I would love to see Huyang join Baylan in an endeavour to establish a remade Jedi/whatever-you-wanna-call-it order in the new galaxy.
Baylan is clearly driven by the thought of a new, improved order, and Huyang has fallen out of time with the fall of the Jedi. It makes sense for them to start over again.
Honestly, the battle droids and general evilness alone should be enough to connect the Separatists and the Trade Federation. Both organizations are hilariously generic in the sense that we learn practically nothing about their precise motivations. All that is given in the movies is that the Trade Federation doesn’t want to pay taxes because they are greedy, and the Separatists? Well, they are characterized by their dislike for the Republic and the Jedi. Based on the abundance of big companies present at Dooku’s meeting, we can infer that they share the same bland motivation as the Trade Federation, money.
So, I think the distinction between the two can be put in the crawl of ROTS, without losing anything.
Actually, the bigger question is why Dooku is on their team. His supposed motivation to leave the Jedi and the Republic is the corruption of the senate, but the first thing he does after leaving is founding the League of the Uber-corrupt, super-capitalist of the galaxy. It just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, what greater good could justify this absurd action against his actual beliefs?
Yeah, visually it’s a no brainer. All the battle droids, droidekas, and neimodians are there from the start of ROTS. I just mean if I’m putting the episode 2 stuff at the end of TPM. When Palpatine says that he’s making an army to counter the increasing threats of the Separatists, it should be established that the Trade Federation is one of the groups of Separatists he’s talking about. They’re part of a trend. If anything I think it would make sense to put it in the crawl of TPM that the Federation is a Separatist group, and then reference it at least once or twice somewhere else.
For Dooku I won’t get into any detail. He’s just Sidious’s apprentice next in line after Maul. It’s a shame to leave out all the subtlety but as you said it’s not well put together anyway. His identity is tied too much to the AotC bonkers mystery plot and I’m trying to cut out 98% of that movie.
Ok, now I understand the problem you were worried about.
Maybe you could use an A.I. voice to change Palpatine‘s line to „…the increasing thread of separatists like the trade federation.“ (or something more eloquent).
I have an idea, I don’t know if it would work in practice. I think it would be interesting to start the story with some of the clone wars scenes shown in the series.
I say this because Ahsoka, in theory, starts in the series with a conflict, right? However, the public only discovers that she is conflicted in episode 5. Personally, I think that focusing on the character’s development is more interesting than the quest to prevent Thrawn from returning. This is Ahsoka’s series, after all. Showing her conflict right away would serve to introduce the character in a more appropriate way than fighting robots in a temple, serving to tell her personal journey since the beginning of the story.
That said, I think it would be interesting to show some of these scenes as a dream of Ahsoka, and show her waking up from this dream in that scene with Hyuang on the ship, and only after that begin the plot of Ezra/Thrawn’s search. Later on, when Baylan knocks her into the water, the focus would be on the world between worlds sequence, where she would get the motivation to move forward, leaving the conflict behind.
Hmm, that sounds interesting.
Spinning that thought further, maybe you can use this dream sequence to infer that this fear of her what her legacy will be is the reason for her falling out with Sabine.
The question is, how can we convey that?
Honestly, the battle droids and general evilness alone should be enough to connect the Separatists and the Trade Federation. Both organizations are hilariously generic in the sense that we learn practically nothing about their precise motivations. All that is given in the movies is that the Trade Federation doesn’t want to pay taxes because they are greedy, and the Separatists? Well, they are characterized by their dislike for the Republic and the Jedi. Based on the abundance of big companies present at Dooku’s meeting, we can infer that they share the same bland motivation as the Trade Federation, money.
So, I think the distinction between the two can be put in the crawl of ROTS, without losing anything.
Actually, the bigger question is why Dooku is on their team. His supposed motivation to leave the Jedi and the Republic is the corruption of the senate, but the first thing he does after leaving is founding the League of the Uber-corrupt, super-capitalist of the galaxy. It just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, what greater good could justify this absurd action against his actual beliefs?
I like the shortened dialogue between Baylan and Hayle. In fact, I played around with the same scene today. I was struggling with the loose “Sakris…” line because, without the rest of the line about the empire, the shot of Hayle is very short. I ended up removing that piece of dialogue too and reduced the line to:
“Scan these imposters for identification.”
