The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 25

sade1212 said:

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:

1. As it currently is - Bail gets bombed, Bail calls Obi-Wan, Bail thanks Anakin (and he and Ahsoka share a look)
2. As it was - Bail gets bombed, Bail calls Obi-Wan, Bail thanks Anakin (single shot, then straight into a different scene)
3. Implied conclusion only - Bail gets bombed, Bail calls Obi-Wan, the battle wraps up without revisiting Bail
4. 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”.

Those droids are just soda cans.

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.

So I’m watching the first episode, and I kinda feel like the part at the beginning where they meet Ventress and the subsequent transition to the movie material is not really… necessary? I’m noting this down while I haven’t watched the entire episode yet (update, I finished it), but I guess it’s there to introduce Ventress, right? But I think the way Ani and Obi are introduced in the movie is very particular and the material from the prior episode kind of makes the geography and their situation… confusing. The setup for what situation they are in and what is happening gets a reset anyway once we go to the star destroyer, so my personal feedback is that the material between the cold open+blue text and the first star destroyer scene where they talk about their communications issue… is sort of just cluttery? And the Bail moments, for that matter, fall along the same lines. I think it just makes things confusing for someone who has never watched the show.

But I also don’t think that straight up omitting that stuff is necessarily the best idea. If I recall correctly, you plan on having a plot element resurface in a later episode. I wonder if I’m the only one with this particular problem with it then.

Kumonin, you’re right that the Ventress stuff doesn’t really drive the plot forward. Right now I’m favouring its inclusion for two reasons:

(1) Because we do lean on Ventress quite a lot this season and it’s a better introduction for her than the later ones. Especially with the implication that she’s behind the trickery here and might be a strategic threat. She essentially becomes the main villain of the first “season” of the restructured show.

(2) Because it’s a decent bit of bro time for Obi-Wan and Anakin, and coming out of Attack of the Clones it re-establishes them as quite a brotherly duo.

The Bail stuff is included not because of the value of him saving lives we don’t care about, but because the scenes put him (who we do care about) in more jeopardy and so we get to see our existing characters act on his behalf, thus building their relationships.

Or I suppose, both are included because I think they’ll both pay off well later, and I’m trying to refocus the series as a whole, rather than just treat this as a series of episode edits.

s01e04 - MALEVOLENCE - Review cut available

My review cut (v1.0) of the Malevolence arc is available. Check the tracker spreadsheet or PM me for access.

Note that the credits music is not quite finalised so excuse the slightly rougher transitions into and out of the episode.

This is quite a radical restructure of the Malevolence arc. Fundamentally it’s the Plo Koon escape pod content and Ahsoka’s rescue from Rising, then the bomber segment from Shadow. The only parts I use from Destroy are scenes of the fleet destroying the Malevolence - there’s no Padmé in this story, and nobody boards the ship. I also cut out the space whales in the nebula - bombers go into shortcut, bombers come out of shortcut. To enhance the emotional stakes and the threat, I’ve pulled the medical station scenes throughout the whole episode, as well as the parts where Grievous is travelling through hyperspace, so the entire episode is much more of a race.

I’ve rearranged absolutely masses of scenes here, to achieve a lot of things. The Malevolence feels more ominous and dangerous, Anakin and Ahsoka act more against the council’s orders (without fully jeopardising the wider mission, but definitely a bit too far along the path of fear of losing someone), the pod killing is more tense as their salvation keeps getting subverted.

The opening crawl establishes that this is not so much a secret weapon, as an extremely deadly one, and that Grievous has been targeting multiple medical stations. Knight of Kalee (and anyone who wishes Grievous were more badass) will be pleased to hear that Grievous is acting far more autonomously and brutally here, and has Dooku’s support rather than being constantly in doubt.

There are a couple of things that I could do with feedback on, but I won’t spoil them - I’d rather see what you guys think without being directed to those elements.

Ah, weird, must be a bad link. It should be fixed now.

Is that last Bail scene passable, or do you think it takes away from the experience? In my mind he’s in the shadow of the wing. But as I say, I’m open to community input on this one. If a majority feel like it just doesn’t work, I’d take it out.

I could remove their reactions, that’s definitely an option. Those are pulled from very disparate sources, and don’t particularly act as a response to Bail so much as a slight buffer for the moment.

That would leave it as:

• “Skywalker!”
• [they turn]
• “Thanks for saving lives!”
• They walk immediately to Yoda and Obi-Wan, not acknowledging Bail

Would that be preferable?

Hmm, I could add voiceover of Anakin saying “we make a good team” over the shot of Ashoka’s face, though I think it’s a bit soon for him to be saying that about her, and it’s yet another disparate source. I’m getting the feeling that less is more.

