EddieDean

NeverarGreat said:

Yeah, I think that the end of the Obi-wan/Maul fight would work better with as few cuts as possible.

I think I agree with you guys that this change should be reverted. Even though ideally the ultimate success should come last, if doesn’t work here . Sirius, you’re right, 3/5/4 is the original ordering. Edit: No wait! 2/4/3/5 is the original order.

The concept that Padme wins because of the destruction of the control ship is a really nice touch.

I can’t take any credit for that, it was at least Snooker, Hal, and probably a lot of other editors before, if memory serves.

Opportunity! If you did want to have Anakin somehow actively guided through the force by Qui-Gon near the ending, without having to wait for him to die first, you could do something during the moment where Qui-Gon is meditating during the Maul fight’s pause. This’d add a bit of value to Qui-Gon, showing his awareness of both fronts, and perhaps even hinting that he deliberately led Anakin to the ship because he had a feeling that he’d be valuable there.

Anyway, I just spent some time on the ending, using Snooker’s as a base and exploring some of my other ideas. I found that a few of my thoughts don’t quite work - for example, you can’t have the Gungan plotline finish too early, because it’s just a bit sudden. One of the problems with recutting the ending is that each of those four plotlines has their own peaks and troughs, so there’s risk of whiplash if the energy in one scene differs from the energy in the next.

But I did find some opportunities I liked! The main ones being finding an earlier home for the Gungan surrender, cutting Padmé’s scenes in the palace, and reordering the conclusion a bit more.

As before, I’ve done only light audio smoothing, and alternate scoring in a few places would make this land better. I’ve also slightly reordered the horses/droideka shots but not fixed the audio there.

Here’s my attempt (16 min), based on trying to minimise cognitive load whilst balancing flow and narrative energy levels. (Key highlights in bold.)

The opening here runs like this, setting up all plots and ending with closing off the Gungan one:

1. Gungans and droids face off up to the point where the shields are breached and close combat begins.
2. Padmé’s team and Jedi guard infiltrate the city, Neimoidians show suprise, team makes it into the hangar.
3. Pilots are freed and we follow them up into space and first combat with the droid control ship.
4. Gungan battle turns bad as the droidekas take out horses and the shield, causing them to flee.
5. Padmé’s team restate the plan to get to Gunray in the throne room, and they move to do that.
6. Maul appears and the Jedi step in to deal with him; Padmé’s team must go alone. First plan change
7. Droidekas block Padmé and Anakin activates his ship to deal with that; Padmé’s team run into the palace.
8. Anakin heads into space.
9. Gungans surrender. Now we have one less thing to think about, and jeopardy hangs over the other plots.

Then the middle, where the main focus is dealing with the changes to the plan, and everything goes wrong:

1. Maul/Jedi battle continues from the hangar into the power room.
2. Anakin joins the battle in space, and we see that he’s decent at it.
3. Padmé’s team (running) get captured. Now the pressure (and focus) is on the other two plotlines.
4. Maul/Jedi battle continues into the forcefield gates, they all pause.
5. Anakin enters the droid control ship, his ship fails. This plotline’s in jeopardy.
6. Maul/Jedi battle continues, Qui-Gon is killed. This plotline’s in jeopardy.
7. Padmé’s team are brought to Gunray. “Your little resurrection is at an end.” Mission seems to have failed.
8. Obi-Wan fights Maul, but ends up hanging in the pit.

Then the ending, featuring the turn, and victory:

1. Anakin turns his ship back on, destroys the droid control ship, and escapes. Hope returns.
2. Gungans are freed, and cheer. Brief high for this plotline, but no mission victory yet-
3. Obi-Wan’s being taunted by Maul’s sparks, but jumps up and bisects him. Hope for the Obi-Wan plot
4. Padmé’s team capture Gunray. Mission victory comes LAST, so we don’t get the high while Obi-Wan’s still in trouble.
5. Back to Obi-Wan, for Qui-Gon’s death scene. *Now that the mission is complete, we see the cost of victory."
6. Endings.

