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The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition ❖ FIRST TEASER NOW ONLINE ❖ (a WIP)

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The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition
a fan edit by Roccondil Rínon

So I’m back to editing. I hadn’t touched my 3-in-1 Hobbit edit in quite a while, but I’ve been inspired to get back and finish the damn thing.

Teaser trailer is now LIVE here.

I liked eldusto84’s edit, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, very much, but there are a number of things I want to do differently, many of which involve shortening the film even further, but some of which involve reinstating scenes. Mamman’s The Little Hobbit managed to make the film coherent, if rushed at some points, in under 3 hours, which is also the length I’m aiming for. If I can’t get it that short and be happy with it, I’ll be content with under 208 minutes, the length of the shortest Lord of the Rings Extended Edition.

In my first passes, I managed to get the first two movies down to 100 minutes each, and since watching Mamman’s edit I’ve confirmed that I can get rid of plenty more of both of them, probably down to 80 if not 60 minutes each. (My first passes kept Azog, Radagast, Tauriel and Kili’s subplots mostly intact, as I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep things coherent without them; the third movie hadn’t come out yet by that point. They’re now definitely all for the chop.)

It won’t be a strict attempt at a book cut, but so long as it’s no less faithful than the LOTR movies, and a suitable prelude to them, I’ll be content. I want to keep it light-hearted and whimsical, without being childish or silly. I find that a lot of edits (not just of this movie, either) go too far in removing whimsy, while leaving in action scenes that could safely be excised. So I’ll be keeping “Blunt the Knives” and some of the dwarvish trolling in Rivendell, as well as Gandalf’s trolling of Beorn from the Extended Edition, while completely eliminating the interminable chase scenes (all three of them) and reducing the Battle of Five Armies itself to maybe five or ten minutes. In fact, I’ll be adding in a few gags that are in neither the book nor the trilogy, such as a smash cut from the dwarves charging the trolls to the trolls cooking the dwarves, and adding some narration from the book (about Rivendell being a perfect place for eating, singing, or just sitting and thinking) over scenes of the dwarves testing the elves’ patience.

For three reasons, I’m going with a roadshow format for this edit.

  • Any movie this long needs an intermission. I did once sit through a LOTR Extended Edition marathon at the Astor Theatre (Melbourne’s premier cinema), which was a fantastic experience, not least because (in addition to breaks between the movies themselves) they added proper intermissions at appropriate points.
  • I want to be able to release it on single-layer Blu Ray and DVD with maximum quality, which will almost certainly require making a 2-disc set. This also necessitates an intermission. I do have a drive capable of burning BD-50s (got it especially to make my copy of NJVC’s Despecialized set), but I know a lot of people don’t, and the discs themselves are rare and expensive. It also means it will match the Extended Editions of the LOTR trilogy, which all come on two discs.
  • Once that was decided, the idea of including an overture, entr’acte and full opening credits was too attractive to resist. I simply love old movies that were made in this format, like Ben-Hur, 2001 and so on (both of which, among others, I also saw in the format at the Astor). I’ve already found (or in one instance, composed) music I want to use for them. They’ll be easily skippable for party-poopers or those in a rush.

JEDIT: I was going to be doing this in 720p, but my equipment can handle 1080p after all, and I can upscale the handful of cropped shots just fine.

Below I’ll post a (more or less) sequence-by-sequence description of the planned project.

Progress:
Vanity plates and opening titles are rendered and complete, including executive producer credits for Johnny Ringo and a friend from university who bugged me to get back into the project, as well as an “additional visual effects” credit for eldusto84. End titles are composed but not yet rendered (I expect I’ll want to include thanks to some more people on here). Act one (ie. An Unexpected Journey/The Desolation of Smaug) exists in rough draft form, but requires further cutting. Act two hasn’t been started yet.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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(NB. not everything referred to in the past tense is completed; I’m just used to writing that way.)

Overture:
Overture of themes, courtesy youtube user saysnobody.

Studio logos:
Custom designed & animated OT.com vanity plate by me. I’ll make this available to anyone else who wants it, of course, in full 1080p. Original 1950s Warner Bros. fanfare and MGM lion roar with current animated logos.