I would love a link to this! Really interested in this idea, I never knew I wanted to consider.

The Malevolence Destruction Tour (lovely description!) is the main element that I’m uncertain about. I’d certainly be happy to drop it entirely - it mainly came together as a way to use a few nice shots and lines that I had put aside to use if I could find a place for them, rather than out of need.

What it achieved was having Plo convey the information to the fleet that the Malevolence has an ion cannon, which they depend on as they plan their attack. Though there are simpler ways to do that. It also showed a bit more of Grievous’ singlemindedness and a bit more brutality.

CMMAP, what did you think of the ending? I wasn’t certain about going from the medical station back to the hangar so quickly, but I think the hangar scene is the right emotional conclusion for the episode, of the options available. Did everything else work for you? This was massively restructured. I’m also interested to know if it’s considered an improvement on the original three episodes, of course!

This episode helped cement in my mind the concept of a ‘Review cut’. As I plan and edit, I’m naturally going to tend towards making the most radical changes that I think might improve the quality, because they really need to be seen to be tested, and you can always dial back from them. Going as hard towards the potential value add as possible, but then dialling back as necessary, lets us ‘settle’ on a point that’s closest to the goal of maximising quality. But that requires community feedback, which necessitates a review cut as opposed to a release cut.

CMMAP said:

EddieDean said:

What it achieved was having Plo convey the information to the fleet that the Malevolence has an ion cannon, which they depend on as they plan their attack. Though there are simpler ways to do that. It also showed a bit more of Grievous’ singlemindedness and a bit more brutality.

CMMAP, what did you think of the ending? I wasn’t certain about going from the medical station back to the hangar so quickly, but I think the hangar scene is the right emotional conclusion for the episode, of the options available. Did everything else work for you? This was massively restructured. I’m also interested to know if it’s considered an improvement on the original three episodes, of course!

maybe it won’t destroy the flow of the episode if you show the malevolence destruction as a whole sequence with the audio overlay of plo koon explaining it?

i liked the ending. to end the episode with walking to the council meeting is great. cutting to fast from the medical station to the hangar didn’t concern me, personally. the whole sequences at the medical station are disposable, i think.

There’s not quite enough footage to show the destruction completely. One thing I wanted to do in my edit was not show the weapon firing, because its effect just looks very unnatural to me. And breaking it around another scene was the only option. I think I’d rather just cut the destruction of the medical transport entirely, and just have Plo mention the ion weapon as he’s recovered from the escape pod. I’m not precious about this scene if it breaks the episode.

sade1212 said:

Cloak of Darkness nitpicks:

Thanks for the detail as always Sade.

Ahsoka going apeshit on Gunray in the interrogation feels like a very Anakin thing for her to do, but you don’t get the impression she’s spent very much time with him yet, so you can’t really read it as his influence.

No, but that’s OK. I think that’s part of her initial rashness. One of the character traits she has early on, that she learns to manage, is her boldness. She’s quick to act, taking the direct path, often without thinking. It’s only after noticing this that I got more of an appreciation for Lightsaber Lost, whose entire lesson is ‘slow down’. Remember, in Christophsis, Anakin says “You’re bold, little one. You might not have made it as Obi-Wan’s padawan, but you might just make it as mine.” He’s acknowledging that she already has that character trait, and it’s part of what bonds them early. It’s also good as the characters grow, to see Ahsoka’s boldness be more moderated, whereas Anakin continues down the path of more directness.

“Skywalker’s not here to save you now!” isn’t a reference to anything, right, because this is their first meeting? Again, seems a little premature, unless you can justify it as her referring to the events of Christophsis.

It’s their first meeting, so it was like this in the original too. I think you just assume that Anakin’s told Ahsoka about Ventress, and Ventress has become aware of Anakin’s padawan (via her informant maybe? It doesn’t really matter.)

Ditto for “Master Skywalker should be proud”.
While your idea to have Anakin immediately palm Ahsoka off is an amusing one, I think there’s just too many little references in this episode to Ahsoka being Anakin’s Padawan for it to work perfectly.

Is this problematic? I intended it to come off as that he’s accepted her as padawan, he’s just booked himself a bit of ‘time off’, since he’s still getting used to it and not entirely comfortable training her. He’s not rejected her, he’s just seen an opportunity to get her trained/looked after by someone else for a bit.

If anything, perhaps this episode would be better placed a bit later so we can interpret it as Anakin’s unorthodox style rubbing off on her a little.
Definitely an essential episode for establishing Ventress, so it’s unfortunate that very little else interesting occurs besides Argyus’ betrayal (and death lol). Luminara Unduli is a really wooden character here, effortlessly slotting right into that humourless, overly-arrogant Jedi master archetype, to the point where Ahsoka doesn’t even learn anything this episode.