I’d still include some tweaks to some of Anakin’s more childish dialogue and actions, make it clearer that Anakin’s deliberately off into space, and tie in Qui-Gon encouraging Anakin through the force, but I think that’s roughly how I’d like to structure it.

NeverarGreat said:

EddieDean said:

Folks, I need to officially take a break from this project for a while. I’ve got too many spinning plates in life right now and a lot of mental overhead, so I need to say out loud that I need to put this to one side so that I can take the pressure off. The project isn’t dead, but 16 months straight on one obligation is heavy, and I need a breather. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.

You’ve earned any break you would take, Eddie. 😃

Cheers, Nev.

Folks, I need to officially take a break from this project for a while. I’ve got too many spinning plates in life right now and a lot of mental overhead, so I need to say out loud that I need to put this to one side so that I can take the pressure off. The project isn’t dead, but 16 months straight on one obligation is heavy, and I need a breather. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.

OK, the Jar Jar voice tool’s video file is now fixed. It’s now two files, TPM and TCW, but it’ll work just the same.

Peter Pan said:

I think the video file on your Jar Jar voice library is broken, only the first ten minutes or so have sound, everything else is muted.

Goddammit you’re right. I’m on it.

Edit: Fuck, it’s rendered that way again. It’s not identifying the peaks, even though the audio work fine in my editing software. I’ll have to investigate further. Balls.

Edit 2: Now the video’s cutting out early too! Oh noooooooo! I think it’s struggling since there are so many sources, I might need to cut it into multiple chunks.

Edit 3: Looks like it should be fine. I’ve split the source video into a TPM one and a TCW one, and they’ve both rendered fine. They’re uploading now.

snooker said:

A few weeks ago I edited something together but never posted it. Here’s my take on the final act. I would make a few changes to this but I think this gets an idea of how the climax could feel. This was heavily based on one of RogueLeader’s posts.

Notes: Some of the audio transitions are very rough and I’m not happy with the transitions after the Gungan retreat and after the Queen is brought to Nute.

And here’s a slightly outdated chart of the edits:

I really liked this. It flowed much more naturally for me. I like how you had the low points of all four plotlines at the same time, for the viewer’s emotional flow to dip as one, before the high points of each.

(As an aside, I remember an interview with Michael Arndt back when he was writing TFA, where he talked about how one of the big successes of ANH’s editing was that it put all of the story and character arc high points within quick succession when things seemed at their lowest - Obi-Wan’s ghost gives Luke hope, Han returns after rejecting the rebellion to get Vader off Luke’s tail so he has the clear shot, Luke takes the shot, Death Star explodes, Obi-Wan’s ghost confirms Luke’s belonging on the Jedi path, rebels celebrate, C-3PO shows how much he cares for R2, medals all round.)

Having just delved into it, I think you used all of the right shots form the Gungan plotline. You could show the horseback charge before the riders get shot down - that one just made a bit more sense to me logically in the moment. I think you cut to the street fight and Neimoidian suprise at exactly the right moment to sell the purpose of the Gungan battle, and the point where you cut back to the Gungan fight felt right too - at that point you’re just intercutting between the Gungans and the hangar so it’s just two plots. I’d still probably prefer to pull the Gungan surrender to far earlier (like your graphic implies) just to get it out of the way, because while it was nice to have the four low points together, it did feel like a bit of mental juggling to still need to stay aware of this plotline during the other three. (Back to the Arndt example, you don’t necessarily need to drop all the low points at the same time as much as deliver all the highs at the same time). It did also feel a bit long to wait to return to that plotline.

