Well, I didn’t expect to have a larger update for you guys today, but it turns out that I do. I’ve just rewatched the first five episodes again, in the order (and mindset) suggested by Imhotep, and I’m definitely going to adopt that approach. I’ve already got two pages of notes on how to make it work.

Essentially, Imhotep suggested ‘focus on the villains’ and to let them link the first few episodes. That ultimately emerges as making Grievous a more present and credible military threat, with Ventress as a competent specialist and fighter. Therefore, we now have:

1. Christophsis, (re)establishing Ventress as an assassin/enforcer for Dooku, and introducing Ahsoka
2. Malevolence, establishing Grievous as a strategic commander with no morality, and developing Ahsoka more. In this episode’s crawl, I’d use the wording of “emergency”, allowing Grievous’ attack to implicitly be the emergency that Ahsoka was sent to Christophsis to tell Anakin about in that episode, retroactively allowing him to overshadow that episode too, and filling in that gap.
3. Mandalore 1, pulling Obi-Wan (and later Anakin) into the Mandalore plotline. I’d rename this ‘The Duchess of Mandalore’ (instead of Death Watch) because that implies an interesting change to what we know of Mandalore, and encourage us to focus on the relationship angle. In this episode’s crawl, I’ll mention that Anakin and Ahsoka are pursuing the fleeing Grievous after the destruction of his flagship, emphasising his threat.
4. Cloak of Darkness, dealing with Ahsoka alone on the sidelines of the Grievous pursuit as Anakin and Obi-Wan get distracted by Mandalore. I’ll change the crawl to state that in pursuit of Grievous, the Republic have captured Nute Gunray, who they plan to interrogate specifically for the location of Grievous. This fits nicely with their behaviour. I’ll also make it clear that Luminara is covering for Anakin in his absence. Here Ventress is now being deployed specifically to protect Grievous (and his strategies) at the behest of Dooku, emphasising both of their strengths.
5. The 501st Legion, focusing on our core clones and culminating in both Grievous and Ventress attacking Kamino, for some big drama where all the threat is clear.

This way, these five episodes focus on the threat of Grievous as a droid general and Ventress as an assassin, with the less focused episodes still contributing to that arc. It’s not super tight, but it’s not much looser than this season of Bad Batch. The downside of this coherency is that it now puts my two worst episodes first, but I think I’m just going to make the disclaimer more prominent…

As I say, I have notes for the improvement of all of these episodes too.

I also watched the episode normally titled ‘Duchess of Mandalore’ (where the Death Watch attack Satine on Coruscant, which I might rename to ‘The Death Watch’ or ‘Revenge of the Death Watch’ [yes, I know I’m essentially flipping the two episode names]), which I have as 108 but Imhotep suggested as 106 “to have the main cast regroup”. This one only shows Obi-Wan and Padmé (and a little Anakin) though, so I might give the Kamino attack a bit more time to breathe by keeping it a little later.

That said though, as per my previous post, I’d like to show Ahsoka returning to her studies in one of these episodes, which could be that episode. It could also be the 501st, to explain why Ahsoka’s not in that one during all the big drama. We shall see.

In terms of thoughts beyond the restructuring, I feel like distance has given me some new perspective (and these are on top of all of the existing feedback, all of which is going to be processed):

• I don’t think Bail in Christophsis adds anything, so I’ll take him out
• I’ll streamline the start of Christophsis a little, to make the orbital/separatist/comms situation a bit more straightforward
• I can streamline a little of Malevolence to make it a bit better paced and give it a bit of time to breathe
• I have a few cuts to tighten and smooth both Malevolence and Cloak of Darkness
• I’ve spotted a few bits of polish in audio and transitions I can give to 501st

Whee!

Absolutely. No big update today since I’m still crunching through all of the feedback here, but I’m going to start a rewatch of season one based on Imhotep’s great ideas about how it could flow. It feels like his suggestion could make the first season feel much more deliberate and cohesive, and I’ve got some ideas for how I could amend some of the crawls to enhance that further.

For a while I’ve been wanting to get the scenes of Ahsoka training in the Jedi temple while the others are busy fairly early in this season, and this watch will help me nail which of a few options I should follow.

I’m already getting excited about getting started on Season One v2.0!

CMMAP said:

Welcome back Eddie, hope you’d had a good time. Finally the polishing is starting 😉

Thanks buddy! It’s like settling into a warm bath, all that lovely Star Wars is being loaded back into my brain. I’ve already had a couple of new ideas I think will help near the start of the show, so I might post up on them in a few hours once I’ve written up my changelog document.

Right, I’m back on it, darlings!

