The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 69

nmxuci5970 said:

have you ever thought about making a trailer for the clone wars refocused.

I have done! It’s not something I think I’ll do until I’ve finished the show, because (1) trailer production is a different technical skill from fanediting, and (2) I think I’d prefer to finish the show before I think about promotion.

I’d also quite like to make an anti-trailer just for fun, featuring all of the things I’m cutting. Dramatic music over the Hutt baby, Jar Jar being goofy, Satine saying “the schools have received adequate government funding!”, stuff like that.

Burbin said:

EddieDean said:

That’s an interesting idea about trimming Bane’s short-lived infiltration. On the one hand it’s quite ballsy, which could add to Bane’s competence. But on the other, as you say, it’s a little absurd and redundant. Removing it would make the tradeoff that Anakin makes more impactful, which is the key emotional point of the episode.

I think rather than making Bane seem competent, it makes everyone else seem incompetent. Bane just kicks Ahsoka in the gut and makes a B line for the nearest cockpit and somehow he’s able to escape.

I will check over it. But if the characters are dependent on knowing Bane escaped and I can’t find an alternative, it’ll have to stay.

On a separate note, I feel like this duology would be the perfect place to introduce the concept of the scum and villany rising in the galaxy. I mean, we get a bunch of scummy bounty hunters taking hostages and kidnaping kids. It works as a precursor of things to come in Season 2.

This is a bit of a general thought but, have you considered doing an “alternate” version of the opening that only has one wall of text instead of two? There’s some episodes where having two feels justified to lay the groundwork, but for others it feels more like you’re using the text to fill the space, rather than using the space to fit the text. Sometimes they include bits that are already stated clearly in the episode itself, or they explain things that don’t feel like they need such thorough explaining. It can end up feeling more like you’re explaining the thought process behind the edits you made to the episode, rather that a natural introduction to what we’re about to see.

I don’t think I’ll do this. In general I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve been able to achieve with the opening text, and don’t feel like I’ve used anything extraneous just to pad it out. Where it (pre)repeats content from the episode, that’s done to help reinforce that theme for the viewer in a way that I think is helpful, and where I don’t have too much to say about the episode, I think there’s value in highlighting the current state of the Galaxy. I also think that if I introduced two standards it might generate some confusion for the viewer.

That said, if any of my wording does feel too ‘fanedity’ then let me know, because I can tighten and revise them.

Burbin said:

What are your thoughts on introducing the “scum and villany” on the opening text for A Strike at the Heart? To me that feels like a more natural place to do it, it introduces scummy bounty hunters wrecking havoc on the Republic capital, messing with both the senate and the Jedi. While the episode that follows this duology, Seven Warriors, subverts our expectations by showing honorable bounty hunters while introducing the scummy pirates.

I think this is OK. This represents the beginning of that rise, which continues more heavily in the next season. We’re hinting at the theme, before making it explicit.

As for some other thoughts on the text in ASatH, I don’t feel like you need to say Bane’s been hired by a Sith Lord, since that’s immediately revealed by Bane in a way that has more intrigue, likewise I find the text about Ahsoka being assigned to the library by Yoda odd, as we don’t really need an explanation as to why she’s hanging out in the library, you could simply state that Ahsoka continues her guard duties at the Jedi Temple or something simple like that just to remind the audience.

First point is a good shout - I think that’s legacy from where I initially used a different Bane opening. Explicitly having Ahsoka assigned to the library is because I put her original assignment to ‘the archive’ in another episode, and this episode’s content there continues the introduction, so I wanted to imply she was moving to a new location, and thus warranting a second introduction.

I don’t think there needs to be anything to add to it, Anakin says “I can’t let Bane get away!”, that’s enough to tell the audience “okay, if he doesn’t chase him down, he’ll get away!”

That’s a good point, thanks!

RELEASED - S02E07 - Monsters (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our seventh episode of season two.
• Comprising the original episodes Brothers and Revenge
• Running 35 minutes.
• DOWNLOAD LINK is in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.
• Note: It’s recommended that you download this before watching, rather than streaming it directly from Google Drive.

A brilliant episode, this, bringing Maul finally back into the Galaxy. We get a good deep dive into Maul’s psyche since Naboo, more of the surviving Dathomir characters, and some meaningful character work for Obi-Wan. It’s got great action, complex alliances, and builds more anticipation for what’s to come. It’s one of the big turning points in the original show, leaving the threat of Maul hanging over it, and hopefully one that’ll serve the same purpose in my edit, which is why I wanted to kick off the hints at Maul’s return as early as reasonably possible.

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘Monsters’ as a light reference to the prior episode ‘Monster’ (where Savage was the titular Monster’), but pluralised here because both Savage and Maul have been referred to as monsters, and they’re the focus of this episode.
• I’ve truncated everything before Lotho Minor. Dooku and Grievous’ discussion, and Savage hunting through the diner, is now in an earlier episode, to help create anticipation for this one. We don’t need Anakin and Ahsoka having dinner here either (especially because this has Ahsoka’s older-looking character upgrade).
• I’ve heavily trimmed Lotho Minor (including some further smoothing compared to v1), removing lots of wandering, snake banter, the pendant going faulty, the ‘fire breathers’ (even though they look cool) and Savage slaughtering Lotho’s scrappers. None of it’s vital. He just meets the snake, who leads him to the right place then tricks him into the trap. It makes sense for both characters.
• I’ve shifted the scene of Yoda sensing Maul to immediately after he’s healed on Dathomir, runs outside, and screams. I used an iris wipe and preserved some of the Maul/Savage audio to help emphasise that this was a powerful moment in the force.
• I’ve cut the scenes of Ventress on Tattooine seeing Savage’s bounty. The main reason for this is because she’s not yet a bounty hunter in my version of events. (This change is the most major canon impact of my restructuring.) Instead, she shows up unexpectedly (though Yoda’s implied there’ll be a suprise visitor), and it’s not a huge stretch to assume she’s felt something in the force (or seen the same transmission the Jedi did). I actually think this works a bit better, and it also makes her now-later journey to Tattooine and decision to become a bounty hunter more of a reaction to her failiure here and fear of Savage and Maul, and has given her longer to keep her resentments before she starts to soften.

Onward to s02e08/09/10, the Geonosis trilogy (formerly the Geonosis pentalogy), where we finally see why there’ve been no major Republic/Separatist conflicts this season. After that I’ll revise the workprints for Monsters and Attachments, to complete the season.

You’re most welcome! He also appears in my s03e02 The Death of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Whoops! Fixed.

Ooh, I’ve spotted a nice unplanned bit of continuity. When we last saw Anakin, in my s02e06, he was in a crash that left him and Ahsoka stranded on the Lurmen planet. After the Maul/Obi-Wan centric s02e07, we’ll return to Anakin in s02e08, which opens with him visiting Padmé. In their opening dialogue, she asks him what’s going on, and he references having had to return to Coruscant via a civilian transport, because his military transport “blew up”. Nice!

Just wanted to say that as I’ve been watching the Bad Batch, I always feel slight disappointment not to hear your excellent musical opening after the helmet logo intro.

❤️

The total noob here. Started with this. Watched:

• TCWRefocused - s01e01 - The New Padawan (v2.4).mp4
• TCWRefocused - s01e02 - Malevolence (v2.4).mp4

This is still within the scope of TCW that I actually watched. I was forced to take my sister into the pilot, which ran in the cinemas in Europe, and watched the couple of first episodes before giving up on this childish show. Years later, this project caught my interested and I mentioned that I could watch this with the untainted fresh eyes of an old school Star Wars fan.
So, my first merciless per-episode feedback, then general feedback.

The New Padawan

Not too much to complain about “The New Padawan” overall, bar its weak first third. It is, in essence, a forgetable pilot episode meant to introduce everything and it gets the job done. Many dialog scenes are still cringeworthy but that is the material that is there. It is still much more watchable than the original stuff.

