EddieDean

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

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.

Respectfully, Vladius, that definitely was intentional. Both George Lucas and Dave Filoni have said in interviews that the Jedi dogma seen in the Prequels was deliberately intended to be taken as a negative, and a factor in Anakin’s, the Galaxy’s, and the Jedi’s fall. (Whether or not that idea successfully landed for audiences is up for debate.) Dave’s explicitly said something along the lines of “that’s why they live in a literal ivory tower”. And the elements of TLJ where Luke criticises the dogmatic past of the Jedi order were apparently a feature of George’s original ideas for the sequel trilogy which he sold to Disney.

That said, whether or not we choose to emphasise or retain those intentions in a fan edit is of course entirely up to the editors.

I’m not posting that for conflict, just for information.

Speculating now, I think he intended that Qui-Gon was supposed to represent the first challenge to that dogma (hence his lower standing in the order), Yoda to represent entrenched dogma fading as he realises its flaws near the end of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan’s and Yoda’s meditations (in life and as force spirits) to represent their coming to understand an alternative existence within the light side of the force, and Luke as the intended inheritor of the new order.

Anakin would have been the first inheritor of the new Jedi if Qui-Gon hadn’t been killed, causing the tragic cascade that led to Vader, delaying the light’s revival. Luke was the new hope, delayed in his path by the presence of Vader. After Return of the Jedi, Luke sought to rebuild the order - already a better one based on the limited information he had, and under the guidance of the force spirits - but in his attempt to rebuild what was lost he still incorporated some of the old dogma, as we’ve seen recently. The tragedy he caused his own family with Kylo Ren and the failiure of his new/rebuilt order sent him, like Yoda and Obi-Wan, into doubt and exile, before the discovery of Rey (and his reconnection with Yoda) helped her forge what will follow.

The only force spirits we’ve seen have been those Jedi that challenged or questioned the order’s dogma, which seems deliberate. (And, for me, makes the final moments of Rise of Skywalker Ascendent all the more powerful, continuing that thread into Rey.)

It also serves to take one layer out of what is originally a complex three-layer gamble.

Could you maybe skip that bit?
Qui-Gon: “I’ll wager my new racing pod against, say, the boy and his mother.”
Watto: “Hmm. Well, uh-”
[Cut to Jar Jar watching them to cover Watto being closer in the next shot]
Watto: “Deal*. But you won’t win-a the race, so it makes little difference.”

*(Could source this from their original deal. For a moment in that line above he’s got his back to the camera.)

Ooh, that is a good one! She’s freed by the time of AOTC so that works, you’d just skip the scene with Watto and assume Anakin knew she was living with the Lars family. You’d also have to make the deal scene work with Watto in TPM. I wonder if Anakin can reference it in AOTC, perhaps using a line like “Attachment is forbidden. If Master Obi-Wan caught me doing this he’d be very grumpy” as they approach Tattooine. Worth investigating!

Thanks! Generally, all of the VFX/SFX is isolated from the music in TCW (with a few exceptions in earlier episodes) so it’s likely to produce a decent volume of workable stuff.

Could do. And wasted is a much better solution there. But I’m no great audio editor, I mainly just wanted to make the tool for the community. I’m committed to finishing Clone Wars before picking up anything new!

Yeah, it’s a real mess, but with work could be improved. I pulled down the volume on that last bit. I don’t know how to pull ‘clean’ voice off a track mixed with audio, but just wanted to put an idea out there.

Here’s a messy example voice edit, to have Jar Jar both demonstrate some personal conviction, and explicitly suggest that the Queen seek their aid.

RogueLeader said:

An idea I would like to eventually play around with is to reuse the footage of Luke getting his hand shot, but have Boba be the one to shoot his hand instead of some random guard on the sail barge.

Basically, a summary of changes I’ve thought of making:

1. Make the jet pack sound effect sound a little beefier (sort of how they made it sound in Mando 201)
2. Have Boba immediately fire when he lands on the skiff, and the shot whizzes past Luke’s head. (You could potentially have him take a shot or two off while he is flying, but you might not want him to miss too much)
3. Rotoscope a yellow electric energy onto the cable wire Boba shoots around Luke. Although we see this cable wire without this effect in Mando, other media have depicted the wire with the energy, like here in Rebels (at the 1:25 mark), and it could add some nice visual flare to the scene that could make Boba cooler.
4. When the sail barge turret shot that knocks Boba down fires, we don’t really see it, just where it impacts. So maybe we could add a blaster deflection sound effect to imply that Luke managed to deflect it while he was tied up. You could also add a blaster shot that passes by camera when Luke flicks his lightsaber. I think this scene may have been trying to imply this, but it could be made clearer.
5. When Boba lands on the floor of the skiff, add some spark sound/visual effects coming from out of frame, emanating from his now-damaged jet pack.
6. As Boba is starting to aim his shot at Luke, you could add a some more brief sparks to help set up his new vulnerability more.
7. When Han says, “Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?” have him say this quicker, then add a Chewbacca growl, as if he is telling Han where he is, then Han swings based off where Chewbacca said he was. Han isn’t saying “Where?” as he is swinging.
8. Boba shot does not miss Luke, but makes contact.
9. Rotoscope Luke’s hand getting shot and his quick reaction shot and put them at this moment. (If there is trouble with making his reaction shot fit, maybe we could just put Luke shouting in pain over the hand insert)
10. Remove Boba’s scream (which many people have already done)
11. After Boba falls in, replace the Sarlaac burping with the sound of muffled blaster shots. It could imply he survives, or he still dies, but it depicts Boba as tough despite the circumstances.

And of course, you would remove his hand getting shot later on since we have placed it sooner.

You could make an argument that you might need to add Luke’s hand injury to any shots where we might see it, but we actually don’t see his injury on his hand after it gets shot even in the theatrical, so I wouldn’t say it is priority.
I would try and make any new blaster shots or any other new effects fit with the 1983 look. Nothing super modern looking.

It is still goofy that he goes in close range when he could’ve taken him out from a distance, but that’s Star Wars for you. If you wanted to rationalize it, you could perhaps give Boba a line or two during this scene. Maybe he could say something like, “He’s worth a lot” (that way you could use both the original and new dubs), implying that Boba might use the chaos to claim the bounty, that certainly must exist on Luke, for himself. This also makes Boba appear more self-serving rather just a Jabba lackey.
If that didn’t work, you could maybe reuse “He’s no good to me dead” or make it “He’s good to me dead” or just “He’s dead”. Boba works better when he says little, but these are just some ideas.

Building off of Boba ideas, I also had the idea of Boba being the one to catch Han and Leia trying to escape, rather than Jabba and literally everyone else in the entire palace hiding behind currents. When Han and Leia turn around to leave, you could reuse a shot of Boba standing in the palace, and point his gun at them, then cut back and show him raising his gun back up, knowing that he has them where he wants them. You would lose a minute of footage from this change though, and any runtime worth keeping may be crucial to keep one’s edit from being too short.

I may try to make Boba’s “death scene” my next project, whenever I have the time. Even though ROTJ is sort of the black sheep of the Original Trilogy, I still feel like there isn’t a definitive edit for this film that does a better job at putting it as close as possible to Star Wars and Empire in terms of quality.

Nothing valuable to add here other than approval. I especially like the idea of muted blaster shots once he’s in.

sade1212 said:

EddieDean said:

I’ve also just finished editing TPM down into just 18 minutes containing all of JarJar’s lines

Why even bother continuing the thread when it’s already produced the perfect version of TPM?

I’m tempted to slap on an intro and some credits and submit it to IFDB as Phantom Menace: 'Tis Demanded by the Gods Edition.

Anyway, in the sanity of morning, I’ve now realised that the file was rendering as huge because I forgot to tick the box for ‘only render this small section’, so I was rendering the entire movie instead. I’m an idiot. The new video is available in the spreadsheet now. I’ve added some notes in the sheet for a few words we might be able to make.

As I was working over this all yesterday, focusing on solely Jar Jar’s lines brought a few things into focus for me:

