Thanks for checking through it again CMMAP. Those transitions to credits are tricky! McFibb and I are working on some more mockups for how to get them to work naturally. We’ll get there!
Well, the first episode in watch order, but the third episode in release order.
That means we have our full first three episodes available.
Please check the last post though - there is a caveat!
The link’s in the tracker spreadsheet - PM if you don’t yet have access.
Next up, I’ll polish up s01e02 and s01e03 to the same standard, then it’s on to s01e04 Malevolence, which I promise you is going to be nothing like the original, but really works!
OK, I believe I’ve got my s01e01 end-to-end complete. I’m rendering the new version 1.1 now, which will become the new master version. This is a complete set of cuts incorporating all of your feedback to date (I think), it’s got complete start and end credits, and it’s got the opening minute from Eminence to stand as the cold open/teaser moment for our entire show.
That’s rendering and I’ll have it uploaded as soon as possible. If I’ve missed any fixes or tweaks in response to anyone’s feedback, please remind me!
The major caveat is that, with the parts which come from the movie, there are framerate issues. Sade1212 has kindly offered to fix these for me, but obviously he’s under no obligation to rush this back to us. To minimise his work and avoid duplication, I’m uploading the episode in its current form, so that the community can review it once more in case I need to make any final final (final) tweaks before he rebuilds the video.
It is still watchable, however. Just expect a little scratchiness.
And for those who’d like to review the new/updated stuff but don’t want to watch the whole episode again, here’s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BjDfaYmNfwy7fjQVfAfGjIdEShAtLzEP/view?usp=sharing
Which represents my s01e01 episode’s introduction, plus the full credits and theme music I’ll use for all episodes, plus the cold open to this episode/the series.
and
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vPfpTxeMJmTQiHv1szh9XShAb9FePoLJ/view?usp=sharing
Which represents my s01e01 episode’s conclusion (including a modified ‘Bail thanks’ scene and a slightly tweaked ‘Anakin accepts Ahsoka’ scene), end credits and theme music, and the correctly formatted community credits.
Please, I urge anyone who’s up for it, give any feedback you have on these clips or the v1.1 when it’s released. The quality of this project has already materially improved due to the great attention and consideration you’ve given this work - its potential is highest thanks to you all. And this one particular is going to be new viewer’s introduction to the show, the replacement for the horrendous movie, and as I’ve said, hard work for Sade1212!
Don’t worry - I’ll include it in a much fuller form as part of the complete cut. Since you’re our resident Grievous fan, what changes would you like to see made to Lair, if any?
Just how fast is a ship going when it is traveling in hyperspace? It turns out, the Lucasfilm Story Group doesn’t worry too much about those details, as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story co-writer Gary Whitta recently revealed that the Star Wars brain trust told him, hyperspace moves exactly as fast as the story requires. According to Whitta…
“The way I heard it was hyperspace moves at the speed of plot, which is, whatever is the most dramatically interesting time it takes to get from somewhere to somewhere else, that’s how long it takes.”
-CinemaBlend interview
However, if you must have in-universe explanations:
Despite being a mature technology and ships having travelled relatively stable hyperspace-routes that were updated constantly, moving through hyperspace was still a dangerous proposition. While generally determined by the distance between two planets, hyperspace travel times between two locations seemingly close to one another could be drastically extended by the need to navigate around stellar hazards, such as asteroid fields and nebulae.
An example of this is the journey from Coruscant to Alderaan. In terms of distance, Alderaan was situated close to Coruscant—the former at approximately 5,000 light years from the Core, the latter at approximately 10,000. However, during the Imperial era, such a journey required roughly sixteen hours of travel due to a section of the route passing through a part of the largely-uncharted Deep Core, where navigation was difficult as a result of the gravity wells produced by the congregation of stars. Ironically, then, it was actually faster to get from Tatooine to Alderaan on the other side of the galaxy. In some cases, intragalactic travels could take days, depending on the distance between two planets and the obstacles between.
-The Wookieepedia article on Hyperspace
So, here’s the update on Christophsis for everyone:
Because of the movie being a different format to the TV shows, I’ve struggled to find a good source for the video that has the right framerate. (Or rather, my editing software is misbehaving when this should be relatively easy.) Extremely generously, Sade1212 has offered to take my final episode and re-apply the full video track, to fix everything. So I need to finish this off completely then send it over for final render.