Prologue:
Replaced with a short (<1min) montage of the Shire and Bag End, with a few lines of narration taken from the audiobook by Rob Inglis. Segues into:

“Good morning”:
Trimmed slightly. Cropped picture to remove “60 years earlier” caption.

An Unexpected Party:
Trimmed a little to remove pettiness, but “Blunt the Knives” stays. I may incorporate a few shots from the first film’s prologue into “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold” as flashbacks, and possibly an extra verse or two from Clamavi De Profundis’ cover, which meshes very well with the version in the film.

Opening titles:
To follow the dwarves’ song. A full suite of opening titles, over an animated backdrop of original maps from both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books. Music by Parademics.

Roast Mutton:
Toilet humour toned down as much as possible. Action scene completely removed and replaced with a quick gag: the dwarves all charge in, followed by an immediate smash cut to them tied up and about to be roasted. I will try to remove Gandalf breaking the stone, but no promises in this regard.

Radagast and Azog:
Completely removed. Cut from the troll-hoard to arriving at Rivendell.

A Short Rest:
Rivendell and Elrond introduced with narration from the audiobook. White Council removed, but some scenes from the Extended Edition retained in whole or part, including Bofur’s song.

Over Hill and Under Hill:
Stone giants completely gone and not missed. Arrival in Goblin-town trimmed to remove references to Azog. Escape from Goblin-town cut down to a couple of beginning shots once Gandalf shows up.

Riddles in the Dark:
Gollum’s introduction altered so it doesn’t seem like we’re supposed to know him already. He doesn’t drop the Ring on-screen. Otherwise pretty much left as is.

Out of the Frying-pan, Into the Fire:
Cut down as much as possible. I considered cutting straight from the escape from the goblin tunnels to the arrival at Beorn’s (Mamman cuts all the way from the the tunnels to Mirkwood, which involves the significant continuity error of the dwarves randomly acquiring ponies only to have to leave them behind immediately), but I want to keep the Eagles in the battle at the end, and so I ought to introduce them here.

Queer Lodgings:
Gandalf’s narration over footage of the Eagles in flight (idea stolen in its entirety from eldusto84) to bridge between films 1 and 2. Arrival at Beorn’s taken from the Extended Edition. Beorn scenes trimmed to remove references to Azog and the Dol Guldur subplot.

Mirkwood:
Probably trimmed a little, but need to be mindful of pacing in this area; Mirkwood should feel like a bit of a slog. Spider sequence cut down to remove the drawn-out action and the nonsense with the Ring.

The Wood-Elves:
Legolas reduced to his first line. Thorin’s parley with Thranduil trimmed. Tauriel’s scene talking about the Feast of Starlight kept, but she’s otherwise excised.

Barrels Out of Bond:
Severely cut once they’re in the river. No Orc chase, no arrow wound, no Legolas.

A Warm Welcome:
The Master and Alfrid trimmed down considerably, but not removed entirely. References to the Black Arrow and the windlance cut. If I can, I plan to incorporate “The King Beneath The Mountain” as sung by Clamavi De Profundis. Kili’s injury, the involvement of the Elves and Orcs, and so on all cut.

On the Doorstep:
Used FX shots from eldusto84’s edit to reinstate all 13 dwarves going to the Mountain at once. A few lines from the audiobook used for narration. The actual climb to the doorstep and the drawn-out attempts to find the door are trimmed down for silliness and to avoid the glaring continuity error with the moon-runes (“the setting sun…will shine upon the keyhole”). I’ll have to see what colour-grading can achieve in this area.

Inside Information:
Cut slightly to remove the Eye of Sauron, but Bilbo’s conversation with Smaug mostly kept intact.

Smaug the Magnificent:
The dwarves never fight or see Smaug inside the mountain; the entire action sequence is removed. Will probably use eldusto84’s FX shot removing Smaug’s golden coating, or potentially remove it some other way.

Intermission:
Act One ends at the same point as The Desolation of Smaug. It’s by far the best point at which to do so. Entr’acte planned to include part of Clamavi De Profundis’ “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold”, probably the part sung in the book in Beorn’s house.

Fire and Water:
Smaug’s attack on Lake-town kept mostly intact, minus the windlance and Bard using his son as a bow (borrowing Mamman’s cropped shots to achieve this).

