The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 59

Much improved, but there are still a few minor changes I would recommend to improve the flow of the opening scenes.

• Instead of opening with Republic ships taking fire, open with the speeder bikes. Your opening crawl already said that the Republic fleet had been forced to retreat to a medical station. If you want an establishing shot, maybe use one that only shows the Separatist ships in orbit?

• When you cut away to the fleet at the med station and the Yoda/Windu transmission, show the entire conversation right then and there. Splitting it makes the first few minutes feel jumpier than it needs to.

• You could cut ObiWan’s line after “Bringing us here was a mistake,” which then would remove the odd line where he calls her his sweet and go straight to her response “You’ve served your purpose.”

• With the Yoda/Windu scene completed earlier, we next would transition directly to Anakin and ObiWan seeing the shuttle land. This still implies the passage of time (they’re in a different location on the planet), but it is less abrupt than going straight from Yalaren saying that he will take a ship personally and then it landing.

• Yalaren tells Yoda that it won’t be easy to punch through the blockade, but the next we see of the fleet is the reinforcements landing after the shield goes down. Is there any footage of a space battle that should be inserted somewhere in between, maybe even just the opening shot from the pre-2.0 version where Venators are exchanging fire with the blockade?

I feel like each of these changes would make a difference, but there are no major issues now with this episode. The opening crawl does a much better job of setting things up, and overall I rather like this. If I saw this and didn’t know what else was coming, I’d be interested to see more and I’d be willing to introduce it to someone else. Well done.

ep 1 v2 is much improved but there are a few bits where the music starts to drown out the dialogue. specifically after obi says to ventress “i didn’t know you brought friends” i couldn’t hear what ventress was saying and when rex says something to ahsoka about “it it’s experience you’re looking for, you’re about to get it”

also, the fade out ending seemed odd and not very final

super impressed with what you’ve accomplished with what was an underwhelming start to an excellent series. can’t wait for the next one!

I watched your v2.0 of The New Padawan:
I liked the reworked episode very much with the exception:

• After “the seperatist army is retreating…” we see the seperatist army is moving forward, seeing incoming reinforcements and just like that the battle is over in a glimpse of a moment. I find that very aprupt, is there any battle footage you can include there again?
• technical wise the voices seem to be quieter than before? Is the center channel a seperate one? If so raise it
• the transition between the music at the end of the episode and the credit music sounds off. They don´t fit together to make a smooth transition. Perhaps try a harder cut?

As far as the suggestions from “vranir” go:

• i share the first two
• about the 3rd and 5th i´m not so sure
  Personally i like the little nick nag between ventress and obi-wan, we get the sense they´ve met before

EddieDean said:

Noted, thanks djonesed and CMMAP. I’ll think further on these. What a tricky episode!

vranir said:

• Instead of opening with Republic ships taking fire, open with the speeder bikes. Your opening crawl already said that the Republic fleet had been forced to retreat to a medical station. If you want an establishing shot, maybe use one that only shows the Separatist ships in orbit?

This point raises some thoughts that are worth discussion.

Obviously a common rule of storytelling is ‘show, don’t tell’, and it’s one that Star Wars famously breaks with its opening crawls. In my edit, for reasons I’ve gone into extensively elsewhere, I need to rely on opening text for a lot of reasons, so I also have to break that rule - at least in a way that this franchise uniquely permits.

…But do we think that was unnecessary? …but do you think this was redundant? Showing the blockade above the planet would certainly follow naturally (if that footage exists), but would it be an improvement on showing the retreat so we can “feel” it more than just being told it happened?

I’m also interested in thoughts on the general case, here.

I can see your point about the establishing shot and agree with your intention (even if i like a opening shot with the speeder bikes) and i do think showing the retreat rather than only telling us is vital.

For the opening of Dark Force Rising I think showing the title after the shot of Anakin (option 2) fits best, maybe you could have the title music fade in as we zoom in on Anakin to make it blend more(?).

Man, what a big upgrade V2.0 of The New Padawan is! The way you further streamlined the episode makes it flow so much better. With the content you had to work with it’s amazing just how great it works, a most impressive salvaging work.

