Idea & Possible fan edit: 'Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse'...

I’m not volunteering to do this, but I was pondering the awenado that would be unleashed should this be created.  That’s right, a tornado of awesomeness.

The 13th episode was never shot of this better-than-ABC-Family-deserved series.  What has been released is a graphic novel of the final episode.

Also floating about on the net is an OK quality recording of a full cast table read of the script at Comic-Con.  The real weakness of which is that the dialog isn’t always intelligible.

(There is a better .mp4 around that is an improvement on the MyFaceInATube version.)

Watching it I kept wishing there were subtitles… which brings me to:

I propose a Ken Burns style treatment of the graphic novel over-dubbed with the original cast from the table read.

The text and art from the comic would gloss over the short comings of the table read.  The original cast’s energy, the camera movement and any other possible effects would help with the static nature of the comic.

Frankly, this is something that should have been done professionally as an extra to the DVDs.  I’m sure can see my plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity.

Is anyone else excited by this proposal?

While I won't actually be doing this as I proposed in the first post, I thought I'd give you a heads up to what I am actually doing.

Using two different sources (so I can correct glitches), I am cutting together different recordings of the Comic Con table read, converting it to DVD, and subtitling.

It's tedious, but necessary since the audio is really poor.  If there is interest I'll let you all know when there is a finished disc.

It's the perfect disc 5 for anyone with the boxset since it ties up the story threads from the season (and is riddled with callback gags).

Doing this to the comic might be nice, but that would actually mean doing terrible damage to the comic in order to scan it (besides lots of aftereffects work to make it a dynamic watchable experience).

Edit: I guess technically this is now just a preservation project... and in the wrong section.

Edit 2: I found a copy of the script they were reading from.  I can now sub all impossible to hear dialog.  This will be 99.99% perfect now.  I also found a post table read interview that I'll be putting on the disc.

Yes, I'm reviving a dead thread that I might still be the only one to have read.

A semi-official version of the table read was released a little while back.  The audio quality is a huge improvement over what I originally used for my custom disc 5.

Anyway, I started thinking about this again.  I toyed with several programs, including After Effects, which I am COMPLETELY and UTTERLY incompetent with.

Finally I ended up with an edited audio clip (removing Javi's commentary), a bunch of edited images (using GIMP), and then stuffed it gracelessly into Canopus Imaginate.

What an awful, clunky piece of... software.  No way to change the transition style, no way to set an image to fit the size of the window, heck no way to set the size of the window you want to work with.

Several hours of my life I can't get back later, and I give you this glittering jewel of imperfection:

The actual render from the program I managed to get in Lagarith 720p with lossless audio.  That was a surprise at least.

This is an SD re-encoding in a manageable 1.86mb: http://www.mediafire.com/?119vqauxp7xsso3

I'm open to suggestions on a more efficient way to do this.  Later pages will probably be mostly panning shots, but the fading of aligned images seemed more appropriate for the first page of the comic.

This is pretty much proof that Imaginate is probably the wrong program for the job.

It wouldn't be much more than an a camera panning over the graphic novel in sync to the table read Ken Burns style.

I'll probably sweeten the sound mix with bits from the series and do some other tweaking (like the bit where the uMaster fades in on the screen).