Another cool pic from THE SHADOW...

I like this one:

Some B&W images from THE SHADOW

Here are a few screenshots from the current edit. Originally I had toyed with the notion of not going completely black & white and leaving hints of color, a la SIN CITY, but I really prefer the look here. And it suits the era...


There's Penelope Ann Miller looking the part of a hypnotized killer...and here's a shot illustrating the fine set design, which I really feel is the strongest part of the film:

Update on THE SHADOW

Well, it looks like I'm pretty close to finished with my fan-edit of THE SHADOW. I've chopped about 17min from the film, including everything related to Alec Baldwin being a ruthless Chinese warlord (heh) and that magical knife with the (IMHO) poorly-animated-sfx face. There were also quite a few little snips from conversations where the dialogue got a bit too goofy.

As I've become more familiar with the film on a shot-by-shot basis, I have to say that the major failing for me are some very shoddy-looking SFX shots and a really intrusive score. I was surprised, because I actually have a copy of the score on CD and enjoy it, but when mixed into the film it begins to grate on me.

Correcting the audio is really my only task left before finishing. One of the real issues when trying to re-edit a commercial film is that you tend to cut and re-arrange in visual terms, and can work around dialogue, but background music will start/stop abruptly or become disjointed unless you're careful to smooth out those rough spots as best you can. With a brassy, intrusive score like this one, it takes a long time to make the new transitions smooth and (hopefully) not noticeable to the average viewer.

Next Project: The Shadow (1994)

Ok, so I actually have several fan-edits in progress:

• ALIEN 3.5 - I'm blending ALIEN 3 and ALIEN 4, using deleted scenes, etc.
• JACOB'S LADDER - I love this film, basically as is. I think it's under-appreciated and damn scary. The 'twist' ending is a little obvious and the very end has a cheese factor, but still a great film. Ever since I saw the deleted scenes I felt that they strengthened an already great film, so I'm going to add them back in and make a few tweaks here and there.

But those are on hold while I finish my next project, THE SHADOW. First of all, I love the Shadow as a character and have since I was a kid. I have all of the OTR (old time radio) broadcasts from the 1930s and have collected the comics. Needless to say, I was excited when the movie came out & saw it in the theater. I enjoyed it, but after the excitement wore off I was left feeling disappointed. Upon later viewings I realized that it just wasn't very good.

The Positives? Great set design and costumes, decent casting, and solid cinematography.

Negatives: Some very clunky special effects now and then...and an uneven tone. The movie tried to be dark and 'fun'. And while (and I may be alone in this) Alec Baldwin and John Lone did a decent job delivering some snappy dialogue and straddling the transitions between campy comic characters and conflicted hero and villain, no other character is anything other than a stock plot device.

So, there isn't any additional material available, as far as I know...so I'm going to trim some of the dumber parts out and focus onre-arranging some of the scenes.

Also, I'm going to covert it to black & white, add in some different music (including the old radio theme, Le rouet d'Omphale ), and see where that goes.

I'll posts some screenshots and maybe make a trailer, more updates soon...

Fan Edit Search Engine

I've been fooling around with Google's Custom Search, and came up with a gadget that will search the most common places to find fan-edits. I've left out torrent sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay, trying to stick to the dedicated sites and forums...

Here's a link to the search, or you can try the little box to the right of this post ;)

The new blog.

I'm moving an old blog to Blogger here because I keep finding nifty little bits of code & such I'd like to run and Wordpress prevents it. That, and I'm trying to consolidate things around my Gmail account...

Anyway, as this will be a forum for me to discuss fan-edited films (both mine and others), I'll begin re-posting old articles related to the creation of my first official effort, MATRIX : ReGENERATED. I'll update the links and maybe add some new notes, but I'll backdate them so they sink to the archives faster...