1. Good God, what an obnoxiously written character.
2. Other than the voice, a big failing of his character is that he has no personality. A proper character has well established wants, that the audience can relate to. He gives Qui-Gon his life debt, which essentially makes him a tag-along, and isn’t interesting, plus later he’s still confused that he got carried along in events. He wants to lead them to Otoh Gunga, then really doesn’t want to go back there, then is coerced into it, then he’s glad to be home even though he’s hurt and nearly punished there. He likes Theed (for a line), dislikes the heat of Tattooine (for a line), then likes Anakin’s home (for a line). He’s scared of a lot, though seems to be quite taken by Anakin, but this goes nowhere. His biggest happy outburst is “Wesa goin’ home!”, even though he hasn’t indicated that he wants that prior, and his world is currently under invasion, and Otoh Gunga rejects him. Arguably his best scene (!) is when he sympathises with Padmé on Coruscant, shows sadness and doubt, and gives her the seed of her plan. I think his main arc is that he regrets his exile and finds redemption when Padmé makes peace and he gets recognition, but this is so underdeveloped. In short, he’s both a genuine idiot, and worse, completely passive.
3. Passivity is so dull. Even dropping the idiocy and trying to reframe his passivity as opportunism still leaves him quite flat. But the problems are that he’s present in a load of scenes (major work to mask out), and used in a number of key scenes that’re valuable for other characters or world-building. He’s especially relevant to Padmé’s plot in a few places (and the Boss Nass alliance turns Padmé from macguffin into a character), so even when annoying, some of his scenes serve a useful purpose and I feel like we should be careful when cutting them.
4. I’m generally an adherent of not deviating too far from canon because of references in other media. But Jar Jar’s presence is limited to TPM and only lightly the other prequels and Clone Wars. My own TCW edit, and I believe all others on these forums, exclude him completely, so maybe there is room for even people who want it to fit with wider media to be comfortable with a re-dub.
5. That said, he (and his voice) are unfortunately such a familiar cultural phenomenon that outright replacing it may still be a stretch for some. But hey, the tool works either way, let’s see what people come up with.
6. I think, if working with his existing voice lines, one of his most obnixious traits is “Mesa”. He rarely says I and never says I’m. You could maybe preserve some of his weird patterns (and maintain lipsync) if you keep the ‘-a’ part of ‘Mesa’ but put it elsewhere in his speech. “I’m called-a Jar Jar Binks”, for example. That way it might just sound a bit more like an awkward accent, rather than idiocy.

Beyond trimming his idiocy and obnoxiousness, I think more work can be done on his passivity. I wonder if we could frankenbyte any new voice lines to actually give him some agency. Looking over my list, a few ideas:

• [to explain why he’s into Jedi, or Anakin once they talk about Jedi reflexes] Ohh, maxi big da force. (Mesa your humble servant?) (Perhaps even something using the word ‘sacred’: “Ohh, da force sacred.”)
• Queensa in trouble, das’ da last thing mesa wantin’! Come on! Hurry!
• Mesa wantin’ to help.
• This planet is piddy hot. Sun doin’ murder to mesa skin.
• Gungans get murdered too, eh?
• Mesa no dyin’ without a fight. Wesa warriors. Gungans got a grand army.
• Wesa gotta fight, mesa thinks.
• [about the Trade Federation] Gungans no likin’ monsters. De outsiders’ bosses will do terrible things.
• Da outsiders must be banished.
• [During the planning phase, if you want to have the Gungan plan be to draw the army out then retreat into the nearby swamp] Da safest place would be underwater. Wesa settin da outsiders up. Outsiders follow, we goin’ back. We retreat!

Great resources, thanks Rogueleader. I’ll add them to OP.

My test minute of my Jar Jar video/tool has taken over two hours to render, so I’ll have to muck about before I can launch it.

Mrebo said:

I think it helps greatly if we know that Shmi is no longer a slave. As difficult as it is for Anakin to try to forget about her, it’s more palatable if he knows she is free. I’d have this done in TPM and she is left behind because the Jedi don’t make allowances for parents tagging along. Qui-Gon gives a disapproving look and Shmi gets it and says, “my place is here. My future is here. It is time for you to let go.”

In AOTC I’d leave it implied that Anakin went back at least once, knows the Lars and plausibly had a conversation in years past with Owen about staying. So we would cut Watto in this telling.

I think the story is stronger if Anakin simply can’t let go of his mother even when she is relatively safe. Adopting Peter Pan’s idea to make it more explicitly the Jedi’s fault helps too. Especially with all of Anakin’s ranting about Obi-Wan holding him back which feels out of left field in the movie as is.

I don’t know if it might be cut so the line, “Mind your thoughts, Anakin, they betray you. You’ve made a commitment to the Jedi order…” applies to his dreams about his mother.

I think it’s also a lot stronger if we’re able to play up the angle that Anakin could have saved Shmi if only the Jedi would have let him. Being told “no attachments” and that indirectly leading to her death would have been a great way to increase Anakin’s mistrust of the Jedi Order.

RogueLeader said:

I know snooker had added plumes of smoke in a night establishing shot of Theed, implying that the Trade Federation was quelling some resistance or rioting that was going on in the city.

