I’ve started working on a fanedit of Army of Darkness, with the goal of making it fit a little better as an “Evil Dead III” like it should. That’s what it is, after all. I’m sure others have done the same sort of thing in the past (I know of “The Fan Cut”), but I want to tackle it myself with my own ideas.
As the thread title says, I’ll be using one of the original working titles during production, The Medieval Dead, which was supposedly preferred by Raimi. I thought about using the more conventional title, Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness, but I figured it didn’t sound as good.
The Director’s Cut will be the main source, with maybe a couple of replaced shots from the two theatrical cuts (all from the Shout! Factory 3-Disc set). I’m using Sony Vegas Pro 11 to edit.
I’ve started some tests on the opening, which is where my edit will differentiate the most. I want to create a blend of the finished opening and the original opening, using as much footage from Evil Dead II as I can.
An issue I’m having trouble figuring out is the opening scene. I want to use the “RENAISSANCE PICTURES PRESENTS” card, continuing through the shot of Ash’s lonely eyes as he begins to narrate exposition (from the original opening). This scene has never to my knowledge been released in HD, meaning that I would have to use upscaled SD footage with a grainplate. I think that the 1080i upscaled footage on the Shout! Factory release would be my best option, but I’m not certain.
For the title card, I’m going to have to re-animate the new title over a clean background of the vortex. This is going to be a difficult task as animation of any form is not my strong suit, and I don’t think either of the films show more than a couple seconds of empty vortex at any given time for me to repurpose. As of now I’m not sure even how I’m going to approach this, and I’m thinking that I’ll just leave it on the back burner and worry about it after the rest of the edit is finished. I’ll have to figure out my options.
After the title sequence finishes, I want to use the end of Evil Dead II rather than negating it like Army of Darkness originally did. This brings me to my biggest issue I’ve been having in my editing tests:
I can’t smoothly transition from the end of Evil Dead II to the beginning of Army of Darkness without removing the music from the scene. But, Evil Dead II has mono audio, and the 5.1 surround, as far as I can tell, is just that mono track distributed among the front channels with music and sound effects on the surrounds. So I can’t remove the music as far as I know.
I haven’t completed a cut list yet, but I generally just want to remove anything that I feel doesn’t belong, whether it’s because it’s just too corny (like the handstand shot in the “Little Ashes” scene), or if it’s because Ash is acting out of character, etc., add back in the deleted scene showing Ash go outside the windmill during the night, and replace the original “I ain’t that good” line with the US theatrical reshoot line, “Good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun.”
Once I have some time to sit down and watch through the film again I should be able to edit this post with a completed cutlist.
Any help (or interest of any kind) would be appreciated. 😄