The Gathering of the Clouds:
Kept as much politicking between the three races as possible, but continued the complete excision of the Dol Guldur subplot except for Gandalf coming with news of Orcs on the march. Thorin’s “dragon-sickness” will be downplayed but not eliminated. The battle itself will be cut very short; I want to focus on the build-up. Two more verses of “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold” may show up here, but only if there’s a natural place for them.

The Clouds Burst:
Battle trimmed down severely to maybe five minutes. Azog, giant worms, trolls, Radagast and other nonsense removed. (Azog will probably show up in a couple of shots, but he won’t be named or shown to be important, and he won’t kill Thorin.) Bilbo’s concussion followed by a smash cut to black, followed by him waking up and finding Thorin already wounded and dying.

King Under the Mountain:
I’d like to try incorporating “The End of the Beginning”, an organ and choral piece by Pink Floyd, over the scenes of Bilbo’s grief and Thorin’s funeral. I’ll have to make sure it works in terms of timing, and I’m not 100% wedded to it, but it ought to work thematically — it was written to depict the aftermath of a great battle in the first place.

The Return Journey:
Short flashback montage to a few scenes from the battle, set to narration from the book, to make up for the fact that most of the battle itself will have been cut. Bilbo’s return home trimmed to remove references to the Ring, but the auction is kept.

Epilogue:
Montage set to narration from the book (potentially including shots from LOTR), for symmetry with the prologue and to make up for an over-rushed ending to the movie (presumably done in the first place to avoid a repeat of the complaints about the over-long ending of The Return of the King).

End credits:
Remade by me to incorporate credits for all three films and avoid duplicating new opening credits. Set to “Bilbo’s Song” from The Lord of the Rings (the one that begins “I sit beside the fire and think…”), with music written by me and planned to be recorded by David Slattery, possibly followed by a third Clamavi De Profundis recording, “Song of Durin” (also a song from LOTR, beginning “The world was young, the mountains green/No stain upon the moon was seen…”), or else one of the credit suites from the original movies.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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Sounds like a killer idea. I will check back as you progress.

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I’m not sure I agree with cutting Azog entirely and having Thorin get fatally wounded off-screen. Like, I know that’s true to the book and all, but to me the idea of having one of the central cast just suddenly show up dead seems terribly anti-climactic. Then again, I’m saying this as someone who was never overly fond of Tolkien’s writing-style to begin with… He did the same thing with Boromir in Lord of the Rings and I thought it was just as underwhelming there. So personally I’d probably keep enough of Azog to at least clearly establish him as the enemy general, probably cutting out all the backstory stuff because it’d bog the story down too much, and try to trim down the battle between them to get rid of the ridiculous stuff such as the whole part where he’s plunged underwater and somehow manages to jump back through the ice and all that.

Still, sounds like yet another promising take on making these movies more watchable. Definitely interested to see how this turns out.

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Yeah, it’s something that will be difficult to pull off. I wouldn’t mind showing it in principle, but I think the fight between Thorin and Azog is just too absurd, especially (unfortunately) the end. I’m going to see if I can get away with showing at least some of the battle in flashback; that ought to give me some more flexibility with what to show and how.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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Quick update: I’m working in 1080p after all. I may need to wait until we upgrade some equipment next year for any heavy colour grading, but otherwise my computer has proven it can handle it.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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First pass of the first film is complete. It’s remarkable how easy it was to cut Azog out of the scene with the wargs and pine-trees — a sure sign that he was a relatively late addition to it. I still need to rework the Rivendell narration — I may need to steal an establishing shot or two from FOTR — and I haven’t cut in the new prologue yet. But most of the signature cuts of the edit from the first film are locked, and the running time is for now down to about 80 minutes, or 90 when you include overture, new prologue and opening credits, and I should be able to shave more off. On to part 2!

