I saw that! Incredible design, it’ll be great to see these episodes properly realised.
I’m getting more and more antsy to return to this project now, and nearly span out the next easy episode before realising it’d be a bit more of a complex one. Must finish my book though, otherwise I never will…
Hey guys, I’ll be back with the start of Season 3 soon, I’m just wrapping up the book I’m reading and have dropped 50 hours into Hades, which is an incredible game by the way.
Either way, I keep coming back to my idea for the Scipio episodes, and thought I’d see if you guys have any ideas/technical knowhow.
If you recall, my plan for the Scipio trio of episodes is to cut it down into one single episode, but include the fireside chat from the Utapau unfinished episode reel. The intention is to use the fireside dialogue about the loss of Ahsoka) as some kind of memory segment, which might enhance Anakin’s harsh behaviour towards Padmé and Clovis to make it feel like his rash actions are a response to losing Ahsoka.
(The main reason I think this is worth doing is because we don’t really get the opportunity to see how Anakin responds to the loss of Ahsoka in the show the way it was originally released, due to the way the last couple of seasons were cancelled and released.)
In that case, I’ll need some kind of effect/visual to accompany the audio, I think. I was thinking either lightly wafting fog (to hit the ‘memory’ angle) or perhaps a fire animated in the same style. Does anyone know where I might get a good simple shot of ‘dream sequence’ stock fog? Or if there’s a good animated shot of a fireside in any TCW episode?
To get off topic just a tiny bit, the first cut was mentioned in a youtube video today from pretty big channel and they mentioned the things that have been added.
That’s a really decent video, especially to give people a primer on the concept of fanediting. The Ascendant stuff is almost all in the last five minutes if anyone just wants to look at that.
triadne said:
Snip
Oh that’s excellent then, I’m very glad it’s artistic choice. And bringing it closer to McQuarrie’s art is a really awesome goal, because his art has that mystical/wistful/adventurous aesthetic that the execution has often failed to capture, or that the franchise aesthetic has tended away from since, so it’d be wonderful if you manage to achieve something closer to that.
Congratulations on all of the significant effort so far, and good luck with the rest!
I think a lot of the technical changes you plan for here sound really sensible.
Intending for this to be helpful feedback rather than criticism, however, personally I have a couple of issues with the colour grade which you might want to look into. Firstly, to me, your grading looks like it’s putting a brown/grey filter over everything, which I think is detrimental. Secondly, I think the filter is particularly affecting your human fleshtones, which I think look quite pallid, giving the characters pale skin and pinkness around the eyes.
As I say - not intending to criticise your work at all, merely offering that up in case it helps you tweak to achieve your desired effect.
Imhotep, thanks very much for this feedback - that’s all really useful.
TOTLC:
Shadow:
Assault:
Great feedback and much appreciated, thank you! Please keep it coming!
Totally valid point, Peter. I agree that it doesn’t go far enough, but it’s better than the original. I’m not a woman and I’ve never been in a nonconsensual situation like that though so I’m not qualified to comment further.
Love that.
Can the Gungans be excised altogether, other than JarJar when he has to be seen with the party? Battle droids still attack Theed so there’s still jeopardy for the Naboo characters and a reason for Anakin to fly off to shut them down.
Anything that makes that whole scene consensual is a massive value add as far as I’m concerned.
Definitely worth taking a break. The amount of work you’ve done is phenomenal, but the best way to keep the enthusiasm is to take a time-out! I havent started watching the episodes yet, but I do love the intro.
Thanks Smudger! Really lovely to have you here. Yeah, I’ll take a couple of weeks to breathe, but I am champing at the bit to get stuck in to season three! Please, if you watch my edits, feel free to challenge and critique any element. And if you’re wondering why I made a particular change or format choice, I’ll do my best to explain!
Looking forward to it buddy!
Thanks! It’s always lovely to hear stuff like that, especially from editors whose movies are my definitive archival versions, since long before I ever thought I’d pick up editing myself. I did just today think that I might record myself producing an edit whilst thinking out loud, and then edit that recording to fast forward through any slow bits, for those that might be interested. But I don’t know, I’m not a particularly competent technical editor, there are people out there who people would be far more interesting to watch than me.
I enjoy sharing my thoughts - it helps me think things through and I like to imagine that there are others like you who enjoy to see my working. Part of what got me into this community beyond the edits themselves was this constant sense of wonder at the incredible problem solving that other editors often demonstrate, and I still enjoy seeing that in threads even where I’m not invested in the output. Fanediting is a cool discipline and a fascinating challenge.
That said, my huge volume of posted thoughts don’t generate as much discussion as I’d expected, which I think comes down to one of two things: Either people read it and are like ‘yeap, sound enough, carry on’, which is fine by me as it means I’ve generated good trust, or I’m just overwhelming people by massively overdoing it and they’re sitting there wishing I’d just shut up and output content. Which is also mostly fine, though I’d rather not be putting people off with a too-high volume of unnecessary analysis and losing out on having people chime in on the necessary analysis.
But hey, if it were just up to me, I’d constantly have people chattering away disseminating and rethinking and challenging, for the best possible output. Y’hear me, people? ALL feedback is ALWAYS welcome!
