poppasketti

Hal 9000 said:

That is probably the best way that idea can be executed. Great work!

But, I don’t have an impetus to remove the sequence. Especially since we won’t be getting any more Leia.

Fair enough! And thank you!

I think I will use your edit when finished and splice in this bit for myself. Leia Poppins just takes me right out of the movie!

Edit: btw, that YouTube video you linked to is fantastic, thanks for sharing!

Hey Hal!

Just watched down the work print, and I love your style! You’re careful and subtle with the changes, so that none of the edits were distracting.

I was most impressed, of course, with the Canto Bight cutdown. Oh man, I can enjoy the movie so much more with that reduction, I think you nailed it!

One thing, though, that I just won’t be able to ever get over watching is the Leia Poppins scene. It’s just too distracting. Ultimately, I think I will want a hybrid of your edit with this scene cut.

So, inspired by the Ivan Ortega videos and my wife’s suggestion for how to eliminate that scene, I tried my hand at a proof of concept edit to see if it can be removed without being too fan-edity. This is the result: https://vimeo.com/268210930
(pw: fanedit)

Does this work at all? One thing I would like to do, with permission, is use the music change Ortega outlined here: https://youtu.be/wq57WLWAqU8?t=10m15s

I love his music transition from Hux to Leia, and that would be my ideal way to finish off the scene. What do you think?

Hal 9000 said:

I’m very reluctant to crop off the broom boy ending because to me it just feels so very ‘fan edit-y’ and inauthentic in a way I can’t put my finger on. Star Wars movies always end with a scene without any dialogue, and even if Canto Bight is hardly there, the meaning of the final scene would still read easily.

Hal, I completely agree with you on this. Ending on the Falcon feels rushed to me and just kind of small.

The broom boy scene works so well not because it pays off the fathier scenes, but because it pays off Luke’s sacrifice. Luke accepting his legend and using it to inspire others gives his actions such weight and scope. It’s just epic. And it plays wonderfully after Rey herself expresses doubt about the fate of the rebellion.

Without that end scene, you lose the scale of what Luke has done. He didn’t just save our heroes, he rekindled the rebel spirit.

(Hal, I would also be grateful to see an early rough cut when it is ready!)

RogueLeader said:

Wow Snook, really good job!

EDIT: Also great job on the crate poppasketti! At least on my phone it looks pretty seamless.

Thanks, RogueLeader!

I know it’s a small fix, but I’ve been following these boards for years, and I’m just happy to be able to contribute something!

Hal 9000 said:

Thanks very much; I’ll be sending you a PM shortly.

Hey Hal,

Here’s my first pass at stabilizing the crate.
https://vimeo.com/263673331
password: fanedit

I’ll scrutinize a bit more myself as I think there’s a couple small things I want to fix, but let me know if you see anything. I uploaded the prores file to vimeo, so if you like, you can download the file and slot it into your edit!

Hey Hal,

It is awesome to see this edit taking shape! I love the balance you’re going for.

I’d be happy to stabilize that crate for you, and let you work on the big stuff. Do you want me to work off my digital copy of the shot or do you have a format I should use to maximize quality? I think my output would be a prores 444 file.

@Daxtreme

Awesome! I’d be interested in seeing both the extreme AND the more subtle versions.

As long as we can agree about the LEIA scene!

TV’s Frink said:

Her name is Leia.

I would fix but that’s changing history. Anyway, it was auto-correct.

Hal 9000 said:

FWIW, here’s my current intended cutlist for an edit of THE LAST JEDI. Of course, any of these may or may not be feasible once I actually have the ripped film to address in a NLE.

• I’ll ask anyone here who is willing, to stabilize the crate Luke sits down on while talking with Leia. The filmmakers bothered to not have him physically interact with the ground, or make walking foley sounds, so this seems like a small but positive change to make. (You just gotta do stuff like this while you’ve got everything cracked open.)

I really like your intended cut-list. And I’d be happy to try stabilizing the crate for you. Sounds like a fun challenge!

I’ve been following this thread for a while, and I see so many interesting ideas flying around. I think we’ll have a lot of fan edits!

I’m wondering if anyone else is in line with what I’d like to see, as it’s getting hard to parse what people intend to make with their edits.

Is anyone else planning on doing this and basically only this?

1) Remove or dramatically scale back Finn and Rose’s storyline
I love Finn, and Rose is a nice new character, but their storyline is wasted on them and has the following awful bits: Maz’s silly phone call, Casino planet, fathiers, Finn’s fight with Phasma, BB-8 piloting walker, Rose’s “saving” Finn with high speed collision that should have killed them both and also prevented him from saving the rest.

2) Remove Leah’s spacewalk
make it just an explosion, perhaps in a few quick flashes show them putting the oxygen mask on her and then in the recovery bed.

I think it would cut out 20-30 minutes of the movie, without needing any material that isn’t there (I think). I find the ideas about restructuring 7 and 8 interesting but mentally exhausting. I just want the parts I found distracting removed, because the stuff I liked (Luke / Rey / Kylo) I loved!

This image is actually a photo Mike Verta took of a projected technicolor print with a 1970s bulb and screen. It does appear to look a bit off, compared to the actual frame, and the bootleg recording. It might be, that the 1970s bulb emitted a more yellow/orange hue due to its age, or perhaps this is another example of the color imbalances NeverarGreat discussed?

Oh, I see. I thought that frame represented Mr. Verta’s final color grade, as I think yotsuya thought. My mistake!

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

These two examples of the same frame really show why I have issues with Mike Verta’s color choices. Both droids seem dull in the top one, but both gleam like metallic surfaces really do in bright lights in the lower one. And it doesn’t seem to be an artifact of the poor condition of of the tape as I get the same gleam when I correct to Mike’s 1 fps sample clips. Mike seems convinced that R2 should be very dark instead of letting the film tell him the color. In all the correction passes I have made on the GOUT, JSC, 97 SE broadcast, and BR, I have never gotten a dark R2 like this. The colors in the video tape are much closer to what I keep getting - a deep cobalt blue. Having been to the Star Wars Costume Exhibit at the Denver Art Museum where they had an original ANH R2 and several pieces to examine close up, the original R2 is not that dark and looks more like the lower photo (I have no idea how many Kenny Baker R2’s were made for ANH or which one was in this shot or which one is on tour with the exhibit).

I’m pretty new to this, but I agree. Shouldn’t the above shot look more like this: