EddieDean

Thanks for the sense check guys. As soon as I had the thought I stopped editing and came here to write it up to see what you guys think. I’m really glad I decided to work out the solution for this episode on the editing track, and that I decided to look at it back-to-front (to keep my eyes on the conclusion, to work out how to best get there), because one of the first things I did was merge the endings of Rookies and ARC Troopers, and that merge just naturally offered up the line “ARC Troopers… in the 501st”, which unlocked the rest.

Kalee, I’ll definitely be including as much of 99 (and his interactions with Hevy) as I can, so long as they don’t make the end of that first act feel drawn out. One principle I’ll always be editing to is maximising emotional value, and obviously 99 is great for that. You’ll also be pleased that you get a good Grievous fight but not the following moment where he loses a bit of menace. He now kicks Obi-Wan’s ass a bit, then Obi-Wan kicks his ass a bit and he realises it’s all going downhill so he pulls out - I’ve removed the scene where Obi-Wan chases him outside and he sneaks up behind him and then… announces his presence and doesn’t take advantage of the situation at all, allowing Obi-Wan to take up a far more advantageous position.

Oh boy oh boy after working it over for a good while I think I’ve cracked the Domino Squad arc. I’m interested in your thoughts.

I considered splitting it into two parts but there’s no natural break other than after Clone Cadets, which leaves it paced weirdly. I also considered making Clone Cadets the cold open, but there’s too much volume that it didn’t feel right. So I was just looking over it looking for trims and assuming I’d release it almost in full, when I hit on what I think is the solution.

So to summarise the episodes right now on face value:

1. Clone Cadets
This episode’s storyline is that Domino Squad fail training, then come together, then succeed training. Importantly, note that that is a strong and straightforward three act journey in and of itself. Adversity is faced and overcome within the episode. Highlights are 99 and his relationship with Hevy. And the important bits of continuity beyond this arc are Echo and Fives.

But the issue I have with it is that the ‘coming together’ is quite clumsy. Ultimately Echo and Fives want to leave but are told not to by Shaak Ti, Cutup gets assaulted, and Hevy wants to leave but is told not to by 99 - and then they decide to stick together, and win because their differences make them creative thinkers? That really doesn’t feel like the victory is earned or that they’re suddenly more cohesive. And it certainly doesn’t feel like we’ve seen them earn Shaak Ti’s description of “possibly the finest clones I’ve ever seen”.

2. Rookies
This episode’s storyline is that Domino Squad are on the Rishi moon listening post, get overrun by commando droids, then when Rex and Cody are there to inspect it they end up all teaming up to take back the listening post in time to warn the Republic of an imminent assault on Kamino. It’s pretty good all round. There’s a couple of redundant scenes and it needs a bit of polish tightening but it’s a cool plot that’s mostly well done. At the end, Echo and Fives join the 501st.

The problem is that in this context it kind of undoes and is undone by Clone Cadets. The whole point of Clone Cadets was to see this team coming together, but here we see them immediately fall apart. Obviously, that happens in war and it’s a decent story. But it feels like the full 20 minutes of establishing them as a group wasn’t worth the investment. Also, if the team are the ‘best ever’, why are they now on a shitty listening post (even an important one)? Also, Clone Cadets has just given us a three act story about Domino Squad, but they remain our focus, and so it turns out that the surviving characters have a second second act although it’s basically them just continuing to be great and continuing to be rewarded for it. I think this makes the whole arc pace awkwardly.

3. ARC Troopers
This episode begins with the attack on Kamino led by Grievous and Ventress, and features Rex, Cody, Fives, Echo, Anakin, and Obi-Wan defending Kamino successfully. Highlights are 99 again, and Echo and Fives really helping out, and becoming ARC Troopers. It’s great end-to-end. I trimmed about three minutes but other than that it’s going to be mostly untouched as the finale to our arc.

