NFBisms

Yeah, I changed Obi-Wan’s reason for leaving Tatooine into just, literally taking Owen’s words to heart. “Leave us alone, Ben.” and he does. It’s already text that Obi-Wan can’t even disagree Anakin’s “death” is his fault, so I leaned into it.

I ended up keeping a bit of the Inquisitor and runaway stuff as the driving force in the decision. Obi-Wan sees The Inquisitors kill Nari after being told off by Owen and from there, Obi-Wan decides his presence is dangerous. That he’s dangerous. So he leaves. (not enthusiastically mind you)

I feel it’s actually a pretty clean starting place for a story that ultimately culminates in Obi-Wan learning to move on from his guilt and regain a sense of purpose.

Here’s how I was roughly planning on streamlining the kidnapping plot’s introduction in my edit.

The idea is that Obi-Wan feels a disturbance in the Force related to Leia while trying (and failing) to contact Qui-Gon.

It’s very very specific to how I’m approaching the Tatooine portion, I’ll get into it in my thread, but for the most part I don’t think we need any of the Alderaan stuff in full if we can help it.

Some of it is nice, but I don’t think a lot of it is necessary from a character perspective. (which is my focus) We can learn a lot about Leia more organically through her interactions with Ben later in the series.

I don’t think this approach is polished/perfect yet or if I’ll even follow through on it, but I like this for how it mitigates a good bit of the POV jumping, keeping us centered on the titular character for most of the [series-turned-] movie. We lose a neat moment with the intercutting Vader suit-up, but it was entirely redundant anyway.

The biggest loss I think is having Obi-Wan not completely cut off from the Force. Him saving Leia on Daiyu later in this context would just be him as rusty and weak. Which is fine I guess, it’s not like that’s not along the lines of how we understood Obi-Wan before, but I liked that moment in the show as it was.

anyway, I want to try to lean less on this device going forward

I have more to explain about it but I’ll save it for my thread

TLWR: A TV-to-movie edit of Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) that is more tonally consistent, utilizing storytelling sensibilities unrestrained from Star Wars’ typical conventions, more in line with a grounded character drama.

Obi-Wan Kenobi as “prestige television” and not a mass appeal Disney+ blockbuster.

SO.

People liked my opening mock-up.

Basically, I liked the creative team behind this show a lot prior to release (Chow did “Something Stupid” from Better Call Saul, Kelley Dixon is/was a Breaking Bad/BCS editor, Oldboy’s Chung-hoon Chung on cinematography). I was expecting something comparable in caliber for Obi-Wan. At the very least, I would see some of that DNA peeking through.

A bit misguided in hindsight, what can I say?

So, I cut together that opening, approaching it through the storytelling language inspired by the best of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul montages, as a way to creatively articulate what I really expected for this show based on the team behind it. What I wanted.

With some support, I figure I can give the rest of the series a shot.

I’ll post any updates and brainstorming in this thread as I go along, and explain some of sensibilities for this. I’m not trying to make it some kind of BB-verse styled edit, but I think taking lessons from its storytelling is how I’m going to make the most out of the material. I do think Chow’s sensibilities as a director, at least for the character stuff, has been conducive to being arranged in this way. It’s a terrible name, I know - worse than “New Canon Cut” which was already so bad - but part of me wants to give her some credit I know many fans won’t.

Anyway, as far as some goals:

• Tighter, streamlined pacing. Really carving this baby up. I hope to get it down to more or less feature-length, and I think it’s doable.
• De-scoring/re-foleying scenes to really give this some [illusion of] subtlety and depth. It’s not that music is inherently showy and unsubtle - I love music for storytelling - but in this case, it distracts and muddles some of the directing. Additionally, it’ll provide a lot more freedom for me to re-arrange and recontextualize individual shots and entire scenes. Using these to create some more…
• Tonal consistency. The show goes back and forth between being goofy as hell and attempts at emotionally sincerity. There’s a lot of forced “hopefulness” that I also think needs to be earned over the course of the narrative, and not just whenever the show feels like it. The de-score helps a lot with this.

Still very tentative, still very experimental.

I just think it’d be fun to work through this with some of you, just don’t expect much haha. It wouldn’t be an NFBisms edit if it wasn’t needlessly ambitious and inevitably too specific to appeal to anyone

Will edit this post with a cut list and more information once it starts taking shape.