I’m making a few more bits of polish first - not having Obi-Wan surrender at all, a little more trimming to dialogue and flow in the Movie part, and better flow for the first five minutes. The imperfect Bail part at the very end will have to stay as it is. If anyone has any more feedback on the episode please share it now, because I don’t want to give Sade double the work!
Either way, this episode should be final relatively soon, so we’re back in proper order. Apologies for starting to release the series in a wobbly way.
In other news, Malevolence is being really good fun, It feels like the restructure I have for it works nicely.
Agreed. I’m definitely in the camp that feel like Star Wars has a great deal of forward momentum now, and we should roll with it rather than trying to anchor the ongoing saga to its original source. I’ve always believed that tweaking the OT to suit what the canon is now is the best approach.
Take Leia’s mother, for example. The OT and PT versions (“I remember my mother”/she died in childbirth) has always been a legitimate retcon which has required smoothing. Back when we just had PT and OT, and the PT was arguably worse, it made sense to allow the OT to be ‘master’. But now, there’s more content adding to the volume of canon supporting Padmé dying in childbirth, that it makes more sense to me to tweak the dialogue in the OT.
Yay! More Christophsis feedback! I needed some, so this is appreciated.
I love the atmosphere of the music starting, and then the video coming in a little later.
Yeah, I thought that worked quite nicely. Obviously it’ll open after the credits, but I’ll let the music play first, a lot like it is now.
At 2:05 the sound transition is a tad noticeable. Maybe you could erase a bit of the sweeping shot of the room, then cut to after Obi-Wan’s initial strike, and do an L-cut on the audio. There’s a moment here where Obi-Wan sort of gears up to do a large swing, which might make for a good “joining the battle” kind of move.
Alternatively, you could just cut directly from the initial break to the close-up shots with the three of them. That might help to hide the fact that Anakin and Ventress are on the steps, snap to the ground level, and then are back on the steps.
The music starts to drown out Ventress as she says “We’re about to take control of this world.” (Although, the editing here is pretty much seamless with the transition, so I’m genuinely not sure if it was like that in the original episode.)
Agreed, I think I need to polish the Ventress section a little. Right now it’s “all of it” but I think it needs a bit of flow touch.
Maybe the Bail Bombing should be right after Anakin and Obi-Wan escape Ventress and she says “Prepare to march.”? That way it gives a little extra time for the two of them to get back to base, and it directly connects Bail’s “Get me General Kenobi” with his message to the Jedi.
I think this is OK - it interrupts the most obvious break in the Ventress sequence, which I think is useful. But I think it maybe needs an establishing shot of the planet first, just to smooth it into place.
I love how you connected the Bail segments to the ground assault segments. It took me a few minutes to realize those were even from separate episodes.
I’m REALLY glad to hear this. I was really hoping I could thread this through successfully.
I’m getting some slight stuttering at 4:38, and one frame at 5:08…annnd a little at 5:17. Just every so often throughout, actually. Is it just me?
Yep, the video is from a bad source - I’m going to replace the whole thing.
The transition back to the battle at 5:24 feels just a hair rushed. Is there any extra time in the shot of the Admiral, that it could linger on him a smidge longer?
Regrettably no, though I might give the Admiral a slower fade, then into the audio of the fight, then fade in the video, to give it a bit more time to breathe in.
Overall, fantastic job toning down Ahsoka in the episode. One thing though, you could probably cut out the bit about “Do we still need this thing? I can’t take it anymore. I have to stand up.” by cutting directly from Anakin’s line to them lifting off the crate. That line makes her go from peppy to whiny, imo. Maybe even swapping Anakin’s “We have a ways to go.” so that it comes before Ahsoka’s “I think we made it past them!” That also tracks better with Anakin letting her stand up, and then hitting the droideka.
Thanks! I agree on standing up in the crate, I was still uncomfortable with that. That’s a good idea though, I’ll play with what you’ve suggested.
It feels weird to me that Obi-Wan surrenders without a plan. Maybe it could work if you cut from him standing in attack formation, to the close up of him, to the shot of the droids? That might imply that he’s overpowered by them, and thus being held by them in the next shot.
I’ve trimmed this in my working version. Now, he doesn’t surrender at all. He tells Cody(?) that he’ll slow the droids down, goes off to fight more, and we don’t see him again until after the shield is down and they’re back to base.
Great job timing Bail thanking Anakin with Anakin turning his head!
