EddieDean

@EvansJ / MikeReese

-On Maul’s cold open:

Valid thoughts, but I think I’ll sit on this for now. Let’s roll out a few more episodes then see how the audience feels after watching a few, with the Maul developments they get. By the next episode after Domino, in proper episodes they’ll have seen blue-armoured Mandos, the Darksaber, and another explicit hint of Maul, so we’ll see if it feels like too much of a disconnected tease.

-On Domino Squad:

Flashbacks are valid. I’d probably rather go with bookending a whole episode rather than finding reference elements to flash back from (since that’s quite radical for Star Wars). But I think I’ll get my teeth in to the edit, and properly load the content into my brain, then see what options that gives us.

Hal 9000 said:

Second episode is good!

Pretending that this is the third episode of a show meant to follow up on the Mandalorian, it’s working for me so far. It must be a combination of the current enthusiasm for SW TV, relation to stuff seen in the Mandalorian, presenting things in a more interesting order, lack of annoying theme intro, fuller episodes with a complete story, and seamless editing throughout.

That intro theme music gets me pumped, like it’s a new SW show. Well done so far!!

Great to hear, Hal. It’s really useful to have your editor’s mind and familiarity with the prequels, combined with your unfamiliarity with the Clone Wars, to help validate whether this works. (Other first-timers please also chime in!)

G&G-Fan said:

Also am I the only one who’s noticed that the file for Malevolence is an hour long and there’s a whole 30 minutes of just black?

Yeah, this one’s only a rough production cut, and I missed this. There must have been content left at the end of the track. I’ll fix it for the next iteration.

G&G-Fan said:
-The thing Ventress says about having someone on the inside (which is an episode I actually quite liked) is never expounded upon.

Keep watching 😉

-Anakin still says “I had everything under control” even though he asked for help.

He’s sassy!

-I think Anakin goes from hating his Padawan to caring about her too soon.

That’s fair. Though I hit all the same emotional beats as in the original. One option I have is to maybe take out the conversation where they’re sitting down and he says “You might just make it as mine.” That would instead mean they return to HQ just with a shared smile, then at the point where Yoda offers to take Ahsoka back, he objects and keeps her on - but less care is implied. I think I’d rather stick with the original because they still demonstrate tension early, and I don’t mind him warming up to her after what basically amounts to her being too bold and rash, which is a very Anakin thing to do.

the spider bot does disappear from the table, but not really much you can do about that

Shh! Let’s pretend we didn’t notice that! (To my mind it, uh, falls off the table when the camera cuts away.)

axlanian said:

Yeah man! Crackle the crap out of it!

This made me chuckle. But yeah, absolutely knacker that thing!

EddieDean said:

…That’ll build interest through their appearances, and allow people to have a central pillar to keep track of and feel developing…

(I can feel my central pillar developing, if you know what I mean)

@Mike:

-On Domino Squad:

I’ve thought about this and not quite landed on a decision yet. I agree that since time passes, the story implicitly wants to be paced. So that’s an argument in favour of spreading it out a bit - probably exactly as you say, with Clone Cadets mixed with Rookies, then ARC Troopers standing alone.

The problem with this is that Clone Cadets/Rookies this early in the show (1) isn’t as strong as ARC Troopers, (2) isn’t well concluded, and (3) doesn’t feature any of this show’s focal characters - and it’s a bit too early for a deviation away from our core. The full trilogy works nicely early because of the great conclusion to ARC troopers which brings it all together and gives you this good emotional clone story. So I think the value of an early Domino Squad arc is in its ending, not its beginning.

One option, perhaps best of both worlds, would be to split it as mentioned (CC/R then AT) but place both later. That way it is paced better but its weaker half doesn’t interrupt what we need to be a strong start to the show.

Alternatively, we mitigate the time delay through trimming dialogue that makes it obvious, plus add (vague) cards to indicate at least time passing, and have the thing early as one whole, which allows the viewer to realise “Oh cool, there’re good deep dives into the clones in this show too.”

I still have the option, though, of getting the whole thing on the cutting board and seeing what comes out, then working out where it fits on the timeline best.