Maybe this section could run as:

1. Gungan battle until the droids breach the shield and the full conflict begins, which enables-
2. Street fight (and Neimoidian suprise) and hangar victory until the shot of the single Naboo fighter falling, which leaves the hangar plotline in a moment of relative peace (the other plotlines haven’t kicked off from here yet) but gets the pilots launched on their mission to destroy the control ship
3. Droidekas enter the Gungan battle, overwhelming them and destroying the shield, increasing their jeopardy and the importance of the Padmé/pilot missions
4. Pilots in space engage the incoming droid fighters (the pilots in space shot implicitly happens a while after their prior shot of leaving the hangar anyway), showing that they’ll face resistance, leaving that plotline in a position of tension so Padmé’s capture of the Neimoidians will be important
5. Gungan surrender, leaving them in jeopardy but closing off that plotline, again emphasising the importance of the other plots
6. Hangar plots spin off, with Padmé ‘reawakening’ the story here with the second prong of their attack (“The Viceroy’s in the throne room”), Anakin ‘safe’ in the cockpit, and Maul triggering the change in plans

On the Padmé plotline, yesterday I was thinking about trimming that too - I feel like the ascension cables part doesn’t add much tension, and just slows down the plot when it needs to be fast. We don’t know the internal geography of the palace, so I feel like cutting away during the gunfight and then cutting back to Padmé’s team getting captured should be OK. Or you could maybe even show Padmé’s team leaving the hangar (running), then rejoin them onscreen when they get captured (whilst running). I don’t think it necessarily weakens their plan to have not accounted for resistance in the higher levels, with the chaos they’ve been causing (and the Jedi they expected to be accompanied by). As much as Padmé doesn’t have much character in this movie, all these scenes really add is showing her holding her own in a gunfight (which we’ve already seen in the hangar) and a bit of creativity (which we’ve seen with her decoys, Gungan diplomacy, and planning this whole assault). If the palace combat plotline is minimised - and ends early - then we’re mainly just following our main characters: Anakin in space trying to help take down the droid control ship, and Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon (who’d be able to help the Queen) being tied up with Maul. It also makes it clearer that they really needed the Jedi for this section, and that Maul was a good counter to that.

Darth Raditz said:

Words!

Yep! And just to be clear, I’m not necessarily proposing that we use these exact alternate lines. An editor would want to decide on their intentions with the character first. For example, Jar Jar already in his role as Junior Representative, or as their deliberate contact on Naboo, or as some guy they stumbled across who decides to help, all have different implications to wider context.

I’m not going to take these particular examples further (mainly because I have to focus on TCW:R, and I’m not great at the music/foley side of things). But I’m really hoping that the takeaway here is showing that the tool makes playing around with Jar Jar very easy for anyone to do, and that there are lots of good alternate lines in there.

And last one for now-

A quick, even rougher example (I had less time for this one) of more of Jar Jar having a personality, this time while Padmé cleans R2 (of her own volition, ideally!)

I think this makes a decent argument that there’s room for Jar Jar to still be a bit of an idiot and a tag-along, so long as he actually has things that he clearly cares about, that motivate him.

I encourage you all to play with the tool - the video has all of Jar Jar’s lines, indexed back to the spreadsheet, so it’s really quick and easy to find alternative lines and see how they work.

Here’s an example of how Jar Jar could care about and be more actively involved in the Queen’s rescue. This’d be more for the scenario where we skip Otoh Gungah because Jar Jar is their guide - albeit a bumbling junior politician who’s uncomfortable in dangerous situations. And Qui-Gon is initially hesitant to trust someone who’s clearly a bit out of their depth, ultimately accepting his value given his local/political knowledge. At the end of this clip, Jar Jar tries to big up his contribution as he realises he wants to be a part of this group and that the Jedi are competent protectors.

Again, it’s rough, but should illustrate some of our options!

Again posted here more for collective thought rather than anything else, here’s a VERY ROUGH cut of the ending if you take out the Gungan plotline and put it up front. All I’ve done here is very lightly smoothed the audio (but it’s not perfect), and removed the scene of Padmé getting the upper hand (since it takes away from Anakin’s victory). I haven’t removed any of Anakin’s annoying bits or the autopilot, or added any of the other ideas for here. It’s just presented this way to give a feel for the cognitive load of the ending without Gungans.

