theslime

I agree. Kind of. Still, cutting it makes it an even less gratifying movie to watch. What's worse - stupidity, or no sense of visual-narrative pleasure WHATSOEVER?

That's not a rhetorical question. I'm honestly not sure. And it's a question you rarely have to ask. If a film is truly bad, you never really ask that question - you file the film under "'F' for 'Forget it'", to quote the great Dale Cooper. But Star Wars is different, mostly thanks to brilliant The Empire Strikes Back. You want to save it because you care about the story despite the awfulness of parts of it.

AotC as is makes the downfall of the Jedi seem not only inevitable given their arrogant and servile nature - their subservience almost smells of decadence in the classical sense; fall of the Roman empire-esque as it is - but also you're left with no real sense of loss. They're bloody THICK, meaning they deserve it.

The galacto-political ramifications of this bloody thick-ness are probably the most subtle and interesting thing about the films. Still, I'm not sure that's the impression George Lucas wanted my mind to be left with after watching the prequels. In fact, if you asked him why Obi-Wan was so stupid in AotC, I think he would respond with a resounding "Huh?".

Where am I going? I have no idea. Maybe that if we want to make the Jedi more intelligent, we might have to rewrite and remake all the prequels, because if you take out the Space Detective, there's nothing left that's actually enjoyable.

Or is there any way of inserting something better about Obi-Wan having reason to believe that clones might be loyal to their (new) master, despite the actual intent of their breeding? If he has a REASON to believe this, it might lessen the bloody thick-ness. The betrayal comes as no surprise to anyone apart from the Jedi. Narratively, that stinks to high heaven.

Actually, that monkey looks much more lifelike than the Gungans.

And now for something completely different:
Personally, I always considered the finding Kamino plot one of the strongest of AotC. I realize that says more about the film than the plot itself, but in my view the plot is one of the few things you actually take a real interest in when you're watching that wretched film for the first time.

Pretty much every fanedit out there cut both the diner and the library/map thingamajig scene - when I watched this film for the first time, these two were probably the only scenes I actually ENJOYED. Obi-Wan Kenobi: Space Detective. This meandering mess of an excuse for a movie needed a mystery to focus it. To be fair, the diner scene isn't all that, but I actually like the library.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would advise people to be careful when editing down the Kamino bits. I'm all for CHANGING it - Jango is Boba? Fine. Drastic colour correction? Yes! Trying to have it make more sense? Please! - but cutting big portions of it doesn't sound like a good idea to me. While you may care more about the political ramifications of Count Dooku's position NOW (after watching it 26 times), there has to a certain draw the first time you watch it. Obi-Wan Kenobi: Space Detective may not be much, but it's the closest AotC comes to such a draw, in my humble opinion. I was sad to see the otherwise massive improvement that was Magnoliafan's edit cut it down.

It will always remain second best.  Cheaper to produce and cheaper turnaround and everyone these days can shoot video, not just anyone can handle film right though.

It is like those self publishing book deals these days.  Anyone can write a book or screenplay.  Anyone can shoot HD Video.  Even kids and soccer moms have access to the technology, if not on the same high level of quality.  Still it makes it less of an art form and opens movies up to anyone.  And you no longer need film school cause you can just shoot right from anywhere.  Do they even use film anymore in film school why not call it what it is "digital video movie making without any frackin film"

Digital is catching up, though. I like the results I've seen from RED and good old ARRI. Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla (2008) was shot on an Arri D-20, and I think that one looked pretty good. (The D-20 has a resolution of 2880x2160.) I wouldn't have known it was digital if I hadn't read it by accident. Digital doesn't have to look like Inland Empire or Attack of the Clones anymore, thank god.

AOTC was not shot at a higher resolution than 1080p. I'm not even sure it went that high. It was digitally upconverted to be big enough for IMAX. Must have looked like shit.

ROTS was shot with the next generation of the same camera, and not even that camera could do higher resolutions than 1080. In fact, ROTS was quite simply cropped from its native 1080 format (i.e. it was shot with non-anamorphic lenses), so that it just used 817 vertical pixels, according to the CineAlta wikipedia page.