-On the Maul opening:

You may have missed some of the earlier discussion, but probably the largest change I’m making to the show as a whole is reordering the entirety, mainly by dragging the Maul plot far earlier so that he’s a presence throughout, and also by kicking off the Mandalore plots early. I think this is justifiable because (1) it gives the show a bit of a central thread which takes us to the Mauldalore conclusion which is absolutely fantastic with a lot of payoff, and (2) Maul in this show is absolutely great and he makes a really ominous background presence, especially since he’s a third party we don’t know the fate of, and (3) The Maul episodes, especially the later ones, actually have a good amount of explicit time skips between them, so they can be paced out.

So, unlike in the original, we are getting straight to Maul - with the end of my (production) season one (essentially the first eighth of the show) putting Savage on the path to Maul, and with the end of my season two (the first quarter of the show) getting Maul in play.

A cold open I believe serves two purposes.

Firstly, it’s there as a promise. “We will get to here.” In this case, it serves to tell the audience “You get Maul, you get Mandalorians, you get Darksaber, you get Mandalorians discovering Maul.” All of that is interesting, and new, and challenges the idea that this show is just the predictable known path from Episode 2 (the start of a war and Anakin’s a bit dark) to Episode 3 (Sidious orchestrated the war and Anakin becomes Vader). It’s a far more interesting hook than just the rest of Christophsis, which is a paint-by-numbers adventure in a bad setting with a character who looks like she’ll probably be quite annoying, to be frank.

Secondly, a cold open is an attention focuser. “Notice these elements as they move through the story.” In this case, it serves to tell the audience “while you may see a lot of themes in this show, keep your eye on Maul and Mandalorians.” That’ll build interest through their appearances, and allow people to have a central pillar to keep track of and feel developing even while other episodes can lean towards feeling more of a part of an anthology.

Bonus, in this case, (1) people already know Maul is in this show, so it doesn’t need to be a suprise. And (2), for people hesitant about Maul, it rips the plaster (band aid) off, saying “Maul’s coming back (from the ‘dead’). Get used to it.”

Game of Thrones (forget its ending) used a cold open very well. The show, for the first season, had almost no fantasy elements, being almost entirely noble houses having beef with each other. But the cold open was “snow zombies”. So we had a full season of good meaty mundane drama, but a full ten episodes of awareness that, hang on, I saw snow zombies. When Dany’s dragon eggs turned out to be legit and hatched, we were onboard. And, of course, snow zombies went on to be the main villain of the show (forget its ending).

Or, in short, I’m not trying to make this show:

I’m trying to make this show:

Well, either/or. Let’s discuss this offline so we don’t leave all the to and fro in this thread! But this all sounds great.

Well hey, I’d be absolutely overjoyed by custom concept art and custom music, and it would allow me to focus a lot more on producing episode content if my part in the pipeline ended at the point where the story did. I’d not ask for more than people were willing to offer, though!

TestingOutTheTest said:

axlanian said:

Chase Adams said:

Just to pull an idea RogueLeader had in the TROS ideas thread for everyone’s consideration…

RogueLeader said:

Kind of building on the idea of the crackly Skywalker saber, I think it could be interesting if during Kylo and Rey’s duel on the Death Star, that Rey’s saber was almost becoming “overloaded” from the constant saber-clashing, and starts shorting out by the end of the duel. For example, in the shot where Rey sort of shakes her hand, you could have the saber fluttering in and out. Then finally, when Kylo keeps hammering away at Rey while she is on the ground, we could see the saber give out while Kylo is raising his to deliver the final blow. This would give a reason for why Rey grabs Kylo’s saber and stabs him with it, rather than just using her own.

I think it would add an interesting aspect to the duel that we haven’t really seen before, where our characters are dealing with a malfunctioning weapon. It also gives Rey a practical reason for why she inevitably builds her own.

This is something I really think would be great to fully realise. 😃
Hopefully it can find a place in this edit.

If this is something feasible that someone here is able to do, it would be one of the best changes possible. I’m still frustrated that JJ completely ignored Luke’s saber getting broken in half.

Are you kidding? The fact that it was fixed and even has a thing attaching the two broken pieces of the lightsaber serves as a visual reminder for Rey’s failure in TLJ, sort of like Kylo Ren’s scar which symbolizes how his actions of killing Han will always be there.

Please try to avoid using mock suprise when disagreeing with someone’s opinion. I don’t know if I’m alone in this but to me it comes off as an attempt to belittle them.

