EddieDean

OK, that’s the full series run through and considered whilst holding this project’s goals in mind. My key takeways:

• Good God, when the Clone Wars is good, it’s excellent
• Good God, when the Clone Wars is bad, it’s horrendous
• However there is, definitely, a best path through it which highlights all the best and massively minimises the bad, whilst missing nothing important. Which means, of course, that there’s huge value in a quality focused cut.
• Less is more. Many of the episodes are overly padded, especially when the show settled into four-episode arcs, and they’re paced around 22 minutes times four, not 88 minutes. Most should end up punchier in the 45-60 minute range.
• Ahsoka is absolutely the heart, with incredible character development, and a range of good relationships.
• Rex also has great development - though most of his episodes are in clone heavy arcs, not all of which are consistently great.
• Quality is all over, though - let the other characters shine too, when they get a really good episode.
• Almost all separatist villains lose their malice through serial failiure, and almost all separatist designs are visually uninteresting.

So here’s the next steps:

• Take a little break. I’ve not done anything else with my free time since I made the original post.
• Read over this thread and my other notes all myself again, to refresh. (Now is a great time for anyone who’s interested to feel free to think through the notes too, and/or offer up any thoughts to help frame the next stages.)
• Review the now-polished list of episodes. Create an initial test chronology - pacing Maul equally, then Mandalore and Ahsoka’s development throughout, then best quality episodes.
• Probably do a few focused watches to challenge that. I don’t really need to question the Mauldalore stuff because that’s all staying and it has its order, but I’d like to focus on Ahsoka’s development and make sure I have a solid growth for her that focuses on all her best episodes in the right order. I’d also like to consider Rex/Clones a bit more closely. I need to work out quite how much Rex is a core character, and if so, which arcs and relationships best support his development. Finally, plug in the other bests, and do a little checking of other episodes to make sure they’re worthy or not.
• I’ll also use this time to pull together and sort some of the additional assets I’ll need for credits.
• Then, get to cutting. I might break from the second rewatch to get at least a pilot episode out to you guys first, so we can discuss that and I can take your refinement notes as I watch. So it’ll be pilot episode first (Cloak/Lair), then onto the priority ones in chronological order. I’ll try to set myself up an editing pipeline where I can churn out the simple aggregate+polish episodes while I’m working on the more technical edits of those that need closer attention.
• Once I’m confident I can maintain the momentum, I’ll advertise the weekly watch and start releasing episodes.

S07E01-04 - Bad Batch Arc - Unsure

Tricky one to make a call on. I like this arc, though it does need trimming. The heart of it is of course the introduction of the Bad Batch, and Rex’s relationship with Echo. Echo looking nice and emaciated is cool - again we’re humanising clones. The natives are pretty same-old.

Aesthetically it’s not much - lovely lighting, but it’s on dull planets with the goofy Techno Union aesthetic and some weird new flimsy battle droids.

I’m really not sure on this one.
In favour of quality cut: A nice callback to our opening episode via CF99; new clones are interesting; development of Echo; nice Anakin/Padme scene; has everyone but the big three so I guess you’re putting them all to bed here.
Against inclusion in quality cut: Echo was last seen in the Citadel which isn’t very strong; very much a backdoor pilot; might not want to focus on brand new clones this near to the end; Anakin and Rex aren’t very interesting in this; it doesn’t escalate the war mysteries or other plots; it kind of becomes a Mace Windu episode at the end.

I’m actually tending towards not including it in the Quality Cut, since it’s neither core to Ahsoka/Maul/Mandalore, nor is it one of the more interesting episodes that comes this late in the show’s chronology.

I reckon you’d cut out all the native stuff. Start with the intro of the Bad Batch, have them learn Echo’s location, go straight to Skako Minor beginning at the elevator, fairly snippy Echo rescue, show them jumping onto the keeradaks (why? can’t explain well but they’ll have to just go for it), then wipe back to Anaxes for the return and second fight there. You’d lose a little character dev for the Bad Batch but they’re not really the focus unless they’re getting their own show, in which case they’ll repilot anyway.

Crystal Crisis on Utapau [Unfinished Episode] - Excludable - Complete Cut

This one’s unfinished, so while it has voice, SFX, and music, the video is made up of entirely placeholder graphics and almost no animation. So while it’s not great to look at, on the other hand it’s an interesting look at the process. I don’t think you could ask anyone but the most committed and tolerant fan, so into the Complete Cut it must go.

