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Idea & Info Wanted: Is there a way to save Bakshi's Lord of the Rings?

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There is a lot wrong with Bakshi’s LOTR, but the thing that irks me the most is the appearance of some of the “animation”. The scenes at Bree and Helm’s Deep, in particular, are clearly just live actors with some posterizing effect laid over them. I’ve wondered if it is possible to make these look more “cartoon-like” to blend in better with the traditional animation. I have After Effects, but haven’t been pleased with my results in trying this.

I want to see your re-edit! Whatever it is!
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Personally, I think the Bakshi LotR movie is terrific. Most people hate that he used rotoscoping in it, but it's a technique he used in almost all his films. With the exception of the fact that it ends at the end of The Two Towers, I think it's a wonderfully crafty film (I'm a big Bakshi fan).

Of course, that's just my opinion....I could be wrong....

I've got better things to do tonight than die! - Springer, Transformers the Movie

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I agree with DrGonzo. The type of animation may not be for everybody, but it is Bakshi style. The film is great in its own kind of way, and like DrGonzo sai, its biggest flaw is ending prematurely and not being the whole story. I don't see much point in trying to change it. And short of re-drawing it I have no idea how you would go about making it look more cartoony.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Originally posted by: C3PX
I agree with DrGonzo. The type of animation may not be for everybody, but it is Bakshi style. The film is great in its own kind of way, and like DrGonzo sai, its biggest flaw is ending prematurely and not being the whole story. I don't see much point in trying to change it. And short of re-drawing it I have no idea how you would go about making it look more cartoony.

Just to clarify, I'm talking about making the blatantly "live action" parts appear more in line with the rest of the film. I hate that it stands out so much. It's like Mary Poppins or something. I actually like the film myself -- it's quite true to the books.

I want to see your re-edit! Whatever it is!
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I have mixed feelings about the silhouetted or posterised parts of the rotoscoping, in his works. Some places, it seemed effective, to me. Other times it didn't seem so hot.

I can see why it ain't everyone's cup.


Sure it was cheap. It was a cost-cutting innovation. But he took those savings and plowed them into some sweet animation, on a budget he could get get in the real world. And it fit the "Oh my god we must censor out all the violence, boo hoo!" times. It's like the shower curtain in Psycho. Told the story, but wasn't graphic. (Animation was considered kid's-first, and boy did they censor it, in the 70's. There was more leeway in movies, but still).


The technical side of this, though, belongs in the "Requests, How-to's, and Technical Discussions" sub-forum.


A bit of advice: honey is better than vinegar. You may feel disgusted, but you want people to come in with positive "That would be neat." thoughts. Maybe change the subject of your first post of the thread to something a little more mellow. Say - "Upgrading the rotoscoping in Bakshi's LotR?".


AE is meant to be frustrating. They want you to take classes, and study under masters to learn their trade secrets. It's built for proffessionals - and "the last thing they need" is a 20,000 self-studied hot shots suddenly competing for their jobs. But that ain't going to happen because there's massive demand from small-scale advertisers, and most people are happy to use their skills to amuse themselves. Thankfully, there's many experts who aren't paranoid, so the info's out there.

But I digress...


It just might be possible to make AE draw a line at the boundry of the colors. And then put the tracings on a monotone.

Since the information is 2-color, there's nothing else to process. So I doubt if you could do more than that without hiring animators.


I only know a thin slice of AE's functionality, so I couldn't tell you "if" or "how".

If it can do that, it would probably work something like an image editor function - you'd auto-trace the boundry onto another layer, and replace the original layer.


A tedious possibility - if you get the lines-on-paper effect, you could manually add some motion blur-effect to selected areas (fast moving limbs & such). Don't ask me how, though.

If you want to spend months on it, learn rotoscoping, and do whatdoyacallit? Radial density? Give them a sense of shape & mass.

Maybe effects-up a swirling fog/dust effect, and use the solid background as your chroma-key color. Give it that fog-of-war thing. (Men and animals stirring up clouds of dust when they fight).

Maybe save the scenes to sequences of images & try some watercolor/oil brush effects in an image editor.

Or buy some plugins, and do it in AE.

You could play with clipping out frames & morphing so the blows look fierce, instead of like inexperienced stunt-actors pulling punches.

Google up tutorials, try forums that are dedicated to that stuff, maybe invest in those here's-what-we-think-you-want-to-know books.

Maybe you can get other people interested in working on the project with you. You might have to get some stuff done, first, and show it to them, though.

It's up to you, learn it, play with it, and show us what you come up with.

One day I found... 10 years had got behind me. Next day was worse.

 

Download  shows from Cable DVR (Updated! Yes, it needs a rewrite, but it's worth slogging through, anyway).

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the Rotoscoping was Bakshi's niche. It was in almost all his films and it was his calling card of sorts. If you want to animate the parts, like Caligula said, it won't change the fact that it is rotoscoping.

I've got better things to do tonight than die! - Springer, Transformers the Movie

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I like bakshi's Lord of the Rings and have always wished for a fan release with an isolated score off of the remastered cd, as well as the deleted gandalf storyboard of of bakshi's site. Been looking for any or all of the scripts for ages by peter s. beagle, that would be really cool to have as a feature in a dvdrom folder.

I have done lots of research and read that some of the animation was done for part 2 but is lost or destroyed.

Bakshi has been selling off all of his production stuff on ebay so any or all pre production artwork in his collection as well as production cels, are being sold off and it's really a shame because they would've been great to be printed up in a book or used on a future dvd release.

Saul Zaentz has blocked the publication of the script by mr. beagle and denies owing him any money based on a verbal agreement over the script, on his site mr. beagle makes a pretty good case for being owed some money because of his inspiration over the jackson films.

now that he has sold all of that stuff and continues to there never will be a restoration or compilation of what 2 would have been like using any completed animation or storyboards as well as the script, sort of like ocpmovie's thief recobbled.

everybody seems to hate Bakshi's Lotr, yet Peter S. Beagles script is far more close to what tolkien wrote than what peter jackson, fran walsh and phillippa boyens wrote. If a yound teenager named peter jackson had never seen bakshi's version the trilogy would never had happened.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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I love Bakshi's adaptation and is fine as it is.

Has anyone thought of editing the really bad Bass/Rankin 1980 animated adaptation of Return of the King, to be more in line with the Bakshi version. Cut out the songs and other tedious bits etc.

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Another cool idea would be to edit "The Hobbit", LOTR, and the Return of the king into one full movie. Yes the animation is different but with some creativity and editing skills of some of the people on this site, I'm sure it could work. Just a thought
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