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EddieDean

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27-Jan-2017
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28-Mar-2024
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Post
#1577306
Topic
(The Mandalorian+BoBF) The Way of Mandalore | A New Mandalore Movie Saga (Final Update in Progress)
Time

One other thought: Depending on how good your Boba AI voice is, it might be nice to add, during the Boba-Fennec fireside chat in movie 2, something along the lines of “but first I’m going to get my armour back”, explaining the two-movie diversion where he seeks his armour before establishing a house.

Post
#1577300
Topic
(The Mandalorian+BoBF) The Way of Mandalore | A New Mandalore Movie Saga (Final Update in Progress)
Time

Absolutely LOVED your updated book three. This is a bridging movie with the least plot - “try to find some Mandalorians, I guess” - and knows it, but it uses its position as a middle episode to do a lot. Your ending sequence is EXCELLENT. The Shadow Council scene works much better as a stinger, spinning up the Thrawn, Palpatine, AND Mando S3 storylines deftly, and essentially saying “don’t worry, we are going somewhere fast”. It pays off the cloning stuff on Nevarro from earlier this movie very well. Then, your montage does a lot of great heavy lifting, telling the audience that the Boba, Bo Katan, and Gideon plots are also well in focus. And the darktroopers are now more explicitly the reinforcements, which works well here. You’ve made some excellent choices here. Really well done.

This really affirms your decision to use as much as possible, but in a creative way.

Edit: Oh, and having Boba snipe Mando was perfect. Extremely elegant, relevant, and competently done.

Edit edit: The only thing I sorely miss is the fuller aspect ratio for the Krayt dragon. I’d love to see that reinstated, it was such a spectacular moment.

Post
#1577282
Topic
(The Mandalorian+BoBF) The Way of Mandalore | A New Mandalore Movie Saga (Final Update in Progress)
Time

Watching movie 3 now, and just a couple of notes:

  • There’s a slightly odd couple of shots on the ice planet as Grogu is eating the spider - one of Grogu from fairly close up, followed immediately by one only slightly zoomed out from that point. In general, a shot transition from a single subject to the same subject should change angle, or switch between close and wide shots. These are just a little too close to each other. There seems to be a lot of other opportunities in this section to pad both with a bit of Mando heading out to find him.
  • Both Tattooine and Nevarro seem coloured too much towards orange-teal. Boba looks like an orange with teal shade, and the later Nevarro facility looks dark teal rather than grey. If you want to bring the colours to life a bit more I’d suggest perhaps a 5% contrast enhancement and 5-10% holistic shift to warmer tones, but not so much of a specific shift to orange-teal in this way.

Loving the first quarter so far though- structurally it’s all excellent, and I love that you kept the ice planet in there.

Post
#1576916
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant Special Edition (WIP)
Time

Maybe Palps experimented on Rey’s Dad, but it failed (or succeeded horribly)? He could even be force sensitive in this version, a threat to Palpatine who chose to become a nobody, living on the fringes of civilisation, out of fear for his origins and love for his wife and child. That’d explain why Palpatine would resent him so much.

I feel like this is an unexpectedly neat angle. But yeah, probably not for your edit, as you say.

Post
#1576907
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant Special Edition (WIP)
Time

Here’s an even more extreme angle that follows from the previous - what if Rey’s dad was captured by Ochi and taken to Palpatine, who tortured him into obedience and deep into the dark side, and raised him as a subservient Sith - giving him the name Snoke. Then, Rey REALLY has a reason to want to kill Palpatine - for vengeance for her father. I’m not suggesting you use this idea, or even that it’s good - more that it’s an angle I’ve not yet seen considered.

Post
#1576906
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant Special Edition (WIP)
Time

This might be a whole new kettle of fish, but what you’ve just said about all the onscreen material about Rey’s parents has made me realise that it might have been originally intended to set up something else - that Ochi was sent to capture Rey’s dad (Palpatine’s son), not Rey. That’s why it’s the same ship, and why they had to abandon her on Jakku - she was likely secret from him at that time. Ochi ended up on Pasaana and died after having done whatever he did with Rey’s dad.