I don’t think Ahsoka learns any lessons in this episode, but I think in this episode we see that her boldness isn’t always entirely without sense. She’s brash and a little childish, but I think this episode shows that she’s got a good intuition and is competent - she’s just not well refined. (As an aside, I think this works well for showing why she was allowed to become a Jedi padawan. She’s totally competent and has the right attitude and skillset - it just needs the refinement of tutelage under a master.)

I agree that it’s a slow episode, though, and a necessary one that’s sadly not fantastic. That’s also one of the reasons I’d put it after my Death Watch episode, which is far more interesting.

Thinking about the ordering then. It’s mainly here because yes, it’s fun to have Anakin dump her at first. I could drop that idea and put the episode later. Though I feel like Malevolence is when he really accepts her emotionally/personally (after only really accepting her formally in Christophsis), and I feel like putting Cloak after Malevolence means there’s even less point in Cloak. Which means that Cloak, which remains necessary, is even less interesting.

(Responding to Artan)

Yeah. I think they work as a sensible pairing because they’re both a little unlike the Jedi default at the time- both quite emotional, intuitive, and bold. And they do moderate each other to a degree, so the council are kind of proven right for a time. But ultimately they both go beyond the council’s expectations, with Anakin not learning to let go and ultimately becoming Sith because of it, and Ahsoka learning not to let go, but to channel her caring nature into the kinds of action that the Jedi council forgot about by the time of the prequels, ultimately becoming one of the best kinds of Jedi even though that wasn’t the archetype at the time.

Wow. Just wow.

EddieDean, your creation of this project couldn’t have come at a better time. Just 2 days ago I made the decision to start chronologically rewatching the entirety of TCW after not having watched it all properly for a few years. After hearing the tragic news regarding Tom Kane my appreciation for the show was re-sparked and I desperately wanted to relive the talent he brought to the show.

After getting several episodes in I took a quick break to skim through OT.com in search of discussion about fan-editing the show since I had never really dug too deeply into any TCW fan-edits in the past.

I had noticed this thread being updated regularly for a couple months so I finally got around to reading the OP.

I was hooked by your ideas straight away and have spent roughly the last 3-4 hours reading every single post across all 25 pages to make sure I was caught up! 😄

I am now very deeply invested in the project and hope to contribute as much as I can to it! 😃

I have so much input I want to share but it’s currently 3am for me so I’ll have to jump back on here soon!

Until then, I ask you, please PM me any finished episodes, test clips, mixes or WIP things you have, I have no preference, whether it be you have to share for input, I’ll do my best to help! Even if it’s the littlest or silliest thing.

Other than work, I have nothing exciting going on at the moment for me, so I can be fully committed to help out if you need me to! I’d love to stay in the loop as well, I already have several little ideas based on the few test clips in this thread.

Keep up the amazing work mate! 👍 ❤️

Amazing, Chase! I’m very glad to have you with us! I’ll share the link to the tracker so you can get stuck in with the existing episodes.

Please feel free to nitpick, criticise, tear them apart as necessary. I’d rather have something heavily criticised then fix it, than have my ego kept intact. Looking over my own history in this thread, I do tend to hold on to my own thoughts longer than I should in the face of alternate opinions, so you (and everyone else in this thread) should feel encouraged to disagree with me loudly and firmly!

It feels like this thread has settled into a pattern where I produce review cuts first, for dissemination, and a few dedicated champions give feedback on the episodes in their slightly unfinished state, which helps me with the finishing touches. I know it’s not an ideal way to consume them, but it’s very motivating for me so it helps keep the momentum up. Nobody’s under any obligation to help in that way though, of course!

Please also feel free to suggest any ideas, changes, alternate takes, radical restructures, whatever comes up. And bear in mind this is both about editing each episode but also presenting and restructuring the whole. Already the community in this thread have made material improvements over what I could have produced if I did this in isolation. And since you’ve just read over the whole thread (kudos!), also do feel free to challenge any assumption or decision- however early it was made. I’d rather rethink and refocus now than later!

I don’t know if anyone’s thought about this yet, but it’d be extra useful to me if anyone who’d just watched one of my new episodes might then go and watch the source material, just in case that generates fresh thoughts. It’s something I don’t do myself because by the time I’ve finished editing an episode I’ve already watched it through about ten times so I’m fairly burnt out on the story!

sade1212 said:

Malevolence nitpicks:

Right, time to properly eat into these.

Again, Padawan gets a capital letter, for some reason.

You know what, I think I’m going to opt to ignore this convention. I can accept ‘Jedi’ as effectively a title, but I think I’d rather treat ‘padawan’ as just a regular noun, like ‘apprentice’. (No offence meant to you of course, Sade.)