In terms of the story, it’s unfortunately yet another four-episode arc with a lot of padding which feels like more of the same, with yet another Grievous fight with no jeopardy. The interesting elements are that Anakin and Kenobi discuss Ahsoka - though there’s little meat to this discussion - and that the macguffin is a massive Kyber crystal. For the first time chronologically we learn that kyber crystals are both lightsaber crystals and used in superweapons, with this heavily hinting that they’d use this for a Death Star (or similar). But we get that information elsewhere, or it’s not particularly important.

I think that’s an accurate take, sade.

Interestingly, if you look at production codes, it looks like the whole series was created in seven blocks of 26 episodes, which would have been released as eight or nine seasons. And for the final arc we go from episodes in the mid sixth block right to 7.21-7.24 for the Siege of Mandalore. But what I find interesting about that is that it might imply that there were originally two episodes to follow it. Perhaps an extended form of the final scene? We’ll probably never know.

Let’s keep TLJ chat out of this thread- it’s contentious, and has little bearing on the Clone Wars.

But I agree that the Martez sisters, while they do have some endearing traits and two lovely character models and animation, do repeat their more annoying traits a little too much, and both make some frustrating bad calls.

Oh, and regarding missing arcs: I’m still hoping that the bad batch TV show adapts the arc about Boba Fett Vs Cad Bane.

Goddamn, that finale. What an amazing piece of work. Easily up there with the very best SW movies abd the best moments from the Mandalorian.

This whole project has to turn the show into the best path which takes us to that end.

Yeah, I’ll be hitting over a couple of the more frustrating points quite quickly. There’ll only be one prison break, for one thing.

I haven’t reviewed Bad Batch or Crystal Crisis yet- I only had time to watch two arcs tonight so I thought I’d watch both Ahsoka ones back to back.

S07E05-08 - Martez Sisters arc - Important - Mandalorian Cut

Introduction of the lovely Anakin model, so we can’t see him from a prior episode after this one.

An important episode, this- lots of nice heavy doubt from the ‘small people’ about the Jedi, a nice personal lesson for Ahsoka, and we put the big three final pieces of this edit in place for the finale.

Its good moments are good, though it does need a fairly heavy trim for pacing - almost all of the first episode can go, most of the second, and almost all of the third. And even the fourth can be tightened quite a bit.

The Martez sisters are fun, with some trimmable frustrations, but they really only serve Ahsoka, so she should be the focus here.

The big question is, is it worth getting rid of all of this so we can save the Ahsoka reveal until the finale? I think probably not, since most people know Ahsoka’s alive later anyway, and it’s a bit of a breather before the finale.

S05E09-12 - Siege of Mandalore - Vital - Mandalorian Cut

Obviously vital for all cuts as it’s the finale, and the momentum behind the restructure.

The “It’s been a while” moment will likely hit best if we have quite a few episodes without Ahsoka, so I might pad it with a few more episodes where she doesn’t appear. That said, I don’t want her out of the show for too long, since she’s the heart.

Pm sent

sade1212 said:

I’d leave Moraband as is. I also have nostalgia for KOTOR, but if it comes up again in the new canon it’ll still be Moraband, and that’s no point confusing someone who doesn’t know about the change.

I’m not sure - I think Korriban has more cultural weight even though Moraband has appeared in live action, so if I had to guess, I’d guess it’d reappear as Korriban, not Moraband. That said, it’s easy enough to revert if the canon/culture changes. There have been times before when editors have made a change to best suit interpretation but that they’ve later softened over time - much like with Hal’s more recent prequels which are more forgiving to the original material.

Knight of Kalee said:

I always got the idea that Phase II armor was worn only by ARC Troopers during the earlier half of the war and later spread to all the ranks in the clone army as the war progressed. For example, in the Citadel arc Fives and Echo, after they become ARC, are the only ones who have Phase II armor while all the non-ARC ones wear Phase I. So having the Domino Squad at the beginning of the series wouldn’t create any continuity issues.

I think that’s the right interpretation, it feels like what they were implying by showing it in the Rookies arc.

Right, I’ve just run a one minute long clip through the full editing pipeline, from source, to conversion, to editing, to rendering. Just to see if I’d hit any snags. It’s all good news - conversion and rendering are lossless so we’re losing no quality or colour information. My editor is reading my 23.976fps converted file as 25fps and I’ll need to remind myself how to fix that issue (it’s common), and right now I’m not outputting the center channel in my render so we’re losing some audio, but that’s likely just a matter of settings - I don’t understand surround sound audio settings yet so I’ll upskill soon.

