EddieDean

Knight of Kalee said:

Needless to say I’m on board with this new dialogue, is way more helpful.

As a marginal note, the cat-like alien was never supposed to be Ventress. She sneaks behind him and silently murders him, that’s why Dooku later says to her ‘My host would applaud your abilities posthumously’.

OHHHHHHHH

Edit: I think I’ll stick with the way I’ve cut it, but OHHHHHHH. Guess I’ve misinterpreted that scene for, oh, eighteen years. Part of me is tempted to keep it but add a quiet stab sound, but I think this new way is a bit cleaner.

Still, OHHHHHHHH.

Ice said:

EddieDean, in the Tartakovsky series at 16:59 there is a super fast cut which I think is not intentional

Thanks Ice, I’ve fixed this now and it’ll be in the next upload. That cut was already very quick in the original - one of the cuts between two episodes originally - but I’ve smoothed it out a bit now, so it’s not quite as sharp. It still cuts quickly, but now it’s no quicker than the original was, and I think Obi-Wan’s landing works as the final ‘beat’ a lot better.

Hal, I also took your suggestion for the fadeout/fadein for Ventress’ first mission.

I think this whole episode has popping audio so I’ll also fix that before inserting Hal’s new dialogue and uploading what should be a worthy full-polish version of this episode.

That’s my pleasure. I’m certainly not an authority here - in my own thread you can see examples of where I’ve failed and have offended people. But I can speak from the experience of knowing I’m not a great communicator but always trying to be better.

What I can say for certain is that both you and GMatias have had a lot of great ideas each, worth pursuing.

Taking up Hal’s kind offer of subtitling my Tartakovsky episode, I realised that subtitling gives us the opportunity to change the context of the speech. So I’ve asked for the cat-being, who is now someone other than Ventress, to say:

[Count Dooku lands and exits his ship]
PREVIOUS LINE: Everything has been arranged precisely as you have requested, most illustrious Count Dooku
NEW LINE: The fallen Jedi apprentice seems likely to win your gauntlet, noble Count Dooku.
[Count Dooku: “Indeed”]
[She leads him in, they overlook the arena]
PREVIOUS LINE: I trust you will find what you seek.
NEW LINE: Watch her destroy these mighty warriors.
[We see fights, we focus on Dooku and the cat seated]
[//Removed shots of Dooku talking to Cat-Ventress//]
[Ventress lands in the arena]

That gives us a little context for Ventress, who is the main new takeaway of this prelude episode, so I think it’s useful. “Fallen Jedi” gives her acceptable backstory even if we’re sticklers for the rule of two, and an “apprentice” defeating these (presumed) top-tier combatants shows that even a Jedi padawan is formidable - helpful in justifying Ahsoka’s early seniority. Having Dooku agree (“Indeed”) that Ventress is likely to win also justifies him having two convenient lightsabers ready for her later, and ties in to the later angle that he respects Dathomiri ‘stock’.

I know we’ve identified that the young Luke and Leia scenes in TROS are recomposited images from the OT as opposed to digital assets like Rogue One’s Leia and Tarkin, but a deepfake pass on them might help smooth them out a bit?

Rogue Leader, those are all good ideas. I like Leia’s politics angle for the Ewoks. Is it worth considering subtitles for the Ewoks to help sell that concept?

My favourite edit of ROTJ, which I don’t think is available any more and I’ve forgotten the name of, also restructured the ending.

The editor made the sensible observation that there’s very litle jeopardy at the end because all of the good guys are trying to destroy the second Death Star, whilst Luke and the Vader he’s trying to redeem are on there, so you kind of know they can’t destroy it while it’s populated by our main characters. So to fix that, they used an alternate establishing shot to have the shuttle take Luke and Vader to the Emperor’s throne room now on the Super Star Destroyer, and created some shots of the DSII flying past the windows of the Emperor’s throne room to reinforce it.

Now, the Rebels aren’t trying to blow up a station with the hero of the Rebellion/last Jedi Knight on it.

This edit also enabled a restructuring to achieve what Michael Arndt said was always one of the strengths of A New Hope, which was that all of the main character arcs got to burst into success at the same moment (originally Han returning, Luke taking the shot, destruction of the Death Star), so similarly the edit mentioned above was able to be better timed because you weren’t dependent on getting Luke off the DSII before kicking off the attack.

