The Editting discussion

"Good point! And while they were there, someone could release Shmi from slavery as well."

Where is that thread? We need to get it going again.

"but thats still no reason to condemn CG"

And nobody is, its just the improper exessive use of it. These days the first thing that pops into peoples mind when they hear "starwars" is "computer effects"

I'm all for digital. Its brought us some great stuff, but when faced with a real stormtrooper or an animated one, I want a real one (except when the shot requires 10,000) when faced with Puppet yoda, or a digital yoda that is trying to look like a puppet, I want the puppet. To me Yoda = puppet, you can't seperate one from the other, the limitations of the puppet are part of Yoda's charm.

"Keyword on "sometimes". It isn't always the case. Your arguments presumed that this intent was deliberate thoughout the films. "

Moreover,you seem certain that your interpretations are 100% accurate to Lucas' own intention, and seem unwilling to consider even the possibility of other interpretations. That is what bothers me. You analysis is fine, but you must accept that it is your analysis. Calling us ignorant or claiming you have "whats right" and "whats true" will not get you anywhere.

 

But shouldn't we be able to see past what the character is made of?

 

Definitly. But in a movie like this a characters physical appearance plays some role in their chracterization. In this case its like having a different actor play Yoda IMHO

But I do agree, its the character not the realization that matters, but personally I feel Yoda's personality is quite off kilter int he PT as well. I don't realy see what purpose he has served so far, he's just in it because people like Yoda, but he has not justified his screen time at all, or had one really meaningful bit of dialogue when compared to what he says in ESB or ROTJ.

 

Why does continuity matter sometimes?
I'm taking an editing class right now, and my professor was talking about how montage throws contuiuity out the window. And thats ok. Theres a difference between the ground and the ground in film, film is an illusion.
I'll go back to that scene with obi wan, anakin waking up and obi wan fighting jango.

Thats a pure montage scene there, it may not be continuity wise plausable, but its not supposed to be, its montage. It finds a rythem and sticks with it, the rain, the nightmare. We feel what characters are feeling like through edting, visuals and music. Anakin and obi wan are both trying to find someone. theres a symmetry

Like my professor said today, It doesnt have to have continuity, editing is an art form, and you pick out shots and edit to form a meaning, and it doesnt have to be in continuity. This idea really shows you in this scene.

 

As you continue to study, Drummer, you'll learn about the different kinds of montage, and which kinds gel with which contexts.

Today, when we think of montage, we think of a series of images, often set to music, intended to summarize the events contained in a given passage of time. Braveheart, for example, features a montage sequence in which Wallace roams the countryside, while a peasant periodically steps in to relate how his legend has grown. Obviously, those two scenes aren't meant to be happening parallel to each other (does William cross Scotland in the time it takes this guy to tell a story?); the sequence encapsulates a much larger time frame, weaving back and forth in time in order to maintain its rhythm.

However, in this case, the montage is clearly presented as such, with a straightforward framework and no illusions of temporal continuity. (The music, which plays one continous track throughout the sequence, defines the framework from beginning to end.) Dissolves are often frequently used in a contemporary montage, and help to cordon such a sequence off from the otherwise straightforward presentation of the rest of the film.

AOTC's cut from Anakin to Obi employs no such visual or aural cues, and in fact doesn't seem to be intended as a montage at all; rather, the jump back in time comes across as an unintentional side effect of the film's heavy, last-minute cutting.

One last thing, in response to your edit: Temporal and spatial continuity are indeed important, as any significant gaps run the risk of distracting your audience. Good editing is invisible; if a cut is jarring enough to remind your audience that they're watching a film, it'll leave them much less absorbed in the film than they otherwise could be.

Thus, unless you break from your scene's established continuity to make a very strong, clear point, it's best to preserve it whenever possible.

 

"Thats a pure montage scene there, it may not be continuity wise plausable, but its not supposed to be, its montage."

PPOR

"Like my professor said today, It doesnt have to have continuity, editing is an art form, and you pick out shots and edit to form a meaning, and it doesnt have to be in continuity. This idea really shows you in this scene"

Within the Naboo scenes, perhaps. Outside of the Naboo scenes, PPOR.

 

I think you're being too generous Geist, there is no montage at all. Its simply a cut from one scene to the next, at best its a simple juxtaposition, but its by no means a montage. If it were, then every transition from one scene to the next in ever movie ever made is a montage.

The only montage in any SW film is the scene at the end of ROTJ SE, the victory celebration, where we see the other planets celebrating, and then we cut back to endor and their is music and quick cuts of the party that seem to condence the events of the party into a few seconds. Lando recants his piloting exploits to chewie, Luke hugs Leia, R2 dances with an Ewok.

