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The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 23

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SECOND EPISODE RELEASED - s01e03 CLOAK OF DARKNESS

Please check the tracker for the link, or PM me for access to the tracker.

So, while I was waiting on an improved source for my s01e01, I got to work on s01e03. This was going to be Cloak of Darkness with a handful of scenes from Lair of Grievous, but I ultimately couldn’t get the Lair content to feel like it belonged. So it’s essentially just Cloak of Darkness with a little polish - I took out a boring scene, cut or modified four or five minor lines of dialogue just to tighten characterisation, and made the ending closed rather than open ended.

One thing I did decide to do was to make the traitor/infomant from Christophsis now explicitly Argyus. Why not! I think it’s tidy.

(See my earlier post for the reasons I couldn’t include Lair. I do still have the rough cut of the Lair content if anyone’s interested, but I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion I did!)

There are a couple of minor bits of polish still required in the credits, but again, I’m waiting on a source. As soon as I have that, I’ll re-release all of the existing episodes in closer to ‘final’ version as I finalise my standards.

Since this was really just polishing an existing episode, I kept the name CLOAK OF DARKNESS, to represent that this really isn’t anything new. Though I did think of making a pun on ‘Unduli’, such as ‘Unduly Alarmed’ or ‘Unduly Betrayed’.

(This is maybe a good time to remind people that I estimate that about 50% of episodes - about 30 out of 60 - will only require a polish pass rather than anything radical, so please don’t always expect something new. What they will be at the least, will be the best or most important episodes of the show, in an order that makes the show flow better, and brought up to a slightly higher standard than TCW at release.)

I’m still interested in any feedback on the opening titles, and the closing ones. I’ve made some changes to the end titles to give the best art a little longer to shine.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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Regarding the closing titles, personally I think the credits/score sync works best when the piece of music that starts at 21:30 in Cloak of Darkness hits the same time as the OT forum credits, as it did in the previous episode. The starting point of the music of course can vary depending on how it blends better with the episode. Maybe you could move forward the beginning of the credits a few seconds or reduce a bit the duration of the text. I agree with giving more screentime to the most striking concept art.

The episode itself was well-done, and good call on making Argyus the mole as you had suggested earlier. Shame to see Lair go, since it’s the only time Grievous gets any backstory or the chance to kill a Jedi in this series, but at least there will always be the complete cut or the original episode to check out.

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EddieDean said:

McFibb said:

EddieDean said:

Knight of Kalee, just spotted your edit.

I agree on tightening up the text shadow a little.

I’m going to struggle with the outro credits in this and every episode, since it always builds up then drops into the bombast of the original.

Unless @McFibb has an idea to draw out the opening of the music track I’m using any further? More of a build then drop into the operatic singing? It’d need to be about 20/30 sec before the current start, with the peak just before where the start is.

But even then, it’s not something I’d be able to use in every episode, I don’t think.

Yup — that’s what I meant by helping out. Love the music too, but happy to take a swing at getting the timing/tone right for the entirety of the outro. Can you clarify a bit more about what you’re looking for?

I’ll try:

So we’re talking about extending the start of ‘The Clones Theme Order 66 Sad Version’.

Currently, it begins with a little hum, then some choral singing, then the brass comes in.

Compare that to existing episodes (like my S01E02), where the final dialogue to close out the episode normally plays over some music which builds slowly for about 30 seconds, giving the sense it’s wrapping up the story, then drops into the BA-BAHHH of the Clone Wars logo / closing credits.

As it stands now, because I’m cutting the BA-BAHHH, we end up with a track slowly building, but then fading out so that I can drop into the choral music of ‘Clones Sad’.

I feel like the best way to achieve the same effect with this track would be to allow the brass drop to replace the original credits’ BA-BAHHH, in which case the choral part becomes our build up.

