I watched Christophsis.
Thanks as always for really detailed feedback. This is so useful. I’ll roll in as much as I can on my next pass - probably waiting until McFibb and I hone in on the final music options.
“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’m suprised by this; I thought it just hammered it home a little more. I feel like it punctuates the scene - without it, I feel like the scene would kind of just fade out. Interested to gather thoughts on this one.
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.
Hm. Totally see what you’re saying here, but I think I’d rather keep the three ellipsis almost deliberately to break the relationship with the traditional opening crawl. That links into broader thoughts I’ve been having about when to follow convention and when to break it. I have to find a balance between saying “This is the Star Wars franchise” and “This is The Clone Wars: Refocused, a TV show you should treat as something as unique and standalone as any other of the slate of Star Wars TV shows.” I’m always interested in feedback here.
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.
Have you considered using Topaz Gigapixel AI, ESRGAN, or Waifu2x to make the background art for the credits higher res?
There’s definitely a future state where I look into additional software like this, but I don’t think I’ll touch anything new until I’m well into the series, if not after.
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.
I’m not sure what’s best here. We have:
- As it currently is - Bail gets bombed, Bail calls Obi-Wan, Bail thanks Anakin (and he and Ahsoka share a look)
- As it was - Bail gets bombed, Bail calls Obi-Wan, Bail thanks Anakin (single shot, then straight into a different scene)
- Implied conclusion only - Bail gets bombed, Bail calls Obi-Wan, the battle wraps up without revisiting Bail
- None of those scenes
My temptation is that (1) is best, as even though it has that slightly janky ending, I think the rest makes up for it. But I’m not a great judge of this. I think I’d prefer to have people think “oh, that was slightly wobbly editing” as the cost of getting to use the Bail scenes earlier. That’s also an important decision - do I need to hit perfection? I think I need to get this polished as much as possible, but I think a little imperfection is acceptable sometimes - mainly permitted since the show itself has production errors and a little jankiness. I won’t aim for it, or intend to tolerate it obviously, but I think sometimes I might have to make a judgment call like this. This’ll always be subjective though, and open to community discussion.
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.
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.
I’m really not a fan of Christophsis at all. It looks ugly all over, and I wish our first episode were set somewhere else. So wait, these are supposed to be natural crystals that the people have built their infrastructure around and into? That’s an OK idea - though very different to the typical Star Wars aesthetic at the time - but it was executed like ass. It’s just not a good introduction to the series. This whole episode is pretty weak, even without the Huttlet stuff. Obviously I wanted my edit to give it the most love possible and still try to bring out its best, but I was always going to be satisfied with “anything is better than the movie”.
“I’m the one with enthusiasm!” feels like an ATLA line to me.
It’s a line I thought about trimming because it is a little goofy, but I opted to keep it (for flow and) because it can kind of be read as her being self-effacing or criticising others’ opinions of her. She knows she’s peppy but I think it shows self-awareness, and that she understands that she’s seen that way - she’s kind of begrudgingly saying “people see me as a kid even though I’m a fully trained and competent Jedi”.
These look like ass too, and I don’t like them bursting out of the ground, but again, it was important for Ahsoka’s plot for her to make a mistake here.
“…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.
Yes, this hits a lot better now.