Shadow of the Mandalorian - Behind the Definitive Cut

Hello there!

This is Kiefer Jenkins, founder of Jetstreak Ink and co-director of Shadow of the Mandalorian. While I have been working on some new and cool projects some of which are original ideas and some that are Star Wars, I’ve also been hard at work on a “Definitive Cut” of the film!

Original Visions of the Force Still

This new cut all came about from needing an Original Score so that we could submit the film for Film Festivals. From there we also discovered that in its state the “Visions of the Force” scene towards the end wouldn’t qualify for any festival since we’d used clips from the Star Wars films. From there I thought to myself, what else could I do to make this new and final cut better?

After some discussion, we discovered that we could tighten up the narrative to make the story more clear and include a better final product. Aside from that, I decided that we could do a final export in UHD since all the footage we shot had already been shot in 4k. That also meant exporting all the VFX shots in 4K too and while I was at work on those I thought I could do better, and so I did! We used a new ship model for the Quantum Mar that was inspired by the Sith Fury Class Interceptor Shuttle from The Old Republic.

Comparison Image Between Definitive Cut and Original

Some of the other changes including a new color grade and subtly detailed clean up of all the footage. This process included importing all the footage into After Effects and running a general clean up from there I saw some clips that could use little touch-ups here and there. Some of the touch-ups included shooting new pickups or shooting new scenes so that the final product could be 100% consistent. My good friend Jeremy Sanglay (@jedidudejay) suited up to take over the role of General Teig. This gave me the chance to re mask the effect and do some fun clean up on the rest of the scene.

There were two more scenes we shot again for this new cut. First, was the opening in which Kief is detained by Darth Vader (Briian Hazelrigg @briianh) and the Emperor (Also played by Jeremy Sanglay) which included members of the 501st Legion suiting up to create the characters in this scene. The second was the Visions in the Visions of the Force montage. We shot scenes with members of the Rebel Legion suited up as Jedi and then other scenes on green screen with Vincent Campos suiting up once more with me to build out the rest of the montage.

We hope to have the new cut done soon for everyone to enjoy. It's been a fun year learning all sorts of new tricks to help make this in my mind THE Definitive Cut. Below is an exclusive clip direct from the new cutI It is the previously mentioned "Visions of the Force" sequence which includes visions of the past, future and other truths Novan & Kief learn from the Force.

I hope you all enjoy it!