Wonderful Paja, thank you very much.

I’m coming now to properly (re)editing in order, which means starting with s01e00 DARK FORCE RISING, the episode I’ve cut from the main Anakin/Ventress plots of the Tartakovsky miniseries.

It’s tough to judge quite how much to refine this, since Tartakovsky has such a unique style that’s part of the charm, although it is action-heavy and not tonally consistent with a lot of the Clone Wars content that follows. I’ll take some of Delpheas’ suggestions and a few more ideas I’ve had, and see what comes out the other end.

There’s also that odd scene of young Anakin talking to Qui-Gon, which wasn’t really connected to any of the other content, which I had shifted up front as a kind of ‘hint at what’s to come’. But on review, I realised that a better place for some of that audio might be my Mortis episode.

I know some like Mortis, but I never have, mainly because it’s so so on the nose, un-subtle, and demystifying. So it was always my plan to turn it into much more of a mysterious vision quest populated by strange entities who at least aren’t super explicit about “I AM THE DARKSIDE” etc. Making it more of a vision, it might work well to include some of that Qui-Gon content, to imply that he may be more connected to the events on Mortis. There’re some good lines:

• Anakin, it calls to you
• You must enter it, alone
• Control your fear
• You are the chosen one
• You must be tested
• Your final test is at hand
• Trust in the force

Some of these could be used during the arrival/set up, and some could be support during their Mortis adventure.

Hal 9000 said:

With respect, I think doing a poor rotoscope would be mandatory for getting this thing made.

Yeah, I really wouldn’t worry about something as insignificant as quality here.

Right, I think I’ve finally broken the structure of season three. This took more effort than I expected! The theme is ‘Shades of Grey’, as almost every person compromises or has their perspective challenged, and the third parties grow in power. The secondary plots are Lux (+Ahsoka) and the bringing together of Mandalore and Maul.

Season two, which precedes this, ends with the reveal of the new droid factory. Maul and Savage are at large (playing pirates), Mandalore is safely neutral, but we haven’t seen the Death Watch for a good while.

The episodes we have in season three are:

1. THE POLITICS OF WAR, where Padmé and Ahsoka meet Lux, and Padmé ‘successfully’ stops the creation of more clones. I think this’ll hit well after the reveal of more droids, but it’s not heavy on the rest of our main cast, unlike the other premieres and finales. I think it should still go first though, because it sets up all of the season’s plots.
2. THE DEATH OF OBI-WAN KENOBI (Rako Hardeen arc), the way I’ve cut it, is high on Obi-Wan but also gives a lot of time to absolutely all of our main cast, for a huge fun adventure with big stakes and emotions for everyone. It also gets Anakin’s doubt in the council in early. For a long time I thought about making this the premiere, because it’s such a rounded episode, but PoW sets up the season as a whole better.
3. DISSENT ON UMBARA, is this season’s ‘clone focus’ episode, which I’ve typically put towards the middle. But we’ve just had an ‘everyone’ episode, so we can have one that focuses on others. This’ll also work nicely after Padmé reducing our supply of clones, since Krell’s big thing is throwing away clones. And paced from that by an episode, it allows a little time to have passed in-universe for Krell to get established with that goal (now that he’s actively Separatist). This episode also has a little Anakin and Obi-Wan, so we don’t miss them as much with-
4. A FRIEND IN NEED, is a great Ahsoka/Lux/Death Watch story, that pushes forward a lot of our main plots. It ends with Lux leaving until the finale, which gives him enough time to get established on Onderon. I may rename this to something like TEMPTATION, since Death Watch are a temptation for Lux, and Lux is a temptation for Ahsoka. Open to ideas here.
5. PIRATES OF THE OUTER RIM, which features Obi-Wan chasing down Maul (explaining his absence from last episode if you like), and leaves Maul floating in space. I wrestled with putting this earlier to imply that Obi-Wan has been actively pursuing Maul more aggressively, but ultimately that wasn’t enough of a value add compared to other priorities.
6. HUNTED, starts and ends with Anakin and Ahsoka (but not Obi-Wan, which is neat given the previous episode) and gives us another Ahsoka solo episode. That’s OK, this season is about pushing her on her own. It also lightly reminds us about the success of training the natives on Felucia, which will come into play in the finale.
7. CITADEL, which I’m reinstating as core, was necessary to include since it gives us everything we’re missing in terms of pacing, at this point in the season. Minor bonus: Echo’s death (even though it’s really throwaway). Major bonus: Since the Rako Hardeen arc shows Anakin’s frustration with the council, we can play that up here as he grows closer to the more imperial Tarkin. I might put some background "Echo"s in the Umbara episode just to imply he’s still part of the squad at that point in time (just not a focal character).
8. SHADOW COLLECTIVE now has a bit more room to exist since it’s surrounded by two episodes with our main characters while it has none, and finally brings Maul and Mandalore together, ready to kickoff next season. It’s also far enough from Rako Hardeen that we don’t have bounty hunters clashing.
9. (/10.) REBELS/KINGS OF ONDERON Gives us all our main characters, plus rebellion, plus Saw Gerrera, plus solo Ahsoka, plus Ahsoka learning to let go via the conclusion of the Lux plotline. A worthy finale.

