EddieDean

Old Hayden is definitely my preference, given how much time the audience has spent with Hayden’s face. Similarly having dying Vader Shaw replaced by aged Hayden face in ROTJ would be my preference too. But then again, I’m pro-heresy.

Likewise. Even when I’m editing, if I hit those credits I have to sit through. It’s so hype.

I can’t believe I’ve put so much work into this goddamn episode. But Vranir, you’ve had some great ideas, a lot of which have proven feasible. I haven’t been able to make all of the smaller ones, but your restructuring (and cutting of scenes entirely) has proven really viable, and has spawned a couple of new ideas too, including a couple of instances of merging scenes successfully. The whole is definitely getting to a point of being tighter still, with far less jumping around. I think this’ll come out even stronger now. Not long now…

I haven’t had time to watch the video yet, but let’s think this all through!

vranir said:

I’ve finished my pass and have sent a link to the video in a PM.

I actually ended up making a lot of adjustments, including trims and rearrangements in order to streamline the story and move things forward at a more even pace. I can’t replicate your excellent wipe-transitions, but I did what I could. Feel free to reintegrate or mimic any of my changes if you wish.

The full summary of changes are as follows:

• Cut from the launch of the hunter droids to Anakin and Asoka with the Jedi Council.

• Replaced the scene with stale air and discovering a broken pod with the initial one where they intend to wait for rescue. The other scene adds nothing that isn’t repeated elsewhere - the pessimism, PloKoon valuing their lives, and the discovery of droids hunting pods are all introduced again later. This also reduces the number of scene-jumps for a smoother episode.

This is doable. And it’d be nice because then Ahsoka’s faith in survivors comes before we know she’s right, so she gets validated. I do like spending a bit more time with Plo and the clones, which is why I initially left it, but this is worth a shot.

• Trimmed an establishing shot of Anakin and Asoka flying toward the wreckage and planet. We already got a similar shot when they first arrived, and the trim makes everything feel faster and the events here and on the pod concurrent.

• Trimmed some of the reaction of the clones to the approaching hunter droids in order to smooth the transition and remove mildly awkward dialogue.

• Cut Asoka’s reaction and “let’s go in” after R2 detects a signal. Her line was mildly annoying and removing it weakened nothing.

• Removed the clone line “It’s Asoka!” I’m not sure how much name recognition she’d have yet. Jumping straight to the next line “She must be close!” is equally effective and dodges the question of whether these clones know her already.

• Cut PloKoon’s reference to humor, since I cut the earlier joke line (and that entire scene).

These five all sound very sensible. I’ll want to make sure that these trims don’t make the music track choppy, but I’ll see if I can execute them cleanly. This could go a long way toward smoothing the start.

• Cut ObiWan’s line about learning from Anakin to maintain formality in the Council.

I’d rather keep this. Since I’m heavily truncating from the first season, I think anything that demonstrates their bond early has value (even just others commenting on it). And since it appears that Anakin getting Ahsoka was a Obi-Wan and Yoda scheme, I think it’s acceptable for Obi-Wan to update Yoda about it.

• The downside of this secondary edit is that, in many ways, it feels more like two episodes that have been joined at the middle. But then again, so do most of the Star Wars movies themselves.

• From the pod we go directly to the launch of Asoka and Anakin’s ship (a very short scene), and from there to ObiWan finding out. The scene with Grievous is gone, effectively dropping him off the map for the audience, as well as the characters.

I definitely want to preserve the Grievous around the nebula scenes (and I don’t think there are more suitable placements). I think it’s better to interleave Rising and Shadow than to just put them back-to-back, because it makes the episode feel more coherent without harming the narrative. That leaves us with the remaining problem of trying not to dart around too much, which we’re trying to solve here.

• Trimmed the Jedi Council talking again about the mystery weapon, mainly because I’m tired of the line and because it makes them seem fretful instead of deliberate/strategic. Instead, we start with Yoda’s line about Grievous being one step ahead of them.

I’m not sure how this will land but I’ll certainly watch your version to get a feel for it.

