Smudger9's Andor Movie Series [EP1 & EP2 Released: 4K; 5.1 Audio] [EP3 & EP4 WIP] — Page 7

arabian said:

I originally thought the Yavin IV stuff needed to go as well but after reading some commentary and THEN the reveal that it’s YAVIN IV, I disagree. Yes, trim the bejezus out of it BIG TIME, but keeping some of it is a necessity. And here is why.

1. We see the origin of Yavin IV as a rebel base. That is HUGE.

2. The back and forth between the squabbling, disorganized rebels in the dangerous, dirty jungle who were infighting, had no food, were fractured and barely had a clue contrasted with the board meeting of the imperials was stark. They were clean, well dressed, well fed with drinks and canapés. They were organized, working together, and casually discussing decimating an entire planet.

Cutting the Yavin IV story is cutting that brilliant juxtaposition of why the Empire is winning right now and the rebels are not. Again, trim the heck out of it, but keep the core of it. It IS important.

For now there isn’t enough there for me to keep it. That may change with the next arc. I don’t feel seeing the origin of the Yavin base is that big a deal, we’ve survived since 1977 without it. I agree on the Juxtaposition with the Empire, but by removing the Yavin scenes you get an alternative Juxtaposition between the comfortable lives of those that comply with the Empire and the tough, dangerous lives led by those that oppose it.

I’m sure we’ll see more evidence of the fractured rebellion. We saw it in season 1.

And even trimming it heavily will add significant runtime.

I’ve now completed the edit of these three episodes and managed to get the runtime down to my target of 1h 15. This will give me a lot more freedom with the second arc.

Changes to episode 3:

1. Moved the Kleya/Cassian scene towards the start to better space out Cassian’s scenes.
2. Cut most of Cyril and Dedra preparing for mother’s arrival.
3. Cut Luthen chatting to the guy who has a Gorman mother (easy to add back in if needed later).
4. Cut the Bix assault scene and anything related to it. I don’t have a problem with this scene, but my aim with these edits is to produce movies that feel like they are related to the main saga. It’s the most radical option, but the flow seems to work fine without those scenes. It puts more focus on Brasso’s demise, which is one of the key outcomes from this whole arc.
5. Lots of other trimming, particularly the wedding scenes, to keep the pace up.

I’ll upload the full edit of arc 1 (single channel, low res) to G-drive if anyone wants to view and give feedback.

Matt.F said:

Smudger, it looks like you’re putting your mind to Season 2 of Andor - but I’ve just finished watching your Season 1 edit (as a primer for Season 2) and wondered if you’d like feedback?

Overall it’s brilliant - you’ve really accentuated the positives and kept the core of the plot streamlined and easy to follow (except for one instance which I’ll come to). Without the episode breaks and with your choices of shots and moments to keep or trim it now feels more cinematic - like watching a pair of movies (the reintroduction of the 20th Century Fox fanfare is a cool little touch too!). I own the 4k series set but I cant see myself watching them again, as your pacier edit appeals more to me (I’ve always preferred movies over TV series, and that’s what your edit provides).

The one thing which doesn’t work… the removal of Andor being arrested on Niamos. I can see why you did it, as it removes a good 5-10 minute chunk of runtime but imho it compromised the edit too far.

Movie one ‘Spark of Rebellion’ ends with Cassian as one of the most wanted men in the galaxy after the Aldhani heist, and then movie two ‘The Reckoning’ begins with a crawl which simply says “Andor has been arrested for treason” and the first time we see him is entering Narkina with the other cons. It’s a massive leap for audiences and leaves you head scratching WTF? It also makes all the ISB conversations about ‘where is Andor?’, ‘we need to arrest Andor?’, become baffling as it appears to all intents he has already been arrested?! Furthermore, we even see Andor in Niamos at the end retrieving his stash from the hotel room - this scene no longer makes any sense without the context of the earlier footage.

I’d really suggest reinstating some abridged version of Andor on Niamos at the start of the edit, as without it ‘The Reckoning’ opens in a confusing and unsatisfying way. You could always save a few minutes elsewhere by cutting the scenes with Nurchi betraying Andor on Ferrix as they’re somewhat redundant to the plot (we already get two or three other references of why the ISB believe Andor is going to be at Ferrix for the funeral).

This is very much meant as constructive feedback rather than criticism as I really think you’ve done brilliantly to turn this TV series into something that feels much pacier and more cinematic, and I look forward to seeing what magic you can work with season 2!

Thanks. Any feedback is much appreciated. You aren’t the first person to say this, so it’s clearly something I need to look at before releasing my fully completed Andor Collection.