Haha, Davnes! That was wonderful.

Cade Skywalker said:

theslime said:

The Geonosis scenes are a huge improvement, but I also think the sky in the other scenes suffers from this treatment. In fact, the colour in those non-corrected screenshots don't bother me at all, as they don't have that orange tint which is so prevalent in most of Attack of the Clones.

The sky desaturation is deliberate. The first scene in the movie is full of fog and has a somber tone, which foreshadows the mystery that surrounds the whole plot of the movie. Then, suddenly, we are some miles away and the sky is clear and bright. The tone is too cartoony considering the dark times this movie is supposed to be set in. But that's just my $0.02.

 

Ah, alright. That's a good explanation. I haven't seen it in a year or so, so I didn't remember the tonal change.

Keep up the good work!

The Geonosis scenes are a huge improvement, but I also think the sky in the other scenes suffers from this treatment. In fact, the colour in those non-corrected screenshots don't bother me at all, as they don't have that orange tint which is so prevalent in most of Attack of the Clones.

MagnoliaFan claimed he had a good solution to this problem by every-so-slightly editing Obi-Wan's monologue in ANH, but since he never completed his ROTS edit, I have no idea how he would go about it.

Did he ever reveal his plans?

Bingowings said:

theslime said:

Good clip!

Based on this, I got another radical idea. Would it work, story-wise, to have the short Vader scene - getting the headgear on, with the Emperor standing by - as the very first scene of ROTS? As a way of building mystery - "who's this guy? Looks evil" - and introducing him early on as a central character. Then when Anakin fails, this other guy finishes the job. There should be at least one instance where Palps refers to his new apprentice Vader by name, so we could put that line earlier in the film. That way we just assume Sidious got a new apprentice after Maul (Dooku was never his apprentice, as far as I'm concerned), since we're not supposed to know he and Palps are the same man yet anyway. And when it's revealed, we could just assume he has two apprentices. (Oh, and btw, screw the "rule of two". At best it's just a Sith survival mechanism, but once they're out in the open (after Maul), it wouldn't make sense to keep it.)

It's blatant trickery, of course, to admit it was really a flash-forward two films later. Of the very worst kind. Still, it's fun as an idea, at least.

EDIT: Thinking about it, using the Vader name earlier in the film to imply there are two, is way over-the-top. I got a little carried away. :)

I love this thread!

I suggested the idea of moving reference to Vader before Anakin starts killing people quite a few pages back so if you are getting carried away so was I back then (this is the place to get a bit carried away in, that's the fun of this thread).

I still think there is potential in the idea (Sidious gives Vader his Sith name and is pretty sure of himself so why not have him assume there will be a Vader to send to the part before he has actually fully fallen?)

If you got rid of the OTT death of General Grievous and had him fall to his death and scooped up by the troopers it could add to the ambiguity of who Vader is (It could be Grievous working under his new Sith moniker).

You could even redub Grievous so he claims to have been a former pupil of Obi-Wan (after training Anakin he might have had another Padwan).

 

Heh, I actually HAVE read the entire thread, but I must have forgotten among all the other ideas bandied about that you said that. Sorry 'bout that! :)

I love the idea of Sidious dropping a reference to his new apprentice before there even is a Vader. That would be cool no matter how you handle the other stuff. He has it all mapped out. Then whether or not you actually admit Vader is Anakin in the end, it still gives a nice and subtle glimpse into how in control Palpatine actually is.

To be less into trickery than my idea on the last page, I think starting with a flashback - matter how un-OT it is - would work too. We start with the Vader headgear and Sidious lurking next to him (scene shortened and de-crappified), then "n months earlier" [I forget the timeframe of ROTS]. Then we wonder for the rest of the movie who that guy was (well, y'know, we could have wondered).

The more I think about it, I think trying to kill Obi-Wan should never have been the climax. Having post-lava Vader kill the younglings - though less of an obvious BETRAYAL than the Anakin scene - would have been more powerful.

