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Post #1401180

Author
sade1212
Parent topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1401180/action/topic#1401180
Date created
9-Jan-2021, 7:26 AM

I watched Christophsis.

Good stuff:

  • That Maul scene, and the music you’ve used for it, does a good job of hinting at what’s to come.
  • The intro music is very, very sick.
  • The scene-setting text reads really well, in my opinion.
  • Thanks for fixing the weird chair/table thing; the editing of the Ventress fight is cleanly done now.
  • The new wipe to Obi-Wan and Anakin in the towers works well.
  • Your smart use of various bits of audio over totally different footage (like the Yularen bombers line, or the Bail transmission) is ingenious and never struck me as too much of a stretch.
  • I was never confused about what was supposed to be going on; your combined and streamlined plot is coherent and well conveyed. The little bit of Hidden Enemy at the start does a good job of setting up the “trouble” Anakin and Obi-Wan talk about later.
  • Whatever editing you’ve done to the movie portion is solid. If you trimmed any specific lines, I didn’t pick up on it.
  • Loathsome isn’t missed, even if I did enjoy Obi-Wan winding him up with war crimes.
  • The episode absolutely feels like it should begin and end where it does. I’m glad there’s not an additional hour of searching for Jabba the Hutt’s son who then never makes another appearance, or anything like that.

Nitpicks:

  • There’s an odd “whoop” sound in between the Star Wars logo disappearing and Maul’s ship appearing, at 00:24.
  • “What are you?” sounds strange because of how you’ve had to work around the music replacement. I don’t think it adds anything, necessarily, anyway - if you’ve seen The Phantom Menace, you know that’s Maul, and if you’ve seen Mando you’d recognise Bo-Katan and the Darksaber. I think the scene is more effective with just the music.
  • I’d be tempted to adjust the ellipsis on “Months earlier …” to a Star Wars-style four periods, even though it’s not technically correct. This applies to the intro text as well, on the last line about Ventress being cunning. I don’t know why Star Wars has used incorrect ellipses forever, but it has - except for the ROTJ crawl. It might be a Flash Gordon thing.
  • The audio transition between the intro and the episode itself could be a little more gradual, I feel. Maybe they’re just musically incompatible in some way though.
  • Some kind of background audio cuts out abruptly at 4:53 towards the end of Yularen’s sentence.
  • When Bail says “Separatist forces have overrun our position!” at 6:38, it doesn’t have the radio filter that the rest of what he says does, even though he’s not any more on screen than he is the rest of the time.
  • The tanks shot at 6:55 still strikes me as odd but I can’t think of how else you’d be able to deal with it.
  • At 7:07 there’s a stray frame of the shot of Cody and the other clones in the tower with Obi-Wan before it cuts to space.
  • At 7:56 the reversed footage is noticeable because Yularen starts mouthing silent words.
  • The music coming in with the clones at 7:57 is super, super abrupt.
  • The cut at 21:10 could use a bit more of an audio transiton, I think. Nope, like that in the original movie haha.
  • Bail really does just appear from absolutely nowhere at the end and Anakin and Ahsoka’s non-verbal responses (and the framerate interpolation of the shot of Anakin) are quite odd and remind me of the awkwardly silent extras in Star Trek: TNG. I’d cut that entirely if possible. I think Bail adds a little bit of weight to the rest of the episode, but if keeping that side plot necessitates keeping this scene at the end I’d vote to cut him entirely.
  • At 25:29 the cut to Ahsoka has a noticeable background audio cut also. I agree with your rearrangement of this though.
  • The transition to the credits still needs work, but you know that already.
  • “Produced by Cary Silver” is off-centre.
  • Have you considered using Topaz Gigapixel AI, ESRGAN, or Waifu2x to make the background art for the credits higher res?

Observations irrelevant to the edit:

  • I never noticed the first shot of Ahsoka shows off her Padawan braid, like a visual response to Anakin’s line, before.
  • Christophsis the planet as seen from space looks hilariously bad in the movie, compared to how it is in Cat and Mouse. The cities are drawn on so vaguely it looks like a placeholder.
  • Obi-Wan and Yoda trolling Anakin by assigning him a padawan wasn’t really a very wise idea, was it. Oh, shocker, the guy who gets really attached to people doesn’t take it very well when we later (SPOILERS) accuse her of being a terrorist and effectively kick her out of the Jedi Order.
  • All the Ahsoka and Rex interactions feel more significant now knowing the Siege of Mandalore.
  • “I’m the one with enthusiasm!” feels like an ATLA line to me.
  • There’s some really low-res environmental textures. Surely it wouldn’t have cost that much more to not use videogame-tier textures for the world; it’s not like the series had to be rendered in real-time.
  • Those droids are just soda cans.
  • Ahsoka is remarkably competent for a 14 year-old, even right from the start. Clearly the Jedi Temple’s training regime pulls no punches in teaching preteens to be soldiers.
  • “…but you might make it as mine.” and the first use of Ahsoka’s theme is a really great moment that just gets better and better as Ahsoka’s story continues in other media. I give it < 3 years before she meets Luke in canon, and that’ll make it hit even harder next rewatch.