Can you upload that scene individually here on the thread, to compare the result? If not, can you send me a PM?
Today I tackled the training sequence and tried to tighten it up. I cut some superfluous dialogue as well as repetitive action and eliminated odd pauses during dialogue.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ErHoanz2vpIC_gFcPBb25eQWRfIoF73O/view?usp=share_link
Let me know what you think.
How would you pull that off, and how would the structure benefit from that change?
I haven’t thought about it too much, but maybe show a shortened version of Ahsoka getting the map with no self-destructing droids, she takes it to the New Republic to entrust them with it, then they raid the ship and take it. There’s no footage of them taking it from there so it will have to be implied. I don’t know. But there is footage of Ahsoka having it on Home One I think.
Ahsoka hands it over to Hera during their meeting where they discuss the attack on the transport, which has to come after the raid. Apart from that there is no scene of Ahsoka on any NR ship if I am not mistaken.
But that problem aside, you could add a shot of the map on a pedestal to the cell that Baylan opens. The simplest way to achieve that might be to edit a still image of the map sitting on the pedestal on Seatos and place it in the foreground of the shot showing Baylan standing outside the open cell from Morgan’s perspective. To sell it even better you could add a digital focus shift from Baylan to the map or vice-versa.
Someone in Smudger’s thread spawned the idea of removing episode 1 almost entirely and starting with the Corellia investigation instead.
Sadly, I had no time to spare at the time, but now I have thrown together a quick mock-up of that idea.
The general structure is this:
-slightly altered crawl, that explains the state of the galaxy and why Ahsoka and Hera are on Corellia
-opening on Corellia, intercut with the introduction of Sabine
-Hera reports to the NR
-new scene, featuring Sabine observing Purrgil traveling past Lothal (new call to action)
-Jailbreak, introduction of Baylen and Shin
-Sabine contacts Ahsoka
-opening of the map
-Ahsoka and Sabine meetApart from the structural change, I only boosted the colors (a lot).
If anyone is interested in giving feedback, just notify me. The edit is about 40 minutes long.
I like the ideas of moving the Corellia story first, makes more sense but how would you create Sabine observing the Pergils on Lothal?
I used the shot of Baylan seeing a silhouette of a purrgil through the clouds, while on Seatos, applied some binocular filter, and tinted the footage to give the impression of infrared sight.
Here is the clip:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-aMXsVQGwn7XhvEnSnORrV7G83zxovq9/view?usp=share_link
Sadly the compression is killing the quality.
Edit: Hey, drive fixed itself and displays the clip in 1080p.
How would you pull that off, and how would the structure benefit from that change?
They work just fine, thanks!
I used the arrival on Corellia, I can send you a link to the edit.
Yeah send it to me! And sorry didn’t intend to have those videos restricted. It should be fixed now.
Maybe you have to change the links because it still asks for authorization.
I used the arrival on Corellia, I can send you a link to the edit.
The videos you shared are set to restricted. Was that intentional?
I was also gonna work on trying to remove the entire Hera and New Republic subplot. I hate that the NR won’t do anything. Especially considering one of their ships was just attacked and a prisoner freed. Them not wanting to help Hera in her pursuit makes zero sense.
That is one of the reasons why I postponed the attack on the cruiser until after the investigation on Corellia and the subsequent scene with the senators. This way their reluctance to funnel any resources into this investigation is less contrived (albeit still stupid, considering the extent of the operation and the appearance of a rogue Inquisitor).
One problem with this approach is that we need a way for the heroes to know about the map and how it looks.
Maybe the map Ahsoka recovers could be a fake? That would show the audience and Ahsoka the looks of the map and explain the self-destruct maneuver of the assassin droids because there is no actual map to destroy.
So, you could open with Baylan and Shin freeing Morgan and Ahsoka’s little Indiana Jones adventure. Then during the meeting with Hera Huyang explains that the map is a fake and with no lead to follow, Ahsoka and Hera decide to investigate Morgan’s former operation on Corellia. They run into the hyperdrive core and place a tracker. Intercut this mission with Sabine’s introduction and her vision/dream about Ezra and add some form of a call to action. She then contacts Ahsoka and joins her on the quest to Seatos.