• Cut the entire Palpatine hologram conversation. Without it, we go straight from PloKoon concentrating to Asoka connecting to him.

I’m in two minds about this. Yes, it’s smoother without Palpatine, but if we keep it it achieves two things: (1) Emphasises the threat of the malevolence and the recklessness of Anakin and Ahsoka’s actions, and (2) Shows some early (light) manipulation by Palpatine, putting a little wedge between Anakin and the council. I think that’s more valuable here than cutting it. Now, our episode two nicely expands on the cast and motivations of the characters from our episode one.

• Transitioned from Asoka comforting PloKoon to the first medical-station scene. By moving this scene later, we transition the focus of the episode to the showdown. We also have Yalaren reference the battleship, information that they presumably learned offscreen from PloKoon, who will momentarily show up aboard the Venator.

I’ll have to check this one. Do you mean you cut the scene where Anakin works out where the next strike is going to be? I’ve got a feeling this suggestion could work just fine.

• From the med station, we transition to Grievous en route to remind us that he exists and to announce that he is very close.

• From Grievous’ short scene, we jump to Anakin’s speech to the troops. There is little lost by cutting the prior scene with PloKoon and the Y-Wings. This moves the fleet more quickly from preparation to action.

Sounds viable. I’ll take a look.

• Cut ObiWan’s reference to a shortcut (only elsewhere mentioned in the cut PloKoon and Y-Wing scene), along with some surrounding dialogue.

I think we need to preserve the shortcut scene. It’s quite important to understand that Grievous has been delayed by difficult space terrain, which smaller ships can navigate. There needs to be some core opportunity which our guys exploit in order to finally defeat this quick-striking threat.

• Swapped the order of evacuation/arrival scenes. Now we see ships undocking, hear the med station personnel discussing the evacuations, and see Grievous arrive.

Sounds good. I did play around with orderings but if the transitions can be made to work (and the music kept smooth) this could be sensible.

• Abbreviated some of Grievous’ orders at the start of battle to show more focus.

I thought I had this fairly tight already but I’ll review.

• Trimmed and arranged the entrance of the Y-Wings to be faster and more direct. Now they appear, Grievous notices but orders the ion cannon powered, the fighters begin staffing, they take damage, and Asoka points out that they can’t all make it. (I trimmed her second “Master” to reduce annoyance and make him more responsive to her.) I also moved PloKoon’s comment about attacking the ion cannon until after Anakin changes their target. Now the idea was his and Asoka’s. PloKoon just explains why it makes sense.

I considered this, so will check your version. I wanted to shift Ahsoka’s lines exactly as you suggest here, but was concerned about matching it to the music. I’ll play with it though.

• Cut a redundant Y-Wing approach snd torpedo launch during the ion cannon attack.

• Cut a shot of the ion cannon charging after it has already been shown more fully charged.

• Transitioned directly from the ion cannon explosion to the Y-Wings returning to the med station.

These sound good too, give or take smooth music.

• Trimmed Anakin’s line about it being hard losing his men. It seemed a little too overtly sentimental for the moment. He says enough with his tone and mentioning the losses.

I added that but agree it didn’t quite work in that moment. Happy to lose it.

• Cut some of the shots with Venators pursuing the Malevolence in order to move things ahead slightly faster. I also cut any shots with PloKoon suddenly on the bridge instead of in his fighter.

Can trim venators, can’t trim Plo. We need to keep those scenes for the dialogue in them, and I’ve already zoomed shots to exclude Anakin. I could add a wipe though, to allow time to pass.

Some really great suggestions here vranir, thanks for giving it so much thought.

Sounds great Vranir, be my guest, thanks! I’m all out of ideas, and have satisfied my goal of making this necessary-but-problematic episode far more digestible, so am happy to have this out of my hands. I’ll be pleased to incorporate anything you find that works.

In the meantime, I get to enjoy getting on with the far better episodes which follow. Hooray! Finally over the hump.