The minor repair is so visually slight that it’s extremely missable, though. The fact that no attention is drawn to it makes me infer that the production team would rather have viewers not notice it. And with that interpretation, I’d assume that the bit of metal which reconnects the two halves is essentially there to put the question to bed if it comes up, rather than as a cool theme or idea that the production team would like to draw attention to.

Chase Adams said:

Sorry for the double post, but an issue I had with mostly the Death Watch episode was that you started getting a little desperate and used individual model art of things and people that still had text on them. 😉 I would recommend only sticking to full depictions of stills from the episodes similarly to what The Mandalorian does. Keep in mind that not every line of text will need its own piece of art, you could probably fade 2-3 names in and out on each and it would save you a lot.

Yep, that episode now represents the older way of doing it. Now, I’d rather always use scenes from the episode, and only five shots with multiple credits fading over each. In the case of Death Watch, It’ll be the three scenes plus the two vehicles, unless I can find alternate sources. I don’t mind slowing my pipeline a little to go on concept art hunts, if people think there’s good value there.

Chase Adams said:

I have several other ideas on how to polish up those credits a lot more.

Please absolutely do! This is fantastic.

Yeah, I’ve just checked over Mando’s credits and they all vary in subtlety. Sometimes it’s just a bit of false 3D via parralax, sometimes it’s just a floating object, sometimes it’s a waterdrop effect over water, sometimes it’s more radical like this. But always different, so there’d be a lot of artistic license! If you get the bug and want to commit to this, please let me know, because there’s great value in them.

(Or if anyone else has similar skills and fancies chunking up the work, be my guest. There’s certainly a lot that could help if people wanted to get their teeth stuck into this.)

Holy shit, that’s amazing. I would absolutely love to include five of these per episode. Proper professional standard of beauty. I mean, if you fancy doing that 250-300 times, please be my guest 😉

RogueLeader quoth:

Without having seen Cloak of Darkness, it sound like it would be good to at least inform the audience as to why Ahsoka wasn’t with Anakin and Obi-Wan in the previous episode.

On this point, for master/padawan, they do spend a suprising amount of time apart. Apparently it’s a thing that during the Clone Wars (at least), often Ahsoka wouldn’t go with Anakin on missions, or she’d be sent off on her own. And it’s never really explained in the show.

So I thought I might mention it right at the start, I guess to mitigate people asking “Isn’t this the Ahsoka show?” right at the start. But ultimately there’s going to be a fair amount of this, so I wasn’t planning to explain it every time.

It looks, in this case, like having Anakin palm her off on Luminara does more harm than good, and that up front it’s only really worth explaining that Ahsoka’s not going to be in the early Death Watch episode.

All really, really useful notes, folks. It’s great having this much detail - even (and especially) when a few of you are saying the same thing. I’ll go back and polish all four episodes before I move onto Domino Squad. Due to the way my life is currently structured, I’ll probably always alternate ‘development weeks’ and ‘polish weeks’, because every other week I have a lot more time in the evenings and weekends. (Note that the audio transitions in and out of episodes are all janky because I haven’t put too much time into them yet, knowing they’re going to be replaced.)

Various thoughts from recent comments:

• In Christophsis episode, do others agree with Chase’s objection to Viszla’s “Who are you?” It’s actually fairly clean - their headsets in that scene just have a lot of static. I think I prefer keeping it to losing it, but I can be swayed.
• I’d be very interested to know how to add radio voice effect to dialogue, if anyone knows how to do that simply within Vegas Movie Studio or a free third party program.
• Excluding Cloak of Darkness? Interested in opinions here. This episode is one which I initially favoured removing, until my focus was drawn to what it tells us about Ahsoka. I think it’s boring on a rewatch or when we know Ahsoka’s character, but I think for a new viewer it’s quite informative.
• One thing that I’d really like to know when people review episodes, an important metric for me, is is this edit of the episode better than the source material? I don’t want to be wasting anyone’s time producing edits for edits’ sake. I want my episodes to justify their own existence. I can’t always turn the source into something great, or maybe even good - but I am always trying to make the better. If I fail at that, then I should simply be bookending the unedited episode.