Post
#1576731
Topic
(The Mandalorian+BoBF) The Way of Mandalore | A New Mandalore Movie Saga (Final Update in Progress)
Time

Loved both movies 1 and 2. Both are structured excellently, feel focused and movie-like, and flow well. I especially enjoyed the balance of Boba/Mando in movie 2, and the movement of Sorgan to exclusively book two. I wouldn’t change any of their structure, stories, or trims. And your audio editing has got noticeably smoother. Definitely my mains.

However, you have a major issue with colour in book one. I know you’ve responded to comments here, but it’s a significant deterioration of colour, and more than just saturation, it’s added really strong unnatural shades of teal and orange. Have a look at the difference: https://ibb.co/NK2Gby3. If it’s deliberate recolouring, please reconsider! If not, something is going wrong in your pipeline - either an effect is being applied (and it should be easy to un-apply it), or you’re reading the files in a slightly incorrect colour space that’s maybe being compounded if your later versions are editing the rendered outputs of your earlier versions. This might be related to your crushed blacks issue from before, which also suggests a slightly incorrect colour space is being read. I know I’ve been a bit of a hound about these edits but I feel like they’re such a good idea and so well-executed that I just really want to champion you getting them to that 100% quality.

Other than that:

  • Book one is great, as I say. You do still have the duplicated shot of Mando approaching the pirate station though. I think you can trim the second one away no problem.
  • In book two, as I mentioned in a previous post, that duplicated scene.
  • For me, even though your new book 2 improves the balance and pacing through to the ending, I’d probably still prefer to trim the Mando-Greef conflict and Mando’s head injury being serious, but that’s just me and I get why you’ve done that.

Looking forward to 3!

Post
#1576572
Topic
MCU: A Recommended Reordering
Time

I don’t know why I’ve spent so much time thinking about this… I really don’t. But I keep coming back to this in my mind. In my latest batch of noodling, I’ve been able to clarify the mission statement of this ‘project’ that’s barely a project: It’s about reducing fatigue. We’re all feeling it, so how do we keep it fresh? Minimising cognitive load, as I’ve mentioned above, is a major one - introducing new shit as late as is relevant, and taking things back off the board early, without breaking things - and another is flow and pacing, best achieved by balancing the highs, lows, and crossovers. I really like the eight-item cadence to a lot of this.

The issues I’ve been more focused on lately is that, now we’ve had Loki 2 and Marvels 2, what’s the right balance of all the post-Endgame stuff now that we’re ramping up the multiverse. I spent a huge amount of time and thought revisiting that era, with the big challenge being wanting to put Loki and What If 1 as early as possible (as they so immediately follow from Endgame), versus needing to not overwhelm. I tried shifting Guardians to let Loki-Spidey be that first arc, I tried Loki-Wanda as the core, etc etc. But the big determining factor in my decision for the current ordering was all the multiversal stuff (Sony Spider-Man, Fox X-Men) that starts to play into the current MCU plot. In essence, if we introduce the multiverse (via Loki, What If, Sony Spidey, etc) at the same time as dealing with the more grounded post-Endgame content which also seeks to set up the new Earth-616 stakes, there’s no focus and we’re throwing so much new shit at the wall with very little coherence or payoff. Or in other words, we haven’t dealt with the fatigue problem. And then if you’re watching Sony Spidey and Fox X-Men during this period, it’s even worse.

So the focus of the post-Endgame block really must be to wipe the slate as clean as possible so that the viewer doesn’t burn out on all this New Shit.

For PHASE FOUR: AFTERMATH then, it’s as I had it before:

  • Spider-Man: Far From Home deals with our fear over the next Avengers-level threat (plus Spidey, post-Tony, and Fury).
  • Falcon and Winter Soldier deals with the global political state post-Endgame (plus Sam and Bucky, post-Steve and a hint of Wakanda)
  • Daredevil is necessary here for Daredevil and Kingpin
  • Thor: Love and Thunder deals with Asgardian refugees post-Endgame plus (plus Thor and Valkyrie)
  • Hawkeye deals with post-Avengers issues and more Kingpin (plus Yelena and new Hawkeye)
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: Holiday Special sets them up again
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings introduces some new shit (plus an update on Hulk and Captain Marvel)
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 wraps them up and takes them off the board in a big, satisfying finale.

