shanerjedi

doubleofive said:

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to knock mattes, I just wasn't fully aware of their proliferation in films ancient and modern, let alone the number in RotJ.  I never noticed most of them, which I guess is a good sign, eh?  We just need to work on improving the current mattes (Vaderios) or creating all new mattes (Venal) to eliminate some of the lines, static elements, or perspective errors.

I'd love to see more comparisons between what was shot and what was matte.  I'm sure they'll be in the eventual "Making of Return of the Jedi: The Definitive Story", since the one for "Star Wars" had a few, tiny as most of them were.

I was kidding you when I said don't knock the mattes. But yeah, the SW films are full of great mattes by some great artists.

Yeah, I'm for losing him.

I like how all six films have some of their own characters. This line of thought also makes me tilt towards losing Boba for ROTJ but that's for another thread.

This also makes me think of other unnecessary fan service characters: Jabba in TPM. Jabba in ANH:SE. Boba in ANH:SE, etc.

Darth Venal said:

 

Indeed it was, this is pretty darn good travelling matte. Just amazing. When you see it in the movie you can see the hills are painted, as they look a little too lush green, but never do you look at the motel and think it's not there. Psycho II is full of matte paintings.

One thing I really love is at the beginning, when it shows the shower scene from Psycho and the tracking shot that ends looking out of the motel room window up at the house, the camera fades to black, and then fades up in colour, on a matte painting where the real house just was. Wonderful.

Gee, can you tell I'm a fan?

No. :P

Seriously, yes, I can hear your admiration. That's great.

Okay, El Presidente Angel has just made us aware that we are off-topic, but it was a great detour anyway. Thanks for posting those pics.

Bingowings said:

It may be impossible to add small sails to the current skiffs but there's nothing but hard work stopping us from adding more skiffs with small sails.

For those seeking a shadowy first view of Luke maybe we could have one final trial on Dagobah before going inside the mudhut for one last goodbye to his master.

If it was done in silhouette it could hide the lack of new Mark Hamill footage.

A dark robed figure picked out in the swamp mists, effortlessly moving rocks, a tree or even his ship would show how far he has come.

Yeah he'd really have to be in silhouette as it stands now anyway because there's no real footage available.

But Venal makes a great point though about pacing of the film. We do need a breather after the Jabba portion. What is that? I don't know.

The thing about these scenes now as they are in the film is that there's transitions that occur and beats that make a film flow and work on an almost subconscious level.

So we need to be aware of those.

But I still love the Dagobah scene to open the film. :p

Darth Venal said:

 

Here you go. What REALLY amazes me is the motel. It's joined at the sign post. Incredible. It's unbelievable that they didn't build the whole motel for Psycho 2; they didn't rebuild it all until Psycho 3. And even though they had the house on the hill, in a number of shots in Psycho 2 it's painted. Wonderful!

 

Wow. See, look at how he added that tree to the left. I love subtle stuff like that. Didn't you say this was a tracking shot too? lol.

Darth Venal said:

 

How about this one. Sort of Hitchcock ;-)  This is actually a travelling matte, which means, basically, that it had to actually work while the camera was tracking across from left to right as a car arrives and pulls up.

It's actually from Psycho II, in 1983, by the late, very great Albert Whitlock. The guy was an illusion genius. Yes, the hills behind the motel are not very well painted, but can you tell where the painting begins and ends?

 

Ahh gee. Now I'm getting all sentimental thinking about all this great stuff. Nope. I cannot tell where the seams between live-action and matte are. Great stuff from Whitlock.

Like all great matte artists, he knew where the detail needed to go and where it didn't. Focus the eye. ;)

edit:

Venal, that Paradine shot was an hanging matte? I miss in-camera fx.

fishmanlee said:

Lando looks like he was done in MS Paint in the first image.

Actually, Lando in the original matte worked very well. Yes, the new one is great because it's the actual footage. But that's one of the benfits today's digital compositing allows.

The matte guys from the originals were forced to raise the bar in order to get things to look right in optical composites. So the original works incredibly well for '83.

That film is an excellent example of great matte work as are most of Hitch's films.

He was using the digital backlot before there was one. Photochemical backlot? :p

vaderios said:

shanerjedi said:

Hey, Hitchcock wouldn't have been able to make half of his films without them. Don't knock the mattes. I love 'em. :D

well we are gonna need them for sure.