Chase, I was a fan of Cat and Mouse, especially the Anakin vs Trench plot. Trench is fairly good value. (He’s not constantly threatening though - he ‘dies’ in Cat and Mouse and doesn’t come back till the Order 66 arc!) But I do like him. The main reason I trimmed this was (1) to get us to Ahsoka’s introduction sooner, and get us off Christophsis sooner, and (2) because I’m not a fan of the stealth ship this early in the show. I have considered a ‘Return to Christophsis’ episode where a traitor (a clone this time, from Hidden Enemy) has enabled the return of the blockade somehow, and Anakin can use a stealth ship to break it while Rex investigates the traitor.

(Though I’m also toying about either doing a ‘Lost Clones’ episode with Rex meeting the Deserter and Gregor in the Void. But that one might become a ‘Commander Rex’ episode, including the traitor on Christophsis as the third mini story.)

mikereese971 said:

Just watched Cloak of Darkness.

Thanks Mike. Glad this works to recontextualise Ventress’ informant. But yeah, looks like Anakin pawning off Ahsoka hasn’t quite landed right, so I think I’ll do exactly as you say and make it just a normal and not uncommon reassignment for Ahsoka. I’ll allude to my Death Watch episode if I keep it there in the ordering, though I think I’m leaning toward Christo > Death Watch > Malevolence > Cloak right now.

Noted on the sound effect, and also, while I have trimmed some cringe lines, people are still getting frustrated with them, so I’ll see if I can take that further. There’s a scene with Argyus and Ahsoka that I think I remember thinking ‘I could remove this in full at a push’, so I’ll do another comb through.

Good shout on the score credit, thanks. I hadn’t realised that was the situation, but I’ll change that throughout.

I appreciate your eye!

G&G-Fan said:

May I have the link to this project so far?

PM Sent

Knight of Kalee said:
Thoughts on Domino

Thanks Knight. I have to confess, I didn’t rewatch Rookies yet, so I might be skipping it too swiftly. It does have some good bits - mainly the infiltration of the commandos and the assault. Less so the worms, if I remember right.

I absolutely want to preserve the clones being referred to as “bad batchers” and “a bad batch” from Clone Cadets.

I think to solve the rushed feeling, I do intend to have title cards to split the episodes. “At the beginning of the Clone War”, “One month later”, and “Present day”, I think.

Maybe I should take a look at the whole arc in the editing deck, and pick out the key bits that way, then let that define the structure. I don’t think it’s going to be a tricky technical edit, just the removal of some scenes. There’s nothing complex to be done with this episode, it’s more about planning it right than executing the plan.

Hal 9000 said:

Just finished watching the first (or second?) episode.

Thqnks for checking it out, Hal. Its original source has 18% on Rotten Tomatoes so this episode was never going to be amazing, so I’ll settle for “good”!

Glad you (and others) feel like the Maul cold open works. As you say, I think it’s sensible to just tell the audience “this is happening, get used to it” early.

And yeah, it’s odd to have Ventress imply she knows Obi-Wan, but that’s in the original episode. The show does a fair amount of this, for example when Ahsoka and Padmé first meet they’re already close friends.

Friends, I’m about to suggest sacrilege, and you might need to pull me back from the edge.

I’ve been thinking about my approach to the Domino Squad arc. Domino Squad is one of the most popular arcs of the show. It has three episodes:

• Clone Cadets, where Domino Squad fail, then fail again, then succeed.
• Rookies, where some of them are killed on duty at a listening post.
• ARC Troopers, where Domino Squad and Anakin and Obi Wan defend Kamino from Grievous and Ventress.

Smudger’s approach has long been the master here, for very good reason. He trims I think just the second training session (of three) from Clone Cadets, and about half of Rookies, leaving ARC Troopers almost entirely intact. And he’s totally right to do that - those are the strongest parts of each episode and his movie (plus some Christophsis, and some extra scenes from another episode to show Grievous drawing the Jedi away from Kamino) works really well. It’s one of the most popular Clone Wars edits, if not the most popular.

BUT

Like, where is the heart of this arc? I just watched ARC Troopers first (because often it helps to contextualise the whole based on the conclusion, if the conclusion lands well), and I agree with Smudger that almost 100% of ARC Troopers has to stay. There’s some good Grievous versus Obi-Wan, some good Anakin versus Ventress, Echo gets a nice highlight, Fives gets a nice highlight, Kamino is a dramatic location, and of course Ninety-Nine is the real emotional punch in the gut that makes this whole arc memorable.