The opening text is a mess in my book, because it seems to paint the picture that various things have happened, especially the retreat to a medical station. Yet, the episode actually opens with the retreat and we see ships arriving later.
I also think the first third does not work as a story: If there is a blockade in place, how is anyone being dropped off through that? Why is the Admiral talking about dropping Ashoka off personally but is actually not?
I think the entire first third should be restructured, with the fleet getting driven off at a later stage (probably after Ventress and the invasion force landing), which would also allow a reduction of the opening text. Causality in storytelling is really important to me, but this episode only comes together in the second half when it comes to that aspect.

Furthermore, I found a few of cuts a little too hard and disjointed, the very first one is a good example. We see the ships seemingly retreat (which is okay, because we got the opening crawl for context), then we cut to the Jedi. No etablishing shot, no sense of what is going on or sence of connections. Granted, that cut is particularly bad, but others are very distracting as well: some in tone, for example the 5:52 one from “prepare to march” to “our cruiser must be back”, and some in simple execution, like 14:16 one from space the ground. The biggest base-challenge for every fan edit, making a cut feel like it belonged there.

Malevolence

I was looking forward to that, I remember this to be a three-parter about a giant evil dreadnought. But the fan-edit version was rather disappointing for me.
First things first, we never see the enemy super weapon. That is a big mistake in my opinion, establishing the thread visually is critical. But in the edit, we only see the aftermath of such a firing. This robs the finale of its dramatic tension. I mean, I have absolutely no idea of what this weapon does. Maybe it is totally harmless, just disabling the station? On the other hand, the Malevolence could blow that station to bits anyway, since it has practically no defenses as the episode states… Also, Grievous orders the retreat way after we see his giant vessel turn away and veer off, which I found weird.

Considering this is supposed to be about the Malevolence, I find it strange that only about 50% of the runtime is actually dealing with that vessel. Instead, we get lots of debris-field action. I do not remember what was in the original episodes but I find the focus of the episode strange.
Story-wise, I find it strange that Ashoka has been doing “a great job” according to Anaking (26:30) when, at least in my book, she really did not do too much. Anakin wanted to search for survivors on his own (and R2 found them) and during the battle, no of her actions was that noteworthy. Not sure if she even fired a single shot. From what I watched, she was out of line and then along for the ride, nothing more.

There is the obvious problem of Anakins strange ship, which is, if I recall correctly, some freighter they picked up during the original pilot. No idea how to deal with this, but it sure is weird in that episode. What ship is that? It looks very un-republic…

Stylistically speaking, there were some fades-to-black (seemingly always to a Hyperspace Scene), which I found to be totally out-of-place. No idea if they were there in the original but to me, they felt super strange.
Maybe this episode has an expectation problem from my end, but while I found the first one to be simple and generic, that second one just felt broken somehow. Pretty sure that first fade-out is partially to blame, as I was totally out at that point.

Also, from watching this second episode, I get the impression that the retreat to a medial station in Ep1 is something you added to introduce some continuity. However, I think that is misplaced. This information adds nothing to Ep1 and in Ep2, we learn from the station by Dooku anyway.

General Feedback

I really liked the pseudo-concept-art approach in the credits as a call to the live action shows, but I think the filter is a little bit too agressive and simple. But alas, that is really not the focus.

Overall, I found the watching experience weirdly choppy from a framerate level. The files I have seem to be encoded at 23.976 frames per second, which is pretty normal and my screens framerate of 120Hz divides evenly enough. Yet, the footage seems very uneven (I also compared to some other files encoded at that framerate), I wonder if your export is buggy. Are you re-targeting the framerate by accident?

Gonna continue watching, but I must admit that I probably had unrealistic expectations of what could be achieved with TCW. So many people say there is good Star Wars in there, so I am going to keep looking for a while longer.

I appreciate the feedback! I would absolutely say to keep going- those two plus Assassin are easily the weakest of the entire show. I’ll give you some more thoughts later, but please don’t be put off by those two. They’re a necessary evil.

I’ve had a bit more time to think through this, proper feedback here-

Vidmaster said:

The New Padawan

Not too much to complain about “The New Padawan” overall, bar its weak first third. It is, in essence, a forgetable pilot episode meant to introduce everything and it gets the job done. Many dialog scenes are still cringeworthy but that is the material that is there. It is still much more watchable than the original stuff.

