Peonthegrate said:

Alright, I’ve got some hopefully not too unorganized/vague notes from Chapter 5. I made these as I was watching it.

Overall a great chapter, with most everything being seamless, it turned out quite well.

Now for some of the notes that I think could be improved upon IMO.

The scene around the 5 minute mark works surprisingly much better than I thought it would. Taking the last scene of the show to one of the first and making it work as well as it did was pretty impressive. To improve upon it more, if possible I would try and draw as much attention as possible away from the debris that the citizens are cleaning, and shots of the debris.
This may be difficult while maintaining the music of the scene by making cuts of certain shots of them simply cleaning the debris. So perhaps it could also help to simply change the music that plays during this scene. As I think the music here works, but could possibly be improved upon by picking something with a slightly different tone. Though I’m not sure what that would be.
TLDR: This scene works pretty well, but I’d cut as many shots of the debris/cleaning of debris that you can while not making the scene feel choppy with the soundtrack.

I was able to remove a couple shots of the civilians picking up the scorched rubble, but watching it back here it doesn’t seem so out of place that the whole scene is worth cutting. I don’t see anything wrong with people working in the background, maybe it’s just a normal teardown/caaonstruction operation? Surely there’s quite a bit of damage that happens around Boba’s town anyways. I got rid of the more distracting shots but I am not too concerned with the rest.

The initial cut to Mando behind the curtain felt perhaps a bit too harsh/quick. Though part of me liked it at the same time. I’d mess around with a slower cut if possible that eases you into the new scene and see how it looks and compare which is best/most fitting for the scene.

I extended the Din intro scene here and used a feathered wipe on the transition instead. That should help.

The Rancor (fakeout) scene works quite well with the assassin , which I was also surprised by. The main issue with the scene for me however was that you could see the Rancor’s gate/door open too much. I’d try and cut away to the assassins saying the mayor sent him before the viewer can see the gate fully open, revealing that there doesn’t seem to be anything there.

Agreed, I cut the final gate shot so we never seen it open enough where we would have seen at least the Rancor’s foot.

As much as I hate to say it as I don’t enjoy the mods, I felt there should be some sort of introduction to them.
The original (D+) introduction of the mods was quite drawn out and long, and had that awkward scene of Boba talking with the guy in his palace. But I feel it may be a necessary evil, as it just felt odd having the mods show up out of nowhere as they main 2 are honestly fairly “main, side characters” in this. And it just feels odd not having a proper introduction to them.

TLDR: I think it’s a necessary evil to introduce the mods similarly to the D+ show. But perhaps it can be cut up and trimmed a lot to be much better than D+'s. It’s one of the only things that didn’t fully work for me in the edit.

So I did actually have a scene of the mod gang recruitment that worked really well for Boba’s character, but the main problem was actually finding a spot to place the scene. It just felt so random and tacked on, especially considering that the recruitment scene takes place at night whereas the rest of my Boba content takes place in the same daytime hours. But you saying it’s something that doesn’t fully work as-is means I must find a solution as the current placement of things isn’t feeling digestible. I added the mod recruitment scene as Boba’s second scene now, so the scene order goes like:

5 Minutes of Boba intro (in his palace and walking the streets)
5 Minutes of Din intro (fight against Klatoonians)
3 Minutes Boba recruits mods
3 Minutes Din collects bounty
10 Minutes Boba goes to Garza’s and learns of Pykes
10 minutes Din trains with new Mando coven
5 Minutes Grogu training

It all actually balanced out really well timing-wise so I’ll have to do a full rewatch to make sure it all works out narratively still, but it does fix the mod gang problem you had.

This is ironic based off of my last point, but I’d try and see if it’s possible to cut/trim up the scene of the mods driving up the the mayor’s office around the 1 hour mark. You didn’t change this scene of them driving up AFAIK so it being a weird scene isn’t on you at all. I just can’t take the scene seriously especially after all the power ranger memes from this scene lol.

TLDR: If possible I’d mess around with cutting/trimming the scene of the mods and Boba driving up to the mayors office.
It’s just a awkward scene because of their out of place speeder bikes and the memes make it even harder to watch. I’d maybe try and cut straight to Boba walking right into the mayor’s building and see how that looks.

