Oh yeah good shout, I think that’s exactly the kind of thing we need. I really hope we see AlaskaSandman back soon.
I’ll certainly try to get the Jar Jar voice tool completed soon. That won’t be a true component ready to drag and drop into an edit, but it’ll be something that gives people the easiest Jar Jar voice playground.
As for actual edits, things that come to mind:
Oh yeah they’re definitely intended to linger. Hopefully by the conclusion of each month we’ll have built up a decent platform of fresh thought on which to build.
What did you learn about the crawls? 😉
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:
Onwards to the second battle of Geonosis…
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.
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.
There’s been a lot of chatter here over the last few days about AI voices provided here.
They’re not perfect, but the best ones are those for robots. The B1 Battle Droid voice is very good, and they have no mouths (so no lipsync), so they could be amended to both trim goofiness and add context.
For example, “Our forces are thousands! You two Jedi won’t be able to stop our invasion!” might be used in a few places to sell the invasion angle.
The music in that shot is really good too, really suits content shot more like a montage.
I’m really glad you and your family are enjoying it!
In terms of the order of events here, it’ll be:
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:
I’ve had a bit more time to think through this, proper feedback here-
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 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.
Years ago I attempted an edit of TPM. I never finished it, but I remember doing a very simple edit in the beginning that seemed to work quite well. It was the scene following the ship blowing up in the hangar and the Jedi reacting to it. Gas is pumped into the room and the Jedi hold their breath. Cut to “Sir… they’ve gone up the ventilation shaft.” This would omit the inane line “They must be dead by now, destroy what’s left of them”, chopping through droids like butter, Qui-Gon trying to burn a hole through the blast doors, and the lightning fast down the hall move when evading the destroyer droids which is never used again. They emerge in the main hangar bay and Qui-Gon says “Battle droids.”, as if confirming a suspicion out loud rather than seeming surprised at seeing lots of battle droids even though they just fought a dozen or so of them a minute earlier with the scene intact. The Jedi kicking ass is then saved for a later scene when they’re trying to free the Queen from the droid escort on Naboo.
This is brilliant, great short cut. Though I don’t know how well this would play into the amidala=Death Star plans angle.
But regardless of that I really like this idea.
Yeah, Darth Gary, I think that’s really clean. Segues nicely from a threat to an opportunity that the Jedi exploit, to trim what feels extraneous when all that needs to happen for the Jedi on the separatist ship is for them to realise it won’t be a negotiation because the Trade Federation are fully hostile.
And Peter Pan, there’s no specific output we’re aiming to achieve here, so my Padmé-as-Death-Star-plans idea is only one idea amongst many! My ideas don’t hold any extra weight just because I made the thread! ☺️ We should explore as much as possible.
I’d add more blood, trailing as he falls. And getting on the floor, maybe dripping down the pit while Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon talk. Lightsabers might be able to cauterize a hand being cut off, but not someone being totally bisected like that. Maybe some organs come out.
I appreciate that some here want full gore while others want minimal/no gore, but maybe there’s a middle ground that can satisfy everyone: We could have blood and organs spilling from only one half of the cut, whilst the other half of the cut looks fine.
Also, a thought regarding the ending. I know the four different plot lines in the climax was a problem discussed even during the editing of the actual film. To help solve this, I wonder if you could “resolve” the Gungan battle before our heroes split up in the hangar. It could play out like this:
- When the Gungan battle starts, maybe have it play out up until the droids breach their shields. This would play out as sort of extended opening for the “climax” of the movie.
- Then we cut to our heroes sneaking into the city. This way our heroes are making their move when the droid army is already stuck in battle.
- Have the Gungans begin their retreat before our heroes split up in the hangar. This would be enough to consider this plot line “concluded” in the audiences’ minds I think.
- Cut Jar Jar’s extended antics while he is trying to escape the army.
- We could briefly cut back to the aftermath of the battle and show Jar Jar surrounded when we need to show our heroes at their lowest point.