RE-RELEASED - S01E02 - MALEVOLENCE (V2.0)

Comprising the entire Malevolence arc.
Our second episode of the season (formerly our third, but I’ve shifted the first season around and it fits better here).
Now brought up to my 2.0 standard, with a huge amount of polish over the previous version.
Running 30 minutes.
Download link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.

Changes from the original source material:

• This is a very radical restructure of the Malevolence arc, using the Plo Koon escape pod content from Rising and the bomber attack from Shadow, finished off with a few shots from Destroy for the conclusion.
• I establish in the opening text that Grievous in the Malevolence has been destroying multiple medical stations, and we join our protagonists on the hunt for him as they manage to identify the rough sector he’s in at the moment. (Later in the episode they get the clue which tells them where he’ll strike next).
• (I refer to these events in the opening text as an ‘emergency’, connecting it back to our previous Christophsis episode, where an off-planet emergency features but doesn’t appear. [In the original movie the emergency was Jabba’s son being kidnapped, but that’s not a plotline which appears in TCW:Refocused])
• We retain and highlight all of the important early development of Anakin and Ahsoka’s relationship.
• To enhance the emotional stakes and the threat, I’ve pulled the medical station scenes throughout the whole episode, as well as the parts where Grievous is travelling through hyperspace, so the entire episode is much more of a race against time. Now, any delays due to the hunt for Plo might cause more lives to be lost as Grievous remains free to attack medical stations.
• I also recontextualised and trimmed a fair amount, to make Grievous more of a competent and cruel strategist, who’s not in conflict with his master, Dooku.
• I’ve rearranged scenes to make the Malevolence itself feel more powerful and threatening, especially helmed by Grievous. Its ion cannon VFX was extremely goofy, I thought, so we never see it fire in this episode - though we still get a feel for quite how devastating it can be.
• I removed a lot of scenes which undercut the core message/character growth of the episode.
• I cut the space whales in the nebula - bombers go into shortcut, bombers come out of shortcut.
• Nobody boards the Malevolence, and Padmé does not appear in this episode. It’d be good to see Anakin and Padmé together so early, but all of the scenes inside the Malevolence are so cringe, they cheapen all of the characters involved.

I never liked the original, but I’m very pleased with where I managed to get this to. I’m not sure if it can be improved any further, but as always, I welcome and encourage your feedback.

And naturally this means I’m over the early hump, so should get the next ones brought up to v2.0 a bit sooner…

Hell yeah, Plex brotha!

Malevolence is complete and rendering now! Gonna do a QC check, but I’ll have it out to you all soon.

This now runs to 30:04. There are about four 3-minute stretches unedited, but the rest is chopped to bits. So a huge amount of work has gone into making this not feel choppy. I think I’ve got it as good as I possibly can.

Nearly there.

More work on the conclusion, which I’d got close to best before, but I’m now making less jerky and the music more smooth and appropriate.

Should get this done tomorrow or not far after…

I’m not sure quite what the cost would be to the material these shots were taken from, as it’s a fairly radical departure, but as a standalone thing, this is actually really good. Having Luke and Leia bring back the spirit of Han works, and then as you say it’s quite powerful having the OT’s big three back together for this one single purpose, the redemption of Ben Solo.

Did we end up deciding to use “More than a clone, less than a man”?

Oh man yeah, that mockup is terrific.

More good progress on Malevolence.

The run-up to the final battle, the final battle itself, and the mop-up are all smoother now. This was always the weakest part of the (amalgamated) episode and one of the reasons for that is that there’s far less emotional jeopardy for the time spent on these scenes, so they feel bloated and slow.

Now, we don’t waste time on the clones who are going to die, and we also don’t have Grievous launch fighters and pick off our bombers with them. The only unexpected threat, which Anakin’s plan didn’t account for (since the Malevolence leaves no survivors and all they had was Plo Koon’s intel from his encounter) was the heavy flak, which forces them to change their plans from assaulting the bridge to attacking the ion weapon.