The same is true for the Dooku fight. Grievous should have been killed first, then Dooku. It's a complete mystery to me how Lucas thought it would be a good idea to kill off the main villain of the last film within ten minutes of ROTS. I know someone suggested switching Dooku and Grievous some sixty pages back, but this is virtually impossible to edit without editing virtually every inter-Jedi conversation in the whole film. The fact that Dooku got killed early on is (redundantly) mentioned a gazillion times in ROTS.

Good clip!

Based on this, I got another radical idea. Would it work, story-wise, to have the short Vader scene - getting the headgear on, with the Emperor standing by - as the very first scene of ROTS? As a way of building mystery - "who's this guy? Looks evil" - and introducing him early on as a central character. Then when Anakin fails, this other guy finishes the job. There should be at least one instance where Palps refers to his new apprentice Vader by name, so we could put that line earlier in the film. That way we just assume Sidious got a new apprentice after Maul (Dooku was never his apprentice, as far as I'm concerned), since we're not supposed to know he and Palps are the same man yet anyway. And when it's revealed, we could just assume he has two apprentices. (Oh, and btw, screw the "rule of two". At best it's just a Sith survival mechanism, but once they're out in the open (after Maul), it wouldn't make sense to keep it.)

It's blatant trickery, of course, to admit it was really a flash-forward two films later. Of the very worst kind. Still, it's fun as an idea, at least.

EDIT: Thinking about it, using the Vader name earlier in the film to imply there are two, is way over-the-top. I got a little carried away. :)

I love this thread!

I like the Geonosis shots even better, Cade! (And I dig your avatar too. Amazing album.)

Depending on how you make the snapshot, it might save a PAL colour profile from the video. If you have Photoshop, you could convert the file's profile to sRGB with the "edit -> convert to profile -> sRGB" command. Or if you have several, you could use the "image processor" (under "file -> scripts")

(And I believe you must do this before you combine them into the comparison pic.)

No worries. I'd just love to read it!

Any news about this? Also: the links on page one are down.

The picture of Jake Lloyd in the desert really sums up what's so horribly wrong about the colours in TPM. It looks like a photo lab accident. I remember watching a pink-tinted 70mm version of Lawrence of Arabia once (due to a lab accident, or just some weird detoriation). It's enough to drive a poor film-loving soul bonkers.

Good work.

I do a passable imitation of the movement patterns of ye olde standard walking CGI creatures (Jar-Jar, for instance). Get good laughs for it too. :)

I think it's a bit too cyan too. Then again: cyan-ish tinting has a proud history in silent films:

"The Lost World" (1925):

As a long-time lurker, I just want to say that I love the discussion in this thread - Vaderios's wonderful colour corrections specifically.

For me, film is first and foremost a visual medium. My favourite films have - for very different reasons - memorable visuals. A quick top five to illustrate: "Il deserto rosso" (Antonioni); "2001" (Kubrick); Fire Walk with Me (Lynch); Sunrise (Murnau); and "Vertigo" (Hitchcock).

The point to all this: I could have tolerated the wretchedness of the prequel stories had they had the strange sense of both wonder and junkyard aesthetics (a beautiful and weirdly potent brew) of the OT. But even the good parts - the Easter Island-ness of the Naboo forests; the late Renaissance building parts from AOTC - get bogged down in terrible and inconsistent colouring.

There is no doubt in my mind that had someone less rich and less famous than Lucas made these films, no studio would have released the films in the states they're in. They would have been colour corrected - heavily! - before release. The finished films (possible exception of ROTS) are not even release candidates - they're in workprint shape.

As much as I love the story changes in some prequel edits - my favourites are probably MagnoliaFan's - I think I would actually probably prefer a colour corrected fanedit with no story changes. Even keeping the Midichlorians. That's how important the colours are to Star Wars, in my opinion. If someone could just make a good and consistent colour correction of the PT - Vaderios, I'm looking at you :) - I would be really grateful.

Sorry if this is (vaguely) off-topic! (Back to lurk mode...)

Ripplin said:

"What's that got to do with [Adywan's] bloody [edit]?"

Is that Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson? Maybe he has a shed to spare for Ady's Wampa?