WARNING: I made plenty of mistakes starting out, and later realized how ass-backwards and un-informed I was about many time-saving techniques like frameserving and video encoding. Read the "how-to" if you like, but please get to the end before following my lead ;)

Part 13: Never watching THE MATRIX again

OK, it’s been about 6 months now and the dust has settled. I heard from a friend that someone at Warner Brothers had a copy & it was making the rounds. Just want to state for the record that I LOVE Warner Brothers. What a great, easy-going, non-litigious group of folks that is…

Also, I noticed a DivX version of what appears to be my edit has popped up on some torrents. Turns out there was another Matrix : Regenerated fan edit out there, only limited to the 2nd & 3rd films. This created some chatter I think, but up until this week I hadn’t seen mine leak out yet.

Also, I was curious as to how a rabid MATRIX fan would take my version. People seem really passionate about the ‘sanctity’ of an original, but REGENERATED doesn’t make a claims against that or even generate any profits. My version is at least mutated enough (Chinese dubbing, false subtitles) that no one would rightly mistake it for the originals or even use it as a substitute for the others (i.e. “I just downloaded this for free, why would I buy it?). It does feel like a different film, not some bastardized version.

Most criticism seemed related to tampering with the artistic vision of the originals, but I guess that is the knee-jerk reaction. There were some valid points about ways to have improved the flow of the story, or recommendations if I was going to clean up sections with minor tweaks, but I’ve decided against further changes. I’d rather re-edit a new film. There’s only so much “Matrix” a guy can take…

For me, the most ‘unprofessional’ aspect of the edit is the section in which Neo is meeting with the Oracle after entering “The Source”. I had no good explanation for why he was there, why the Source led back to her, etc. And the editing is a bit clumsy to top it all off. I wanted to get Neo awake and the plot moving again, but couldn’t resist the little scene where she warns him of Smith. By far this is the weakest link in my edit.

Anyway, if you enjoyed it, great. It was mostly for my own fun and technical education. And if you’d like a more high-quality version of the edit than these XVID encodings, I know that some of the full 2-disc copies are floating around. I got some reaction back from people who had seen it while at a comic convention, so I’m sure you can find it if you look…

Part 12: Final Cuts

Ok. So, I made a final edit. Running time is 4hrs17min, including end credits (which are all 3 films combined). Using the Divxland Subtitler, I’ve set the timing on the new text and exported it to the proper file type. This basically meant watching the film and pressing a button and holding it for the duration of a given subtitle. I noticed a few visual problems doing this and was able to make corrections there as well.

I did output the audio in a 5.1 ac3, but did not go back & remix it to create any panning (you know, sounds swooshing from side to side…) effects. I did lay in some new music here and there to soften transitions and unify some actions.

I decided to use Sony’s DVD ARCHITECT to produce the menus. Mainly because I’d never tried it before, but also because I knew it would allow me to link the files, create custom buttons (if I wanted), and could handle the subtitle stream easily.

As it turns out, it was this last feature that was most handy. It lists each title as a separate event and allows you to change the font, style, size – etc, of each…as well as to tweak the timing. So, I was able to correct some mistakes & make last minute dialogue changes easily.

I created some menu backgrounds, then added chapter stops, named them, and created the links for the “scene selection’ menu. When the whole project was compiled (took about 47min), I had a 12gb size DVD file on my hard drive that I could test. A nice bonus to DVDA is that if you make minor changes to backgrounds, links, font, chapter stops, etc. in your project, it only recompiles the changes & not the whole thing.

All in all, I was very pleased with the outcome. However, I did notice that some of the timing on the subtitles was skewed when the project was finished. Titles would ‘stick’, as if they were repeated.

I did have to compress the DVD about 67% to fit it on a dual-layer 8.5gb DVD-R. It played in my home player, my PS2, and my PC. Quality was pretty good, & I didn’t shed any tears over the video degradation.

The subtitles did get messed up, though. Some are only on the screen for a second & others stay for minutes, bumping others out. Once I’ve got that corrected, I’m done.

Part 11: maybe 98% finished

Made a few more ‘style’ cuts and have really entered into the ‘fine-tuning’ stage – snipping a few seconds here or there and smoothing out some of the audio’s rough patches. I’m really getting much better at using Vegas and have become a fan. It’s very easy to make titles, professional transitions, etc. You can nest several projects together and perform some really complicated actions. It outputs mpeg files of comparable quality to other encoders, and can create ac3 compression audio tracks as well.

