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EddieDean

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Join date
27-Jan-2017
Last activity
30-Jun-2025
Posts
2,549

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Post
#1440897
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

Welcome DrV! I’ve produced the first three (of five) seasons covering ~30 (of ~50) episodes already, if you’d like to check any of that out now. But currently I’m doing that polish pass that’s being discussed in these last few posts before returning to season four. It’s unlikely I’ll tighten up seasons two and three in the same way as I’m currently looking at season one (because there are simply fewer options), but it’s season one that needs it most. Still, you could watch S1 now in its current state if you wanted to get your teeth in. It’s complete for a v1, I’m just working on a v2.

Post
#1440774
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

The other thing I’m considering is actually taking the start of my Holocron episode and putting it at the start of my Duchess of Mandalore episode.

Holcron currently starts with the Republic abandoning Felucia and Ahsoka fucking that up, leaving her to be told off by the Jedi council and being put on Holocron guard duty.

Putting that at the start of the episode where the Death Watch attack Satine on Coruscant achieves a few things:

  • It gives the Mando episode a bit more Anakin and Ahsoka, again maintaining their presence throughout the season.
  • It puts a nice chunk of action up front in the Mando episode (and the Holocron episode doesn’t need more action).
  • It gives a good reason to drag the main party back to Coruscant, where they stay until the Holocron heist in the following episode, allowing Obi-Wan and Anakin to both steal away to spend time with their love interests.
  • But most importantly, it sets up Ahsoka as being punished by guard duty an episode early, making her punishment (and Mace Windu’s line of “longer [guard duty] now”) feel a bit more meaty, and making the holocron heist more of a suprise than the convenient assignment of Ahsoka there in that episode.
Post
#1440773
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

With that same intention of making the first season as smooth as possible, I’m going to add two scenes from Assassin into our now episode three, the first Mandalore episode.

In the crawl, I’ll explain that as the Republic begins the hunt for Grievous, Anakin’s escorted Ahsoka back to Coruscant to begin her studies as Obi-Wan’s come to Mandalore.

Then, probably at the first time skip (when Obi-Wan and Satine travel to Concordia) I’ll show Ahsoka studying in the temple, being a bit bored and sleepy.

Then, after Obi-Wan and Satine defeat Pre Viszla and before they return from Concordia, I’ll show Ahsoka asking to come with Anakin, but him telling her to focus on her studies.

This gives us a few benefits:

  • Firstly and mainly, that we now understand that Ahsoka might not be invited on every mission, explaining some of her later absences.
  • Secondly, a bit of bonus Ahsoka to make this episode’s new placement a bit less of a black sheep, and to keep her presence felt early.
  • Thirdly, it’s good to actually see and understand that as a junior padawan she does still have school, she’s not just a kid Jedi.
  • Fourthly, a nice bonus: In the new dialogue, she tells Anakin she’d like to come with him so she has his back. Anakin’s main action here is that he kills the Mandalorian traitor in cold blood - perhaps with Ahsoka by his side things might have gone differently? It’s a nice hint at how he’ll behave in future without her moderating influence.
Post
#1440710
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

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!

Post
#1440678
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

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!

Post
#1440665
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

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.

Post
#1440654
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

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).

Post
#1440358
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Time

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.

Post
#1438806
Topic
Star Wars Episode I: The Rise of Naboo (v3.5 released)
Time

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.

Post
#1438744
Topic
Star Wars Episode I: The Rise of Naboo (v3.5 released)
Time

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.

Post
#1438051
Topic
Star Wars Episode I: The Rise of Naboo (v3.5 released)
Time

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.

Post
#1437148
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

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.

Post
#1436828
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

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!

Post
#1435843
Topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Time

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.