EddieDean

Right, while letting other tasks do their thing, I’ve taken a closer look at the necessary cuts to the Malevolence arc - our episode four.

The bulk of Ahsoka’s development is in the first episode, the second is OK but slow, and the last is poor.

I had been thinking I’d switch Trench in for Grievous, and there is enough Trench dialogue to replace the key things (he says ‘I’, ‘on’, and ‘cannon’, so you can at least have him fire the Malevolence’s Ion Cannon), but I realised that if you’re keeping the focus on the first episode, it actually makes Grievous more badass rather than less. And Grievous needs to appear tougher.

I realised a way to make the final edited episode have more threat and heart is if we roll episode two’s attacks on the medical station into this one - plus make it multiple stations. So now, in the crawl, we establish that Grievous has a new flagship and has been destroying medical stations - that’s good and villainous but also strategic this early in the war - and no fleet that’s been sent to stop him has come back alive.

We establish that Abregado system (where he does the pod killings) is near to Naboo/Rendellia, and that he’s been spotted there. Plo goes to Abregado, we use some extra dialogue from episode three where he says “The droids are jamming our transmissions”, episode one plays out pretty much in full. After Plo is saved by Ahsoka, we see him and Yularen tell Anakin that he’s now in Rendellia where there’s another station. We cut to Plo and Ahsoka in episode three calling Luminara for support, and she says she’s on her way, as we see the Malevolence bearing down on the medical station, and the Kaminoan working on helping clones escape. But then we immediately cut to the end of episode two where the three Republic cruisers appear near the medical station, and the start of episode three where they do a lot of laser damage. We splice in Grievous getting into his ship, see Obi-Wan shout “Maximum firepower”, cut to laser fire, and simply have the Malevolence explode - we can cut from one of its smaller explosions to some clone admirals cheering. Grievous goes to hyperspace, we wrap up.

All of the wheat, none of the chaff. And Grievous got to be a savage who just got overwhelmed by superior firepower.

Oof, nice! I’ll try that out over the intro text and see how it feels.

That said, I’m really happy with the actual cuts. I’ve managed to remove the conveyor belt entirely, cut out the mini spiders, and cut out the bits where people are just wandering around in the cargo bay.

The conveyor belt scene took a major rework. You can see it in the clips in my previous post (though excuse any framerate issues.) It now goes:

• Obi-Wan goes off to ‘meditate’, we see him approach the front door of the mine
• Satine and Viszla talk
• Mandalorians jump out at Obi-Wan, he, loses his lightsaber, but isn’t knocked out
• Obi-Wan calls Satine at dinner with Viszla. I’ve added the sounds of background fighting to his call dialogue. Now, he’s simply overwhelmed and suprised, fighting tough guys without his saber, and knowing that Satine is savvy enough to distract them so he can get the upper hand. He’s putting her at risk but they spent a year together - they trust each other.
• Satine leaves dinner and arrives at the mine.
• We see Obi-Wan’s still in the same fight from earlier.
• Satine triggers the door alarm.
• As they fight (as opposed to while they have Obi-Wan on the conveyor), the Mandos now say “A disturbance at the entrance”, then team up to knock Obi-Wan back, still unarmed (he looks like he’s taken a bad hit here and needs a moment - previously this led into him being knocked out), then say “Let’s go check it out”
• They run off, and Satine sneaks in
• I use a long shot from earlier when Obi-Wan scanned the room, and cut dialogue of Satine saying “where are you?” (previously from when she arrived at the entrance), to give the Mandalorians time to reach the entrance, realise they’ve been tricked, and run back in. I also added cut dialogue from the conveyor scene to have them say “The boss will love the lightsaber”, to semi-justify why Viszla has it later. (You have to assume something happens offscreen.)
• The Mandalorians immediately grab Satine, to Obi-Wan’s (hidden) cry of “Look out!”, but then I use the second half of his backflip off the conveyor to have him jump down from the rafters - this actually works really nicely, I think. It implies that he’s used the element of suprise - exactly as they did when they caught him - instead of relying on might versus two unexpected Mandos.
• He lands on the one Mando, knocking him out, and flips the other. As in the original, we cut into Satine and Obi-Wan moving to get out of there right away.