Season four, which follows this, begins with Maul and Death Watch actually taking Mandalore (our first and only season premiere not following a main protagonist).

You could potentially have it flicker out while he’s ‘obscuring’ the projection, in that moment when he steps through.

Minor question: At the end of the Onderon episode, Dooku tells Kalani (the droid general) to pull the troops back to Agamar. Later, in Star Wars Rebels, the rebels fight a bunch of droids and Kalani on Agamar.

I could keep that as is.

However, I could also change Dooku’s dialogue, so he’s pulling the forces back to wherever we see them next. Nice for flow, and it doesn’t technically change the fact that Kalani + troops could end up on Agamar. But it could imply a bit more threat for wherever is named.

What do you guys think?

Amazing, thanks! I really appreciate it. Here’s a quick screen test. What do you guys think?

A couple of thoughts, if nitpicking is OK Paja:

• I wonder if we should keep the ‘THE’? Not sure on this one. Technically this whole show will still be ‘The Clone Wars’ (and the ‘Refocused’ of my edit won’t appear in the opening title).
• The ‘E’ slightly overlaps the rightmost edge of the imaginary box described by the horizontal bars - could the ‘CLONE WARS’ be slightly reduced/shifted so that it fills that box?
• Perhaps a little more spacing between ‘WARS’ and the lower horizontal bar? The same as the distance between the top horizontal bar and the ‘C’ in ‘CLONE’ feels about right? Or maybe all three gaps (the one above CLONE, the one between CLONE and WARS, and the one below WARS) should be the same as the one between CLONE and WARS?
• Not sure if this is possible, since I’d guess the way this was done was by tracing over the lettering, but can ‘CLONE WARS’ be sharpened at all? It looks a little blurry to my eyes, though I don’t think that’s a major issue.

That really is a good idea.

Also, this bloody hypocritical argument:

TestingOutTheTest said:

We’re taking movie canon, here.

Test, you’ve argued yourself so many times about how you’re supposed to infer things without needing them spelt out for you.

Well, which one is it? Are inexplicit things plot holes, or are implicit inferences canon?

You seem to have real trouble accepting that others have different perspectives, you defend your own point of view strongly whilst putting others’ down with condescension, and then when called out on it CONSTANTLY, you just double down on the condescension.

You’ve got to work with this community, not against it.

That’d be awesome RogueLeader, thanks very much!

Here’s a brief update on the state of play:

I know this period of time has likely felt like a lot of thinking and not a lot of doing, but there’s been a huge amount of prep work and planning behind the scenes. I have pages and pages of notes on the content produced to date, and once I’ve written up my final thoughts on the ordering of season three (probably tomorrow) that’s absolutely everything done that gets me ready to return to editing.

I’ll (re)produce episodes now in the new - final - order. So it’ll be a good time to jump on if you’ve been waiting for the final polish pass, or if you want to view the episodes within the final coherent season structure to get a feel for how the episodes flow together. Those episodes should be relatively quick to produce, or at least have a steady cadence, so if you’re interested in watching along (and commenting!) “live” then that would be the right time to begin.

Once I’m done with finalising seasons one to three, the remainder should follow fairly steadily too, since I’m now very confident in my narrative and technical skills, and everything I need to do to polish and complete them. I’m super excited.