Thank you! I really wanted to know if this worked, because I’ve tried so many alternatives to this but not found any, and as it is I think this is imperfect. The turn works nicely, and then we can assume Bail is in the shadow of the wing, but I wish it had a little longer to land, or Anakin to acknowledge it without going straight over to Yoda and Obi-Wan. But I think I’m going to have to leave this imperfect, so long as nobody thinks it’s actively broken.
When Anakin talks to Yoda about Ahsoka, maybe it could be structured like this: Yoda says “Trouble with your new Padawan” > Obi-Wan says “I was explaining to Yoda about the situation.” > Anakin: “Really?” > Ahsoka glances at Anakin, Anakin looks at her (shots moved from before Obi-Wan’s line) > Yoda: “Perhaps we can…” and the scene continues. I feel like it will have more emotional weight if Ahsoka and Anakin share a glance as he’s deciding whether to accept her, rather than “Oh no, even Yoda’s talking about us.”
That’s a good thought! I’ll check this. I actually had introduced a different shot (from the end of Cat and Mouse actually) which could be interpreted at him looking at Ahsoka with a little humour and affection, but this seems cleaner.
EDIT: I’ve just tried this and you’re right - it really works!
Overall, really great job blending the three episodes together, and especially with making Ahsoka less annoying! I didn’t even notice the lack of "Sky Guy"s. Other than the nitpicky stuff above, my only “large change” suggestion might be to cut the opening with Ventress altogether, and just open with the bombing on Bail. Her stuff doesn’t really matter to the rest of the plot, and she talks about “her loyal informant” as if that person matters in your edit.
I almost agree. I think for this episode, the Ventress stuff achieves a couple of things - (1) It gives us a little lightsaber fight up front, and a nice scene of Obi-Wan and Anakin as a team, which flows nicely from AOTC. (2) It introduces us to Ventress, and we need her introduction here since she gets a lot less in our third episode when she reappears. And (3) It implies some kind of trickery and that the Separatists at this stage in the war are one or more steps ahead - making Ahsoka’s later help all the more valuable. I think they’re all minor bonuses rather than major ones but they add up to worthwhile.
As for the informant who now isn’t the traitor clone, wait until my S01E03 😉
End Credits
WOW. I am absolutely floored by this. It’s sweeping, it’s epic, it’s meditative, it’s exciting, it’s familiar, it’s new. Absolutely incredible, McFibb. I love the hints at the Star Wars theme (which ties us back to the OT), and Duel of the Fates (which always says “Maul”.) This song feels like the fabric of The Clone Wars. Both the show, and the period within Star Wars. Really, really, really impressive.
I need to check it in context but I’m sure it hits the notes we need.
What a gorgeous piece of work. You’ve got an extreme talent, McFibb - especially since you haven’t seen most of TCW.
Extremely exciting!
The five minute edit of Lair of Grievous is neat, and coherent enough (aside from Grievous having no legs in that one shot haha), but I wouldn’t put it on the end of Cloak of Darkness. It doesn’t add much besides, well, getting to see the Lair of Grievous - and him actually succeeding in killing a Jedi for once - so I don’t think it’s worth the hassle to shoehorn it in. I’d vote to save it for the Complete Cut.
Plus, the Jedi he kills is a fresh knight who seems really naive, it’s hardly a really competent threat that emphasises his skill. I know that the show needed recurring villains, which means them losing a fair amount, but I think Grievous especially came off pretty poorly, he seems to only lose. I’ll do all I can to make him as badass as possible in this show.
Deal!
So, since I’m still working on my source for S01E01, I’ve started on S01E04, the Malevolence arc. This was always one of my least favourites, but I’m really glad you guys encouraged me to keep it because I’m really pleased with the rough cut so far.
Essentially I’m intercutting the first and second episodes.
Grievous has the Malevolence, and has destroyed many clone medical stations, and is currently doing that in the Abregado/Rendellia/Naboo area. Obi-Wan is coordinating evacuations, while Anakin and Ahsoka are involved in the hunt. Plo has been sent to Abregado whose medical station has sent out a distress signal.
We begin in media res, Plo evidently having arrived to find a debris field, with our first shots being the destruction of Plo’s powerless ship by Grievous. The Malevolence launches pod killers then immediately jumps to hyperspace, towards the next station. As the pod killers try to kill Plo, and Anakin and Ahsoka search for Plo, we intercut with scenes of the medical stations slowly trying to evacuate, Obi-Wan showing concern in a few conversations, and Grievous travelling - first to a convoy route where he destroys a medical transport (but not before it gets a signal out which tips the Republic off), and then going the slow way around the nebula towards the Rendellia medical base - but with a huge head start.