But the very good news is that, as Smudger9 informed me recently, there’s no music in the center channel. Editors of other sources will recognise this as a rare treat! When you’re editing, you have the video track, and one or more audio tracks - but usually voice and sound effects have music on their track, so if you’re trying to fix some simple dialogue for example, it can break the music in the background, and sound obvious. So it’s great to confirm that for the Clone Wars DVDs, the voice/soundFX is split from music/ambient. (Weirdly, it wasn’t perfect, in the clip I viewed there was one voice line in the music channel, but it looks rare.) This gives me way more flexibility for trimming and reordering dialogue, but also for changing dialogue (e.g. Moraband > Korriban).

I’ll muck about with those couple of issues, but this is looking good.

Plan now is to finish my watch through - probably tonight - then get to work on Cloak of Darkness / Lair of Grievous, because that episode is going to require all of the skills at my disposal, so it lets me refine them while sharing the content with you to get ideas together and collect feedback. Then I’ll probably take a breather, maybe watch over the series again in a preferred order, before starting the edits properly.

Awesome, cheers Hal. Yeah, this is primarily inspired by how you’ve managed your sequel threads, especially TROS, which has been probably the most collaborative yet.

Thanks. I don’t know if producing this many posts makes it a little hard to follow for people, but I suppose I’m focusing on each question/decision in isolation so at least they can be quoted if needed.

I wasn’t sure if posting this much would be valuable, or it it would come off as narcissistic. As someone who was a fan of fanedits for at least a decade before becoming an editor myself, I was always fascinated at the process behind the curtain, more so than just the outputs themselves. It inspired me to become an editor. So part of the reason I’m sharing so much is for those people who do find it interesting - and who might pick up editing in future (It’s fun! And easy to learn!). I also wanted to collect my thoughts, so if I’m not doing it here I’d be doing it somewhere else. And finally, of course, this way people can see for themselves and challenge the decisions, and it’s more likely to satisfy more people, including the audience who don’t participate in these forums but who still want the output.

Since we’re talking about a little reordering of episodes, I thought about the clone armour. The Phase I armour (which appears in episode 2) is used up until the Citadel/Mon Cala episodes, where it appears alongside the Phase II (which appears in episode 3), which then becomes the main armour.

Oddly, Phase II does appear in ARC Troopers (not a suprise, that was originally set a little later), but it also appears in Clone Cadets, which I thought was early in the war. I really think we need those episodes up first.

Canonically, the armour had a phased rollout, so I don’t personally have a problem with the idea that the Clone Army was launched in the Phase I armour, whilst they gradually upgraded the forces with Phase II throughout the clone wars, but I can understand if people have an issue with it.

We really should open with the Rookies arc though - it gives us some meat for Ahsoka’s light intro, makes us care for the clones, and also makes sense that the Separatists would target Kamino early.

Maul: Son of Dathomir Audio Comic - Important - Mandalorian Cut

WOW. I’ve read this comic before but what an achievement the audio comic is!

The story itself is fantastic - Maul is broken out of prison and loses his cartel support while everyone fights everyone else and Sidious does more house cleaning. It’s important because it fills some key gaps.

But damn, what an experience the audio comic is. Voice work that’s really close to the original (especially Dooku, an amazing impression), sound effects, music, and really nice movement given to the static panels to add dynamism.

A great experience and I’ll definitely be watching more Audio Comics by these guys.

S06E10 - The Lost One (First episode of The Yoda Arc) - Important - Quality Cut

First episode is separate from the others. It’s quite interesting, and while low on action, but by this point in the story I think we’re pretty invested in an investigation of the origins of the clones.

It adds an interesting wrinkle that you don’t have otherwise- the information that the Jedi became aware that the Sith created the clone army, and that they opted to keep it a secret and continue the war anyway.

This needs to come late, but I might give it an episode to breathe before dropping straight into the next one.

S06E11-13 - The remainder of the Yoda Arc - Important - Quality Cut

This one’s mostly fantastic, and contains a lot of revelation. As with Mortis, I think it’s a little hamfisted and demistifying, though I think this one will be far easier to cut around.

I’d like to remove there being a literal planet of the force where (some?) life began, and the five literal life-after-death spirits, but the rest can all work if that planet is merely a vision, and I use the occasional voice over from the spirits.

