EddieDean

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.

I know I have to subject myself to the worst episodes of Clone Wars just in case I can strip them for parts, but goddamn, today was horrible. I know it’s not interesting to read about for you guys either, but on the off chance that it spawns any ideas, here we go again…

The movie has some nice Coruscant establishing shots, and there are a handful of decent Ahsoka lines, plus a decent Sidious capper if you needed an ominous ending and had the footage for it. It’s kind of a shame that they shot their wad on this idea so early, because having Anakin return to Tattooine and talk Ahsoka through his feelings there could have been really powerful if done as well as the later storytelling.

Ambush has one really nice scene where Yoda tells the clones they’re special, but it looks like utter ass so I don’t think it’s worth me forcing it into my ‘lost clones’ anthology episode (along with Deserter, Gregor, and the traitor from Hidden Enemy).

Blue Shadow Virus has nothing except maybe the odd bit of combat banter but I don’t think I’ll need any more of that, and Sphere of Influence is totally worthless.

Almost universally in this show, anything to do with Tattooine or Hutts is absolute guff, Jar Jar is obviously extremely grating, and Padmé’s episodes generally suck. They really did Padmé dirty in this show, or perhaps they had an uphill struggle since she’s a senator and he’s a warrior and they have to keep their relationship secret, so it’s hard to get them opportunities to spend time together in a way that feels natural. Either way, Padmé got few good storylines and often Anakin/Padmé meetings felt forced, even when the actual character writing in them was decent. It’s disappointing but it’s better to keep Padmé sidelined than to force her crappy episodes to the fore.

What a horrible viewing experience today; I’m very glad to be dumping these forever. It’s genuinely put me off the Clone Wars a bit, I have to remind myself that the whole purpose of this exercise is to cut out this rot and leave only the delicious fruit behind. I’ll conclude this intermission review process by watching through my own episodes again, both to remind myself of their context and get a feel for their ongoing story, and to nourish myself on the good bits of this show.

Tartakovsky is jarring but fills a couple of gaps; Boba is pure good fun.

As I take a little break, I’m just watching through some of the episodes I’m sure I’m excluding, to see if they have any elements worth preserving. Most of this will likely come to nothing, and I’m not going to force it into places it doesn’t belong, but I’m taking stock of what I have here.

Evil Plans has a few things I might add into the Holocron arc. A couple of good shots of Bane’s crew getting into speeders (to help with the ‘putting together a crew’ element), and some cool Bane quotes - “Cad Bane, at your service, for a price.” “I’m your worst nightmare”. I might also borrow the nice Anakin/Padmé cuddle to cap off an episode sometime if I need it. Padmé also has a good line “you should really lighten up”, which might be fun as they start to come into conflict.

Hunt for Ziro has more good Bane lines - “I hate it when someone does my job”, “the separatists are paying a million a head for Jedi”, and a good sassy Obi-Wan one, “I never did enjoy hanging out with you.” The hutt dancers are quite good, except for Sy Snootles, so I might try to preserve some of their song “Dan Hutt Oola” for the later episode where the Hutts encounter Maul, if that’s possible.

There’s almost some usable stuff here when Bane talks to the Hutts, but there’s nowhere for it to lead to. Similarly, the Bane/Obi-Wan/Quinlan fight is cool, but the only thing you could use it for is to prelude the Rako Hardeen arc with Bane’s capture, but I don’t think it could really be recontextualised as that.

Downfall of the Droid has a good back and forth between Anakin and Ahsoka about real world experience versus academy training. Obi-Wan also says “Grievous’ spies have intercepted our trandmissions”, which might work somewhere. There’s some good Ahsoka lines - “May the force be with you, master”, “Hit it, Rex!”, and “Follow me, boys!”

The separatist listening post in Duel of the Droids is quite a nice design, so if I need to relocate a scene and it doesn’t matter where it’s relocated to, I might use this just because it looks nice. I could use Nal Hutta’s establishing shot for the planet, since at range it matches the colour scheme and Nal Hutta looks nice too.

Bombad Jedi features a lot of inspirational Padmé lines, which I may use in my upcoming Corruption on Mandalore arc, because if I remember right I planned to use some Padmé up front from the first episode, before transitioning into the Academy stuff.

But then the Death Star he was in exploded with the power to at least destroy a planet.

Haha, can’t argue with that maths 😉

I’d also prefer to not have to use them, since they’re not exactly a modern convention, and it’s always better to “show, don’t tell”. But I think I have to, for a few reasons.

Firstly, even in the original versions of some episodes, the newsreel at the beginning carried important exposition that the episodes didn’t cover. Dropping the newsreel - which I think is the right move to mature the tone and give me more editing control - means losing that expositon, which means needing to find an alternate home for it. A good example of this is the holocron arc, where Cad Bane finding master Ropal was actually in the newsreel between two episodes of the arc.

