WitchDR

Vladius said:

Baylan and Shin on the New Republic ship should be started in medias res with them already on the ship, because the explanation of how they got there is really dumb.

I showcased a cut like that over on Smudger’s edit. He ultimately chose to keep the opening as-is. I don’t think it’s perfect, but anything is better than leaving the stupidity of the captain’s plan in.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1G8OAwmEzlKftG-FEnWNMdF7ygFfFrmbs

daveybjones999 said:

Yeah, episode 3 is a bit tricky because of the spacewalk and Ashoka’s change in outfit. I think the only way to make it shorter is instead of removing the space walk you’d have to remove the dog fight instead and have them immediately find the ring and jump into that sequence and completely remove the fight with the 6 fighters. I also suppose you might be able to shorten the descent onto Seatos as well. Another way to save time in the episode is to 100% remove Hera’s subplot about disobeying orders and cut out the scene with the Senators. It’s also mostly easy to remove that subplot from episodes 4 and 5 as well, by only including the scenes of her leaving to help Ahsoka and removing all dialogue about it being an unsanctioned mission, in episode 4, and it’s mostly possible to cut around the New Republic stuff in episode 5, but you might have to wait on episodes 7 and 8 to see if the subplot is able to be fully removed.

I agree Davey. I think removing or heavily trimming the Hera and New Republic B-plot is where we’d be able to trim the most time out of the middle episodes.

I wish we could do away with them ever having a falling out all together. Their entire relationship is something that happened off screen that will probably be expanded in some comic or novel. As someone who enjoyed Rebels, I really hate that they have this whole relationship that we never saw.

I agree GLogus. The first 4 to 5 episodes would be an extremely boring first movie. But depending on the length of the final 2 episodes, it may end up having to be 2 movies. The way the show is structured makes it really hard to fully remove massive portions of episodes. It’s honestly a shame, because I think there is a really good single movie in there. But I really haven’t seen a way to achieve it yet, without outright removing full episodes.

I think Matt.F had the best solution for this. Relegating a lot of the first three episodes into the crawl instead, which would be a huge plus considering those episodes are about an 80% constant drag on the plot. And with that we could remove Ahsoka and Sabine’s weird relationship that never happened in Rebels, which would be a huge improvement to the show imo. We could start the movie with Ahsoka going to pick up Sabine to go find Ezra. With a little AI line work, I don’t think this would be that hard to achieve.

Instead of Ahsoka and Sabine having a prior “Jedi/Padawan” relationship, we could change the training scenes on the ship as the first time Ahsoka’s started to train her as a Jedi.

losthead said:

With episodes 5 and 6, I get the feeling you could very easily cut out most of the Hera and Jacen subplot, as well as the New Republic arriving on Seatos, and instead intercut Ahsoka’s WBW journey with Sabine and the others on Peridea? That way, once Ahsoka rides the whales, the witches alert Thrawn about it. I think it could make it a lot tighter, and we could reduce the Jacen subplot to an expository line. I also feel you could cut out the New Republic arriving, and have Ahsoka depart with no interruption. If they are still on Seatos and that becomes a plot point, you could easily slot in their arrival after Ahsoka leaves.

Something like this could be doable. Just have Huyang alone be the one to find her instead. Keep the scene of the ship lights over Ahsoka, but cut it right before the female pilot jumps in to grab her. Than you could change the dialogue during the scene where they discuss it when Ahsoka wakes up.

I tried doing a mock-up of Huyang and Ahsoka’s conversation after he saves her. Not entirely satisfied with it, but it’s something that could be fleshed out:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/104Fzlcjm73AtwlizctAk790DRjRovFgv

Changed it to Huyang using a scanner to find Ahsoka out in the water, and changed all his "We"s to "I"s.

If we intercut between Ahsoka’s episode 5 plot and Sabine’s episode 6 plot, it’d probably be pretty easy to remove Hera and the New Republic’s involvement altogether. And with how the NR has been portrayed, the less of them the better honestly. We already have the NR shutting down Hera’s search in Episode 3, so we have a reason for them not to be involved further. But we will have to see how Hera’s story unfolds in the next two episodes to make a final call.