After Ahsoka and Anakin save Plo, Yularen tells them that he’s learned of the convoy route attack and they realise he’s heading to Rendellia. Anakin formulates the bomber plan and they jump through the ‘short cut’ - though showing none of the nebula (we assume size of the ship matters for this hyperspace jump or whatever). They arrive, and I’ve cut it so that Grievous’ bloodlust in trying to destroy the medical station before turning his attention to the incoming bombers is what allows them to get close enough.
I’m not going to show the ion cannon firing at all during this episode, though its effects will be seen - I don’t like the visual effect, and this way it retains some mystery - though I have a lot of opportunities to show how savage the Malevolence is. Ultimately, the bombers target the ion cannon, Grievous attempts to fire it, the Malevolence starts to explode, Grievous evacuates, and one “fire everything” from Obi-Wan later (from the third, mostly unused episode) and it’s job done.
In my rough cut it feels far stronger, and with far higher stakes. It also feels right coming after Cloak of Darkness, because this is the start of Anakin and Ahsoka becoming friends, and I liked him pawning her off on Luminara at first.
Noted, thanks guys. Knight, I agree on the music. I definitely want there to be ONE closing theme tune, ideally Clones (Sad). My hope is that so long as it starts on the right note it’ll merge with whatever tracks used to lead into the original ending theme, and that McFibb can wizard it up. I’ve got a lot of faith in him, so let’s see how it goes!
Hmmm. You could MAYBE split the ending phone call of Cloak of Darkness into three parts to wrap around Lair of Grievous:
But that’s only if we thought the Grievous part worked.
Ohhh, I see! That scene, where it flashes back to Gandalf recruiting Thorin, does two things. (1) It recaps the mission, but importantly, (2) It gives us more context on Thrain. In the original Desolation of Smaug, it makes sense because it serves both of those purposes. But actually in AdamDens’ 2FS (which I love, obviously!) it kind of doesn’t work for the second purpose, because Thrain has already been discovered at the end of the first half. So when making this a TV series, I reasoned that if the show had been made this way, the flashback would mainly be used to reintroduce the viewers to Thrain, in the episode where Thrain is rediscovered.
So, for those who are interested in the process, here’s my UNFINISHED attempt to turn Lair of Grievous into the end of my Cloak of Darkness episode - I got it down to a tight 5:45.
Goals:
There’s dialogue and sound effects, but no music in this yet, because I didn’t get that far.
Essentially I worked through it, first restructuring the whole, then sequences, then scenes, then I added back in anything that I felt was necessary to make it flow right or fix new continuity errors I’d introduced.
This is the point I got it to where I decided that it ultimately wasn’t going to work.
The part where I realised it wouldn’t work was when I noticed that I couldn’t have Kit Fisto leave when there were clones alive. So I had to kill them off, without using the scenes where they die (because that would have drawn this out massively). So I tried to do an implied Grievous slaughter, using a quick shot of him (legless, but hoping you wouldn’t notice) diving at the clones then some sound effects of them dying, which I embedded in another scene of the clones calling for reinforcement but their ship getting blown up. It almost worked, but I think ultimately it’s just too rough, and moves too fast. At that point, the whole episode kind of collapsed as a possibility.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oN0Cc292i4f_oaPneWiA0ZqwahYkn9De/view?usp=sharing
Edit: Whoops, I cut this a little too short. Dooku says “So there is room for improvement.” and then it ends.
😉
Check the sheet in about ten minutes McFibb - I’ve just added a tab called ‘other stuff’ and put in a video with lots of examples for you. It’s uploading as we speak.
Yeah, absolutely. I don’t want to take away her character growth. Mostly I’m just trimming “Snips”/“Sky guy”/“Artooie” and anything that swings to the thoughtless side of reckless rather than just bold, or to the petulant side of cheeky.
Two observations that don’t relate to your cut at all but rather the original episode. Ashoka insulting Ventress as ‘hairless’ is just silly, she also calls her a ‘Bog Witch’ and I had no idea anybody knew she was a Nightsister that early, secondly Argyus is voiced by James Masters.
The only observation I have about your cut (other than it looks and sound good with no errors I can pick out) is that the episode credits is the one from ‘Death Watch’ rather than this episode.
