Perfect. It seems like you’ve got a really good handle on this whole thing, so I’m looking forward to digesting your vision! I’d be eager to grab any updated version too should you release one!
I enjoyed almightycutie’s but this sounds more refined and a bit more satisfying at the end, so I’d be very interested to have a link please.
A couple of thoughts:
While I was thinking about Citadel, I decided to watch Grievous Intrigue, in order to see if those two could be merged, since that thought came up recently.
They can’t. Grievous Intrigue is more about the rescue of Eeth Koth than his capture, so he can’t really be swapped out for Even Piell.
I then watched Deserter too, just for fun. I think there’s a decent enough Complete Cut episode here which is Grievous Intrigue then the Grievous/Obi-Wan parts of The Deserter, though with the battle droid bants heavily trimmed. It’s definitely not worthy of the Quality Cut though, it’s just not that important or great. Obi-Wan even says at the end “well we’re back exactly where we started”.
Speaking of The Deserter, the actual Deserter plot in that really is super. As discussed I think it’s sensible to merge that with the Gregor plot from Droids in the Void, and the traitor plot from Hidden Enemy. I think I’ll present this as ‘Tales of the Lost Clones’, in the order ‘Lost in Spirit’ (traitor), ‘Lost in Mind’ (Gregor), ‘Lost in Body’ (Deserter). I think I’ll pull this episode forward into my season two, for pacing and because it’s not been a clone-heavy season, so it’s OK to chuck in a clones-but-not-main-characters episode. This gives us a single punchy ‘clones are individuals’ episode, and highlights Rex as the ‘main’ clone character for the audience.
Note: This probably means I won’t merge traitor clone / stealth ship into a ‘Return to Christophsis’ episode.
Should be doing some more polish of my early episodes again tonight.
Well, that’s Citadel reviewed too.
Adi Gallia is in it for one scene and one line - and both could be removed with no problem, so reordering Revival relative to Citadel is easy to resolve.
However, on review, I just don’t think Citadel is worth keeping in the Quality Cut. For QC, it needs to be either important or great.
Is it important? Arguably no.
Is it great? Arguably no.
So I’ve just been looking a little forward to ensure I’m structuring the future phases correctly.
Since I’m wanting to bring Revival forward, the major impact as highlited by Knight of Kalee is on the Younglings arc, so I’ve just checked over both.
Revival only needs one trim - the removal of smirking Palpatine at the end. Sidious gets to be ominous, but Palpatine shouldn’t.
For Younglings, the arc is shot beautifully, with gorgeous animation and lighting, and really good direction. The Obi-Wan/Grievous encounter, especially the space battle, is very Original Trilogy in the best way. It’s not super relevant to the plot but it’s lovely. Grievous is great in this arc too. If I can’t find somewhere better for the space battle / ship fight part I’ll keep it where it is.
The actual storyline is great too - except for the focus on the Younglings. That’s not to say that they’re bad, per se, it’s just that time spent on them is kind of time wasted, when they’re the sole focus. There’s added value with all the lightsaber stuff, and especially if we play this up as Ahsoka’s teaching, but I think it needs some trimming. But the rest of the storyline is great fun. A little goofy, but in quite a charming OT way.
I’ve always intended to cut the first episode - where the kids find their crystals (and keep it just as a Continuity Cut episode, so it’ll still be there if you want it) - and to start on the Jedi lightsaber ship with the crawl explaining that Ahsoka’s taken an active role in training the kids (since the Holocron arc) and is escorting these ones back from having earned their crystals on Ilum. I’ll trim and tighten what I can, but it’s basically fine. If I do preserve the Obi-Wan space battle in this episode, I’ll draw it out through this arc’s episodes two and three rather than just three, to allow Obi-Wan’s presence to take some attention off the kids and keep the whole feeling a bit more balanced.
Anyway, the main reason I’m reviewing these is to see about the ordering. I had thought about pulling the Younglings arc up really early, but I think I’d rather do Ahsoka alone on the Trandoshan hunt before this one, and then I’d want to leave some breathing space due to the relative similarity between these. So that’s the main motivator for keeping Younglings a little later. That said, I think I can keep their ordering flipped. All that needs removed is Revival’s references to Grievous ransacking it (which we don’t even see in the Younglings episode, it happens offscreen), so I’m happy to write the destruction off as rival pirates or some lesser threat, and then have Hondo have repaired the base (expensively, hence his relative desperation) in time for Younglings.
I think Hondo’s character arc works either way. It’s definitely fine Revival > Younglings, because that way round he’s light with Kenobi, then after the destruction of his base and the Maul bros attack he’s understandably desperate, in time to soften when faced with the reality of the Younglings situation. (For comparison, originally it’s that he’s initially more piratical, then the Younglings soften him up a bit and he gets his ass kicked by Grievous, which makes him light with Kenobi, before losing his base.) It reads fine either way.
That said, I still need to compare Revival to Citadel too.
