EddieDean

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.

SECOND ELEMENT TEST AVAILABLE

https://vimeo.com/494944921

OK, I’ve made some changes to this one.

• Audio for intro is different. I took a version of Ahsoka’s theme (since she’s our core) with bombast up front, a little melancholy in the middle, and a touch of military at the end, which should give us relatively decent flow from the elements that come before and after, whilst still giving us that little hint that something’s not as it should be. Let me know how it feels but please keep suggesting alternatives.
• I’ve centered the intro text and split it over two pages so it’s less overwhelming. (I don’t want to reduce the quantity of text overall since I might end up needing to use text to help my future cuts go more smoothly.)
• I’ve given the CLONE WARS logo a little zoom to give it a bit of life.
• I’ve kept the ending the same, just flipped the text to yellow instead of teal. It’s still a ‘family’ colour. I think I’d like to stay a little closer to established fonts and colours for this show (as opposed to for Mando) since this is more one of the ‘classics’.

(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!

I’ll have to consider the cold open idea further. What you essentially need is a strong opening scene, followed by a beat to breathe where you’d put your titles, then a decent enough follow up scene. And I don’t know that every episode has that.

Remember, every audio transition is potentially jarring, so you generally want to avoid interrupting the episode as much as possible - it can reveal the amateur nature of the edit.

We’d also need a very strong ten second piece of music (like Mando’s ba-dummm) for the title to “own”.

Maybe I’ll play with two pages of text, and center aligned.

Wonderful and detailed feedback folks, thanks very much!

My main takeaways:

1. Leave Lucasfilm and franchise logo as-is, but watch the transition into the following music.
2. Experiment with other intro text music.
3. Possibly rearrange text/TCW logo/episode title if necessary to suit music.
4. Use a little capitalisation in intro text (I’ll use it to highlight where I want the viewer’s focus to be then, I reckon)
5. Add a little life to TCW logo.
6. Use a different/bolder font for closing credits (though I did pick the most teal episode for my demo)

I feel like convention “permits” us to create the intro text the way I have because each TV show (and some movies) seem to do their own thing. This isn’t a Skywalker saga movie so I don’t think scrolling yellow is suitable, but the teal in that font at least keeps the text “in the family”. I might split the same amount of text over two screens, depending on what the musical cues dictate.

I like the idea of cold opens but I doubt they’d be available for all episodes because the show simply isn’t made that way. I will keep an eye out as I go, though. I wonder if a cold open would clash with intro text though? We’re drawn in with the action, but then drawn back out by text talking about the state of the galaxy?

Sade:

• I’ll also check antialiasing
• The concept art is indeed placeholder, I’ll make sure future ones fill the screen. I will need some stills from the episode though, as I need eleven pieces of art per episode, and some of the shorter episodes don’t have that many. I picked a bad example though, since there’s no concept art for the movie.
• Glad you spotted ‘new’ and ‘newly’- I felt that too and was wondering if it was just me. I’ll avoid language like that in future.

ELEMENT TEST AVAILABLE

I’ve had a very productive day - I’d call this me now being thoroughly over the hump, and almost ready to get cracking.

https://vimeo.com/494261348

(Note: Actual video is only 3:30, there’s a dead 2 min at the end)

This is a test of all of the ‘elements’ that compose an episode of TCW: Refocused.

The actual ‘meat’ of the episode is only about 20 secs long, just as an example of lossless video and audio from the original source, and surrounding that is all of the opening titles, text, and closing credits.

I’m interested in feedback on two things:

1. How does it feel? Obviously the actual episode itself doesn’t amount to much, but does the surrounding content tell you “this series is worthy of your time”, and position the episode within the wider tragedy of the clone wars? Are the production values high enough that it feels like it could have aired on TV? Does the opening draw you in and build anticipation? Does the closing let you mull over and digest the episode, and let you reflect on the creative process?
2. How does it work technically? Any visual glitches? Any colours off? Any stuttering? Any bad transitions or fades? Is everything timed well, did you have enough time to take everything in without it dragging?