(zoom it)

The shadows is an uber problem here. Not impossible. Just to decide what is easier for the more difficult shots.

It seems its going to have great effort to continuity these...

Add them to the list 005 ;)

 

-Angel

Yeah the top one was the miniature set shot at ILM. The miniature shots actually compliment your dune stuff better than the location stuff as the ILMers could get more fanciful than what the location provided.

EyeShotFirst said:

doubleofive said:

Bringing back the rearranging of the ending sequence of RotS.  This is from the "'Explanations' of Vader" thread on SW General:

Bingowings said:

Tarkin was a Wayne Pygram in a halloween mask : 

Wow, that's not the best makeup job, and why on earth is he so old 20 years before ANH?!  Here's a picture of Peter Cushing in 1957's The Curse of Frankenstein.

He looks great!  Certainly not ancient like RotS Tarkin.  Maybe it didn't take 20 years to build the new Death Star, maybe the movie should have ended with the construction just like has been suggested!  Perhaps that is what was meant all along?

Here you go buddy. This should be really easy knowing he doesn't speak or really move much.

Well, it would be much easier if it involved him merely standing there like in those stills. But this is a moving actor. Tracking a digital head, or even face onto this character in the background would require more than just a still photo pasted onto another still photo. You'd likely have to create a 3D head digitally and then track Cushing's features onto it.

If Tarking was just standing there that would be one thing. But the character moves and walks away. Tracking hell.

IMHO, it would be better to just take him out altogether as it's just another fan service moment that doesn't show his character in any special way beyond "Look, it's Tarkin and he's on the bridge with Vader and Palpatine." Paging Ric Olie.

.

DF Shadow said:

 

whoaaa ^^ awesome.

 

Lando no longer looks like one of my old action figures dangling there. lol

 

Nice work!

I like how youve blended the seams between live-action and background Angel. You can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Well, we can tell but were pretty nuts. :p

There is another film with alot of Tunisian sand dune footage and that is The English Patient. Yes, I watched it and I liked it!(I have to say that) :p

But that film has a lot of Tunisian dune footage. If any can be put to good use, I dunno.

doubleofive said:

vaderios said:

Yes!The whole bottom of the boats is matte too.

 

-Angel

OK, I've come to the conclusion that there are way too many mattes in this film.  Either that or I've just never noticed them in other films.

Hey, Hitchcock wouldn't have been able to make half of his films without them. Don't knock the mattes. I love 'em. :D

Bingowings said:

Ghost said:

Good points.

 

Also, do you think it would work to put the Luke on Dagobah scenes at the beginning of the movie.  It would make the whole Luke a master Jedi thing more believable.

 

Then after that show him flying to Jabba's.  That would be a pretty CG scene.

That's what a lot of us want, it makes Yoda's death scene less stupid too (he's held on to life long enough to finish teaching Luke rather dying in the middle of a conversation after giving him a very quick crash course).

It also starts the film on a double down note that only picks up when our heroes rescue Han.

Yoda dies, The Emperor has a new Death Star, Chewie is captured, Han is still captured, Leia is captured, the droids are captured , Luke is captured (suddenly ROTJ starts to feel like ESB).

We get one hurrah and then act II kicks in and it starts all over again.

I direct you, if you haven't been there yet to doubleofive's lovely list of all our hopes (it contains links to SSWR's Fan-O-Matics which are pretty much along the lines you mention and lots of nice brain and eye candy) :

http://doubleofive.wordpress.com/rotj-fanedit-wishlist/

This is one of the main reasons for doing it. It really shows how dire things are. It would increase the tension and up the stakes too to have Yoda gone before he goes to Jabba.

It would also make Chewie telling Han that Luke is a jedi knight make more sense.

Speaking of the fans wish list:

bingo, in your Luke goes to Tatooine and Kenobi's hut after Yoda's death(brilliant idea by the way), you show a picture of 3PO with the falcon in the background. Well, there is that 3po shot already in existence from AOTC where 3po sees "master Anakin" again after a long time. It's already on Tatooine. It already has 3PO. The only decision would be the background. You might be able to just keep it and then "golden" up the droid without any other changes.

I'm trying to remember if that AOTC shot had a tracking move or not.