One thing to mention is the working pace. It may seem pretty slow, but consider that each time I decide to encode the most current edit, it takes about 3hrs to encode the first section, and another 6hrs to encode the second. I pretty much work in my spare time & let the computer crunch video overnight.

I had to make a couple of tough choices recently: it occurred to me that the ‘Flight of the Osiris” sequence starting off the second half is mostly unnecessary. It makes a nice ‘vision’ for Neo to have & I spent quite a long time editing it together (only the ‘chase’ parts of that episode into a 2min piece) but as a viewer you get the gist that the machines are tunneling down toward Zion without needing to see the Osiris discovering that fact & being chased. I cut it out, and replaced it with a flashback of Neo waking up in his pod from the first film. Then I cut that part from the first section, goosing the original film along.

I’d say that the actual editing of the film is 98% done. I’m going to sit through the whole thing again from start to finish looking for mistakes and minor adjustments, but it’s definitely the home stretch.

Part 10: Price of Perfection(ism)

I noticed this big ULTIMATE MATRIX set when it came out last winter, but since I already owned each film and the Animatrix (twice, if you count the Chinese bootlegs) I didn’t pay much attention. However, I was so irritated that the look of the first film on my dvd copy was much different from the sequels (its ‘warmer’ with less contrast and brightness) that I had been toying with trying to correct the footage I was using.

Then I noticed a review of the set that mentioned that the first film had been remastered to bring the look closer to the others. Sigh. Weighing the cost of DIY versus getting the box set, I went ahead & spent the cash. Just got it yesterday & have ripped new video, but (ack!) when I created my frame-served files there was a 21ms time difference, so I had to go back & adjust each edit involving the first film by 21ms. Ugh.

But, I’m happy to say that the whole thing does look much better.

I’ll soon be reselling 2 of my 3 collected Matrix sets, so keep an eye out for bargains on that certain online auction site.

Part 9:

Ok, so I got into proper video technology up to my elbows and have completely changed my working methods. I’ve switched to using the ‘frame serving’ method, which boils down to creating a sort of placeholder file that represents the actual footage. That smaller file is readable & edited in Vegas. Then, when it comes time to output to mpeg2 video for dvd, the original source files are never degraded. Each successive version will have the same quality output, despite the constant tweaking. Of course this meant going back & re-creating each of the already edited sequences, but in the end it was well worth it. The ‘chunks’ that I had been using were originally created with some clumsy editing software and have benefited greatly from being re-edited in Vegas from the start. Most of the transitions have been improved and the ability to mix the audio simultaneous with the video creates some much more seamless editing.

I’m far enough along that it’s time to get serious about subtitles. They’ll have to be some significant changes to the original scripts since I’ve made some drastic cuts. Subtitles are actually kept in a separate text file that can be overlaid over the video (so you can turn them on & off). Since the commands to start & stop each line of text are keyed to the running time, they can’t be finalized until the actual cut of the video is completed. I’ve already downloaded the original subtitle files from the net, converted them to a single text file, and then re-arranged them roughly to match the current shape of the movie while making dialogue changes. Obviously, they cannot be finished until I’m satisfied with the video.

I’ve discovered a nifty little program called DIVXLAND MEDIA SUBTITLER that lets you tweak a text file as you watch the video, then can output to the format associated with actual dvds. I’ll use it to create the new subtitles for the full-length version. For the DivX encode to watch on a computer I’ll burn the subtitles directly on to the video itself as it encodes (using VirtualDub).

Current cut, 4h24m20s at 11.827GB (with surround sound in ac3 format). In order to fit on a Double Layer disc I’ll need to compress it to around 68%...

Rough Cut

Sized up a rough cut of the complete version. Start to finish clocks in at 4 hours & 39 min. Feels a bit jerky in the climax though…

Part 8: Diminishing Returns

The farther along I get the more that my past mistakes are irritating me. All of the constant encoding, editing, & re-encoding has degraded the image quality in some of the more action-packed scenes to the point where I’m really distracted by it. I was intentionally encoding to 2 single large files and them slicing them back up & then encoding them again to other large files, but I really should have kept re-using the original parts. It was a lazy way out & now I’ve got some shitty footage in parts. Once I have an edit locked down I’ll see about re-creating the shots with fresh rips of the material.