Anakin Starkiller said:

It’s a little rude to just call theyre ideas dumb. Constructive criticism is helpful, but just judging something without giving any alternatives or ideas doesn’t help anytime.

I’m sorry. I’m not very good at gauging tone and tend to come off meaner than I intend. Could someone provide with an alternative wording to my earlier comment that would be considered not rude?

Folks, Anakin Starkiller has mentioned in a few places that he struggles with tone a little, which does buy a little tolerance - though obviously that’s not a free pass and being disrespectful is still problematic.

Anakin Starkiller, the thing that people are objecting to here is the calling of an idea ‘dumb’, because it can seem like a personal attack. All ideas are subjective (i.e. it’s a matter of personal opinion), so technically there’s no right or wrong here, and no bad ideas.

In a situation like this where you think an idea may not work, it’s best to say just that - “I think that might not work”, and then give your reasoning. That way you’re analysing the idea rather than appearing to criticise the person who had it.

It’s always best to avoid language which insults someone’s intelligence - “dumb”, “idiot”, “stupid”, etc - firstly because it’s never pleasant to hear, and secondly because it doesn’t give them any feedback which might help them refine their ideas and grow from. None of us are locked into our weaknesses, all of us are on a journey of personal growth at our own pace, so it’s always best to treat others as people who are growing, and where sensible it’s kind to hand them things (like encouragement, and good analysis of ideas) which might help them grow.

It’s also good to show that what you’re sharing is your own opinion (using “I think”, for example), rather than trying to pass something off as an objective fact (e.g. "That idea is bad)

So you might instead want to say something like:

Anakin Starkiller said:

I don’t think using Rogue One footage would really work, because it’s very clearly set during the OT. There’s no way to remove all the iconography in a way that would make it plausibly pass off as being in the ST era.

All of your analysis is still in place, but this way you’re showing that it’s just your opinion, and you’re talking about their idea, rather than appearing to attack their character.

You could take that further if you wanted to encourage the poster, and help them work through the challenges rather than writing the idea off before it gets off the ground:

Anakin Starkiller said:

I see exactly what you’re trying to do here, and this is a creative idea. How would you handle the aesthetic differences between OT-era Rogue One footage and Sequel-era footage? Without CG to change the Rogue One ships into sequel era ones, you’d need to find some way to explain or justify that the different ships in the two scenes are different ships of the same factions, what are you thinking of for that? The opening crawl is probably your most accessible possibility.

One thing you might also consider, Anakin Starkiller, is to add a signature to your posts. This would be a small message that would automatically appear under all of the posts you make here, and might help to avoid this situation in future. For example you could have it say “I apologise if the above message sounded rude - I have difficulty gauging tone.” It’s up to you whether or not you want that appearing on all of your messages though, it may not be something you want to broadcast. If you do want to do that, you can click on your icon in the top right, then ‘Your Account’, then type your message into the ‘Post Signature’ area and save.

If you do that, bear in mind it wouldn’t become a free pass though - it’s still important to think about the wording you’re using when challenging other people’s ideas.

Yeah. it’s definitely an awkward choice. On the one hand, I don’t like taking things out that are officially good™. But here, maybe pacing and efficiency is gooder™?

Excellent, Knight! If you do check out the potential Grievous Intrigue/Citadel links, I’m eager to know your thoughts, because it’s a good way down the list for me so not something I’ll encounter for a while. I’ll review Revival/Younglings though - since I’m trying to emphasise the Ahsoka as teacher angle, maybe I’ll pull Younglings up a bit anyway.

I don’t intend to release alternate cuts - I’d like to have a set of one version of each episode, which people can select from based on personal taste - so if anyone really objects to losing the invisible fight they should shout now! Like I say, removing that was a suprise to me because I do kind of like it, but at the same time it’s not a value add and I think the episode a whole would be stronger without it - mostly because the episode already has so many scenes and events the it feels like “and then, and then, and then, and then”. It’s a great episode, it’s just denser than most.

Right, I’ve finished my period of ‘taking stock’. Prepare for a wall of text.

