Well sheeeeeit. You’re right that it’s too late, so that’ll have to be. There’ll always be things like that to find. All the same, good to point it out.
Somehow, Coruscant returned.
I agree too. And don’t worry- especially early on, we don’t get more than one episode without Ahsoka.
Now on to Cloak/Lair, which as you say is weaker.
With this pairing, the intro would focus on how Anakin’s essentially dumped Ahsoka on Luminara for a bit, whilst she’s escorting Gunray.
The Cloak of Darkness is an OK episode. The Ahsoka stuff is good - Luminara/Ahsoka makes a good pairing because we see that Ahsoka’s boldness is not necessarily a weakness - and the rest is fine, though I’ll trim some of Gunray and the goofy stick droid thing, plus the scene of Ventress planting bombs (mainly because it just looks very dull). Unfortunately the episode is cut in quite a boring way, so it doesn’t have much dynamism to it.
But Lair of Grievous… It’s just not that good. I think the only way it can stay is if you absolutely whip through it. The good bits are the hints that Grievous is monstrous, and the final beat where Yoda acknowledges that there’s a risk that the war may turn the Jedi from peacekeepers into warriors. Grievous is a real weakness though - yes he gets a bit of layering here, but he gets an easy beat and the tension between him and Dooku only really serves to show that even Dooku thinks he’s a crap villain. For there to be any tension in the episode it has to be Grievous’ plan, I think, and he’s laying in wait.
So you’d essentially have Fisto arrive on the planet, straight up to the chair (unopposed) and reveal the Gunray hologram, have the folk explore his lair, then skip right to him coming out of his main room (implicitly doing this deliberately to draw Kit Fisto away), then killing Nadar. Instead of fighting Grievous, I’d then just have Fisto flee, and report back to the order.
There is a nice scene in Shadow Warrior which I thought about including here, where Dooku and Sidious talk about Grievous. But the only workable Sidious dialogue is “This turn of events is unfortunate. General Grievous is a critical part of my plan for the Clone Wars. You must lure [Skywalker] into a trap”. And it’s set on Naboo, with some lovely establishing shots, but I think that raises way too many questions.
My editor has crashed, but since it’s still rendering my 8-bit Christophsis source I don’t want to force a restart, so I’m looking at some upcoming edits. My episode two is made from the first two Mandalore episodes.
This is a really strong arc, but I wanted to trim the goofier elements, notably Obi-Wan getting put on a Bond villain’s production line OF DEATH, and the small spider things. Instead the story plays out as:
This episode doesn’t feature Ahsoka, and this early in the show I’m considering explaining it away in the crawl. There’re plenty of times later when people are off doing their own thing, but in this case, I think people will expect to know why, so I think “Anakin’s escorting Ahsoka elsewhere” is important for the opening. Either that, or this is our episode one?! That’d fit a bit more tightly with the cold open of Death Watch commandos finding the Maul bros, then we could introduce Ahsoka in episode two - though this episode’s quite Obi-Wan focused so isn’t an ideal opening.
I was thinking of calling this episode either THE DEATH WATCH or TERROR(ISM?) ON MANDALORE. I could call it DUCHESS OF MANDALORE, since Satine is the focus, but my DoM wouldn’t include the actual Duchess of Mandalore episode, which’ll come a little later. But by calling it THE DEATH WATCH, they’re our key element to continue to follow throughout the show, which is sensible.
Work continues on the Christophsis episode. Using now the original sources, I’ve produced the rough cut from the best elements of the three episodes, and it flows nicely. It runs to about 30 minutes. Plot is now:
I think I’m just going to call this THE NEW PADAWAN, unless anyone can think of anything better. CRISIS ON CHRISTOPHSIS is a bit too cheeky. THE SIEGE OF CHRISTOPHSIS is cool but takes a little weight off the later outer rim sieges, and I think it’s best to focus on the characters for this one. I don’t want to highlight Ventress since she’s a minor part, so I wouldn’t go with something like APPRENTICES or PADAWAN AND ASSASSIN.