Instead it’ll run like this:

• Yoda hears from Qui-Gon and opts to go into the deep meditation, where Qui-Gon directs him to Dagobah
• Yoda enters the force cave on Dagobah and communes with Qui-Gon
• First vision: The false peace of the temple, where Dooku is the betrayer
• Second vision: The future deaths of the Jedi
• Third “vision”: Yoda on the force planet, cut down to just the fight against his fear.
• Voice over directing him to Moraband, which I think there’s a good chance I can change to Korriban with some audio editing. (The planet is canonically Korriban, George just wanted to use another name for this episode.)
• Yoda awakens on Dagobah and flies to Korriban
• Sidious notices “an opportunity”, and calls Dooku to help with the ritual
• Yoda encounters the Sith snakes, Sith acolytes, Bane spirit, and then the Sifo-Dyas illusion which draws him into the trap
• Spirit fight with Sidious, preserving all the metaphors and hints
• As Yoda wakes, stay on a white screen, picking any of the remaining valuable quotes, ending with “there is another… Skywalker.”
• Yoda denies his experiences to the council. “No longer certain that win a war, one can…”, and we play out the rest as in the episode.

You still get all the meat, we just preserve more mysticism.

You know what, I think you’re right. I think we need to get through the episode a lot quicker, so I’ll look into some restructuring. But that ultimate moment of loss, closure to Lux, and origins of Saw add up to Important. I think the Rebellion angle is least important here so perhaps I’ll focus on those characters and see what the heart is.

Lifeincontext said:

EddieDean said:
I don’t think it quite counts as interesting development for Ahsoka, since she’s portrayed as merely competent here (which we already know), and her plot with Lux actually doesn’t go beyond a little jealousy, which is a shame after some of the earlier setup.

You’re doing great work here, man!

I do feel like I need to stand up for this arc, though. On my recent rewatch, I came to realize how important this arc was for Ahsoka’s development. First, it provides catharsis regarding the Ahsoka-Lux relationship for the audience, which is important; seeds shouldn’t be planted if they don’t go anywhere (which we sadly learned with the ST). I know the arc doesn’t do a great job coming through on it in the writing, but at least it addresses the relationship’s culmination/end. Second, while admittedly very subtle, there are two things Ahsoka struggles with here: her jealousy, obviously, meaning that she wants to hold onto Lux – a moment where she’s tempted to be possessive (a very Dark Side emotion)…but even more than that, she realizes that she needs to let go of her attachment to Lux (on a romantic level) AND her attachments in general (on a spiritual/Jedi level). This realization is then immediately challenged when she can’t save the girl Lux loves at the end, making her question her role as a Jedi and feel kind of powerless. It’s setting her up for more internal conflict that we see pay off with Barris in her trial arc.

I may not be adequately articulating what I’m trying to say here, but I hope you get the gist. I think it’s at least worth discussing.

Well argued! I’ll give it another look - especially the last episode in the arc!

S05E02-05 - The Onderon Arc - Excludable - Continuity Cut

This one’s not Important, since it doesn’t further any of our core plots. It’s got an interesting theme - Ahsoka trains a rebellion insurgency - and it investigates that quite nicely, especially with the character of Stiela Gererra, who we regrettably don’t see again. It also shows some of the radicalisation for Saw Gererra, which would certainly be interesting for a fan of the wider franchise (the Continuity Cut). I don’t think it quite counts as interesting development for Ahsoka, since she’s portrayed as merely competent here (which we already know), and her plot with Lux actually doesn’t go beyond a little jealousy, which is a shame after some of the earlier setup.

As for editing this, you could tighten it up. The first two episodes could probably be turned into a montage interspersed with the main quotes, ending with the destruction of the power generator, allowing the main plot to focus on the people of Onderon in the insurgency.

As a note, I will probably be padding out the Quality Cut with items currently called Excludable, since I’ll want it paced well - I’ll just make sure I’m picking the best. After making sure I have the right Mando / Maul episodes, I’ll also look into Ahsoka’s arc in depth to make sure her character journey is a highlight.

sade1212 said:

EddieDean said:

These are the episodes that I intend to exclude from my edit altogether.

• s05e10-13 - the Aberfar / droid commandos arc, for having goofy abrasive characters and a horrible setting

I know you did mention Gregor already; but besides Mortis this is the only totally excluded arc which does have any important continuity. It’s been a while since I watched it, but is there any hope there for just a ~20 minute thing featuring Gregor being a Commando and not much else?