Of the episodes I planned to exclude, I’m certain I still want to exclude them all. That means I won’t be including them in my edit in any capacity - not my Quality Cut, nor any of the lesser ones. That covers Huttlet Crisis (from the movie), Ambush, R2 Captured duology, Bombad Jedi, Blue Shadow Virus duology, Sphere of Influence, Ziro the Hutt (except the Senate Hostage Crisis scenes), Droids in the Void (except Gregor), The Disappeared, and Crystal Crisis (unfinished episode). I won’t be adding credits etc to these episodes.

Of the episodes I planned to include only in the Continuity and Complete cuts, I’m certain I still want to keep them out of the Quality cut. That means they will get edits (though I may be relatively lazy here and they might just be polish rather than the execution of any creative ideas), and they will get full TCW:R credits, so you can watch them as part of TCW:R if you want to. I won’t be editing these until after I’ve created my Quality Cut, though. This list includes the Tartatkovsky Microseries Mon Calamari/Dantooine/Ilum episode (already complete as I did it while I did the other Tartakovsky one), the Mon Calamari arc, Lightsaber Lost (already complete as it was Quality but got downgraded), Lair of Grievous, Dooku Captured duology, Crash on Maridun duology, Orto Plutonia, Innocents of/Liberty on Ryloth duology, Zillo Beast duology, Grievous Intrigue (unless upgraded), Shadow Warrior (unless downgraded), the Droids duology, Tartakovsky’s Nelvaan arc, Tartakovsky’s Coruscant arc, something with the remainder of the Christophsis content (unless any of it gets upgraded into a ‘Lost Clones’ anthology), and Pursuit of Peace/Senate Murders (unless upgraded).

Of those, I found some useful lines and scenes which I may be able to repurpose to improve more important episodes, as detailed in the last couple of pages.

I then watched over all of my episodes again, in the new chronological order. Broadly I’m very pleased, though I think I have a lot of refinement to do. I’ll be bringing them all up to standard before producing any more episodes. I’ll also do a pass of their opening text just to make sure everything flows in the new order. I have collected all of the comments previously left in this thread, so they will be actioned if they’ve been mentioned here. But I also wanted to specifically highlight a few things:

• Main takeaway 1: I must improve the music. This might mean picking up the skills myself, though I have really no idea where to start. I love McFibb’s music and will absolutely preserve them, but I mean that the transitions into my episodes (from near silence) and out of my episodes (into the piano which kicks off my outro music) are poor. I’ll see if finding suitable replacement tracks for the content in those sections (replacing the original music in the episode, NOT replacing McFibb’s credit music) gives me more to work with. (I might also think about improving the actual music within the episodes themselves, though that’s not going to be anywhere near first pass for this project.)
• Main takeaway 2: The art in the credits is good, but sometimes too low resolution. Chase Adams used a cool technique which kind of turned images into tapestry style, which served to increase the resolution by artistically obscuring some of the detail. If anyone knows how he did that, or has other ideas for improving the credits imagery, that’d be much appreciated.
• s01e00 - DARK FORCE RISING (Tartakovsky intro) - Via Hal I’ll fix the missing subtitles.
• s01e01 - THE NEW PADAWAN (Christophsis) - I have fixed the video except for one shot, but haven’t released this to you all yet. I’ll fix this. I’ve also colour-corrected Bail in the last shot a bit more, and found another shot which might help his appearance at the end land a little better. There are a few transitions I need to fix, but I have the skills now. I did find this episode contained very quick cuts, but I don’t have options here really - I’m using the longest shots I can. You guys can still highlight anything you feel doesn’t quite land though, for me to investigate.
• s01e02 - THE DEATH WATCH - One of the opening scenes in Duchess where a scout reports to Almec and they summarise Satine’s importance may work better here as the ending. This episode was the first I released and still has the old music and old credits art and timings, which I’ll fix, though I’m still short on a couple of pieces of art, which I’m not sure how I’ll work around.
• s01e03 - MALEVOLENCE - I’ll tidy up the Plo Koon/Republic cruiser intercut scene to remove the Republic cruiser, and just have Plo cover the key information. I’ll also remove the briefing room chatter of “the head clanker” just because it’s delivered quite awkwardly and we know who Grievous is. I’ll be replacing a goofy pod-killer droid line with “No survivors” from the Lurmen episode.
• s01e04 - THE 501st LEGION - I’ll trim “open up”/“didn’t say please” to remove banter in a life-or-death situation. I’ll dub Hevy’s death with him now saying “Brothers!” in a slightly pained way, from Hidden Enemy. I’m not going to add the original worm scene in, because I don’t mind the suprise worm, but I will cut the dialogue where a droid specifically highlights the number of surviving clones who escaped. I’m happy to imply Cutup died offscreen during the Commando attack. I’m also happy to leave the fight in the training room having a clone shot then fine - this is a simulation, and we don’t know the rules. The clone who gets injured gets properly injured - which is why he stays down if we want to think of it that way - and that can be a part of why they failed in a simulation. The scene where the main clones meet 99 when they return needs to not imply they’ve been away for ages, and the reaction to Hevy’s death needs some tweaking. I’ll regretfully remove Chase’s animated credits and go back to static ones, since I can’t output every episode to that same standard. Though I’ll hope for more in future, and welcome more of Chase’s if he’s able to produce more, and probably I’ll eventually come to this myself if nobody else can help. (But probably not for the first pass of the project.)
• s01e05 - CLOAK OF DARKNESS - No notes for this one. I don’t think I can find better insults for Ahsoka to use to describe Ventress, but it’s OK either way.
• s01e06 - CHILDREN OF NIGHT (Nightsisters) - This was a suprise to me, but I think I’m going to remove the initial fight between the invisible Nightsisters and Dooku. It doesn’t serve the plot at all - Ventress and the Nightsisters are already vengeful against Dooku, and Dooku already has cause to want a new assassin whether or not he’s just had an attempt on his life, so there’s no change before or after. And we don’t really need another lightsaber fight - even one that’s bad guy on bad guy. Ventress even fights Dooku later in this episode, so all the emotions get to come out in combat then. The loss here would be that Dooku’s kind of badass in it, though I don’t know quite that it’s valuable to state that, and the gain would be tightening the pacing (in a LOOONG episode that’s already a large sequence of events) and also the fact that invisibility is quite a weird force power, even for witches. This will require slight trims to the scene where Talzin calls him, because otherwise he’s surrounded by broken glass with no explanation. I’m also going to trim the final hangar fight a bit.
• s01e07 - THE BLOCKADE OF RYLOTH - I need to add a wipe and remove a wipe, and fix a few transitions. Nobody fed back on it, but I don’t think my artificial scene where the Toydarian (who used to be a guard) offers Bail Organa aid flows naturally. I think I’ll either get this scene to work or just drop it - The surrounding context works just fine if I can’t. I needed some space from this episode because it was a complex interlacing, but on review I think it worked totally fine. These fixes might be a pain to do though, because I lost the project file even though I have triple backups.
• s01e08 - DUCHESS OF MANDALORE - I might remove the opening scene with the scout and Almec, so that the Almec conversation can be used in The Death Watch. There’s an odd camera swing where I trimmed Obi-Wan’s infiltration, and a bit too much obvious malevolence from Mas Amedda at the end, which needs a trim.
• s01e09/10 - A STRIKE AT THE HEART (Holocron Crisis) - I’m going to cut the goofy rabbit droid from when Bane’s team take the Senate. When Bane’s called the shapeshifter but she’s spent a while talking to Ahsoka, I’m going to add “Talk to me” from Evil Plans before the shapeshifter replies “I’m in”, to imply impatience and tie it better to what we’ve just seen. As Anakin’s been captured I’m also going to have Bane say “The Separatists are paying a million a head for Jedi” from Hunt for Ziro, which works here but also explains a little extra in the Boba Fett arc. There’re a couple of silent mouth movements elsewhere which need trims. (As an aside, I’m still so pleased with how the Ahsoka teaching ending comes together to cap this off. Anakin even says “this weapon is your life” to Padmé at the start, then Ahsoka passes that on at the end. My reading now is that she realises that the Sith Lord has a multi-generational plan. So she immediately shifts into a mode where she’s solving that problem - by investing in the next generation. And that’s ultimately how Palpatine is defeated, so she’s proven completely right, and therefore wise beyond her years.)
• s02e01 - SEVEN WARRIORS - I’m going to remove the ‘medical station has gone quiet’ angle, since in A Strike at The Heart the Republic have abandoned Felucia. Instead, they’ll have heard rumours that the Separatists have pulled their forces together elsewhere so they’re checking if they can take Felucia back, only to find a cursory defense in orbit. I’ll try to remove the audio of large creatures crunching about if possible.
• s02e02 - MASSACRE - Since I don’t want Dooku to fight invisible Nightsisters in my Children of Night, I won’t have him reference ‘Illusions’ here. I’ll also remove the mention of the Defoliator - it’ll still be present, it’ll just be a special sort of tank that fires a kind of fire bomb, without a name. (I don’t like “unique” weaponry appearing then never being used again, much like the incredible EMP weapon that takes out a whole army in Zillo Beast. I don’t care that it caused a sinkhole, there’d be times when it’d still be very useful, like in space…)
• s02e03 - SINS OF THE FATHER (Boba Fett) - All good, though I think I rendered this without credits art by mistake. (Total aside but I love the scene where a clone is taking the cadets in the wrong direction, and the Admiral puts on a totally happy face and makes out like going to the escape pods is a game, so as not to panic them. That scene alone made me comfortable removing his other early appearances, because it showed absolute lightning-fast empathy and tactical good sense, which is all we need to depend on later for Boba’s arc.)
• s02e06 - RETURN OF MAUL - I’ll shift the one scene where Yoda and Obi-Wan react to the Return of Maul later, to after Maul’s just had his sanity recovered and then he runs outside to scream. This way, that scream carries more potency, implicitly causing a kind of rageful echo in the force. That Maul scene it comes from can be happily interrupted there.