Huge thanks to Eranjello for the production of this absolutely perfect poster, which is exactly what I had in my head but hadn’t thought to ask anyone for yet:
I’m still strongly in the ‘make Pasaana Jedha’ camp. There’re those couple of unused Rogue One trailer shots, a lot of opportunities to craft the word ‘Jedha’ from ‘Jedi + a’ in dialogue, and an easy enough static shot of the planet with a crater or similar on it. And it’d give you the opportunity to cut out a new planet and return to a familiar one. It wouldn’t be much of a value add in terms of Jedha’s story, but it’d be at least as much of one as having Pasaana be all new.
*Rey shields
I always liked the version:
Desert woman: “Who are you?”
Rey: “None of your business, that’s who!”
Iris to credits
Noticed in the opening crawl, the third sentence ends in a comma when it probably shouldn’t. (“…whose crystal factories produce ray shields,”)
Goddamn it, I removed that comma so many times, but I kept going back and forth on the credits. Somehow, comma survived.
Thoughts about Malevolence
Disclaimer: I watched the original episodes a while back, but I don’t remember these ones well at all. So if any problem points below are in the regular episode, sorry! Also, apologies if any of this has been said before!
I like that there’s still tension between Anakin and Ahsoka, her outburst and Anakin’s chastening after feels right, especially with having this episode pretty early on. The pacing worked well for me, I liked that it was faster. I also liked the humanizing moments of the clones and how that contrasted with the general opinion that clones are “expendable”.
The cut between Anakin and Ahsoka rescuing Plo Koon and the Malevolence coming out of hyperspace at 16:46 felt abrupt to me. I don’t have a surefire way to fix this, but if there are any establishing shots of the Republic ship to bridge the gap that might help. Otherwise, letting it fade to black in between and allowing a couple seconds to breathe in between would also work.
Scratch that, the whole section (up until 17:33) feels a bit wonky. I wasn’t sure when the cuts to the other Republic ship were taking place chronologically (are they flashbacks or happening simultaneously?) And the iris transition after Ahsoka says “I’m sorry Master Plo” also had a split second where the shot with Ahsoka and Plo Koon reversed? Other than that center section, everything else flowed well and was paced perfectly!
EDIT: I just finished looking at the most recent version of The New Padawan, and I think having the Clone Wars logo just appear adds that extra bit of punch which feels great. The added Bail Organa shot definitely helps to sell his inserted line to Anakin too.
YES! This is the kind of meaty feedback I like.
On Christophsis, that’s good to know. I’ll stick with punchy CLONE WARS logo if nobody else objects, and match that timing for my future episodes. I was really pleased with that Bail shot. It’s from the Hidden Enemy newsreel, but it’s awesome that Bail even looks up to the sky, as if he’s watching the transport ship come in.
On Malevolence, this is super useful, thank you. The scene of Plo discussing the ion cannon intercut with the Malevolence destroying the medical transport was experimental - and the main reason the episode was released as a review cut as opposed to a release cut - and I agree it doesn’t work and needs to go. I’m going to remove the intercutting entirely, and just return to Plo explaining it’s an ion cannon to Ahsoka and Anakin (also a fabricated scene, but a far easier one to make work).
Oh man, that sounds lovely. ROTJ really does just have a flow problem, it’s a bit too sequence of events, and not enough ebb and flow. I think your description sounds great, and yeah, Spence edit rings a bell!
Comprising my Christophsis episode, new changes as above.
V1.5 link is in the spreadsheet, PM for access.
That’s my S01E01 full polished release version rendering now.
As it does that, here are the notes for what I changed:
This is incorporating all feedback to date - so if you guys see anything that I should still look at please mention it - as once I’ve released this I should be putting it down for good, only picking it up again in response to feedback.
There’s still a chance that I’ve missed the odd broken frame, even though I’ve combed through this multiple times now, so apologies if that happens, and if so please just let me know.
I’m glad I went through this and the previous episode’s grind. I’ve learned some decent audacity and GIMP skills which will help as we move forward. And it’s good to know that I know how to make both video and audio behave properly when they error up.
No no it’s good! I wish more people would jump in with things like this - I don’t want anything to be above criticism, including the things people may assume are already “settled”!
OK. Well I’m about to re-render my whole Christophsis, so I’ll do it that way, and you guys can see what you think.
Right, my s01e00 - Dark Force Rising (Tartakovsky prologue) is all fixed up ready for its fully polished release, pending Hal’s subtitle change.
It’s so weird that an audio track can contain hidden ‘pops’ which don’t play in VLC or audacity, but which my Magix Vegas movie editor picks up and writes into the episodes. And that running the file through audacity with no changes sometimes doesn’t remove them, but sometimes does. This time I had to run the audacity output back through audacity again to get a clean version. Super odd.
On to Christophsis’ polish.
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’.
I’m still laughing about how wrong I was about this scene.
You let me down so gently there too. “As a marginal note”. Haha!
My host would applaud your abilities POSTHUMOUSLY.
What did I think that meant? I was always like “Oh, I guess the real host would kill cat-Ventress for pretending to be the host instead of getting on with the fight like she was clearly supposed to, bit weird to mention that, but fine.”
Sitting there like “Disguising yourself as a cat is a bit of a weird force power. Oh well, carry on.”
Fuck’s sake, Eddie… 😄
This is it. This is the one.
Edit: Are you using the older footage only, or will you be including Special Edition CG dewbacks?
Nah, full steam ahead, thanks Hal.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.