Lord Of The Rings trilogy edited together as a single film- anyone done it? (1 Viewer)

Has anyone ever tried to edit the Lord Of The Rings trilogy (preferably the extended editions) into a single film? I know people do back-to-back-to-back screenings of the trilogy all the time, but I wonder how it would play out as a single 12 hour film?

I don't see why It needs to be edited together.
wouldnt just watching the 3 movies all in a row do the same thing?

How would you make it one movie?
What media would you use to hold it all?

oh yeah, welcome to the HTF

No, because you'd still have to sit through or skip credits and some other redundant material. I think it'd be cool to see them edited together as one really long film. Back in the LD days, I actually made a videotape of the Back to the Future films that did this. It was pretty cool, especially since my friends couldn't tell where one stopped and another began. I wasn't able to ditch the opening credits, unfortunately, but they still transitioned pretty smoothly.

Anyway, I think it'd be fun to see this for LOTR. They don't all have to be on the same disc - they can be spread across however many it takes. But the editing would render them one film without any interruptions...

I've thought of this before myself. The individual films are cut in such a way that to simply paste them together back-to-back would not be a "one-film" experience, that you'd have to cut out a *lot* more to make it cohesive, move flashbacks around, etc. It would be an interesting experiment, but you'd have to drastically alter the flow of the originals (for example, the very end of Fellowship, which screams "ending", would not fit).

But of course, there's no need to do any of this, even if you could fit it onto one (high storage capacity) disc. LOTR as 12-hour seamless narrative would probably be (mostly) unpalatable.

You mean like this?

as colin said spread across as many as it takes, just stop the current dvd at the credits, same thing. as coressel pasted in his post.

Or just get another DVD player and a video switcher, then run all the discs DJ-style, manually switching the discs as they end or as the credits are about to roll.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I too, just don't get it.

However, if you wanted to challenge yourself and edit the extended editions into one 7 or 8 hour movie that flows together, that would be interesting. I just don't get why you'd bother simply chopping off the credits when you can just skip them.

One extra challenge if you did this somehow seamlessly -- Could you sit down from the beginning and watch the whole thing through without leaving your seat or pausing?

Hmmm probably not. Good point.

Yup. I did it. All three EE's on one DVD-9 (dual-layer) disc with the credits hacked off. It was a 11+ hour show and the video quality was very good. I did take some creative liberties to put Gandalf's fall at the beginning of Ep. 2 where he mets up with his friends in the forest. This worked perfectly and made it feel seamless. Took a week to complete the whole thing and remaster it to fit on one disc. It was a challenge, but worth it!

Oops! Almost forgot ... even though I managed to fit the complete trilogy on one DVD-9 - I did keep the uncompressed version on a harddrive which the filesize weighs a hefty 250gb.

That's just what I was going to do. I still plan to edit all three films together one of these days, but honestly, it was taking me so long to figure out how to use the editing software that I kind of let it slide. Hopefully, one of these days I'll get back to it.

But I wouldn't just chop off the credits... there are several scenes and parts of scenes that I want to omit.

The Two Towers portion would have no flashbacks except for Gandalf's fall... they're not needed if you're viewing it all as one long film. The flashback with Aragorn trying to return Arwen's Evenstar would be moved to the Fellowship portion, chronologically, so it's no longer a flashback. I'd simply cut the Osgiliath flashback from TTT:EE because I think it's a mediocre scene at best.

Same with the Arwen/Aragorn flashback in TTT, where he's laying down in the gazebo in Rivendell... it's a dull scene, shot during pickups, that really served no purpose except to remind us who the hell Arwen was after we hadn't seen her in a year. I'd just cut that one, too.

I detest it when people capitalise "of" and "the" in a film title. It's The Lord of the Rings, not "The Lord Of The Rings"!
And just get a multi-disc changer to watch the entire series.

i dont detest anything as un-important as
that.

not a big deal,

I went to the all day screening of the trilogy when ROTK premiered. Saw the EE of FOTR then the EE of TTT which was followed by the premier of ROTK. It still stands as the best day I have ever had at a movie theater.

I once made a homemade VHS edit of Halloween and Halloween II chopping off the end credits of H1, the recap and opening credits of HII so it looked like one 3 hour long Halloween film. Seemed cool to me at the time...
I was young, hell they were pan and scan...

ABSOLUTELY! I did the same thing as you (so glad the theater here did that). Like you, that remains the best movie going experience i've ever had. The audience was filled w/ people who really wanted to be there, so everyone behaved.

I'll one up you for nerdiness , I did the same thing when Criterion's LD came out but I put the (non-Carpenter sanctioned) TV scenes in too.

I didn't make it myself, but I have a version on DVD that combines I and II, in 16:9 widescreen that has the television scenes for HI and gives you the option of watching the end of HII with the original theme instead of Mr. Sandman