Either way, the project’s an absolute joy, I’m loving churning it out. As I say I’m going to force a break to read a book and finish a videogame at least before returning, but Season Three can’t take too long either. It’s a bunch of easy polish passes for the most part, plus quite heavily trimming Umbara, turning Rako Hardeen into probably two longish episodes (because it’s all good), and then possibly one more complex edit in the Onderon finale.
Comprising Legacy of Terror and Brain Invaders.
Details on the last page, link in the spreadsheet, PM for access.
And with that I can say-
(Well, except for those couple of transitions in my clones anthology, and I think one episode with a very minor bugfix pending, but shhh, I’ll fix them soon.)
Woop woop woop! Trumpets, etc.
Now I’m going to force myself to take a little break because it’s been all-out for a couple of months. Only a little one though!
Comprising Landing at Point Rain and Weapons Factory.
Details on the last page, link in the spreadsheet, PM for access.
The final episode of this three-part arc and the season is rendering now, should be up in three hours max.
I nearly just rendered an episode with incomplete titles by mistake.
It would have read:
"The Clone Wars spread instability and chaos across the galaxy.
Mando Mando Mando.
Mando Mando Mando.
Mando Mando Mando.
Mando Mando Mando.
Mando Mando."
I’ve no doubt that’s exactly what Dave Filoni’s template document for scripts for episodes of the Mandalorian looks like, but it’s not going to suffice for you guys.
I think I’d like to stick with Return of Maul as the priority, because I really want the show to be bold about the fact that “MAUL IS COMING BACK, deal with it”, because it’s useful to rip the plaster (‘band-aid’) off early and let people come to terms with it earlier.
So I’m more inclined to rename the Geonosis episode, and I think for the sake of uniformity for that now-trilogy I’ll stick with the ‘X of/on Geonosis’ format. I suppose it’s clear that we are returning to it, so Assault works fairly well because it implies some urgency after Padmé’s discovery. That would also help preemptively let people know that Padmé’s episode is not likely to be action heavy, so would help manage expectations there.
Maybe Assault on Geonosis?
Hm! I can’t have The Return of Maul, then two episodes later, Return to Geonosis. Help!
As you all know, I also prefer to consider AOTC as Episode 1, with my own rearrangement of episodes from “The Clone Wars” forming an in-between-quel, which I titled ‘Labyrinth of Evil.’
Which episodes did you choose for your inbetweenquel? What do you think best bridges AOTC/ROTS?
That’s worth thinking about. The reason I left those transitions unfinished is because I find it’s a different mental discipline to fix the music - it comes less naturally to me - so I have to change mental gears for it. In this case, I’m cutting at the point where the music would otherwise drop into the bombasic Bah-BAHH of the original credits, which I want to avoid. So I need to find alternate music to fade out to instead, which takes a fair amount of time.
Regarding the intro texts, the first one is the only one that actually matters - we need to know the Republic guys got ambushed and we’ve ‘returned’ to Christophsis. But the other two give all of their context within the episode. So I don’t mind so much people forgetting them - and they are certainly very heavy - but I don’t want the audience feeling overwhelmed or disoriented. I might have to do something different here, so if others’ could give more feedback on this too that’d be helpful.
If I do change the timing of the intertitles, I’ll need to find alternative music for them too, which’ll take a little while.
A renamed (and lightly edited) Senate Spy. Fully complete.
Details over the last few posts, link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM for access.
I’ll see what I can add back into the Poe interrogation scene in terms of audio.
In terms of progress on Act 3, the major thing is of course the Hosnian Destruction. I decided to use the entire music track this time in order to fit all of the important characters reacting to the destruction, including Rey, Finn, and Kylo:
Password: fanedit
There are of course audio issues to sort out. The actual destruction scene had to be practically silent due to moving the music around, though I kind of like it.
It may be possible to remove the Resistance officers from around Leia in that final shot, but would that be worth the effort?
I haven’t followed the context for this change but I didn’t see any problem with the Leia shot. To me it fit perfectly, I don’t know why the resistance officers were problematic.
Watching this reminded me of a personal annoyance that just gets me every time, and since I first saw it I now can’t unsee it. In the room where Kylo kills Han, the balcony/entrance that Rey and Finn stand at has a railing, and on that railing are lights. The lights have a red light on the left and right of the fixture. But really annoyingly, the lights just look clipped on to the railing, and one is offset. I don’t know why, but that’s always taken me out of the scene, even though it’s not even really that egregious, possibly not even an error.
Oh, I had another idea for the Reconnaissance briefing, which I think Hal would be interested in as well:
Password: fanedit
I managed to put a reference in there to the Senate and link it to the Hosnian system, which solves the issue in Restructured of never actually knowing what planet was destroyed. It also arguably does a better job of conveying this information than the theatrical version, since we are given the info before the planet is blown up and not twenty minutes after.
I did have to sacrifice Snap’s line about contacting the Republic, but I think it’s a fair price since that line wasn’t working too well anyway.
There’s also the oddity that Leia says ‘the Senate is their next target’, but it can easily be interpreted that she’s referring to the escalating series of First Order attacks throughout the film.
This is really, really good. A huge value add.
Review version only because there’re two unfinished transitions (out of the first two episodes), and because it’s a complex edit and I’d like to see how this one works for you guys. Feedback on this one would be very helpful, please.
Details over the last few posts, link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM for access.