Hey, all! Apologies again for the delay, I was really trying to get this out before December, yet here we are. So here’s what’s been going on:
I think I have finally fixed all of the techinical difficulties with my computers that was making editing so difficult, the upgraded laptop helps on the road, though even with that I was still having major issues with read/write speeds from my external drive, and the Disk usage was constantly at 100% and I began getting warnings about a corrupted drive… So, I stopped using that drive until I could order another one. The new drive arrived a couple nights ago and I did a full backup of the entire project, it took 13 HOURS to transfer everything, so something was definitely failing in that other drive, but it’s all safely on a new one. Through that I was able to do a partial review of the full film, but had some major audio bugs I missed that was making watching the draft render impossible to focus (nothing serious, just stupid errors like leftover soundtracks from other scenes that I accidentally left in the timeline that began playing over character dialogue, lots of floating unintended audio placements). So I cleaned all those up and made another draft render to complete final edits from (it’s such a massive project with thousands of extra files, so it takes 3-4 hours to render out each time).
I spent a couple hours watching it last night (the full film including credits is currently ~3 hours 45 minutes, this is before pacing cuts, but this long of a film takes a lot of time to review) and to be honest I was actually expecting it to be in rougher shape than it was. There are certainly still some glaring issues to fix, but it’s mostly very easy fixes to make (color grade overlaps, subtitle grammar/formatting, still some floating audio). Overall I was encouraged by the state of things. I have maybe ~5 AI VFX shots in here (mostly just extensions to scenes, there are SO many fast jump cuts on Mandalore, having a few extra seconds of an explosion playing out really helps the chaotic pacing), and a few of those I want to redo because the video models have developed SO much over the year+ that I have been working on this, so I’ll replace some of that. I have access to Adobe’s generative extension function now too which is really cool for holding on a character’s face for another second or two.
I can say, the part that I reviewed, I was having a LOT of fun with. The Mando’a, the alien voices, the new story direction… I am very proud of it all, and even more excited to share it with you. The film feels like old school Star Wars. It really does. I know some of you are waiting on this daily, and this is something you’re looking forward to as much as some of the upcoming Disney projects, so I want to thank you for your patience and apologise again for the delays. I want to promise a Christmas present for you guys, but I have so much family holiday travel I don’t think I can make that promise, though I will try as hard as I can to get it out ASAP. Let me know if you have any questions!