Anyway, one little thing to share with you all is that now I’ve really reviewed each season as a whole, I’ve now refocused the first lines of each season’s opening text (the part that appears for every episode in the season), to best emphasise the theme of the season and help show the passing eras of this ongoing war. They are as follows:

1. Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars. (Many Separatist strikes this season.)
2. The Clone Wars spread chaos and instability across the Galaxy. (Focus on Scum and Villainy and corruption.)
3. Shades of Grey emerge as the Clone Wars grow more complex. (Loads of compromise and temptation, and third parties.)
4. The ceaseless Clone Wars challenge even the strongest wills. (All focal characters get pushed to extremes.) [Not quite sure on this one, maybe change ‘ceaseless’ for something implying they’ve engulfed the galaxy.]
5. Conspiracies abound in the final days of the Clone Wars. (Order 66, Sifo-Dias, Palpatine, Mauldalore, etc.)

Here’s a preview of the new standard for TCW:R’s outros, including the main credits over concept art, the new community credits, and the remainder of the credits from the original episodes.

They’re suprisingly full of polish most won’t notice, but the main change is matching the timing of the credits and concept art to the music, which I thinks works a lot nicer. It actually means that those elements aren’t equally timed relative to each other, but to me it feels a lot smoother.

IMAGE HELP REQUEST

Is anyone able to help me produce a high-res (~1080p) version of the Tartakovsky Clone Wars microseries logo (in this font) on black (or transparent)? Either pure yellow (this exact shade) on black, or the ‘fuzzy transmission’ style (like this) on black? Alternatively, putting the Tartakovsky Clone Wars logo inside the ‘Star Wars’ container the same way as the regular Clone Wars does (like this) would be even cooler.

I’d like to use it to replace my current logo for the two made of Tartakovsky content.

Thought 3: Season two ends on the reveal of a new droid factory. Season three begins with Padmé successfully stopping the creation of more clones - made more potent if the discussion is directly following the reveal of more droids. I’ll now move Umbara up (for a few reasons) - now, having Krell deliberately throwing away clones makes even more insidious sense if he’s already a pawn of Dooku. Then in the season three finale, Onderon, I’ll play up the fact that reduced clones have forced the Republic to turn to new strategies such as guerilla tactics (implicitly indirectly seeding the future rebellion). Also, I’ve realised the kicker I want for the opening text in the season three premiere (the Padmé episode) should be: “The republic needs more soldiers, but its citizens need peace.”

Thought: Would my clone individuality anthology, Tales of the Lost Clones, be better served by highlighting Rex? Perhaps still using the ‘tales’ moniker since it’s an anthology, but TALES OF CAPTAIN REX, or THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN REX? The middle episode doesn’t focus directly on Rex but it’s Rex they use to inspire Gregor.

Thought 2: Looking more at the overall ordering and the flow of the show and seasons, I think one more thing I can play up a little is the Republic’s fear that Mandalorians side with the Separatists. It nearly happens twice in season one, and then Padmé’s major focus in Season 2 and 3 is keeping Mandalore neutral, which Ahsoka also becomes a major part of. I think that works nicely if it’s set up as a threat, then is supposedly put down, until wildcard Maul comes back on the scene, strengthens Death Watch, and retakes Mandalore.

I hate this stupid idea and I hate everyone who’s contributed to it.

Don’t exeggutor’s eggs have an explosion move? Egg bomb, or something like that? We don’t necessarily need the energy axes, we just need something scary for Finn and Rose to pull back from. That could be one of the eggs, glowing/charging up/about to explode.

In the Crait battle, should they be riding on flying pokémon? Should the battering ram be a pokémon firing some sort of beam attack? Should Finn’s ride be a pokémon that’s weak to that attack? Should ‘it’s super effective’ appear as his ride crashes?

In the final fight between Kylo and Luke, Luke’s pokémon should be one with illusion.

Rian Johnson has said that the bombers from the beginning were supposed to evoke cows (in his original script). Maybe they’re space Miltanks or similar.

I hate that I’m going to enjoy watching this stupid movie, you bastards.

This is really exciting. I’ll wait for the final version rather than the workprint, but it seems like you’ve approached this with real good insight.

Donated with pleasure! Those frame comparisons look excellent - universally better than any of the other sources. I really respect Star Wars purism but damn these versions brought up to the modern standard are the ones for me.

