Updated - s02e03 - Sins of the Father (Boba Fett arc) to v1.1, just fixing the credits.
Can I get a quick opinion guys? A friend recommended that I change the way I present the four cuts (Mando, Quality, Continuity, Complete) in my tracker spreadsheet. Can I get some feedback on whether the original INFO tab is clear enough, or if it isn’t, that the new ‘Info2’ tab is any clearer? I want to make it obvious to people that people who want the Mando cut just need the red episodes, but people who want the Quality cut need red + green, etc.
Updated - s02e02 - Massacre to v1.2, trimming references to Nightsister illusion, and to the defoliator tank (which still appears, but isn’t named)
Updated - s02e01 - Seven Warriors (originally Bounty Hunters) to v1.1, removing the medical station angle (making it just that the Separatists have abandoned the planet), and better hiding the loud fauna noises.
Woop! Thanks so much guys! Artan, I hope you enjoy it!
Woohoo! Thanks buddy! Thanks for all of your support - the community’s feedback and support has been MASSIVELY motivating, I cannot understate that. It’s great knowing that it’s well liked. As I said earlier, the rest that I’ve made are now polished and uploading, and with luck I might get through the rest of season two this week. Onwards!
Updated - s01e10 - A Strike at the Heart (Holocron Crisis) (Part 2) to v1.3, fixing nothing but the credits.
But with that, I can say…
No caveats, no asterisks. I’m sure there will be things I’ll need to fix or improve in future, but as of right now, the whole season is release quality.
Woop woop!
Remaining four episodes are also fully edited, they’re uploading now.
I don’t mind them, and I do like the Nightsister variations on a lot of stuff, but I think unless it serves the plot in a particular way, it’s best avoided.
Updated - s01e09 - A Strike at the Heart (Holocron Crisis) (Part 1) to v1.2, trimming the rabbit droid, adding a line of dialogue for Bane.
Question for you all: In Massacre, at one point Talzin does some witchy magic to reveal a hidden cave, where she hangs out whilst the zombies are resurrected. She uses green magic to make the rocks reveal a passage, then walks through that, then green magic seals the rocks behind her. We know it’s not an illusion and that the rock is actually solid, because later, the droids explode through it. So she’s technically using the magic to make the wall intangible. That’s a new power, and it’s got weird ramifications. Should I remove the scene of her entering the cave that way, just to avoid adding that new layer of the Force which isn’t strictly necessary? She’s already said in dialogue that she’s going to a ‘hidden cave’, so it’s not like her change of position depends on it.
Edit: I’ve convinced myself to get rid of it.
As a note, I’m OK with the way that Talzin uses the wax voodoo doll to remotely harm Count Dooku, since it’s effectively a witchy twist on Vader force choking that guy halfway across the galaxy via phonecall.
Updated - s01e08 - Duchess of Mandalore to v1.1, removing an unwanted camera swing and removing Mas Amedda’s obvious malveolence at the end.
Updated - s01e01 - The New Padawan (Christophsis) to v1.8, now with an unwelcome frame removed, and a single beat extended, when it cuts from Yularen down to the first street battle
Updated - s01e07 - The Blockade of Ryloth to v1.2, fixing, uh, just the credits I think?
Should have all of my existing episodes finished with full polish today, so that I can get on with other episodes this week and hopefully have the second season completed over the upcoming bank holiday weekend!
Snip
That’s all really wonderful to hear, RaoulJuke, thanks so much for your feedback! That’s exactly why I’m doing this. Your insights as someone who’s not watched the original series (but who knows the rest of Star Wars well) will be really valuable, so please keep them coming! The questions you mentioned (Does the story flow? Does the story feel complete? Does the series have a continuity that wants me to come back and see more? Does it feel amateurish?) are all really important to me so it’s great to see that you’re thinking about it on those terms.
That’s interesting that you liked Cloak, because I think it’s one of the weaker ones! That one I haven’t touched much at all, I don’t think I made any major edits to that, but yeah that quiet scene was quite odd. There’re a few instances in the very early episodes where the music is a bit odd, maybe they only added the music as the last thing they did, and for some episodes perhaps they didn’t have time to properly finish it?
DFR was relatively heavily restructured to make it flow like an episode rather than feel like a series of short scenes, or at least with the intention that it felt like the timings all worked out.
Keep it coming, and I’m glad you’re enjoying it!
This one is the last one that was still in ‘Review Cut’ of my original batch. ‘Review Cut’ means there’re elements I’m not necessarily settled on yet - and this episode was HEAVILY restructured from the original sources. On review, it flowed perfectly well, and I think some trims to awkward bits were what fixed it.
I’ve just fixed a few minor bugs here with this polish pass really, rather than anything radical. It was just an absolute pain to fix them because I’d lost my project files, so had to effectively patch up the current best output. It’s fine now, though please highlight anything that’s still sketchy.
Right, that’s me over the hump. I think I should be able to finish my polish pass this weekend, then next weekend my output should spike up again because I’ve got four days off, baby!
I think TestingOutTheTest might be JJ Abrams.
By this logic, I think anyone who defends TLJ is Rian Johnson. Not that I hate TLJ.
Do you not feel like the original, unedited version of TROS might be right for you?
There are some fan editing choices I agree with, but I feel the majority of criticisms are INCORRECT in the way many of you guys feel about TLJ’s criticisms.
Bolded and capitalised for emphasis. Opinions are subjective, buddy, there’s no correct or incorrect. Sometimes people are going to differ from you and all you can do in that situation is move on.