I’ve quickly mocked this up (VERY ROUGH, excuse quality) to give you an idea of what I’m thinking makes sense.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JwpM7ATxqbDAlMh_6ggOWkFntD0Y_3SE/view?usp=sharing

The top yellow track in this video is the episode’s video, the bottom yellow track is the music channel, and the bottom blue track is the voice/sfx.

You can see that, to replace the existing track entirely, I’ve had to pull the beginning of Clones Sad back 30 seconds into the episode proper.

I’ve extended the choir to do this, which I think is neat, but it’s probably way too dominant. I don’t know if you could achieve something more subtle. Or something which achieves the same emotional effect, but with different sounds - but which still launches nicely into the brass drop. And I’d prefer not to lose the choir altogether since I think it’s a nice part of the anticipation.

There’s also a risk that other episodes start their build as early as maybe 40 seconds in, in which case I’d need maybe 40 seconds of neutral/choral build before we get to the brass drop.

Nice mock-up. Helpful! Do you know if the ending build up in the original episodes is always the same, or at the very least, in the same key each time?

Also, do you want to drop right to credits or to logo again?

Finally, could you send me the video track + dialogue + no music for the last 30 seconds, then your full credit sequence, sans music?

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@EddieDean regarding my possibly encountered frame drops in episode 2 aren’t any. The video started to stutter because of the ai enhanced upscaling of the nvidia shield pro. i watched the episode back and worth with and without it to rule it out 100%

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CMMAP said:

@EddieDean regarding my possibly encountered frame drops in episode 2 aren’t any. The video started to stutter because of the ai enhanced upscaling of the nvidia shield pro. i watched the episode back and worth with and without it to rule it out 100%

Super, thanks for confirming. Weirdly, my pipeline does put the episodes out by a frame. (Well, like a percent of a frame, but the effect is that they’re off by one). But luckily, since they’re still the right FPS, I just shift the video stream by one frame for perfect sync again.

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 (Edited)

Knight of Kalee said:

The episode itself was well-done, and good call on making Argyus the mole as you had suggested earlier. Shame to see Lair go, since it’s the only time Grievous gets any backstory or the chance to kill a Jedi in this series, but at least there will always be the complete cut or the original episode to check out.

Sorry to disappoint. There’s some good meat in there (the Jedi killing and a bit more flavour to Grievous as you say). But looking at the series as a whole, spending a whole episode on it this early in the series would lose us a lot of momentum and spend more time on weaker scenes than I think is sensible. And treating it as a capper to Cloak just doesn’t seem to work as nothing brings us full circle, and it doesn’t reduce well.

I’ll share my rough cut in a bit to see what you think.

Tell you what though, I will be sure to include it (in full) with my Complete Cut, as episode S01E03-B. And I’ll tweak the start to make it flow correctly from the new ending of Cloak.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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EddieDean said:

CMMAP said:

@EddieDean regarding my possibly encountered frame drops in episode 2 aren’t any. The video started to stutter because of the ai enhanced upscaling of the nvidia shield pro. i watched the episode back and worth with and without it to rule it out 100%

Super, thanks for confirming. Weirdly, my pipeline does put the episodes out by a frame. (Well, like a percent of a frame, but the effect is that they’re off by one). But luckily, since they’re still the right FPS, I just shift the video stream by one frame for perfect sync again.

strange, which vegas version do you use? i’ve heard of a problem with v15.0 and could post the fix.

Watched cloak of darkness. despite one thing, i have nothing to criticize in a negative way. great work regarding argyus, even without grievous it flows well.

the one thing: i still think it’s worth a try to merge the music in the end credits
„ Although i like the suggestion from samo21 (first track from samuel kim in the link), because it could be tricky to always find the right transition from end of an episode to credits. depending on the episode itself of course. perhaps there is a possibility to fuse the two tracks.
my suggestion would be try to add your track after 0:26/27/28 of samuel kims song and see how this plays out.
because i think the beginning (first two seconds) of his song would be perfect to every ending, cause it feels general.“
because i found the transition in this from end of episode to credit score unfortunate.

the concept arts are beautiful.