Episode 6 honestly still had a lot of fluff. I was able to cut this episode down to 26 minutes pretty easily. I’ll send ya the cut in PM’s if it can help give you any ideas for cuts Smudger.

If episode 7 plays out with Baylon and Shin showing up with these bandits to attack Sabine and Ezra, we could easily assume that these bandits are just a part of Thrawn’s squad. Doing this could allow you to entirely remove them ambushing Sabine and every scene of them in this episode. Instead having their first scene be how ever they appear in the next episode with Baylon and Shin. But if Thrawn ends up betraying Baylon and Shin and the bandits team up with them instead, this may not work.

But we will have to see how next episode plays out, but this is definitely a possibility.

I think this is a great first cut Smudger! It flows far better than the first two episodes did originally.

I do echo something others above have mentioned though… the jump from Ashoka getting the map and then instantly being on the ship with Huyang afterwards. The dialogue about Huyang being too out of reach for contact needs to be removed, or you could reinstate Ahsoka trying to communicate with Huyang while in the tomb then jump to her on the ship with Huyang and allow the conversation to remain as-is.

Two other things I think could be fixed are:

• Ahsoka’s search for the map needs trimming. Too much walking around to each pillar. Could easily be tightened up.

• Also Sabine still has a hole in her back from the stab wound she received from Shin.

Here’s a trimmed down version of the map search and also the shot of Sabine with the back of her shirt fixed using masking:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s1LA58QGDZFkAIvYzGFHUjs8ui7cdPkJ
(Have to start putting clips on Google Drive, since Vimeo seems to strike everything down now)

Other than those things, I think this is pretty much the best it can get!

Would love to check out the first cut!

GLogus said:

I agree wholeheartedly, but I think you are referencing episode 5. Episode 5 was great, but like you said, it could lose a good 15 minutes and be much better off for it. Episode 4, on the other hand, was impressively paced and had me on the edge of my seat.

Oh sorry, I had episode 5 freshly on my mind and misread lol. Yes I would agree that Episode 4 definitely has the least amount of fluff in terms of all 5 episodes.

GLogus said:

Episode 4 was so good, including its pacing, that it imo it doesn’t any significant trims. All the other episodes, however, have felt needlessly slow.

It was definitely the best episode yet. But I would say the opposite. All of the search for Ahsoka and Purgil scenes were badly paced and need to be heavily trimmed. This episode could easily be cut down to about 35ish minutes as oppose to 49 minutes. The Purgil scene especially dragged on way too long. And all of the Ahsoka and Anakin scenes should be merged together with almost no jumping back to Hera constantly telling everybody to keep searching.

I got to say, after Ep5, I think this show is in dire need of a single movie edit. I really don’t think the first 4-5 episodes will make a good single movie for a two movie edit. Episode 5’s ending feels like the perfect spot for mid-way through one movie. The new Galaxy portion of the show serving as the finale of the movie.

But getting all 5 episodes cut down to only about an hour to an hour and a half would be extremely daunting. We will have to see how long these final 3 episodes are. But as of right now, I think this show would be best served as a 2h30m movie.

Man, I just decided to watch through these movies again recently and it made me remember about this post from years ago! I hope one day you revive this project G&G. Your Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Biollante hybrid was something I was so hyped about!

smudger9 said:

I’ve watched it back a few times and it now feels like Sabine has more of an emotional collapse as she sees help arriving. Shin still clearly wins the duel, so that plot point is retained.
It seems to work and I’ll edit out references to the lightsaber injury in the medical bay.

When you put it that way, I think that is a satisfactory work around. You did good on removing all the references. But there’s still the shot right before she collapses, where you can see Sabine has a hole on her back from where the saber went straight through her.

I tried masking out the wound and sent you the clip via PM if you want to use it.

She obviously appears more wounded than she should be, but it may be the best that can be done. You’d also need to remove the hole in her shirt on her back.