Feel free to absolutely savage this - it’s best it’s torn apart now rather than later!

Once I get this into a state where it’s worth taking forward, I’ll convert as much of this into universal assets and templates to make future episodes as repeatable as possible, then get to producing the first episodes!

sade1212 said:

You could use ffmpeg for those things if you’re alright with a bit of command line. Getting audio would be “ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vn -c:a aac -ac 6 -b:a 640k output.m4a” and getting video would be “ffmpeg -i input.mkv -an -c:v copy output.mp4”, I think. I don’t know how Vegas would take those files, but they work well for me in Premiere.

Are you intending to only render it out in stereo rather than 5.1?

Sade, just resurrecting this to say thanks very much for this. I’ve now got to grips with ffmpeg, and am demuxing audio and video now with a single combined command, which is super easy now. I’ll also be editing and outputting in 5.1 surround. This was a really helpful direction, thank you.

Not at all buddy, it’s a team effort! I just hope I can do right by everyone.

Onward to editing! I’ve got a good chunk of time now to get my teeth in, and about seven evenings in a row free followed by a few full days free, so it’s time to get going. I’ve set up my project workspace and am now going to spend some time working on the end-to-end pipeline and creating the universal elements like text and credits. Expect to see something within the next couple of days.

I have to say folks, thanks very much for giving me a better appreciation of The Clone Wars. Through doing my watchthrough and then sharing those thoughts with you and gathering feedback, I’ve found there’s far more quality in it than I originally thought. It’s a large show, and it starts so very poorly, that I never really took the time to focus on its good bits and appreciate its quality. Reading back over some of my earlier comments, I feel like I was much harsher than I needed to be in a lot of areas - and ignorant of the quality. I feel now that I’m far more focused on where the good is in this show, especially as it related to character development, and I’ll do my best to dig it out and highlight it for you all. So please don’t worry if you disagreed with a lot of my earlier harshness - it’s probably been replaced now with a respect and appreciation for the bits which are genuinely good.

Knight of Kalee said:

EddieDean said:

A reference is made to Grievous ransacking Hondo’s base in the one episode, but seen in the other. I think it can be worked around.

Yep.

And honestly I don’t think the Younglings arc depicts Grievous that badly. You’d only need to trim the bit where he goes all out villainous gloating after Ahsoka flees, when’s fired upon by Slave I, and maybe the space battle with Obi-Wan’s forces (this one mostly for pacing). The lightsaber duel with Ahsoka is decidedly balanced in Grievous’s favor.

I’ll check it again then. Maybe I’ll just skip the first episode, which, whilst cute, is about characters other than those we care about, and isn’t super necessary. I’ve also just realised all these kids probably got slaughtered not long after this episode.

A reference is made to Grievous ransacking Hondo’s base in the one episode, but seen in the other. I think it can be worked around.

That’s perfect buddy, unspoilt newbies will definitely be really valuable. Once I start releasing I intend to do one weekly- it’d be great to have your feedback as it airs “live”.

Good shout on the eminence ordering!

sonofabinadi said:

I think the ordering you presented is brilliant, especially with the balancing of character development and the thought you’ve given to Ahsoka’s arcs and how each one shows different aspects of her character. I do think the idea that certain Domino Squad arcs could be used as flashbacks could work well, provided the pacing still works. Really excited about all the ordering and where things lie currently!