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McFibb said:

Nice mock-up. Helpful! Do you know if the ending build up in the original episodes is always the same, or at the very least, in the same key each time?

Also, do you want to drop right to credits or to logo again?

Finally, could you send me the video track + dialogue + no music for the last 30 seconds, then your full credit sequence, sans music?

I think probably the same key every time. Which might mean that I’m giving myself the same problem per episode, if the key match is what we really need. In which case it might be sensible for us to switch out Clones (Sad) for something in the same key, though this makes me EddieDean (Sad).

It might be easiest for you to match to whatever note episodes tend to land on.

A little later today I’ll give you some examples of episode endings so you can see, as well as the other couple of examples you’ve asked for.

Not sure what you mean about dropping right to credits or logo. If you mean, at the end of each episode, do I want the build at the end of each episode to hit the peak which triggers the first visual of the closing credits (a name over concept art), then yes, sure. Though it doesn’t need to hit immediately after.

Don’t worry too much about getting the length of this too perfect or synced to my visuals, because it goes like:
Credits over concept art (I can change their length) > Community credit (fixed length) > Main credits (can vary in length) > Lucasfilm credit (fixed length). So I can always make tweaks to fit. What’s most important is the transition from the episodes, and then that the track is good (and ideally melancholy/emotional/not too upbeat).

Knight of Kalee said:

Regarding the closing titles, personally I think the credits/score sync works best when the piece of music that starts at 21:30 in Cloak of Darkness hits the same time as the OT forum credits, as it did in the previous episode. The starting point of the music of course can vary depending on how it blends better with the episode. Maybe you could move forward the beginning of the credits a few seconds or reduce a bit the duration of the text. I agree with giving more screentime to the most striking concept art.

I think you’re saying/asking the same thing McFibb is there? That the final scene of the episode should be followed immediately by the first screen of the credits? I’m very happy to do that - and happy to keep tweaking until we get it feeling perfect.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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CMMAP said:

the one thing: i still think it’s worth a try to merge the music in the end credits
„ Although i like the suggestion from samo21 (first track from samuel kim in the link), because it could be tricky to always find the right transition from end of an episode to credits. depending on the episode itself of course. perhaps there is a possibility to fuse the two tracks.
my suggestion would be try to add your track after 0:26/27/28 of samuel kims song and see how this plays out.
because i think the beginning (first two seconds) of his song would be perfect to every ending, cause it feels general.“
because i found the transition in this from end of episode to credit score unfortunate.

Yeah, I think that might be what I’m learning here. I’m not a student of music but what McFibb says about key might be right. And I agree that Clones (Sad) just doesn’t quite work as I’d hoped. And hey, I shouldn’t lock onto something that isn’t going to work - the project must come first. We’ll play with it.

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Don’t get me wrong the clone sad theme (liked you joke about being you sad) is a wonderful choice for the end credits but not necessarily for the first 20-30 seconds. depends on the other theme, might be possible even at 10 seconds in.

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EddieDean said:

SECOND EPISODE RELEASED - s01e03 CLOAK OF DARKNESS

Please check the tracker for the link, or PM me for access to the tracker.

So, while I was waiting on an improved source for my s01e01, I got to work on s01e03. This was going to be Cloak of Darkness with a handful of scenes from Lair of Grievous, but I ultimately couldn’t get the Lair content to feel like it belonged. So it’s essentially just Cloak of Darkness with a little polish - I took out a boring scene, cut or modified four or five minor lines of dialogue just to tighten characterisation, and made the ending closed rather than open ended.

One thing I did decide to do was to make the traitor/infomant from Christophsis now explicitly Argyus. Why not! I think it’s tidy.

(See my earlier post for the reasons I couldn’t include Lair. I do still have the rough cut of the Lair content if anyone’s interested, but I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion I did!)

There are a couple of minor bits of polish still required in the credits, but again, I’m waiting on a source. As soon as I have that, I’ll re-release all of the existing episodes in closer to ‘final’ version as I finalise my standards.

