McFibb

EddieDean said:

That’s good, but it needs to fit to some standard structure, which I currently have as six lines of text, of which the first and last are shorter.

Since I have to do about fifty episodes, I figured the very first line might position the viewer chronologically, and then the second would give the state of the galaxy.

Your fourth line wouldn’t quite work, since at the start of the episode we believe it’s Obi-Wan who’s requested a padawan - Ahsoka is ostensibly his, not Skywalkers, and ‘officially’ it’s only Yoda that changed that plan (though it’s implied later that Obi-Wan was in on it).

Your second, third, and fifth lines are all good though!

I actually don’t think they do have to fit a certain structure. There’s a natural assumption that each episode holds something new or different than previous episodes, and I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch for the viewer to expect that different episodes will have different needs re: to expository information right up front. Plus, it can allow you some creative freedom when your hands are already tied in so many ways given the source material. I think this idea goes back to my previous post about pacing/tightening. Everything should serve the larger purpose rather than a fixed structure for the sake of structure. If a longer set of title cards make sense, then I’m all for it. But there are few things more aggravating to a viewing experience than sitting through something that doesn’t need to be there – indeed, something that is only there to fill a structural void. I won’t miss what I don’t miss!

Awesome @EddieDean!

Constructive feedback time (reminder: I never was able to get past these first episodes):

• Already, I like the tightening. When SW is at it’s best, it is TIGHT with very little fluff. The plot moves, the action moves, the character development moves – everything serves a larger purpose, from cinematography to dialogue to action. I think any edit must ask the question: “Is this [set piece/dialogue/shot/etc] absolutely critical in delivering a must-watch SW experience?”

• That said, the clip provided can be trimmed further, I think. Or at least reshuffled (of course, saying all this without seeing the whole episode). For example, the transition between Ventress leaving OWK and AS post-fight using the circular swipe led me to believe we were leaving the two Jedi for some amount of time, filled by what surely was to be action/plot/dialogue/etc with another set of characters. Instead, we are instantly back with OWK and AS at what seems to be possibly hours later, ready and prepped to tackle the Separatist Army. To my untrained eye, this doesn’t actually feel like a super critical scene, and from what I gather, seems to be the beginning of a separate episode’s expository introduction. I think less could be more by perhaps using that circular swipe to go right to the next scene, with establishing space shot followed by Yoda and MW addressing the admiral on the ship. The surrounding dialogue explaining a lack of contact with OWK and AS still makes sense, and keeps the pacing a bit more tight and tense: OWK and AS are off to see what Ventress is talking about exactly, and as the watcher, we don’t know how dire the situation is. It keeps everyone on their toes.

Anyway, that’s just one example of how tightening might be used to stronger effect for the benefit of the whole.

• Personal gripe time: I absolutely hate PT droids. Their talking just fully takes me out of the story. Their antics aren’t funny, don’t add anything to the plot, and for the most part, really diminish any sort of menace or threat. Have you given any thought to removing all their dialogue in favor of what other fan edits have proposed – that they are all on the same network anyway and don’t require vocalization to communicate?

That’s it for now. THANKS FOR THIS!

Hey all — sorry for being MIA the last 24 hours. I’m working on a new rendition of the intro music. Agree about the “bigness” being a problem. I think a more restrained, but equally tense theme that adds an element of unrelenting forward momentum can really do the trick. Gonna put in some more hours tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll have something to show for it!

This community is awesome.

sade1212 said:

I also thought it was the Avengers theme at first, haha. I like it, though it’s very intense and thus might be a little much. I second the comment regarding the transition to the piano bit for the episode title being a bit abrupt.

Clearly the most reasonable solution here is to change the intro music about every twenty episodes, because Clone Wars is an anime.

Yeah, the crescendo at the end of the logo isn’t ideal, but I didn’t have any other “outro” sequences in the source material. I’m working on finding a better exit.

And unrelatedly – re: to my mention of Asohka’s theme earlier, I was wrong. It’s “Burying the Dead”, not her theme. Still think it works, but the musical metaphor now breaks down. Blame it on me not knowing these characters! Pros/cons of having fresh eyes/ears.

CMMAP said:

McFibb said:

@EddieDean – I took a crack myself at an idea, stemming from V4. Check it out here: https://vimeo.com/495284667

Take it with a grain of salt, especially from a guy who has never seen TCW. That said, I know this much:

1. It’s about intergalactic AND inter- / intra- personal wars.
2. Asohka and Anakin are primary characters.
3. The music should take into account the emotions revolving around each of the above.

So, I took a swing. Might be a huge miss, but happy to contribute an iota of an idea for this great thread!