There won’t be anything truly NEW for a while, such as a new episode, because I’m going to do the long-promised full polish pass first. I’ll be sure to update the thread title when s04e01 comes out, so people who don’t want to follow all the minutiae can check out for a while.

I’ve got a big list of fixes though, and it’s the right time to start getting the existing episodes up to the best possible standard in response to the Bad Batch and all of your feedback to date. Every existing episode will get rereleased as part of this process (if only because I’m going to update the titles and credits, though usually there’ll be more too).

To be honest I think the biggest transgression against the community by TestingOutTheTest is that they have consistently failed to make any amendments to their behaviour in the face of a huge number of comments asking that they do. I don’t think there’s any one large misdemeanour, so much as an abrasive incompatibility with the way that this community operates demonstrated in a hundred smaller interactions.

Relative to so many online communities this one is particularly peaceful and patient, yet Testing’s actions constantly piss people off and Testing doesn’t seem to care. All it would take would be for Testing to just listen to what people are saying to them and make a little effort to synergise better with the collective for the sake of demonstrating just a little understanding and respect, but they seem disinterested in doing that.

I really admire the amount of meticulous thought that’s going into this.

Artan42 said:

Energy leaves Palp’s body in RotJ. Clones have existed (with Palp’s knowledge) since AotC. Clone tanks are show in RoS. Palps wants to posses Rey in RoS.

He’s the original spirit in a imperfect clone body. That’s the only read I got from watching the film.

That was my take too.

As you say Kalee I’m taking a little break! Though not a deliberate one to be honest, it’s just drawn out a bit longer than expected. Rest assured the gears will start turning again around the 19th!

I really appreciate that analysis, eyepainter. I assumed you’d be in the right mindset to consider it fully. I haven’t watched the movie in a good while, but I thought it was likely that Theed would need some CG additions as you say, which I think we’re still just a tech evolution away from right now. I might still just do a very simple pass edit of the movie to cut that out though, along with anything else that mandates, just to see what’s still broken that would need fixing in order to make that work.

I love the level of thought that’s going into this. It’s fantastic that you have L8WRTR’s and HAL’s excellent versions to mull over and help inform your own changes. This definitely feels like the first of the ‘third generation’ of prequel fanedits.

This might be too much of a tangent for your thread, eyepainter, and it’s certainly not a request for you to make this change, but I wonder if you’ve got any insight into the idea of removing the Naboo ground battle between the Gungans and droids altogether.

It’s something I’ve been considering for a while, and like I say not a request of you, but since you’ve been interrogating the movie so completely lately I’d be interested to know if you think it’s workable (in any edit, not necessarily yours).

For me, the ground battle always takes me out of it, firstly because we have no emotional investment in any of the characters there, but secondly because it’s so CG. The landscape itself looks fake and unnatural to me. I wonder if the sky battle and Maul fight, with the threat that the droids are in Theed, could be sufficient to close out the movie.

Am I right in thinking that v4 will be your ‘final’ version, Nev?

An improvement across the board!

Bottom ones across the board now. Good job.

Agreed with Atom. Top ones work better, except for sandy scenes.

Atom-88 said:

Hi Eyepainter, The Naboo and Tatooine scenes look bette with #2 theatrical grade but I do prefer #3 HDR Cinema for the other scenes. Sorry that’s probably not that much help,bjust my personal opinion 😁.

P.S really looking forward to seeing your new edit of this👍.

Came here to say this. #3 is my favourite across the board, except for a couple of all-desert shots which I think are a little overexposed.

So, as promised for a while now, the next major activity I’ll undertake is a full polish pass to incorporate as much of the new feedback as possible. The downside, naturally, is a delay in returning to producing new episodes, but the upside is of course the refinement to the existing content, especially the earlier content which needs it the most.

Therefore, now’s the best time to give any feedback you have which you haven’t yet shared, and a good time to watch any episodes you haven’t since there’ll be a fair break until the next ones come out!

Off the top of my head, the plan therefore is as follows:

• Update the community credits to include all recent contributors
• Create a new alternative franchise title animation, combining the existing Mandalorian one with the Bad Batch one
• Aggregate all un-actioned feedback by episode into one master document
• Reconsider the ordering of episodes, especially in season one
• Re-think the odd episode title

Then for each episode (including the Tartakovsky ones):

• Rewatch my episode in isolation, noting any further changes I’d personally like to make
• Replace franchise titles and community credits
• Fix end credits to make them a bit more perfect (I don’t think anyone’s noticed but there’s a slight timing disparity in there)
• Review wipe timings (I think I based my timing on an earlier episode’s timings before they’d decided on a different standard later on)
• Make all valuable cuts - sometimes producing A and B versions of episodes for community review (e.g. with Bail in Christophsis)
• Edit opening text (thanks Imhotep and others!) and titles, including alterations due to any new placement

If anyone has any other ideas of things I could do while I’m doing a deep dive into this I’m all ears.

