vranir

I too love the visual of the Gungan city, but I also completely understand it being removed.

Regarding Palpatine, I’d argue that it’s likely not a mystery that he becomes the emperor. When Amidala says that they need his help, most of the audience is going to think “Oh no.”

That said, it doesn’t have to be immediately obvious that he’s truly behind everything going on. If set up the right way, the audience can piece the truth together at the same time as the characters. To me, that’d be a more interesting journey - thinking that we’re rooting for the bad guy because he’s helping against the other bad guys but then realizing that he was behind everything all along.

I like it, especially the thread about the ambassadors and some of the new JarJar lines, but the following still stand out to me as (unavoidable?) issues:

• The number of quick scenes make it feel a bit choppy.

• How did the Jedi get to the planet? Why are they in the woods?

• Do we have to tip our hand w Sideous so early? I’d ideally like to see Dooku instructing them, setting up the overall Separatist threat, then reveal that he’s secretly taking orders from elsewhere in Ep2.

This may have been suggested before, but what if the Sideous hologram was a Dooku hologram?

I’m not sure how many times I’m going to watch this, so I’ll wait for the polished version. That said, I’m really looking forward to this edit! Thank you for putting it together.

As someone else who couldn’t make it through vanilla Clone Wars, I highly recommend these edits as a way to enjoy what the series offers.

He drops his cover in order to kidnap Satine, aided by the distraction of the spider droid and the coming Separatist boarding droids. It’s not clear what he had planned beyond that, but it doesn’t seem slipshod to me.

A lot of the Plo’koon and clone dialogue was also pretty redundant - same topics and sentiments being repeated, not much dimension being added each time. I personally prefer more cuts if it means more concentrated substance.

I like the Malevolence as it is in the current edit. I think the biggest problem was the constant buildup of it as a mystery ship. You’ve already reduced that angle in 2.0.

I agree that the less Ventress talks in New Padawan the better. It bugs me to no end how often these characters know one another by name when we’ve never seen them interact or have only fought each other in fighters etc.

I think focusing on that invasion stuff would be the best short-term gift to the community.

I’ve always been fine with the Mandalorian seasons as they were released, but I’m looking forward to using this edit as a special movie in the middle of the series.

Of course I’d like ENT too, but pace yourself, good man!

Thank you for introducing me to Cad Bane ahead of his appearance in Boba Fett. It’s much more fun when one can recognize the cameos.

I like it and what it does for his character (every little bit helps). The last line is very unclear though.

I actually don’t mind the end of season 4 as the finale. It leaves things open, but it also wraps up enough. More satisfying than SGU I think, probably comparable to the SGA finale.

For SG1, which premiere version are you planning to use? I personally prefer the final rerelease where they made some cuts (no nudity or awkward Carter line about genitalia) and replaced the giant glider with a shuttle.

While I agree that Bane’s infiltration goes nowhere, it is what lets them know he’s still alive and presumably has the holocron. Otherwise, they’d reasonably conclude he died in the explosion.

Here’s my detailed feedback and custom follow-up edit list for the final three episodes of Season 1. As always, most is subjective, but feel free to take anything that you want.

Please do note the text issue for “Children of Night” and the two text issues for “The Future of the Force.”

CHILDREN OF NIGHT

• The opening text uses the word “Whilst.” Though technically correct, it is the only instance in any of these crawls where you use an archaic term like this. I suggest replacing it with “While” for consistency.

• Made a slight trim to ObiWan and Anakin’s conversation during the initial fighter battle, just trimming mildly corny banter.

• Trimmed the most over-the-top “Master!” during the Ventress flashbacks, since it just took me out of what was otherwise a pretty serious sequence.

• Trimmed the appearance of Ventress right after the witch contacts Dooku. This leaves the plan a little more vague for a few more minutes, in order to build intrigue.

• Trimmed a redundant “Yesss” from Ventress.

• Shortened Ventress’ speeder ride to only include her arrival in the male village. I just got tired of seeing people go past those fleshy bag trees.

• Trimmed a redundant line about letting the challenge begin. Now, only Ventress says it, as a VoiceOver.

• Trimmed Savage’s line about his brother being weak. Now, he simply kills him, without dialogue or clear emotion. He is a machine.

• Trimmed Ventress’ advice to Savage so that it is now simply to never sympathize with the enemy.

• Cut all of Dooku’s analysis of the situation on Deveron. Instead, he says that he needs proof of Savage’s skills and is sending him there.

• Cut the scene where word of the massacre arrives at the Jedi temple. A lot of what was said was redundant and a tiny bit corny. Instead, we now transition immediately from Dooku calling Savage his apprentice to their lightsaber training.