But what sets that up best? Arguably, a little of Clone Cadets. Showing Echo and Fives before the assault, for sure. And definitely highlighting Ninety-Nine before they’re sent away. But Hevy (who has the closest relationship with Ninety-Nine) dies in Rookies (in nice heroic form, certainly), but doesn’t serve the show much beyond that. He exists to highlight the heroism of Ninety-Nine, really.

Let’s also account for the fact that Echo is important in the Bad Batch, and Fives is important in the Order 66 arc, so we should know them by name.

And while Echo, Fives, and the rest of Domino Squad are good characters, they’re not exactly deep characters. They’re not emotionally rich. They’ve got a small number of traits which make them distinct from most clones, but their personalities only differ from ‘the template’ by a small amount. I think it’s right that we should highlight them enough to remember their names, buuuuut

Do we really need to see much of them? Like, what if we started with a cold open, ‘at the beginning of the clone war’, and saw Domino Squad simply win their final challenge in Clone Cadets - without facing/overcoming adversity first - and then have Hevy thank Ninety-Nine for his support. And then ‘present day’-it straight into ARC Troopers.

What I’m saying is - if we maintain the whole Ninety-Nine emotional core, and the main character emotional core of the finale, and if we at least highlight Echo and Fives, do we need to show the challenges and growth of Domino Squad?

Part of the reason I think this might be more additive than subtractive is because, to be frank, some of the elements in Clone Cadets are a bit weird. Brick the bounty hunter dislikes Domino Squad enough that he assaults a clone and tries to force a reaction. At least three of the five in Domino Squad actively try to leave the squad. And we see them begin in an extremely sloppy way, but improve over only a couple of days into what Shaak Ti calls “possibly the best clone squad I’ve ever seen”, just because they learned team work and creativity? Are their various eccentricities really some perfect venn diagram that results in a really optimal team? And isn’t that mooted by the fact that we never see Domino Squad act as a squad again after ARC Troopers?

I don’t know, am I going mad here? I know nobody thought Rookies was too amazing, but is it heretical to think that the best bits of Clone Cadets are about three minutes near the end to set up ARC Troopers?

REORDERING?

Just wondering if it’s worth reordering these initial episodes in what I consider my season one, since a few have mentioned it.

(Bear in mind it’s only my season one from a production perspective, I don’t know if I’d end up presenting it that way.)

Remember, whether creating this for a familiar audience or the theoretical new one (likely coming from Mandalorian), the goal is to get viewers hooked with the promise of a good time to come. Early episodes should show the breadth of the show (its range of themes and how many suprises it has even if you know the plot of the prequels), the depth of the show (the emotional beats it can hit, and the nuance it can offer to familiar elements), and should convince us of quality. Our main character is Ahsoka, then Anakin and Obi-Wan, and our main villain is Ventress (only hinting at Maul). We need to demonstrate a good amount of value for fans of the Mandalorian too.

The six episodes in this (production) season, in their current order, are:

• Christophsis - Ahsoka is introduced. Bro time for Anakin/Obi-Wan. Tactical Ventress. Pretty sure we have to start with this.
• Death Watch - Obi-Wan gets great new depth. Mandalorians and the Darksaber. Anakin appears in the second half. Ahsoka and Ventress do not appear.
• Cloak of Darkness - Ahsoka on her own. Competent Ventress. Not a great episode.
• Malevolence - Ahsoka’s best character traits emerge. Ahsoka and Plo. Ahsoka and Anakin become bros. We learn that this show may make us care about clones.
• Domino Squad - Clone heavy story. Feels a little later in the war. Competent Ventress, though her plan fails. Anakin and Obi-Wan appear in the last third. Ahsoka does not appear. Pretty sure this should come fifth, as it doesn’t follow our main characters so we really should make sure we’re invested first.
• Nightsisters - Ventress is kicked out, lots of great Sith infighting. Anakin and Obi-Wan appear at some point. Pretty set on ending with this.