I’ve yet to add any more animated shots to the second half, mostly because I’m reluctant to add any more running time. So there’s that, a final audio mix to smooth out some dead spots and add mood music, then subtitles. Then figure out how to jam it on to a DVD and create menus as well. I’ll probably create 3 versions – the full single DVD, and 2-disc set, and then a DivX encoded version to watch on my laptop.

Part 7: Trials & (mostly) Errors

Was finally able to burn a complete single version on to a disc. Even compressing down to 8gb to fit on the dual-layer disc takes away some of the visual quality. I also noticed several disjointed edits and some sequences that feel too rushed. I’ve tweaked the end a bit more as well. [Running time, 4hrs 20min.]

I’ve pared too much away from the middle third of the story, relying on fades to transition between scenes. I took some dialogue scenes from the “cutting room floor”, and inserted them in new spots. The transitions are much improved and there’s more flow to the story. I’ve decided to cut out almost all of the brief scenes in Zion in which Zee and Charra scamper around launching missiles at the giant drill. Since I cut most of Zee out of the story, there was little reason for them other than to show some action during the battle…
[Running time: 4hrs, 18min.]

Part 6: Moving Along

I’ve re-edited the last 45min of the story and it flows much better. Of course now that I’m truly beginning to appreciate the editing program, I’ll have to re-do the first few hours to tighten it up. I’d like to hit as close to the 4 hour mark as possible. I have been reluctant to remove much from the first film, as it sets up the basic framework of a really good story, before the 2nd and 3rd devolve into action sequences, but it seems that I might be able to re-arrange or weave those events around the action…

Also, I had mixed in quite a bit of footage from the “Animatrix” episodes into the first section, but virtually none into the action-heavy final two-thirds. It really added some punch and vitality when done right, so I’m going to search for appropriate footage for the later events.
[4 hours 27 minutes]

For the new subtitles, I’ve found fan transcripts of the 3 films, combined them, and have re-arranged according to the edit so far. The next step will be converting those into a subtitle file, but that will have to wait until the final edit is locked down.

Part 5: Second Thoughts

Wow. Several months since any progress. Some family issues and then the holiday season kept me away from the project for some time, and then a new job robbed what little free time I had after that. Anyway, on with the show…

I had completed a rough cut of what should be the first half of the project, encompassing the first film. I trimmed most of the later scenes and even did rough cuts of the major sequences.

A friend let me use his computer recently and I spent some time playing with Sony’s “Vegas Video”, which seemed to be basically a slightly more user-friendly version of Adobe’s Premiere. Even so, it seems a real step up from the free editors I was using and based on my preliminary experiments it will help me give a more polished look to the project. My expectations have expanded as well, and I will hopefully be able to create a 5.1 surround audio mix when the visuals are completed.

Of course, during that time I realized I was going about the process in a slow & inefficient way.

The more professional way to prepare the footage would be to rip the files into AVIs & then ‘frameserve’ those into Vegas…however, I’ve already created all of these little mpeg segments so I’ll live with those, even though they are a less than desirable when using a higher-grade system.

Moving along now.

The entire first two thirds of the story are edited to a reasonably solid state.

We’re all the way up in the story to the climactic final sequence, in which Neo battles Smith, the Hammer races back to Zion, and the city is battling the machine army. Instead of leaving those in sequence, I’ve reworked them to all occur simultaneously. Obviously the most complicated editing in the project…

Part 4: Re-arranging the plot

A major block of the film has been edited: Concentrating on the transition between the events of the first & second films forced me to make several early choices that will impact the film’s structure. I believe that by focusing on the transitions and blending of the films first, the essential material will stand out & opportunities to introduce snazzy moments will appear.

