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…