EddieDean

Ohhhhh yeeeeeah!

(RE)RELEASED (WITH A NEW STORY) - S01E06 - Resistance on Ryloth (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our sixth episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising content from the episodes Storm Over Ryloth and Liberty on Ryloth. (IMPORTANT: The prior v1.x version of this covered Supply Lines and Storm Over Ryloth, but not Liberty on Ryloth, so this story is all-new. Worth a look if you’ve seen this one before.)
• Running 38 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.

This is my version of the Ryloth story, originally told over five parts. I use only Storm and Liberty here because it focuses on the core plotlines of this arc, which also happen to be the strongest - Ahsoka’s first command, Anakin and Ahsoka breaking the blockade, Mace Windu meeting with Cham Syndulla, and the politics between Cham and Orn Free Taa. Because these episodes share some characters (notably Mace and Wat Tambor), they tied together nicely. I’ve placed it here for character balance in the season, and as a light follow-up from the events of my episode Assassin, which features Neimoidian subterfuge.

I’ve changed this since the original because the original jumped around between too many plots, since Supply Lines had two on top of the core from Storm. The Cham content in Supply Lines wasn’t as valuable as that from Liberty, and as much as I like Bail, his plotline was too disconnected from the main plot and too heavy on Toydarians and Jar Jar. I didn’t use Ambush here because it’s a very weak episode (other than that one scene with Yoda and the clones in the cave), and I didn’t use Innocents of Ryloth because it was a fairly middling and quite unimportant episode (even accounting for Waxer, Boil, and Numa, which is a cute plotline but hardly core.)

As it stands now, this episode tightly tells the story of both the ground and air attempts to liberate Ryloth from Separatist occupation, highlighting Ahsoka via her first failiure and the lessons she learns from it, and Cham Syndulla and Ryloth’s politics which’ll pay off more in Bad Batch and Rebels. Pleasantly, the villains in this one are quite competent, so there’s genuine threat.

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘Resistance on Ryloth’, for the popularity of Ryloth in Star Wars fandom, and to highlight the Cham Syndulla angle.
• The opening crawl establishes that the swift attack on Ryloth is a result of the Republic’s distraction at Kamino (as seen in my prior s01e05), and references Ryloth’s stolen military data (as hinted at in my opening for my s01e04 which featured Nute Gunray’s liberation by the Separatists).
• The opening crawl also establishes that only Mace Windu has made it to the surface, but that Anakin and Ahsoka are leading the counterattack on the blockade. The blockade is now supplying the bombers in what is now almost exclusively a firebombing campaign, explaining the relative lack of ground forces on the planet and adding to the blockade’s importance.
• I intercut between both Storm and Liberty, having both stories progress in parallel, with amended dialogue to allow both stories to reference each other.
• I used almost all of Storm, though I trimmed the start of Liberty where Mace has led his forces through a really exposed pass, and removed all references to the force bridge, which I didn’t want highlighted. This required a little restructuring to the final assault, though it still matches the music nicely. I also cut a few of Liberty’s scenes together, making Wat more overtly disobedient (mainly for expedience).
• The stories conclude with Anakin and Ahsoka breaking the blockade, then Dooku’s final attempt to bomb Mace and his forces during the assault on the capital, before Anakin and Ahsoka arrive from the skies to take out the bombers and save Mace and the Twi’leks, bringing both stories neatly together.
• I shifted and colour-corrected the earlier scenes of Anakin and Ahsoka shooting down bombers into the final sequence, to give it a bit more punch, and to remove them from the earlier scene to avoid a continuity error.
• I made a few trims to droid banter but they’re largely inoffensive here. I kept the reference to droids no longer requiring a control ship, which is useful exposition, but it’s also one of the show’s better jokes.

This episode (re)release took me a while as it was a brand-new episode created from scratch, but there’s nothing radical needed for the next few episodes so I hope to get them upgraded to 2.0 standard more quickly.

Another great and very competent edit. Again, the narrative completely works, and it’s a really neat movie-length telling of the core story of the second season.