That is a classical montage.

In some ways the clone war battle is a montage, but thats disputable. It has some of that style to it.

But simply cutting from Obi to Ani and back to OBi is not montage, its just parallel story telling. There are two heros who take seperate paths during the movie, and we intercut between the two stories.




I'd be curious Drummer, do you extend this symbolic analysis to the design of the characters?

 

" But simply cutting from Obi to Ani and back to OBi is not montage, its just parallel story telling. There are two heros who take seperate paths during the movie, and we intercut between the two stories."

And occasionally three, as in the end of ROTJ. Except for the end of ROTJ (which is the end of the Saga, there are no other montages, yet you proudly proclaim that one exists right in the middle of AOTC, and not only is there no need for it, but it blows continuity as well.

Yeah, briiliant analysis.

 

Exactly.

Conversely, Peter Jackson has made the LOTR films in a very montage heavy style, almost every scene has montage elements (I'm not saying this is better or worse then SW, its just different) Even some simple dialogue scenes make use of subtle jump cuts, Jackso shoots in a style where continuity is not very important. A characters arm might be up in one shot then cut to a shot where they have alreay put it down. LOTR has dozens of continuity "errors" like this in every scene, but it is so consistent that it is not noticable, it is simply the rythm of those movies and how PJ is shooting them, I think largely to do with condensing a story that is in many ways too big to fit into any movie.

There are also a host of other montage elements in the basic frame work of LOTR. Various voice overs from all sorts of characters interwined with the real time events (ie Saruman reading the book about Moira as we intercut with Gandalf contemplating the more dangerous road) smash cuts to other places and other times. Multy layered flashbacks that take place in several different time frames. As I said eveyr scene of LOTR has one montage element or another, nearly every scene has the sense that we are condensing time, moving more quickly through a journey that would take to long to document in full. (ie the fellowship walking through moria, a 5 day journey. We see several clips of them checking out various elements of the cave, but we can tell that we are NOT seeing many less important events inbetween. ANother example is when Aragorn is heading back to helmsdeep after awaking in the river in TTT. We see all sorts of shots of him riding back that have no continuity with one another. Its sunset in one shot, then clear day in another. This is to show that it took a long time to get back, not jsut a few minutes as we see it)

It works in those films because like I said it is constant and very consistent.

SW is made in a very classical, very reserved style which does not hold true to the same cinematic language that LOTR is employing. So to suddenly throw it in would seem out of place. Just like swearing, nudity, and pop music would seem out of place in SW.

"Why does continuity matter sometimes?
I'm taking an editing class right now, and my professor was talking about how montage throws contuiuity out the window. And thats ok. Theres a difference between the ground and the ground in film, film is an illusion."

Filmmaking is full of rules, rules that can be bent by soem and broken by a chosen few.

Take silence for example. One of the first things I was taught in MY first week of film school was to never, ever have silence. Ever! I don't mean no talking, I mean no room tone, no ambience, no soundtrack at all. Pure silence.

But, as my teacher pointed out, even though you can never ever have pure silence... some times you can.

2001:A space odyessy makes incredible use of silence in the vacuum of space.

But, that does not mean that silence used in another film by another filmmaker will be equally, or for that matter at all effective.

My teacher told us we could never use silence, even though their is always a possibility of it being used to good effect, yet he forbid it anyways. Why? Because odds are none of us would use it effectively. You need to learn why to obey the rules before you can start breaking them.

Likewise in the new PT Anderson movie Punch drunk love, there is a horribly over exposed scene, its almost pure white. Ironically at the same time PDL came out I was just reviewing some rushes from a short I was DOP on, and I too had over exposed a couple shots.

But why is it brilliant when PTA does it, and a $%#& up when I do it? There is no simple way to explain it. But again, you have to be an expert in the rules before you can break them. More importantly you can't just know th rules in the academic sense. Filmmaking is an art of expirence, not academics. I can honestly say that the girl who got the highest marks in our program was also considered by 99% of the students to be the

 

"But why is it brilliant when PTA does it, and a $%#& up when I do it? There is no simple way to explain it. But again, you have to be an expert in the rules before you can break them. More importantly you can't just know th rules in the academic sense. Filmmaking is an art of expirence, not academics. I can honestly say that the girl who got the highest marks in our program was also considered by 99% of the students to be the most incompentent and least talented individual of our year."

I like this particular reply. There is a simple way you can analogize it though. Its like two guys say the same exact joke the same exact way, hand movements and what not. People laugh when he does it, but don't laugh when I do it. It is odd indeed. (People really laughed when I did it. He didn't get the laughs. I just didn't want to come off as conceited. Oopz! Guess I destroyed that perception now.)