I also trimmed a couple of scenes in the medical station. Still now, with this episode, we establish way earlier that Grievous is on the hunt for more medical stations, and then this one in particular, in order to add a time pressure aspect (and recklessness) to Anakin’s hunt for Plo Koon. But then we don’t need to keep cutting back to it to establish tension about faceless clones the audience doesn’t care about, especially since Anakin and Ahsoka aren’t emotionally invested in them either. This keeps the final fight that much smoother.

I’ve preserved some of Grievous’ arrogance, which ultimately gives him his comeuppance. I wasn’t sure about this, because I’d like to only show him when he’s a most compelling threat, but ultimately in this context he dismisses his ship’s vulnerability to bombers (which is OK since he’s only really underestimating a Jedi’s ability to evade flak) and he focuses on the medical station rather than the incoming threat (because he doesn’t perceive it as as much of a threat, and boy does he love killing clones).

Just a little more work to go to finalise the wrap-up and the very opening, then I can bookend this and get it out the door…

I know this isn’t an episode anyone’s excited about (indeed it’s probably my least favourite in the whole of my show), but I realised that my Malevolence episode really needed rebuilding from scratch, so I’ve spent the last nine hours doing that. It’s nearly done - all I need to do is play around with Grievous’ arrival at the medical station, and then rework the final battle a little.

It’s been painful but there’re LOADS of improvements. Less jumping around (via scenes recombined from the original), moments given far longer to sink in, extended scenes, and where I’ve intercut things, I’ve managed to keep all the scenes on the same theme together, so it’s way less taxing. This should flow a lot better than before. I’ve been less ‘clever’ with some of my reorderings than my original version - I had reordered some things for drama, but ultimately that small benefit wasn’t worth making the episode so choppy.

Hopefully this’ll be done soon, so I can move on…

I’ve just updated:

• s01e00 Dark Force Rising (v2.2), making Obi-Wan’s “Yes” louder
• s01e01 The New Padawan (v2.3), making the Ventress stair dialogue louder

Malevolence is coming nicely…

vranir said:

But then Anakin is the only one without a full name. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin, Ahsoka Tano, and Plo Koon.

I didn’t mention it above but I’ve shortened Obi-Wan Kenobi to just Obi-Wan also. The rule being that if it’s the first time mentioning your name you get the full thing, but for future references, a shorter version is OK.

Oh, these are fantastic changes, thanks. I’ll include all of those. By removing “Skywalker” I can just get away with “As Anakin and his new Padawan Ahsoka Tano lead the search, Jedi Master PLO KOON picks up Grievous’ signal and moves to intercept.”

Might as well share where I’m at with Malevolence too:

Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars.
The Republic faces a dire emergency, as the leader of Dooku’s army, the droid general GRIEVOUS, strikes swiftly from the shadows.
With his new weapon, the battleship MALEVOLENCE, he has been destroying medical stations, killing thousands of wounded clones.
Obi-Wan Kenobi now urgently coordinates the evacuation of medical stations in the Naboo sector, where six have recently been destroyed.
As Anakin Skywalker and his new Padawan Ahsoka Tano lead the search, Jedi Master PLO KOON has picked up Grievous’ signal.
But no fleet that has faced the Malevolence has yet survived…

Notes:

• We capitalise GRIEVOUS, MALEVOLENCE, and PLO KOON, since they’re this episode’s newly introduced focal points. The episode title ‘MALEVOLENCE’ highlights the theme of bad guys being bad guys, and helps our season start from the footing of its villains being legitimate threats - important since they underpin the war and this entire era of Star Wars.
• “Emergency” is now mentioned early, heavily implying that this is the emergency mentioned in the Christophsis episode. Now in context, as soon as the war broke out, at Dooku’s command, Grievous started wrecking the Republic’s ability to field clones.
• Grievous is now “the droid general GRIEVOUS” rather than “GENERAL GRIEVOUS”, since he’s often referred to as the ‘droid general’. In the context of “the leader of Dooku’s army” it leaves more room for the viewer to recognise that he’s a general OF droids, rather than a droid himself.
• “Strikes swiftly from the shadows” I think most clearly implies that he’s appearing, destroying, then escaping, rather than being involved in any prolonged conflicts. It leans into Grievous’ cowardice without that distracting from his villainy. The idea he’s hit a lot of stations (quickly) gives value when Grievous is annoyed his ship has to slowly navigate the nebula, which is the opportunity the Republic need to defeat him - implying they got lucky, maintaining his implicit threat.
• We refer to the Malevolence as both a battleship and a weapon, to mask the fact that in the original episodes, they didn’t know that the “mystery weapon” was a battleship.
• Obi-Wan coordinates “in the Naboo sector” because he has dialogue implying they’re close to Naboo, but specifically “sector” so I can imply the Republic know the rough area where he is, allowing me to pull the scenes with Nala Se earlier since they now don’t know where he’ll strike next, so must evacuate all local stations. This means that there’s more of a race against time now, with Grievous on the hunt while Anakin and Ahsoka fuck about trying to save Plo. It makes their actions reckless (which they’re chided for in the episode) while still being heroic.
• Our “BUT” sentence connects to Plo’s discovery of Grievous, allowing us to open the episode on his ship’s destruction.

vranir said:

I like it.

If I were asked to edit this text (which I do professionally), I would question whether the word “military” is necessary when describing the energy shields.

I’d also ask about the need to call Ventress “a priority target.”

Both of those details could be inferred from the context and just make the sentences wordier.

Grammatically (especially if you remove the “priority target” phrase), you should add a comma before ASAJJ VENTRESS. The comma would make it clear that she is Dooku’s assassin (the only one). Without the comma, the technical meaning is that she is one of his potentially many assassins.

That’s as nitpicky as I can be. Every version of the text has been an improvement over the previous, and as it stands now, it’s quite good.

Lovely detail, thanks!

I had just deleted ‘military’, to replace it with ‘powerful’, but then went back to ‘military’ again. I know the context is there, but this season I really want to emphasise that the Separatist’s attacks are against really sensible military targets, and that they’re targeting them all as a matter of real strategic priority. This adds threat to the Separatists and our villains, that the first season of the show really suffered from. The word ‘military’ was the most explicit way to convey, well, the military theme to the season, in the context of this episode.

Ventress being ‘a priority target’ was also a late addition. My entirely new context for these scenes, which wasn’t present in the original episodes, was that Ventress has drawn them away (whilst jammed) so that the Republic force doesn’t detect or disrupt the landing of the large Separatist fleet. This adds competency to her character, and adds to the episode’s main threat. Making it explicit that the Republic now “fear invasion” but that Obi-Wan and Anakin have really had to drop their duties to pursue her, I think gives the viewer the best possible shot at putting two and two together.

I think I’m OK with leaving it ambiguous how many assassins Dooku has. In my mind he has a whole bunch of non-force assassins, whom he hires as he needs to, but only one capital-A ASSASSIN. I think it’s flexible enough to not be vital, and that adding a comma there leaves you with a few too many in that sentence (“Dooku’s Assassin, Asajj Ventress, a priority target…”).

I know I’ve effectively just said “Yeah nah” to all of your suggestions, but I still really appreciate being challenged in this way, as it forces me to think through my priorities in greater detail, so please do keep this up!

Anyway, let’s focus back on editing. Today and tomorrow I have a good amount of time, and am working through Malevolence still. It’s kind of fine as is, but I’m just tweaking and pruning it, which is taking a lot of time as it’s got a lot of cuts.

Anyway, I’ve taken the recent feedback and been tweaking the Christophsis opening text further. I thought I’d share it here before rendering the episode again. Bear in mind this is our very first episode, so it has to do a little heavy lifting:

Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars.
With ANAKIN SKYWALKER’s ascension to the rank of Jedi Knight, his former master OBI-WAN KENOBI has requested a new padawan.
Aided by a small clone squadron, the duo now defend Christophsis, a planet whose crystal factories produce military energy shields.
Count Dooku’s fleet has forced the Republic’s ships to retreat to a nearby medical station, leading to fears of an imminent invasion.
But having detected the distant signal of Dooku’s assassin ASAJJ VENTRESS, a priority target, the Jedi rush to capture her.
They are unaware that comms have just been jammed planetwide…

