Ever edited your own version of a movie? (1 Viewer)

[Melson]

Wow, nice thread!

I once made a very rough Back to the Future: The Saga from VHS to VHS by just removing the end credits for each film and sticking them together.

I'd love to see a Matrix: Remixed someday, but I don't love the sequels enough to do it myself.

 

[Kelvin DP]

Does anyone know to actually take a real studio DVD and make it a quicktime file to put on my computer. I used to mix deleted scenes into films using a VHS and DVD Player but the cuts can be quite jarring, and the quality is low. I was wondering if there was anything I could use to put my DVDs on to quicktime and then edit it through iMovie.

Thanks.

 

[Jack Theakston]

Keith,

Wow! It's been years since I've heard this score. Brings back some fond memories.

Just for kicks,

here's my take on Lee's PHANTOM theme (although I have less voices on my computer than he did his WurliTzer).


And if you check my main site, this week I have the main themes from the original score for the film up.

 

[Robert Anthony]

Alex Spindler: Wow--how far along in the planning did you get? I remember walking out of Matrix Reloaded and thinking "If this and Reloaded were simply ONE MOVIE it would have been a great sequel." And since, I've had the EXACT same idea to edit the two movies together.

I was actually going to start it with "The Final Flight of the Osiris," using the original Matrix Revolutions titles, then at the white flash cut to "Osiris" while cutting out the blindfolded swordplay--and then going from there STRAIGHT to the meeting of the captains from Reloaded. I think the Osiris scenes would provide a way better opening than the Trinity "Dream sequence" (which would be saved till the end of Reloaded, and edited together in sequence) opening, and also act as a bookend to the battle of zion chase home by Niobe. And then from there--completely skipping Zion. No Rave, no goofy speech from Morpheus. Granted, we miss out on the introductions of a lot of the secondary characters, but aside from Niobe and her crew (which were mostly introduced in the Captains meeting anyway) you don't really lose any impact by seeing them in revolutions. I also had an idea where I cut directly from Seraphs "look, it's Judas" catcalls and subsequent asskicking, STRAIGHT to them going down the stairs to the S and M Club Hell dancers, guns drawn. That stupid slo-mo dancing on the ceiling gunfight is out. I'd also take out 2/3rds of the burly brawl, (just have him fly off sooner) and move Bane's posession to WAY later in Reloaded, so the reveal at the end of Reloaded isn't quite so confusing. And most of Trinity's speech in Revolutions would be axed completely, as well. And "Freedom" by Rage Against the Machine ("freedom...yeah, right..") would play over the closing credits

I haven't really gone past planning stages, and whether or not the existing score would cause abrupt jarring cuts or silent parts would help me pick which scenes I'd be cutting or moving. But if it turned out most of those choices were do-able, I think I could cut about an hour out of both movies, and make "The Matrix Revolutions" into one 2 1/2 hour standalone sequel.

I HAVE done my own edits of all 3 Star Wars radio dramas. I took the individual half hour episodes, cut off the opening and closing credits, and joined the episodes together. It came together REALLY well, I had to creatively use existing score and some sound effects to mask the blending of episodes. I ended up with a 4 part Star Wars as opposed to 13 parts, a 3 part Empire as opposed to a 10 part, and a 2 part Jedi as opposed to a 6 part. I think it makes em a little more cinematic, actually.

anyway, Alex, maybe you and I can brainstorm on this thing and see what we can come up with. I honestly think there's a GREAT 2 1/2 hour movie lost in the "Reloaded/Revolutions" films, it's just buried under a lot of padding. Hell, if I can get my hands on the score, with my experience doing the Radio Dramas--maybe I can massage the score to cover up any abrupt edits anyway. Possibly using one of those audio stripper programs to break the footage down to just its dialog?

Sound cool?