 

It is weird, but filmmaking is such an instinctual process IMHO and thats why debates like this get so complex, because what is true for one thing in one film in one instance, is untrue for another.

Its a swirl of contradictions which is difficult to wade through. Its the way I think AOTC takes itself both too serious and at the same time not serious enough, that it is both boring and yet has too much action.

Going back to the Punch Drunk Love example, I remember that afternoon being really mad at myself for screwing up the light reading on those shots in the film (in my defence we were shooting on reversal which is damn hard to expose properly) that night I'm watching punch drunk love and admiring the brilliance of the over exposed shot, and envyign PTA and his filmmaking savvy.

The success of his over exposed shot did in anyway justify my error though. Yet intention is not the only factor in this equation either. As has been pointed out many times, doing something on purpose doesn't make it a good choice.

 

blockquote

I'm all for digital. Its brought us some great stuff, but when faced with a real stormtrooper or an animated one, I want a real one (except when the shot requires 10,000) when faced with Puppet yoda, or a digital yoda that is trying to look like a puppet, I want the puppet. To me Yoda = puppet, you can't seperate one from the other, the limitations of the puppet are part of Yoda's charm.

I need to object to a few things here. First of all CGI isn't just creating creatures or character...it is also about compositing vast amounts of different elemtents together to appear seemless. In both ATOC and TPM, Lucas succeeds brilliantly in this endevor. I had a hard time telling the difference between a mintature set, a computerized set Of weather something was shot outside or actually indoors. Sets I thought were Computer Generated were actually minatures composited with live action via the computer.

Especially the space scenes are done far superior to the original. I am re-watching the OT right now...what is somewhat more noticalbe is the grey boxes that surround some of the space craft due to optical compositing. Aslo very noticable are the matte paintings. in some scenes you can see the brushstrokes or the difference in contrast between the live action and painting.

And as for the Puppet Yoda-I've just watched him on ESB- and while it is a masterful puppet perfomance...its still a puppet. What Lucas needed from Yoda in AOTC was a more expressive character. One look at the puppet in TPM (And yes, according to Lucasfilm it was the exact same puppet...George is very frugal) and we can see why he went with CGI...especially when Yoda had a promenant role.

The Clone Troopers, I must admit-I didn't think they were CGI at all. On the final scene I thought they were-just because of the artsy panerily way the sun was playing off of there visors. But I couldn't belive that all of them weren't the same guy in armor composited.

And there were hundreds of "digitally" edited shots" that were changed and no-body I know even complained or noticed them. Like the "deathstick" guy didn't have deathsticks, antenneas but did have ears at one time. R2 wasn't in the orignial opening shots on the landing pad. So Bibble was added in several weeks later after the orignal visitation with the queen was filmed.

Some weren't succesful. For example-at the First Kiss scene Lucas realized that he should have had Anakin touching Padme before kissing her. So he added a hand stroking her gently. Now I didn't notice if the hand were fake. What I did catch was the fact that Padme wasn't even RE-ACTING to Anakin touching her. I think if Porman was actualy there-she would have had some sort of response....but instead-she's just gazing out into the sea.

Lucas, for good or ill has had his imagination unleashed by the computer age. I think that a lot of people are stunned and overwelmed at the amount of information he puts on the screne.

 

personally I feel Yoda's personality is quite off kilter in the PT as well. I don't realy see what purpose he has served so far, he's just in it because people like Yoda, but he has not justified his screen time at all, or had one really meaningful bit of dialogue when compared to what he says in ESB or ROTJ.

Off kilter is right. It's difficult to put your finger on it but it's as if there's no umfff behind the character at all..no real consciousness. He's like a sack of helium blowing off inert gas. I get no sense, except for the meditation scene, that Yoda is thinking deeply about anything or that he really gives a damn about anything.

And it my book that makes his character completely and utterly useless.

To be fair, however, I'd have to say that it's not completely the fault of him being CG. Like everything else in the prequels a large share of the blame can be attributed to the writer and director.

 

And as for the Puppet Yoda-I've just watched him on ESB- and while it is a masterful puppet perfomance...its still a puppet. What Lucas needed from Yoda in AOTC was a more expressive character. One look at the puppet in TPM (And yes, according to Lucasfilm it was the exact same puppet...George is very frugal) and we can see why he went with CGI...especially when Yoda had a promenant role.

The puppet in TPM "wasn't" the same puppet. They went with a new one in TPM because Lucas wanted him to look younger than in the OT. Why he would look younger minus 30 years when the dude is already 800 years old is beyond me. ? But hey, that's Lucas logic for you.

