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The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 16

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Hmm, the only real options there for smoothing would be to either split them further from each other with more silence in between, or to keep the slight overlap (allowing the hum to come in where it does) but having the ‘pings’ and text come in later. What do you think it needs?

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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@EddieDean – I took a crack myself at an idea, stemming from V4. Check it out here: https://vimeo.com/495284667

Take it with a grain of salt, especially from a guy who has never seen TCW. That said, I know this much:

  1. It’s about intergalactic AND inter- / intra- personal wars.
  2. Asohka and Anakin are primary characters.
  3. The music should take into account the emotions revolving around each of the above.

So, I took a swing. Might be a huge miss, but happy to contribute an iota of an idea for this great thread!

Keep up the great work!

EDIT: Music credit goes to Samuel Kim, with remix by me.

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Holy shit buddy that’s absolutely awesome. Tonally I think that fits really well - it’s a really nice mix of military bombast with something more ominous and melancholy.

I think the text section is way too fast though - I’d probably go as slow as letting it take double the time, in which case, are you able/willing to produce a mix which lets that middle section last for twice as long before we drop into the TCW logo section? I don’t know quite how technical you are with mixing, but I’d love a couple of those nice piano notes throughout too if it’s possible to make that work.

That said, I’d be more than happy to have this become our intro. There’s no upper limit to how collaborative this effort can be. You’d need to send me the audio so I could recompile the video per episode, since the text will always differ. Let’s give the usual suspects time to feedback too, but I really like what you’ve done.

Since it feels like we’re getting close to our final version of this, I’m going to crack on with my edits, in the chronological order of my Quality Cut, since that’s the ordering I’ll be releasing first. I have about six days free now, so I intend to blast through these if I can. I’ll go back over them to add the intro/outro stuff once we’ve settled on it.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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Whoa! SO glad you like it! Everyone else weigh in too. +1 for collaboration.

Happy to continue to make tweaks. At the time (i.e. this morning, lol), I wasn’t concerned with copyright/quality stuff, but if this fits and feels right, we’ll need to go about it the right way… starting with reaching out the Samuel Kim and getting permission (or at the very least, letting him know. He seems super lax about fan edit stuff).

Would it be useful to have a selection of intro audio assets that you can pick and choose depending on the episode? Maybe creating a short, medium, and long intro, with the variation only occurring during the intro text? Happy to do that for the audio, so long as you give me some durations that would be appropriate (e.g. total length: short - 30 secs, medium - 35 secs, long - 45 secs; with the expectation that the difference in length would go in the “Intro Text” section.

FYI – I know nothing about 5.1 Surround. Would it be a problem for stereo export of the audio sequence?

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The intro text should always fit to 40 seconds, if you can manage that. That allows for two groups of three sections of text, with the final whole getting extra time to digest. So since it fades in from a brief period of black, 40-50 seconds of music before the TCW logo appears would be about right.

Is permission necessary for fan edits? I’d assumed that since this was non-profit, and consumers of an edit own the source (which contains Kim’s music in context for this purpose), that we’re covered? Though if it’s necessary of course we should.

Stereo is absolutely fine for music. It’s only the meat of the episode that needs the 5.1 sound, and my sources give that. I’ll just play the stereo through the front channels and leave the others silent.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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McFibb said:

@EddieDean – I took a crack myself at an idea, stemming from V4. Check it out here: https://vimeo.com/495284667

Take it with a grain of salt, especially from a guy who has never seen TCW. That said, I know this much:

  1. It’s about intergalactic AND inter- / intra- personal wars.
  2. Asohka and Anakin are primary characters.
  3. The music should take into account the emotions revolving around each of the above.

So, I took a swing. Might be a huge miss, but happy to contribute an iota of an idea for this great thread!

Keep up the great work!

EDIT: Music credit goes to Samuel Kim, with remix by me.

I’ve to say I like it too. Right amount of epicness. For a second I had concerns it’ll be the avengers theme from endgame when the intro text unfolds.
Though I agree with eddiedean regarding the longer time for the introtext and piano to pin point this with the emerging sentences.

One minor issue for me is that the audio-transition from the tcw logo to the episode name is fairly rough, because of the difference between the two music pieces. Perhaps it is possible to smoothin it out? Or maybe it the intro music could end around 0:54/55? Therefore the difference would be lesser than before.

For stereo to 5.1, you could use ffmpeg, the conversion to 5.1 should work? (not an expert though).

Other than that, great job!

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CMMAP said:

McFibb said:

@EddieDean – I took a crack myself at an idea, stemming from V4. Check it out here: https://vimeo.com/495284667

Take it with a grain of salt, especially from a guy who has never seen TCW. That said, I know this much:

  1. It’s about intergalactic AND inter- / intra- personal wars.
  2. Asohka and Anakin are primary characters.
  3. The music should take into account the emotions revolving around each of the above.