 

[Robert Anthony]

also, you'd THINK Phantom Menace would be easy to re-edit, but looking at both Phantom Edits--it just wrecks the hell out of the pacing. That movie needs reshoots, not re-edits. I can't think of a way to cut scenes that doesn't make it totally herky jerky.

 

[CaptDS9E]

There are a few movies i would like to see done like this. However one recent one i would like to try is ST:Nemisis. I had the theatrical ending. Love the alternate one. Also a few scenes in the movie are just not necessary in my opinion

capt

 

[Tom Blizzard]

Intersting topic. Here's how and why I edited some movies.

You've got to remember that ten years ago Pan-N-Scan was the norm and VHS was the main source of home viewing. Of course I jumped on the laserdisc bandwagon around 1990 and I enjoyed the benefits of widescreen formats. I had taught Geometry in the local high school for many years and one day I realized that there was a "real world" lesson in aspect ratios that could be applied to our unit on Ratio and Proportion.

I introduced the aspect ratios of films, TV, the "new" widescreen TVs using all the numbers and ratios.

My goal was to show the LD widescreen version and the VHS pan-and-scan version at the same time. Of course the students saw this as an unheard of way to see a movie in Geometry class. The movie I picked had a few of four letter words and a couple of "questionable situations" that I did not want to show the class. Remember now, I am over 60 years old so I'm probably a bit more conservative than many of you. Also, I did not want a ton of parents calling the "boss".

Anyway, the title I chose for the demo was "A League of Their Own." I recorded the LD copy to my JVC S-Video recorder and edited out the four letter words, etc. I then made a copy of the VHS format and tried as best as possible to edit out the very same spots. Believe me it was not easy........

I then took a 27" monitor and hooked up my S-Video VCR to it and showed the 2.35:1 LD version I had taped and edited. I already had a 20" TV mounted on the wall in the same room, so I put the VHS Pan-and-scan version on that screen using another VCR. I positioned the 27" on a stand right below the 20" so both formats could be easily seen together.

Wow, what a reaction.........most of the kids had no idea what they were missing in the VHS version. We did worksheets, measured movie screens at the local theater, measured all different sizes of TV screens and converted to ratios just to see how it all reduced down to the known aspect ratios.

Even today, ten years later, I see former students everywhere I go and many of them mention this exercise.........

 

[AllanN]

I have never edited a movie for content and never will. One out of respect for artist rights, even if it was just for my personal use. Two because I'm anal and any variation from the original would seem wrong to me. However once I get a DVD burner the first thing I’m going to do is take my A Clockwork Orange DVD and make a anamorphic 1.66:1 transfer so I don’t have to watch it letterboxed and pillerboxed on my 16:9 TV in the correct AR. Also ill finally go and buy an import unrated Eyes Wide Shut and make a region free version that will play in my player. This is the only title so far that I want from another region so I have never bothered to by a player that you can make region free.

If the director and studio wanted to do this It would be cool to see franchise movies like Back to the Future, Matrix, Star Wars(even though the movie would have a whole different look half way through), and Lord of the Rings cut into one long movie. Maybe LOTR and SW can have intermissions.

 

[Brian_Johnson]

I would love to take the Lawnmower Man DVD, put all the deleted scenes from the DVD back in the movie (shame on you New Line for not having seamless branching), and burn a new DVD so I can watch the movie the way it was supposed to be watched. I have no idea how to do this, so I hope that a re-release is in the works.

 

[Simon Young]

Kelvin DP - I can tell you how to do it on a Mac running OS X, assuming that's what you're using. All of the software used is freeware.

Rip the disc using a nifty program called OSEx. It's easy - using the drop-down menus, select the title you want (if in doubt, pick the one that matches the length of the film), then pick which chapters you want to rip. Select the correct video, audio and subtitle streams (to save space, turn off all audio tracks apart from the one you will be using). Finally select Elem. Stream from the 'Fmt' menu, and Title from the 'Seg' menu. Hit BEGIN. Wait until it finishes.