I agree with all of this. It’s got a lot of necessary introductions, but is ultimately forgettable. I think I’ve got it to the place where it gets us up and running as painlessly as possible, but I agree it’s still just not very good. I am totally out of remaining ideas for improvement, however, so I’m always interested in further suggestions.

The opening text is a mess in my book, because it seems to paint the picture that various things have happened, especially the retreat to a medical station. Yet, the episode actually opens with the retreat and we see ships arriving later.

Now this is a good shout, I agree that mentioning the medical station doesn’t work both because we see the retreat after, and it adds little to the next episode. So I think I’ll reword it to something to emphasise that the Seps have the overwhelming advantage here, and remove the medical station reference.

I also think the first third does not work as a story: If there is a blockade in place, how is anyone being dropped off through that? Why is the Admiral talking about dropping Ashoka off personally but is actually not?

I think this stuff’s OK though. Not every blockade is perfect, so simply saying someone ‘bypassed’ it should be sufficient. A small scout force can be assumed to not have much of a problem, and they are Jedi after all. I might look for another establishing shot before the bike shot though.

Furthermore, I found a few of cuts a little too hard and disjointed, the very first one is a good example, but others are very distracting as well: some in tone, for example the 5:52 one from “prepare to march” to “our cruiser must be back”, and some in simple execution, like 14:16 one from space the ground. The biggest base-challenge for every fan edit, making a cut feel like it belonged there.

I’ll review these again, but I’m quite limited in options here, and have tested a lot of approaches. I’d be interested in ideas. Perhaps I need to find a new scene to place between ‘prepare to march’ and ‘our cruiser must be back’.

Malevolence

First things first, we never see the enemy super weapon.

This was deliberate - the actual ion cannon to me looked very goofy and not very Star Wars, so I opted to reframe it as the Malevolence itself being ‘the weapon’ - it’s huge, it has a load of heavy artillery, and it’s got an ion cannon to disable opposing tech with. And I found that not seeing the ion weapon kept it a little mysterious. For me I felt that worked, but I’d be interested in second opinions here.

Considering this is supposed to be about the Malevolence, I find it strange that only about 50% of the runtime is actually dealing with that vessel. Instead, we get lots of debris-field action. I do not remember what was in the original episodes but I find the focus of the episode strange.

This is also deliberate. The emotional core of the episode is Ahsoka’s persistence in wanting to save Plo, which is an important part of her early character development (and the reason this episode was included in the first place - I had originally wanted to cut it). We haven’t lost much actual Malevolence content at all though - only the scenes actually within the ship, which was way too goofy - the original trilogy was (1) almost all debris-field action, (2) half meandering round space whales and half bombing run, and (3) within the ship until it explodes. So you’ve not lost much - if anything the proportion of Malevolence scenes is probably higher than the original two episodes. But the key is Ahsoka and a bit of development for her relationship with Anakin.

Story-wise, I find it strange that Ashoka has been doing “a great job” according to Anaking (26:30) when, at least in my book, she really did not do too much. Anakin wanted to search for survivors on his own (and R2 found them) and during the battle, no of her actions was that noteworthy. Not sure if she even fired a single shot. From what I watched, she was out of line and then along for the ride, nothing more.

Eh, she kinda pushed them to keep searching for Plo, I think there’s a decent enough argument that her persistance was a major factor in saving him.

There is the obvious problem of Anakins strange ship, which is, if I recall correctly, some freighter they picked up during the original pilot. No idea how to deal with this, but it sure is weird in that episode. What ship is that? It looks very un-republic…

If you choose to assume that the Republic has access to a few more specialised ships, and that this is a decent enough scout/recovery vessel that Anakin seems to like, it saves you from having to get into the horrible Hutt Baby plotline.

Stylistically speaking, there were some fades-to-black (seemingly always to a Hyperspace Scene), which I found to be totally out-of-place. No idea if they were there in the original but to me, they felt super strange.

