oh_riginal

adywan said:

The Golden Idol said:

Ady, in the Luke/Vader ESB duel, after Luke sticks the smoking tube in Vader's face, he gets his lightsaber back and swings it at Vader, who blocks it. However, Luke and Vader's sabers should be rearranged, as Luke's blade should be on the RIGHT, and Vader's on the LEFT. As it is now, it looks like Luke is blocking Vader, instead of vice-versa. Can this be fixed?

There's actually no problem with that shot. Look at it in slow motion and you see that  Luke swings his saber then the first few frames he is still swinging it and Vader blocks it. Vaders is on the left and Lukes on the right.

Is it just me, or does Luke's saber in the 2nd frame look too short, too skinny, and too bent?

No need to get bent out of shape, Luke!

Darth Venal said:

Yeah, I should have been a little more articulate and said the prequels had much more complex choreography, rather than better. Lazy of me. And I absolutely agree, they really do look contrived, rehearsed and choreographed. Some work better than others, but it definitely feels like a dance rather than a duel.

While the Obi Wan/Darth Maul duel from TPM is usually picked as the favorite of the PT duels (for good reason), I have recently taken a liking to the Dooku/Obi and Anakin duel from AOTC (before Yoda shows up). The only thing that ruins that duel for me is the extreme close-up glowfest. But when that part of the duel is removed through editing, the duel has a nice flow to it that is probably as close to an OT duel as the PT can get.

As for the Vader/Luke duel, I don't think anything needs to be changed about it, other than (as I've brought up before) saber burn/glow marks on walls/rails and such. The duel itself is perfectly fine, with the one-handed moves by Vader in the beginning being my favorite part. It really shows his superior skill in contrast to Luke, who has both hands on his saber and looks almost as if he is trying way too hard, rather than getting by on skill alone.

The usual fan-edit idea seems to be to show Bail Organa just as the laser hits (which Ady also did in his "deleted scene" version.)

Why not show Bail Organa looking up and seeing the Death Star in the sky sooner? There could be a brief shot of him on the balcony (where he brought Leia at the end of ROTS) looking up and seeing it approach... then cut to the space shot of the Death Star getting closer to Alderaan, then the scene would proceed as normal. Just a thought.

ChainsawAsh said:

oh_riginal said:

ChainsawAsh said:

That's more EU bullshit to "explain" why there's a droid that looks like IG-88 in the room where Chewie finds Threepio in pieces.  It's something that didn't need explaining, since it wasn't even the same color (come on, do you really think there's only one droid that looks like IG-88), but that's the EU for ya.

 

I'm not implying that the droid should be recolored to look identical to IG-88... just more metallic. To me, the way it looks now, it looks like it will snap in half if it's knocked over by the wind!

I wasn't responding to your post - in fact, I didn't even know you had one dealing with that subject!  In fact, I agree, it could use a bit of a touch-up ...

Yeah, it was more of a "connected" reply, since I brought up the topic first, then somehow the EU aspect of the two droids being one and the same came up, and then you replied to that, but the EU wasn't what I originally brought up... so what I said was true, from a certain point of view....

A cool but absolutely unnecessary add would be to have IG-88's "eyes" move independently of each other, similar to how they did in the 2-D Clone Wars cartoon (and I think also in the new CGI Clone Wars, if I recall correctly). But yeah, not an important change, just would be cool to see in a non-animated version.

ChainsawAsh said:

That's more EU bullshit to "explain" why there's a droid that looks like IG-88 in the room where Chewie finds Threepio in pieces.  It's something that didn't need explaining, since it wasn't even the same color (come on, do you really think there's only one droid that looks like IG-88), but that's the EU for ya.

I'm not implying that the droid should be recolored to look identical to IG-88, thus making it actually BE IG-88... just more metallic. IG-88 is more of a black metal color, correct? Perhaps this other droid could be more metallic gray or something. To me, the way it looks now, it looks like it will snap in half if it's knocked over by the wind! WHOOPS! Sorry Ugnaught, Lando will have to send Lobot to go buy a new one for ya.

Bingowings said:

IG-88 does look like a hard arsed piece of military kit though (much more than the battledroids in the PT do), I can't really visualise it cutting lawns or cleaning windows.

It's only really a concern for people who have seen the film so many times that they notice stuff like this.

Guilty! It's a trade-off I have to live with. Oh well.

But yeah, I don't really have a problem with some droids looking less metallic, but the IG-88 models do LOOK like they are made to do more physical things then mopping floors or interpreting languages, so it just seems like it should look more durable than it does currently.

Here's another minor detail that bothers me in ESB:

IG-88 is a pretty cool looking droid/bounty hunter. His appearance is brief, but cool nonetheless. I'm sure some of you agree? While the head is a reused part from ANH (from the cantina), it doesn't take anything away from the look of the character.