Keep up the great work!

EDIT: Music credit goes to Samuel Kim, with remix by me.

I’ve to say I like it too. Right amount of epicness. For a second I had concerns it’ll be the avengers theme from endgame when the intro text unfolds.
Though I agree with eddiedean regarding the longer time for the introtext and piano to pin point this with the emerging sentences.

One minor issue for me is that the audio-transition from the tcw logo to the episode name is fairly rough, because of the difference between the two music pieces. Perhaps it is possible to smoothin it out? Or maybe it the intro music could end around 0:54/55? Therefore the difference would be lesser than before.

For stereo to 5.1, you could use ffmpeg, the conversion to 5.1 should work? (not an expert though).

Other than that, great job!

Yeah, the transition could be better. I wanted to somehow introduce Asohka’s theme, while at the same time carrying the Order 66 theme to it’s conclusion of the Imperial March, and finding a way to overlay the two without having adequate source material required pitching one or the other, which both creates some artifacts and creates a bit of disconnect.

I was more concerned about the overall length of the intro, so I cut more elements shorter than I would’ve liked, so the fact that the general consensus is that longer = better, I think some of that jarring can be remedied.

The core issue with adding Asohka’s theme at the end over the episode title is three-fold:

1. Tonally, def different
2. Diff key
3. The piano note is actually a 2nd/11th (musical term)*, over the root chord. While as a standalone for Asohka’s theme, it creates a longing/yearning/wistful/melancholy feeling, in this context, it feels contrary, out of place, and introduces a bit of thematic/tonal dissonance. I countered that by fighting fire with fire and continued with her theme using the second piano note of her theme to be overlaid on some of the Imperial March, which together is very noticeably dissonant, which one could argue might fit the eventual nature of the push/pull of the light/dark side embodied by both Asohka and Anakin (speculating though… since I’ve never seen it and I avoid spoilers as much as possible!).

All that to say, it’s very well possible these two independent pieces of music that I’ve smashed together thanks to the glory of technology may very well not play nicely in the context of this intro edit. I’ll keep playing around and keep you all in the loop.

*EDIT: It might actually be a 6th. I’m not at a piano to figure it out. Regardless, it has the same impact on the listener described above.

Whoa! SO glad you like it! Everyone else weigh in too. +1 for collaboration.

Happy to continue to make tweaks. At the time (i.e. this morning, lol), I wasn’t concerned with copyright/quality stuff, but if this fits and feels right, we’ll need to go about it the right way… starting with reaching out the Samuel Kim and getting permission (or at the very least, letting him know. He seems super lax about fan edit stuff).

Would it be useful to have a selection of intro audio assets that you can pick and choose depending on the episode? Maybe creating a short, medium, and long intro, with the variation only occurring during the intro text? Happy to do that for the audio, so long as you give me some durations that would be appropriate (e.g. total length: short - 30 secs, medium - 35 secs, long - 45 secs; with the expectation that the difference in length would go in the “Intro Text” section.

FYI – I know nothing about 5.1 Surround. Would it be a problem for stereo export of the audio sequence?

@EddieDean – I took a crack myself at an idea, stemming from V4. Check it out here: https://vimeo.com/495284667

Take it with a grain of salt, especially from a guy who has never seen TCW. That said, I know this much:

1. It’s about intergalactic AND inter- / intra- personal wars.
2. Asohka and Anakin are primary characters.
3. The music should take into account the emotions revolving around each of the above.

So, I took a swing. Might be a huge miss, but happy to contribute an iota of an idea for this great thread!

Keep up the great work!

EDIT: Music credit goes to Samuel Kim, with remix by me.

EddieDean said:

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”.

Right on both counts. I’m happy to enlist myself in IDing appropriate music. I’ve also some experience as an audio engineer/mixer (though as a hobby vs pro), so happy to try my hand at any audio transition issues you face (eg. compression, EQ, limiting, etc.) It occurs to me too that a new member just posted he’s a pro engineer and interested in supporting fan edits. Maybe he’d be a good resource whenever you cross this bridge?

@EddieDean — re: the cold open idea, I think ordering could be:

• New SW logo
• Intro text
• Cold open
• TCW logo (agree on movement)
• Episode title
• Core episode

I also agree with the previous commenter that fewer lines or split across two pages would be better. That said, left aligned works for me.

And I totally respect that each SW franchise can have its own unique identity. So run with it! We’re just voices in the ether with an opinion on everything!

And it can’t be said enough: thank you!

Awesome work! I’ve been refreshing this thread massive amounts the last week or so, and it’s great to see you’ve been up to a lot!