Yeah, I left the Death Watch credits in just while I’m waiting on the final source for the ending, at which point I’ll correct it for all the ones I’ve done to date and use the correct ones moving forward.
You’re right about Ahsoka’s language being a little weird - I did take out some of her weirder language because she says a few things that are awkward or too bold in this episode - I did try to clean them up but couldn’t for whatever reason. but I’ll check again though.
Edit: I was able to take out “Hairless harpy” but not “Bog witch”. Now, Ahsoka sees her appear and just draws her lightsaber, which works better anyway. But I couldn’t take out “Bog witch” or replace it with other language - Hairless Harpy, Ventress, or Lowlife - because the tone is all wrong. I want to keep that scene though since it’s Argyus realising he can manipulate her into leaving, and it also emphasises the threat that Luminara is walking into, and that Ahsoka will ultimately save her from.
I think we just assume that she’s either using a generic insult (she does look witchy) or she’s using an actual racial slur for ‘someone from Dathomir’ (assuming that she looks noticeably Dathomiri to Ahsoka), not knowing that she’s an actual witch from an actual bog. Probably the former!
Don’t get me wrong the clone sad theme (liked you joke about being you sad) is a wonderful choice for the end credits but not necessarily for the first 20-30 seconds. depends on the other theme, might be possible even at 10 seconds in.
Yeah. If McFibb can work some magic so that the majority of Clones (Sad) is preserved, but that it transitions out of the episode body properly, that would be the best case scenario. I accept that we might have to lose the lovely choral stuff and maybe even the minor key, though.
Thanks for your feedback! I will look at those ending transitions!
What did you mean about the placement of the Smaug intro? What do you think it needs in order to work?
the one thing: i still think it’s worth a try to merge the music in the end credits
„ Although i like the suggestion from samo21 (first track from samuel kim in the link), because it could be tricky to always find the right transition from end of an episode to credits. depending on the episode itself of course. perhaps there is a possibility to fuse the two tracks.
my suggestion would be try to add your track after 0:26/27/28 of samuel kims song and see how this plays out.
because i think the beginning (first two seconds) of his song would be perfect to every ending, cause it feels general.“
because i found the transition in this from end of episode to credit score unfortunate.
Yeah, I think that might be what I’m learning here. I’m not a student of music but what McFibb says about key might be right. And I agree that Clones (Sad) just doesn’t quite work as I’d hoped. And hey, I shouldn’t lock onto something that isn’t going to work - the project must come first. We’ll play with it.
Nice mock-up. Helpful! Do you know if the ending build up in the original episodes is always the same, or at the very least, in the same key each time?
Also, do you want to drop right to credits or to logo again?
Finally, could you send me the video track + dialogue + no music for the last 30 seconds, then your full credit sequence, sans music?
I think probably the same key every time. Which might mean that I’m giving myself the same problem per episode, if the key match is what we really need. In which case it might be sensible for us to switch out Clones (Sad) for something in the same key, though this makes me EddieDean (Sad).
It might be easiest for you to match to whatever note episodes tend to land on.
A little later today I’ll give you some examples of episode endings so you can see, as well as the other couple of examples you’ve asked for.
Not sure what you mean about dropping right to credits or logo. If you mean, at the end of each episode, do I want the build at the end of each episode to hit the peak which triggers the first visual of the closing credits (a name over concept art), then yes, sure. Though it doesn’t need to hit immediately after.
Don’t worry too much about getting the length of this too perfect or synced to my visuals, because it goes like:
Credits over concept art (I can change their length) > Community credit (fixed length) > Main credits (can vary in length) > Lucasfilm credit (fixed length). So I can always make tweaks to fit. What’s most important is the transition from the episodes, and then that the track is good (and ideally melancholy/emotional/not too upbeat).
Regarding the closing titles, personally I think the credits/score sync works best when the piece of music that starts at 21:30 in Cloak of Darkness hits the same time as the OT forum credits, as it did in the previous episode. The starting point of the music of course can vary depending on how it blends better with the episode. Maybe you could move forward the beginning of the credits a few seconds or reduce a bit the duration of the text. I agree with giving more screentime to the most striking concept art.
I think you’re saying/asking the same thing McFibb is there? That the final scene of the episode should be followed immediately by the first screen of the credits? I’m very happy to do that - and happy to keep tweaking until we get it feeling perfect.
It’s important to remember though, that Star Wars ships travel through hyperspace at the speed of plot. That’s always been the rule.