You should now have two files on your hard drive - one with the extension .M2V and the other with the extension .AC3.

Use a program called mAC3dec to convert the .AC3 file into a stereo AIFF file. Remember to select AIFF and 48.0 kHz, and to untick all of the boxes before beginning.

Use DiVA to convert the .M2V file to a QuickTime movie. This bit is tricky to explain, so it's probably best that you just try it for yourself. Remember that you must set all crop values to zero, and match the output size to the size of the original video (if it's NTSC, 720x480; if it's PAL, 720x576). Choose where you want to save the file, then select what compressor you want to use to convert the video. This part is up to you, depending on how much disc space you have. If you're using iMovie, then you'll have to use DV. It'll drop some quality, but it shouldn't be too noticeable. However, if you're using Final Cut Pro or an equivalent, you can pick whatever codec you like. Be aware that some produce better results than others - I would recommend Photo JPEG with quality set to 75%; it takes up less space than DV and hardly compresses the image at all (some have claimed that it is worthy of being broadcast standard). You can also enforce the frame-rate - if you're using iMovie, be sure to pick 29.97fps, as that is the standard for NTSC DV. However, if you leave it blank and click on 'Enforce constant frame rate' from one of the drop-down menus, you will end up with a super smooth 23.98fps piece of video, which will look great on the computer but will require up-coversion to true NTSC before burning back to disc. Click on BEGIN and wait for DiVA to do its thing.

It'll take a while, but you'll now have a QuickTime file that can be imported into any editing program (including iMovie, so long as you've selected the DV NTSC codec at 29.97fps). Remember that you can always use QuickTime as a simple editing solution, provided you've got the Pro version (well worth $30). It supports every codec, resolution and frame rate that Final Cut Pro can (FCP is based on QuickTime, see), and so the import and export functions are less limited than within iMovie. Editing with QuickTime can be tricky and painstaking, but produces fine results with a little time and patience.

Before you start editing, you have to combine the converted audio and video tracks - if you've working in FCP this is easy: just drag them both onto the timeline and find a good sync point (sometimes the files differ in length by several frames, so it's always good to check if they're perfectly in sync before starting). It is possible to do this in QuickTime Pro using the 'Add' function, and a little luck.

The rest is up to you, and can be learned from the help files within the above programs.

On another note, I was thinking of tackling The Matrix Remixed soon. I won't include the Final Flight of the Osiris, but I will take onboard a lot of the suggestions that have been made, if that's OK. I'm looking to make it around 3 hours long, and totally seamless (down to the credits).

Also, remember that this exercise can be useful to restore films from Director's Cuts back to original Theatrical Cuts. Take Superman, or Enter the Dragon - one could easily remove the restored sequences, and have something that closely resembles the original version.

 

[Robert Anthony]

Simon, I have no problem with you taking any of my ideas at all. Which ones were you thinking of using--and why not use Osiris? Where would you start the movie at? Would you keep the Trinity "Dream" or just pick up later in the movie? Use a flash cut to go from the opening titles straight to Neo waking up? That might work.

 

[Simon Young]

Well, as fun as Osiris is, I don't think it belongs in any of the Matrix films. Apart from the fact that the CG isn't completely convincing, it spends too long telling too little story to kick off a long film. That's one of the reasons why I'm cutting Bilbo's narrration from the beginning of Fellowship - Gandalf's conversation with Frodo on the cart does the job just as well, and quicker. If the pace goes at the beginning, you're screwed before you've started.

Thinking about it, though, I don't know how well the two films would work as one. Other than the first half of Reloaded, the films are quite lean. Others may disagree, but I'm afraid that taking out some bits from Reloaded would impact on scenes in Revolutions, which would be made redundant. By removing them, it would upset the pace of Revolutions. I'm just not sure how it would work. But I'd like to try.

 

[AndrewWickliffe]

I've done quite a few.

When I was in high school, I did a VHS-to-VHS edit of "King of New York." I changed the ending around so David Caruso and the old cop lived.