Oh man. This is perfect feedback Imhotep, I love this. I’m really looking forward to the forthcoming polish pass.

I won’t go into all the detail since it’s pretty universally “yes, yes, yes”. Big fan of all the crawl tweaks and your suggestions for further cuts.

I agree on Nightsisters, it does remain a little long and it is quite plot dense. I had considered splitting it into two but I think your smaller tweaks are a better idea.

Thanks so much for this level of detail!

That’s how we all started!

You have a lot of unique ideas, TOTT, have you considered investing in learning the skills required to realise them?

Sure!

SEASON THREE COMPLETE!

-thanks to the releases today of-

RELEASED - s03e08 - Rebels of Onderon

32m50s. Comprising the first two episodes of the Onderon arc, notes as above.

RELEASED - s03e09 - Kings of Onderon

36m28s. Comprising the final two episodes of the Onderon arc, notes as above.

Download link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.

And don’t forget to check out the new s03e00 bonus episode (v2.0) which transitions us from season two into season three via some Tartakovsky microseries episodes and some Forces of Destiny shorts if you’re interested. Huge thanks to Delpheas for the idea and support here.

As always, thank you all for the ideas, support, feedback and refinements along the way.

I’m interested in feedback on how this season flows as a whole - especially in terms of the balance between Ahsoka, Maul, and the other mains. This season contains all the Lux Bonteri episodes so I’m curious about how it feels with that focus.

Next up will be another short break before I do a large polish pass of the first two seasons, before diving into our season four premiere where Maul finally takes Mandalore.

Right! Of my Onderon arc, the first part (Rebels of Onderon) is rendering now, and I just need to put the presentation polish on the second half (Kings of Onderon) so that shouldn’t be far behind.

I’m glad, because in the end I did manage to find some trims to my second episode:

Firstly, I sped up the transition between the rescue in the royal square and the arrival back in the wilderness, so that now having saved the King the rebels immediately flee the city, rather than conducting a few more operations within it first over a number of days. The action now happens over a single day, with King Rash immediately pursuing them into the wilderness with his full force, so it feels a lot more tense.

Secondly, as much as I love Hondo, I removed him altogether. Previously the attack on the rebel base was conducted in phases, with enough downtime during them for Ahsoka to call Anakin, Anakin to fly to Felucia, Hondo to fly to Onderon, and Ahsoka to distribute the rockets. This added implied hours to the battle. Now, the rebels already have the anti-air rockets, and once their own assumed air superiority gets challenged by the new droid airships, they quickly move to fetch and distribute the guns. It’s no less tense, and this worked out suprisingly smoothly. There’s still a good amount of battle though since it’s a visually interesting one in an otherwise quite political episode.

As always in line with my editing goals, I strove to retain all of the emotional beats and character work, whilst keeping the jeopardy high and the pacing quite tight.

Good progress on the Onderon arc today, it’s nearly done.

I’ve finished the cuts for the first episode, getting the meat down shorter than expected to about 30 minutes. Since the first of my episodes contains the first two episodes of the original arc, we didn’t need the scene where they get attacked to prove their growing skill, as they successfully carry out the strike on the power generator now in my first episode’s second half. I’ve preserved almost all of Ahsoka’s jealousy, except for one scene I had to trim just to get the rebels from finishing their training transitioning into their move on the capital city. I also cut Saw being jealous of Steela - instead, when she’s voted as their leader, he celebrates.

The second of my episodes will probably remain quite long, since I can’t really find any content that needs cutting. I’m not a huge fan of this because I think the quality of the content doesn’t quite warrant a 50-minute runtime, but I don’t think I have an option here.

The main change I’ve made between the original presentation of this arc and my own is that I’ve moved all scenes of the kings into the second episode only. So the first episode purely focuses on the training and first success of the rebels, and will thus be called REBELS OF ONDERON. I’ve then moved the kings into the second episode, with a bit of dialogue modification, so that one then focuses entirely on the kings and their generals (and the rebellion), and will thus be called KINGS OF ONDERON.

I’m not sure exactly when I’ll have this finished, but it should be earlyish next week.

(Reposting from quite a few pages back)

I’d also prefer to not have to use opening text, since it’s not exactly a modern convention, and it’s always better to “show, don’t tell”. But I think I have to, for a few reasons:

Firstly, even in the original versions of some episodes, the newsreel at the beginning carried important exposition that the episodes didn’t cover. Dropping the newsreel - which I think is the right move to mature the tone and give me more editing control - means losing that expositon, which means needing to find an alternate home for it. A good example of this is the holocron arc, where the plotline of Cad Bane finding master Ropal actually happened in the newsreel between two episodes of the arc.