Sorry, I missed this earlier. Yeah, I’m still trying to work out what to do with Domino Squad. It could go later in the series and use ‘Near the beginning of the Clone Wars’ for Rookies, up to ‘Present Day’ in time for ARC Troopers. You’d lose that early suprise that the clones actually can have really interesting stories though, but you’d gain the benefit of having clone development be a bit more focused towards the end. And you could group it either as:

• All three arcs together, though time is implied to pass in these episodes so it doesn’t quite work.
• Rookies, then Clone Cadets/ARC Troopers
• Rookies / Clone Cadets, then ARC Troopers
• Rookies / Clone Cadets, then Grievous Intrigue / ARC Troopers (like Smudger did, making the kidnap of Eeth Koth be part of Grievous’ plan to pull Jedi from Kamino)

Right now I think having people realise ‘oh nice, that hit me harder than I expected a clone story to’ is more valuable than maintaining a familiar memory of the characters (since they don’t have huge or powerful character arcs so much as that they reoccur) and it’s more valuable to get that good set up and payoff of Rookies/ARC troopers as close together as possible. So I might go for that later pairing - Rookies/Clone Cadets then GI/ARC Troopers as a two part episode at the end of my ‘season one’.

(*Note: I’m not going to release it labelled as ‘season one’, the seasons I’m using in planning are definitely just for my internal pacing.)

Speaking of Grievous, my current ordering/selection has a side benefit of minimising uses of Dooku and Grievous where they come off as weak or cheap, which is cool, so we only really see them when they’re either coordinating things or giving themselves new levels of threat (sometimes above what we see in the movies, which adds value). I still like the idea of switching the owner of the Malevolence from Grievous into Trench, and the main threat of it being that he’s an escape pod killer rather than the goofy looking EMP weapon.

That just leaves the Jedi Younglings arc, which I’m not quite sure about. I think it’s cute and fun, but I don’t know if it works tonally in a show that’s trying to be a bit more focused on the tragedy of the Clone Wars. It’s another easy Grievous beat, and quite a cartoony one, plus it focuses heavily on a bunch of kids. The kids are pretty good for kids (they’re not really cringey), but still, it’s much more of a caper than an adventure or a moody escalation. We also cover Ahsoka’s ability to train and inspire in the Trandoshan arc and the Onderon arc. That said, it’d be nice to frame it as a recognition of her successes in the Trandoshan arc. I’ll watch this one again.

CMMAP said:

EddieDean said:

And in my mind I’m feeling that episodes should run in the 20-50 minute range, otherwise I should think about restructuring.

If you feel this way is the best for your project, do it.

I won’t make myself a slave to it obviously, but it’s where my mental alerts will kick in to rethink.

And in my mind I’m feeling that episodes should run in the 20-50 minute range, otherwise I should think about restructuring.

Yeah. I figured that’d be the consensus and I agree, I just wanted to run it through a few more brains.

Yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’d need to land right every single episode, which must be close to impossible. Let’s call it “a second pass at the absolute earliest, if at all”.

That reminds me though, something I could do with more feedback on from anyone please: I’ve said ‘episodes should be whatever length they need to be’, but swinging from 22 minutes to 90 minutes might feel a bit much. I can solve this mainly by releasing four-parters as new two-parters, which is basically harmless for the binger but helps the person who wants them to be more digestible - plus every episode break is an opportunity to use the new opening text to recontextuailse anything I need to. And I’ve also said that simply laying one episode on top of another in other edits doesn’t quite work for me - HOWEVER, is it worth doing in order to balance our characters across the show? As if we’re always following Ahsoka, Anakin and Obi-Wan even if they’re apart from each other? I think this might help it feel like more of a show with a single unified cast than an anthology show, but on the other hand it might introduce the same issues I’ve found with other movie edits in the past.

Here’s an EXAMPLE that I haven’t put much thought into - so don’t interrogate the logic too much, just the feeling here:

• Ahsoka’s Christophsis episode / The Mandalore Plot - Anakin meets Ahsoka while Obi-Wan investigates Death Watch on Mandalore
• Voyage of Temptation / Cloak of Darkness - Anakin and Obi-Wan escort Satine while Ahsoka helps Luminara
• Rising Malevolence / Domino Squad (2 parter) - Domino Squad as the ‘spine’, while Ahsoka’s with Plo and Anakin first, then Anakin and Obi-Wan are pulled off to Kamino
• Nightsisters (I wouldn’t intercut the Maul ones probably)
• Storm Over Ryloth / Duchess of Mandalore - Ahsoka and Anakin fight over Ryloth while Death Watch targets Padme
• Holocron Crisis (in full, since it features all the mains)
• etc etc
  Does that make it feel more like a fluid ‘series’ than a set of anthology episodes? If so, is it worth doing? Or does it feel more like merging unrelated content?