After that it’s back to normal production, though I’ll be reviewing a few episodes in batches just to see what value I can create. I’ve got Assassin coming up though I really don’t like the idea of Ahsoka only having known future visions in that one episode, it doesn’t feel quite right for her.

Oh, and I still need to have a little think about my Maul arc pacing. It won’t shift by much, but now I feel I’ve adopted a five-season structure, I’ll just see if Maul wants to wiggle a bit to fit right.

Finally, just to be clear - the only way this project will be left incomplete will be if I’m incapacitated. I’m extremely motivated and excited to see this all the way through. I want to create the optimal completed product, and that isn’t going to change. Sooner or later, you’ll have your 50+ episode Quality Cut, and after that, your 64+ episode Complete Cut.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at, my dears!

Coincidentally, I’m watching that right now, and yeah, I totally agree.

Hey, that’s lovely of you to say Kane, thanks! ❤️

I haven’t watched yours, but I gladly would (feel free to PM!) - are there any cuts in particular that you’re proud of that you think work particularly well, that I should look out for? You’ve definitely picked out the main themes that a fan of the recent canon would enjoy - Geonosis is a great all-rounder, then Maul, then Mandalore, then Ahsoka, then the finale. Definitely the show’s big beats with the biggest impact, and absolutely the right set to get someone up to speed in a punchy way. I’m just about to edit the Geonosis arc myself so am especially curious how you’ve approached it.

That’d be fantastic HAL, thanks. Prequel seems sensible. I’ll send over the clip.

How odd. Thanks for the spot, I’ll see about adding those in. I know nothing about creating subtitle tracks, so if you (or anyone else) can point me to a decent overview/tutorial that’d be useful, please.

Thanks buddy, I’ll check that out!

I’ve just gone through my own first few episodes, and they do have glitches in their current form that I’m not pleased with. I’ll polish them all up ASAP, I can’t have new people come in and see them in this unpolished state.

I let my momentum get away from me!

BrotherOfSasquatch said:

RogueLeader said:

I think the trouble is trying to determine what a malfunctioning saber looks like, since there aren’t many examples of that.

Well, there is this one part in the Rebels TV show… >.>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEh9BA1GyFM

Obi-Wan’s got a little damaged in Dooku Captured in the Clone Wars, all his did was retract and extend quickly a few times, as if it was being quickly turned on and off.

Continuing to take stock of my excluded / non-Quality-Cut episodes.

The Dooku Captured duology is alright, when I get to it I can probably cut out having them all tied together, and minimise Jar Jar, which were my main objections. There’re a couple of decent Dooku lines I might use elsewhere, and Obi-Wan’s spacewalk which is quite nice. Weirdly enough, the original episode has discontinuity, where the fist episode ends with Obi-Wan and Anakin successfully avoiding being drugged, and then the second episode having them wake up having been drugged.