At this point, the decks are as clear as they can be. The focus is almost entirely on existing known characters and the state of the world post-Endgame. And because the decks are clear in 616, we’re not desperate to see those plotlines immediately continued, and can spend a bit longer diving into ‘side stories’ if we want to. Now we’ve got that much more mental space for getting into the multiverse - either directly through the MCU 616 content, or going into the actual cross-franchise multiverse instead. Forget interludes (nobody needs that much structure) here we’re just saying “view multiverse stuff in this position”, again with a goal of keeping it as digestible as possible. We also strip out What If, making that optional too.

So PHASE FIVE: MULTIVERSE can now become something much more focused:

  • Loki 1 kicks it all off. It’s timeless, and ends up with a Multiverse (and Loki in unknown time).
    • What If 1 optionally goes here to introduce the concept.
    • Sony Spider-Man optionally goes here for those wanting a deep dive before NWH. (Plus Venom if you fancy.)
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home is our big, exciting, fan-favourite multiverse story, featuring three Spideys and Doctor Strange. The biggest sacrifice of this ordering is having this paced a while after Far From Home, but I think it’s far more beneficial this way. Here, we open on a flashback to just after he’s been outed by Mysterio, then we assume that his legal troubles occupied perhaps at most a year - in which the previous phase occurred.Then after Daredevil steps in and clears it all up, we’re back to the present in the timeline.
    • Fox X-Men (core movies) optionally goes here. Now it’s time to see actual new characters from other worlds - not just alternate versions of our own. Let’s introduce Pietro, Xavier, and Beast at the very least - they’ll appear again this phase.
    • What If 2 optionally goes here. If we’re taking such a big break to go through Sony Spidey and Fox X-Men, this brings us back to our familiar characters and storylines (in a multiversey way).
    • Note: If we’re doing these major side-stories, we’ve now got them out of the way before the Multiverse/Kang stuff really ramps up in 616.
  • Wandavision is here, as early as we can get it. Even if you ignore the Pietro tease, Wanda, Maria Rambeau, and Monica Rambeau will return this phase.
  • Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania sits here, balanced between the two Loki seasons, and set in the middle of this phase, developing the Kang threat we’ve had since Loki 1, and giving us the update on our final group of post-Endgame characters not yet returned to.
  • Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness now brings our 616 characters to other universes, starting the true crossover phase. Wanda, Doctor Strange, Maria Rambeau, Xavier, and even Captain Carter for the What If fans. We’re getting serious.
  • Loki 2 next. Again, it’s timeless, but it serves to temporarily reduce the Kang threat (letting us forget him for a while) and it’s just great. And it leaves us clear to take a run at our final two items:
  • Ms. Marvel has some further nice reflecting on the prior Avengers, and directly leads into-
  • The Marvels, with a great focus on Carol, Kamala, and Monica, then that nice multiversal tease with Maria and Beast, and setting up Kamala looking to team up with young Hawkeye.

At this point, the multiverse stuff is active but not so loud it can’t be put down for a little while to focus back on core 616, and nothing from 616 is demanding too much attention or memory either.

The remainder of the content can sit by the wayside for now, probably giving us a phase six that looks roughly like Black Panther 2, Eternals, She-Hulk, Echo, What If 3, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, Eyes of Wakanda, [Logan and Deadpools,] Deadpool 3. A bit of a mishmash, but again we’re left with some room to breathe here, before 2025 gives us a proper 616 escalation with Cap 4, Thunderbolts, Ironheart, Daredevil Born Again, Spidey 4, etc.

Again, I have no idea why I’ve put so much thought into this…

Post
#1576564
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant Special Edition (WIP)
Time

What about, instead of “The force literally wants us to kill Palpatine”, “The force chose us… to bring balance.” That way, the Palps creation is still ambiguous in that moment, but the Force still has a clear will for them. It also links back implicitly to the Chosen One prophecy, and why Anakin/Luke/Kylo/Rey are all somewhat “chosen ones”. And needing to kill Palpatine is also implied, but without being specific.

Post
#1575934
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one!
Time

Well folks, thanks to g00b’s efforts and explay’s support, I’m so happy to say that this show’s going to have subtitles soon. First few episodes have been excellent so far.

By g00b’s suggestion we’re going to put the name of each speaker in the subtitles, which REALLY helps with identifying the clones, especially early on. I can’t wait!