So I think our options are:

1. Christo > Death Watch > Cloak > Malevolence > Domino > Nightsisters - Ahsoka’s sent off solo before Anakin really takes her on as his own. We get the Mando/Obi-Wan stuff before we get to really know Ahsoka. We learn that clones have feelings too then have another clone heavy episode.
2. Christo > Death Watch > Malevolence > Cloak > Domino > Nightsisters - Ahsoka gets taken on by Anakin then trusted with a solo mission. We get the Mando/Obi-Wan stuff before we get to really know Ahsoka. We get a balance of clones in focus.
3. Christo > Malevolence > Cloak > Death Watch > Domino > Nightsisters - Ahsoka gets taken on by Anakin then trusted with a solo mission. We get the great Mando/Obi-Wan stuff late. (Too late?) We learn to care for clones early. (Too early?)
4. Christo > Cloak > Malevolence > Death Watch > Domino > Nightsisters - Ahsoka’s sent off solo before Anakin really takes her on as his own. We get the great Mando/Obi-Wan stuff late. (Too late?) We get a balance of clones in focus.
5. Christo > Cloak > Death Watch > Malevolence > Domino > Nightsisters - Ahsoka’s sent off solo before Anakin really takes her on as his own. We get the great Mando/Obi-Wan stuff after two Ahsoka episodes - her intro then her solo mission. We learn that clones have feelings too then have another clone heavy episode.
6. Christo > Malevolence > Death Watch > Cloak > Domino > Nightsisters - Ahsoka gets taken on by Anakin then trusted with a solo mission. We get the great Mando/Obi-Wan stuff after two Ahsoka episodes - her intro then her and Anakin becoming close. We learn to care for clones early. (Too early?)

Also, it’s worth bearing in mind the enjoyability of the edits I’ve produced. There are already better and worse ones. I wouldn’t want to put the less popular ones up front!

Really interested in people’s thoughts on this.

sade1212 said:

Malevolence nitpicks:

Right, time to properly eat into these.

Again, Padawan gets a capital letter, for some reason.

You know what, I think I’m going to opt to ignore this convention. I can accept ‘Jedi’ as effectively a title, but I think I’d rather treat ‘padawan’ as just a regular noun, like ‘apprentice’. (No offence meant to you of course, Sade.)

Interestingly, this time around you’ve done the opposite with the intro transition, having the episode audio come in before the picture does. I think it could be slightly more gradual, but I understand that the music is tough and the usable footage is limited because of originally having the newsreel audio.

This is probably more just chance of the scenes I was given than anything else. Once I have the final music from McFibb, I’ll review the intros and outros of all of the episodes produced to date, and make them smoother. With Christophsis, someone mentioned that it was cool to have the motorbike sound before the shot opened, so I kept it (even though I only did it by chance). In Malevolence, the music before the image was quite immediate, so I went for a quick music fade to image fade, mainly to distract a little (passed off as urgency). But as I say, I’ll clean these all up.

[Many technical points]

Thanks very much! I do watch and rewatch episodes as I create them, but this one had around a hundred scene and shot changes that I’d shifted around so I was bound to miss a few.

I hadn’t even realised you’d replaced Plo’s dialogue until Ahsoka abruptly cuts him off mid-sentence for a hug. I quite like intercutting Plo’s dialogue with the clones getting ioned, but Ahsoka just butting in out of nowhere doesn’t really work for me. The footage reversal for the wipe is also not subtle.

Yeah, I think I will just drop this scene. I actually had to have Ahsoka interrupt him because his full sentence has beeps, and I wondered if I could get away with it. Looks like not! But that’s fine, there’re other ways to work this scene. And yeah, there was a chance the reversal would be obvious. Annoyingly, a reversal with a wipe is too much for my PC to process for a preview in real time, so it’s arduous to check the quality on layered changes like this.

I think I’ll change this whole sequence, so that basically they bring Plo on board, he mainly talks about the clones surviving (as in the original), but then have him just mention “it was an ion cannon”. No actual scene of the Malevolence destroying the medical transport. We don’t need a description of an ion cannon because it’s irrelevant to the plot. If you didn’t know what one was, you’d know that whatever was happening, it was absolutely knackering ships, so it’d make sense to target them later. Plo can either mention it being an ion cannon as he’s rescued or later, as Yularen says “he’s heading to the Rendellia medical station”.

At 18:28 when Yularen says “Skywalker”, the audio editing seems a little odd, like the music suddenly lowers (presumably to mute whatever Ahsoka is mouthing) and then it comes back in.

I thought this’d get pointed out. It’s a weird glitch in the original, and by coincidence it’s the first issue I noticed that the series itself has, because I happened to pick Malevolence and randomly that scene back when I did my first pipeline tests. “Skywalker” is actually on the front channel rather than center, so I guess they were trying to do a ‘far away voice’ thing. But it sounds odd to my ears too. I might just do without it, and cut straight into Yularen getting down to business.