Notes:

• In this episode we formally introduce ANAKIN and OBI-WAN (hence their full names and capitalisation), and the villain VENTRESS. (Ahsoka doesn’t get named here since she’s only introduced within the episode, but is still made the episode’s largest focus via the episode’s title.)
• The fleet now is “Count Dooku’s” (not “Separatist”), because the character is more important than the faction (in our first episode). This season we’re focusing on the villains, with Dooku as their leader, and both this and the next episode (Malevolence) rely on knowledge that Count Dooku is pulling the strings. This change also adds more weight to why we’d care about Ventress as “Dooku’s assassin”.
• I changed some of the jankier language. It’s now “With Anakin’s ascension to the rank…” rather than “As Anakin has earned the rank…”, which is cleaner, and I’ve kept “But having detected” but dropped “However”, so at least we don’t start two sentences in a row with those slightly jarring context-sensitive words.
• I wanted to keep “But having detected” because it’s the imminent invasion which they miss BECAUSE they’re forced to pursue Ventress, so I needed to maintain the causal link between the two sentences.
• I’ve also made it more explicit that Ventress is a priority target, pulling them away from their other duties, and kept the idea that her signal is “distant”, which gives us leeway in overland travel times and day/night cycles.
• To fit in the fleet status sentence, I’ve had to change the tense, so the Republic fleet has been forced to retreat but then we see that actively in the episode. I think it’s an OK compromise.
• All of the remaining language and references ties into the rest of the season and this episode’s lanugage more accurately.

Solemn.Philosopher said:

EddieDean said:

This is very much a side thing and way lower priority than anything else, but I’ve also been playing with the idea of turning both Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones into TV-length episodes as a season zero. So essentially this show would emcompass the entirety of the prequel era, as an accessible mixed-media episodic show, that was consistent with (and additive to) canon, but focusing on telling the highest quality coherent story.

The huge advantage of this approach is that chopping into episodes and maintaining my opening text means that I can keep certain plot points offscreen and recontextualise and clarify more of the movie content, and allow us to focus only on the best and most necessary content.

That said, I’d fit all of that around the existing show, rather than the other way around. I don’t want that to be mandatory, and I’d far prefer if my TCW:R allows the viewer to slot in their preferred versions of the movies.

I’ve been wanting someone to do this for a long time. I think it would be good for Revenge of the Sith as well, so you can slot in the final four Clone War episodes in between. I know you are basically doing the opposite with the shows (editing the arcs together) and wouldn’t work since I assume you are doing the same with the final episodes.

I guess I’m not technically going purely for aggregation of arcs so much as “quality of experience”. The main advantage to me of chopping the movies into episodes is that we can avoid difficult scenes by simply covering them in the opening text. Off the top of my head, I might like to do the following:

• Exclude the Gungans from Phantom Menace. The conflict is between the Trade Federation and Naboo, and the stakes are the people of Theed. (The Gungans still exist, and are another nation of Naboo, but they don’t need to feature in this war or this story. I think this bends canon without breaking it, and wouldn’t negatively impact your enjoyment of other media.)
• Start with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in Theed. They’re with Jar Jar, who’s one of Naboo’s ambassadors to the Republic so is acting as their local guide, perhaps helping them infiltrate the city using his local knowledge - which I think works, because he ends up as a representative in the Naboo delegation in episodes 2 and 3, we’d just be giving him that role earlier (Obviously you’d still minimise some of his more abrasive traits.)
• We get an EPISODE ONE rescuing Padmé from Theed through to Tattooine, Anakin, the pod race and leaving with him. This would be about 50 minutes.
• In EPISODE TWO, we bring Padmé to Coruscant, then back to Naboo. Cutting the Gungans, we emphasise that the droid army is overwhelming Theed’s defences. The Jedi are focused on the Sith Lord, whilst Anakin realises that the droids can be killed by destroying their control ship, and does that. End on Qui-Gon’s funeral but not the street celebration. This would run to about 40 minutes. Perhaps we can explain somehow that Anakin (with his technical knowledge) has worked out that there’s a control ship.
• In EPISODE THREE, we skip ahead to the start of Attack of the Clones. We reestablish the core characters and focus on the Coruscant content up until both parties leave. We use the opening text to explain more clearly how the Trade Federation attack has formed into the nascent Separatist movement.
• In EPISODE FOUR, we focus purely on Obi-Wan and his investigation of the Clone army through to his capture on Geonosis.
• In EPISODE FIVE, it’s Anakin and Padmé on Naboo and Tattooine.
• In EPISODE SIX, we bring Anakin and Padmé to Geonosis and play the remainder out (except the droid factory).