The assertion that the digital Yoda is more expressive is something I've heard before and it's true. But while it's true it's only true in a superficial sense because all that's really happening is that Yoda is given a larger palette of facial expressions without any real driving emotive force behind them. In the final analysis what this means is that the so-called expressiveness you refer to is really just a cheap gimmick and the character ends up being nothing more than the sum of its parts.

As it turns out in ESB Yoda is much more than the sum of his parts simply because he nails the emotional stuff every time. And the reason he nails the emotional stuff is simple. Oz himself is on the actual set with Mark Hamill working kinesthetically with a real chunk of matter in the form of a puppet and getting superb direction from a real director. The process of working with a "real puppet" on a "physcial set" with a "flesh and blood actor" in "real time" creates an atmosphere of snynergy and kinesthetics that simply can't be replicated by a cartoon.

Keep in mind that expressiveness doesn't necessarily translate into any sort of depth or grit in a character. There is superficial expression in the form of facial expression and then there's real expression in the form of emotional projection. Look at the puppet with your soul and you'll see it definitely has many times more depth than the digital abomination in AOTC does.

 

Yoda has yet to develope any depth (I personally think he has the grit down pat) shown in ESB as he has yet to experience the comming events in Ep III. By which, of course, it will then be too late.

Wasn't this an editting discussion?

 

>>>In the final analysis what this means is that the so-called expressiveness you refer to is really just a cheap gimmick and the character ends up being nothing more than the sum of its parts.

so tell us, what is it that creates expression? What abstract force does it?

 

"it is also about compositing vast amounts of different elemtents together to appear seemless."

No one is agaisnt good compositing, nor was that ever mentioned. No one is against CG for that matter, just inapproiate use of it.

"What Lucas needed from Yoda in AOTC was a more expressive character."

Why? Yoda has been pointless to the PT so far. There is nothing he has said or done that could not have been said or done by someone else.

"The assertion that the digital Yoda is more expressive is something I've heard before and it's true. But while it's true it's only true in a superficial sense because all that's really happening is that Yoda is given a larger palette of facial expressions without any real driving emotive force behind them. In the final analysis what this means is that the so-called expressiveness you refer to is really just a cheap gimmick and the character ends up being nothing more than the sum of its parts. "

Exactly. Actually this comment applies to almost all aspects of AOTC.

"Yoda has yet to develope any depth (I personally think he has the grit down pat) shown in ESB as he has yet to experience the comming events in Ep III. By which, of course, it will then be too late. "

But thats so stupid (not you but that as an idea that Lucas is trying to sell if indeed thats the point) the idea that someone could live for 880 years and not develop any character or "grit" as you put it. ANd then in the last 20 years of his life become a wise sage. Its ridiculous. Yoda like the emperor should be portrayed as a constant in the universe.

 

"Wasn't this suppose to be an editing discussion?"

Yes. Lets try and steer away from symbolic colours and the varying quality of CG FX back to Editing and story contruction please.

 

From SW EP:1 DVD Audio Commentary. By Lucas

"I use Montage Editing throughout the scenes... Overall on the grander scale, i do it in terms of intercutting different ideas"

 

Sorry RS..didn't mean to hijack your thread.

*If anyone wants to continue the Yoda discussion in another thread let me know.

 

""I use Montage Editing throughout the scenes... Overall on the grander scale, i do it in terms of intercutting different ideas" "

How about a little context? Which scenes, specifically, was he referring to? Seems the Naboo/Kamino scenes were in AOTC, were they not? ?

 

Yoda is wise enough in the PT to observe
the Jedi are becoming too arrogant.

He's wise enough to warn young Anakin
of where fear leads to.

He voices concerns that Anakin is too old
to be trained.

He's wise enough to go to Kamino
and bring a Clone Army to help
rescue the Jedi.

He serves plenty of purpose in the PT
if one observes from a positive point of view.

 

I'm sorry but that doesn't cut it for me. Most if not all of these things could of been said or done by Obi-wan, Mace or anyone else.

Yes he recognizes problems within the jedi, yet does nothing about it.

"Sorry RS..didn't mean to hijack your thread."

No problem, I actually enjoy off topic tangents, and would of been happy to keep it going, but I also don't want the thread (which is enjoying a very healthy second life) to get locked, so I figured it was time to steer back on course, thats all. No apologies nessesary. Discussions evolve, and I'm all for that.

 

Me_Be_Jedi, He also says that he uses it in all the films, he created that type of editing style in EP 4, its consistent through out the movies.
So yeh, its in AOTC also.

 

Well I'm sorry too, Rebel Scumb, but I didn't really post my comments so that they could cut it with you. I posted those comments because they cut it with ME.