DarkJedi3P0 said:

how about inside the shield generator when the rebels bust in :)

But there's not a battle then so what would be the point?

But see, that kinda stuff can quickly lead to things being crammed into the films for no reason. I mean, it's decades after the prequels. The holograms don't have to look the same.

One of the reasons I loved ESB when I was a kid is because it wasn't SW2. It was its own thing.

So we shouldn't lose sight of what makes each film unique in its own right.

Ghost said:

Why not put something like this hologram on the Death Star during the Battle of Endor?

Yeah but where?

Rhikter said:

shanerjedi said:

I think you'd be surprised how many ILMers and fx artists are fans of this project and others of its kind. :D

I've often wondered if any in-industry type folk participated or followed fan edits.  Are you saying you know of proof that supports this suspicion?

 

Yes. I'm saying that some fx artists at ILM and elsewhere, being fans of SW and fx stuff all around, like this kinda stuff. That's what I'm saying. Notice I said some. I know some don't like it very much, but that's just from a creative standpoint: We made it. Let's move on.

And there's some public comments by Muren himself. He seems almost indifferent about it all, including the SEs he worked on. lol.

Darth Chronus said:

shanerjedi said:

Yes but it's not the order that she's told. It's that after she seems to have no reaction to her true family. Maybe it was too much for one movie?

Ah yes, sorry, I actually focused a little bit on the 'WTF...your father?' part of your post. I do know what you're talking about :)

Yeah, Leia doesn't really say anything in the vain of 'Damnit, I should have known that bastard was my father!'

Lol :)

It's not a huge issue for me but it has made me wonder over the years if ROTJ, by compressing so many things into one film, really missed a chance to finish off the saga in a truly epic way. Too much of the film ties up things quickly and then moves on.

Yes but it's not the order that she's told. It's that after she seems to have no reaction to her true family. Maybe it was too much for one movie?

Speaking of that Leia/Luke scene:

Anyone else find it kind of odd that Leia doesn't seem to have much reaction to the fact that since Luke is her bro and Vader is his pa, that also makes Vader her father too?

In fact, she even says to Luke: "WTF?! Your father?!"

Yes Leia and YOUR father too.

Darth Venal said:

 

Yes, given that Leia can't really know what she's recalling, "just feelings" as she says, it's vague. Either way, we know she didn't know her mother. I wouldn't change any music to prequel music unless the piece I was replacing was particularly unsuccessful as it stands. I hate homogenising everything into one identical lump. Somewhere in the 12 years since the Special Editions people have started to want that, whereas I prefer each movie to have its own aesthetic, its own identity. So what if Imperial Shuttles never appeared before Jedi and then they're everywhere. We didn't see A wings or B wings, Mon Calamari and their cruisers, and any number of other designs before they featured, but so what? Seeing new designs actually used to be something that appealed about these movies.

QFT.

Well Leia's adoptive mo likely died when Alderaan went bye-bye. And I would urge restraint when adding new music to an existing film so it doesn't feel tacked on.

I really liked Dave Elsey's makeup work on Farscape, but his makeup work for Tarkin looked just like that: makeup work.

But still not as bad as stoned Yoda from the TPM council scenes. Worse than felix the cross-eyed lion.

"High are you master jedi?"

"stoned I am. wasted my head it is"

Bingowings said:

He said at the time that it was deliberate decision so I assume that Neeson's reluctance to return complicated his grand plan, just as DiCaprio's reluctance to join on did. 

Assuming there was a grand plan.

I find it hard to believe that Jar-Jar wasn't going to play a greater role in the series until his near universal unpopularity forced Lucas to ditch him.

There are so many circles to square in the PT but that's part of the fun, there's the challenge.

If Jar-Jar could be made to work with re-dubbing it might be worth replacing Threepio with the new improved version.

In some ways spreading Jar-Jar about may be more radical than taking him out.

Oh, trust me on this: there was NO grand plan. There was barely a sketch, let alone a master story arc to cover three movies.

Basically, Lucas knew how the story began with Obi-Wan(but then it was Qui-Gon at the last minute) finding Anakin and how it ended with Mannakin getting the helmet put on. That's why so much of the prequels ends up as almost inconsequential to the overall story.

No, no. No yellow notepad full of story outlines for this one. Not at all.