This is going to be a really tough edit isn’t it! As many have said, the footage is there to make an amazing movie, but Filoni always makes it difficult to cut elements because one scene always leads to the next!
I’m not too keen on the idea of opening with episode 3. The presence of a crawl does give a lot of freedom regarding where you start the story because it’s free exposition. However, there will be way too much for the crawl to achieve in order to explain the state of the galaxy, the map, Thrawn and the Sabine/Ahsoka relationship. I think there are elements of episodes 1 and 2 that we need to see.
I think this edit is going to have to be done “back-to-front”, which is what I used to do with my Clone Wars edits. Figure out where you’re going and then figure out how you got there. So what I’ll probably do is edit together 7 and 8 as the final act and see what threads need a start point.
In terms of act 1, one idea I’m floating is to have Ahsoka already in possession of the map, which will be explained in the opening crawl. I’ll still open with Baylan and Shin rescuing Morgan, but then cut to Ahsoka arriving on Lothal. Then I can reinstate the scene where Morgan sends Shin to Lothal. That should all bring in act 1 at 45mins and streamlines things.
We open on the Republic cruiser and the story then moves to Lothal before heading to Seatos.
The real battle I’m having with this edit is episodes 3, 4 and 5. It’s so difficult to get those episodes edited down. Has anyone got suggestions of how to remove Ashoka’s stupid space walk? It would be easy if she hadn’t changed her damn outfit! Grrrr
Thanks for all the input. I’ve sent the link to those that have requested it.