Like the first, I think you could have had slightly fewer wipes, but that’s barely an issue. Though one thing I noticed with both this and the first one was that when you cut from the static starfield (that hosts the opening crawl) down to the pan down to the initial action, it’s almost like the blacks become a little grey? Hard to describe, but there’s something just a little jarring with that transition, and I think it’s to do with black levels.

Really enjoyed this. I could see the huge amount of work you put into the restructuring to make the narrative seamless, and I appreciated your moving of lines from cut content to keep their value in this movie. Excellent work.

Only nitpick would be the transitions- I didn’t feel like any were necessary, most notably that final iris wipe after Gideon’s darksaber reveal, which came fast after another transition.

I wish! But my other option worked just fine, at least. It’s all coming together nicely though. I’ve got the structure and audio of the ending all working, I’m just working on some colour matching to try to extend Anakin and Ahsoka taking out the bombers now, then I should be able to wrap it all up and render it. Not long now!

Edit: Watched through my workprint and I’m really happy with the structure. I’m going to remove a few transitions and smooth over the audio in a few places but I think this episode comes together well.

Bummer indeed! Either way, I’ve made a lot of progress on this episode now. Given the start a little longer to breathe, and I’ve done all of the intercutting through the plot of Supply Lines, now with just the last few scenes of Liberty on Ryloth to go. Feels good though, look forward to getting this one out to y’all.

Ah shit! Shit, shit shit! I can’t use the scene that way because it introduces a continuity error. At the time I want to place this, in the space part of the story Yularen is injured in bed, so he can’t appear here. And since he’s in the middle of so many shots, I can’t crop around him. Balls. I can’t trim his injury either, as Ahsoka’s plot depends on it and he wears a bandage in the space scenes.

OK, well that’s great to hear guys, thanks. I’ll definitely add the radio SFX to the first shot of Anakin talking from Mace’s perspective, and tidy up the new audio a little more.

I’ll also see about my options regarding that shot of Yoda turning, which allows me to change Yularen’s voice line. Though with this scene coming later I think the original lines about no reinforcements coming might make sense in context.

I’ll probably follow up this scene with Mace stepping out at the site of the massacre - kicking off his plotline - meaning that those intro scenes I posted above will be more focused on Wat Tambor’s strategising and the space front, so a bit less of an exposition dump across lots of locations.

And Burbin, I agree. I’ve now watched through this pairing a few times as I’ve been working out the right pacing of the scenes, and it definitely feels like it’ll work well as a single story - better than the original (split episodes) and my first attempt (with Supply Lines), I think. Always lovely when a new episode comes together like this.

I need some opinions folks: Does this scene work?

Storm Over Ryloth keeps having Anakin report in to Mace, which works nicely paired with Liberty on Ryloth, because it’ll seem like Anakin’s reporting to Mace directly on the ground. If this scene works, it’ll be a really slick bridge between the space action and the ground action, and tie them all together nicely. But if it doesn’t work, I’ll have to just have this as two separate holocalls as in the original.

PMs sent! Enjoy!

Really good steady progress on RESISTANCE ON RYLOTH today.

I’ve done a lot of work on the opening scenes, reworking a lot of dialogue to tie the two plots together.

HERE’S A (ROUGH) CLIP OF THE INTRO (I know there’s one weird shot of Yoda in there, I’ll work around that.)

(This clip will follow from the final line of the opening text, something like “BUT A SEPARATIST SCOUT HAS JUST DETECTED WINDU…”)

We open with a scene of Tambor and his tactical droid, to emphasise that Windu is their primary threat, and to show the suffering Twi’leks very early so we sympathise early.

• Tambor says “The Jedi is progressing faster than expected” (rather than “The Republic”), because it’s only Mace’s small force on the planet as the blockade is not yet broken.
• He then says “target every inhabited village in range” as a means to stop Mace from gaining support locally. This’ll increase the threat against Cham Syndulla, paid off when we see the fire-bombing which ultimately catalyses the Twi’leks. (I’ll be establishing in the crawl that firebombing, from bombers operating out of the blockade - not the city - will be one of the major ways the Separatists are oppressing the resistance).
• Tambor then immediately drives the Twi’leks outside the city as a strategic ploy to delay any bombardment or aggressive attack on the city. I’ll move Tambor’s other dialogue from here - about withdrawing their troops into the city - to much later, to help justify my cutting of the bridge which’ll make the assault on the city easier later.