Secondly, sometimes in order to better pace or restructure an episode, I want the ability to cut exposition sequences from the episodes themselves. A one minute text description up front is better than many boring minutes I may have to keep in order to preserve a bit of explanation. A good example of this is my Christophsis, where I can get the main characters onto the planet and establish their mission and relationships without any faff, meaning we only have entertaining content to enjoy.

Thirdly, sometimes I want to recontextualise something that’s going to appear in the episode. In my Domino Squad episode I felt like my big change to make their initial failiure send them to the outpost could have done with more clarity, so I used the intro text to emphasise that they risk lesser duties if they fail. Or in my Holocron episode, to intercut Holocron (Bane + shapeshifter) with Hostage Crisis (Bane + posse), I used the text to emphasise that Bane’s a guy with a network of specialist associates.

Fourthly, I can use it to make causal links. My original Christophsis left the matter of a mole in the Republic open, and reminding the viewer of the Republic mole in Cloak of Darkness encourages the viewer to infer that it’s Argyus, since he matches that role. Mental niggle now removed - and implicitly now the viewer will be more comfortable with any elements not answered in a given episode, trusting it will be addressed later. (Note: I dropped this specific example more recently, but it was useful at the time and I may use this technique again.)

Fifthly, I can also, for example, highlight characters or events a bit more directly, so that the viewer is a little more likely to pay attention to the elements of the episodes that I think are the strongest. Emphasising the Satine angle in our first Mandalore episodes means we treat her as less of a single episode character, and pay particular attention to her. I’ll be doing the same with the political situation in the next Mandalore episode, since it’s important to the later Mauldalore arc.

Sixthly, I can use it like a “previously on The Clone Wars”, like with the Maul arc.

And finally, when I’m not using it for those purposes, I try to use it as an opportunity to keep the viewer on top of the ‘state of the galaxy’, and give a bit more of a sense of the ebb and flow of the war, and keep the whole feeling cohesive. In my first season I tried to emphasise that all of the Separatists attacks were against strategic targets - making them more of a competent threat - but that the Republic during that season successfully established a foothold. In the second season, it’s the rise of scum and villainy, etc.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that while these may be boring for the preexistent Clone Wars viewer, who knows all the necessary context, for the new Clone Wars viewer this infodump may be important to their understanding and enjoyment, therefore a more engaging way to start the episode than it would be for an existing one.

In conclusion, I think it’s more valuable to have it than not. That said though, that’s not me trying to shut down discussion on this, because I think it’s a worthy topic. If I’m missing the bar on any of that, it’s definitely worth discussing. If there are elements of the intro crawls which you guys think I should change, or apply better to achieve the above goals, or additional things I should use those crawls for, I’m all ears.

(I should emphasise here, when I share things like this, it really isn’t to shut down discussion - it’s just to “show my working” and share my thought process on the raised subject. I don’t ever want the fact that I’ve thought about something a bunch to make people feel like I consider the matter final. I can expand on any of this stuff, and there’s nothing in this process or these episodes that I wouldn’t welcome other people’s input on.)

In terms of the format, obviously text gives me the most flexibility - I don’t really have the ability to use any other format, and modifying the newsreel would be too limiting. Luckily, Star Wars as a franchise uniquely has a tolerance for text crawls, so if you can get away with it anywhere, you can get away with it here. Much like wipe transitions, it’s very much a dead medium, but this particular franchise grants a lucky amount of leeway.

My goal, I suppose, is to make this show as good as it can be - even if that ultimately means it still doesn’t pass the modern bar for quality. Because people will always love Star Wars and want the fuller picture - especially now that so much is calling back to TCW - and TCW doesn’t deserve to be the black sheep that people feel they have to avoid or resentfully trudge through. I can’t remove all the imperfections, and sometimes I’ll have to replace one imperfection with another, but ultimately every judgment has to be made against the goal of making the entirety of the experience I produce as palatable as possible - which might incorporate an up-front minute of boredom per episode. I’ll always continue to encourage discussion though, not least because you guys will have new ideas which help me bring up that quality level and minimise those imperfections.

(And if it’s a maths game, you may be pleased to know I’ve already shaved off fourteen hours of almost universally absolute dreck in those thirty episodes released to date alone, and the final 50 episodes should be saving you about 17 hours total.)

Del’s a woman, but yes! OK then, I’ll take a look at refining Dark Force Rising a little further. I’m still split on the inclusion of Bail, but I think what I might do as part of the next polish pass is release some alternate versions so everyone has an A and B to compare to.