However, an identical droid can be seen (for the sake of avoiding the EU, I would assume it is a different droid but same model) in the background of the scene when Chewie is trying to rescue C-3PO's parts from the Ugnaughts. The problem with this identical droid is the color, or shall I say LACK OF COLOR on it. It is totally obvious that it is an unpainted IG-88 that was placed there as a prop. The IG-88 seen in the bounty hunter lineup looks metallic, as a droid should. But without the paint job, the droid seen on Cloud City looks like a big plastic model, and nothing more!

The droid itself doesn't move in any of the shots, so I think it might not be too difficult to color it a metallic color to match up with IG-88, instead of looking like an Ugnaught's lifesize plastic replica of IG-88 (collect them all!)

Not a big deal? Perhaps. But it is one of those things that has bothered me every time I see it, ever since I first noticed it (I'm talking YEARS now).

Sevb32 said:

How about one new still from Revisited per month? Pretty please? It would get us something to look forward to every 4 weeks, and have it about the same date every month, that would just be 12 more stills over the next year, obviously. Please and thank you! :)

I like this idea better than seeing more clips. I'd like to save the rest for the actual viewing experience when ESB:R is finally done and released!

maggot_brain said:

adywan said:

oh_riginal said:

adywan said:

thats a lot of damaged files. what usenet provider are you using? Ep1 was only posted a couple of weeks ago so it should still be complete even with an ISPs service.

 

 

 usenet.com server, downloading through grabit.

i would switch your provider if its giving you that many incomplete files with something so recent.  i use astraweb. i'm only paying $11 per month for their unlimited service through their special offer. its very rare i get any incompletes

 

I second this.  Also Astraweb are increasing their retention to 365 days.

 

Okay, astraweb it is. Let's see if this works out better!

Update: And I had no issues with astraweb or quickpar. Thanks so much! Loving the quality of the surround sound and picture!

adywan said:

thats a lot of damaged files. what usenet provider are you using? Ep1 was only posted a couple of weeks ago so it should still be complete even with an ISPs service.

 

 usenet.com server, downloading through grabit.

adywan said:

oh_riginal said:

Funcha said:

Use par buddy with one of the par files and it will restore the missing par file. Still don't quite get the whole par rebuilding concept, but it's worked when I needed it!

 

Trying to work with par buddy... but not having much luck finding the settings used to repair and to add the missing rar.

Par is a whole new thing to me, as I never heard of it before. Any help/advice?

use quickpar instead. Just open one of the par2 files with quickpar and it will scan the set. Once that is complete  just click the "repair" button and it will fix any damaged rars, as long as you have enough par2 files

 

 Ah okay, quickpar it is. The download came with 10 par files.

Update: Says I still need 105 blocks.

Funcha said:

Use par buddy with one of the par files and it will restore the missing par file. Still don't quite get the whole par rebuilding concept, but it's worked when I needed it!

Trying to work with par buddy... but not having much luck finding the settings used to repair and to add the missing rar.

Par is a whole new thing to me, as I never heard of it before. Any help/advice?

Anyone else unable to download rar part 45?? Two days have gone by since I got the rest, and this one file is holding me up!

ChainsawAsh said:

adywan said:

It will be freely available through usenet in the usual group from Tuesday 19th July 2009

Sunday (today) is the 19th - Tuesday is the 21st.  I take it the Tuesday is right, but the 19th is not?

I'm far more excited for this project than someone who generally pretends the prequels never happened should be ...

My impatience is wearing down on me... may have to subscribe, rather than wait for a rapidshare version or torrent....

buddy-x-wing said:

I didn't see this on the opening page , so I hope this hasn't been discussed before

I'm off work today, recovering from the Flu and decided to watch Empire for the first time in about a year or so, and re-noticed a minor little something thats bugged me for a while.  In the scene where  Yoda meets Luke,  Yoda grabs some sort of weird chocolate bar from Lukes rations,  takes a bite and chews,  yet the food remains completely intact,  it always reminded me of the scenes on Sesame street whenever the characters mimed eating something.  Is there any way to actually make it look he actually took a bite out of the bar?

It sounds like a minor thing, and I'm sure it's well within the realms of Ady's capabilities, but It would  add more believability to Yoda in that brief little scene.

I'm sure this was mentioned before, but I don't recall if Ady addressed it or not.

Bingowings said:

I'm moving my response to this chain of discussion here for obvious reasons.

doubleofive said:

mrbenja0618 said:

EyeShotFirst said:

I hope ady showcases the space battle and the death star battle for our main attention. All I need to see is the rebels on Endor turning off the shield generator. Then back to the important dark duel. Coz the Endor Forrest battle is a mood killer.

It really does kill the mood.... But the space battle in ROTJ is still IMHO the greatest of all the films. I'm still amazed at how well the ships maneuvered with them being models on wires. Great work.