Since this was really just polishing an existing episode, I kept the name CLOAK OF DARKNESS, to represent that this really isn’t anything new. Though I did think of making a pun on ‘Unduli’, such as ‘Unduly Alarmed’ or ‘Unduly Betrayed’.

(This is maybe a good time to remind people that I estimate that about 50% of episodes - about 30 out of 60 - will only require a polish pass rather than anything radical, so please don’t always expect something new. What they will be at the least, will be the best or most important episodes of the show, in an order that makes the show flow better, and brought up to a slightly higher standard than TCW at release.)

I’m still interested in any feedback on the opening titles, and the closing ones. I’ve made some changes to the end titles to give the best art a little longer to shine.

Two observations that don’t relate to your cut at all but rather the original episode. Ashoka insulting Ventress as ‘hairless’ is just silly, she also calls her a ‘Bog Witch’ and I had no idea anybody knew she was a Nightsister that early, secondly Argyus is voiced by James Masters.

The only observation I have about your cut (other than it looks and sound good with no errors I can pick out) is that the episode credits is the one from ‘Death Watch’ rather than this episode.

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CMMAP said:

Don’t get me wrong the clone sad theme (liked you joke about being you sad) is a wonderful choice for the end credits but not necessarily for the first 20-30 seconds. depends on the other theme, might be possible even at 10 seconds in.

Yeah. If McFibb can work some magic so that the majority of Clones (Sad) is preserved, but that it transitions out of the episode body properly, that would be the best case scenario. I accept that we might have to lose the lovely choral stuff and maybe even the minor key, though.

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 (Edited)

Artan42 said:

Two observations that don’t relate to your cut at all but rather the original episode. Ashoka insulting Ventress as ‘hairless’ is just silly, she also calls her a ‘Bog Witch’ and I had no idea anybody knew she was a Nightsister that early, secondly Argyus is voiced by James Masters.

The only observation I have about your cut (other than it looks and sound good with no errors I can pick out) is that the episode credits is the one from ‘Death Watch’ rather than this episode.

Yeah, I left the Death Watch credits in just while I’m waiting on the final source for the ending, at which point I’ll correct it for all the ones I’ve done to date and use the correct ones moving forward.

You’re right about Ahsoka’s language being a little weird - I did take out some of her weirder language because she says a few things that are awkward or too bold in this episode - I did try to clean them up but couldn’t for whatever reason. but I’ll check again though.

Edit: I was able to take out “Hairless harpy” but not “Bog witch”. Now, Ahsoka sees her appear and just draws her lightsaber, which works better anyway. But I couldn’t take out “Bog witch” or replace it with other language - Hairless Harpy, Ventress, or Lowlife - because the tone is all wrong. I want to keep that scene though since it’s Argyus realising he can manipulate her into leaving, and it also emphasises the threat that Luminara is walking into, and that Ahsoka will ultimately save her from.

I think we just assume that she’s either using a generic insult (she does look witchy) or she’s using an actual racial slur for ‘someone from Dathomir’ (assuming that she looks noticeably Dathomiri to Ahsoka), not knowing that she’s an actual witch from an actual bog. Probably the former!

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EddieDean said:

You’re right about Ahsoka’s language being a little weird - I did take out some of her weirder language because she says a few things that are awkward or too bold in this episode - I did try to clean them up but couldn’t for whatever reason. but I’ll check again though.

I think it’s a matter of finding the balance. Part of the greatness of her character is how much she grows up from the pilot film to Rebels and removing too much of the childishness she exhibits makes that transition a bit jerky and less fluid, especially when it’s pointed out that’s she’s on the young side for a padawan anyway (in the pilot film).
I do find the ‘hairless’ line just plain silly, not because it’s immature, but because it’s just hypercritical and I only mentioned the second line because I can’t remember if it creates a continuity issue or not.