I edited "Gia" all to hell--removed all the interviews, but kept the structure, and used a lot of period music to move the story along. (along with the "Jaws 3" love theme, of course)

I worked on a "Jaws 2" edit without the kids on the boats, inserting the DVD's deleted scenes and trying to tell the whole thing from Roy Scheider's perspective. I might go back and do that again.

I'm working on an extended version of "King Kong," the 1976 version.

I just discovered two very helpful tools for this process: the sheervideo codec for Mac, which maintains perfect quality in an easy-to-edit form, and 3ivx, an MPEG-4 codec I've found maintains great quality. Since I'm not pirating these things (who'd want my cut of "Jaws 2," for example), MPEG-4 seems a fine way to keep them.

I was thinking of doing an extended version of "The Mexican," since a lot got cut for time. Maybe "The Patriot" too. (the Mel Gibson one)

I was going to do a "Close Encounters" extended version but I never spent much time on it. Something like that, I prefer the movie the way it is.

The Evil Dead trilogy edit sounds like a cool idea, IMO, if someone had all the right versions of it to edit together.

Quite unfortunately, I use Premiere for detailed edits, because I can't afford Apple's Final Cut Pro/Express.

Wow, that's just about my longest post. Is anyone still reading this?

 

[Robert Anthony]

They should work perfectly fine, as the Wachowski's and producer Joel Silver constantly referred to the movies as one single movie, just split in two. They wrote them at the same time, filmed them at the same time, and Reloaded didn't even really have an ending, just a split point.

there is a TREMENDOUS amount of padding going on between the movies. The thing you have to hold onto is Neo's journey to destroy the Matrix. Everything else that is just excess to this, cut it out. Rave sequence doesn't really do anything, the landing at Zion doesn't do anything but show people fawning over Neo and people disagreeing with Morpheus. Which is alright--but it's padding at that point: In Revolutions, the same themes are touched upon, but in a more urgent situation--I think it would actually make the revelations that people don't believe in Neo and the Prophecy a little more powerful--and it would also make Morpheus faith crumbling at the end of Reloaded much more poignant.

What sucks is that you lose the sequence where Link meets up with his wife, which is one of the better "small" moments in both movies.

I ALMOST think the Seraph fight is extraneous, too..And Trinity's entry into the Matrix becomes a little more tense without the flashforwards to it from Neo's POV. We know he's having bad dreams, but we don't know of what--then watching the Trinity infiltration, not cut to pieces, not halfway spoiled for us--we learn what Neo's seeing while at the same time wondering how she's going to work it. It's tense on two situations, instead of how the movie has it, where we're only worried about whether she's going to shut the electricity down--we know she's going to actually get shot, because we've already seen it. Removing the flashforwards, we know something bad will happen, but we don't know exactly WHAT. Maybe she's kidnapped, maybe Smith copies over her--who knows. Adding that element of the unknown can only help, plus the whole set piece works better not broken up into pieces throughout Reloaded.

Basically, I'm thinking you could, if it was tight enough, get to the conversation with the Architect at the 80 minute mark--and still not lose any information TRULY essential to the main point of the story: Neo's confronting the computer world. As long as one doesn't feel chained to keeping all of the action scenes in their entirety: The S & M ceiling gunfight is totally unneccessary. 2/3rds of the burly brawl can go and it will still keep its urgency. The freeway chase should be left untouched, but almost everything else in reloaded looks like it should be fair game.

I need to rewatch both and take copious notes, but I remember right after walking out of Revolutions it was VERY clear in my head what could go where seamlessly.

 

[Keith Paynter]

Jack;



Actually I meant that my source for the Lee Erwin soundtrack was a 16mm library print. The Image LD was supposedly sourced from a 35mm Blackhawk copy (Although since they issued 'non-theatrical' prints I don't know if they actually made 35mm versions - definitely 16/8/S8 though). It looks much cleaner than the 16mm blow up of the included 1925 cut, but there have been some very good transfers of 16mm material when you have suitable telecine equipment.