Interestingly, this time around you’ve done the opposite with the intro transition, having the episode audio come in before the picture does. I think it could be slightly more gradual, but I understand that the music is tough and the usable footage is limited because of originally having the newsreel audio.

This is probably more just chance of the scenes I was given than anything else. Once I have the final music from McFibb, I’ll review the intros and outros of all of the episodes produced to date, and make them smoother. With Christophsis, someone mentioned that it was cool to have the motorbike sound before the shot opened, so I kept it (even though I only did it by chance). In Malevolence, the music before the image was quite immediate, so I went for a quick music fade to image fade, mainly to distract a little (passed off as urgency). But as I say, I’ll clean these all up.

[Many technical points]

Thanks very much! I do watch and rewatch episodes as I create them, but this one had around a hundred scene and shot changes that I’d shifted around so I was bound to miss a few.

I hadn’t even realised you’d replaced Plo’s dialogue until Ahsoka abruptly cuts him off mid-sentence for a hug. I quite like intercutting Plo’s dialogue with the clones getting ioned, but Ahsoka just butting in out of nowhere doesn’t really work for me. The footage reversal for the wipe is also not subtle.

Yeah, I think I will just drop this scene. I actually had to have Ahsoka interrupt him because his full sentence has beeps, and I wondered if I could get away with it. Looks like not! But that’s fine, there’re other ways to work this scene. And yeah, there was a chance the reversal would be obvious. Annoyingly, a reversal with a wipe is too much for my PC to process for a preview in real time, so it’s arduous to check the quality on layered changes like this.

I think I’ll change this whole sequence, so that basically they bring Plo on board, he mainly talks about the clones surviving (as in the original), but then have him just mention “it was an ion cannon”. No actual scene of the Malevolence destroying the medical transport. We don’t need a description of an ion cannon because it’s irrelevant to the plot. If you didn’t know what one was, you’d know that whatever was happening, it was absolutely knackering ships, so it’d make sense to target them later. Plo can either mention it being an ion cannon as he’s rescued or later, as Yularen says “he’s heading to the Rendellia medical station”.

At 18:28 when Yularen says “Skywalker”, the audio editing seems a little odd, like the music suddenly lowers (presumably to mute whatever Ahsoka is mouthing) and then it comes back in.

I thought this’d get pointed out. It’s a weird glitch in the original, and by coincidence it’s the first issue I noticed that the series itself has, because I happened to pick Malevolence and randomly that scene back when I did my first pipeline tests. “Skywalker” is actually on the front channel rather than center, so I guess they were trying to do a ‘far away voice’ thing. But it sounds odd to my ears too. I might just do without it, and cut straight into Yularen getting down to business.

I hear voice echoes at 29:11.

I think that’s on me. The medical station voice hits all channels, I guess to simulate reverb in that room. So editing that scene is a pain.

I’m enjoying this excuse to rewatch TCW and engage with it a little more than I did the first time. I don’t really remember the original episodes, but this edit makes a pretty fun short movie. You’ve merged the episodes well. The start is really engaging, as it quickly makes Grievous seem brutal and coherently sets up the threat. The medical station scenes work cleanly where you’ve put them. All the Plo Koon rescuing stuff is enjoyable enough - Anakin and Ahsoka’s interactions are exactly the sort of set-up I did feel was needed for the nitpicks I mentioned in my last post; and even though we haven’t seen lots of Anakin/Ahsoka missions, this episode does a good job implying there’s been a few offscreen.

It’s good, isn’t it! I’m enjoying it a lot more on rewatch and detailed dissemination too. When it first came out I barely paid attention to the episodes because season one was so agressively bad. And I didn’t give most episodes after that a good chance too. Especially since the show kept throwing Shadow Warriors and Droids in the Voids at us even in the good seasons. I really hope I preserve everything good about this show; I really don’t want to be a butcher.

The Shadow Squadron space battle section is watchable but not my favourite aspect of Star Wars. Whatever editing you did in this bit worked for me, though I can’t say I recall how it was originally. I was freaking out wondering how you’d managed to drag another thirty minutes of episode out after the Malevolence blew up but thankfully it’s just an accidentally left in black screen, haha.

Agree. This cut absolutely whips through it, and puts it in what I think is a far more compelling order. It also now gets straight to the point. But the space battle itself isn’t great, and there’re way more exciting ones later. This does suffer a bit from originally being episode two then three of the original arc, since the story loses a bit of momentum after Anakin destroys the Malevolence’s main weapon, giving us about three minutes of it slowly limping away while Obi-Wan’s fleet just batters it until it dies. But again, I just cut through the main points of that as quickly as I could to get us to swift victory, because by then all the emotional beats had been hit.