So, having watched the latest Bad Batch episode, I’m super pleased that I produced my Tales of the Lost Clones anthology episode the way I did. I don’t think people should have to churn through the awful Droids in the Void episodes (88 minutes!) just to get context for Gregor.

I watched through most of my season 2 again last night with fresh eyes, and found a few more trims and tucks to make.

In terms of its structure and broader context, the way I’d like to theme this period of time is that in season one the Separatists made a lot of very tactical, surgical strikes to key locations, and the Republic fought back well to establish a foothold. At the end of season one, the Separatists fail to ally with the Mandalorians, and then the Republic, having established itself, draws back many troops to restrategise for what they now see will be a long war. As the Republic do this, the Separatists do the same, going relatively quiet as they expand out across the galaxy to resource-efficiently secure more resources. And due to all of this, the Scum and Villainy get bolder and begin to rise. The big reveal at the end of the season will be that the Geonosis factories are productive again.

I’m just not quite sure about the middle of the season’s ordering.

With slight reordering, season two then feels like:

1. SEVEN WARRIORS (was ‘Bounty Hunters’) - (Re)introduces our big three, with the abandoned Felucia plot letting us contextualise that ‘breathing period’ and the introduction of Hondo. It also gives us the first hint at uprisings which will eventually form the Rebellion, and lets us see the oppression of the ‘little guy’.
2. MASSACRE - (Re)introduces our main villains, and shows one of the reasons they’ve withdrawn from the forefront of the war: The new Dathomir wildcards, which they swiftly remove from play. But it is light on main characters.
3. CORRUPTION ON MANDALORE - Gives us a bit more early Ahsoka and Padmé, and leaving Padmé on the planet implicitly keeps it in focus for longer until her return in the finale. Shows the longer-term Republic investment in keeping Mandalore neutral (i.e. not aligned with the Separatists).
4. TALES OF THE LOST CLONES - Is light on main characters too, but has a little Anakin and Obi-Wan in the one episode to balance out the previous episode a bit better. Isn’t necessarily set at this point in time (except maybe the Christophsis bit, another long term reinvestment by the Republic), but highlights more key clones and especially Rex.
5. SINS OF THE FATHER (Boba Fett trilogy) - Again shows a Republic at relative calm, as it’s letting the clone youths tour the capital ships. Having Anakin (early) and Ahsoka (later) in this episode balances a bit better with Monsters, which features Obi-Wan. Though I can’t pretend these two episodes are simultaneous as Mace is in both. I think this also works better a little later as it also features Hondo, like the premiere.
6. MONSTERS - Puts Maul on the board, and closes out the Nightsisters/Ventress plotline for now. So by now, we’ve had this period of essentially a lot of chess moves on both sides, but no major conflict. Leading us to-
7. (8,9) GEONOSIS TRILOGY - Brings all the main characters together to show that - oh shit - the Separatists have been churning out way more droids all this time. Good growth and highlights for all of our main characters.

The only weakness of this ordering that I can see is that maybe it gives us a slightly too mature Ahsoka by giving her the Corruption episode before she gets that extra Plo Koon ‘slow down’ lesson in the Boba Fett episode.

In addition, I was thinking about potentially putting a little of Savage’s hunt for Maul (originally chopped out of the episode where he finds Maul) into the Massacre episode - though I’m not sure if that’s actually added value. I might also do something with the moment where Anakin and Ahsoka sit in the diner and go “I’ve got a feeling that a familiar enemy is on the loose”. That could go anywhere and give an episode a bit more A&A flavour.

Again not so interesting, but I’ve finally worked out the modern standards for transitions that SW uses, and it turns out I was way off, so fixing this in all episodes should give us that much more of a natural experience.

For linear wipes, T-B takes 11 frames, diagonal takes 12 frames, and L-R takes 13 frames. I’d been using 24 frames (a full second), so I’ll get a bit of flexibility back too by fixing that. I’d also been using 50% feathering, whereas SW only uses 10%.

For wipes which break up the screen more quickly, like a split radial wipe or blinds wipe, it can be as short as 10 frames and only 3% feathering.

And for irises, which I’ve realised are WAY less common than I’d thought, they’re around 13 seconds and 50% feathering, though the timing is more variable.