But like I say, this is far, far away for me, it’s definitely outwith the core goal of this project, so I don’t want to put too much thought into it.

jrs81 said:

Not to put any more projects on your plate, but have you considered doing the Battle of Geonosis with a mix of Battlefront II footage and the end of Attack of the Clones? The end of AOTC is such an early CGI Fest, it feels like an animated show!

I quickly threw this together, but wanted to share this idea with more than words. It is definitely too ambitious for me, but could be interesting…
https://mega.nz/file/g1YWWZpJ#GXh5KSkUzGH2r4SK12oS8qv1p4OvflgbeyehxhA4Nto

I wasn’t planning on including any other sources unless it can be seamless, but in the far far future when I come to consider this additional project, I’ll certainly think through others’ approaches.

vranir said:

2. “But” and “However” are awkward starting sentences right next to each other. If you drop the “However” and start with “They are unaware…” it will read more smoothly.

I’ve had more feedback saying the same, so I will look at this again. I’ll check the Ventress stairs audio too.

Very glad your wife enjoyed the intro though!

CMMAP said:

EddieDean said:

A REQUEST

This is a long way off, but now that I’m planning on incorporating Revenge of the Sith into my show, I’d better review some edited versions. So, if you guys have any recommendations for preferred edits, I’d like to hear them. I’ll gladly chop and change between versions, if necessary. Bear in mind, my priorities will be:

• Adhering to franchise canon as closely as possible (rather than bending to match the OT or PT specifically, for example)
• Compelling narratives (like Hal’s reordering of the events which lead to Anakin’s fall) which bend the plot without breaking it
• Characterisation in line with TCW as much as the PT
• A narrative which fits with TCW and the wider franchise, rather than anything too radical
• Attractive additions and cuts which enhance the enjoyment of the story
• 1080p+ video quality, including incorporated deleted scenes

Happy to review supercuts of ROTS/SOM too, if they’re more than just the two official release versions intercut chronologically.

Thanks in advance!

i´m a little confused: Will you incorporate actual visuals from ROTS into your quality cut?
I would be against that…

I won’t be having mixed media episodes, but your conclusion of this show (and the Clone Wars journey) should either end up as:

VERSION 1

• Seasons 1-4
• Martez Sisters arc
• Bad Batch arc
• Revenge of the Sith movie
• Siege of Mandalore arc

or

VERSION 2

• Seasons 1-4
• Martez Sisters arc
• Bad Batch arc
• Revenge of the Sith / Siege of Mandalore cut into about 5-8 episode-length chunks and put in roughly chronological order (but without mixing RotS/SoM in any given episode)

vranir said:

Well done. My wife is going to start the series with me tonight using this version.

Two tiny nitpicks in the opening crawl, both on the second slide:

1. “the duo” comes so far from the reference to ObiWan and Anakin that it might be better to say “the Jedi.”
2. “But” and “However” are awkward starting sentences right next to each other. If you drop the “However” and start with “They are unaware…” it will read more smoothly.

The only other issue I noticed was a big drop in volume when Ventress jumps up the stairs, which lasts for a few seconds/lines of dialogue before returning to normal.

I’ve just changed the duo to the Jedi, and re-released that episode as v2.2.

I think starting with but, however, and, etc is alright though, so I’ve left that as-is.