A STRIKE AT THE HEART

• Made small times during Bane’s planning scene so that the story moves ahead faster and more of his cards are held close to his chest. The plot will become clear enough as the episode progresses. I also minimized the conversation about the safe, since that’s not really an issue in the edit.

• Significantly trimmed Anakin and Padme’s dialogue to be less cringy. Yes, it matches their tone in “Attack of the Clones,” but I think it works better and maintains its heart if toned down.

• Minimized the dialogue between Bane and the fish-like hacker, mainly because I didn’t care for the hacker and wanted him to simply do his job.

• Trimmed Bane’s redundant line about the senators giving him their com links, both before and after the Palpatine scene.

• Trimmed Bane’s recognition of Anakin (in two instances). Now, Anakin is considered simply a random Jedi who got in Bane’s way.

• Made a number of small trims during Anakin’s fight with the IG unit, tightening the flow of the sequence.

• Trimmed Anakin’s vocal reaction to being shot at by Bane’s team.

• Trimmed some of Bane’s dialogue immediately after breaking into the temple. Again, his character doesn’t seem like someone who would tell his colleagues his plans beyond exactly what they need to know in the moment.

• Trimmed much of Anakin and ObiWan’s conversation about the security breach. Because this is a compound episode, the conversation completely ignored what just happened in the senate building, which should be at the forefront of Anakin’s mind. By cutting the dialogue right after Anakin says that something’s happening, we can infer that they went on to talk about the entire situation.

• Trimmed the dialogue by ObiWan and Yoda about someone being disguised as a Jedi and Ahsoka needing to check on the librarian. It all seemed like intelligence that was gathered in a cut scene. Now, Yoda just tells Ahsoka to be vigilant because he senses deception, and she figures the rest out on her own.

• Trimmed Ahsoka trash talking Bane after his arrest.

THE FUTURE OF THE FORCE

• There is a typo in the opening text: “Artefact” > “Artifact”

• The opening paragraph also reads very awkwardly. I suggest “is reeling after the senate hostage crisis and a simultaneous heist from the Jedi temple.”

• Cut several establishing shots and Bane scenes during the opening battle, in order to move into the central plot faster.

• Trimmed some of Yalaren’s exasperation with Anakin. They’ve been together all season, and he should be used to Anakin by now.

• Trimmed Rex’s line about waiting for orders while Anakin is trying to figure out a plan to board the ship. It just felt awkward to me.

• Agan, cut some of Bane’s monologuing to the droids. He doesn’t seem like someone who would readily share what he is doing with the people around him.

• Cut Anakin repeating that Ahsoka should wait for him as she chases Bane.

• Cut some of the short scenes aboard the Venator and some of the exterior shots of the Separatist ship, in order to keep the focus on Anakin, Ahsoka, and Bane.

• Cut Ahsoka calling Bane “Slimo,” both times. The second cut (in the Gungan city) was not as smooth as I’d like, but I really didn’t like that line.

• Cut Anakin almost staying behind on the ship to chase Bane some more. Now, he and Ahsoka run straight to the launch bay to evacuate.

• Cut Anakin’s odd “hmm” after Ahsoka tells him that the holocron was destroyed.

• Cut the final scene of Ahsoka at the temple. I know that you really like having it there, but to me it still feels a bit random and my personal preference is to end the episode on Anakin and Palpatine.

Thank you, as always for your extensive work on this project. I can’t wait to get into Season 2!

Oh, one quick issue I noticed - there appears to be an extra vertical text line poking through during the opening crawl, kind of like an echo of the text behind it and slightly to the right. I’m not sure if it’s a lower layer showing up or what, but it does catch the eye in an otherwise pretty flawless production.

I was hoping everything was okay for you.

I’m definitely interested in both of your new projects - EFC is uneven but wildly underappreciated and SG1 is just classic. That said, I’m most interested in getting a decent number of episodes released for whatever projects you choose to focus on. I’d rather have a full season of 1 or 2 shows than 4 episodes each of 6 different shows. If splitting your efforts more broadly prevents burnout though, maybe that is the best way to go.

Since he doesn’t remember getting out of the sarlac in his armor, maybe don’t show that part? You could cut away after he uses his flame thrower inside the sarlac or start with him disoriented, being found by the Sand People.

I am looking forward to this more and more with the airing of each episode.

Thanks. It’s there now.

I watched the new intro. It wasn’t bad to start with, but it’s much better now.

I’m afraid that the new version of Ryloth doesn’t have a link in your spreadsheet.