 

[ChadMcCallum]

I've been thinking about doing a chronological cut of The Godfather trilogy. I know you can get it on vhs but I don't feel like tracking it down. I may cut Lord of the Rings into one film or try to do a chronological edit of it. If I do just cut the films together I'll be putting the Smeagol/Deagol scene back in TTT where it belongs. I didn't think it worked at the beginning of ROTK.

 

[Alex Spindler]

I'm with you all the way Robert. I'll collect my notes and put them in a text file to showyou how it goes. The Osiris makes an appearance not by being shown from the beginning in its entirety but instead in a slight flashback during the opening scene, namely of their view of the swarm and subsequent U-turn to get out of there.

There would also not be a Seraph fight, as including it in the full film will just emphasize how much of a non-character he is.

Most of the fun is trying to think about how the cuts would affect the overall film, so I'm still wondering if a rough edit view is needed to be sure pacing and momentum is maintained.

This should be fun.

 

[Simon Young]

Well, I gave up on my edits of Lord of the Rings. I began to tackle Fellowship, but then I stopped and thought "Am I EVER going to watch these? Why would I watch this version, on my laptop, in stereo sound, when I could watch a slightly longer version on my big TV with DTS 6.1?"

Plus the fact that each finished film took up about 20GB on my hard disc - 20GB I can't really spare. People may be wondering why I didn't just make a DivX or burn the thing to DVD. The answer is, that no matter how well you compress the video, it will still look nowhere near as good as the original DVD. Plus, even if you were a master of MPEG-2 compression, you'd end up splitting the movie over at least 3 discs (until dual-layer burners are more commonplace).

It just wasn't worth it. However, I will be attempting edits of the Evil Dead Trilogy (simply out of curiosity) and the 2nd and 3rd Matrix films. Just not yet.

 

[Simon Young]

Thanks for the heads up on the SheerVideo codec - I was aware of 3ivX, but not the other. By the way, I just found a great codec called G Film Conversion, for Final Cut Pro. It enables you to convert from or to PAL, NTSC, and 24fps progressive. It changs the frame rate and dimensions of the image accutately, and is capable of adding 3:2 pulldown to 24fps source.

This effectively means that you can take a PAL DVD, convert it BACK to 24fps to get the correct speed and audio pitch, convert the resulting video to NTSC then output it to Apple Compressor to do a great MPEG-2 encode, before burning it with DVD Studio Pro. Why would you do this? Well, sometimes the best version of a movie is PAL only, and this would be a way for those without PAL DVD players (or those of us who can't stand PAL speedup) to see the movie in the best way possible.

Example: The R3 version of Shaolin Soccer is meant to be good, but it's got horrible subtitles, audio sync problems on the DTS track, and severe over-cropping on all sides of the image. The French R2, however, has apparently got an excellent transfer, a decent 5.1 track but no subtitles. What one could do, in theory, is rip the R2 PAL version, convert it to NTSC, add subtitles (using the R3 as a reference but changing it to better English) then burn it! Of course, it would have to be split in two, but that's a small price to pay. On top of this, you could preserve the 5.1 track if you saved the original AC3 as seperate streams, slowed them all down, then used the Dolby Digital converter that comes with Apple DVD Studio Pro.

The tools are all there - it's just up to us to use them!

 

[MichaelSloan]

If I was the editor of Star Wars Special Edition, I'd cut out the scurriers running away from the landspeeder on the way into Mos Eisley, lose the Stap droid swatting that small flying droid when he's being taunted, remove the swoop frightening the ronto and knocking over the jawas riding it, let han be the only one to shoot when greedo is argueing with him, trim jabba's meeting with han to a view of chewbacca cutting straight to after han steps on jabba's tail, and remove the overhead shot of the millenium falcon taking off from docking bay 94