Seriously I agree.  I mean, each ship is a separately shot element composited who knows how much time later.  It's impressive.  And to only have a couple mislayered/disappearing elements is extremely impressive.

All three layers of the battle need to be expanded in my view.

How does a small group of Rebels defeat an entire legion of the Empire's best troops to bring down the reactor to allow the Rebel fleet to survive being attacked by a large Imperial fleet and a full armed and operational Death Star?

The ground battle is only a mood breaker because it currently makes little sense and has no real visual and emotional impact.

I have to agree here. The ground battle has no rhyme or reason to it. It is also incredibly small in scale, even for it's time. Look at the Hoth battle, then look at the Endor battle, and the Hoth battle's epicness dwarfs the battle of Endor by quite a bit. There seriously needed to be more troops for BOTH sides, but more importantly for the rebels. During the battle, it almost appears that the ewoks take over the battle and the rebels basically disappear, besides Han, Chewie, Leia, and the droids. And even the heroes, who up until this point in the OT have been the center of focus in the story, seem to take a backseat to the ewoks, as they really do all of the action it seems. Han and Leia shoot a few Stormtroopers while trying to open a door and smirk at each other, while only Chewie gets to do anything cool (hijack an AT-ST).

If anything, the mission should have been less of a battle, and more of a stealth mission, as the characters expected it to be. More excitement could have been made from a handful of rebels trying to break into a highly guarded base than having a bunch of teddy bears outsmart a few dozen Stormtroopers and a couple AT-STs in the woods on a nice sunny day.

I've already talked about how to expand on at least the Millennium Falcon's part in the space battle, though I think other places in the battle could be expanded as well, such as the idea of having a Mon Cal ship and a Star Destroyer attacking each other similar to the space battle in ROTS. There is even a brief shot in ROTJ where the two ships align next to each other like that!!!

The Luke/Vader rematch, as far as I'm concerned, is fine as is, except for the annoying swinging Luke does after screaming "NEVER!" as I mentioned before. Seriously, he looks like a blind kid trying to hit a baseball at times! At least that part of the duel could use some tweaking in editing.

Rhikter said:

oh_riginal said:

However, the AOTC duel, as short as it is, feels overbearingly long when it gets to the silly looking close-ups of Anakin and Dooku twirling the lightsabers above their heads, not even looking like they are clashing sabers, even though we are supposed to think they are.

Ha!  I'm so glad you brought that up.  I've never mentioned it to anyone, but I've always thought that part of the duel looked ridiculous.

Then you should like the mock-up I did. It was such an easy edit, it's ridiculous! On youtube, there's a big description in the details of the video that explain all the re-editing I did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlE9JBYaEFw

I may want to go back and re-do some of it, since I've been learning more and more about editing since I did that mock-up.

But, to go back on topic, one thing that still bothers me about ESB to this day is the shot of Luke while he is doing a handstand on Dagobah. In the wide shots, Luke's arms are straightened all the way, and the pose looks convincing, but when it cuts to a close-up of Luke, his elbows are bent, and he looks like an actor being held upside down, reaching his arms to the ground, rather than holding himself up. Though I don't think this is fixable....

EyeShotFirst said:

Why is the ESB duel so much better than the high speed epicness of ROTS. I don't know. Darth Vader was so scary the first time I saw that. That duel made you worry for poor Luke. The ROTS duel was just fast. I had the feeling that they just wanted to bump sabers. Darth was hiding in the shadows and fog in the bespin duel popping out of the darkness nearly testing Lukes power. It was like he was test driving Luke to see if he was worth all of the trouble. "If he survives I will take him to mean old Mr. Palpy. If he dies well I guess I will invite Leia into my meditation chamber and let her witness the fire power of my fully armed and operational battlestation IN MY PANTS HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!! It is a good thing I only have one child."

I don't think any of the lightsaber duels had the eye candy that the bespin duel had. Well TPM duel was pretty badass. Actually it was the best part of the whole PT.

 

 

The ESB duel and the PT duels are really two totally different types of creatures, and each have things about them that can be appreciated for what they are. As you pointed out, Vader is more or less playing with Luke, like a cat playing with a mouse prior to killing it. To me, it was never a coincidence that Luke got his hand cut off only after Vader got tapped on the shoulder!

The PT duels are fast paced, hectic, and probably more of what Lucas wishes the ROTJ duel had turned out to be. TPM is very acrobatic in its choreography, almost like a dance. The AOTC duel is probably the closest to the OT out of all the duels, since Dooku also liked to talk during his fights.

My problem with the duels in the PT has nothing to do with how they were choreographed or filmed, but with how they were edited...

The TPM duel is edited very well, because there is no "Michael Bay" style of editing going on. The length of a camera shot lasts a while without cutting to a new shot, with probably the best example being when Obi Wan first attacks Maul after Qui Gon was stabbed. The shot lasts quite a long time for a single shot, allowing the viewer to see every single move very fluidly.