We then cut to the good guys discussing the same thing, to frame Syndulla as Mace’s solution to the problem on the ground, and set up the political situation early (since it has more importance to Bad Batch and Rebels).

• I cut all of Anakin’s good news, since it hasn’t happened yet.
• I changed Mace’s reports of Obi-Wan’s success into more reports of Tambor’s success, to keep the stakes tight, and make this much more of Mace and the Twi’leks’ final stand.
• Yoda now says “A plan you have to take the city?” (rather than “the bridge”), because I’m minimising that aspect.
• When Palpatine asks about reinforcements, Yularen now replies that he’s working to breach the blockade, rather than his original more pessimism. Mace re-emphasises Syndulla’s importance, but we now know there’ll be action in the ground and the skies.

We then cut to Wat Tambor talking to Mar Tuuk (the Neimoidian) aboard his starship, now showing that Tambor expects an attack and is prepared for it - he’s now a more competent strategist, and anything that happens in the skies is expected by the Separatists.

And finally we cut to the Republic and Yularen arriving guns blazing, in an attack that now has well-established stakes and has been discussed on the ground too, so everything’s neatly tied together.

Though all those scenes I’ve listed above have been chopping around a little, we’ll then spend a long time focusing just on the sky battle, before cutting only to Mace - there’s only two main narratives from here on and we’ll chop between them a lot less. The next scene after the (failed) space battle will be Mace finding the graves from the Twi’lek massacre whilst searching for Syndulla.

I think it works nicely! There’re some more opportunities later to keep the sky and ground plots related to each other too.

As an aside, this new version of Ryloth, focusing on Cham’s doubts about Republic occupation, will serve the following episode well too, where we’ll see more of Mandalore’s hesitance around Republic overreach.

It’s interesting that you say that, because for this pass through the episodes I made certain to match my transitions exactly to the timing and settings used by the original sources. That said, when I see a wipe in Star Wars (even the movies) it tends to take me out of it a little, so perhaps it’s that general aversion to fades that you and I share?

Good notes, thanks GLogus.

You make a good point of having Grievous’ laugh before his ‘proper’ introduction, so I’ve trimmed that. (Harder to smooth the audio there than I was expecting!) I’ve also fixed the flipped frame while I’m at it.

I’m not sure about removing the fades - I’d be interested in others’ opinions on this. Subjectively I quite like them - they feel like a little reset or breather to me. I’m using them here as an alternative to wipes (which tend to be same time/different place, which there’s a fair amount of in this episode), to subtly allow a little time to pass in transit (since both follow a drop into or out of hyperspace). To me it feels OK, but as I say, interested in other opinions here.

As for minimising the Plo content, I think that’s the heart of the episode - it’s an early opportunity to say ‘individual clones matter’ and showcase a little of Plo’s importance to Ahsoka, and give her an emotional plotline which fleshes her out. The medical station stuff ups the stakes of Ahsoka’s diversion, which is why I embedded the one in the other. So I think I’m happy that this structure is the way I want to tell the story of this content.

Keep 'em coming, baby!

I really like the LUT. Looks very natural, more like the OT. I’d be interested to see more demo shots with the same LUT.

Yeah, it’s probably best to trim what you want to trim in isolation first, then see what you can make from it. Be sure to take a note of any speech you cut that you could repurpose, though.

I felt like the Bad Batch episodes of TCW could behave as a fairly decent episode zero of that show, since they slow down TCW’s important escalating rush towards its tragic conclusion. But they do feature some valuable Anakin/Padmé content that helps in its current placement. That said, I don’t think they’re as good a first episode as Bad Batch’s episode one, in terms of setting up the stakes and themes of that show, nor the state of the galaxy which it delves more deeply into.

