Right, I’ve finished my period of ‘taking stock’. Prepare for a wall of text.
Of the episodes I planned to exclude, I’m certain I still want to exclude them all. That means I won’t be including them in my edit in any capacity - not my Quality Cut, nor any of the lesser ones. That covers Huttlet Crisis (from the movie), Ambush, R2 Captured duology, Bombad Jedi, Blue Shadow Virus duology, Sphere of Influence, Ziro the Hutt (except the Senate Hostage Crisis scenes), Droids in the Void (except Gregor), The Disappeared, and Crystal Crisis (unfinished episode). I won’t be adding credits etc to these episodes.
Of the episodes I planned to include only in the Continuity and Complete cuts, I’m certain I still want to keep them out of the Quality cut. That means they will get edits (though I may be relatively lazy here and they might just be polish rather than the execution of any creative ideas), and they will get full TCW:R credits, so you can watch them as part of TCW:R if you want to. I won’t be editing these until after I’ve created my Quality Cut, though. This list includes the Tartatkovsky Microseries Mon Calamari/Dantooine/Ilum episode (already complete as I did it while I did the other Tartakovsky one), the Mon Calamari arc, Lightsaber Lost (already complete as it was Quality but got downgraded), Lair of Grievous, Dooku Captured duology, Crash on Maridun duology, Orto Plutonia, Innocents of/Liberty on Ryloth duology, Zillo Beast duology, Grievous Intrigue (unless upgraded), Shadow Warrior (unless downgraded), the Droids duology, Tartakovsky’s Nelvaan arc, Tartakovsky’s Coruscant arc, something with the remainder of the Christophsis content (unless any of it gets upgraded into a ‘Lost Clones’ anthology), and Pursuit of Peace/Senate Murders (unless upgraded).
Of those, I found some useful lines and scenes which I may be able to repurpose to improve more important episodes, as detailed in the last couple of pages.
I then watched over all of my episodes again, in the new chronological order. Broadly I’m very pleased, though I think I have a lot of refinement to do. I’ll be bringing them all up to standard before producing any more episodes. I’ll also do a pass of their opening text just to make sure everything flows in the new order. I have collected all of the comments previously left in this thread, so they will be actioned if they’ve been mentioned here. But I also wanted to specifically highlight a few things:
- Main takeaway 1: I must improve the music. This might mean picking up the skills myself, though I have really no idea where to start. I love McFibb’s music and will absolutely preserve them, but I mean that the transitions into my episodes (from near silence) and out of my episodes (into the piano which kicks off my outro music) are poor. I’ll see if finding suitable replacement tracks for the content in those sections (replacing the original music in the episode, NOT replacing McFibb’s credit music) gives me more to work with. (I might also think about improving the actual music within the episodes themselves, though that’s not going to be anywhere near first pass for this project.)
- Main takeaway 2: The art in the credits is good, but sometimes too low resolution. Chase Adams used a cool technique which kind of turned images into tapestry style, which served to increase the resolution by artistically obscuring some of the detail. If anyone knows how he did that, or has other ideas for improving the credits imagery, that’d be much appreciated.
- s01e00 - DARK FORCE RISING (Tartakovsky intro) - Via Hal I’ll fix the missing subtitles.
- s01e01 - THE NEW PADAWAN (Christophsis) - I have fixed the video except for one shot, but haven’t released this to you all yet. I’ll fix this. I’ve also colour-corrected Bail in the last shot a bit more, and found another shot which might help his appearance at the end land a little better. There are a few transitions I need to fix, but I have the skills now. I did find this episode contained very quick cuts, but I don’t have options here really - I’m using the longest shots I can. You guys can still highlight anything you feel doesn’t quite land though, for me to investigate.
- s01e02 - THE DEATH WATCH - One of the opening scenes in Duchess where a scout reports to Almec and they summarise Satine’s importance may work better here as the ending. This episode was the first I released and still has the old music and old credits art and timings, which I’ll fix, though I’m still short on a couple of pieces of art, which I’m not sure how I’ll work around.
- s01e03 - MALEVOLENCE - I’ll tidy up the Plo Koon/Republic cruiser intercut scene to remove the Republic cruiser, and just have Plo cover the key information. I’ll also remove the briefing room chatter of “the head clanker” just because it’s delivered quite awkwardly and we know who Grievous is. I’ll be replacing a goofy pod-killer droid line with “No survivors” from the Lurmen episode.
- s01e04 - THE 501st LEGION - I’ll trim “open up”/“didn’t say please” to remove banter in a life-or-death situation. I’ll dub Hevy’s death with him now saying “Brothers!” in a slightly pained way, from Hidden Enemy. I’m not going to add the original worm scene in, because I don’t mind the suprise worm, but I will cut the dialogue where a droid specifically highlights the number of surviving clones who escaped. I’m happy to imply Cutup died offscreen during the Commando attack. I’m also happy to leave the fight in the training room having a clone shot then fine - this is a simulation, and we don’t know the rules. The clone who gets injured gets properly injured - which is why he stays down if we want to think of it that way - and that can be a part of why they failed in a simulation. The scene where the main clones meet 99 when they return needs to not imply they’ve been away for ages, and the reaction to Hevy’s death needs some tweaking. I’ll regretfully remove Chase’s animated credits and go back to static ones, since I can’t output every episode to that same standard. Though I’ll hope for more in future, and welcome more of Chase’s if he’s able to produce more, and probably I’ll eventually come to this myself if nobody else can help. (But probably not for the first pass of the project.)