So, I took a swing. Might be a huge miss, but happy to contribute an iota of an idea for this great thread!

Keep up the great work!

EDIT: Music credit goes to Samuel Kim, with remix by me.

I’ve to say I like it too. Right amount of epicness. For a second I had concerns it’ll be the avengers theme from endgame when the intro text unfolds.
Though I agree with eddiedean regarding the longer time for the introtext and piano to pin point this with the emerging sentences.

One minor issue for me is that the audio-transition from the tcw logo to the episode name is fairly rough, because of the difference between the two music pieces. Perhaps it is possible to smoothin it out? Or maybe it the intro music could end around 0:54/55? Therefore the difference would be lesser than before.

For stereo to 5.1, you could use ffmpeg, the conversion to 5.1 should work? (not an expert though).

Other than that, great job!

Yeah, the transition could be better. I wanted to somehow introduce Asohka’s theme, while at the same time carrying the Order 66 theme to it’s conclusion of the Imperial March, and finding a way to overlay the two without having adequate source material required pitching one or the other, which both creates some artifacts and creates a bit of disconnect.

I was more concerned about the overall length of the intro, so I cut more elements shorter than I would’ve liked, so the fact that the general consensus is that longer = better, I think some of that jarring can be remedied.

The core issue with adding Asohka’s theme at the end over the episode title is three-fold:

  1. Tonally, def different
  2. Diff key
  3. The piano note is actually a 2nd/11th (musical term)*, over the root chord. While as a standalone for Asohka’s theme, it creates a longing/yearning/wistful/melancholy feeling, in this context, it feels contrary, out of place, and introduces a bit of thematic/tonal dissonance. I countered that by fighting fire with fire and continued with her theme using the second piano note of her theme to be overlaid on some of the Imperial March, which together is very noticeably dissonant, which one could argue might fit the eventual nature of the push/pull of the light/dark side embodied by both Asohka and Anakin (speculating though… since I’ve never seen it and I avoid spoilers as much as possible!).

All that to say, it’s very well possible these two independent pieces of music that I’ve smashed together thanks to the glory of technology may very well not play nicely in the context of this intro edit. I’ll keep playing around and keep you all in the loop.

*EDIT: It might actually be a 6th. I’m not at a piano to figure it out. Regardless, it has the same impact on the listener described above.

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I also thought it was the Avengers theme at first, haha. I like it, though it’s very intense and thus might be a little much. I second the comment regarding the transition to the piano bit for the episode title being a bit abrupt.

Clearly the most reasonable solution here is to change the intro music about every twenty episodes, because Clone Wars is an anime.

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Yeah, a friend of mine suggested changing the theme music every chunk of episodes, but that sounds like waaaay too much effort to be honest. And I’d rather the start feel more tied to the ending.

Right, I’m now looking at the edits proper, taking each episode in detail.

Currently working on my s01e01, which is just the Ahsoka elements of the Christophsis arc (and technically the rest of the movie, though I’m cutting the entirely of the Hutt baby storyline).

Since I don’t think the stealth ship belongs in the show (plus it’s a slow episode), and I don’t think we should explore traitor clones this early in the show (it’s literally the first episode), I’m left with some good material from the first two episodes.

  • There’s such good material to make Trench the threatening captain of the Malevolence, so I’m going to continue to explore that idea.
  • The actual traitor clone stuff is fine and is almost entirely in interiors, so it could be placed later in the show, so long as you start with a republic failiure which could reasonably be internal sabotage, and find a sensible place for these ten minutes.
  • The remainder of those episodes can be combined to give us a nice intro before Ahsoka’s, I think. First we see them delivering supplies to Bail (I’d hoped to preserve that), then they bike over to where Ventress is camped out (which contains some good dialogue about how much it’s obviously a trap, which helps to justify how they knew to get there), then while they’re fighting Ventress the bombers target Bail, and shortly after this sequence we drop into the original Ahsoka part of the movie where they talk about a comms blackout. I think that’s all a nice way to add some fun sequences and introduce Ventress without wasting too much time, and to make it look like the separatists were a few more chess moves ahead than expected - worth all the more when Ahsoka’s the one to deliver victory.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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sade1212 said:

I also thought it was the Avengers theme at first, haha. I like it, though it’s very intense and thus might be a little much. I second the comment regarding the transition to the piano bit for the episode title being a bit abrupt.

Clearly the most reasonable solution here is to change the intro music about every twenty episodes, because Clone Wars is an anime.

Yeah, the crescendo at the end of the logo isn’t ideal, but I didn’t have any other “outro” sequences in the source material. I’m working on finding a better exit.

And unrelatedly – re: to my mention of Asohka’s theme earlier, I was wrong. It’s “Burying the Dead”, not her theme. Still think it works, but the musical metaphor now breaks down. Blame it on me not knowing these characters! Pros/cons of having fresh eyes/ears.