Does anyone have links to anything useful Snook shared?

evansj1983 said:

I suppose we should also consider his lines in the few episode of TCW he’s in (at least the ones that were Ahmed Best) if the goal is to have as much as possible to construct new words/phrases.

That’s a really good shout. Is anyone able to provide a list? (Could copy my spreadsheet to use as a template, then I’ll merge them?) I’ve watched those episodes to death for my edit, please don’t make me watch them again! 😉

CaptainFaraday said:

Damn, Eddie, that was fast!

Well, I’m motivated! I’ve just finished adding the time codes to the spreadsheet - no other info there yet though.

I’ve also just finished editing TPM down into just 18 minutes containing all of JarJar’s lines, all with a video timestamp. That’s rendering now and I’ll upload it soon. But it should give anyone who wants to edit JarJar’s voice the right tool to have all the sources, all the lines to change, and decent enough video to lipsync, that they can then extract their new audio from it in high quality to reinsert easily into their own edit. I’ve created that file in a way that I can easily fix it, add sources from the other movies, or other languages, so if anyone has any further needs from it let me know.

(Actually, it’s rendering as a huge file - does anyone know how to output from Sony/Magix Vegas at lower video? Or my best option to downscale the video easily after it’s done? I have a bunch of tools, I just don’t have any brain left.)

I haven’t edited any lines yet, because I’ve run out of sanity. But the tool will soon be available to anyone to make editing his voice easier. Democracy!

Right, here’s the in progress Jar Jar voice polish spreadsheet. Just all 108 of his lines in order so far, but now I’ll go through and grab the timecodes (I’ve got them highlighted in my editing software). Figured I’d post the sheet now in case anyone wants to pick out priority lines, or if they want to spot good sources to make key words like ‘I’m’, etc, or other replacements.

I’ll also mark the sources as dirty or clean in terms of background SFX (so we know if they’re usable), and add context. Once it’s in that state, whether or not I output anything decent, it should be a good resource for anyone else who wants to have a play around on their own - and if anyone makes a fixed line, I’ll add it in here too.

I haven’t added his lines AOTC or ROTS yet, can anyone pinpoint those?

RogueLeader said:

EddieDean said:

Actually, screw it. I can see this task very clearly, I’ll pick it up. Editing Clone Wars needs a different type of free time, I can work on this Jar Jar voice idea without it distracting from it.

If you think it wouldn’t be too bad, that would be cool! Maybe you could play around with one or two lines just see if the idea will actually work.

Yeah, I’ll post a couple when I’ve had a play. Need to dig them all out first.

Actually, screw it. I can see this task very clearly, I’ll pick it up. Editing Clone Wars needs a different type of free time, I can work on this Jar Jar voice idea without it distracting from it.

Vladius said:

I liked that one that used the people getting shot at in Star Trek Insurrection. Kind of silly but it worked.

Which edit was that, Vladius?

Yeah, personally I’d rather conservatively improve Jar Jar than replace him entirely, but there shouldn’t be any competition in this thread; it’s all about ideas and assets, not decisions.

Data analysis is always a great start. Got something to do? Start with a spreadsheet and break that shit down.

I honestly don’t think tweaking up Jar Jar’s voice would be that much work, so long as the voice track is isolated from the music. He can’t have more than 50 relevant lines, and I think a little would go a long way. If I wasn’t focused on Clone Wars I’d pick this up right away.

It’s just about starting it in the right way- get the source file into an editor, watch it through slowly, with each line add it to a spreadsheet and maybe also add a little text over the corner of the video including the timestamp (for ease of future editors replacing it). Video doesn’t need to be high quality as it’s just to help line it up and check lipsync. Cut everything else out, leave the master voice track present (as a source) but muted, make a new voice track to copy to for mucking about with, render. Ideally as two different audio tracks in case people want access to the source still to make their own changes.

I know actually getting the voice right might be a bit of a challenge but he’s so loose and goofy that it must be easier than most to at least get it better than it is.

RogueLeader said:

Jar Jar Binks

In regards to Jar Jar, instead of totally dubbing him, I’m curious if it would be possible to play around with his dialogue to simply tone down his sometimes confusing Gungan dialect. A few examples:

“I spake” to “I speak”
“You saved my again” to “You saved me again”
“More did you spake?” to “More did you say?”
“Ex-squeeze-me, but de mostest safest place would be Gunga City” to “De safest place would be Gunga City”
“’Tis embarrassing. My afraid my’ve been banished. My forgotten. Da bosses would do terrible things to me. Terrrrrible things to me if me goen back dere” to “Tis’ embarrassing. I afraid I’ve been banished. I’m forgotten. Da bosses would do terrible things to me. Terrible things to me if I go back dere.”
“Wesa goen underwater, okeyday?” to “We go underwater, okay?”
“My warning you. Gungans no liken outsiders, so don’t spect a warm welcome” to “I’m warning you. Gungans don’t like outsiders, so don’t espect a warm welcome.”