I agree with the horrible cartoonish appearance of the bikes, I can just cut straight into Boba walking through the door.

At around 1:27:20 the main cast sorta just seems to teleport into Garzas sanctuary. It feels kind of weird. the scene may need cutting entirely, or rearranging. I don’t recall how this sequence played out in the D+ version, so this may be how it was there too. In either case it feels weird having them straight up teleport during Fennec’s monologue.

I like the idea of this on paper, though in execution I think it didn’t quite work (yet at least). The idea being that, the Marshall initially declines Mandos offer to help out. I was able to tell where the scene was cut up around the 1:24:15 mark and then again to the 1:31:00 mark. I’d perhaps just revert this to the Original D+, as that seems the easiest way to make the scene feel less “edited”.

I’ll combine these two since it’s all tied together. I did completely rebuild the whole segment here from the ground up. I did end up scrapping the “Cobb refuses” idea and reorganized a ton of scenes around here so it seems less like the crew teleports from the palace to Mos Espa. In order to do this, I did have to remove some of the “planning” scenes to make it happen but they were redundant anyways.

In the scene with Cad Bane and Boba talking for the first time, I’d be interested in seeing about cutting some of Fennecs dialogue. I noticed during the D+'s version of the Finale that Fennec seems to be guiding along Boba quite a bit, and though some of that seemed to be cut here, I think it could do with some more cutting. She tends to monologue/explain a bit too much for my liking throughout. Though this may be personal preference.

I had already removed about 75% of her telling Boba what to do in this scene, but I was able to remove one more line from her that was the one that change Boba’s mind, so at least now it’ll seem like he makes the final decision on his own. I’m not able to cut anything else here without losing the tension of the scene though.

This is just a personal gripe that has bugged me since I first saw it on D+. But the scene at 1:45:15 as Fennec is driving away to me always felt so weird because of the strange smile of admiration that the Pale mod has at 1:45:19.
Personal gripe, I’m sure. It just looks so weird to me lol!

Haha, no I agree there. It’s an unnecessary, super corny 5 second camera zoom in on her face for no reason. Easy enough to cut since it’s distracting.

at 2:04:38 you can see the D+ “CHAPTER 6 FROM THE DESERS COMES A STRANGER” title card.

Oh that was left in there on purpose, I’m trying out the Theory of Relative Titleography and seeing the “Chapter 6” text should evoke a strong sense of familiarity with watching the D+ version. Kidding… It was a remnant attached to the fade. I fixed it. Thanks for pointing it out!

I personally thought what you did with the final montage of Boba getting tribute from everyone in his palace was quite brilliant. Really great idea there. However for me it slightly messed with another one of my favorite scenes (from the D+ version). Which was of Grogu tapping on the glass with the Mandalorian.
I’d see if there’s any way to perhaps separate the montage of Boba, and the scene of Grogu with Mando in his starfighter some.
Smudger9 did this scene well, yet very similar in his movie edit. The part that feels a bit off to me in this edit is that Mando being reunited with Grogu should be more… I’m not sure, quiet? I think having the (great, yet not fitting for this scene IMO) music play during their scene together is what throws me off. That and that it was shortened, by not having Grogu tap on the glass.

TLDR: I’d see if you can separate Boba’s montage of getting tribute, and Mando+Grogu reunited scene so it feels more endearing.

I tried to fix this today but I ran out of time. Really having a hard time nailing the timing across these scenes here but I’ll get it done hopefully tomorrow.

It’s a lot of notes I have but I really did enjoy this edit. It’s certainly a very difficult edit to make and I think you’ve done a great job on it. I think with a few tweaks and adjustments it will become the definitive way to view the show (In my opinion of course).

Thanks, this edit is much better after a second pass based on your review.

So I’m finding it’s taking around 14 hours per film to render, upscale, and upload. I’m not actually releasing in 4k because I didn’t notice much difference in the results from the software, but I am upscaling it in HD to remove a lot of the artifacts to simulate a 4k upload. With that said, you can see the math on how long it’ll take! I’ve got 2 PC’s working on rendering and upscaling so it should only be a few days before everything is available to download.