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‘Burying the Dead Epic Cinematic Version’ is what I’m using in the original v1,3,4. And I agree, it’s totally lovely. Whether in mine or yours McFibb, it feels like we’re all strongly gravitating towards it as an element of the identity of TCW:R.

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Regrettably my machine seems to really be struggling with NJ’s inputs. It slows down so badly that it can’t render the preview video at even the worst setting, so I’m effectively editing blind.

I know my machine can handle high quality sources because I’ve edited 1080p versions of the Hobbit movies with no trouble, so I think it must be NJ’s. My assumption is that it’s the 10-bit colour information as opposed to the original source’s (and more common) 8-bit info, and with such a high resolution and long length file it’s too much to process.

Now, it’s not to the actual upscaling that’s causing this, since I’m using his 1080p versions. But in the process I believe NJ is introducing HDR lighting. It gives us a subtlety of colour which frankly isn’t vital to us. Colour that deep is mostly useful for colour processing, which I don’t intend to do (since NJ has already done that himself). I would still like to preserve his colour grade if possible - but I don’t need all that deep data. So option one is that I’m running his Christophsis episode through my rendering pipeline now, but with 8-bit colour, to see if I can handle what’s returned as a new input.

Failing that, option two is to revert back to using the original sources, which frankly are fine, just not quite as rich in colour as NJ’s. I can always grade them myself, I suppose, though that’d be a huge amount of effort for minimal reward - it was more of just a bonus from using NJ’s.

Edit: It’s taken an hour to render 4%, so re-processing NJ’s may be a non-starter.

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To be entirely honest, I’ve never noticed NumeralJoker’s processed versions being significantly better, just a little more saturated. Even now that we’re in the era of real AI upscaling, I’m still skeptical that you can meaningfully create a 10-bit colour source from an 8-bit colour one.

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For now, I think option one would be preferable. Due to the fact, that grading yourself would consume a lot of time.

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It’s still only at 54% though, which is a pain. I don’t want to have to spend 24 hours pre-processing each of 50 episodes - that makes a weekly release far more unlikely. I think I’ll stick with the original sources, without grading. To be fair, the show always looked great when it looked great, and most of the episodes that looked like ass have been excised for exactly that reason. I think for the weekly release (which is very much our pilot), original should be absolutely fine. I’ll consider grading or alternate sources - that’s all easier to do after final cut, which should follow community feedback anyway.

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Understandable. May i ask which processor do you have? I might be able to help you with the encoding.

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EddieDean said:

There’s nothing released yet buddy, but stay tuned. I’ve put the current status right at the top of the OP so it’s easy to check, and will update the title as new episodes are released.

Oops, my bad! I will definitely stay tuned.

BTW, I have just posted my own episode grouping/order in another thread that you might find of note.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Clone-Wars-2008-animated-tv-series-general-discussion-thread/id/9823/page/14#1397754

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Dr. Krogshöj said:

EddieDean said:

There’s nothing released yet buddy, but stay tuned. I’ve put the current status right at the top of the OP so it’s easy to check, and will update the title as new episodes are released.

Oops, my bad! I will definitely stay tuned.

BTW, I have just posted my own episode grouping/order in another thread that you might find of note.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Clone-Wars-2008-animated-tv-series-general-discussion-thread/id/9823/page/14#1397754

Nice, thanks for the share. I always like to see others’ versions of these, because it helps me to see where the community’s focus is.

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Work continues on the Christophsis episode. Using now the original sources, I’ve produced the rough cut from the best elements of the three episodes, and it flows nicely. It runs to about 30 minutes. Plot is now:

  • In the intro text we establish that Bail’s involved in supply and relief on Christophsis but with only a very small clone escort, Anakin’s knighted so Obi-Wan’s requested a new padawan, and Ventress has been tracked by Anakin and Obi-Wan too easily to Christophsis.
  • We open on the planet, with Anakin and Obi-Wan biking to Ventress to find that it’s a trap - as expected - but one not intended to capture them but to draw them out while the Separatists establish a comms blackout and drop overwhelming force onto the planet.
  • During the fight with Ventress, we see Bail’s rear base being attacked, then as the fight concludes we see the huge army arrive.
  • After they flee the huge army by speeder thing, we then skip forward to Anakin and Obi-Wan having arrived at the forward base and made contact with the clone forces, where they spy the army besieging them while they listen to Bail calling for more help.
  • Unaware that they’re being ignored (or that there’s an issue on Christophsis) due to the comms blackout, the Jedi Council send a ship with Ahsoka to request the return of Anakin and Obi-Wan. Instead, she joins them.
  • Obi-Wan faces the main force, whilst a bickering Anakin and Ahsoka destroy the shield generator thanks to Ahsoka’s brashness (but less annoying dialogue).
  • The end scene plays out the same, with thanks and Anakin formally accepting Ahsoka, but we intercut Bail also thanking Anakin for the lives saved.

