sherlockpotter

A lot of these debates (Force Dyad vs. “bridging their minds”; Palpatine “made” Snoke or not…) seem to be arguing between what makes for stronger internal continuity, and what makes for a stronger story thematically. My personal feelings tend to lean towards the latter, but there’s no objectively “wrong” answer. I’m curious what Hal thinks about all of this - he’s the man in charge, after all.

We only know two things about being a Dyad - You can connect to each other remotely with the Force, and “A-newly-cloned-body-of-an-ancient-decrepit-Sith-Lord-can-absorb-most-but-not-all-of-their-combined-Lifeforce-energy-in-order-to-revitalize-his-body-change-his-eye-color-and-regrow-his-fingers-if-the-two-are-standing-next-to-each-other-in-front-of-him.” That’s just Storytelling 101, people.

If anything, I say cut the Dyad concept from TROS. At least in TLJ, Snoke bridging their minds is thematically relevant and conceptually nuanced.

The more I think about it, the more I think the film would actually be stronger if it didn’t try to retroactively come up with a backstory for Snoke. Getting rid of the Snoke Clone vat really does go a long way to making the scene more vague and mysterious, and therefore, more palatable than the obtuse “SNOKE WAS A CLONE! SEE??” reveal; but what’s to say that Palpy isn’t just taking over from where Snoke left off? Snoke tried to rule with the First Order. He failed. Now Palpy is swooping in to claim it all for himself. If anything, that makes more sense why Palpy just magically appears with the Final Order fleet. If he was behind Snoke all along, why didn’t he give the First Order the new ships sooner?

Perhaps we could replace the line “I made Snoke. I have been every voice…” with something like “Snoke was weak. I can give you so much more…”

It’s really a matter of whether people want to be told the facts outright, or to maintain a bit of mystery and ambiguity in the story. People who prefer the former, yes, would want to be told, “Palpatine made Snoke. That’s how he connects to the previous two films.” Cut and dried. People who prefer the later wouldn’t care about the semantics and would prefer that the details be left up to interpretation - allowing the film to focus on its own story, rather than fleshing out things in the past that are no longer relevant. Neither perspective is inherently wrong, so I guess it just depends on which side Hal sits.

It reminds me of the recent series of Doctor Who, where they tried to definitively state the Doctor’s backstory. Many viewers, such as myself, think the show is more engaging when the Doctor’s history is more mysterious.

CaptainFaraday said:

Brewzter said:

sherlockpotter said:

sherlockpotter said:

Okay, I took a stab at color correcting the insert shot of Leia holding the medal. It struck me that, given how bright the blueish backlight is in Leia’s Death Chamber™, the dim, golden tone of the medal clip kind of stood out. Bear in mind that I’ve never color-corrected anything before, and my entire experience consists of watching one YouTube video; so if anyone out there knows what they’re doing and wants to offer some feedback, I’d be grateful!

Original (for comparison): https://streamable.com/soz9a7
Color Correction: https://streamable.com/y53j10

I may actually want it to be an even brighter blue. Hmm…

Another attempt - much stronger blue tones, and it’s a bit brighter to hopefully better match the quality of the lighting in the surrounding footage. Also shifted the color mask over to try to imply directional lighting. Is it too much?

https://streamable.com/v8g9w8

Nailed it! That looks great. I’d totally use this in my edit

Is it possible to add rain to the insert shot of the medal? That’s really the only thing which alerts my eye to something being amiss.

If anyone knows where to get a good rain effect that would match style of rainfall in the Leia shots, I could definitely try to add that in. I tried working with a free video that I found, but it didn’t look right.

sherlockpotter said:

Okay, I took a stab at color correcting the insert shot of Leia holding the medal. It struck me that, given how bright the blueish backlight is in Leia’s Death Chamber™, the dim, golden tone of the medal clip kind of stood out. Bear in mind that I’ve never color-corrected anything before, and my entire experience consists of watching one YouTube video; so if anyone out there knows what they’re doing and wants to offer some feedback, I’d be grateful!