OPENING

Obi-Wan’s Vision of Leia

DISCLAIMER: I do not claim to know or understand what Deborah Chow was trying to do with this show, nor do I think what I’m doing here is some kind of “fabled original plan”. Nor do I have any sort of handle on her personal style.

Anjohan said:

1. Yes, I like NSFBisms remake of the opening a lot, and would have no issue in using it. But I would most likely only use the opening, because it breaks with the tone and the flow with what follows. It is cut in such a, let’s say, intellectually rewarding way and at a swift pace - and without any music, that when followed by the rest of the film it’s like this very intriguing, dark, lonely tone that is set and then all of a sudden it’s cut like a generic Star Wars series/film.

Yeah, I really just made it as an experiment, a little peek into what I would have wanted out of this show, but I didn’t map out how the rest of a hypothetical edit would follow. It’s actually been incredibly difficult even trying to break what the next tonally consistent minute would be lol

Not just that, there are a lot of shots I re-utilized out of their actual context. I completely made up the whole progression with his sizzling pot for example, which uses some shots from when the Organas call him.

I’m trying to find a way to make something work with it, but I’d recommend against it if it’s outside the scope of your edit tbh.

snooker said:

leftshoe18 said:

RogueLeader said:

Hal 9000 said:

poppasketti said:

hey thanks guys ^^

Idk, I might just do a whole edit with this approach now actually. I don’t know how far I could take it given what the show becomes, but if I can make some progress that works for me past the first episode this week, you might see a thread pop up here. 👀

This is something I put together in the other Kenobi redux thread, just in case it could be relevant to this project in some way:

NFBisms said:

I was one of those suckers who was actually really excited for Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) because Deborah Chow and Kelley DIxon’s work on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad fuckin’ rule. Needless to say, that was a bit misguided.

So I took a crack at editing the show to be closer in tone and style to what I expected out of BB-verse alumni.

I don’t think I’m going to do the whole show, but it was just a fun little experiment. The edit isn’t supposed to be like BB/BCS fwiw, just approaching the material with some of the storytelling philosophy I learned from them.

At the very least, Deborah Chow’s sensibilities as a director were still conducive to being arranged in this way so at least some of my excitement wasn’t unfounded

I was one of those suckers who was actually really excited for Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) because Deborah Chow and Kelley DIxon’s work on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad fuckin’ rule. Needless to say, that was a bit misguided.

So I took a crack at editing the show to be closer in tone and style to what I expected out of BB-verse alumni.

I don’t think I’m going to do the whole show, but it was just a fun little experiment. The edit isn’t supposed to be like BB/BCS fwiw, just approaching the material with some of the storytelling philosophy I learned from them.

At the very least, Deborah Chow’s sensibilities as a director were still conducive to being arranged in this way so at least some of my excitement wasn’t unfounded

Alright, this episode lost me.

I’m so bored by action sequences longer than three minutes unless 1) they’re rooted in stunt choreography as craft or 2) building character, so this entire episode just washed over me. There were like no stakes. Everything they’ve ever been good at with this show before, wasn’t in here.

If you had been set to write an Obi show and had gone back and refreshed yourself on the canon - scenes and dialogue made in both PT and OT - would you have written Obi as unaware?

I mean, I definitely would. When the realization that he didn’t actually kill the brother he loved happened offscreen from the movies, writing that as its own story is a no brainer. It’s extremely fertile ground for emotional character work, I don’t see why any writer would reject that opportunity. Regardless of how you think it was done, the concept is more than sound.

RogueLeader said:

I think it has less to do with the location and more to do with how it was shot. Like the shots of Obi and Vader actually clashing felt almost fan-filmy. Hard to put my finger on it.

I do agree with the character stuff though.

I think it’s the location + the lightsabers. They’re literally just facing off in an Earth quarry. And the way the red and blue light spills illuminate the scene and behave - the sabers actually look like the glowstick props they are.

act on instinct said:

I think some people who had set their hopes especially high are slowly realizing they may have put too much faith in Deborah Chow, I think if this show doesn’t pull it together in the end she’ll have the Star Wars stink on her that Rian had and people will unfairly judge her abilities after pinning their hopes on her up to release. Some fans forgot they were still dealing with Disney here, the director is the patsy to blame for the studio’s continued failures.

