EddieDean

(RE)RELEASED - S01E08 - Children of Night (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our eighth episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising the entire original Nightsisters arc.
• Running 52 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.

The Nightsisters arc is a popular arc with good reason. It focuses on the internal politicking of the Sith and the Nightsister/Nightbrother darkside cults, has some great development for Ventress and a little development for Dooku, and gets the ball rolling on the Maul plotline which is very important to the show. I placed it here in the chronology because the Maul(/Mandalore) content is so good that I wanted to make it the ‘spine’ of my show, an ever-present threat that throws the idea of the Clone Wars just being a predictable two-party conflict into doubt, that adds threats and characters that we don’t know the outcome of even if we’ve seen the movies.

Ahsoka is absent from this episode, but since our last episode put her on archive guard duty, that’s explained well enough (well, better than the original episode, which didn’t explain it at all, at least).

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘Children of Night’ to highlight the various self-styled ‘children’ of Dathomir - Ventress, Talzin, the nightsisters and nightbrothers, and Savage.
• The opening text lightly reminds the viewer of the current state of the war: After all of the opening strikes against key targets, both sides have now bedded in for what they realise is going to be a longer war than they anticipated. The Jedi are meditating on the future, which I think works thematically, but I also use here to lightly explain why Anakin and Obi-Wan are in their Jedi robes rather than their more military garb (a costume change which originally happened for season three of the original show).
• It’s pretty much the entire trilogy of episodes stitched together, with only minor trims, other than-
• I removed the scene of the Nightsisters trying to assassinate Dooku directly using invisibility spells. It was a fun combat, but it returned us to the status quo, and I’m not a huge fan of adding too many new force abilities. Instead now Talzin’s plan is always the subterfuge of sending Savage as a sleeper agent.
• I trimmed the recruitment of Savage heavily. Now, there’s only one trial, and Ventress only selects Savage and Feral to fight - implicitly because she can see that Savage is the strongest, and she needs to use his feelings for Feral to break him.
• I cut the references to Iridonian versus Dathomiri Zabrak. It’s not something relevant to the plot, and it’s the kind of thing that, if you cared about it, you’d have already looked it up on Wookieepedia.
• I also cut the scene of Anakin and Obi-Wan at the Nightbrother village. All they learn there is to visit Talzin, which they should have done first anyway (other dialogue refers to Dathomir as the ‘planet of the witches’, and Obi-Wan later shows he knows that ‘women are dominant on this planet’), and the Nightbrothers aren’t as important to this story or to the Clone Wars as a whole, beyond Savage. Instead they just fly directly to the witches.

Onward now to the Holocron arc, the two parter which concludes this season, which shouldn’t take too long to polish.

Nearly done with Nightsisters too. I improved a lot of the audio transitions, and trimmed a couple of scenes. Hopefully get through that tomorrow. It feels right as the last episode before the two-part season finale, following the tradition of having a big escalation before the end of a season. And it gives a nice deep dive into the two least explored major villains of our show, so I think this whole season is going to feel very “right” when it’s done.

(RE)RELEASED - S01E07 - The Death Watch (V2.1)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our seventh episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising the episode originally called Duchess of Mandalore, BUT notably NOT any content from the episode originally called Death Watch. (I’ve essentially flipped the two names for my edit.)
• Running 24 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 the episode originally called Duchess of Mandalore, where the Duchess is attacked on Coruscant by the Death Watch following her escape from them earlier in the season. It features a good amount of politics between the Republic, Separatists, and Mandalore’s two main factions, giving us some good interesting ‘third party’ content early in the series, as well as that valuable Mandalorian focus which I’m keeping present throughout my show.

The content from this episode is largely untouched. It’s split from the prior two episodes in the original ‘Mandalore trilogy’ mainly because they didn’t need to be back-to-back, and this way, we get two bites of the Mandalore apple this season, helping reinforce that Mandalore is going to be a running plot. We also get our first sight in TCW:R of Padmé without it being boring, and our first sight of Coruscant’s underworld. We also get some scenes set in locations originally designed by Ralph McQuarrie during the production of the Original Trilogy, back when Coruscant was known as ‘Had Abaddon’.

I’ve added a couple of scenes originally used during the holocron heist arc, where Ahsoka is disciplined by the Jedi council (originally for insubordination at Felucia, now in context for insubordination in our previous Ryloth episode). The Jedi assign her guard duty of the Jedi archives, which effectively explains to my audience why she’s not present in this or the next episode (Nightsisters arc), until she rejoins the plot during the following episode (Holocron Heist arc).

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘The Death Watch’, to highlight the return of a key reoccuring threat in TCW. And it sounds cool.
• Used the opening text to remind the audience of the situation with Mandalore. I also mention here that, after the initial strikes of the war, the Republic has now realised that this could be a longer and more complex war than they intended, so they’ve summoned the Jedi back to Coruscant to scry into the future. I’m doing this partly because it’s an interesting angle but partly to explain why the Jedi wear their season three robes in my next episode (Nightsisters), where I’ll open with mention of their (scrying) meditations being interrupted, which is probably about as well as you could explain that temporary costume change, given that I think it’s the greater good to place that episode as early as I can.
• Opened the episode on Ahsoka being disciplined for her disobedience at Ryloth, before transitioning into this episode’s original opening.
• Moved one scene of Dooku telling Sidious that their plan is going fine earlier, to where their plan WAS going fine, as opposed to the original placement where it came after showing their plan starting to fall apart. This placement also helps clarify why Republic overreach on Mandalore would be a bad idea.
• Removed the idea that Satine has to hand herself in as ‘a distraction’ so Obi-Wan can sneak into the senate to deliver the true recording to Padmé. That was always a slightly odd/risky idea, and I didn’t like the implication that the Republic senate building’s security was so lax, so now Satine suggests Obi-Wan gives it to Padmé (which he should be able to freely do without scrutiny as he’s a senior Jedi) and she implicitly just stays in hiding while he does that.

Onwards now to Nightsisters, which only requires basic polish, then the Holocron arc, where I’ll remove the scene I’ve moved to this episode.

Thanks for the feedback, djonesed. I’d agree with your critique of both episodes, but I think I’ve reached the limits of my options here (unless anyone else has an amazing idea). I think they’re my weakest two episodes, but they’re good enough, and at least (in my opinion) far better than what we were originally presented with.

I will rethink the Malevolence fades though, just in case.

I know that using opening text isn’t ideal, but as you’ve acknowledged, I think it’s the best option I have available for keeping the quality of the actual body of the episodes high.

Keep it coming!

Loud and clear, folks.

Technically, both are possible. The dialogue in the discipline scene will definitely work for both versions, and I’ve checked that I could remove the scenes from Holocron and still have it paced correctly.

Opinion time - what do you guys prefer?

1. Ahsoka DOESN’T get punished for her disobedience at Ryloth (s01e06), but remains offscreen until the Holocron Crisis arc (starting s01e09), where she is disobedient at Felucia, then gets assigned the guard duty that pays off in that episode.

-OR-

2. Ahsoka does get punished for her disobedience at Ryloth via a new scene added at the start of the following episode (s01e07), being assigned guard duty that’ll explain her absence until the Holocron Crisis (s01e09), in which it’ll be resolved. In this version, we won’t include the Felucia scenes.

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.