Pleasure to be of help.

I actually spent ages yesterday thinking and typing up how I’d approach a movie or movies, but couldn’t crack it for you. If it were me, I’d want to do something with the ‘as much as possible that’s related to SW media’ bullet above, combined with the core of the Maul/Mandalore content. But that’s definitely more than one movie, perhaps even three or four, and then your challenge is far more complex in terms of breaking it down, combining, and pacing. It’s something I might think about after I finish my TV show, but really, when I was thinking about it, I kept coming back to key moments in the TV show that I’d be cutting that I didn’t want to. But hey, I guess that’s why I’m focusing on a TV show, whilst you’re focusing on movies! Best of luck either way!

Acbagel said:

For this project, I want to find a balance between what you have done with your TCW:R project and what Smudger is doing with his Mandalorian movies. Reorganizing scenes between episodes, cutting out the fluff, but ultimately creating a storyline that can be digested in a single sitting in a complete way. I’m not going to get hard locked into pre-determining a time length or movie count beforehand though. An initial estimation is aiming for 1.5-3 hour films, either 2 or 3 of them total depending on pacing.

I think this is the key. In your analysis, look for how episodes flow together or complement each other, and look for dialogue that could be repurposed to help smooth things out - such as when their handler sends them off on a mission. Reorganising scenes, mainly by pulling dramatic scenes early so their threat lingers, will be valuable too.

Bad Batch is more serialised than Clone Wars, so you probably will be able to get closer to a rough movie length more comfortably, just be sure to end on your more dramatic peaks, but find the episodes and scenes that lead up to those points. In my opinion, having too many disconnected plotlines ends up feeling like the episode doesn’t have much thrust.

Then consider me encouraged!

Much appreciated buddy, thanks.

Really interested in this. I’ve only watched the show the once, and don’t have the capacity to load it in and thoroughly analyse it right now, but I think you have exactly the right approach.

That said, if you do a watch-along analysis, I’d love to jump in and join you on that.

How certain are you that you want to run with the movie length idea? I found “as long as necessary” serves my Clone Wars edits well, without binding me to a rough runtime, and that coupled with using text crawls up front allows me to pull weaker content out of the episodes themselves (where necessary) and to pace and bridge the content more freely.

I’ve done work with raw Bad Batch files, so if I can help you with any of the technical stuff, I’ll be happy to.

Cheers CMMAP, I’ll take silence as affirmation then 😃

Hacai, thanks very much for reviewing this. Glad to hear you found it smooth. Did you think it served well as an introduction to the series? Did you feel it flowed well, and was the emphasised Grievous hunt a fun little addition?

On your notes:

• s01e03’s conveyor belt is tricky, and I think I’ve got that one as good as I can, having tried a lot of alternative approaches. It’s very quick and choppy, but I think that’s my only option to get us from A to B - I have to use Satine’s scenes to permit Obi-Wan’s to progress off-screen, and vice-versa. I think we really have to have this this way, because for our first introduction to the Mandalorians, they really shouldn’t be so cartoonish, but we do have to get through this content for the plot.
• s01e03’s hostage situation is a bit of an oddity, because it was like that in the original. All I trimmed there was a shot of the spider-bot on the table before it falls off. In the original, the guy takes Satine hostage and Obi-Wan just stares, and the guy backs Satine out of the room. When Obi-Wan chases them out of the room they’re nowhere to be seen. This is one of those edits where I don’t have any options for making it better than the original, because the original just did it in that weird way.
• s01e05’s underwater hunt was trimmed, but again even in the original he just teleports quickly to underwater. I cut the underwater action sequence, but perhaps there’s more I can do here. Maybe we don’t have Obi-Wan go underwater at all, just letting it be a concern that isn’t followed up on, then I can use some of his underwater dialogue as they pop back up and attack the city - “Oh shit, they were doing stuff underwater!” I’ll try that approach.

You’re right about the black bars on the sides of the s01e01 video too, I’ll see why that is. Edit: They’re all rendering like that, I must have knocked my render settings off a little. They’re still watchable this way but I’ll roll out updates as soon as I have time.