Good spot and good question. As I watched it, I was looking for opportunities to preserve exactly those elements, as you say. Ultimately, the episode must contain a lot of clunkiness and some abrasive characters - though perhaps a little less than the rest of the arc. It’s definitely an awkward episode, though perhaps it is salvageable with some framing and trims. I’ll take a note to consider it and perform another review, though it’ll be a lower priority edit than most.

Even if it can be preserved, I wouldn’t call it important, because the fact that Rebels features a mentally ill clone doesn’t necessitate that we see the clone in his prior appearance. (Especially because the mental illness isn’t related to his loss of memory on Aberfar, but rather the explosion that he ended up in at the end of the episode, and clones getting caught in explosions isn’t much of a suprise.) So little is added by knowing him before, other than I suppose a bit more sympathy for him. But he’s mostly played for laughs in Rebels so I don’t think it’s too important to be sympathetic either.

Still! I’ve created a new ‘awkward’ category in my notes for these couple of episodes. I’ll see what I can do, and preserve it if I can! And of course there’s nothing stopping others from choosing to simply include this episode - my recommendations won’t be final, and users with pre-existing opinions will be able to achieve whatever they want with the cuts I produce.

It’ll be the Quality cut I’d like to show weekly here. This’ll be harmless for those who want to supplement it with elements of the lower two cuts, but I’d like to have the Quality Cut as the focus because I’d like to give it the best chance to speak for itself. There are well liked episodes which I’m not going to be including in the Quality Cut, and I’d like as large an audience as possible to test my theory that their inclusion doesn’t deliver as much value as they are believed to. As a fairly radical thing, I’d really like that tested and challenged, I guess asking the question “If we didn’t know these episodes existed, would we miss them?”

I can’t believe I’m suggesting to people to not watch things they like - or not watch things I myself like! But I believe this is worth a real shot, mainly for the sake of the potential viewers who haven’t seen the Clone Wars yet, who have that hesitation about a famously wobbly kids show, who want that quality feel of Mandalorian more than they just want to eat up as much Star Wars as possible.

Artan42 said:

That’s quite a helpful infographic.

Thanks. I think these are the primary audiences, the main reasons someone might want an edited version of Clone Wars. But I’m interested to know if anyone can think of any alternative approaches.

‘For Kids’ is one I considered, but that’s not really one I think it’s worth curating around. It’s a different goal to mine. Besides, you want to show kids one of two things: (1) Fun, light entertainment, in which case you just have the original version of the show or chronological order. You’re being less discerning with this approach so you’re not after curation, I reckon. (2) They’re the kind of kids who can follow a story and you want to hit them with the best quality, in which case any of the cuts other than Mando should be fine. Both kids and adults can enjoy the same thing (emotional resonance) and be bored of the same thing (deregulation of banks, etc). It’s not a matter of maturity.

I’ve made the following to help visualise the cuts I intend to produce. Each cut will include the complete cut above it - you only get more content as you go down the pyramid, never less. This way, if you’re the kind of person who really wants to watch a curated ‘best of’ experience but who doesn’t need to see Ackbar’s origins, you’d choose the Quality Cut. But if you need to get your Saw Gerrera fix, you’d pick up the Continuity Cut.

Obviously, if a story is both Quality and Continuity, then it’ll appear in the Quality cut, so there will of course be lots of continuity in the quality cut. Episodes are placed in the highest category available.

There’s not anything too special to this presentation - I’ll mostly be using it in the master document to help direct people to the episodes they are most interested in for the experience they choose.

I’ve also decided on the first test/pilot episode I’ll produce and make available to the community.

CLOAK OF DARKNESS / LAIR OF GRIEVOUS

It’s probably not one that’s highly anticipated, which is fine, but it serves multiple useful purposes:

1. It’s one of the more technically complex episodes, since it’ll require merging, polish, new sound work, and the creation of new scenes from third sources. So it’ll be a good technical challenge to get my skills back up to scratch, and to demonstrate those skills to you all.
2. It’s early, not too spoilery, and not vital, so it makes a good episode to present to the community to help refine both my technical edits and the standards for openings and credits which I intend to present.
3. While not one of the more anticipated elements, it’s one of the best examples of a potential “value add” edit, where the output could feel significantly improved over the inputs. It’s also one which, in my mind, is on the cusp between important and not important. So after it’s been produced, the community will be able to decide whether or not it belongs in the Quality Cut or a lower one.