I had this idea based on having TC-14 actually be on the Jedi ship in the scenario where they head to the planet under invasion without intending to meet the Neimoidians, in which case the droid’s dialogue could be something like “We’re setting you down in the swamp near where your contact was last seen” or something.

Here’s an example new introduction to Jar Jar, where he actually has character!

It’s not perfect, but I think it demonstrates the potential of using Clone Wars lines!

Right, here’s a quick mockup of just the Gungan scenes from the final battle, aggregated. I’ll follow this up with the remainder.

This is VERY ROUGH, with absolutely minimal audio smoothing, just to get a feel for how it’d play out in isolation and show what shots are available. This is very rough and as far as I can take it with my audio editing skills! I’ve trimmed almost all of Jar Jar’s goofy antics and kept all the rest, though I shifted a couple of shots - (1) we see the Gungans charge on horseback BEFORE we see them fall, and (2) I’ve shifted the shot of the droidekas appearing and firing to immediately before a shot hits the shield generator, as if that was the plan.

The Gungan plan is to present their largest possible army to draw the droid army out, and to hold out as long as possible before losing the shield, at which point they’ll flee to the swamps. (Ideally, they only did all this to enable the sneaking into the city.)

The Droid plan is to test the shield, then when confirmed they can’t bombard it, to send in ground troops as cover for the droidekas, at which point their overwhelming forces can cause some quick chaos and force surrender. (We should really drop the ‘wipe them out’ angle in order to achieve this, since it isn’t what the droids do, though I left those lines in.)

The one thing I think isn’t great about this angle is that the battle ends very quickly. Jar Jar lands on his arse (as he does in the original) and then it’s pretty much done - when we return we see them being rounded up. Cut like this, I think we go from Jar Jar landing on his arse after chaos to them being rounded up a little too quickly.

I think the best solution here is to intercut just a little in order to give that rounding up scene time to get established - and I think the most elegant place to put it would be just after the ships fly out of the hangar and one crashes down on the plains. So it’d flow like this:

1. Gungans march, put up shields, and prepare
2. Droid tanks stop within range and test shields with a brief bombardment
3. Battle droids activate and march on the shield
4. Skirmish begins, first footsoldiers, then Gungan horses
5. Droidekas enter shield and shoot down shield generator, triggering retreat
6. Chaos, Gungans are overrun, Jar Jar escapes with Tarpals but they get shot down and Jar Jar lands on his arse
7. Begin the other endings - Padmé and Qui-Gon breach the city and the hangar
8. Pilots are freed, Anakin gets in a ship, pilots mount up and leave the hangar
9. One pilot is shot down (in that sweeping shot downwards to the plains)
10. The Gungans surrender
11. The other pilots head to space
12. Maul appears, and the three remaining plots continue from here

Plus, getting the Gungans out of that mishmash of storylines should take some mental load out.

Ah no wait, crap, Qui-Gon’s not dead until he talks to Obi-Wan later. Then again, I suppose he doesn’t need to be dead to talk to the boy, dying is fine…!

Damn, I wonder if Qui-Gon could even guide Anakin through the force? Anakin’s in space, Qui-Gon dies, Obi-Wan falls into the pit with Maul in pursuit, Qui-Gon does a “use the force, Luke” on Anakin, Anakin destroys the ship, Maul feels the disturbance and is distracted, Obi-Wan feels it too and uses the distraction to win.

There’re even some lines from the start of the Tartakovsky 2003 Clone Wars microseries that could work:
“Anakin, it calls to you.”
“Control your fear, you are the chosen one. And you must be tested.”
“Your final test is at hand. Trust in the force.”

Does anyone want to volunteer to play around with that idea and produce a mockup?