Edit: I’ve just seen your edited post. I think it’ll work out fine that way. I’m sure the Jedi are taught about Nightsisters to the point where a bald, Force wielding, woman, with tattoos can be assumed to be a witch to a Jedi anyway even if they’re not.

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Yeah, absolutely. I don’t want to take away her character growth. Mostly I’m just trimming “Snips”/“Sky guy”/“Artooie” and anything that swings to the thoughtless side of reckless rather than just bold, or to the petulant side of cheeky.

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 (Edited)

EddieDean said:

CMMAP said:

Don’t get me wrong the clone sad theme (liked you joke about being you sad) is a wonderful choice for the end credits but not necessarily for the first 20-30 seconds. depends on the other theme, might be possible even at 10 seconds in.

Yeah. If McFibb can work some magic so that the majority of Clones (Sad) is preserved, but that it transitions out of the episode body properly, that would be the best case scenario. I accept that we might have to lose the lovely choral stuff and maybe even the minor key, though.

Don’t fret yet. I have some magic up my sleeve to try an idea or two out!

As for the “drop”, I literally meant the logo. I’ve seen some shows do that before, where it’s a hard cut, matched to a crescendo in the music, going straight to the logo, followed by a fade into the credits.

Not saying that’s my preference, but that’s what I was trying to clarify.

Looking forward to your vid snips!

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EddieDean said:

Check the sheet in about ten minutes McFibb - I’ve just added a tab called ‘other stuff’ and put in a video with lots of examples for you. It’s uploading as we speak.

Fantastic. Thanks dude.

Also, your parenthetical joke made me laugh aloud. Well done.

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 (Edited)

So, for those who are interested in the process, here’s my UNFINISHED attempt to turn Lair of Grievous into the end of my Cloak of Darkness episode - I got it down to a tight 5:45.

Goals:

  • Cut down as much as possible while showing that Gunray’s tracking was some kind of contingency/bonus trap
  • Make Grievous seem as badass as possible

There’s dialogue and sound effects, but no music in this yet, because I didn’t get that far.

Essentially I worked through it, first restructuring the whole, then sequences, then scenes, then I added back in anything that I felt was necessary to make it flow right or fix new continuity errors I’d introduced.

This is the point I got it to where I decided that it ultimately wasn’t going to work.

The part where I realised it wouldn’t work was when I noticed that I couldn’t have Kit Fisto leave when there were clones alive. So I had to kill them off, without using the scenes where they die (because that would have drawn this out massively). So I tried to do an implied Grievous slaughter, using a quick shot of him (legless, but hoping you wouldn’t notice) diving at the clones then some sound effects of them dying, which I embedded in another scene of the clones calling for reinforcement but their ship getting blown up. It almost worked, but I think ultimately it’s just too rough, and moves too fast. At that point, the whole episode kind of collapsed as a possibility.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oN0Cc292i4f_oaPneWiA0ZqwahYkn9De/view?usp=sharing

Edit: Whoops, I cut this a little too short. Dooku says “So there is room for improvement.” and then it ends.

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EddieDean said:

So, for those who are interested in the process, here’s my UNFINISHED attempt to turn Lair of Grievous into the end of my Cloak of Darkness episode - I got it down to a tight 5:45.

Goals:

  • Cut down as much as possible while showing that Gunray’s tracking was some kind of contingency/bonus trap
  • Make Grievous seem as badass as possible

There’s dialogue and sound effects, but no music in this yet, because I didn’t get that far.

Essentially I worked through it, first restructuring the whole, then sequences, then scenes, then I added back in anything that I felt was necessary to make it flow right or fix new continuity errors I’d introduced.

This is the point I got it to where I decided that it ultimately wasn’t going to work.