I also found that the focus on Obi-Wan and Satine is much stronger when we don’t keep cutting away to the lower deck. Her scenes actually flow perfectly, so we get about ten minutes of really nice, deep, character building.

Now I’ve watched it in this format, I think this episode works great as our episode two for the theoretical first time viewer. Right away we get Mandalore, Death Watch, and the Darksaber. We get new layers to existing things: shades of grey within the Republic, new depth to Obi-Wan. And we end on Anakin killing a guy in cold blood with a smirk, which shows that this show is going to explore more of Anakin’s fall.

So I’ve just spent the day really enjoying doing the full Mandalore cut. I’m really happy with it. But technical issues are letting me down.

• Mediainfo reads the original source mkv files as 23.976fps
• Mediainfo reads the ripped mp4 video files as 23.976fps
• In the media window of Vegas Movie Studio when selected, it recognises the files as 23.976fps
• When I check the file properties in Vegas, it recognises the files as 25.000fps (greyed out)
• When the project settings and ruler ate at 25.000fps, the frames align to the ruler
• When the project settings and ruler are at 23.976fps, the frames do not align
• I’m still able to render at 23.976fps, and both seem OK? Take a look:

Rendered when the project is set at 23.976:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tM-wU5cE9WK-9IvZcVfV8hxF2n5w2uHk/view?usp=sharing

Rendered when the project is set at 25.000:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1udn2HmHR3y6JVBB7EyE54-iqBwHVDm3-/view?usp=sharing

I can’t tell if those have any blurring, duplicated frames, missing frames, or any other issues. I’ve turned off resampling for all media.

The other thing you can see there is that I have crushed blacks. I’m passing all media through the Studio RGB to Computer RGB default colour levels filter, which seems necessary because otherwise my blacks aren’t true black on starfields, titles etc. They’re dark grey. And weirdly, the render has the crushed blacks but the preview itself doesn’t, so I don’t know where in the process this issue’s emerging.

PM Sent.

I’m not going to touch LOTR until I get feedback from viewers of the Hobbit that they think it’s worthwhile. I’m not in a rush on that one. It’s such an undertaking, but I’d want to know there was an appetite for it. Right now I’m focused full time on my Clone Wars edit.

I’ve been waiting for this to get approved by the guys over at IFDB since this project was finished six months ago. I’ve been told it’s ‘in the queue’, but since every editor and their mum has made a Hobbit edit, it seems like there’s no appetite amongst the approvers to take my edit off the pile and review it, which is unfortunate. I respect that they’re doing this as a hobby for free as a service to the community, so they have the right to pick and choose, it’s just frustrating personally to not be able to share work I’m proud of.

It’s just a weird issue. Every setting and bit of info says 23.976, but when the media is imported, it becomes 24.001 or 25.000. It’s only for these episodes though - not any others.

That’d be amazing Sade, thank you, but there are so many cuts in there, I think in the time it’d take to detail it for you I might as well have done it myself. It’s about 50 cuts, I think. I’ll just take a day to rebuild it copying myself.

Hm, I see what you’re saying. But if the project (and source) are at some other value, say 24.001, surely rendering to 23.976 is going to cause skipping on its own?

Right, my sources for the Christophsis episode are being read by mediainfo as 23.976 but by Vegas Movie Studio as 25.000 or 24.001. So I will have to recreate the work, which is disheartening, and right now I can’t get a hold of alternate sources. So I’ll put that on the backburner for a little while. I’d really like to get one episode finished, end-to-end, so on with episode two - Death Watch on Mandalore. For this one, all of the sources are behaving and the frames are NICELY ALIGNED TO THE RULER. Plus, unlike the Christophsis episode, all of the voice/sfx are on a different track to the music, so the editing is super easy. I know the cuts I want to make for this one so I’ll see y’all in a few hours…

ADR14NAT1ON, agreed that ‘so’ is out of place, and that the dialogue should still be fruitier than I had it.

Knight of Kalee, I was hoping that the ‘informant’ and Ventress’ later reference to ‘you are betrayed’ could stay, even unanswered, because I figured that the grand army / the Republic at large are such huge organisations that feasibly the Separatists may have lots of options for subterfuge. We also know that the Seppies have been planning this war for a far longer time than the Republic, and both Sidious and Dooku are subtle manipulators. Even if not, two episodes later (in my ordering) we see Captain Argyus turn traitor and be working directly with Ventress, so I think that could implicitly answer it if it’s still niggling at the back of someone’s mind.