CaptainFaraday said:

You might want to look at EddieDean’s Clone Wars project; he’s probably done the heavy lifting for you in terms of figuring out how to strip things down to thematically relevant narratives and placing them together.

I actually saw this post and intended to chime in last night before I ran out of time.

If you wanted to do AOTC > [something CW] > ROTS as a self-contained trilogy, you have a lot of options, depending on the story you want to tell. Other Clone Wars editors than myself have created movies from this content, a lot of which are really really strong - so it’s worth checking those for ideas and to see what works.

I guess your key decision is Ahsoka/No Ahsoka/Minimal Ahsoka (maybe where you just explain her away as a temporary padawan or something in the crawl).

If you want to tell simply the strongest emotional journey across the Clone Wars, I think Ahsoka would be your focus. That means going a bit off your brief, and having your Clone Wars episode introduce and develop Ahsoka (hard to do in one movie but probably possible), and then conclude with something that overlaps ROTS and the Siege of Mandalore. I think that’d be the best short telling of the Clone Wars. Your Clone Wars episode might have to be something like Ahsoka’s introduction on Christophsis and perhaps the Cad Bane arc (good romp, develops their relationship, also goes the Palpatine/younglings angle), whilst Obi-Wan is off pursuing Darth Maul in advance of the Siege of Mandalore content, before capping it with Ahsoka’s fall. But Ahsoka’s excellent conclusion really depends on Maul, which naturally would suggest that you include TPM in some way, or at least those scenes, perhaps in flashback.

Anyway, I think that probably isn’t exactly what you’re going for. In terms of a more ‘straight’ AOTC > [custom CW movie] > ROTS, your CW could combine one or more of the following, depending on your priorities:

• If you do go Ahsoka, then the Christophsis content from the movie (and its prequels) introduces her (and has a neat cut where you don’t have to get into the Jabba baby). You could conclude on Ahsoka’s Fall to explain her later absence, though without following it up with the Siege of Mandalore for the emotional gut punch. Ahsoka’s best episodes, which also feature the other main movie characters, which would be easiest to include are Storm Over Ryloth, the Cad Bane arc, the Geonosis arc, and the Onderon arc. (She has better solo episodes but I don’t think you’d want those if you were only going to have her in the one movie - you’d want to keep her tied to Anakin’s story.)
• If you want to highlight the corruption growing in Anakin, then Voyage of Temptation, the Slaves of Kadavo arc, and the Rako Hardeen arc emphasise that. Mortis would add to that if you fancy a big force vision quest.
• If you want to give Obi-Wan some more depth, then you’d be well served by the early Mandalore trilogy, almost all Maul content (though that has the above mentioned issues with Maul), Slaves of Kadavo which nearly breaks him, and Rako Hardeen.
• To emphasise the Palpatine angle and the growing darkness, you have to make a call on whether you expose Palpatine=Sidious in this episode or in ROTS, but I’d suggest the Cad Bane arc, Order 66, and the Yoda arc.
• And if you really want to lean into the Clones, to emphasise the war angle, you’d probably be best served by Domino Squad, Deserter, Umbara, and Order 66. But this would be very light on main characters.
• If you wanted to fill in as much as possible that’s related to other SW media, I’d choose Christophsis (introduces Ahsoka and Ventress), Geonosis (returns to Geonosis, all the main characters, has Ahsoka meet Barriss and then traumatises them both), Citadel (introduces Tarkin, and his relationship with Anakin), Onderon (tests Ahsoka, shows an early rebellion, and introduces Saw Gererra), then Ahsoka’s Fall (return of Tarkin, Ventress, Barriss, and exit of Ahsoka). I don’t know how long it would all run, but this is quite a neat collection that I think would work nicely together.
• And finally, if you just wanted a good romp that gets quite close to cinematic stakes and quality (because bear in mind most of the above content wasn’t designed to be consumed in the way you’re intending here), then I’d recommend the Rako Hardeen arc, for Coruscant, bounty hunters, tension between Obi-Wan and Anakin, all the main characters, and a whole bunch of fun. Preceding that with the Cad Bane arc would give you double Cad Bane, more Coruscant focus, and more Palpatine scheming. Perhaps pop Yoda’s quest in there too.