Secondly, sometimes in order to better pace or restructure an episode, I want the ability to cut exposition sequences from the episodes themselves. A one minute text description up front is better than many boring minutes I may have to keep in order to preserve a bit of explanation. A good example of this is my Christophsis, where I can get the main characters onto the planet and establish their mission and relationships without any faff, meaning we only have entertaining content to enjoy.

Thirdly, sometimes I want to recontextualise something that’s going to appear in the episode. In my Domino Squad episode I felt like my big change to make their initial failiure send them to the outpost could have done with more clarity, so I used the intro text to emphasise that they risk lesser duties if they fail. Or in my Holocron episode, to intercut Holocron (Bane + shapeshifter) with Hostage Crisis (Bane + posse), I used the text to emphasise that Bane’s a guy who can pull together a posse quickly.

Fourthly, I can use it to make causal links. My Christophsis left the matter of a mole in the Republic open, and reminding the viewer of the Republic mole in Cloak of Darkness encourages the viewer to infer that it’s Argyus, since he matches that role. Mental niggle now removed - and implicitly now the viewer will be more comfortable with any elements not answered in a given episode, trusting it will be addressed later.

Fifthly, I can also, for example, highlight characters or events a bit more directly, so that the viewer is a little more likely to pay attention to the elements of the episodes that I think are the strongest. Emphasising the Satine angle in our first Mandalore episodes means we treat her as less of a single episode character, and pay particular attention to her. I’ll be doing the same with the political situation in the next Mandalore episode, since it’s important to the later Mauldalore arc.

Sixthly, I can use it like a “previously on The Clone Wars”, like with the Maul arc.

And finally, when I’m not using it for those purposes, I try to use it as an opportunity to keep the viewer on top of the ‘state of the galaxy’, and give a bit more of a sense of the ebb and flow of the war, and keep the whole feeling cohesive. In my first season I tried to emphasise that all of the Separatists attacks were against strategic targets - making them more of a competent threat - but that the Republic during that season successfully established a foothold. In the second season, it’s the rise of scum and villainy, etc.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that while these may be boring for the preexistent Clone Wars viewer, who knows all the necessary context, for the new Clone Wars viewer this infodump may be important to their understanding and enjoyment, therefore a more engaging way to start the episode than it would be for an existing one.

In conclusion, I think it’s more valuable to have it than not. That said though, that’s not me trying to shut down discussion on this, because I think it’s a worthy topic. If I’m missing the bar on any of that, it’s definitely worth discussing. If there are elements of the intro crawls which you guys think I should change, or apply better to achieve the above goals, or additional things I should use those crawls for, I’m all ears.

(I should emphasise here, when I share things like this, it really isn’t to shut down discussion - it’s just to “show my working” and share my thought process on the raised subject. I don’t ever want the fact that I’ve thought about something a bunch to make people feel like I consider the matter final. I can expand on any of this stuff, and there’s nothing in this process or these episodes that I wouldn’t welcome other people’s input on.)

In terms of the format, obviously text gives me the most flexibility - I don’t really have the ability to use any other format, and modifying the newsreel would be too limiting. Luckily, Star Wars as a franchise uniquely has a tolerance for text crawls, so if you can get away with it anywhere, you can get away with it here. Much like wipe transitions, it’s very much a dead medium, but this particular franchise grants a lucky amount of leeway.

My goal, I suppose, is to make this show as good as it can be - even if that ultimately means it still doesn’t pass the modern bar for quality. Because people will always love Star Wars and want the fuller picture - especially now that so much is calling back to TCW - and TCW doesn’t deserve to be the black sheep that people feel they have to avoid or resentfully trudge through. I can’t remove all the imperfections, and sometimes I’ll have to replace one imperfection with another, but ultimately every judgment has to be made against the goal of making the entirety of the experience I produce as palatable as possible - which might incorporate an up-front minute of boredom per episode. I’ll always continue to encourage discussion though, not least because you guys will have new ideas which help me bring up that quality level and minimise those imperfections.

(And if it’s a maths game, you may be pleased to know I’ve already shaved off five hours of almost universally absolute dreck in those seventeen episodes released to date alone [not even including the episodes skipped entirely], and the final 50 episodes should be saving you about 17 hours total.)

In terms of cold opens, they’re not really an option. I’ve been actively looking out for opportunities but unfortunately the episodes just aren’t structured in that way. A cold open needs to have some punch to it, and nine times out of ten you don’t have any options in the first third of an episode to break on such a moment. Furthermore, audio transitions into and out of proper content are one of the hardest things to get right - far harder than smushing two bits of content together - so I’d be effectively doubling the likelihood that we end up with jarring transitions.