Following from this, I wonder if there’re any lines we could use to have the people in the hangar hear that the Gungans have been overwhelmed, especially so that Anakin learns it. He’d already know that the plan was to send Naboo pilots up to the droid control ship, but it’d be good for his character if learning that the Gungans are in jeopardy is also a factor in his decision to try and help.
Edit: Or even Padmé, actually. What if the Gungans get captured, Padmé gets captured, and even the pilots in space start failing, and Anakin hears it all from his cockpit (presumably over the comms, with a bit of radio-like audio?), and THEN he gets on up there to help out?
Man, I was just writing almost the exact same post on my phone while at the vet’s, but didn’t finish it in time. But suffice to say, I completely agree.
- If you, like me, wish to remove both the moment that the fake Queen orders Padmé to go clean R2 and the scene where she actually is cleaning him and meets Jar Jar, you only miss two things:
- The first part of a small subplot where Panaka gets impatient/distrustful with the Jedi
- Padmé’s name.
The first one doesn’t matter very much, is arguably even good since there’s no payoff anyway, but the second one can be a big problem. We’d only learn her name when Anakin seeks her out in Coruscant before he’s rejected by the Jedi, which is a bit too late for us to gain a degree of intimacy we should already have with her character.
Here’s a thought - what if we just cut the first scene, but preserve the second? What if Padmé’s cleaning R2 just because she feels like it, rather than being ordered? She’s Queen, so she can do as she pleases, and she’s not exactly busy with official business. This way, one of the first things she’d do when given a bit of liberty is choose to clean up a little robot - hinting at both her humility and compassion (similar to Rey with BB8) and her interest in droids (and perhaps mechanics).
One of the weaker plot points in the prequels is Padmé and Anakin’s romance, and one of the weaker plot points in TPM is the connection that Padmé and Anakin seem to develop that isn’t exactly well explored on screen. But if she has a natural interest in droids (and mechanics), that could help show why she’s drawn to Anakin when she sees he’s built (or repaired) his own, C-3PO. It’s arguably one of the better scenes relating to their character development together in this film (as much as people tend to skip it because it’s world-shrinking). And showing her compassion (plus highlighting it in the crawl, if you like) also shows why she’s drawn to a boy who acts so selflessly.
Eddie - I generally try and retain as much as possible, especially with TPM, which as you said yourself can easily get edited down significantly shorter than all the other SW movies if you’re not careful. So anywhere it could theoretically be retained, I’m trying to probe for a way to do it (then, people have greater flexibility with what changes they want to include, and how much of the runtime it bites out of the movie). I agree that the scenes are hardly necessary, especially in this new version of events.
That makes a lot of sense. Worthy probing! I also fall on the side of preserving as much as possible, so it feels like a Star Wars movie in length. The more I watch TPM, which I’ve done a few times this month, the more I think there’s genuinely a decent core there. I feel like it needs four main fixes:
Of course, that’s on top of the usual trims to common frustrations, which includes a bunch of more subjective tweaks, but by and large a hundred editors have shown us how to smoothly cut around them. I feel like TPM had so many obvious issues (exemplified by Jar Jar smelling a fart, how funny), that it distracted from a few of the more fundamental ones. But now that it’s been edited to death, and by and large there are solutions to all of those cringes, it clears a path for us to think a bit more clearly about some of the underlying stuff. (That’s not to say that other editors haven’t tackled the core, though, of course they have.)
The youtube video posted earlier, “How Star Wars was saved in the edit”, feels like the right approach to take here - preserve what you can, structuring it in the most compelling way and with the best context.
Just spitballing the Jar Jar/Jedi introduction, you might be able to do something like this:
[Jar Jar is saved by Qui-Gon, and gets up]
JJ: Whassa dat?
JJ: [noticing Qui-Gon walking away] Hey wait! Thatsa Jedi robe.
[Jar Jar walks after Qui-Gon, cut to them walking in the forest]
JJ: Mesa Representative Binks.