There’s nothing released yet buddy, but stay tuned. I’ve put the current status right at the top of the OP so it’s easy to check, and will update the title as new episodes are released.
Oops, my bad! I will definitely stay tuned.
BTW, I have just posted my own episode grouping/order in another thread that you might find of note.
Nice, thanks for the share. I always like to see others’ versions of these, because it helps me to see where the community’s focus is.
There’s nothing released yet buddy, but stay tuned. I’ve put the current status right at the top of the OP so it’s easy to check, and will update the title as new episodes are released.
Looks like an Intel I5-6600K @ 3.50GHz, with 16GB RAM.
It’s still only at 54% though, which is a pain. I don’t want to have to spend 24 hours pre-processing each of 50 episodes - that makes a weekly release far more unlikely. I think I’ll stick with the original sources, without grading. To be fair, the show always looked great when it looked great, and most of the episodes that looked like ass have been excised for exactly that reason. I think for the weekly release (which is very much our pilot), original should be absolutely fine. I’ll consider grading or alternate sources - that’s all easier to do after final cut, which should follow community feedback anyway.
Regrettably my machine seems to really be struggling with NJ’s inputs. It slows down so badly that it can’t render the preview video at even the worst setting, so I’m effectively editing blind.
I know my machine can handle high quality sources because I’ve edited 1080p versions of the Hobbit movies with no trouble, so I think it must be NJ’s. My assumption is that it’s the 10-bit colour information as opposed to the original source’s (and more common) 8-bit info, and with such a high resolution and long length file it’s too much to process.
Now, it’s not to the actual upscaling that’s causing this, since I’m using his 1080p versions. But in the process I believe NJ is introducing HDR lighting. It gives us a subtlety of colour which frankly isn’t vital to us. Colour that deep is mostly useful for colour processing, which I don’t intend to do (since NJ has already done that himself). I would still like to preserve his colour grade if possible - but I don’t need all that deep data. So option one is that I’m running his Christophsis episode through my rendering pipeline now, but with 8-bit colour, to see if I can handle what’s returned as a new input.
Failing that, option two is to revert back to using the original sources, which frankly are fine, just not quite as rich in colour as NJ’s. I can always grade them myself, I suppose, though that’d be a huge amount of effort for minimal reward - it was more of just a bonus from using NJ’s.
Edit: It’s taken an hour to render 4%, so re-processing NJ’s may be a non-starter.
‘Burying the Dead Epic Cinematic Version’ is what I’m using in the original v1,3,4. And I agree, it’s totally lovely. Whether in mine or yours McFibb, it feels like we’re all strongly gravitating towards it as an element of the identity of TCW:R.
Yeah, a friend of mine suggested changing the theme music every chunk of episodes, but that sounds like waaaay too much effort to be honest. And I’d rather the start feel more tied to the ending.
Right, I’m now looking at the edits proper, taking each episode in detail.
Currently working on my s01e01, which is just the Ahsoka elements of the Christophsis arc (and technically the rest of the movie, though I’m cutting the entirely of the Hutt baby storyline).
Since I don’t think the stealth ship belongs in the show (plus it’s a slow episode), and I don’t think we should explore traitor clones this early in the show (it’s literally the first episode), I’m left with some good material from the first two episodes.
The intro text should always fit to 40 seconds, if you can manage that. That allows for two groups of three sections of text, with the final whole getting extra time to digest. So since it fades in from a brief period of black, 40-50 seconds of music before the TCW logo appears would be about right.
Is permission necessary for fan edits? I’d assumed that since this was non-profit, and consumers of an edit own the source (which contains Kim’s music in context for this purpose), that we’re covered? Though if it’s necessary of course we should.
Stereo is absolutely fine for music. It’s only the meat of the episode that needs the 5.1 sound, and my sources give that. I’ll just play the stereo through the front channels and leave the others silent.