A few things:

(Refresher: I’m a Clone Wars noob, but longtime film cannon fan.)

1. The hype train was for real watching the new Star Wars intro logo from Mando. Def psychs you up leading into the CW logo.

2. That said, I agree partially with a previous commentor: the music just doesn’t quite fit over the CW logo and intro text. However, I’d advocate keeping the new SW intro (from Mando) and swap in new title/intro text music. Not sure if it’s tempo, arrangement, tone, etc — but it’s not quite what I anticipated musically coming into the show I’ve been reading from your deeply curated analyses. It’s 100% within reach, and I get what you’re trying to do from previous posts (and I’m all for it!), but the choice for intro/outro isn’t quite there yet. It’s almost too somber/sad, as opposed to contemplative.

3. Totally agree that intro text is far superior to the narrator, but I’m not a huge fan of the Solo-style text. Not that I’m in favor of going full traditional SW crawl, but I do like that the crawl is forcibly concise, but allows bolding/all-caps for emphasis. I feel in an episodic series like this, that could be really useful creatively. I don’t have a constructive path forward in this point, but I’ll keep thinking on it.

4. Back to the logo and chapter title: I’d love to see a cold open every episode prior to seeing both of these. Obv influenced by Mando, but I think they use it to great effect and could be super effective here. It’s more work finding the story beats for each episode to knock the cold open out of the park, but it would be icing on the cake if you could make it work!

5. Lastly, font/font color could possibly be tweaked. I love thin fonts as a general rule, but the blue color made it slightly difficult to read, especially over the end credits. I’d advocate doing a font and font color exploration and see what works. Go wild; we can always pair you back. 😃 Maybe play with diff fonts or sizes for end credit role/name pairings.

I’m gonna watch this like 500 more times because I’m so ridiculously excited to start watching! Thank you! I’ll be sure to aggregate additional feedback as it comes to me.

EddieDean said:

Final thoughts before I put this down for a little while:

My plan is to modify opening and closing screens.

For the opening, I think I need a track with less bombast than the current one, which matches the bombastic nature of the newscaster narrator. In my edit, I’m not going to preserve him, since I get far more flexibility if I use text I can control - this gives me more flexibility in what I cut from edits so I think it’s worth doing. It also makes us take a breath and contextualise what we’re about to see. In terms of music I intend to go for a little military, a little weary, a little sadder, and let the opening text have a more somber tone. It may be that the current closing credits track is a bit more suitable, or I might go darker still.

For the closing, I’m going to redo the credits over imagery from each episode’s episode gallery / BTS gallery on StarWars.com. This’ll be much more like Mandalorian, which has those lovely bits of art.

This will be over particularly dark, ponderous music - I want us to take a beat after each episode and really digest it. I think the best track for this might be the prelude to Order 66 music which slowly builds throughout the third episode of the final arc. This would serve us nicely because it’s dark and ominous - welcome since we know the inevitable conclusion of the Clone Wars and mentally it draws us toward that end - and also because, when we later hear it in the episode itself, fuck me is it going to be tense. (And luckily, of course, the episode actually pays off that tension.) A similar one would be this: https://youtu.be/cNO3aNksUzg?t=1498

Yes, yes, and yes! Really glad to hear you’re losing the narrator (which you mentioned some time ago, but I never chimed in), both for the reasons you listed previously and above, but also because it is just so jarring, especially for someone like myself who is coming from live-action canon into this new medium, which is shocking in and of itself. The episodes I’ve watched before in trying to get into TCW have always had me tentative from the moment NewsMan starts talking. I totally appreciate the original intent to include that as a constant within TCW: it sets it apart from other media, it has a similar feel as the original Flash Gordon-esque serials of way-back-when, etc. But since the approach you’re taking with this fanedit is more somber, character-driven, and forward-looking, I think the bold choice to remove his narration is not only a boon to your creative freedom in establishing each of your episodes, but significantly aligns the entry point for each episode with the new tone you’re setting.

Again, just a dude and his unpolished thoughts. Others who have fallen in love with TCW as-is may well feel the choice is too far a deviation from the soul or gestalt of the show. I can’t say one way or the other, but as one of the few of us following along who hasn’t actually seen more than 3 episodes of TCW, I certainly am excited for your approach and think it will make a meaningful impact on the viewer experience of the show.

And yes too for all your other musical choices. SO looking forward to this!!

EDIT: One more thing – the decision to have credits over concept art is brilliant. One of my favorite things about Mando and I routinely watch all the credits solely for this reason.