The main reason I structured the movies this way was because I absolutely hated the Cassian arrest sequence. By far the worst part of the series and so out-of-place. The acting, the shoretroooer dialogue, the Kangaroo court…. None of it worked for me.

I’ll go back over the footage to see the best way of including it.

Thanks Again.

jkimm said:

Really like what you’ve done. I made some edits to the first 10 minutes for the fun of it. Below are two sections with changes. I’m curious what you and others think.

Intro Meeting
• Trim “nervous is good - I’ve had fun here - now everything changes” dialogue (1:26-1:48)
• Trimmed “am I” (1:52)
• Removed coworker leaning in whispering (2:08-2:10)
• Swapped closeups of Andor (2:10-2:14) <-> (2:02-2:05)
• Removed “what was that?” and “she said you were cute” (2:21-2:26)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19JarUVLRzei4ZbJ8cJSBaPl2bqnfQx4d/view?usp=sharing

Hangar Escape
• Slight trim of Andor messing with controls (5:36)
• Trim fighter hitting ceiling for second time (5:43-5:45)
• Slight trim of fighter bouncing around (5:51-5:52)
• Trimmed and rearranged shots of fighter firing at troopers (6:03-6:10)
• Trim bit of trooper pausing before reloading cannon (6:19)
• Trim targeting system (6:24-6:25)
• Trim trigger not firing (6:29-6:38)
• Trim display charging (7:38)
• Trim fighter banging into cliff and “no, no, no” (7:50-7:55)
• Trim fighter making a sharp right and scraping against the rocks (8:02-8:13)
• Trim fighter hitting rocks, would’ve been destroyed by now (8:23-8:26)
• Trimmed a bit of the cave collapsing (8:51)
• Trim a little before fighter ascends (9:01-9:03)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FfefHzAbBsB4oGhtSuphuB9WRt8DvmFZ/view?usp=sharing

I like the intro meeting cut to remove the cute reference. I’ll probably incorporate that when I’m fine tuning.

The TIE escape is very smoothly edited. I tried a couple of additional edits, similar to what you’ve done, but when I added in the other 5 audio channels things got a lot more challenging lining up the music, so I pulled back and let most of the sequence flow.
My edited opening sequence is 8 minutes, which I’m happy with from a structure point of view - it makes for a nice opening sequence for a Star Wars movie.

I finally got time to sit down and start playing around with the second arc.

I’m happy with how my edit of the first arc fits, I’ve just made one alteration by re-instating Bix’s dream sequence given that it’s now a crucial part of her character arc. I have, however, repositioned it so that it happens after she sees the imperial ship arriving. This does 2 things - it provides a trigger for that dream sequence, and secondly it casts more doubt in the viewer’s mind as to whether the events are real.

So onto the second arc.
The main challenge with editing this season into 2 movies is going to be dealing with the time skip. And we have a major event that is referenced but not shown - the soldier killed by Cassian when he and Bix were on a mission.
I plan to deal with that by cutting together a continuous “Cyril on Gorman” sequence and have that as the first arc 2 footage. Cyril doesn’t appear in the finale of arc 1 and is absent in my edit for the last 15mins.
This gives a reasonable passage of time for him to be briefed by the ISB and sent out to Gorman. The continuous Gorman sequence then provides enough time for Bix and Cassian to get relocated to the Coruscant safe house. I’ll then edit their dialogue to turn the interaction with the soldier into a random event, rather than than a happening on a mission.

So then we have the rest of the arc.
The Gorman plot is the spine and can definitely be streamlined. But there are whole threads that don’t feed into the Gorman story - D’Quar and the bugged artefact.
Q’quar will almost certainly become relevant in subsequent arcs, but could be moved to movie number 2. The bugged artefact could probably be cut completely. The issue there is that it takes Mon Mothma almost completely out of the second half of the movie.

Lots to ponder and a plan won’t become clear until I’ve seen arc 3 and possibly arc 4.

Wow. I finally caught up on arc number 3. Just…wow. It’s going to be very difficult finding enough in that arc to cut it down to 90mins! But I like a challenge.

But having got through that arc it means I can pretty much lock in the plot for Episode 3.
I have re-instated a few things that had a pay off in arc 3:

1. Luthen meeting (and subsequently recruiting) Mon’s assistant.
2. The scene with Cassian and the Bell-boy.
3. Luthen’s brief chat with the imperial cadet from Steargard.

I have one major quandary that I was looking for an opinion on… Bix’s arc. I really thought that after taking revenge on Dr Gorst, we would see her being an active part of the Rebellion. But it was the exact opposite. That Dr Gorst sequence now seems a bit out of place, and my feeling is that Bix’s decision to leave would be more powerful if she didn’t kill Dr Gorst. I’m very tempted to cut it completely.