Original (for comparison): https://streamable.com/soz9a7
Color Correction: https://streamable.com/y53j10

I may actually want it to be an even brighter blue. Hmm…

Another attempt - much stronger blue tones, and it’s a bit brighter to hopefully better match the quality of the lighting in the surrounding footage. Also shifted the color mask over to try to imply directional lighting. Is it too much?

https://streamable.com/v8g9w8

For the “Snoke bridged their minds” vs. “They’re a Force Dyad” disconnect, it’s yet another thing that TROS does to try and retcon TLJ. It could be handwaved away by assuming that Snoke was only able to bridge their minds in the first place because they’re a Force Dyad; but I think whichever explanation you prefer ignores the main problem with the reveal: How does Kylo even know about the Dyad? Kylo didn’t “sense” anything about it in TLJ. Palpy doesn’t tell him. He doesn’t discover the secret in this movie. No one has even heard of the concept until Kylo just decides to tell Rey about it, without any context whatsoever.

If we really wanted to tackle this whole “To Dyad or not to Dyad” issue, I think the best solution would be to cut Kylo’s line in the hangar about the Dyad. Then, the Dyad concept becomes a shock reveal at the very end when Palpy learns about it.

Of course, since the whole Hangar scene will have to be overhauled anyway for the eventual Rey Nobody version, it may be more practical to leave it for now and just come back to the issue after V2 is released.

Okay, I took a stab at color correcting the insert shot of Leia holding the medal. It struck me that, given how bright the blueish backlight is in Leia’s Death Chamber™, the dim, golden tone of the medal clip kind of stood out. Bear in mind that I’ve never color-corrected anything before, and my entire experience consists of watching one YouTube video; so if anyone out there knows what they’re doing and wants to offer some feedback, I’d be grateful!

Original (for comparison): https://streamable.com/soz9a7
Color Correction: https://streamable.com/y53j10

I may actually want it to be an even brighter blue. Hmm…

Hal 9000 said:

If we wanted to remove the line, I imagine it’d be best to simply remove the footage where it takes place. Maintain the pace, just without that line present.

I agree with Hal. If the line is going to removed, the scene will have to be tightened up around it in order to avoid a lot of dead space.

As for whether or not to… I go back and forth. On one hand, it’s just about the only time the movie even tries to connect TROS with the rest of the trilogy. On the other, did we (the audience) ever hear Vader speak to Kylo in the other films?

In TFA, when Kylo is speaking with Vader’s helmet, I kind of like the idea that he’s begging Vader for guidance, but he hears nothing in return; because Vader became Anakin again, and Kylo doesn’t realize that “Vader” is gone. That was always my read of the scene; and I suppose, thinking about it, Palpy’s “I’ve been pretending to be your Evil Grandfather! Bwa ha ha!” line does undo a lot of that nuance.

EDIT: If we decide to gut that line, it would probably just be easier to cut the Snoke part too, and just say “My boy…the First Order is just the beginning.” As Jarbear said, Snoke seemed to be operating independently of Palpy; and at this point, Snoke doesn’t even matter to the story. He’s already been removed from the Clone Vat (thank God for that, by the way). Maybe it would be stronger/more logically consistent to just have Palpy stand apart from Snoke entirely? Sort of take over where Snoke failed?

Hal 9000 said:

Didn’t someone recently modify the lighting of the shot with Leia holding the medal in closeup? If so, can you send that to me to implement before I get the chance to forget about it?

I know I mentioned it as a potential suggestion - just to make the insert feel more connected to the surrounding footage, since the lighting behind Leia is so striking. I’m not sure if anyone actually worked on the shot though.

Personally, I didn’t mind the video game footage, but I think the pacing works better without - that way, the first big, explosive bit of action is Kylo himself.

I also like the mechanical nature of Rey’s new lightsaber with its moving parts, so idk.

Just had a thought - what if, in the Death Star fight, the clip of Leia dying is shuffled forward slightly, and spliced in as Rey is healing Kylo. Then the implication would be that Leia sacrifices herself, allowing Rey to channel her life force into her son? That also explains how Rey is able to heal a mortal wound without killing herself, like Ben did when he healed her.