Noted. I’ll review that again and see if they work better with fades. I don’t think I use more than one other fade to black throughout the entirety of the other episodes I’ve yet edited - I try to keep my wipes as close as possible to the exact style of the originals.

Maybe this episode has an expectation problem from my end, but while I found the first one to be simple and generic, that second one just felt broken somehow. Pretty sure that first fade-out is partially to blame, as I was totally out at that point.

That’s fair, and again, I’m interested in any other second opinions here and suggestions to polish it further.

General Feedback

I really liked the pseudo-concept-art approach in the credits as a call to the live action shows, but I think the filter is a little bit too agressive and simple. But alas, that is really not the focus.

Fun fact! This is real concept art. So sometimes it’s a bit basic, but like the show itself, they get more attractive as the show goes on.

Overall, I found the watching experience weirdly choppy from a framerate level. The files I have seem to be encoded at 23.976 frames per second, which is pretty normal and my screens framerate of 120Hz divides evenly enough. Yet, the footage seems very uneven (I also compared to some other files encoded at that framerate), I wonder if your export is buggy. Are you re-targeting the framerate by accident?

I’ll check this but I’m pretty sure that it’s all tight from my end.

Gonna continue watching, but I must admit that I probably had unrealistic expectations of what could be achieved with TCW. So many people say there is good Star Wars in there, so I am going to keep looking for a while longer.

Please do. I’m as frustrated as you are that the opening of the original show was so weak, and that due to necessity I have to include some content that’s also weak. While I want to be outputting content that’s as good as possible, what I have to work with doesn’t always lend itself to meeting the standards of good, so I have to simply settle for better than the original. I’ll always look to improve those episodes, especially the very first where TCW:R remains weakest.

That said, the first two episodes of TCW:R are easily the worst of the entire batch (and as I say, episode four is a bit meh too). TCW got materially better throughout its run, and I think and hope that you’ll find that TCW:R does that far more quickly than the original show. Feedback here has been positive on the other episodes and there are very few other episodes that I’m dissatisfied with - I’m confident that I’m giving viewers a solid TCW experience that’s materially improved over the originals and lets the great parts of the show really shine.

I’m always open to feedback so please keep it coming, and I hope you enjoy the rest!

I’m really glad you and your family are enjoying it!
In terms of the order of events here, it’ll be:

1. I’ll upgrade the remaining three episodes of season two to v2.0 standard
2. I’ll upgrade season three to v2.0 standard, and at the right place in the ordering (check my spreadsheet) I’ll also create the Kadavo episode
3. I’ll create all of the season four and five episodes
4. I’ll consider an alternate set of finale episodes, making Revenge of the Sith episodic and modifying Siege of Mandalore so that both can be watched in an appropriate alternating order

Anything I’ve not yet created at all (the Kadavo episode in season three, and all of seasons four and five) will be created to v2.0 standard for its first release. There’ll be no v1.0 for those, it was just an older and less polished way of doing things, so ‘v2.0’ for me just means ‘adhering to a higher set of standards and polish’. (You may have noticed that my season three episodes, which are still v1.0 standard, have slower and fatter wipes, the odd noticeable audio transition, and imperfect credits timing.)

That said, if you reach the point where you run out of my episodes, I’d recommend that you just plow on with the original episodes (in my spreadsheet’s order). At the point where I’ve got to so far, the vast majority of episodes are far better and won’t feature major trims or restructuring, and little to no recontextualising of scenes from other episodes. So you won’t lose much by the absence of my edits, other than the way I tend to present the episodes.

The only major changes I plan are as follows:

• The Mortis episode will be restructured more heavily, so it’s more of a vision quest and less of an explicit thing.
• The Yoda episode will be slightly restructured, so it’s also more of a vision quest and less of an explicit thing.
• The Scipio episode will ideally start with this video.
• The Liberation of Maul episode will ideally be this video.

EddieDean said:

Vidmaster said:
Overall, I found the watching experience weirdly choppy from a framerate level. The files I have seem to be encoded at 23.976 frames per second, which is pretty normal and my screens framerate of 120Hz divides evenly enough. Yet, the footage seems very uneven (I also compared to some other files encoded at that framerate), I wonder if your export is buggy. Are you re-targeting the framerate by accident?