The Lurmen duology is quite boring, though it begins with one of the best space battles of the series. I might cut the entirety of Lok Durd and the Lurmen, leaving it to be the great space battle followed by the quick theft of a shuttle from the Separatist compound, unless I can find a better place for it. Problem is probably that Aayala Secura doesn’t appear in many other episodes, so you can’t play out the full thing, though it might make an opening to any old episode if you just cut after Anakin blacks out. I’d want to at least have a bit of context though, rather than just sticking it on somewhere. If I can’t make the cut of Lok Durd and the Lurmen work, I’d just release this in full.

Orto Plutonia has nothing to use, but is fine (in the Complete Cut).

Yeah, Clone standalone would be Quality Cut. Deserter is the ‘core’ clone individuality episode, I think, so if you’re only including one such episode I think that’s the one. But bringing a few good ones together on the same theme might help sell the concept and allow you to highlight the best moments without needing deep dives, so that when that thread starts getting pulled more later, you’re lined up for it, without having had to take focus off the main plots of the show for too long. The secondary feature of such an anthology would be to pull Rex into more focus and allow him to become more of a main character, a little further into the show than the beginning, when you’re ready to follow someone new.

Still just taking stock and refining future plans.

I’m not sure yet if the traitor clone stuff from Hidden Enemy should work best as an anthology episode grouped with Cut Lawquane from Deserter plus Gregor from Droids in the Void. ‘Tales of the Lost Clones’, to highlight Clone individuality in one focused grouping before we start to see more of that, especially with Rex, in the Umbara and Order 66 arcs. This is probably the preferred option, keeping these small but decent arcs focused as one rather than peppered throughout (which would divert us from the main thrust of the show).

However, if I don’t use Hidden Enemy like that, then the Christophsis content left over from my first episode might be best presented as a ‘Return to Christophsis’ episode as follows: Later in the war, the crystal tech factories on Christophsis have successfully miniaturised stealth tech, leading to the creation of the stealth ship prototype. However, someone in the Republic military has leaked the information about a new secret Republic weapon to the Separatists, and they’ve reacted with a blockade while they attempt to identify and capture the weapon. We then play both episodes intercut - Anakin’s brought in to break the blockade whilst Rex on the surface investigates the leak. The reveal that it’s Trench that’s the bad guy and the implicit threat of him, justifies the use of the stealth ship even though that means revealing what it is, so they effectively ‘spend’ the one use of the stealth ship on destroying Trench. Having the traitor be linked to the stealth ship and implicitly leaking the tech specs can help justify why we don’t see this tech again.

I only ever wanted these elements to appear late in the show anyway (as opposed to earlier even than episode one, the movie), because in their original placement I think it’s way too early to see stealth tech (that’s never used again) and it’s way too early to have a traitor clone.

Either way, I don’t think this episode would become a part of my quality cut, becoming Complete Cut at best (or Continuity Cut if Bad Batch returns to the stealth ship idea.)

(The main reason I watched these was to see about other collateral I might use elsewhere - and I did find a useful Bail shot in the newsreel which might help expand my Bail scenes at the end of my s01e01, so totally useful!)

Are you sure? We’re talking about the Cat-lady right? As far as I remember it, it was always played for jokes, with her having quite a lot of unsubtitled alien speech followed by Dooku’s “Indeed.”

Just a thought guys - is it maybe just worth removing Luke saying he’ll give her three lessons? Then there’s no missing third lesson. He can give her an explicit ‘lesson one’, and follow that up with an explicit ‘lesson two’, and then, you know, just stop counting, and stop making each lesson a quantifiable thing as he just starts sharing wisdom and experience ad-hoc.

Here’s something else worth thinking about - the first lines of my crawls.

It’s my intention that they serve as a kind of top-level state of the galaxy (to be followed by more detail), so I think having them be the same per batch is acceptable. I don’t think I want to write 50 unique ones!

Back when I was working as eight production seasons, I assumed I’d do eight, but if I’m now working towards five release seasons perhaps I should just have five.

In which case we might have something like:

1. It is the early days of the Clone Wars. (Christophsis up to Holocron Crisis, the establishing acts of the war)
2. Darkness grows as the Clone Wars engulf the galaxy. (a lot of bounty hunter episodes plus Geonosis)
3. The Clone Wars continue to rage across the galaxy. (Citadel, Lux, Rako Hardeen, Kadavo)
4. The long-fought Clone Wars are taking their toll on the galaxy. (Younglings, Onderon, Umbara, Mortis, Ahsoka’s Fall)
5. Mysteries abound in the final days of the Clone Wars. (O66, Yoda, Bad Batch, Maul)

Interested in thoughts.