So far, I’ve shortened the final action sequence from the first film while also combining it with an animated action bit from “The Kid’s Story” in THE ANIMATRIX [note: “The Kid” appears in the 2nd & 3rd films as a secondary character that is a bit annoying on the face. By introducing him in snippets throughout the first film it gives the story some depth & enhances the parallels to Neo’s storyline.] This seemed to work out so well that I’m going back through and adding more of his story to the first film wherever fitting…

The beginning of the second film involves Neo’s premonition of Trinity’s death, & then the introduction of a couple other crews as they meet to discuss a message from the lost ship OSIRIS (that the machines are digging down toward the city) before they return to Zion.

I chopped all of that exposition out & inserted the actual fate of the OSIRIS (from THE ANIMATRIX episode) as the vision Neo has as the ship is headed for Zion. We see the machines digging, the OSIRIS destroyed, & Morpheus & the gang arriving in Zion. Since I’d already planned to seriously alter the “Trinity killed/revived” storyline there was no need to keep his vision here.

As a result, the action ends with a bang…we catch our breath for a moment…then the story picks up right away again with the introduction of Zion.*

*Note from future me....I spent quite a bit of time editing "Final Flight of the Osiris" into a blitz-quick chase sequence that Neo would see in a 'vision' just prior to his arrival in Zion. This is how we learn that the machines are tunneling down to the city. Later, I cut the whole thing in favor of a 'flashback' of Neo being plucked from his pod (which I had cut from the first section of the story.

Part 3 : Broad Strokes

I’ve got a couple dozen “chunks” of footage separated, with the audio stripped. Most have been converted into MPEG2 files, while being nipped & tucked in the process. I’ve pulled several very short clips from throughout the series to use as “flashes” or visions or whatever during the various transitions between scenes.

I tried to follow the natural scenes breaks and essentially just saved the clips as mini-movies.

Also, the first 30 minutes or so has been laid out, pasted together roughly, & I’ve done a couple of practice burns to see how well the pieces fit. Some of my concerns about being disjointed have been eased, as edits that felt jerky or abrupt on the computer are much smoother and cleaner once they’ve been encoded and played on a standard DVD. However, my belief that smoothing out the soundtrack cannot be neglected is growing stronger. The cuts & transitions will always seem ragged & amateurish until the sound is remixed in the final stages…

Part 2 : Ducks in a row

I’d re-authored the 3 films now with the Chinese audio tracks. Visual quality is much improved, and there were no problems synching the audio.

The next issue is preferred editing method.

I was too much of a klutz with Premiere and decided to keep things simple using the editing tools that I’m more familiar with. Unfortunately, the quickest & easiest methods are also the least precise & with the goal of keeping this project as cheap as possible I’m making it more difficult. Most of the free conversion/encoding software downloadable from the Web lack key functions unless you pay extra, & some of the “express” freeware programs I’m most familiar with lack features.

Currently, the process should go like this:

1. Using a DVD-rippers (like the oh-so-wonderful DVD-Shrink), separate sections of footage into as few pieces as possible, but leaving them in the “DVD” formant. (Like little 5 min DVDs, retaining the “VOB” file structure of actual DVDs)
2. Rip the audio from each section, into a “.wav” format. (This is due to the fact that the wav seems to be the most trouble-free when crossing between several formats, with the drawback of creating larger files.
3. Import the VOB file for each section into a program such as TMPGEnc 3.0, which allows you to trim, cut, copy, and paste the files & re-arrange their order. TMPGEnc doesn’t recognize the “ac3” audio format without forking over some cash, which is why we’re creating the “wav” source for the audio. When ready, the files can be exported as one in the “MPEG-2” (dvd ready) format.
4. Now, we can’t make anything other than simple cuts & joins with that, so in order to create more artistic transitions like fades, wipes, etc…we can use Premiere, export our file to the “AVI” format (less loss of quality and a quicker encoding process), then use TMPGEnc to convert it to MPEG-2 while combining it with others if need be.
5. We’ll combine all of out MPEG-2 files (video & audio) and author them back into the DVD file structure using a handy program like TMPGE’s DVD-Author.
6. Once the visual edit is finished, we’ll strip our new “soundtrack” from the film to be enhanced. We can then add minor sound effects, new music, or attempt to remix from a 2-channel audio track into the 5.1 “surround” mix.
7. Using DVD-Author again, we’ll combine the new audio mix with the finished video.
8. But wait, we’re not done! Now we have a completely re-edited film with Chinese audio but no subtitles. We’ll have to add new subtitles, line by line, throughout all 4 to 5 hours of footage. Subtle changes can be made to the original dialogue at this point to reflect the new version and minimize the damage coming from losing huge chunks of visual story…

Part 1 : Starting a "Fan-Edit"

NOTE: This is a little how-to, blow-by-blow account of how to go about something like this, since most of the questions I received were of that nature. -- Zinn


First, some background.