A boring job, but it’s all value in the end…

Hah, just noticed a nice thing I can do. I’ve flipped the ordering of some Hondo episodes, meaning that his base is destroyed now BEFORE it’s ransacked (offscreen) by Grievous. But I just realised that in my ordering, the last time we see Hondo’s base is in the episode where Ventress and the Slave-1 crash out of frame in an explosion.

Putting two and two together, Slave-1 crashed into Hondo’s base. Neat!

I know this isn’t particularly interesting but I’ve just refined and finalised the community credits, trying to edge them that much closer to the style used for the majority of TCW, and I’ve gone through all of the pages of this thread to date to try to make sure that all of my major contributors (that’s you guys! ❤️) here have been named.

Just the credits and wipes to rethink now, before I can return to true editing, or at least the polish of real content.

I know this is all quite a slow pace now, following from a break too, but to my mind this is a really useful period of reflection and rethinking. It’s the deep breath before the crescendo of momentum that’ll polish the first three seasons and carry us into the final two.

I was thinking I might rethink my Christophsis from scratch, just in case. At the very least, I think there’s something I can do with reordering to have the Republic talk about how they’ve lost contact and to send down Ahsoka, only THEN cutting to Anakin and Obi-Wan on bikes heading to Ventress, to heighten the tension. This would also have the advantage of beginning the Ahsoka introduction episode on her actual introduction. I might trim some of the earlier battle prep too (my fancy scene where I used Bail audio) to both entirely cut Bail, and to get us into the meat a lot quicker. This episode might end up very short, but that’s totally OK, and I think the more coherent and inoffensive it can be, the better.

Random thought: In line with my current reordering plans, I might rename 1x06 ‘The Blockade of Ryloth’ to ‘Resistance on Ryloth’, just to give a little extra weight to Cham’s side of things, and to emphasise the emotional stakes for Ahsoka in the air.

Hal 9000 said:

EddieDean said:

Here’s a preview of TCW:R’s new franchise logos

lol, very nice. Was that a DHMIS reference?

Not consciously! I thought I’d throw in a little Monty Python for you all though.

Knight of Kalee said:

As a nice side effect it also holds up better with canon, namely having Katuunko alive for the Ryloth arc.

Yeah, I’m suprised I previously forced myself into the wrong order for that. Some distance has allowed me to ‘reset’ some opinions here, and see my work afresh.

Also I’m so glad to see you’re willing to take retroactive feedback from The Bad Batch to further tighten your cut!

Absolutely! This was always the plan, to tweak if things changed. I still don’t think we need to lean too heavily into the second Ryloth episode, so Cham vs Orn Free Taa will remain a Continuity Cut episode rather than Quality cut, but I’ll produce that sooner rather than later, for the sake of the completionists.

CMMAP said:

EddieDean said:

Here’s a preview of TCW:R’s new franchise logos, borrowing content from both Mandalorian and Bad Batch.

I prioritised elements of TCW, then the prequel era, then the wider impact of TCW, and finally the wider Filoniverse.

I thought it was a nice touch to end on Vader.

You´d had me at “…utter bull****” 😄

Haha, I’ve been meaning to do a stupid opening text for a while, this was a better opportunity than putting it in a proper episode that people will download. Wish I hadn’t buggered up the fade on the second line though, that could have made this dumb joke land a little better.

Nice order for the franchise logo and vader as the end - just perfect.

Super, glad that seems to be the consensus. The two franchise logos are actually quite different, I found - not just the resolution, but the Mandalorian one is heavily cropped, so I had to crop the Bad Batch one to match. They’re not even perfectly timed to each other or the music, so I found I had some leeway.

Here’s a preview of TCW:R’s new franchise logos, borrowing content from both Mandalorian and Bad Batch.

I prioritised elements of TCW, then the prequel era, then the wider impact of TCW, and finally the wider Filoniverse.

I thought it was a nice touch to end on Vader.

Yeah. ‘Sensing the end’ is a kind of ‘will of the force’ thing, so it’s very easy to roll with it.

If we obscured Palpatine’s face and dubbed him, we could dub him with a woman’s voice just to particularly distinguish the character from any of the known leading Sith.

The problem with this approach either way though is that you have the essentially less well explored Snoke followed by the essentially less well explored Overseer, putting a lot of weight on the idea of Kylo as the primary defeatable antagonist.

+1 for a last warning or ban. I’m fed up.