Let’s try to be productive! I’m going to see what I can do tonight to explore getting the Gungan battle finished before the other action really starts, and I’ll do something with Jar Jar’s voice too.

Goddamn, that’s a pair of EXCELLENT ideas.

That all sounds great. Both of those major points are very important to me. Perhaps, if it feels like this could become a reality, we should consider sources? And importantly, to not do this in ignorance of the other vital edits that came before. For me I’d definitely look to both Hal’s and L8wrtr’s for a base, as well as some of the more recent releases here.

As soon as I find time I’ll play with the Jar Jar voice tool and see what I can yield that might be viable for an edit. But I’d strongly advise others to play with it too!

I look forward to watching it. Let me know if you’d like me to include it in the spreadsheet as an alternative edit.

Folks, apologies for very slow releases lately. Work’s really picked up so I’m very swamped at the moment. I’ll continue to grab what time I can, and I don’t think this busy period should continue to last for too long, but I wanted to acknowledge it.

Ooooh yes please!

Yeah, those are universally an improvement. Good job. I especially like the natural scenes looking… natural.

Right, Cranyx, I feel like your really detailed reviews deserve a proper response.

Firstly, and most importantly: I really appreciate you doing this. Your critiques are fair and very precise, which is very valuable. So I’d ask you to please continue doing this as you work your way through the show! If you’re willing, it’d also be good to hear from you what you think does work, because that’s useful reinforcement. For example, (excluding the criticisms you’ve mentioned,) would you say the first season works as a complete end-to-end unit of TV? Is it an improvement over the original couple of seasons of content for you? Does it include and exclude the right episodes?

In general terms, you’ve identified that I’m perhaps too heavy-handed with some cuts (axe versus scalpel, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as you say). And with you being very familiar with the base content, I appreciate your perspective that there’s maybe some good stuff I’ve cut that I could have left in. I don’t disagree with that - but this may simply be a matter of different subjective priorities between us, and (respectfully!) it may just be that the original may be a better match for your tastes than this edit. But you’re quite right that I should do what I can to make this not feel like a fan edit.

Taking the opening of the 501st as an example, I agree that the intro doesn’t give us much to work with with the characters, but that’s deliberate - I’m not intending that the audience build an emotional connection with the clones that’ll quickly die, instead wanting only to show that Domino squad has disunity, and I think that the only necessary takeaway from that episode in terms of the clones is the names of Rex, Fives, and Echo, for familiarity that’ll be developed more later.

Similarly, with the invisible Dooku fight in the Nightsisters arc, it is absolutely a good fun scene, and I was suprised to find I wanted to cut it, but while I’m not aiming for a specific runtime in any episode, it was more of a matter of pacing here. It is a scene that the plot can bypass, and the key to this plot was the introduction of Savage and the final five-way combat, which it only took us away from. That said, once that episode is ‘locked in’ (probably after I finish the full series) I’ll release an extended version with that scene added back in. I definitely think that we don’t need to see the other two challenges though, because they’re very redundant action with characters we don’t care about, whose only purpose is to whittle them down to Savage and Feral.

I suppose an important note here for other participants in this thread is that, because I (respectfully) think that Cranyx and I may have differing priorities, I find it particularly helpful when others jump in to agree with Cranyx’s criticisms. (Hopefully it’s clear I still very much respect the feedback, and I’m not trying to dismiss it at all here, so much as wanting to emphasise that in a lot of places I’m fairly confident in my decisions - but having multiple people agree that a certain approach should be reconsidered can help snap me out of that where necessary. You guys know better than me whether or not you’re enjoying an episode, and my assumptions can only take me so far.) For example, the note that the Malevolence should be seen to fire is now received loud and clear, and I’ll add those scenes into the opening of that episode. It’s sometimes hard to find the balance point on the spectrum of ‘goofy looking versus useful to see onscreen’ (among other things). I think you’ll struggle to convince me to reintroduce the Mandalorian conveyor belt of death though…