QG: You almost got us killed, are you brainless?
JJ: Mesa a deep thinker.
QG: The ability to [think] does not make you intelligent, [get us] out of here.
JJ: Uh, mesa no big with the force, but yousa let mesa handle dis.
QG: That won’t be necessary.
JJ: The Queen is me pallo. Mesa knowin her a longo time.
[A droid pursues Obi-Wan and is dispatched by Qui-Gon]
QG: You saved my again!
OW: What’s this?
QG: A local, now let’s get out of here before more droids show up.
- I like that new structure! I wonder if there’s a way of keeping more of the original scenes, though - maybe the Jedi are going to the Droid Control Ship first to either end the invasion diplomatically, or they think the Queen is being held there, depending on dialogue options. It could even be a deliberate trap for them to go there first, since Sidious would know the Senate has dispatched Jedi to go there and rescue the Queen.
I’m wondering, Faraday, what do you think would be the advantages of retaining those scenes? In terms of character development, the two parties (Jedi and Neimoidians) don’t meet there - the Jedi are simply attacked by droids before they flee. I think the negative of including them is that it means the Jedi stumble into the plot, rather than have a more exciting/interesting rescue mission, and the first (chronological) time we see the Jedi they get easily overwhelmed by these corny cheap robots. If we trim them, and set the Jedi on the planet deliberately, their first action scenes show them handily dealing with a few droids in the forest to protect Jar Jar, then successfully saving Padmé from her prison escort, then successfully handling a hangarful of droids - all escalating evidence of martial competence. Other than showing a bit of Neimoidian fear at having the Jedi onboard, which is valuable but seen again elsewhere, the Neimoidian shots don’t require the Jedi there, and the Jedi scene could be placed on their transport, as suggested by StarkillerAG.
Without a dialogue rework, having them leave for the surface without confirming that the Queen isn’t on board (they haven’t searched it, or accessed its databanks, etc) might make their leaving seem indifferent - and you might also need a dialogue rework to have them suprised when they do actually find her in Theed.
Looks like it’ll take me about an hour per remaining Jar Jar episode of TCW to cut them into the sources video, so I’m going to pace myself on that. But Bombad Jedi is done, though not yet rendered.
Looking over the voices, a lot are very clean, and there’s absolutely loads that could be useful to us.
Of particular note are quotes I think could help sell the angle where Jar Jar is already a representative and their native local guide:
❤️
Oh man, you’re totally right, there are LOADS of great Queen-related lines! I’ll try to compile all the clips ASAP.
Hi, new here. How can I get a copy of this? The changelog makes this edit sound fantastic!!!
Also, does anyone have any recommendations for any fan edit of TFA and TLJ that compliment this edit visually, canonically and pacing wise??
I’d recommend TFA:Starlight and
TLJ:Legendary to precede this. All three edits, while made by different people, included a lot of cross-collaboration and shared goals.TLJ Legendary was also Hal. You might have mixed the titles with Rekindled by Poppasketti?
My bad, I did mean Rekindled.
Hi, new here. How can I get a copy of this? The changelog makes this edit sound fantastic!!!
Also, does anyone have any recommendations for any fan edit of TFA and TLJ that compliment this edit visually, canonically and pacing wise??
I’d recommend TFA:Starlight and
TLJ:Legendary to precede this. All three edits, while made by different people, included a lot of cross-collaboration and shared goals.
Another thought following from StarkillerAG’s ideas:
In the invasion scenario, you may want to drop the blockade angle entirely. The blockade has disappeared by the return to Naboo in the finale anyway, replaced with a single droid control ship, as I’ve mentioned before. But having no blockade would also help explain their ship successfully arriving at the surface, albeit deliberately avoiding the occupied city.
If we see a single droid control ship from the beginning (which the Jedi transport isn’t equipped to do anything about anyway), and we also properly identify it as a droid control ship up front, then we open the movie with the Death Star that must be destroyed to save the day.