(Glad for any of you enjoying the series so far though.)

it’s me, i’m some people

There are things I really like, but it’s honestly just a bunch of small things that Star Wars doesn’t usually do (but is in other stuff normally.)

The franchise as a whole is kind of emotionally stunted so I like that Obi-Wan Kenobi does have an EQ. It’s where Chow excels as a director IMO. There’s just so much cheapness in the surrounding elements that it doesn’t feel as good as any of it should. The action is kinda slow, the world doesn’t feel that imaginative, the villains are hard to take seriously.

I don’t really mind that much - The Expanse is the “Canadian shot Sy-Fy show” people are literally comparing this to, and I love The Expanse - but Star Wars/Obi-Wan maybe deserved more than that. It’s frustrating because SW is a massive franchise and Disney is a massive corporation.

If there were going to be these restraints, this team would have excelled at something far less rooted in action, and something more dialogue-driven. For example, I was disappointed when they reached the checkpoint because it cut off Obi-Wan’s interesting recollection of his early life, for a frankly underwhelming sequence. Even Reva’s subtle expressions and allusion to her origin/ambitons are far more compelling than Vader pursuing Kenobi.

Anjohan said:
They should watch all seasons of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, analyze it and realize how good, female characters are written. Even for short appearances.

Ironically, Deborah Chow and Kelley Dixon are BB/BCS alum. The director and editor both contributed to those shows haha

Idk, it doesn’t seem like that that much of a stretch for Vader’s reputation to grow in political/Inner Rim circles, while being completely irrelevant to the day to day on a backwater planet without any consistent Imperial presence.

Ben is specifically keeping out of The Fight and to himself too. I think it makes a lot of sense and works towards establishing just how much he’s isolated himself. If it’s contrived, I don’t mind it. It’s small detail that says so much more about the character than the alternative IMO

Obi-Wan realizing Anakin is alive is also one of the only emotional beats that would have made this show worth making anyway, do we really want that to have just happened off screen?

I’m very excited for edits of this and to take a crack at it myself. So far, I’d just tone down the Inquisitors/Mercenaries. Cutting the Leia chase, some of Flea, and a bit of the exposition about the Inquisitors and their methods.

I actually think her performance directing and emotional blocking was the strongest part of all this, if anything. I think her weaknesses are related to the Volume and where she is in that technology curve. (And certainly not the pioneer Favreau is in that regard).

Budget constraints and the less-than-stellar script certainly don’t help but her character work has always been strong.

Alright, after having slept on it more, here are more of my thoughts…

Things I liked:

• Generally the narrative approach worked for me. I’ve mentioned how much I didn’t like Filoni/Favreau’s Thing™️, so to have this more rooted in character drama and real emotion was all I needed to like this.
• The performances are good. That’s another pretty nothing bullet point, of course it would be, but I like this as a vehicle for more Ewan Kenobi, and outside of Lucas’ stilted direction and dialogue too.
• I liked the pacing. A lot happened in only two episodes, but it was still deliberately told. Every narrative and character element was given just enough time to land effectively. I think the direction in that regard was great for what it was (which is definitely more TV than cinema but I’ll get to that later).
• Reva was everyone’s fear, but she’s honestly the most compelling Inquisitor here. If they really had to save Vader for later, they could do worse smaller fish. Her somewhat personal stake is what grounds the show in character; it’s intersecting motivations crossing paths and coming to a head, not just a plot driven adventure spurred from external incidence. I liked that for this.
• Daiyu Alderaan cool

Things bad:

• Production design felt cheap. It’s very very TV. I like TV so I didn’t mind and was expecting it, but the Inquisitors sans Reva felt like Power Rangers villains and a lot of aliens were fan film tier.
• Everything felt like sets, and actually made me appreciate the way the prequels were shot. When nothing is real, it’s best to lean into it. “The Classic Hollywood” argument for Lucas’ directorial choices has never made more sense to me than right now. The cinematography that could otherwise have been great feels strange and low budget here, particularly with the…
• Lighting, color grade, etc. Everyone is right about it - it’s not a visual spectacle at all. (Other than Ewan’s face am I right heyy)
• Coincidences, weird dialogue moments. Unfortunately, that short snippet last week was the peak of this show’s naturalistic writing lmao. It’s still rooted in more realistic depictions of human beings with emotions, but when they need to exposit, they will. Which is a shame, because it’s always for things like explaining what an Inquisitor is. It’s there for someone who doesn’t know Star Wars like that, and could easily have been removed.