Leia’s death then serves a narrative purpose beyond “drama,” or “losing the will to live.”

I’m thinking:

• Ben hears Leia calls his name.
• Ben turns around, distracted.
• Rey stabs him.
• (Maybe Rey hears Leia call her name too?)
• Shot of Leia silhouetted.
• Rey reaches out towards Kylo’s wound.
• Leia collapses
• Wound heals

JakeRyan17 said:

Except if it’s a codec issue beyond container, then it’s not solving the issue. If something is an avi, it’s not likely H.264 even though the new container of mp4 would suggest that. If a program, especially a non-linear editor, can’t read a file, it’s far more likely a codec issue than a container issue.

That would just me be misinterpreting the problem then. I know when I’ve tried to edit videos, there are certain file types that the editor won’t accept. If the problem was as simple as that, FFmpeg tends to be a fast converter.

Also, transcoding doesn’t lose quality just because it’s changing formats. For example, to use ProRes codecs as an example, you cannot add quality that wasn’t there. So, some people will transcode H.264 into ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ for editing, and scoff at using ProRes 422 LT: all have higher bandwidth than H.264 and will not have any quality loss. Look at the data rates capable from codecs, if the source codec is at a lower rate than the destination codec, you won’t lose quality (unless you set the transcode to compress the file or something). Using something too much higher in bandwidth will just create an unnecessarily large file.

I just meant to say that Handbrake, at least by default, will transcode the file; and in my experience it will compress the data and result in a loss in quality - I’ve gone from a 30 GB source, converted with the highest quality preset, to a 9GB file. Maybe Handbrake has other options to avoid that; but if the goal is just to streamline the operation, I find that a quick line of code is a valid solution. It’s definitely not the easiest program for beginners, but that’s why I tried to spell out exactly what to do.

FFmpeg is a good tool, but if you’re deep enough in knowing how to use codecs and such, I feel like you’d be using better tools anyway. That’s why I generally don’t recommend it to people.

Do you have a converter that you recommend, other than Handbrake and FFmpeg? I’ll admit, I’m only a hobby editor - most of you probably outclass me - so I just want to help this project any way I can!

I typically use FFmpeg for conversions. It’s a bit more confusing to use than Handbrake, but I find that it’s faster, and the output is generally a higher quality too. Another benefit over Handbrake is that Handbrake will try to re-transcode the entire video; whereas FFmpeg can simply repackage the video and audio tracks into any other format container. In other words, it can convert your file to a compatible file type without losing any video quality.

If you just need to convert it from .avi to, for example, .mp4, you can do that really easily and quickly with this command (remove the square brackets and add the file name):

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a copy "[output file].mp4"

(In layman’s terms, this means “Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video and audio tracks without transcoding them, and output them into [output file].mp4”)

If you need to convert the audio codec - aac audio tends to work well when I’m editing - you could do that with:

ffmpeg -i "[source file].avi" -c:v copy -c:a:1 aac "[output file].mp4"

(Run FFmpeg. Use [source file].avi as the input file. Copy the video track without transcoding it. Convert the 1st audio track to .aac, and output the video and the audio track into [output file].mp4")

Movies Remastered said:

I thought I’d make this quick clip to break those shots up.

https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1408525/action/topic#1408525

I really like the effect! But one thing feels off to me: The Falcon is going from right to left, then Poe is looking left to right, and then the Falcon exits hyperspace right to left. I feel like it throws off the screen direction of the sequence - we know the Falcon is facing left, but Poe is looking in the opposite direction. Consequentially, it feels like Poe is sitting backwards in the Falcon, like he’s facing the rear.

(Frankly, this is pretty sloppy in the J.J. Cut too; but it’s lessened a bit by the next shot being with Finn. So the feeling is less “J.J. goofed up the edit,” and more “Wow, there’s a lot of commotion right now. Which way do I look?”)

I wonder if it might work better if the Poe clip is mirrored? Given how quickly the clip passes, I don’t think it would be super noticeable. Heck, Doctor Who did that very thing with Big Ben. And that was freaking Big Ben.

Will the sound of Luke’s crackly saber be changed to more closely match the chainsaw-like sound of Kylo’s?