(The main trims I made are: We don’t need to see Obi-Wan fighting the droids underwater in an already action-heavy episode after he gives Anakin the plot relevant information. And we don’t need to see Obi-Wan fighting Grievous outside after he’s already beaten him inside, especially since Grievous sets up a kind of suprise attack that he then doesn’t utilise at all. And removing both of those scenes lets us get rid of the flying whale thing which just pulls me out of it a bit. I also cut Grievous and Ventress discussing that their master has ideas for the clone DNA, because denying it to the Republic is enough, and we don’t need to imply that Sidious is into cloning when Palpatine has full access to cloning tech.)

This episode is easy to trim into the immediate follow-up to Rookies.

So anyway,
I finally realised that this isn’t the story of Domino Squad. That’s not the heart, nor does it leave us with a good focus for the rest of the show. It’s the story of Echo and Fives joining the 501st.

And here’s the main solution to focus it, fix the early pacing issues, and fix the unsatisfying Clone Cadets/Rookies collision: Domino Squad fail their training, and the Rishi moon outpost is their punishment. (I know I have to sully the legacy of the popular Domino Squad to do this, but I think it leaves us with a far stronger story.)

Now, we get a proper three-act story. We establish in the crawl that the Republic is rushing new batches through the training as quickly as possible in order to field troops, but that some batches still don’t complete the training, and are given lesser jobs like maintenance or manning listening posts. We get the start of Clone Cadets, introducing Echo and Fives within Domino Squad but having them fail (probably using all of the mistakes from the first and second attempts, so they’re sloppy but it’s the ‘leaving a man behind’ that gives them the fail.) We see the emotional fallout of that and establish the relationship with 99 - only now, they’re failiures too, just like him, and he’s the only one who thinks all clones can be heroes. We don’t invest in Cutup, Droidbait, or Hevy.

Then we ‘two weeks later’-it straight into Rookies. Now, their boredom matches that this is punishment, and Echo longing to be on the front lines and Rex thinking the moon’s run sloppily will have more value later. That episode plays out, with the other clones dying off as Rex and Cody learn that these two ‘lesser clones’ are competent when the shit hits the fan. We end the episode with them leaving the moon with Rex and Cody but they don’t get to join the 501st yet - they’ve merely been rescued.

We wipe transition right into Kamino for the battle, where it plays out as before. (Echo and Fives have been given slightly nicer armour or taken the time to paint theirs up in thanks while on the flight over, we assume, if we notice.) But now, their plot parallels 99, as they’ve been discarded as failiures but when thrust into battle they stepped up and helped win the day. And finally, we close the episode on Rex and Cody naming them “ARC Troopers… in the 501st”. They’ve earned both rewards at the same time - but this time, they’ve been earned by these individuals overcoming multiple trials, rather than by Domino Squad deciding to become the best clone team ever overnight.

The biggest loss here is Hevy’s relationship with 99, as with no win there’s no medal to give to 99. Though we still maintain 99 and all of his main emotional beats. We establish that he believes in all clones, he wishes for his own chance, he finally gets his chance, and he dies a soldier.

One other thing I might play with to make this hit a bit better and to cement Fives and Echo as the focal characters is to have their desertion come BEFORE we see Domino Squad fail. So right at the start of the episode two (implicitly) perfectly fine clones are talked out of leaving a poorly performing squad, but then punished for that squad’s failings, eventually earning the recognition they deserve. This might work a bit better since devoid of the original episode’s context they’re complaining about a squad which is legitimately not that good. I’ll see how this works.

This episode then, of course, is no longer called ‘Domino Squad’. Instead, it is called ‘The 501st’ - the heart of the episode being Echo and Fives’ path to that prize, and ultimately the legion the audience will continue to follow throughout the wars. And at the end of the episode, we have our clear clone focus - the 501st, Rex, Fives, and Echo.

I’ll reply in full later, but a question for you Hal with your first time viewer hat on- do you feel like Malevolence should have come before Cloak? And do you feel like Malevolence makes Cloak unnecessary?

OK, thanks. Those are certainly the main reasons it’s included, but yeah, the episode being fairly weak early on has to be balanced against that.

HAL, as a first time viewer, what value did you get from Cloak of Darkness, if any? What did it teach you about the characters?

RogueLeader said:
I also kind of see NFB’s point about the Snips/Skyguy thing. Like, having one instance of it to show how Ahsoka can be kind of irritating at first. But to be fair, are these nicknames ever used later on in the series?