My audio transitions aren’t likely as clean as yours. What I tend to do is split the track in iMovie as close as I can around the line that I want to get rid of. I then separate out the audio, shorten the video on one side or the other until it reaches a new camera shot, then overlap the residual audio, fading the pre-cut audio out, while fading the post-cut audio in.

Often this results in a transition that blends pretty naturally to my ear, but I don’t use any fancy speakers, and I’m not an audiophile. There are definitely times when I can’t make a cut like this due to a more dramatic change in the background music, though sometimes I can hide that by fading in and out a third layer of audio with other background noise or music.

I ended up cutting Rex’s introduction. Cody gets introduced while Rex just takes his helmet off offscreen.

Feedback, based in part on further edits that I made. As said before, a lot of this is subjective, but if you find anything useful, feel free to copy it from my files or recreate it yourself.

Please do note the typo in the opening text for Resistance on Ryloth.

ASSASSIN

• Trimmed some initial shots of the Jedi. Now we go from the ship exterior to her talking to the guard on the screen.

• Cut some of the dialogue when the guard meets the clone outside the interrogation cell.

• Trimmed some of Ahsoka’s threatening. It’s still there, but it’s faster and doesn’t call him a worm etc.

• Made a few of small trims to tighten up the battle and boarding sequences.

THE 501ST

• Cut part of the dialogue by the mercenary clone trainer. Cut clone requesting a transfer to another squad. Jumped straight from failure to Heavy getting out of his bunk. All of this was done to make the opening of the episode faster and more fluid.

• Made small trims around the arrival of the commando droids to get them to the door faster and to reduce their chatter.

• Trimmed out the rock worm (both appearances).

• Trimmed a bit of dialogue between Grievous and a bridge droid to make them less goofy.

• Trimmed another battle droid line when Heavy is sneaking around to reduce goofiness.

• Removed some redundant and non-sequitor lines when Anakin, ObiWan, Rex, and Cody are talking about the need to defend Camino.

• Moved Anakin’s line about pressing the advantage and re-added him returning to the planet to make the cut of underwater scenes with ObiWan sequence more naturally.

• Trimmed a few lines when Fives and Echo are assigned sniper duty just to tighten the scene up.

• Cut a few redundant scenes of troopers firing at droids and squid ships.

• Trimmed some of the banter between Grievous and Ventress to make them a bit more direct.

• Cut Anakin’s line about Ventress saying hi.

• Cut the battle droid knocking on a door.

• Cut two instances of Grievous recognizing ObiWan and calling him by name.

• Trimmed a few more redundant combat shots.

• Moved Greivous entering his escape ship to a slightly later point when it is more clear that they’ve lost.

• Trimmed Ventress and Anakin lines about her being executed. Now she just says they probably want to capture her, but that’s not going to happen today.

• Ended the episode on the eulogy for 99.

RESISTANCE ON RYLOTH

• Typo in opening text: “defences” > “defenses”

• Suggestion in opening text: “their newly established space blockade” > “a newly established space blockade”

• Cut Wat Tambor strategy session after he says to target the villages. Cut scene of Twileks being marched out of the city. The scene is good, but the whole civilian-shield thing never becomes relevant in the actual battle.

• Trimmed the Mace and troopers overlook scene after “which means they can’t be that far.”

• Cut the close up shot of the lucrehulk bridge area. The first establishing shot of the whole ship seemed sufficient.

• Cut a battle droid response when ordered to launch fighters.

• Cut a few corny lines from Ahsoka and her pilots during the fight.

• Trimmed down Ahsoka’s most directly disrespectful line to Yalaren.

• Cut the establishing shot of the Venator after their retreat, along with Anakin’s initial dialogue with two clones. Instead, the scene opens with Ahsoka beside her fighter.

• Made several trims to remove corny droid talk about older models. Now they just march past.

• Cut the Nemoidian’s talk with Wat Tambor about Anakin. It wasn’t bad, but it seemed unnecessary, and the transition without it seemed to serve the story better.

• Shortened the establishing shot of the Venators snd fighters preparing to depart.

• Trimmed the battle droid repeating himself to the Nemoidian captain.

• Made several small trims to make the collision faster.

• Cut the dialogue about the droids taking a while to attack the Venator.

• Ended the episode with Mace’s line “You’ve earned your freedom, general.”

THE DEATH WATCH

• Suggestion in opening text: “While Senator… Its Death Watch radicals…” would get rid of two paragraphs in a row starting with “But.”

• Trimmed the initial mention of an assassin by Dooku, in order to leave everything about their plot a surprise.

• Trimmed the bit about only being a “friend” to slightly dial down the drama with ObiWan and Satine.