Holy shit buddy that’s absolutely awesome. Tonally I think that fits really well - it’s a really nice mix of military bombast with something more ominous and melancholy.
I think the text section is way too fast though - I’d probably go as slow as letting it take double the time, in which case, are you able/willing to produce a mix which lets that middle section last for twice as long before we drop into the TCW logo section? I don’t know quite how technical you are with mixing, but I’d love a couple of those nice piano notes throughout too if it’s possible to make that work.
That said, I’d be more than happy to have this become our intro. There’s no upper limit to how collaborative this effort can be. You’d need to send me the audio so I could recompile the video per episode, since the text will always differ. Let’s give the usual suspects time to feedback too, but I really like what you’ve done.
Since it feels like we’re getting close to our final version of this, I’m going to crack on with my edits, in the chronological order of my Quality Cut, since that’s the ordering I’ll be releasing first. I have about six days free now, so I intend to blast through these if I can. I’ll go back over them to add the intro/outro stuff once we’ve settled on it.
Has anyone considered the flipside for RotS/Rogue One? Adding a little burned forest to the landscapes?
Well argued, Jake.
Hmm, the only real options there for smoothing would be to either split them further from each other with more silence in between, or to keep the slight overlap (allowing the hum to come in where it does) but having the ‘pings’ and text come in later. What do you think it needs?
Ahhhh, phew!
I was hoping nobody would say that about the speed of the end credits! I’ve got it right now so it ‘snaps’ which makes it more reproducible, though if I slow it down it’ll be much harder to copy times eleven for each episode. I’ll see if I have any other options.
V4 was my preference, and yes, I accidentally rendered it without tweaking the Clone Wars logo, which I agree should end up at max (well, hit the safety zones).
I’ll see if I can find a slightly wider font.
I do like the ellipsis. I liked that in my last line of my v1. It feels a bit pulpy and cheeky, but I think that’s OK for Star Wars? Interested in folks’ feelings on that.
Currently, in terms of lines, I went with
1,2,2. : 2,2,1.
With the very first being “time period within the clone wars”, and the very last being “hint at what’s to come”. Though I don’t know if that last one needs to strictly be 1 line.
OK, here’s v3 and v4:
Noted both. I also preferred more melancholy. When I was looking for something with a bit more bombast I did pass over a few other suitable candidates for softer, so I’ll revisit those. I also checked out the non-sad version of the Clones theme but think it’s a bit too military for what I’m going for. My preference would be to more closely link military==tragedy in this show, rather than just let the ‘wars’ element of the clone wars be an isolated element.
I’ll also give myself a bit longer than a minute for the intro music, to let the text linger for longer. I’ll also see if TCW logo fits earlier to a given track, though I don’t think this is mandatory, since other shows allow it to come after intro text equivalents or cold opens.
I also think I prefer teal text for end credits over yellow, though I’ll see if I can give it more shadow and let the background images move a bit (though I’m adding work per episode here).
I’d prefer to keep the end credits over static images, and ideally the concept paintings from StarWars.com for consistency. I think scenes that I’ve cut are a cuter addition than promotional shots or the art showing digital elements (like character models or sets). I think I want to avoid previs.
OK, I’ve made some changes to this one.
(Ignore the couple of images in the outro credits which aren’t fullscreen; all will be in the real episodes)
Let me know what you think needs further tweaking, anything that doesn’t work, which options you prefer in v1 vs v2, etc.
I like that. There is enough material to make that work. I think it works nicely as a homage to what was lost, though I can see people objecting on the grounds of it being potentially confusing. But I think I’ll do that unless there’s outcry.
Message received! I’ll play around with the intro music and flow.
Glad everyone seems to like the ending. It’s a wonderful piece of music.
Here’s a question for you all: If I run out of concept ART for the closing credits, would it be best to fill the gaps with promotional shots from the episode (so nice shots but not concept), or other concept materials like the images they show when creating new assets like sets or characters, which are less beautiful but interesting in a different way?
Perfect. And yeah I’m more than happy to take suggestions for audio!