Do you think that works, or should I remove the reference?

Also agreed on droids. We have to accept them as part of the ‘fabric’ of Star Wars, as we also have to accept that Star Wars often enjoys light humour. I’ll seek to prune only the most egregious LOLs.

One point of focus that’s probably worth mentioning here is that my intro text for episodes isn’t necessarily a Star Wars ‘opening crawl’. I’m deliberately using the term ‘intro text’ to make that distinction - as many of you have pointed out, we needn’t be beholden to convention. Whether or not Star Wars as a franchise had that concept, this show’s identity has introductory text (by necessity, since it gives more flexibility than keeping the narrator). Similarly, it’s distinct from the newsreel.

(Not that I’m disagreeing with any of the suggestions here.)

Legit. I might then look to extend the amount of text I give each page, which will have an impact on the music. I’ll see how it goes when I do the first episode.

Right, I’ve been able to fix those issues highlighted. I’m finishing up the episode now (excluding the intros and outros) and am going to render it overnight (I’m in GMT) so I can upload in the morning.

Those video issues look endemic - if they’re every hundred then that’s hundreds to fix, but I don’t want to remake all the smoothed audio so I’ll see if I can just create a new video track with compliant sources. All of the sources, the project settings and the ruler are at 23.976, but I must have lost something by originally setting it up as 29fps. If I have to duplicate it all I will…!

The version I’ll upload will contain those frame issues but at least I’ll be able to gather any willing feedback while I work on fixing them at the same time.

Edit: No, I won’t do that, the video using the movie as the source is too bad when rendered. I’ll fix it first.

Thanks guys. It’s great to have some more experienced editors in this thread. I’ve only produced a handful of edits so far so it’s useful to have your technical knowledge here.

Sade, thanks for the kind words. Glad you think that intro works. I know exactly where those errors have come from and they should be easy enough to check and fix. They’re related to my earlier mistake so shouldn’t reoccur in future episodes.

I’ll check the black levels in the cut to tanks, though that bit is kind of necessary in order to construct this new dialogue. Originally Obi-Wan calls Anakin to talk about the plan, but in this whole scene I’m using the dialogue from Cat and Mouse where Bail calls Obi-Wan then Obi-Wan calls Anakin to get the same information across. But Anakin receiving the call in this scene doesn’t give me enough time so I had to pad it- first by reversing the shot so Anakin looks out the window, then at “something outside the window”, then back to his focus on the call. If the shot feels too short my only real option is to extend it instead, and let the dialogue take a little longer.

I’ll review the other issues and trims!

And everyone- I’ll think more about the crawl. Though I am going to release some of the Tartakovsky series as episode 0 of this show.

McFibb, we’re on the same page. I agree about tightening being an option. Right now, since a lot of voices here have swung me toward inclusion rather than exclusion, I’ve produced, let’s call it, the ‘loosest possible tight edit’. As in, I’ve made the necessary cuts for the story to work and to remove the most objectionable bits, but left the episode otherwise intact. Mainly due to cognitive load! Once I have the story and key cuts working, I can then look to trimming and polishing - but I thought that might be best to do incorporating viewer feedback. So I’ll absolutely consider yours and other trims, once this round is complete.

I also hate the PT droids, and have cut their voices as much as possible. You might have spotted a couple of ‘roger rogers’ removed from that clip already, and there’re more in the full episode. You do need to put up with their voices when they’re carrying important dialogue, but I’m getting rid of as much trash as possible. I couldn’t cut their 'aaaaah!'s as they fall from the speeder bikes due to the surrounding sound, though I think that ‘joke’ is OK.

I’m also thinking that I much prefer to release content as a dialogue with you guys to feed back. That’ll give us our best final quality for each episode. I’m starting to think that a weekly schedule might encourage me to rush episodes or not account for all the to-and-fro, so I think what I’d prefer to do is to simply release each one in (my) chronological order, as and when they’re done, but accounting for feedback, so I don’t have too many spinning plates at one time. I’ll build less of an audience this way, which may be detrimental for feedback, but I think I should give the work on each episode as long as it needs, for a better result.