@EddieDean – FWIW, you’ve been more than diligent in ensuring the utmost respect be held for other fanedits, all the while thinking critically about how you want to move forward with your particular fanedit. I respect @EU’s opinion on the matter, but I have such respect for your transparency, commitment to discourse, and just plan simple human decency you’ve brought to the table with this thread. It’s clear for those of us following this entire thread regularly that your respect for others, their opinions and experiences, and the source material itself is paramount, and it’s remarkable the level of “normalcy” this thread has maintained given that we’re all anonymous and posting on the internet in a web forum. That’s nearly always due to the OP setting the tone for the subsequent discussion, and you’ve done a phenomenal job wrapping this whole community into your personal journey, which isn’t something you needed to do (but have done anyway). You’ve got integrity, and so few of us on forums do, and I for one am thankful for it.

Tl;DR: Keep up the good work, and good on ya for being a person.

@KoK and @EddieDean —- Thanks for the clarification. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see!

Also, @EddieDean —- I like the idea of the “cold open” to the series. For me coming in fresh to TCW, it adds a new level of cohesiveness to the overarching plot of TCW that never really is established in the first few episodes, either aired order or chronological order. That editorial decision, or one like it, I think would go a long way for new viewers.

@Hal9000 —- Having never actually been introduced to Ashoka since I never watched TCW, I’m far from an being an informed viewer. That said, coming from a great familiarity with the rest of canon, it never made sense to me that Anakin would receive an apprentice, seeing as the Jedi Council was firmly against his training in the first place. Plus, he was never elevated to Master Jedi. Maybe this gets clarified in TCW. Hence, my immense interest in @EddieDean’s pursuit. But until proven otherwise, I totally agree!

Just chiming in here to second the weekly watch party idea. With Mando wrapping up in the next few weeks, it’ll be great to have something else Star Wars-related to look forward to with some regularity!

EddieDean said:

Hah, you said that just as I was editing my own post to add that thought. Once I’ve watched the first Mandalore arc I’ll be diving into Smudger’s Geonosis/Mandalore film to see how he’s handled things- and it’s no surprise that he’s opted to interlace those two since it does make sense.

(Whether or not I think moviefying the episodes is the right approach, a huge priority will always be episode polish so I’m still very interested in how he and other editors are doing things.)

And I’m glad you’re enjoying these updates! It’s an important brain dump, but I was worried that people would think I was being obnoxious by updating so frequently. It’s good to know that people are getting a kick out of it, and who knows how many lurkers are themselves getting inspired by an intimate look at the process.

Please, anyone who’s reading this, add your voices to this discussion, even to respond to my older posts. Agree or disagree, it’ll all help focus the project.

+1 for being a part of the peanut gallery. I find myself refreshing the thread multiple times a day!

EddieDean said:

Right, McFibb, that’s the front page updated with a full list.

@EVERYONE, feel free to review and challenge that listing on the front page.

Artan42, thanks for this. There were some useful points there, and it encouraged me to take a look at the earlier production orders. I’d already kept a note of the changed character models in case of reshuffling, but ultimately I think I’ll adhere to roughly chronological order but with a real focus on pacing the whole.

@EddieDean: THANK YOU! This is awesome. I so appreciate your thoughtful responses and effort in making this happen!

Hey there — would love to get my hands on your fanedit. Any chance you could PM over a link?

Thanks!

Hey there — ditto on the request to watch TLJ Reforged! Any chance you could PM me?

Thank you!

@EddieDean – you, sir, are a hero. I’m a Star Wars nerd, but have just never been able to get into the Clone Wars for all the reasons others have listed here and other forums. Of course, with The Mandalorian heating up and introducing some phenomenal characters and stories introduced in TCW, I’m hopping on the bandwagon in hopes of getting myself up to speed on all things TCW, and I want to lean on your new project for my introduction to all this. I was going to start with Smudger’s fan edits, but then saw this thread and have immediately halted!

So, here’s my question: can I start diving into things now based on your VIDEO criteria, keeping chronology according to SW.com? Or should I wait until you produce a fan edit of your own? And if the latter, you are just one person tackling over 100 episodes of content and I imagine your timeline for release is pretty far in the future – would I be correct in that assumption? And lastly, if that is the case, how should I proceed?! I want to have the best experience with TCW as possible (with hopes of convincing my SUPER skeptical wife to join me [she’s a huge Mando fan and decent SW fan, but she draws the lines at cartoons, and while I’m still willing to be brought to the Dark Side, it’s an uphill battle for her]) while at the same time being realistic enough to still get the fullest enjoyment out of Mando in real-time.

Seriously, cheers for doing this!

EDIT: Signed up for this forum just to contribute here. Legit excited for this!