Several months ago I had remembered a thought that had passed through my mind while watching the film ARMAGEDDON. No, not “Please shoot me.” It had occurred to me while bearing through the film that it would be tolerable if I pretended it had been directed by David Lynch. Indeed, my mind began filling in the blanks of the film with odd little ideas & I daydreamed some of the changes that should be made. Fewer seizure-inducing edits, slower – dreamier music, more fades & dissolves, less flag-waving, less Ben Affleck….

Anyway, in the present day, I realized that I had the technology at hand to make that transformation a reality: A pretty fast computer & some borrowed digital editing programs. I sought a copy of that truly awful film and batted around some ideas, including merging it with DEEP IMPACT, the other asteroid disaster film to come out that summer. My plan was to use the visual footage, yet strip away the English audio, leaving a dubbed track, and then creating my own subtitles. This way I could re-write the dialogue as well. However, I was getting discouraged by the lack of multi-language DVDs out there to make this idea work. I was stuck with French, which might get me a little into the “new wave” mood, but I was disappointed.

Then, I realized that I had been barking up the wrong tree. The project still seemed like a hoot & I really wanted to try my hand at editing so I looked for another source material and saw…The Matrix.

Now, I enjoyed the first film quite a bit. I identified with the themes & the Eastern Philosophy subtext hit home. Plus I’ve always been a science fiction fan and the production design & special effects were obviously excellent. I could appreciate parts of Reloaded, but was disappointed by what seemed to me a kind of self-importance, & then was also under whelmed with Revolutions when it came out. However, as time has passed I’ve realized that there was a lot of story & subtext packed into the latter two films along with the ground-breaking effects. So what I’m saying is that I don’t necessarily think these films need to be altered, dumbed-down, or improved. (I liked them, and hope no one is offended by my little exercise.)

However, they make a perfect source for my project for a number of reasons:

· Over 6 hours of footage
· A uniform, consistent look with all 3 films
· Distinct sections of the films that, while cool, can be deleted if they don’t advance the story.
· A futuristic setting that lends itself to a variety of editing styles
· Primarily action-based scenes, reducing the need to cut around dialogue.

So, to work…

First, I needed better editing software than the freeware I had been using to edit commercials out of my home-made DVDs (TMPGEnc) so I got a hold of a cheap copy of Adobe Premiere. Then, I borrowed a friend’s upgrade to Premiere Plus. Being my first experience with professional, full-featured ‘non-linear’ editing program, I was a bit overwhelmed.

During that period I broke down the elements of the trilogy and some sections of the animated companion, The Animatrix. I separated them by scene and/or visual cuts and numbered each one, listing them in a spreadsheet so I could move them around easily. After some pondering I came up with new sequences and arrangements for several scenes and tossed out several pieces that were dragging down the pace. I wanted to keep the basic premise of the first film, but compress the sequels and trim down some scenes to increase their impact. I would invariably lose much of the depth of the story, but that couldn’t be helped.

Ok, so I needed material. There weren’t any available copies of the films that had Chinese/Japanese soundtracks, so I tracked down and ordered a copy of the set from China via a certain online auction site. After much delay, it finally arrived and I had my audio.

But then I ran into a major obstacle: These imports were an obvious knock-off and of dubious legality, but my problem was that the picture sucked. The visuals were highly compressed and of extremely poor quality, probably a step below the “backups” I make of my own DVDs. Since my plan was to divide the films into sections and edit them before remixing the audio, I needed better quality video. I had to strip the audio from my imports, and then combine that with the higher-quality video of my own editions before I could begin editing…