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.
The episode itself was well-done, and good call on making Argyus the mole as you had suggested earlier. Shame to see Lair go, since it’s the only time Grievous gets any backstory or the chance to kill a Jedi in this series, but at least there will always be the complete cut or the original episode to check out.
Sorry to disappoint. There’s some good meat in there (the Jedi killing and a bit more flavour to Grievous as you say). But looking at the series as a whole, spending a whole episode on it this early in the series would lose us a lot of momentum and spend more time on weaker scenes than I think is sensible. And treating it as a capper to Cloak just doesn’t seem to work as nothing brings us full circle, and it doesn’t reduce well.
I’ll share my rough cut in a bit to see what you think.
Tell you what though, I will be sure to include it (in full) with my Complete Cut, as episode S01E03-B. And I’ll tweak the start to make it flow correctly from the new ending of Cloak.
@EddieDean regarding my possibly encountered frame drops in episode 2 aren’t any. The video started to stutter because of the ai enhanced upscaling of the nvidia shield pro. i watched the episode back and worth with and without it to rule it out 100%
Super, thanks for confirming. Weirdly, my pipeline does put the episodes out by a frame. (Well, like a percent of a frame, but the effect is that they’re off by one). But luckily, since they’re still the right FPS, I just shift the video stream by one frame for perfect sync again.
Please check the tracker for the link, or PM me for access to the tracker.
So, while I was waiting on an improved source for my s01e01, I got to work on s01e03. This was going to be Cloak of Darkness with a handful of scenes from Lair of Grievous, but I ultimately couldn’t get the Lair content to feel like it belonged. So it’s essentially just Cloak of Darkness with a little polish - I took out a boring scene, cut or modified four or five minor lines of dialogue just to tighten characterisation, and made the ending closed rather than open ended.
One thing I did decide to do was to make the traitor/infomant from Christophsis now explicitly Argyus. Why not! I think it’s tidy.
(See my earlier post for the reasons I couldn’t include Lair. I do still have the rough cut of the Lair content if anyone’s interested, but I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion I did!)
There are a couple of minor bits of polish still required in the credits, but again, I’m waiting on a source. As soon as I have that, I’ll re-release all of the existing episodes in closer to ‘final’ version as I finalise my standards.
Since this was really just polishing an existing episode, I kept the name CLOAK OF DARKNESS, to represent that this really isn’t anything new. Though I did think of making a pun on ‘Unduli’, such as ‘Unduly Alarmed’ or ‘Unduly Betrayed’.
(This is maybe a good time to remind people that I estimate that about 50% of episodes - about 30 out of 60 - will only require a polish pass rather than anything radical, so please don’t always expect something new. What they will be at the least, will be the best or most important episodes of the show, in an order that makes the show flow better, and brought up to a slightly higher standard than TCW at release.)
I’m still interested in any feedback on the opening titles, and the closing ones. I’ve made some changes to the end titles to give the best art a little longer to shine.
Edit: Whoops. I just hit post on a message I was prepping saying that S01E03 was ready. It’s not yet!
Your first three points will be fixed in the next release- and I’ll have a look at the other two too!
I managed to recreate the audio from the beginning today, so I’ve been able to extend it back out to include a planet shot.
^ Got.
Today’s work has been a bit of a bust, unfortunately. I was working on the capture of Nute Gunray arc.
If you remember, it has three episodes:
I’ve gone through Cloak with just a couple of minor tweaks and reorderings just to take out a little bad humour or characterisation, no problem.
But I’ve spent the day trying to make Lair of Grievous work, and frankly, I can’t get it to.
I believe that Lair can’t stand alone, because it’s following the escape of Gunray, but it doesn’t feature any of our main characters. So I wanted to have it be a short capper at the very end of Cloak, if possible.
What it adds, is the reveal that Gunray’s escape contained a bonus contingency where the villains might even be able to draw a Jedi or two into a trap. So I wanted to maintain that if possible. And while doing that, I wanted to take the opportunity to have Grievous become more of a menacing villain. I think Nadar was a boring new character who was ostensibly a knight but felt more childish than early Ahsoka, and since he dies in this episode, he adds no ongoing value to the series, so I wanted to minimise him and make this Fisto’s mission. I cut out the pointless monster, Grievous being damaged and rebuilt, and the goofy medical droid entirely.