Since you feel like you disagree with the “majority” of criticisms from “many of you guys”, then perhaps you should put a thread together where you outline your opinions and use them as the basis for creating ideas for an edit, rather than the uphill struggle against this apparent majority who seem to broadly agree?
This is seriously interesting. I could absolutely go for a five hour BTS.
As an aside though, I misread your title as “A 13-part Dooku series” and was thinking “There’s no way there’s enough content to make a series focused only on Count Dooku.”
Seriously though, since the conversation here has become so polarised and we’re often talking at crossed purposes, perhaps it’d be genuinely more constructive if we split the thread into two, for the two main audiences: People who broadly thought TROS was OK, and people who broadly thought TROS was not OK. That way you’d be able to focus on the two camps’ ideas for improvements without conflicting over the core stuff.
I think TestingOutTheTest might be JJ Abrams.
By this logic, I think anyone who defends TLJ is Rian Johnson. Not that I hate TLJ.
Do you not feel like the original, unedited version of TROS might be right for you?
Thoughts to self: I’d still very much like to get the shot of Anakin and Padmé hugging in from Evil plans somewhere, and possibly the scenes of Ahsoka and Padmé / Ahsoka and Yoda from Assassin.
Possibly the latter could go into Death Watch, since it’s now my episode two, and I could change “Anakin’s escorting Ahsoka elsewhere” to make it explicit he’s taking her off to further training (since canonically and in this series there’s a schooling element to being a padawan), either under Yoda or a bit of political training under Padmé. It’d still be pretty light though, and it feels like it might take the wind out of that episode’s sails. Not sure.
The former could go in a few places. For good heft it comes after a little trauma or a little introspection regarding romance, and it needs Anakin on Coruscant. So end of Death Watch could also work - he’s just spotted that Obi-Wan has some awkward romance stuff so he goes to Padmé to enjoy that he has some love in his life. It could also come during the Holocron Crisis, which is already quite Anakin/Padmé heavy, though right now I like how those few ending beats work (with Anakin being sus with Palpatine, then Ahsoka training the younglings.) Geonosis could also be an option but I haven’t reviewed that one in a long time.
Unrelated thought:
This memory may be out of date, but I think I was intending to cut Order 66 arc down quite a lot, for pacing and because it’s key moments are pretty sparse. If I can get the whole thing very short, I’ll also look to cutting it directly into Yoda’s first episode, the Sifo-Dyas one, if possible.
I think TestingOutTheTest might be JJ Abrams.
So I think I’m going to do a little jiggling of Ahsoka episodes.
Season three will contain Ahsoka’s Lux arc:
This way there’s a focus on her relationship with a new character, a focused temptation and loss, and Onderon works as a finale because it’s about rebellion and Saw Gererra.
Season three will also give us the Maul Bros building power and working with the Mandalorians, for Rex it’ll give us the Umbara arc, and for Obi-Wan it’ll give us Rako Hardeen.
Season four will traumatise Ahsoka (and Obi-Wan):
This way, it becomes about taking her out of her comfort zone, testing her solo, making her doubt the strength or necessity of the Jedi order. We will also have Mortis (as a vision, not explicit) here, to hint at what’s to come.
Season four will open with Maul taking mandalore, and have him on its throne until just before Ahsoka’s fall, where Sidious will clean house. For Rex ideally it’ll have Order 66 in here, though I’m still working on that. For Obi-Wan it’ll be his enslavement in Kadavo and then Satine on Mandalore.
I think these chunks work nicely. Season two will feel like the most ‘anthology’ season, but it’s got episodes which tie back to previous arcs, and it continues to develop Ahsoka, so I think it’s theme is the Clone Wars spreading chaos.
I think my five seasons’ first lines of the text crawls become something like:
In terms of the Order 66 Arc, the only thing you’d have to consider is Fives is in the Umbara Arc, but besides that I really think you could put the Order 66 Arc anywhere you want to break up the action with slower intrigue. Just an idea, but would it work as a “season premiere” for your Season 5? One reason that might work well is after Ahsoka leaves the Jedi Order it would slow down a bit to set up the dominoes for the last few arcs (which tie everything together) and then escalate to the finish line. Another alternative is to make it in Season 4 before Ashoka’s Fall which would fit with the theme of deception (things aren’t always what they seem) and betrayal that we see. That would make Season 4 kind of clone heavy though.
I think I definitely want to follow Ahsoka’s fall with my Scipio episode, because I’m going to be making changes to that episode which make it more of a response to Ahsoka’s loss. But I’m thinking I could pull O66/Yoda possibly as early even as season 3.
With the removal of the invisible Dooku fight (which I think really works), slight changes to the Dooku-Talzin call, and minor trims near the end.
Hmm. Thinking about what I shared earlier regarding ordering, I wonder if I should challenge my own assumption that the ‘mystery’ aspect should come in only at the end of the show. I wonder if the Order 66 arc and Yoda’s quest arc in particular might have a lot more value and create ongoing intrigue, earlier in the series.
just finished watching s01e01 and it was really well done! the first bit with ventress I noticed characters’ locations jumped around a bit suddenly a couple times, but the rest of the episode was really smooth. and the credits artwork was excellent. only technical issue I noticed was a stray frame at 14:20 when Anakin is talking to Rex (right after “there’s been a mix-up, the youngling isn’t with me”)
also, i’m getting ‘access denied’ on s01e04 and e05
can’t wait to watch the next one!
Thanks for the stray frame get! I’ve fixed the permissions on 104 and 105, so please enjoy! Keep that feedback coming!