We’ve finished book 4 and apparently that film was the best out of all Star Wars content so far (other than acolyte we’ve done EVERYTHING leading up to this). Lots of concern for baby yoda and when Boba finally made his appearance she thought he was going to be the villain which made the stand off more tense due to the Boba sniping scene in the previous movie.
I know it’s old rope by now but having him reveal his face here first at the end makes it so much more impactful, it hit wonderfully.
Bad news is she is dying to watch more now and we only have Ahsoka and your book 5 I need to drag out!
Take as long as you need but how are we looking on the next release? Can’t tell who is more excited to be honest
Haha awesome! Sound like a good time! Would love to know what she thinks of Book 5 when you get to it 😃
Book 6 is still in the second pass of the technical review stage. This one is very very detailed. I’ve been logging it on my YT channel, but you’ll see there it’s just slow, monotonous work. Like making a new 3-second transition for Boba’s Palace can sometimes take 45 minutes of work… and with my 4th baby coming in a month, 45 minutes is very valuable time haha. I’m working every free chance I get though! It’s coming along piece by piece.
I watched movies 1 through 4, and I loved movies 1 and 4. I also enjoyed 2 and 3, although I think they have things that could be improved. But overall, I enjoyed all four movies, mainly because you cut out many bad scenes from the Boba Fett series, saved the scene of Mando removing his helmet for the fourth movie, and gave Luke the enhanced face.
My feedback:
Thanks, Sirius. I appreciate all the time it took to sort through and write out so many notes! The technical pointers are helpful, I’ll have to go back through each to see what exactly you’re noticing there. It seems like the overall critique is that most of the films don’t necessarily “feel” like a traditional movie feels. That, I will fully acknowledge as true. Some of them do feel like that more than others, as you mentioned, but to me it “feels” more like a consistent conglomeration of related episodes. I think TV to movie edits “feel” more like movies the more you end up cutting. One of my main goals was to cut as little as possible to preserve the overall pacing and integrity of the main storyline. In doing so, I retain a lot of the slower “non-movie” feeling scenes and such. Each film does have it’s own consistent 3-Act structure with character arcs and stories in place, but as you experienced, some films more “significant” than others. I think that’s something that I personally don’t see as a problem, as my goal wasn’t to create perfect traditional movie experiences, but to tell the best story possible in 2-3 hour chunks.
Some of the suggestions there like, “Perhaps it would be good to include a short AI conversation between Boba and Fennec” are cool ideas, but not really feasible at the moment. Maybe in a few more years the tech will be there to pull this off, but as of now even the most professional efforts possible will still scream “This is AI!” and look very out of place. I’m already pushing the limits to the max with the voicelines and a few small AI VFX shots.
I would be interested to see what you think about Book 5 as well if you ever get the chance!
Not sure if this has ever been brought up, but the color banding in a few scenes is pretty distracting. It’s pretty much only in darker scenes like when they’re hunting Fennec Shand in book 2. I wonder if it would be possible for Acabel to re-encode the edit using h265 10 bit settings as that really helps to eliminate color banding.
Yes, this has been discussed before (can’t remember what page of this thread though). Unfortunately, it’s not just a simple “re-encode with some altered settings” situation. I don’t have the original project files anymore. Those were on a hard drive long since dead, but I did have fully rendered edits saved of the films. So the vast majorities of revisions (like, the last 3+ years of work) I have done on earlier films are not done by working on original source files, but onto already rendered versions of my older films (the exported ones with the borked settings). That is to say, the only way to “fix” the dark scenes like the Fennec night scene and sections of the mercenaries in Book 1 would be to 100% remake it from scratch. I tried AI restoration a year or two ago and it didn’t seem to help at all. Maybe some new tech will help alleviate it, but as of now, I wouldn’t have any other choice but to compeltely remake all of that and you’re looking at a loooooot of hours to do that, and no guarantee I could get it exactly how it appears now again (but with fixed coloration).