I feel like I should absolutely keep pushing forward while I’m motivated, yeah. And if I hit a roadblock on a given episode for whatever reason I should just skip forward and plow on. I don’t have much free time, so I need to spend my focus when I have it. I’m always happy to go back over prior episodes, and even while I’m not actively editing the older ones, I’m taking everyone’s feedback and adding them to my projects for my polish pass.

That said, I know I’ve said it recently but I’ll reiterate:

Everyone, please always feel free to comment on older episodes!

They’re not finished just because it was a while since they were released. Please continue to rip them to shreds if required!

Anyway, speaking of that polish pass, I said I’d go back and do the polish pass now that I’ve done Tartakovsky, since I hadn’t heard back from McFibb on the music for a while. But he’s just got back to me and confirmed he’s back in the game, so I’m going to wait and see what he produces before ‘finalising’ those earlier episodes. Which means I’ll probably be picking up the next couple of episodes first. Though I am going to pause for a little while to watch over my discarded episodes, just to take stock again of any useful scenes or elements.

And that’s the second part of Holocron now updated, incorporating the ending from Lightsaber Lost.

So long as you’re enjoying it I’m happy! We’ve already got past the most egregious stuff, it’s mostly just polish and making the restructuring work now.

Man, I can’t believe I’ve already made fifteen of these. Back in November when I had the idea I didn’t intend for it to be me who picked this project up. And all that month spent planning, I still wasn’t sure I had the knowledge or skills necessary. It’s crazy to think that I’ve already got 30% complete. But I’ve really got the momentum up now, I feel like I’m outputting them faster than you guys can watch them!

Also currently rendering the edited version of the second part of the Holocron Crisis arc, now with the ending from Lightsaber Lost so it ends with Ahsoka teaching younglings not to lose their lightsaber, just after Anakin’s lost his lightsaber and Ahsoka’s saved younglings. That’ll be ten hours or so though, because it’s my bed time!

RELEASED - s01e00 - DARK FORCE RISING - RELEASE CUT AVAILABLE

Comprising Tartakovsky Miniseries’ Muunilinst/Yavin/Hypori storyline, and considered a semi-canon prologue to my series.

RELEASED - s01e00-B - TALES FROM THE CLONE WARS - RELEASE CUT AVAILABLE

Comprising Tartakovsky Miniseries’ Dantooine/Mon Cala/Ilium stories, and considered entirely optional.

See above for notes for both. PM for link to the tracker spreadsheet with links.

I always quite liked it due to the tartakovsky charm, even though it doesn’t mesh with the rest of the media so nicely, but on this rewatch for the sake of editing it just now, I found the voices so jarring compared to TCW. Anakin is at maximum whine, the Clones are American, and Grievous is completely different. You’re also missing some opportunities to use more of the franchise’s music - the TCW clone theme, subtler music than the Imperial March, etc. The main reason I’m including it at all is really to introduce Ventress and Grievous.

One thing this has reminded me to mention, is that I’ve taken these episodes now as far as I intend to myself, but I’m absolutely open to collaboration with anyone else who has any ideas about better ways to present them. If someone wanted to take a stab at changing the music/audio/voicework, or had ideas for restructuring beyond what I’ve done, or trims to what I’ve retained to better match TCW’s characterisation, I consider them an open community project.

Right, that’s my Tartakovsky Microseries bonus episode now rendering too. That’ll be up in a couple of hours.

That’s just Mon Cala/Dantooine/Ilum, not edited at all except for just making the transitions smooth and equal to each other. Ending on the final Dooku beat actually serves the Ilum story quite well, giving the viewer time to ruminate on the fact that the Jedi probably abandoned Ilum after this (to its eventual abuse by the Sith and its conversion into Starkiller base), though that idea kind of contradicts the fact that the Jedi continue to source lightsaber crystals from here at least a little further into the Clone Wars.

This episode is not part of my quality cut, it’s just for people who want all the canon. Even if you did want to watch both episodes, I still think they’re better presented in this split way - one with all of the story and a proper narrative running through it, and one little anthology episode.

Note: If you want this one you’ll need to scroll down my spreadsheet a bit, to the Canon Cut section (that’s yellow on black).

I’ve just updated my tracker to also contain links back to the relevant forum discussion for a given episode, just for the extra context.

Oh bollocks, that rendered version has rendered at 90 min long. It’s only 60 min of content followed by 30 mins of black screen, but it’s a massive file. Balls. I’ll upload it anyway just in case anyone’s super into it, but in the meantime I’ll re-render it to the proper length. Give me another 4h…

TestingOutTheTest said:

Why do people misinterpret the lessons from TLJ so much? They weren’t about training Rey, they were intended to explain to her as to why the Jedi are inherently flawed.

Why do you act like everyone else is an idiot so much? Frequently you’re reacting in this thread like you have the only valid interpretation and those who have alternative interpretations are wrong, or worse, inferior.