Someone in Smudger’s thread spawned the idea of removing episode 1 almost entirely and starting with the Corellia investigation instead.
Sadly, I had no time to spare at the time, but now I have thrown together a quick mock-up of that idea.
The general structure is this:
-slightly altered crawl, that explains the state of the galaxy and why Ahsoka and Hera are on Corellia
-opening on Corellia, intercut with the introduction of Sabine
-Hera reports to the NR
-new scene, featuring Sabine observing Purrgil traveling past Lothal (new call to action)
-Jailbreak, introduction of Baylen and Shin
-Sabine contacts Ahsoka
-opening of the map
-Ahsoka and Sabine meet
Apart from the structural change, I only boosted the colors (a lot).
If anyone is interested in giving feedback, just notify me. The edit is about 40 minutes long.
Basically the equivalent to the PT, OT, and ST ideas threads.
This is the place to brainstorm any and all editing-related ideas pertaining to the Ahsoka series.
I remember that Snooker added Dooku to Qui-Gon’s funeral. That could get you started.
The next best place to integrate Dooku might be at the Jedi Council.
The problem is introducing him as an important character. In these scenes, he would merely be a random background character with a vague connection to Qui-Gon.
It would be great to have a scene of Dooku talking to anyone. You could use the footage of the balcony scene at the temple and create a new one that features Qui-Gon talking to Dooku. In this setting they can talk while standing next to one another and gazing off into the distance, that should make it a lot easier to composite everything.
The only question is what they should talk about.
I am interested, can I have a link?
Generally, I like the series. Especially the new galaxy intrigues me and I am exited about Baylan’s true motivation. However, Peridea was not really foreign enough for my taste. It feels odd, that the night sisters are speaking basic and that they know about the Jedi.
Speaking about the visuals, do you intend to change anything about the desaturated colors?
So, here are my thaughts after watching the complete first act.
The general structure works just fine and has a good flow to it. Also, the dialogue change from Corellia to Seatos had me baffled. I knew it was coming, but it sounded so clean that I didn’t notice the change.
The only piece that really stood out to me was Shin’s sudden appearance on Lothal. But I suppose you cut her send-off to Lothal because you eliminated the droid battle at the temple. Speaking of which, I liked that you dropped the fight, but maybe you could add Ahsoka’s attempt to contact Huyang back in. The cut to the cockpit felt a little quick.
Other than that, I would suggest reworking the “end”. The scene with Sabine’s hologram feels redundant. I think it would be better if we had her suit up and join Ahsoka at the painting. This way you wouldn’t need to mention the Corellia mission as an excuse for the hologram.
I imagine a scene order like this could work.
-Dissection of the droid’s brain; cut right after the mention of Seatos
-Space Stonehenge
-Huyang and Sabine chat in the med bay followed by her gear up
-The arrival of the energy core
-Sabine joins Ahsoka at the painting
Alternatively, I would consider cutting both the med bay chat and the arrival of the energy core and revert back to a version of the “Brain surgeon” scene that has Hera cheer up Sabine. The arrival of the energy core scene simply does not add anything and you would save the reveal of the ship until the heroes discover it themself.
I also wanted to comment the opening crawl and the title.
-I think that the white “Ahsoka” logo doesn’t compose well with the rest of the crawl. Maybe it would be possible to make it yellow, as the rest of the crawl? Alternatively, you could just name Star Wars: Heir to the Empire.
-btw, talking about the title, I don’t mind it, but it’s very probable that Dave Filoni’s movie will end up being titled “Heir to the Empire”. So maybe it’d be good to find some alternative title.
-Also, since you will probably end up with only one movie for “Ahsoka”, and considering the fact that this is a limited series, with no plans for s02 (for now at least), maybe it would make more sense to skip “Episode I” part for now? Again, it could be just “Star Wars - Ahsoka - HTTE” or “Star Wars - HTTE”.
I agree with szopman, the title and the crawl clash visually.
Maybe you could make the crawl plain white to match the title card?
Can I have a link as well?
Ohhhh, I realize now that you wrote two parters.
I had read two partners at first and was dead confused.