but going by the changes listed I'm sure you can imagine what else might be gone too. The main things I wanted to get across, having never seen them before in an episode 1 edit, were the total removal of Jabba and the podrace announcers, and the transition from the funeral out to the credits. But the movie's a lot shorter on the whole, too. 109 minutes, I think.

I'm one of those people that really, really likes the story of the prequels, but bloat, speedbumps, moments that always knock me out of that Star Wars universe... they prevent them from being truly engrossing for me. So my goal with all three was lean and mean, with visuals always taking precedence over dialogue. Once you start chipping away, moments you never really noticed start coming to the fore. I remember in episode 2, right after Shmi's funeral, there's this wonderfully composed shot when R2 arrives with Obi-Wan's message, and Anakin walks into frame and his cape is blowing in the wind, and the desert is behind them, and it just screamed Star Wars to me. But in every viewing of the theatrical cut, I'd be so numb and beaten down at that point by extraneous moments and dialogue, something like that would never even catch my attention. It's a really fun process.



Post
#238769
Topic
Scenes with a lot of red are pixelated and blocky
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/238769/action/topic#238769
Time
Thanks. That's what I get for going into this half-informed with a full head of steam. I went back into Cinematize and imported a test section as 4:2:2 uncompressed and it looked a hell of a lot better. I was following someone else's 'template' so to speak when I imported things as DV footage. If the uncompressed video isn't prohibitive in terms of space, I'll probably have to go back, locate the in and out points of my original imports, and replace the source files.
Post
#238759
Topic
Scenes with a lot of red are pixelated and blocky
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/238759/action/topic#238759
Time
I'm pretty pleased with the video quality of my edits, but for some reason scenes where there is a lot of red present (think the scene in TPM where they're deciding to go to Tatooine, aboard the queen's ship) are very blocky. I did some searches, and apparently there's a common problem with the color red somehow related to interlaced images, but this shows up even when I play the disc on my progressive player. Is this a common pitfall when converting mpeg2 files to DV? Any help is much appreciated.
Post
#233308
Topic
Episode I: PaulisDead2221's Edit (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/233308/action/topic#233308
Time
I'll see what I can do with zooming out on that shot and giving it a proper iris... I may have to run it through after effects to reverse the zoom. I totally get what you mean about that being a more "star wars-y" ending shot than the four characters in a row... I seem to remember thinking the long shot was a bit too short for me to use in that fashion, but maybe not. I also love the four of them in a line like that. All the major players going forward, with the eventual victor of the trilogy right there in front.

I'd be interested to see how your ending is coming along, even in its unfinished state. Please post!
Post
#233009
Topic
Episode I: PaulisDead2221's Edit (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/233009/action/topic#233009
Time
I just started getting copies of my episode 2 edit out, but my episode 1 edit is pretty much done... just another week or two for final tweaks and the slow-ass mpeg2 encoding on my aging G4. I'll start a thread soon, I'm sure. In any case, I don't mean to distract from paulisdead's edit.... I just know there's been discussion here as to how to excise the 'Dinotopia' parade, and wanted to show one example of how it could be done.
Post
#231146
Topic
Problem with text in re-created opening crawl
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/231146/action/topic#231146
Time
My crawl was very similar, in that I saw the same thing in the clip you posted... a weird shimmer at the center of s's, a's, e's, and so on. BUT, there's a filter that I only just now discovered: 'reduce interlace flicker'. It does a very good job of sucking the sharpness out of the text as it moves up screen, and brings it a lot closer to what I saw on the AOTC dvd.
Post
#230901
Topic
Problem with text in re-created opening crawl
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/230901/action/topic#230901
Time
Hello all... I've posted in the other thread about my Episode II edit (The Gathering Storm) which is completelyfinished except for this one aspect of the crawl that I'm bangig my head against. I'm hoping someone here is familiar with the problem I'm running into.

I've recreated the opening crawl in After Effects, and I'm very happy with it for the most part, but as the text gets abot halfway up the screen, it has this annoying, unwanted shimmer. What seems to happen is that letters like a's and e's have this strange drag on the center part of the letter, like the outer thirds are moving correctly, but the resolution isn't high enough to display proper movement of the entire letter, so the middle section seems to stay in place or move out of conjunction with the rest of the letter. When many of the letters do this in concert, it looks totally crappy.

I've inspected the quicktimes of the original rip from the DVD, and it's not in the original crawl, though in general the letters seem a little less defined in the original crawl. Not blurry, but the kind of "averaged out" look that comes from taking something at film resolution and dropping it down to standard def. I've tried applying some depth of field blur to my crawl using the 3D camera, but it's not really the same.

Interestingly enough, the original crawl does have that shimmer when worked with and spit back out on to a single layer dvd. I guess the compression brings it out.

Anyone recognizae this problem? I've seen it in some other fan created crawls as well... but I know it's not in the original DVD, at least at it's original compression level, and I'd like to try and match that.