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?

OK, I think I’ve got an idea which’ll get us a lot more value out of the Ryloth arc.

There’s a lot I don’t like about Liberty on Ryloth - mainly the extremely bland landscape, poor military tactics, and lack of main characters - but there’s a lot of unleveraged value there too. Far more so than Supply Lines, this showcases Cham, his strength of character, and his good political interactions with Orn Free Taa. And contrasting with Innocents of Ryloth, the suffering of the natives is far more pronounced, giving us far better established emotional stakes, and a more competent and threatening opposition. The ending is a good high too (more exciting than ‘we’ll come and pick up Anakin now’ from Storm Over Ryloth), showing the natives properly liberated and incorporating Ahsoka and Anakin as they take out the Separatist bombers to help win the day.

Therefore, let’s consider merging Storm with Liberty. The situation on the ground can be established early to give us the stakes for Ahsoka’s challenge in the skies above, and as the space battles progress, we can intercut with Mace searching for Cham and encouraging him to resist. After Anakin and Ahsoka break the blockade, we can follow Cham and Mace liberating the natives, with their suprise heroic appearance at the end to save them from bombers.

To achieve this I’d recontextualise a few things. We’d establish that Mace was already on the planet when it was overrun. I’d have no major Separatist ground forces on the planet, instead having the situation be entirely a bombing campaign coordinated from the overhead blockade after the massacre seen in Liberty. Rather than making this about retaking what was the capital city, I’d recontextualise that location instead as Wat Tambor’s prison complex. (Which can be the converted capital if you like, but I won’t draw attention to that). I never liked the ‘single force bridge’ entrance, but I think I can trim around that cleanly so that the combined Cham/Mace forces are free to walk up and assault it directly. Oh, and I can of course use my prior Nute Gunray context to help explain why the bombing campaign was so swift and effective. And the distraction of the Kamino attack to explain why the Republic didn’t help at the time.

I think this is the stronger core. Now that Cham is a major player in other media, I think we get good value out of his emphasis here, but it’s Ahsoka who remains our hero.

I’m going to continue reviewing the other Ryloth content to see if there’s anything else I can make work here, including the couple of Ryloth episodes in Bad Batch. I’ll also consider whether any of the spare can make a decent second episode to follow-up later, but I think the Storm/Liberty combo takes some of the pressure off there.

Onwards to my RYLOTH episode. I think I could really do with some extra thinking here, if anyone has any spare.

As a reminder, my episode as it currently stands uses pretty much the entire plot of Shadow Over Ryloth, which is about Anakin and Ahsoka having to break the blockade above the planet, with the emotional core being Ahsoka failing in her first command and having to deal with that. The secondary plot I intercut was from Supply Lines, where Cham Syndulla appears, though the main focus there is on Master Di’s plot as he tries to protect some Twi’leks trapped on the surface, while Bail tries to get some blockade runners from nearby Toydaria to Ryloth in time.

Reviewing what I’d already produced, I think it’s really unacceptable that I left this episode available so long with the huge audio glitch at the end, so I’m very sorry about that. It’s a really poor standard. I know I was keeping up momentum at the time but damn. I let you guys down with that one.

Going into this episode’s polish, I already knew that, because of the reordering, I could have the Toydarian King Katuunko appear in this episode, since now he won’t be killed by Savage until my following one (which makes a nice tight pairing as I can frame it as more immediate revenge). So I was already planning on reintroducing the scenes with Bail and Katuunko, albeit avoiding JarJar if possible.

However, on review, while the structure of the episode is broadly fine, my big takeaway this time was on how much jumping around we do. You’ve got Anakin and Ahsoka, you’ve got all the POV stuff of the Separatist admiral, you’ve got Master Di and Cham, AND you’ve got Bail and Katuunko. There’s too much juggling.

Now that I’ve had more experience at digging into the value of the source content, I think I need to make some changes.