They disappear quickly, but I did keep a “skyguy” in Malevolence, which I thought was cute without being obnoxious.

(Responding to McFibb)

Hmm, I don’t know, doesn’t that take away from the idea that Maul was super secret? He was Sidious’ secret weapon then killed and disappeared onto a trash planet, I don’t think that’d be widely known, even by senior Mandos. I think their wondering what a Dathomiri male with a lightsaber even is is more of a valid reaction.

From a real world perspective, I think all we need to see is that it’s Maul. If we only know the prequels we think “Oh, Maul survived? Not sure how I feel about that but it’s presented in a way that’s clearly deliberate.” If we’ve seen Rebels or Solo we think “OK, we’re getting some exploration of Maul, and apparently there’s a Mandalorian element?” And if we’ve seen the clone wars, we think “alright, this is a deliberate refocusing on the Maul content, which we didn’t get until late S3, or really the end of S4, so there’s clearly something different happening here.”

That’s the intention, at least! I’m not saying that lands as intended necessarily.

Good feedback sonofabinadi, thanks.

I think what you’re saying aligns with quite a lot of feedback, so I think I’m going to make the following changes to the first four episodes:

• All technical things mentioned so far
• Credits transitions
• Christophsis: Cut Anakin’s anger after being saved.
• Christophsis: Cut Anakin and Ahsoka’s look response to Bail, and try to colour correct Bail to daytime/more teal. Maybe pad that moment’s transition into the next shot some other way.
• Cloak: Trim a bit more janky dialogue.
• Malevolence: Remove the merged ion cannon description/destruction scene, putting the line “it’s an ion cannon” somewhere else.
• Flip Malevolence and Cloak, and drop Ahsoka being palmed off from Cloak, making it just a normal thing that happens rather than Anakin’s discomfort.

Maybes:

• Remove the Maul cold open and make it the stinger at the end of Death Watch (where it makes sense in context) rather than at the end of the season (which will already end on Maul’s face). Still a bit on the fence on this one, putting myself in the place of an absolute newbie. I think I’ll make this change based on feedback to my (production) season one finale, which we’re two episodes away from.

I appreciate you looking into that, Knight of Kalee. Thanks for the analysis, this is all useful. It’s great to be discussing topics episode by episode because it’s really valuable for us to share focus.

I’m having a slightly slower couple of days - full brain by the end of the day so a bit less brainspace left for editing - but nobody need worry about any lack of momentum. It’s all ticking on!

NFBisms said:
idk, it was just really noticeable to me how harmless and inoffensive Ahsoka was. It didn’t jive with important character moments and dialogue in the episode.

A totally valid opinion of course, but I think that my intention right now is to make the show (and especially the early episodes (and especially the Christophsis arc)) as palatable as possible for the theoretical first-time viewer. We all love Ahsoka, but her early portrayal is one of the things that most turned people off about the show. And it’s the people who had those initial intolerances that I’d most like to cater for now. That said, I totally understand where you’re coming from, and I totally understand why the writers started off with her behaviour being like that, because it did give her a very strong arc.

My only real technical (if even) gripe is that it’s noticeable to me when we’re coming into a scene from the titles with the music already halfway through a track.

Definitely going to fix this for all episodes to date. Right now, ‘Release cut’ of an episode comes with the caveat that I’m yet to polish the credits in and out (whereas ‘Review cut’ means it might have elements I’m yet uncertain of, or a little roughness). But I’ll absolutely rerelease all of them when McFibb and I (and any additional collaborators) have settled on our plans for the music.

Noted!

RogueLeader said:
I agree that if you could cite or mute his line, asking for her help, might alleviate the whiplash feeling you get when he says moments later “I had it under control!” I mean, I know this is whiny Anakin we’re talking about here, but still.

Good shout, might see if I can remove that.

that line, “You wouldn’t have made it as Obi-Wan’s padawan, but you might make it as mine” would be a bit of a shame to lose.

I could maybe play that line over the two of them as they walk away, see if that works.

@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 😉