- s01e05 - CLOAK OF DARKNESS - No notes for this one. I don’t think I can find better insults for Ahsoka to use to describe Ventress, but it’s OK either way.
- s01e06 - CHILDREN OF NIGHT (Nightsisters) - This was a suprise to me, but I think I’m going to remove the initial fight between the invisible Nightsisters and Dooku. It doesn’t serve the plot at all - Ventress and the Nightsisters are already vengeful against Dooku, and Dooku already has cause to want a new assassin whether or not he’s just had an attempt on his life, so there’s no change before or after. And we don’t really need another lightsaber fight - even one that’s bad guy on bad guy. Ventress even fights Dooku later in this episode, so all the emotions get to come out in combat then. The loss here would be that Dooku’s kind of badass in it, though I don’t know quite that it’s valuable to state that, and the gain would be tightening the pacing (in a LOOONG episode that’s already a large sequence of events) and also the fact that invisibility is quite a weird force power, even for witches. This will require slight trims to the scene where Talzin calls him, because otherwise he’s surrounded by broken glass with no explanation. I’m also going to trim the final hangar fight a bit.
- s01e07 - THE BLOCKADE OF RYLOTH - I need to add a wipe and remove a wipe, and fix a few transitions. Nobody fed back on it, but I don’t think my artificial scene where the Toydarian (who used to be a guard) offers Bail Organa aid flows naturally. I think I’ll either get this scene to work or just drop it - The surrounding context works just fine if I can’t. I needed some space from this episode because it was a complex interlacing, but on review I think it worked totally fine. These fixes might be a pain to do though, because I lost the project file even though I have triple backups.
- s01e08 - DUCHESS OF MANDALORE - I might remove the opening scene with the scout and Almec, so that the Almec conversation can be used in The Death Watch. There’s an odd camera swing where I trimmed Obi-Wan’s infiltration, and a bit too much obvious malevolence from Mas Amedda at the end, which needs a trim.
- s01e09/10 - A STRIKE AT THE HEART (Holocron Crisis) - I’m going to cut the goofy rabbit droid from when Bane’s team take the Senate. When Bane’s called the shapeshifter but she’s spent a while talking to Ahsoka, I’m going to add “Talk to me” from Evil Plans before the shapeshifter replies “I’m in”, to imply impatience and tie it better to what we’ve just seen. As Anakin’s been captured I’m also going to have Bane say “The Separatists are paying a million a head for Jedi” from Hunt for Ziro, which works here but also explains a little extra in the Boba Fett arc. There’re a couple of silent mouth movements elsewhere which need trims. (As an aside, I’m still so pleased with how the Ahsoka teaching ending comes together to cap this off. Anakin even says “this weapon is your life” to Padmé at the start, then Ahsoka passes that on at the end. My reading now is that she realises that the Sith Lord has a multi-generational plan. So she immediately shifts into a mode where she’s solving that problem - by investing in the next generation. And that’s ultimately how Palpatine is defeated, so she’s proven completely right, and therefore wise beyond her years.)
- s02e01 - SEVEN WARRIORS - I’m going to remove the ‘medical station has gone quiet’ angle, since in A Strike at The Heart the Republic have abandoned Felucia. Instead, they’ll have heard rumours that the Separatists have pulled their forces together elsewhere so they’re checking if they can take Felucia back, only to find a cursory defense in orbit. I’ll try to remove the audio of large creatures crunching about if possible.
- s02e02 - MASSACRE - Since I don’t want Dooku to fight invisible Nightsisters in my Children of Night, I won’t have him reference ‘Illusions’ here. I’ll also remove the mention of the Defoliator - it’ll still be present, it’ll just be a special sort of tank that fires a kind of fire bomb, without a name. (I don’t like “unique” weaponry appearing then never being used again, much like the incredible EMP weapon that takes out a whole army in Zillo Beast. I don’t care that it caused a sinkhole, there’d be times when it’d still be very useful, like in space…)
- s02e03 - SINS OF THE FATHER (Boba Fett) - All good, though I think I rendered this without credits art by mistake. (Total aside but I love the scene where a clone is taking the cadets in the wrong direction, and the Admiral puts on a totally happy face and makes out like going to the escape pods is a game, so as not to panic them. That scene alone made me comfortable removing his other early appearances, because it showed absolute lightning-fast empathy and tactical good sense, which is all we need to depend on later for Boba’s arc.)
- s02e06 - RETURN OF MAUL - I’ll shift the one scene where Yoda and Obi-Wan react to the Return of Maul later, to after Maul’s just had his sanity recovered and then he runs outside to scream. This way, that scream carries more potency, implicitly causing a kind of rageful echo in the force. That Maul scene it comes from can be happily interrupted there.
After that it’s back to normal production, though I’ll be reviewing a few episodes in batches just to see what value I can create. I’ve got Assassin coming up though I really don’t like the idea of Ahsoka only having known future visions in that one episode, it doesn’t feel quite right for her.
Oh, and I still need to have a little think about my Maul arc pacing. It won’t shift by much, but now I feel I’ve adopted a five-season structure, I’ll just see if Maul wants to wiggle a bit to fit right.
Finally, just to be clear - the only way this project will be left incomplete will be if I’m incapacitated. I’m extremely motivated and excited to see this all the way through. I want to create the optimal completed product, and that isn’t going to change. Sooner or later, you’ll have your 50+ episode Quality Cut, and after that, your 64+ episode Complete Cut.
Anyway, that’s where I’m at, my dears!