• Mainly, I need to remove most of Master Di, while preserving almost all of Cham. Cham, regrettably, is very passive in this episode, and barely a character at all. But, he’s developed now in both Bad Batch and Rebels, and as Hera’s father, there’s lots to get to know. So I should certainly retain him here. However, as much as it’s a cool little military diversion, I don’t think there’s enough emotional value to Master Di’s protection of the Twi’Leks (using the plan to blow up the ship to block a path), nor of his eventual death. Also, if we do care about Di’s death, it’s a bit of a bummer at the point in the episode where we’re supposed to just be winning - Ahsoka and Anakin breaking the blockade, and Bail dropping supplies. I think I’d like to refocus this section, so that instead we’re focusing on Cham as the person with a problem (we’re starving and on the run), with Bail’s hunt for supplies as the solution, until Ahsoka overcoming her trial wins them all the day. This way we’re focusing far more on the emotional core.
• In doing this, I’ll intercut a lot less of the remaining content too, keeping the episode feeling more ‘blocky’ than parallel.
• The Separatist admiral is definitely our most interesting Neimoidian, as he’s definitely competent, but (1) he’s still a Neimoidian, and (2) he’s surrounded by Separatist tech and in particular chatty Battle Droids, so I want to trim his scenes just down to his most compelling. I might also remove Wat Tambor entirely, because fuck Wat Tambor, but also my possible second Ryloth episode will be about a season later so I don’t think Wat Tambor should be on the planet yet.
• While my artificial scene of Bail hiring the Toydarians was better on this rewatch than I remember it, I’ll be replacing it with ideally just one scene of Bail and Katuunko, without Jar-Jar.

That’s the main stuff, and to be honest that all warrants recreating the episode from scratch, which won’t be as tough as it sounds.

However, also a factor is the plans for my second Ryloth episode. Again, due to Cham’s increased importance, I’m tempted to include more of him. The problem being, I remember Innocents of Ryloth and Liberty on Ryloth both being fairly unemotional and unexciting episodes with just Obi-Wan appearing from our set of main characters.

One option I’ve been playing with here is the inclusion of some of Jedi Crash, which has a great opening action sequence, and is crap otherwise other than showing Ahsoka caring for Anakin. I’ve considered a merge of that with Innocents/Liberty, to show essentially the big three characters split from each other. That might just give both plotlines the balance they each need in order to stand together.

But before I pursue that, I might look into including more from Liberty into this current episode. To memory, the best content there was in seeing Cham’s conversations with Mace, where they discuss Ryloth’s difficult politics, the victims of the war and the freedom fighters, and Cham’s issues with Orn Free Taa. I’ll see if there’s a workable solution there, or default back to the other plans listed here.

The other combo, the least likely I’ll use, might be to put the Master Di content in Liberty/Innocents, perhaps as the setup for things going badly for Cham before the start of that episode. So the first episode would be all Ahsoka’s trial, and the second would have all the Cham scenes.

Anyway! Pile of thoughts. If anyone has ideas there I’d love to hear them.

And that’s reuploaded now.

Good notes, thanks Vranir. I’ve made those changes and will shortly release a v2.2 containing them all.

• I agree with your text change
• I’ve trimmed Sidious referring to Ventress’ failiures. Now, Dooku says he plans to use Ventress, Sidious simply slowly replies “Ventress…” as if he’s considering it, and Dooku replies affirming his confidence. I didn’t chop any of Ventress and Dooku’s conversation, since he’s just affirming that this is an important mission without room for error, so her success in light of that implies that she took her master’s words to heart.
• I fixed the glitch that was offsetting the voices in the Venator boarding scene.
• The music transition was actually as it was originally, but there was a little noise on the SFX channel that I think made it more punctuated. I’ve toned down that squeak, so it sounds smoother now.

Many thanks buddy. That’ll be available as soon as it’s uploaded.

UPDATE ON THE STATE OF PLAY-

WHERE WE’RE AT

Just to catch people up to speed, I’d produced the first 30 of ~50 episodes back around mid-June 2021. I was allowing passion and momentum to carry me through getting a lot done, because I really wanted the mental confirmation of having a majority of episodes under my belt. While I focused on churning episodes out, I developed my skills and built up a good body of extremely valuable feedback and ideas from all of you here.