Your opinions on these movies are absolutely welcome. Your arrogant dismissal of other people’s opinions is absolutely not. Please learn to have a civil discussion. I’ll get you started: “I respectfully disagree - let me draw your attention to…”

OK, I’m rendering my episode zero, the Tartakovsky Microseries episode, now. I’m calling it DARK FORCE RISING as above. The full episode runs to about 56 minutes. That should be uploaded about four hours after posting this.

As above, it is Muunilinst/Yavin/Hypori, minus Dirge and the lancers, minus Ventress’ cat disguise (the cat is now someone else), plus Dooku training Grievous.

I ended up reordering it more than expected, to make it a bit of a tighter narrative, as follows:

• After Yoda concludes his narration by mentioning that Anakin’s special, we cut directly to Anakin’s dream about being kid Ani with Qui-Gon. In the original there was no context for this dream, and where it is now there’s still very little context, except that for the viewer it kind of ominously sets up this episode and the rest of the Clone Wars. I also moved it up front as a way of starting the episode and the Clone Wars with saying goodbye to child Anakin and Qui-Gon, a kind of “we’re moving forward from TPM/AOTC.” That might not totally work but it didn’t totally work where it was anyway, so I don’t really mind.
• After Palpatine sends Anakin and the clone army off to war, we cut straight into Dooku finding Ventress. Now all of the military prep happens at the same time as Dooku training Ventress, so it’s less like he just met her in the arena and then immediately sent her off to kill Anakin. We then cut to more army prep, then more Ventress prep, before we kick off properly. It just feels a bit better paced this way.
• Then into Muunilinst, with some slight reordering so there’s less intercutting. We get a bit more space battle than before, then the landing on the planet right the way through to victory, then back to the space battle for Ventress’ arrival and we follow that plotline right through Yavin.
• The prior scenes originally were split by Ventress’ introduction, but now I use that break to introduce Grievous being trained by Dooku (but not the later half of that scene with Sidious). This does take away the slow reveal of Grievous in the later Hypori plot, BUT it achieves two things: Firstly, in this training Dooku actually teaches Grievous “you must break them before you defeat them”, and then it makes Grievous’ stealthy fearful introduction a demonstration of him following that advice, so it’s still impactful. And secondly, it’s a cool scene, and since this ‘chunk’ of Tartakovsky is the only part I consider necessary for my Quality Cut (that is, I’m not recommending people watch any other parts of Tartakovsky if they want context for the CG clone wars), I wanted to get that initial setup for “I’ve been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku.”
• I moved the shot of Yoda having an “oh shit” meditation moment to right after Anakin’s just completed his rage-fueled attack on Ventress. Now in context, he’s reacting to feeling the darkness rise in Anakin. A viewer could choose to imply that it’s this feeling which compels him to agree to Knight Anakin and later grant him a Padawan, in the hopes of keeping him on the right path.
• We then get all of Hypori uninterrupted, then all of the original endings to this section of the miniseries. This takes us through Anakin’s Knighting, Anakin and Padmé’s secret meeting, C-3PO’s golden paint job, and Anakin flying off with his new haircut. I then cap this off with the scene which originally ended the first half of the microseries, where Yoda ruminates about the rising darkness as thunder storms overhead.

The original is a bit of a mash up, aggregating the original three minute long clips often with quick transitions and abrupt audio cuts. I’ve tried to smooth that where possible, and tried to make my own transitions as clean as possible, but the one cut of my own that stands out to me as still a bit jarring I’m going to allow for now since the original permitted things like that too.

This episode isn’t wrapped in my usual TCW:Refocused trappings, because it does kind of stand alone. I added my own credit and Tackel’s for the upscaling, but didn’t touch it otherwise.

Since I’m in the zone I’m just quickly going to put together the cut scenes from this half of the microseries now, those being Dantooine/Mon Calamari/Ilum, which I’ll call ‘TALES FROM THE CLONE WARS’ as part of my Continuity Cut.
(As a reminder: My main edit is the ‘Quality Cut’, which contains my recommended content and viewing order, but the ‘Continuity Cut’ is extra stuff for those who want every single nugget that ties in to wider canon but that doesn’t utterly suck.)

I’d go that way too. I’m a franchise purist rather than an OT purist, so I’d be eager to help the OT subtly fit in better with the surrounding content.

RELEASED - SINS OF THE FATHER (BOBA FETT ARC) - RELEASE CUT

My production number 209, episode number TBD (early/mid season 2)

Notes as above. I also took out the weird line where Hondo implies that his species plus Aurra Sing’s species could have made a human kid. I only really took out the skeet scene from the first episode, but I could trim that episode further if people feel like that part is a bit slow.

PM for a link to the tracker.

Yeah, that snake’s not great. I’ve trimmed it down as much as possible, it’s quite goofy originally. Glad you’re, as a newbie, starting to enjoy Maul. He becomes a great character, ultimately making his return completely justified.