Anyway, everyone who wasn’t excited about this was right to be so, this just about met (and a little less) my generous expectations. I’m just happy to see stuff like this with a character I like.

I’ve been so burned by Star Wars stuff recently that I’m just happy for a Star Wars show that is approaching its story in the way that it is.

It may not be the plot or production value I would have expected or even wanted, but its measured storytelling and solid character work is all I’ve been asking for from this franchise. I like that the drama and action is derived from intersecting character motivations (and they feel like characters, not templates!), I like that Kenobi’s psychology serves as the personal, thematic throughline. It’s more engaging than the pulpy, trope-driven Favreau shows and more emotionally interested than Filoni’s fables.

It’s just good TV, perhaps in a cultural moment with an abundance of great TV, but it’s solid work.

And this is Star Wars. It’s Obi-Wan! I care more than I’d often admit, but I do enjoy these actors and this “lore” enough that competent work within it makes me happy.

The Inquisitors were definitely the hardest part to get onboard with, but The Third Sister is compelling enough by the end of those two episodes. You really get a feel for why she is the way she is, and they haven’t even explained it yet. It’ll be interesting to see her aggressive campaign cross over with the Vader/Kenobi feud. She’s out of her depth there, and not [just in] her skills and ambition.

I wouldn’t have had Leia in this show at all, but she was fun here. I enjoyed seeing Obi-Wan connect with her a bit, and it makes all the sense for her to be the only thing to draw him out. I kinda wished Obi-Wan had been more reminded of Anakin with Leia, rather than Padme. Leia’s snarky, fiery spirit feels more like her father’s thing. Luke if anyone was more like Padme between the two.

SparkySywer said:

All of Dave Filoni’s shows are decent but overrated at best (ATLA/TCW) but mostly kinda bad. The Mandalorian is his best show, but it seems that it was good in spite of him. The two episodes he directed were the worst two.

what is this ATLA slander

jedi_bendu said:

Dave Filoni has been good at that before, I think.

I agree Deborah Chow might be a better director though, and I hope she gets lots of praise for her work on this series. Jon and Dave can’t have ALL the spotlight.

I think he’s understood the broader beats of character drama, but I’ve always felt like he’s lacked subtlety that makes his characters truly feel real. Emotional moments for him are big moments, the in-between filled with external action that [can] tee up character changes without being the point. Development only happens via plot triggers, characters don’t have to explicitly carry anything with them to the next arc if it’s not the point.

I don’t quite know how to articulate it, but I don’t think Filoni would have approached the scene the way we just saw in that clip, if he would have even approached character work in that way to result in a similar scene at all. It’s way too understated and nuanced for him; Owen and Ben behave like real people with storied friction, as opposed to just vessels for the emotional concept, if that makes any sense.

I’m probably overthinking it. I’m just excited to see a non Abrams, Filoni, or Favreau Star Wars. Hell, even Non Lucas.

i just want to say i’ve been waiting so long to see star wars characters talking to each other about their lives and emotions and not just stoic one liners and exposition. this is all i’m excited about, im telling you deborah chow >> filoni/favreau’s action figure mentality

I have a lot of [perhaps naive] optimism for this show based entirely on the strength of the behind the scenes team.

No other live action Star Wars show yet has had a team this good. On Mando and BOBF, Filoni, Favreau, and Rodriguez were all varying degrees of indie/fanboy/amateur. Star Wars to them was an action figure playset for fanservice and innovative technology.

It’s the girl who threw eggs at Simon Cowell!

Anakin Starkiller said:

You left the bombastic music in! I was saying you could just go straight from A New Home to a quieter end credits theme, sorta like I did here but without Binary Sunset. But whatever, it’s not my call to make how you make your edits.

I think the idea is cool but the transition in this clip is too smooth and it happens too quickly? Trying just having a beat of nat sound and a fade out, before you start the piano music. If you even need the music at all.

I love Timothy Olyphant, I don’t think I care about anything else in this show but Timothy Olyphant, I hope Vanth isn’t dead. 😦