(Apologies if the sound has already been tweaked. I’m looking at the footage muted.)

Movies Remastered said:

Yeah, I figured this was the first time seeing the effect so I ramped it up to 11. 👍🏼

Looks fantastic! I agree with Hal - since there’s not really an establishing shot of the blade being damaged, it’s important that the audience can obviously see that it’s been scarred from the last movie.

Can’t wait to see all of the new blade effects in v2. Huge kudos to everyone who’s been working on them!

Fair Dom, fair. I was just thinking out loud.

I’m just relieved that we no longer have to deal with Kylo’s ship exploding. Poor guy loses so many ships in the original cut.

Can we add a scene of Ben pulling Vader’s ship out of the water, set to the Yoda Theme?

But actually, I don’t suppose it would be possible to place the model of [whichever ship is chosen] somewhere on the Death Star? It’s not something that ruins anything for me, but it would be a way of addressing a potential plot hole.

Sounds good, Hal. I appreciate you giving it a listen!

As for the Vader’s Castle shot, I think it’s fine as it is without the trees. However, for a compromise solution that hopefully wouldn’t be as difficult, what if there were some extra plumes of smoke coming up from the lower-right corner, where the ships head on their way to the burned forest? That way, it would imply that the area to which they’re heading has been razed. Perhaps the smoke could even obscure that section entirely, covering any trees that “might have once” been there. I.e. Rather than the castle being in the middle of a forest, it’s right on the edge of one.

At least, I’d imagine that an extra smoke effect in the corner would be easier to add than tracking a bunch of trees around throughout the camera pan. But I really think it’s fine as is for a three second shot.

Retimed some of the effects to better sync with the video. Dual of the Fates, remixed with Kylo’s Theme and Rey’s Theme:
https://streamable.com/fldzit

No worries if we want to keep it as John Powell’s original arrangement. I just did this largely as a personal experiment.

I tried re-balancing the audio mix so that the Kylo and Rey themes are more pronounced than the DOTF. Hopefully it makes the score feel less at-war with itself. Does it work any better, or is this still a case of “less is more”?

https://streamable.com/mdyqcq

Hal 9000 said:

No, he’s right. That reviewer captures my thoughts pretty well overall. I fundamentally approve of TLJ and disapprove of TROS.

I will harness the collective power of this community to execute a solid V2 as well as a Rey Nobody edition and then destroy the DeLorean.

JJ can’t save the franchise, only Hal’s new powers can do that.

No but seriously Hal, thank you! Can’t wait for Rey Nobody!

Cinefy said:

I think I prefer the way Hal last did it to be honest, makes it sound like 2 songs are overlapping

That was my intention, just considering John Williams’s own penchant for polyphony. I wanted the themes to overlap, rather than sounding like two separate pieces smooshed together; but if it doesn’t work in this case, it doesn’t work. Maybe I’ll play around with the audio levels a bit. Appreciate the feedback!

A couple of other tiny thoughts I had while looking at the Death Star fight. The added shot of Leia holding the medal - would it be possible to add some of that bright white backlight color into the shot? Right now, the colors feel a little off between the Medal insert and the Leia silhouette shot. It’s just a small little thing, but it might help to incorporate the shot better into the scene.

The other thing is, would it make the scene flow better if Leia says “Ben…” before we see her, and then Kylo stops fighting, turns, “sees her” - as if he’s stopping fighting because he hears her voice and senses her presence. The way it is in V1 (and the original cut) is that Ben stops short, Leia appears, then says his name, and then he looks over at her. There’s a split second where the audience is thinking “Wait, why the heck is he stopping?” Rather than “Oh! Was that Leia’s voice?” The scene still makes sense as is, I just wonder if it might flow a little more cleanly. What do you guys think?

I tried mixing Kylo’s and Rey’s themes into the new Duel of the Fates score. Thoughts?

https://streamable.com/dkrf37

Fun fact: The original snippets I used came from the track “Kylo Ren Arrives at the Battle” from The Force Awakens - so it’s kind of putting music from their first encounter into their final battle.