I finished the revised book three recently and I do love what you have done with it! The standout scenes in my opinion is Boba being responsible for the speederbike crash of Din’s when he is carry his armor back to town. I also like the end montage from the introduction of the shadow council scene from season three, to the brief scene borrowed from season three with the mandos amassing their fleet and finally Boba with his “tribe” and Din with his “tribe”. You have done a great job. Cannot wait till the updated book four!
Minor Note: I was a bit concerned about continuity issue as you have moved scenes around from different scenes. The Moff Gideon scene was the biggest concern, especially how close the hologram scene is during the mando heist on the cargo ship and the shadow council scene and the stinger at the end of the moff overlooking his dark troopers (regarding is his facial hair appearing, disappearing and reappearing). However, I think it works as the hologram is not very clear, then you have the shadow council scene, then you have a long shot of him admiring the dark troopers. Only other minor continuity scene I believe I found, but I could be mistaken is moving Boba’s scenes around his cloak is burned by the acid in some earlier scenes now that are moved around before he visits the sarlacc, but overall it is not too noticeable. I do love this series and look forward to seeing how you save the modern day Boba Fett scenes and season three of mando. Keep up the great work and may the force be with you!
Thanks for the review! Book 4 had the least amount of needed updates, so that should definitely be out sometime this coming week.
Regarding the continuity of those scenes, I don’t think there should be any instances of Gideon’s facial hair changing. As you can see in the picture, I had deepfaked his season 3 face onto his scenes in this film to remove his facial hair and color-masked his hair to be black instead of grey in the shadow council scene.
Are there specific timestamps from where you noticed inconsistencies in his appearance? I can touch those up if there is something that jumps out.
For Boba’s robes, I hadn’t ever noticed that before but I can look at the scene order and see if I can maybe mask some of that too if it’s distracting. You said you might be mistaken, but if it stuck out to you, can you see which scenes you were saying the acid burns are there vs not?
Loved both movies 1 and 2. Both are structured excellently, feel focused and movie-like, and flow well. I especially enjoyed the balance of Boba/Mando in movie 2, and the movement of Sorgan to exclusively book two. I wouldn’t change any of their structure, stories, or trims. And your audio editing has got noticeably smoother. Definitely my mains.
However, you have a major issue with colour in book one. I know you’ve responded to comments here, but it’s a significant deterioration of colour, and more than just saturation, it’s added really strong unnatural shades of teal and orange. Have a look at the difference: https://ibb.co/NK2Gby3. If it’s deliberate recolouring, please reconsider! If not, something is going wrong in your pipeline - either an effect is being applied (and it should be easy to un-apply it), or you’re reading the files in a slightly incorrect colour space that’s maybe being compounded if your later versions are editing the rendered outputs of your earlier versions. This might be related to your crushed blacks issue from before, which also suggests a slightly incorrect colour space is being read. I know I’ve been a bit of a hound about these edits but I feel like they’re such a good idea and so well-executed that I just really want to champion you getting them to that 100% quality.
Great, then I’m going to do a couple of tiny bug fixes/adjustments on Book 1/2, but overall it sounds like the story is locked on the first 3 and ready to be considered complete!
As far as the color goes, I definitely prefer colorful visuals to the drab washed-out appearance that Disney Star Wars seems to lean toward. I have done color adjustments to every planet uniquely, but the pic you sent looks quite drastic and I suspect I made an adjustment layer on top of the scene in addition to adjusting the scene itself, which would double the intended effect. I will take a peak. As far as the blacks/banding go, I haven’t been able to address it at all. It’s burnt into the source footage on my timeline to begin with and I’d need to remake dozens of hours of work to fix it. I love crystal clear 4k footage as much as anyone, but as I’ve said before this project originated in my basement pre-covid and was my first foray into fan editing. I had very early versions of these films made just for me and my wife to watch back then, years before I even knew this website existed. If I ever hit a total lull in the action on editing, I have mentioned before I’d like to manually go frame by frame to replace all the bad-looking scenes with 4k, but at this point, I’d rather work on the story than spend a couple months solely on a visual update. Trust me, I know as is it knocks a point or two off of the films as far as reviews go, but it’s just a monster task to fix right now.
Other than that:
- Book one is great, as I say. You do still have the duplicated shot of Mando approaching the pirate station though. I think you can trim the second one away no problem.
- In book two, as I mentioned in a previous post, that duplicated scene.
- For me, even though your new book 2 improves the balance and pacing through to the ending, I’d probably still prefer to trim the Mando-Greef conflict and Mando’s head injury being serious, but that’s just me and I get why you’ve done that.
Looking forward to 3!
- Ah yes, I will fix that one. I recall an old post about that now.
- Already fixed and new version is up
- I do believe if the adjustment to the Fennec v Rookie scene is made, then yes absolutely the Greef + injury scenes need to be cut. For anyone who hasn’t seen Eddie’s idea here, refer to this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GJq4g3QRwLhOrpgI2eNySS7UaQkIXHxb/view
How do we feel about extending the Fennec death back to full, and trimming the Act 3 segment on Nevarro like Eddie suggests? I can’t keep all three scenes at full length, the film already drags on a bit too long as is. These are all changes I’ve gone back and forth on a lot so I’m open to a couple yays or nays to push me over the edge here.
Also, thank you to everyone else who has left kind words about the edits. It’s been an incredible experience working on this saga with such caring feedback and suggestions. The brainstorming that has occurred in this thread has been phenomenal. The films have grown so much and really feel like something special due to how many ideas have come from the Star Wars fan community.