I didn’t think my episodes were being produced with subtitles, Hal, so the fact they have any is a suprise to me! In all my demuxing and rendering, subtitles aren’t a part of my pipeline. I did make a trim there though, deliberately cutting those lines, so ideally the subtitles wouldn’t feature either.

I’ll take a note to think about a fade on the Sidious beat.

Kalee, lovely notes thanks - this is exactly why I share this stuff.

On Grievous Intrigue, my notes say that he’s got some real malice in this episode, so it does serve as something to strengthen Grievous. I don’t know yet if that makes preservation of the whole episode worthy, but I’m considering it. The other option I realised we have is possibly taking the good malice (which I think I remember being mainly upfront) and turning this into Grievous capturing Even Piell, leading up to the Citadel arc. There’s quite a lot of Piell getting captured footage in the Citadel newsreel which might work.

On Younglings, thanks for the detail. I hadn’t noticed the models change but I’ll compare them. I do really want to keep Maul as an ever-present threat, who just keeps growing in power, and that really starts with Revival, so I want that early. I’m tending towards keeping the Younglings arc in some form since it features more of Ahsoka teaching, which I want to lean into in this edit. So ideally I can play Revival > Younglings in that order. I might have to downplay the Grievous vs Hondo angle in Younglings to achieve this, so there’s no implicit clash. The Florrum base doesn’t need to have been sacked by Grievous, I don’t think that’s a particularly important plot point.

One thing I was thinking about Younglings though is that you could probably drop the first episode altogether - as much as I do kinda like it - because really the Younglings shouldn’t be the focus of the arc, Ahsoka and our main characters should. I think that can work. (And of course I’d still release the first episode as part of my Continuity Cut if so, so it’d be there if people wanted it.)

I really like that note about the investgations. In the final season I want to be emphasising the mysteries of the war, so having the Jedi act in response to the O66 arc and mentioning that in my crawls seems like a good idea plus a nice nod to continuity, thanks.

(I’ve already put a couple of cheeky nods in my crawls in a couple of places, though nobody seems to have noticed yet 😉)

Looking over the Droids in the Void arc, while I will be dumping the majority, I agree now with the poster who suggested that the Gregor content is salvageable. It has a couple of flaws (mainly surrounding goofiness) but mostly they can be dug around, and it ends up being quite a decent little story. I think the lead-in would just explain that the tiny Republic Colonel Gascon’s technical infiltration team have crashed on a separatist droid mining planet and leave it at that.

There’s nothing in the first episode which is worth using for this. The second episode’s ice comets are a lovely setting with nothing it can be tied to. And I don’t want to use some of the nicer establishing shots of Aberfar since I think the less we lean into its weirdness the better. The fourth has that nice explosion at a conference at the end, which you could work into some kind of sabotage given context.

Edit: Bardotta is pretty useless too. Maybe the odd good Mace line but nothing major. It’s cool to see Mace and Talzin together but there’s nowhere that could serve.

While I’m having a brief period of taking stock, I’ve just gone over my first 15 pages where I did all the reviews and a lot of you made great suggestions, and I have taken a quick note of some episodes I should review together:

• Corruption / The Academy / Assassin / Heroes on Both Sides / Pursuit of Peace / Senate Murders: The Academy is the main focus here, followed by Assassin, but the other episodes may be able to add value to the Padmé plotline.
• The Deserter / Gregor (Droids in the Void) / Hidden Enemy / Grievous Intrigue: Do the first three work well as a “Lost clones” anthology? Do the first two work better as a Rex-focused duology? Does Grievous Intrigue paired with the Deserter give us a stronger episode overall? Does Grievous Intrigue work well elsewhere - perhaps interspliced with Cloak of Darkness, currently my weakest epiasode?
• Revival / Younglings arc: I need to see what I can do to flip the chronology of these without it breaking anything.
• Order 66 arc / The Last One (first Yoda arc episode): I wonder if these can be tied together, since in TLO Yoda is actively investigating O66.