So after finishing my third season (of five), I went back to the beginning, establishing more polished standards to release to, and using my improved skills and community feedback to re-release already completed episodes up to what I’m calling ‘2.0 standard’. I’m sure there’ll always be the odd tweak or improvement that someone might suggest and/or I might pursue, but these revised edits should be as close to final final as any other release you’d find on these forums.

2.0 standard incorporates improved opening credits (using unique franchise credits I’ve made for this show, taking elements from both Mandalorian and Bad Batch), better-timed closing credits, a refined community credit, fixed audio without pops, smoother visual transitions which accurately match the original sources, smoother audio transitions, rethinking every single decision and edit I’ve already made, and restructuring and recontextualising some episodes further to squeeze more value from the content I have. I also remade a couple of my very first episodes from absolute scratch.

It was particularly important to me to make sure that the very beginning of the show was as good as it could possibly be. The first reason being that TCW famously starts particularly badly, so I needed to challenge that knowledge. The second being that this is people’s introduction to TCW: Refocused, so I need to make a compelling argument for TCW:R’s own existence.

Now, with the release of s01e05 to v2.0 standard, I believe I finally have that solid introduction to TCW and TCW:R.

As I came to reorder the first season, Imhotep and others here suggested an order which I thought was really powerful, so I’ve leaned into that for this edit, making those episodes up to s01e05 work like a small story arc with a few ongoing elements, which I think adds value over the original presentation. This focused little arc introduces all of our main characters and the early themes of the show, gives us a good high-stakes peak, demonstrates my technical skills and intentions, and gives some good variety. And as a bonus, it carries us through easily my least favourite (but still necessary) three episodes of this project, so once you’ve finished this arc, you’re over the worst and into the far stronger body of episodes which follow.

So, to summarise:

THE EPISODES UP TO s01e05 MAKE A GOOD SOLID INTRODUCTION TO THE SHOW.
They are very final, having been heavily revised, are of my highest release quality, and form a mini story arc.

I’d recommend that the new (and returning) viewer watch these five episodes (plus episode zero if you want the Tartakovsky microseries to set everything up), and personally I’d be very interested to get feedback on this group of episodes, particularly in how well it works as introductions to TCW and TCW:R (compared to the original launch of the show), and how well the connective tissue works together.

WHERE WE’RE GOING

In terms of what follows, I will of course be polishing the rest of the completed three seasons up to 2.0 standard. There’ll be a couple of extra episodes I’ll release during that polish, one of which will be a bit of an experiment to see if I can make a decent episode out of some unused Ryloth content now that we know Bad Batch returns there (Edit from the future: I’ve done this now), and one which just fits better in season three with my revised ordering. Then I’ll continue working to conclude the show. I have a few more demands on my time these days, so followers of this project may have found the pace of release slowing, but I assure you, my resolve has never been stronger.

That said, despite the polish currently being undertaken, you can watch this show pretty much to completion right now if you want. Season one is already completed to v2.0 standard, so that’s the worst content from the original show already up to a far better quality. The 1.0 versions of seasons two and three are by no means unfinished, and feature all of the key edits I intend to make, so you can watch those if you don’t mind a little less polish. And the final seasons I’ve not touched at all yet (four and five) require very little serious editing, so you can watch the original episodes in my spreadsheet’s recommended order if you don’t mind the trappings of the original release, without my hand.

WHERE WE’VE BEEN

This project is almost a year old now, so please indulge me a little here as we approach its first birthday. When I first had the idea for this edit, it was just some thoughts and a suggestion, and I didn’t really intend to carry it out myself. I never loved TCW, as much as I wanted to. But seeing the initial support for the idea, noticing I had already put a lot of foundational thought into TCW without realising it, and with very very basic editing skills, I decided to crack on with it myself. I had no idea how long it would take, what structure it would take, or how many episodes I would produce, and I certainly had no clue what level of analysis, planning, skill, or community support it would require. But as it grew and cohered it only felt like a more and more worthwhile project. I’ve now fallen properly in love with the show, and my passion for this project is mainly driven now by wanting to give this wonderful community another piece of Star Wars that they can love too, and that fits alongside, supports, and enhances the franchise’s excellent and ever-growing canon.