So, I had essentially structured it so that Kit Fisto lands, meets Nadar and enters quickly, and then they discover it’s Grievous’ lair straight away (so for the viewer it all now adds to his menace). They reach the chair where they think Gunray is (without any fight or lesson as they advance), and Dooku reveals it’s a trap for them. They press on, while Dooku calls Grievous to tell him that Sidious wants some Jedi deaths. Grievous leaves his control room, knowing Kit and Nadar are watching him, and as Kit enters first I used a quick cut to have him suprise Nadar and shut the door, then kill Nadar very quickly. I then needed a reason why the clones all end up dead (since originally they get picked off one by one), so I used the scene where one tries to call for backup, and intercut it with some shots to have Grievous appear to jump out on them and slaughter them off camera. Kit then calls R6 and leaves the facility in a hurry. Grievous appears, wanting a fight, but instead I had Kit just leap into his starfighter and fly away, then have Dooku be like “not great, Grievous.”
There was no conclusion available, since originally it was just Kit saying to the Jedi Council “Nadar got a bit aggressive there” and Yoda saying “yeah, let’s not turn too much into warriors I guess”. But there was no way of tying it back into the original plot either - or even having them say “Well we never did find Gunray”.
Ultimately, I think it succeeded in making Grievous a bit more badass, though it made Kit Fisto run instead of fighting (which I think was the better move but I can see people objecting to), but ultimately it just didn’t add anything, and it felt like a weird diversion. I don’t think it can stand on its own, so I’m just going to change the ending of Cloak to “Gunray got away, but there’s nothing we can do about it, and at least Ahsoka had some character development.”
Is anyone able to get me a high resolution, 23.976 FIXED FRAMERATE version of the Clone Wars movie, (or just the Christophsis bits plus a little padding either side)? Or even just an .mp4 of the video track would be fine. TSMUXER can easily produce this from a high quality .mkv, if anyone’s up for it. My version isn’t good, and I don’t have the means to get another version myself for the short term, which means I can’t fix the framerate issues on my episode one yet.
@EddieDean — Thanks for the clarification! I can screw around with it the next day or two and give you a few versions. That work?
You’re awesome!
Ahh, got you. It’s a sensible pair of interactions in context, but for the audience it’s redundant information. It could be trimmed, but this is how it was in the original episode, and I don’t think it’s egregious enough to want to interrupt the flow of the surrounding effects for.
In the scene where they find the empty crate on Satine’s ship, I wonder if there’s a way to clean it up so we don’t hear a description of what’s (not) in the box twice within about 10 seconds?
This is OK, isn’t it? In the first call, Anakin tells Obi-Wan ‘yes, there’s a danger’, and in the second call, he’s saying ‘assassin probe coming your way’. That’s just responsible guard duty, isn’t it? Giving key information as soon as it comes up! Or have I missed something?
That reminds me - if everyone could try to include timestamps with feedback where possible that’d be super useful, since it saves me looking over minutes of clip at a time to investigate things like this! Thanks!
- am i delusional or is the intro and outro volume higher than the episode volume?
I don’t know if you’re delusional or not, but I can confirm that the music levels outside of the main episode parts are way too loud. 😉
- regarding wipes in the episode, i personally think it works best if someone uses the same wipe transition over the course of the entire episode. but that’s up for discussion because after all it’s a personal preference.
This would be nice, but there’s no way to change an existing wipe without trimming, and that has knock-on effects to sound, voice, music, etc. It’s more work than it’s worth. Like the originall, TCW:Refocused will have to remain a multi-wipe show.
Edit: A third thing occurred to me. i watched the episode on my uhd samsung tv via nvidia shield pro. i thought i spotted 6-8 (maybe more) framerate issues (frame drops). perhaps @sade could shed light to it if he watched the episode via mpc-hc again?
Interesting. Please point any such out as and when you find them. It should theoretically be as close to perfect as you can get right now, but I’ll check every reported issue.
Other than all the above, i’m thankful that you took upon this project. it is a real joy.
Thanks, and thank you always for your feedback!
I image neutral systems as being members of the Republic with representation at the Senate, and the intent to stay in the Republic, unlike the Separatists. However, they think other members should be able to leave the Republic if they so wish, so that’s why they don’t support the war effort.
I’ve looked into this more - it’s complex but you’re right. The Galactic Republic, governed by the Galactic Senate, represents a republic of worlds. Neutral systems, including Mandalore, are OUTSIDE of that system - they are not members of the Republic. HOWEVER, there is a faction WITHIN the Galactic Republic called the Pacifist Faction, who have an additional seat WITHIN the Galactic Senate for the Council of Neutral systems. This seat exists deliberately to allow allies and neutral parties from outside the Republic to at least have a formal voice and presence within the Republic beuraucracy.
So Mandalore is not a member of the Republic, but as the leader of the Council of Neutral Systems is granted a seat in the senate.
Or to put it another way, “You are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank of member state. Take a seat.”