Other thoughts:

• All of your technical observations (cuts, audio, transitions, dialogue issues, narrative gaps, establishing shots, etc) I’ll review once more for certain.
• s01e01 - I’ll see if I have a better option to transition from the Ventress fight to the arrival of Ahsoka, though if I remember right I can’t move the Yularen scene here because it’s needed to split the Ventress fight, which has gaps. (As you’ve spotted, there aren’t many available establishing shots I could use there either, though I may be able to reorder the opening a little and start on the planet before cutting back to space)
• s01e02 - I get your point on restoring clone dialogue. As I said above, I don’t want to lean too heavily into clones, especially early on, because I want to be clear with the viewer about who our main characters are. But I’ll rethink this and see where restoring it may add value over the current version.
• s01e03 - If I remember right, in the original episode Satine does teleport to Merrick so he can capture her, then once they leave the room Satine and Merrick teleport away, forcing Obi-Wan to run after them.
• s01e04 - I might re-add Ventress placing the bombs. I figured suprise was fun, but perhaps the audience should know. I’m interested what others think on whether the new Ventress dialogue works. I don’t want to edit just for the sake of it, especially if it feels jarring.
• s01e05 - I think I want to stick with my structure, but I’ll certainly review the other smoothings you suggest.
• s01e06 - Same as with 501st, I think these two episodes interleaved is the approach I want to take for the Ryloth arc, but I’ll review your suggestions.
• Openings - While trimming exposition from episodes is one facet of incorporating my opening text, that’s a more minor one; the major factor is that the original episodes had the expository newscasts, which required a replacement. I don’t think I have any alternative options here, so I have to rely on asking the audience to accept the text. Trims to in-episode opening exposition are very minor - I don’t think I’ve ever actually consciously done it.
• Closings - I agree that it’d be nice to have a few options for closing out episodes with music. I like the music that plays over the credits, but transitioning into that music in other ways based on the tone of the ending would be preferable. Music composition/editing is something I have zero skill with, so my only option here is via help from others. I’m certain though, that I don’t want to end on the original series’ bombast.
• s01e07 - Interested in others’ opinions on whether Ahsoka’s discipline belongs in Death Watch as opposed to the finale. Since she’s disobedient at the cost of lives in Ryloth, I think the scene works fine as discipline for that, but I suppose the main question is whether the scene belongs in Death Watch at all, where it serves to take her off the playing field for a bit. I think we had broad agreement that this approach was valid, but happy to reopen that line of thought.
• s01e09 - Yeah, I really don’t like the Mace Windu dialogue in the ending, but I just have no options here. Ropal and the idea of the Kyber crystal is a waste of time plotline that makes Bane seem really weak, which also feels like a trimmed episode that happened offscreen only to be summarised in the following episode’s newscast. It resulted in this awkward scene with Mace, which is a shame.
• s01e10 - Indeed, I’m not American so I’m content to spell the word as “artefact”. You guys can work around that, I’m sure! If it helps, I suggest a headcanon for you that, since Imperials seem to mainly be British, that Galactic Basic uses the British spelling for some words 😉

All said and done, I’ll reiterate that I hope that none of this comes off as dismissive, and I greatly value your input.

This isn’t to hand off the responsibility for this edit, but if anyone did produce alternative cuts of episodes I’ve edited - for example a less radical 501st - I’d happily add my series’ opening and closing conventions (if that was wanted), host them, and add them into my spreadsheet. I’m very open to community collaboration here.

To just add, I currently plan to release extended versions of the following episodes:

• The Nightsisters arc with the invisible Dooku scene
• The Geonisis arc with the Anakin/Ki-Adi-Mundi prongs of the attack
• The Rako Hardeen arc with the Box episode reinserted
• The Umbara arc with more of the visually interesting combat from the first couple of episodes