I’m extremely grateful to all of you, for your support, feedback, ideas, and patience, and extremely proud of what we’ve been able to achieve together. It is an absolute pleasure to work on this project with all of you.

As always, any and all feedback is welcome and encouraged.

(RE)RELEASED - s01e05 - The 501st Legion (v2.1)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard (especially including fixed audio without pops in this re-release).
• Our fifth episode of the first season. (I’ve shifted the first season around, so check again if you’ve seen this one before).
• Comprising content from the popular Domino Squad arc (Clone Cadets, Rookies and ARC Troopers).
• This episode concludes a mini story arc that I’ve been setting up in the first half of the first season, so the episodes up to and including this one make a good jumping on point if you want to check out this show and this edit.
• Running 46 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.

While adhering to the core of the original story arc (which is one of the best arcs in this show), and without too much restructuring, this edit makes some major changes to Clone Cadets to reframe the whole arc into a new three-act structure. Now, Clone Cadets ends in failiure for Domino Squad, and the Rishi Outpost seen in Rookies is the lesser assignment they’re given as a result. I appreciate that this is quite a radical change but I believe it really works for the better. You can read far more detail on my reasoning here. I placed this episode here because it gives us a good strong mid-season peak and starts to make us care about the Clones, and the early strike on Kamino gives our villains more competence.

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘The 501st Legion’ to highlight the fact that this will be our main clone company that we follow in TCW, and since it’s the ‘prize’ earned by these Rookies through their actions in the episode.
• The opening text now reflects this episode’s positioning as the conclusion of the first half-season’s mini story arc. By this point we’ve been introduced to the main characters and the stakes, and now everything comes together on Kamino. (Well, except for Ahsoka, but I’ve now made it clearer earlier in the season why she doesn’t always appear).
• I reference Nute Gunray in the opening text too, since the reordering allowed me to recontextualise my episode Assassin (formerly Cloak of Darkness) as part of the hunt for Grievous which starts during Malevolence and concludes here, and the interrogation of Gunray as an attempt to learn Grievous’ location.
• I also make clear in the opening text that failiure in combat training means a lesser posting, helping the transition to Rishi later.
• Clone Cadets has been heavily cut down, focusing only on the clones which will matter to the rest of the show or have some emotional value, but most importantly recontextualising the scenes so that Domino Squad’s training ends in failiure (through their own lack of skill and teamwork, not through sabotage). We see Bric’s lack of faith in the clones, then Echo and Fives convinced by Shaak Ti to properly commit to the squad, a single failed attempt (using content from both original attempts and maintaining all of the exposition), Bric and El-Les confirming their failiure (I’ve polished this scene since the earlier release), and then Hevy attempting to go AWOL before being convinced to stay by 99. All other scenes are excluded.
• Rookies begins ‘Two Weeks Later’, with our squad assigned to the Rishi Outpost. It’s largely the same as the original, but I’ve made a few trims here to focus on the key detail and the key characters. There’s less scurrying around on the surface of the moon, and the eel is trimmed, though still present a little. Echo and Fives aren’t made members of the 501st yet.
• From their recovery on Rishi, we transition straight into ARC Troopers’ scene on the bridge with Cody, Rex, Obi-Wan and Anakin, which brings the plotlines together and brings the audience up to date on the plot.
• ARC Troopers is largely unaltered, though I’ve cut Obi-Wan’s underwater action in an already action-heavy episode, and cut the second half of his fight with Grievous, which doesn’t further the plot in a series where Obi-Wan and Grievous already fight loads without changing the status quo. 99 is preserved as much as possible, though I had to cut him having Hevy’s medal, since in this episode Domino Squad didn’t receive one. (I’ve polished this scene since the earlier release too.) At the very end, Rex makes Echo and Fives “ARC Troopers… in the 501st”, bringing their arc in these episodes to a close.

As always, any and all feedback is welcome and encouraged.

Excellent job, everyone.