Oh boy, ask and ye shall receive. There’s nothing quite like waking up to great helpful feedback like this! ❤️

@Hal: on timings: Obviously any indication of release is going to produce a rod for my own back - there are still a few unknowns and a weekly release is a lot more pressure than a one-off. I really want to get it out as soon as possible though - and ideally before any new show starts airing though I think the first season of Bad Batch will hit sooner (though that’ll probably help focus this if needed). There are ~45 episodes, so potentially this ‘TV show’ runs for a whole year. Since you guys seem up for that, I do think it’ll be really useful, as I’ll be able to refine by episode as we go rather than getting much more limited ad-hoc feedback on the whole. Either way - I do have a good amount of free time right now and I’m super motivated, so I’d hope to get the demo episode out by mid Jan, and the first episode of the weekly series out by the end of Q1. I’d rather release without rushing, but also I think the ‘live’ show will be treated as an opportunity to refine, (so bear in mind it may contain the odd issue.)

@Sade: I think ‘months earlier’ for the cold open works best. Originally Eminence was near the middle of the three year clone wars, but I’ve brought it earlier. I don’t want to get as specific as quantifying the months because that’ll just remind people in the know that I’m breaking things. “Months” could be 2, 3, 13, 18, so I think it takes the pressure off the audience to think about it too much.

I think I will keep Domino together then. I think I won’t merge it with Ahsoka’s intro though - I think that 22 minute chunk will just stand alone to get Ahsoka in play soonest and simplest, then give us more fun episodes after to explore her properly. I’ll probably put Domino Squad at the end of my ‘season one’ chunk since it’s a bit less focused on our main characters.

@Sade: REALLY like your idea to merge Deserter/Gregor. It’d split up the visual dullness of Gregor nicely, and bring out the best of both. I had thought Deserter/Hidden Enemy, but they both actively have Rex in so can’t be intercut. This ‘episode’ is one where I think the merge is sensible, since they’re thematically linked and the Deserter bits of Deserter are only 10 mins.

Agreed that Onderon needs a trim, the Utapau conversation has to appear, and that it’s a shame Bad Batch has to come so late, because it really suits earlier in the show. (When that show comes out maybe we’ll see if we’d all prefer to call these episodes just Bad Batch S01E00?)

@Sade, KnightOfKalee, CMMAP: Message received on Bounty. I’ll try to include it, albeit later (so she’ll already technically be a Bounty hunter by the time she joins the Boba crew). We can always find on the watch-through that you all agree with me or vice versa 😉

And regarding Ahsoka’s appearance ‘out of order’, yeah, I’ll totally be cutting around that - it’s an easy cut and I always thought that diner scene was a little out of place anyway. In terms of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s appearances, as far as I’m concerned they become guys who simply have two outfits they alternate. Speaking as a person who changes their clothes daily as opposed to annually, and wears the same outfit more than once, I think this is acceptable. It’s just Ahsoka you can’t have grow and shrink.

Yep, I’ve just been doing some final planning but I’m about ready to produce my universal elements and tests. I don’t know how much backlog I’ll want to produce before I kick off the weekly watches but I’ll see how fast I can churn out the easier ones and get a sense for how long the more tricky ones feel. Definitely interested in feedback on any of the outstanding thoughts in that post though!

jarbear said:

Also Rik, I don’t know what the “Official” answer is via comics, books, etc … but I am sure Kennedy’s response of “The Force is Female” is probably the answer. ;P

What?