However, the AOTC duel, as short as it is, feels overbearingly long when it gets to the silly looking close-ups of Anakin and Dooku twirling the lightsabers above their heads, not even looking like they are clashing sabers, even though we are supposed to think they are. Removing these shots makes the duel flow much better, even if the duel is shortened by a lot. I did a mock-up of this on youtube a while back, and I think the duel is better off.

The ROTS duel is the worst duel, editing-wise. I'm sure most of us have seen the behind-the-scenes footage of Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor practicing for the duel... I thought it looked amazing, since it was all in one shot. But the finished product has shots that last only a few seconds before cutting to another angle, which totally takes me out of the duel, cause I can barely make out what is going on shot-to-shot. If Lucas had made more simple decisions with camera angles, like he did in TPM, I have no doubt that the duel would have been improved 100% for it!

Coming back to ESB, the duel, while not flashy, has more character to make up for it, since it isn't intended to be a flashy duel in the first place. It's Vader showing off to Luke that he is superior from the beginning, with the one-handed moves, to the ability to talk calmly during the duel to piss Luke off, and later on with Vader throwing objects at Luke, which I'm sure was an entirely new concept for Luke, as the only duel he ever saw was the final moments of the Death Star duel in ANH.

I honestly don't think one style of duel is better than the other, as I like equally the subtleness of the ESB Vader vs. Luke as much as I like the fast-paced Maul vs Qui Gon/Obi Wan. It's really all in the editing.

The ANH:R version of Obi Wan/Vader dueling, at least to me, brought the duel a little closer to the PT. The shot of Vader blocking Obi Wan's saber in a close-up shot of Vader's head reminded me heavily of a similar shot in TPM when a close-up shot of Maul showed him blocking both Obi Wan's and Qui Gon's sabers. But the original version of the duel wasn't very good anyhow, since the choreography wasn't very well done, so the edit improves upon it a lot. The ESB duel doesn't need re-editing other than special effects (think: glowing burns added in to where the saber hits metal, etc.)

ROTJ has a decent duel, but I never really liked the duel after Luke screams "NEVER!" because it looks like Luke is barely even touching Vader's saber half the time, as he swings wildly like someone who has never been in a duel before, even though he fought Vader in the previous movie! The music in those moments is what truly saves the duel from looking terrible. Just watch it without music and it looks silly. The bad thing is, not much can be done to fix that.

Okay, early morning rambling over....

hans olof said:

One question: In this 1980 cartoon (which is based on the original script), Luke screams "NEVER!!!" when he falls from Darth Vader when he tries to get him over to the dark side. Was the SE- scream from 1997 closer to the original script than we thought?

 

I doubt it. That scream in the 97 SE was more of a "omg, I'm falling! This was a stupid idea!" type of scream. Not only that, but it was Palpatine's scream from ROTJ. In my opinion it was the WORST SE moment in ESB and I'm glad the 2004 DVD removed it.

Besides, "NEVER!" worked better in ROTJ.

rcb said:

i love it. its almost like a re-edit by ady. very nice. just take out the luke in the seat and we're all set

Think of the Luke footage as a placeholder.... It would be nice to be able to have some random rebel in that seat instead, but the footage isn't available. I just put Luke there to show SOMETHING to get my idea across. The turrets are cool, and it's a shame Lucas and co. didn't bring more attention to them in ROTJ, as I think it would have made the Falcon look even cooler in the battle, and raised a bit of the epic-ness of the battle overall.

sgdelta1771 said:

Davnes007 said:

The Golden Idol said:

How do you know this?

He felt it.

 

Anyway, here's a 'quick' little video I just made that has that clip in it, as-well-as a couple of other crazy, wacky, and odd ideas. Set your faces to 'stunned'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQm9rlbJSyI

I honestly think that the Bespin approach sequence is ok as it is.  Adding that first clip sequence to me detracts from the mystery and feeling of the scene.

 

I just like the panning shot better, rather than cutting from the Falcon flying past the camera, then cutting to a shot of Cloud City with the Falcon entering the frame from the right.

This isn't nearly as cool as the potential for the scene can be, but it's a visual example nonetheless.

Note: Pretend the rebel in the turret seat just LOOKS like Luke....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHOrjo3hB2I

Erikstormtrooper said:

Erikstormtrooper said:

I'm currently in the process of downloading the AVCHD of ANH, but the speed is abysmal. I tried several different torrents and they're all pretty much the same. Can anyone make any recommendations?

 

 If anyone cares, the torrent for ANH ended up improving in speed, and I'm now seeding.

I just can't wait till TPM ends up as a torrent... or on rapidshare. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting this onto my TV screen!

The Golden Idol said:

How do you know this?

He knows the ways of the force. He's been trained to use the dark side.