That’s good, but it needs to fit to some standard structure, which I currently have as six lines of text, of which the first and last are shorter.

Since I have to do about fifty episodes, I figured the very first line might position the viewer chronologically, and then the second would give the state of the galaxy.

Your fourth line wouldn’t quite work, since at the start of the episode we believe it’s Obi-Wan who’s requested a padawan - Ahsoka is ostensibly his, not Skywalkers, and ‘officially’ it’s only Yoda that changed that plan (though it’s implied later that Obi-Wan was in on it).

Your second, third, and fifth lines are all good though!

Yeah, what I said was contradictory. What I meant was that I prefer only the application of the (neutral) force to be morally light or dark, but that healing, i.e. interfering with natural forces like life and death, is morally dark. Though Neerb’s explanation works nicely with that, because with sacrifice of one’s life force to heal, natural balance is preserved.

Anyway, time for all these weeks of planning and chat to be rewarded. Time for-

FIRST ACTUAL CLIP

OPENING CRAWL:

• It is the early days of the Clone Wars.
• New battlefields emerge every day, as the armies of the Separatists and the Republic clash across the galaxy.
• Senator BAIL ORGANA has taken a direct role in providing relief and supplies to the clone squadrons on the front lines.
• Anakin Skywalker has achieved the rank of JEDI KNIGHT, so his master Obi-Wan Kenobi has put in a request for a new padawan.
• Meanwhile, the pair have tracked Count Dooku’s vicious Sith assassin, ASAJJ VENTRESS, to the key planet of Christophsis.
• But Ventress is far more cunning than she appears…

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sA29YutBnVZ3ixdgJ-qUHhmy88i7fEAC/view?usp=sharing

Cast your peepers over that. That’s now the introduction to our Christophsis episode, essentially using scenes from Cat and Mouse and Hidden Enemy to make it so that the assault is a bit more of a trap, and to give us the bonus tension of Bail’s supply and relief efforts throughout the whole episode.

Yeah, Dr. Krogshöj, I did think about numbering/chaptering them, but as you say, I’m producing multiple cuts. I’d like people to be able to mix and match. And I’ve played around with the idea of naming by convention, but I think I’d rather stick closer to TCW and allow each episode to have a bit more flexibility. I might revisit this after I’ve produced all of the edits, for v2 (the wider release beyond these forums).

Sade, you’re right, but it looks like the movie’s slightly out. Either that or that 23.976 is really a slightly variable framerate and it’s just getting picked up at 24.001. I’ll always run at 23.976 though as it solves the issue if it comes up. And I always check as much as possible with test short renders, then full, for frame issues. I’m quite a meticulous frame editor so I generally catch them early.

I’ve never been a great fan of abilities being categorised either as darkside or lightside, I prefer to think that both dark and light are moral interpretations of the same thing.

So lightning is ‘darkside’ not because it’s on the darkside powers level up path, but because it directly harms and tortures people. Whereas a mind trick is ‘lightside’ because it’s an alternative path than violence.

Similarly, ‘preserving those we love from death’ is darkside insofar as it’s an act of fear of loss, an intervention against the natural order of things. When baby yoda used it, I put it down to his naivete, but when Rey did, it felt like an attempt to make force healing less inherently dark, which I didn’t like.

Yeah, I just tested both, and lower seems better. But in exploring that for future episodes, I was able to fix it for my existing episode, just by disabling resampling (and matching transitions to frames), which means I don’t have to duplicate everything. Woop!

I’ve made a mistake with my Christophsis episode and had it set for NumeralJoker’s source, even though I’d switched over to the originals. Changing the settings threw a lot out of whack so I’m having to reproduce the work. But nevermind! I’d worked out all of the cuts, so it shouldn’t take me too long. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, either way.

Unfortunately the two Christophsis episodes are still a slightly different FPS to the Christophsis parts of the movie, being 23.976fps and 24.001fps respectively, so there is a risk of slight visual issues in either half. Should be minor though.

For those in the know, what’s best to set my project at? The 23.976 or the 24.001? My guess is that compression is less messy that extrapolation, so going smaller seems wisest.