Info & Ideas Wanted: for my Pearl Harbor/Tora Tora Tora Cut

I remeber watching Pearl Harbor and being both amazed and nauseous.  Amazed at the special effects and attention to detail during most of the battle scenes and nauseated at the love story, the screenplay and the dumbed down revisionist history portrayed in the film.

For me (and other I suspect) Tora, Tora, Tora–from a historical perspective–has been the definitive and favored version of the events of Pearl Harbor on film, but the battle scenes and special effects were generally pretty cheesy even for its time.  So the idea occured to me what if these two movies could be effectively combined into one cohesive story?  This is my first large scale attempt at a fan edit.

I’ve generally cut out all the story of PH and used only the battle scenes.  So most of the story is told using TTT until the attack begins.  I’ve kept a couple key battle scenes from TTT (such as the B-17s attempting to land during the attack and the sub attack), but generlly most of the battle scenes are from PH.

I also discovered that TTT has very little background music so iv’e tried to add in several Hans Zimmer soundtracks to help with consistancy.  I discovered that the PH soundtrack and The Last Samuri soundtrack are nearly identical.

I have used the DVD release of TTT and the director’s cut DVD release of PH.  I’m using Vegas 6 for video editing and FXHome to modify the few battle scenes i’m keeping from TTT.  Nothing extreme, just adding a few more explosions, tracers, muzzle flashes, etc.

I’m interested in any opinions or advice anyone has and I’d love to upload some clips if someone will point me in the right direction…

Thanks,

J

This cut has turned out to be very frustrating so far and now I'm starting over for the third time.  On the bright side I've aquired better software to use so I'm hoping to do a more high quality job.

I'm now using:

Vegas 9 - video/sound editing

AE CS4 - specail effects and color correction 

This is my plan for now:

Color Correction: my biggest hurdle so far has been matching the color of TTT with PH and Jerry B's color pallete and filters.  I'm now using after effects and I'm hoping I'll be able to match the grain and color sceme of PH.  I'm brand new to Affect Effects so any pointers would be welcome.  I also have the red giant add-on pack. 

Special Effects:

After (if) I'm able to get the color correction right I'll move on to updating the few battle scenes i'm keeping from TTT (i.e. the USS Hood attacking the sub, B-17's landing during the attack, ect).  I plan on adding bigger and more dynamic explosions, tracers, muzzle flashed and selective camera shake to better match the action in PH.

I also would like to find a way to remove and redo the subtitles, but they are imbedded on the the film and very tedious photoshop and rotoscopining are the only way I know to remove them.  Anyone have any advice?

Sound: The sound for TTT is 4.1.  I've been able to separate the wave files, but the sound separation isn't true at all.  I'm finding that I'll need to rework most of the sound for all TTT scenes to give it a true 5.1 feel.  Also, the planes sound very different in TTT vs PH so I've downloaded new sounds to better match PH, but i'm finding replacing these sound to be very tedious.

If anyone has advice to help with any of this it would be much appreciated.  I'd alos like to see if anyone is willing to tackle some cover art for me...

J