I think it’s a far better solution than leaving the stab in though.

vranir said:

Random fan-edity idea: What if the attack on the Republic ship came after the map and Corellia stuff? Morgan Elsbeth isn’t actually involved in any of it very much, so breaking her out of jail could be reordered as a later step in their plot.

This honestly may be a great idea to radically edit the show. The only problem you run into is you can’t use the scene of Huyang talking about Baylan and Shins lightsabers to Ahsoka. So we’d need some other reason for Ahsoka to walk to another room, so Sabine can have the opportunity to take the map to progress the plot.

I definitely hope we can end up cutting more. I’ve went through all three episodes countless times in Vegas, just trying to find ways to remove large chunks out of it, but just keep coming up short. Only really being able to trim scenes, instead of completely removing them.

I think these 3 episodes only really have about 45 minutes worth of good content in total, but it’d require some absolute radical editing and ideas to get it there.

Here’s some of the stupid things that could hopefully be tackled:

• The New Republic captain allowing Baylan and Shin to enter the ship, knowing they are lying about being Jedi

Maybe we could start this scene in the middle of the fight instead? Skip the whole boarding part all together. We could try something like this: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/859635415
I feel like adding the alarm sound just helps bridge the scenes together. We would have to recolor the cock pit in the ship establishing shot, since it isn’t lit up red.

• Sabine taking the map to her place, just so the bad guys can easily get the map

Probably can’t be fixed.

• Sabine being stabbed by Shin, only to be completely fine in the next episode like it never happened

Probably can’t be fixed.

• One of the assassin droids staying behind at Sabine’s just so they have a new clue to where they need to go

What if we made the droid Sabine beat, the one they take the head off of instead?

• Shin and the other pilots shooting at Ahsoka on the wing instead of just shooting her downed ship

Like you said, the whole Clone Wars-esque Ahsoka space walk scene can’t be removed.

And I agree with you on the awful pacing of scenes. I think almost every single scene needs some level of trimming. So many scenes drag on far too long. Too many shots of characters just standing and staring at each other, or showing us each character walking to every spot they need to be at in the following scene.

I really would love if the community could brainstorm some radical ideas for this, cause I think there’s something really great here unlike most of the live action shows. But it just needs a lot of work to get there.

Anjohan said:

I’m not going to watch a single episode before someone in here, who despise Disney Star Wars as much as me, give it tremendous amount of praise. I’m eagerly awaiting, and hopeful!

I absolutely despise Disney Star Wars, but I’ll say the show is just okay so far. One of my biggest issues is the god awful pacing, which hopefully a good fanedit can fix.

Another problem is that a bunch of stuff happened off screen between Ahsoka and Sabine that soured their relationship a tad. Makes it hard to connect with the characters when we saw none of this.

There’s some cool moments and some obvious headscratchers, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as Obi-Wan, Boba, or Mando S3. If you liked Rebels, give it shot. If not, wait for an edit or skip it all together.

Some screenshots from WIP Episode 3 “Boxed In":

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Thanks! What should I dial back? Blur? Contrast?

Some screenshots from WIP Episode 1 “Escape Room”:
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I’m only 45 mins in, and it’s wonderful so far Smudger. I did see one error though. You can see the line from the space background that the crawl transitions to, during the crawl itself. This is in the 1080p version.

https://imgur.com/a/2g20e0j

Hi ya’ll!

I love the new Beavis and Butt-Head seasons, but heavily dislike the digital look of them. So my goal for this edit is to give each episode a more rough aesthetic.

BEFORE

AFTER

I will be making “No Music Videos” and regular edits of every episode.

The “Your mother once thought as you do” line is definitely something that needs to be added!

Would love to check out Book 4!

I decided to throw a quick clip together to show the Scorpenek Droid error: https://vimeo.com/822212271

The rancor has already ripped off one of the blaster arms and destroyed the eye of the droid. Then when he throws it to the ground, it reverts back to having both it’s blaster arms and eye while it shuffles around on the floor. Only for it to again revert back to damaged once the Rancor rips the other blaster arm off.