Obviously how doable this would be would depend on how easy it is to isolate Jar Jar’s dialogue, and if you could find the right pieces to frankenbyte the dialogue changes. I recall Brian Blessed (who voiced Boss Nass) gave an interview where he said “I tried to make sure my noises didn’t interfere with dialogue”. He basically said that he thought that Jar Jar sometimes made noises on the line, and he has a lot of plot, so the audience would go, “What’s he saying? What did he say?” Anyway, I’m not saying Brian Blessed should be the authority on this, but I think it is a fair point.

And of course, basically every TPM edit in the past has toned down Jar Jar by cutting certain scenes or lines whole cloth, or muting Jar Jar’s voice, but I’m curious how possible it would be improve the dialogue that is necessary without overdubbing Ahmed Best’s performance. Because I think one issue with cutting a lot of Jar Jar is that if you cut too much Jar Jar, the edits feel less invisible as they should if you’re going for an edit that could pass as a theatrical release. This method might allow an editor to keep more Jar Jar, but make him less annoying. Another positive thing about this route would be that you probably could get away with these dialogue changes without Jar Jar’s mouth movements being noticeably off, since the CGI twenty years ago wasn’t as true-to-life as it can be now.

I think this idea has legs. I don’t think it’d be too tricky to start - one could watch through TPM and Jar-Jar’s couple of other appearances, taking notes in a spreadsheet of each line, timestamped. You’ve then got that for quick reference to identify your available replacement sounds. Isolate those lines in a working project to create common source replacement words (“I’m”, “I”, “Me”, etc), then take each line in place and replace what you can to tidy it up whilst preserving the meaning, ideally against the video to check for acceptable lip-sync.

Vladius said:

I’ve said this before but people use way too many all caps words in their crawls. If you look at the movies they only do one or two.

In chronological order each count is 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 2, 6. So you’re right, and Rise of Skywalker (and the whole sequel trilogy) is an outlier. But I don’t personally think it’s a big issue - I think all caps is an easy tool to direct people’s attention to the core concepts.

Plus, you could just switch ‘invaded’ with ‘blockaded’ and ‘bring the Queen to safety on the capital planet of Coruscant’ with something like ‘negotiate a peaceful solution before the conflict escalates’ if you wanted to preserve the blockade angle.

Oof, just spotted something else to amend what I’d just said-

Queen Amidala (the figurehead) is the macguffin, Padmé (revealed in the third act as the true Queen) is a character with real agency. This way you don’t reveal that Padmé is Queen until the right moment.

Perhaps-

The GALACTIC REPUBLIC is failing. As
its Senate becomes more complacent,
QUEEN AMIDALA, elected ruler of the
planet Naboo, stands as a vocal champion
against corruption.

With the Republic’s ability to protect
its worlds diminished, the greedy TRADE
FEDERATION have invaded her home system,
in an attempt to force her compliance.

The Jedi Order, mystical wielders of
THE FORCE and defenders of the Republic,
have dispatched Jedi Knight QUI-GON JINN
and his apprentice to bring the Queen to
safety on the capital planet of Coruscant.

The key factions are the Galactic Republic (complacent, corrupt, unable to act), the Trade Federation (greedy, opportunistic), and the Jedi Order (protectors, mystical, act semi-independently of the Senate). The key characters are Queen Amidala (champion of democracy) and Qui-Gon (a Jedi Knight). The plot is escape from invasion.

Compare to the original crawl: The key factions are the Galactic Republic (in turmoil, bureaucratic), and the Trade Federation (objecting, greedy), and Jedi Knights (protectors, mediators, act on behalf of the Supreme Chancellor). The characters are the Supreme Chancellor (leader) and two Jedi Knights. The plot is taxation leading to blockade leading to negotiation.

With my suggestion you could perhaps do more to explain how getting the Queen to Coruscant might actually help (beyond just escape), but I think early dialogue captures some of that. It doesn’t explain what the force actually IS, nor does it hint at the dark power behind these events.