Achk Med-Beq's Chat Table: casual discussions

Anyone know how much, if any, editing on the finale of Episode I occurred after the screening featured in the Making Of documentary?
youtu.be/da8s9m4zEpo

We see Lucas, Ben Burtt and the others discussing the pacing and the complexity of intercutting four storylines together. This is when Lucas said "I may have gone too far in a few places."

We also see a somewhat concerned Ben Burtt saying "In a space of about 90 seconds you go from lamenting the death of a hero, to escape, to slightly comedic with Jar Jar, ya know... to Anakin and his little, kind of, tag. It's a lot, and really, it's a very short time."


We then see them acknowledging how the pieces can't be taken out and how you can't undo the whole thing. Followed by Lucas then discussing how they can diminish the effects by slowing it down a little bit and making it less intense.


Even when I saw the movie for the first time, I didn't have a problem with anything regarding these issues. So again, I'm wondering what was done to the rough cut after this conversation.

They may be available in the following book:

www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Storyboards-Prequel-Trilogy/dp/1419707728/

Star Wars Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy Hardcover – May 14, 2013
by J. W. Rinzler (Editor), Iain McCaig (Introduction)



Here's a 4K flick-through:



Shamefully, I don't actually have that book. Mister Rinzler (wherever you now are), please forgive me, sir! I will rectify this eventually.

(I've spent a lot of time out of work, low on funds, and have had to choose my purchases carefully. Maybe I should have become a chuba thief like Jar Jar!)


Yes, the earlier ideas are usually fascinating in and of themselves, and I like treating the films as a raw document with previous iterations and scribblings.

Also, that marker pen is very 1990s. You could probably make an ASMR video of Lucas scrawling on everything. "This is real, this is real. Not so real, not so real."



I can't answer this in any detail, because there are many gaps in the editing history of the prequels and what has been made available to the public. Jon Shenk, for instance, allegedly shot over 600 hours of behind-the-scenes footage, but "The Beginning", the documentary he later assembled (Lucas, despite his documentarian sensibilities, was supposedly reluctant about the idea of a non-narrated, cinema-verite featurette), is less than one-hour long. It'd be nice to see more of that footage someday. 

On another note: I wonder if Lucas came to rue the rawness of some of the moments included in the documentary? Some of those chunks were, after all, later used by RedLetterMedia to suggest that the film was a mess and that everyone went into denial about it afterward.

In order to soften things after the rough cut, I think some of the pieces in the action climax may have been re-arranged (Somny  alluded to it with his comment about John Williams' music being chopped up), and at least one item was taken out. Notice that Ben Burtt alludes to Anakin "and his tag". There are many definitions of the word "tag":

www.thefreedictionary.com/tag


Quite a few are a good fit, but I suspect it's something along the lines of "the refrain or last lines of a song or poem", or "the closing lines of a speech in a play; a cue" -- which would likely make it the scene of Anakin landing back in the hangar (after blowing up the Droid Control Ship) and asking if he's going to get in trouble.

It's at the end of this deleted scenes montage (14:44: Anakin's Return):



("Who in blazes" -- LOL!)

You can see how Burtt would have been of the opinion that the scenes came rapid-fire ("in the space of about ninety seconds") and had clashing, dissonant tones. 

From the sounds of it, Obi-Wan was going to defeat Maul and then cradle Qui-Gon a little earlier: i.e., it wasn't the final scene before the wipe to Theed and Nute and Rune being escorted away before the celebration. I can imagine Lucas doing it that way because he wanted the lightsaber duel to be bracketed both sides (start and end) with non-Jedi characters fighting to save the day. The duel itself is really a distraction. The Jedi are simply trying to contain Maul while Amidala, herself using a distraction in the form of the Gungan Army, attempts to take back the palace. But he must have decided it was too "bold", to use his wording in the documentary, so rolled back his plans a bit and ended on that most private of moments between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon.

Maybe it was also an old ghost he was clinging to from the drafting process. In his earlier drafts, Qui-Gon is only a bit character who doesn't appear until Coruscant. Obi-Wan operates on his own until then, is the discoverer of Anakin, is older (as is Anakin), and has most of Qui-Gon's traits. So perhaps Lucas was still resisting putting too much emphasis on the doom and gloom of losing Qui-Gon. It's an important strand, but I can see him choosing not to emphasise it, in line with TPM being more of a Byzantine mosaic of consequences. However, to give the film more impact and smooth out things for the viewer, he likely embraced the obvious solution: cut some of the extraneous pieces and end on Qui-Gon reassuring his apprentice that Anakin will bring balance -- death and life, sorrow and hope, in a fitting closer of a scene. Naboo regains its freedom, but the galaxy has lost a leading light in the battle against the coming dark. And yet: This leading light recognises (like Padme in her final moments in ROTS) that a shard of hope remains.

The book looks awesome. Very little colour or text, and most of the storyboards appear quite crude, yet the story is told vividly.


I think it got re-arranged, yes. But, of course, I can't prove it. They obviously tweaked it, though, based on their initial reaction and the subsequent conversation in the kitchen/living area.

One interesting thing the documentary highlights is just how intimately Ben Burtt was involved in the film's editing and assembly. And it's really a very fitting time capsule for what is, in many ways, an iconic and revolutionary blockbuster movie. Jon Shenk, in another article, said "It was like working on a new chapter of The Bible."


Well, for the trench run sequence, they originally used footage from an assortment of war films, including, as this Slash Film article states, directly quoting Gary Kurtz: "The Dam Busters, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Battle of Britain, Jet Pilot, The Bridges of Toko-Ri, 633 Squadron and about forty-five other movies":

www.slashfilm.com/557980/dam-busters-influenced-star-wars/

Most people, however, just think of "The Dam Busters", which even the article pivots on.

Obvious influences on the podrace include the chariot race in "Ben-Hur" and John Frankenheimer's 1966 film "Grand Prix". But I wouldn't be surprised if Lucas had 2001 on the brain. He probably always has.

Oh, and I think we need some sort of "Prequel Rough Cut" or "Prequel Development" thread. 

one idiot said lucas knew he screwed up when he said that gone too far line

Taking a shower with

We've lost a lot of the Star Wars family in recent years. Very sad.

One of my English students is a usually pretty serious but chill guy (deputy mayor of Prague) who I wouldn't have expected to like sci-fi, but the other day he mentioned he loves 2001: A Space Odyssey, quite a lot.

Then I mentioned how I too like it, as well as Star Wars and he eagerly replied, "I like Star Wars too, they're great, but only the ones made by George Lucas. The new stuff, eh... no thanks!"

I feel like we really bonded there.

I wonder if anybody actually ended up using any of Grievous' body for spare parts.