I hear voice echoes at 29:11.

I think that’s on me. The medical station voice hits all channels, I guess to simulate reverb in that room. So editing that scene is a pain.

I’m enjoying this excuse to rewatch TCW and engage with it a little more than I did the first time. I don’t really remember the original episodes, but this edit makes a pretty fun short movie. You’ve merged the episodes well. The start is really engaging, as it quickly makes Grievous seem brutal and coherently sets up the threat. The medical station scenes work cleanly where you’ve put them. All the Plo Koon rescuing stuff is enjoyable enough - Anakin and Ahsoka’s interactions are exactly the sort of set-up I did feel was needed for the nitpicks I mentioned in my last post; and even though we haven’t seen lots of Anakin/Ahsoka missions, this episode does a good job implying there’s been a few offscreen.

It’s good, isn’t it! I’m enjoying it a lot more on rewatch and detailed dissemination too. When it first came out I barely paid attention to the episodes because season one was so agressively bad. And I didn’t give most episodes after that a good chance too. Especially since the show kept throwing Shadow Warriors and Droids in the Voids at us even in the good seasons. I really hope I preserve everything good about this show; I really don’t want to be a butcher.

The Shadow Squadron space battle section is watchable but not my favourite aspect of Star Wars. Whatever editing you did in this bit worked for me, though I can’t say I recall how it was originally. I was freaking out wondering how you’d managed to drag another thirty minutes of episode out after the Malevolence blew up but thankfully it’s just an accidentally left in black screen, haha.

Agree. This cut absolutely whips through it, and puts it in what I think is a far more compelling order. It also now gets straight to the point. But the space battle itself isn’t great, and there’re way more exciting ones later. This does suffer a bit from originally being episode two then three of the original arc, since the story loses a bit of momentum after Anakin destroys the Malevolence’s main weapon, giving us about three minutes of it slowly limping away while Obi-Wan’s fleet just batters it until it dies. But again, I just cut through the main points of that as quickly as I could to get us to swift victory, because by then all the emotional beats had been hit.

Amazing, Chase! I’m very glad to have you with us! I’ll share the link to the tracker so you can get stuck in with the existing episodes.

Please feel free to nitpick, criticise, tear them apart as necessary. I’d rather have something heavily criticised then fix it, than have my ego kept intact. Looking over my own history in this thread, I do tend to hold on to my own thoughts longer than I should in the face of alternate opinions, so you (and everyone else in this thread) should feel encouraged to disagree with me loudly and firmly!

It feels like this thread has settled into a pattern where I produce review cuts first, for dissemination, and a few dedicated champions give feedback on the episodes in their slightly unfinished state, which helps me with the finishing touches. I know it’s not an ideal way to consume them, but it’s very motivating for me so it helps keep the momentum up. Nobody’s under any obligation to help in that way though, of course!

Please also feel free to suggest any ideas, changes, alternate takes, radical restructures, whatever comes up. And bear in mind this is both about editing each episode but also presenting and restructuring the whole. Already the community in this thread have made material improvements over what I could have produced if I did this in isolation. And since you’ve just read over the whole thread (kudos!), also do feel free to challenge any assumption or decision- however early it was made. I’d rather rethink and refocus now than later!

I don’t know if anyone’s thought about this yet, but it’d be extra useful to me if anyone who’d just watched one of my new episodes might then go and watch the source material, just in case that generates fresh thoughts. It’s something I don’t do myself because by the time I’ve finished editing an episode I’ve already watched it through about ten times so I’m fairly burnt out on the story!

(Responding to Artan)

Yeah. I think they work as a sensible pairing because they’re both a little unlike the Jedi default at the time- both quite emotional, intuitive, and bold. And they do moderate each other to a degree, so the council are kind of proven right for a time. But ultimately they both go beyond the council’s expectations, with Anakin not learning to let go and ultimately becoming Sith because of it, and Ahsoka learning not to let go, but to channel her caring nature into the kinds of action that the Jedi council forgot about by the time of the prequels, ultimately becoming one of the best kinds of Jedi even though that wasn’t the archetype at the time.

I think there were some good tests of both - fully grey Exegol, with green smoke around Palp’s life support device. But fair enough if it’s not a change you’re looking to include!