I really like opening on the space conflict above the planet before going down to the surface, I think it works great and feels more like proper Star Wars than awkwardly opening on some speeder bikes treking across a random city. I totally agree on the ‘show not tell’ principle, and on that note, I like the opening texts on principle as a way to give context to the episodes (and change it when needed), but I think some bits often feel redundant. In this case I don’t think is necessary to say that comunications have been cut off - the first line of dialogue in the episode is a droid saying they’re jamming their comunications, and we later hear from Yularen that they’re unable to reach them. So I think we get enough context from the episode itself.

A couple of further thoughts on the crawl to make it fit more closely with how you now introduce the situation:

• “A huge Separatist blockade has forced the Republic support fleet to retreat…” > “The arrival of a Separatist blockade cuts off all communications and forces the Republic support fleet to retreat…”

This would emphasize that the Separatist fleet took the Republic by surprise, explaining their disadvantage. The present-tense wording would allow the retreat to be happening as the episode starts, instead of having happened already.

The tying of the comms situation directly to the fleet also would explain why Anakin and ObiWan are in the dark about everything except Ventress.

The last line then becomes about Anakin and ObiWan. “Unaware of the Separatist fleet, Obi Wan and Anakin trace the signal of the dark warrior Asaj Ventress to a building on the far side of the city…”

The “far side of the planet” sounds good but doesn’t make sense if Anakin and ObiWan are using speeder bikes instead of a shuttle/fighter. It’s also too far to be the place from which the droids march the next day.

Finally, is “dark warrior” the best intro title for Ventress? Alternatives could be the “fallen Jedi,” the “Sith assassin,” the “dark assassin,” “Dooku’s assassin,” etc. “Agent” could also be a good choice instead of “assassin” or “warrior.”

Where are you putting up the new episode links Eddie? The old work sheet I’m on doesn’t have any links to episodes anymore.

For Ep00, I essentially agree with exactly what Burbin said. I think option 2 is visually the cleanest way possible to present it, but the abrupt music at the title card is a bit jarring. If that can be somewhat gently faded in, then I think you’re golden.

This journey has been an… experience for me. Thank you. Watching the clone wars like this is such an enjoyable experience. Then I watched the prequels (HAL9000 v7)… and during the battle of Geonosis, I thought I was watching one of your edits!! Early CGI felt like Clone Wars!!

Have you thought about adding the prequels to this series? With the Up-res’d deleted scenes and outdated CGI, I felt like I was watching an early 2000’s TV show and i found myself enjoying the prequals more than I had in the past. To have that viewing experience in episodic chunks, credit/music/art experience… Some of the art of prequal era is stunning!! That could be fun 😃

With option 2, could you potentially hard cut from Anakin to the logo? And maybe play around with the musical transition, whether it starts right after Yoda gets done saying “Force”, or just cross fading the music at the hard cut? Perhaps another brief cue from the title card track could be used to help bridge the transition as well. Maybe even hard cutting away from sooner might help.

I also wonder if you could keep the hard cut at the beginning too. I noticed you also chose to fade in at the very beginning, but I personally like how the original just started without any fade from black.

If you can’t get option 2 to work I think option 3 would be alright too.

Here’s an explanation for why I think 2 is better than 3. Yoda’s narration feels much like a book’s prologue, and the scene in the office much like a Chapter 1.

Version 2 goes: prologue, title card, Chapter 1, etc…

Version 3 goes: prologue, Chapter 1, title card. For me, this is just awkward.

Thematically, I believe you get the same impact as you’re looking for with the DFR title coming after a close up of Anakin either way.

The 2.0 version of The New Padawan is great. I only watched a bit of Dark Force Rising but I noticed when Obi-Wan says “Yes” in the office scene, it’s a lot softer than the other dialogue. Also your removal of the antagonism between Anakin and Obi-Wan in the hangar doesn’t quite work because they still kind of glare at each other grumpily. I wonder if it’s just better to leave more of it in, Anakin is still a padawan here after all.

Version four definitely, it felt the most smoothest to me.