I think I’m just going to call this THE NEW PADAWAN, unless anyone can think of anything better. CRISIS ON CHRISTOPHSIS is a bit too cheeky. THE SIEGE OF CHRISTOPHSIS is cool but takes a little weight off the later outer rim sieges, and I think it’s best to focus on the characters for this one. I don’t want to highlight Ventress since she’s a minor part, so I wouldn’t go with something like APPRENTICES or PADAWAN AND ASSASSIN.

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My editor has crashed, but since it’s still rendering my 8-bit Christophsis source I don’t want to force a restart, so I’m looking at some upcoming edits. My episode two is made from the first two Mandalore episodes.

This is a really strong arc, but I wanted to trim the goofier elements, notably Obi-Wan getting put on a Bond villain’s production line OF DEATH, and the small spider things. Instead the story plays out as:

  • In the intro text we establish that Mandalore leads the Neutral (not Separatist) systems, that it used to be warlike, but that a Mandalorian has attacked a Republic cruiser so while Anakin’s escorting Ahsoka elsewhere, Obi-Wan’s been sent to investigate.
  • We open with Obi-Wan arriving on Mandalore then continue as in the original with some Satine exposition, the bombing, the trip to Concordia, and Obi-Wan going to investigate the mines while Satine dines with Pre Viszla.
  • Then, Obi-Wan gets in the fight but we don’t see him captured. He calls Satine for backup (I’ll play some fighting sounds over his phone call so we get the impression he’s still fighting), then she comes in, distracts the guards, but then gets caught, as Obi-Wan springs from high up to save her. (We don’t need to see him on the conveyor at all, he’s just using her as a reliable distraction and happens to be above when she gets grabbed.)
  • We then conclude that episode with Anakin joining the pair to escort them all to Coruscant, which flows nicely into the next.
  • More good dialogue now, but we skip all of the early scenes of spiderbots in the basement of the ship, focusing on the relationships and the backstory.
  • Eventually they go for dinner, but Anakin is called downstairs as some clones have gone missing. We then get the single scene of the Clone being puppeted by the large spiderbot.
  • He calls up to Obi-Wan that one’s got loose - but as Obi-Wan kills it, we skip the scenes of the baby spiders entirely, with a clean cut to Merrik taking her hostage - he’s now just taking advantage of the chaos (since his plan’s been interrupted by the Jedi anyway) rather than waiting to be caught.
  • Everything then plays out the same.

This episode doesn’t feature Ahsoka, and this early in the show I’m considering explaining it away in the crawl. There’re plenty of times later when people are off doing their own thing, but in this case, I think people will expect to know why, so I think “Anakin’s escorting Ahsoka elsewhere” is important for the opening. Either that, or this is our episode one?! That’d fit a bit more tightly with the cold open of Death Watch commandos finding the Maul bros, then we could introduce Ahsoka in episode two - though this episode’s quite Obi-Wan focused so isn’t an ideal opening.

I was thinking of calling this episode either THE DEATH WATCH or TERROR(ISM?) ON MANDALORE. I could call it DUCHESS OF MANDALORE, since Satine is the focus, but my DoM wouldn’t include the actual Duchess of Mandalore episode, which’ll come a little later. But by calling it THE DEATH WATCH, they’re our key element to continue to follow throughout the show, which is sensible.

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I personally don’t mind the little spider assassins, I think they dial up the horror aspect, though I’ll admit in terms of pacing cutting the probe antics does more good than harm. But yeah I can do away with Obi-Wan’s “staged accident” at the beskar mine.

This should remain episode two, since the Christophsis stuff does all the necessary to establish most of the vital characters (Ahsoka, Captain Rex, Ventress) that anchor the show. Besides, seeing how the Mandalore episodes are better written and more in-depth, the Christophsis events would feel rushed if they come second.

I like “The Death Watch” for the title.

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It’d certainly be daring and radical to put Mandalore up front, but I agree with Knight of Kalee that Christophsis should remain first because of all of its specific character introduction moments. That’s one of the things that’s always irritated me about the chronological order having Cat and Mouse first: you’re just dropped straight in. I think that’s part of why, when I first decided to watch TCW, I wound up starting Cat and Mouse three or four times before eventually actually getting through it and bingeing the rest of the show.

If you’re too concerned about introducing Ahsoka and then immediately dropping her, you could jigger the order slightly and put Cloak of Darkness or Malevolence in second, though they’re unfortunately weaker episodes. Alternatively, you could continue the precedent, and arrange the episodes such that Ahsoka is occasionally randomly absent from one episode, but never two in a row, if possible.