The part where I realised it wouldn’t work was when I noticed that I couldn’t have Kit Fisto leave when there were clones alive. So I had to kill them off, without using the scenes where they die (because that would have drawn this out massively). So I tried to do an implied Grievous slaughter, using a quick shot of him (legless, but hoping you wouldn’t notice) diving at the clones then some sound effects of them dying, which I embedded in another scene of the clones calling for reinforcement but their ship getting blown up. It almost worked, but I think ultimately it’s just too rough, and moves too fast. At that point, the whole episode kind of collapsed as a possibility.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oN0Cc292i4f_oaPneWiA0ZqwahYkn9De/view?usp=sharing

Edit: Whoops, I cut this a little too short. Dooku says “So there is room for improvement.” and then it ends.

Real tight, but i think it works. Have to take a look on the original episode to see the whole part again.

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Hmmm. You could MAYBE split the ending phone call of Cloak of Darkness into three parts to wrap around Lair of Grievous:

  • Run through Cloak of Darkness in full, up to Ventress and Gunray escaping on their ship
  • Wipe to Kit Fisto in space, being called by Luminara and Ahsoka. (Though that’d mean he kind of comes out of nowhere.)
  • Early in the Lair of Darkness part, use the middle of Cloak’s ending phone call, beginning with Luminara saying “all is not lost”, Anakin suggesting they track the ship, Yoda saying “move fast”, and Luminara saying “I’ve already talked to Kit Fisto”. This would keep us mentally back with Luminara and Ahsoka even while we’re watching Grievous, and show that they’re essentially (indirectly) monitoring the situation throughout.
  • Remainder of the Grievous episode, ending with Dooku chiding Grievous for letting Kit Fisto escape.
  • We then have to IMPLY (but not see) a call back from Kit Fisto to Luminara saying he failed, and we won’t be able to see them react to the news of Nadar’s death.
  • Back to Cloak for the first part of the ending, “Gunray got away”/“It’s OK Ahsoka”, and Yoda saying “Shame about the treachery.” But they wouldn’t be able to comment on Grievous’ lair.
  • Straight into the third part of the ending, Anakin saying “See you soon”, and Luminara telling Ahsoka she’s a good kid as our final emotional beat before flying the ship off to a new adventure.

But that’s only if we thought the Grievous part worked.

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 (Edited)

EddieDean said:

I think you’re saying/asking the same thing McFibb is there? That the final scene of the episode should be followed immediately by the first screen of the credits? I’m very happy to do that - and happy to keep tweaking until we get it feeling perfect.

Maybe not right away, but yeah a middle ground between what you did in Death Watch and Cloak of Darkness. Or maybe alternate depending on how does it blend with the pre-existing lead-up score. I know that not all the episodes have had their soundtracks officially released, but for example “Obi-Wan and Satine”, which is the ending theme of the second Mandalore episode, is one of those tracks, so you could play the entirety of this theme, then give it a couple seconds to breath, then fade in to Clones (Sad). Something like this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wxoE_LSxjL4-YrW-0kSiSEjHvXEq_TM4/view?usp=sharing

I’d honestly prefer if changes are made to the episode ending music rather than change Clones (Sad) each time; keeping the credits theme consistent would make the project seem more “professional” so to speak. This Samuel Kim track works really good as a closing theme and sums the tragic perspective on the Clone Wars that you want to convey with these edits. Of course, if a particular episode/arc warrants it, you could use a different track for the credits, much like the S2 finale of Mando or the S5 finale of Clone Wars.

I’m gonna take a look to your abridged Lair of Grievous and see how it goes. Regarding Fisto appearing out of nowhere, you could state in the opening text that he was supposed to rendezvous with Luminara or something. If enough people believe it works as a cap to Cloak of Darkness, maybe you could release it as an alternate edition?

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The five minute edit of Lair of Grievous is neat, and coherent enough (aside from Grievous having no legs in that one shot haha), but I wouldn’t put it on the end of Cloak of Darkness. It doesn’t add much besides, well, getting to see the Lair of Grievous - and him actually succeeding in killing a Jedi for once - so I don’t think it’s worth the hassle to shoehorn it in. I’d vote to save it for the Complete Cut.