I notice that all of this is extremely light on Grievous. He might not actually appear in any of those I’ve mentioned. While he does appear in a lot of TCW, a lot of the time he feels neutered. He never even sees Anakin (because of ROTS’ line where he’s suprised about Anakin’s height), so ends up in drawn duels with Obi-Wan a lot, and his military strikes are often defeated. Since originally ROTS introduced him afresh, you could just ignore him in TCW and just let ROTS introduce him as it did originally.

Hope that helps! Ultimately I’m a proponent of the other approach - where I think that the best way to enjoy the clone wars is to keep it as a TV show whilst trimming the fat - but I’m happy to continue helping you think through this if you need someone with TCW loaded firmly into their brain.

Good to hear buddy, looking forward to it! I miss having frequent collaborators sharing their opinions and feedback here, but appreciate that this is a far less interesting time for the project as I polish content starting right from the beginning. I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts on the improved 1-5.

Having not paid attention to the intermediate working steps, to me, both the higher and lower of those sound flawlessly integrated, with my preference tending slightly towards the lower one.

OK yeah, really happy with the Storm/Liberty plan. My rough cut feels like a single coherent journey, with the stakes on the ground enhancing the drama in the skies, and the final conclusion bringing it all together. I’ve reviewed all the franchise’s Cham/Ryloth content, and Liberty gives you everything you need to set that up, so we don’t need to use Supply Lines.

These things are always subjective, of course, but personally I think this is the best narrative one can make from the best moments of the Ryloth arc. Excited to get this one done.

Of course, this’ll mean no need for a second Ryloth episode, but hey. Quality first.

Anyway, feeling like this’ll work nicely has me just throwing some thoughts together about what comes next. There’re two little considerations here.

• In my (new) reordering, I was going to follow up Ryloth with my Nightsisters arc, because that way you get all of the main early battles (up to Sullust at the beginning of Nightsisters), then we get two Coruscant episodes (Death Watch on Coruscant, then the Holocron arc) to imply that both big factions are taking a breather as they bed in for what they now realise will be a long war.
  • (I was also thinking of slightly explaining away Obi-Wan and Anakin’s costume change in Nightsisters by saying they’d been interrupted while meditating with the other Jedi on the future of the war, which might emphasise the ‘long war’ angle.)
• That prior idea also originally had the little bonus of showing King Katuunko being killed in Nightsisters by Savage at Dooku’s command, immediately after showing Katuunko deciding to side with the Republic and aid Ryloth in my Ryloth episode. But, Katuunko doesn’t now appear in my Ryloth plans, so that’s no longer something to consider. (Episode quality without Katuunko trumps the value of including him in just for that soft pairing.)
• However, I should also consider Ahsoka’s discipline. In Ryloth she’s disobedient at a cost of lives, but unpunished. At the start of Holocron, there’s the short Felucia intro where Ahsoka is again disobedient at a cost of lives, but then the council assign her to guard duty, which’ll pay off later in the Holocron arc.
• I could (as Smudger did in his movie edits) shift the discipline so it’s instead referring to her Ryloth disobedience. This’d benefit us (1) because it’d allow her discipline to linger longer, until the finale, adding weight to her punishment, and (2) because it’d explain why she’s out of play during the Nightsisters and Death Watch on Coruscant arcs.
• If I do do that, though, I don’t think the scene belongs at the end of my Ryloth episode, since that’s a happy peak. But it could begin the Death Watch on Coruscant episode, where our characters all return to the planet. The impact of that though, would be putting Death Watch on Coruscant next after Ryloth, and Nightsisters afterward. That’ll probably be fine, but it does mean a little more of a gap where we don’t see Ventress, a little more of a gap where we don’t see Maul, and it means that Sullust in Nightsisters comes after the return to Coruscant, so I can’t quite play up the angle of having many military strikes before a larger breather.

Thoughts?