I’ll check this but I’m pretty sure that it’s all tight from my end.

I rechecked, everything is fine. I had a driver-problem, for some reason my Windows decided to eliminate the AMD driver from the system, I was running with the stock generic display driver for the last week. Ignore this.

EddieDean said:
I’m as frustrated as you are that the opening of the original show was so weak, and that due to necessity I have to include some content that’s also weak. While I want to be outputting content that’s as good as possible, what I have to work with doesn’t always lend itself to meeting the standards of good, so I have to simply settle for better than the original. I’ll always look to improve those episodes, especially the very first where TCW:R remains weakest.

This is totally understandable and we all appreciate your hard work. Nobody here is a wizard.

Lots of new options opening up with the AI voices recently shared here.

In particular, Grievous is quite convincing, so I might be able to use that in my Massacre episode to help bridge the two, something like “I’ll deal with this Jedi distraction then muster my armies to take out those witches!”

Ahsoka and Anakin aren’t bad either, though generally robotic voices are better.

Oh man there’s absolutely loads I could use this for. It could be really helpful for my merged episodes and some of the weaker ones near the start. It could blow this project wide open. I think I should stick to the current plan for now, and make more progress on the episodes ahead of me, before getting even more distracted. But there’s huge potential here.

(RE)RELEASED - S02E08 - Shadow of Geonosis (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our eighth episode of season two, the first of the three-part Geonosis finale.
• Comprising the original episode Senate Spy.
• Running 23 minutes.
• DOWNLOAD LINK is in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.
• Note: It’s recommended that you download this before watching, rather than streaming it directly from Google Drive.

This is Senate Spy only lightly touched up. It’s one of the less strong episodes, a little clunky and ham-fisted, but it helps set up the remaining two parts of the Geonosis arc (which is excellent) and it’s also got some good Anakin/Padmé tension which’ll pay off in a few places later.

As I was putting this season together (based on the best episodes for this chunk of time, narrative flow, and character balance), it naturally cohered into a season focused on ‘chaos and instability’ (bounty hunters, corruption, rising third parties, and the impact of the war on the ‘little guy’ in the galaxy). There were very few plots about Republic/Separatist conflict in this chunk of time - which is absolutely fine, since the war isn’t our focus (nor our source of enjoyment) so much as the characters within it, and they get good development this season. But the absence of major on-screen conflict worked nicely with the decision to conclude this season with the Geonosis arc (a strong finale), because it gave me the opportunity to present the Geonosis reveal as something a bit more material to the plot. Now there’s a bit more tangible ebb and flow to the war - the Separatists failed to get a swift victory due to the Republic defense of Kamino, so have turned to long-term strategy and investment in a new droid factory so they can come back stronger, and that’ll lead nicely into season three’s political conflict over the creation of more clones, and thus more escalation. That all serves to emphasise Padmé’s role in the war, as well as make it less of a case of “what fight we’re not invested in the outcome of are we watching this week?”

Anyway, my main point here is that, while this is a slightly weaker episode, I’ve polished it a little and emphasised its role within the larger plot, to help squeeze a few more drops of quality out of it.

Noteworthy changes as follows:

• The episode is titled ‘Shadow of Geonosis’ to emphasise the ties to what’s to come.
• The opening crawl highlights the relative quiet and plays up the intrigue.
• Rush doesn’t objectify Padmé in quite as slimy a way, and Anakin’s still jealous but isn’t as overt about his jealousy, so we drop some slapstick.
• Instead of Padmé being poisoned by her drink, which is super obvious, I just had her poisoned by the meal instead.
• Padmé isn’t Clovis’ password (I’ve always hated ‘guess the password’ scenes where the password is an obvious thing that person likes), instead, his holoprojector was just unlocked.
• I slightly reordered the finale to let Clovis being in trouble come first, so we can end on Anakin and Padmé returning.

Onwards to the second battle of Geonosis…