EddieDean

evansj1983 said:

Alright. About to take one for the team and work my way through all the Clone Wars episodes with Jar Jar to transcribe his lines. Wish me good luck.

edit: So far I’ve got up to (and including) S04E04 Shadow Warrior. Hopefully there’s some useful lines/sounds that can be used. I’m using Disney+ to make my notes so I can’t actually rip the BR and isolate dialogue etc. but at least this should provide a resource for those that can.

Here is the spreadsheet I’ve created.

Just have the season 6 two-parter to go. But I’m calling it quits for the night. I’m Jar Jar’d out!

This is a heroic effort! Thanks so much! I’ll add it to the spreadsheet, and cut those lines into the video too so they’re all in the same place and on hand.

sade1212 said:

Sorry, this is not relevant to TPM lol.

No no, I think you both raise perspectives which are valuable to shaping a focus for TPM! I don’t think we need to take it further, perhaps, as we’ve covered what’s explicit and what’s open to personal interpretation, but I think this discussion is still valuable to a potential editor. Here we should be thinking about themes we’d like to emphasise or downplay. I think your analysis of selfish versus selfless love, and forbidding personal connection versus permitting healthy connection, is spot on.

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

I liked this quote from Dave:
“And at the end of the day, one of the questions that I guess I pose is, is that really a good thing? Is Anakin’s way of being so compassionate wrong? Because on a certain level, you have to accept that the Jedi lose the Clone War. So there is something that they’re doing that’s wrong. There’s something they’re doing that doesn’t work and that the dark side is exploiting. If anything, it’s Luke’s overwhelming compassion and love for his father that in the end overthrows the Emperor because it’s something that he doesn’t understand. So as far back as Anakin, there is a seed of an idea of love and compassion, which admittedly in Attack of the Clones, the Jedi say they’re lacking because they’ve become arrogant and very sure of themselves.”

I think that demonstrates a good middle ground viewpoint. Either way, I think there’s a valid interpretation in either direction, and as you say, it hasn’t been particularly emphasised in the movies, so I don’t think we need to wrestle over the details.

This is a good article that goes into some of it, including the video attached. And other Lucas and Filoni quotes here, here and here. But you’re right, there’s still a lot of room for interpretation in there, and certainly the genuine positives of Buddhist or transcendent beliefs are also a major factor in the design of the Jedi.

That’s really slick.

I haven’t watched over the original sources for those in a long time, and I thought that one felt natural enough.

Yeah. And thinking about your whole idea, even if the viewer is watching TPM first, and doesn’t have the context that parents can’t come with Jedi when they go away to get trained, Shmi explains “my life is here”, which implies enough to make that element of it work.

Here’s a quick little mockup of the deal just being a straightforward ‘the boy and his mother’.

There’re a couple of alternate ways you could cut that, but that’s a simple one. Music transition at the cut seems fine too.

One other idea I had, if you still want a little Qui-Gon manipulation, would be to add in the shot of Qui-Gon waving his hand (originally to manipulate the dice) as he’s saying ‘the boy and his mother’, or just after it. There you’d be implying that he’s using a mind trick to get Watto to accept.* There’s maybe a conflict there with him failing to mind trick Watto earlier. However, you could read that as Watto rejecting the first attempt because he STRONGLY wants spendable money, whereas the second attempt succeeds because Watto’s mentally WEAK to gambling, something that Qui-Gon’s now realised he can exploit. That’d also give Qui-Gon a little arc (fail > succeed) but also be a little manipulative for a Jedi - perhaps emphasising his less dogmatic side as he does something a little wrong to achieve a greater right.

*You could also split the scene of Jar Jar looking left and right around that shot, to emphasise it. He looks from Watto to Qui-Gon, we see Qui-Gon’s hand wave, he looks back from Qui-Gon to Watto as we see Watto accept. Might help tie it together.

Whoops! Fixed.

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?