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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New prologue is now locked. I may fiddle around with the music a little, but overall I’m happy with it. Stole several shots from Team Supertramp’s 4K visit to the Hobbiton set a couple of years ago, which mesh very well with the narration. It works out at 70 seconds, which I think is acceptable.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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I’ve been continuing to work on this, and I’ve now added back in substantial shots from the original prologue over an extended “Misty Mountains” song. The new prologue, extended song and full opening titles, in fact, come to about 10 minutes between them. Despite all this, I’ve still managed to get Bilbo out his door in just over 22 minutes from the opening logos, which I’m pretty happy with. (eldusto84’s edit, which omits the original prologue but leaves the entire sequence from “Good morning” to Bilbo leaving pretty much intact, has him running out his door bang on the 30-minute mark, for comparison.)

The biggest concern was that the dwarves wouldn’t get enough characterisation, but apart from Bifur (who doesn’t have any lines in English to begin with, and whose axe-in-the-head schtick I don’t care for) and Nori (who wasn’t well established in the full cut either), I’ve kept at least one decent establishing moment for each one. Amazingly, despite cutting at least half of the running time of the Unexpected Party, it doesn’t feel rushed.

The troll scene works well. I can’t get rid of all the childishness, but I’ve toned it down considerably. I may yet be able to tighten the pacing a bit, but the smash cut gag from the triumphant charge to the spit-roast works perfectly; in fact, I’ve made it a match cut, with the downstroke of Thorin’s sword matching seamlessly with a troll throwing wood on the fire.

Rivendell is still a problem. I’m pretty much only cutting out the White Council scenes, and moving around a few other little bits and pieces, but it somehow manages to still feel rushed: they arrive, they have tea, Elrond reads the map, and they leave. I’m able to add in at least one extra day/night cycle with some careful rearrangement, but I’m far from satisfied with it yet.

Goblin Town is okay. I’m considering switching scenes around so Gandalf shows up and starts the dwarves running before the Riddles in the Dark sequence, rather than after. It does mean losing a lot of Barry Humphries’ admittedly excellent Great Goblin, but it hits the important beats.

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The audiobook narration is great, and this edit looks really neat. The scenes from the youtube video seem to have some sort of framerate problem, and are currently stuttering. Also, I think you should probably avoid any sort of OT.com logo, as none of the projects here are produced or directly approved of by the mods.

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Hmm. That honestly hadn’t occurred to me. I can’t seem to find anything official about it, but what you say makes sense. I’ll see if anyone else says something, but I’ll err on the side of caution unless I hear definitively that it’s OK.

Not sure about the framerate issue. The original footage is 30fps, but I thought I had slowed it down to match the 24fps I’m editing in. It was just a quick-and-dirty render, so that may be the problem.

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January update:

The assembly cut of the film is just about complete. The Rivendell sequence and the Battle of Five Armies, as well as a few smaller bits and pieces, remain to be put together in a form I’m happy with, and there’s plenty of work still to do (including attempting to trim down the running time), but I’ve come much further over the holidays than I expected.

The running time of the assembly cut is 232 minutes, not counting the overture, intermission and end credits: 155 minutes for Act 1 and 77 minutes for Act 2. Act 2 corresponds to the third original film; the transition between the first two films occurs almost exactly 90 minutes into Act 1. This is far from the final running time; I’ve yet to even begin work on the epilogue, for example, and I expect to be able to cut a lot from the Battle of Five Armies, in particular, yet. My stated target running time of under 208 minutes, based on the length of the Extended Fellowship of the Ring, should be achievable, although it should be noted that that figure includes 7 minutes of credits, whereas my credits are pushing 15 minutes (The Battle of the Five Armies’ credits, for comparison, run to 13 minutes), so a fairer target might be said to be 201 minutes without credits; I therefore want to try to lose 31 more minutes, rather than 24.

I may end up having to cut out the sole Tauriel scene I wanted to keep, for reasons of pacing and continuity, which is most unfortunate. I did a fair bit of work on it — I didn’t want to keep it entirely in its original form — and I’m very happy with the scene in itself, but I haven’t been able to make it work in the wider context. If worse comes to worst, the edited version of it will go on the Blu-Ray and DVD as a deleted scene, along with a few other scenes that I like but have to remove for reasons of pacing or running time. (The sequence of the dwarves being smuggled into Esgaroth will probably end up here as well.)

My colour grading experiments to change the “doorstep” scene to match the moon-runes (ie. to change the “last light of Durin’s day” back to the sunlight) have actually been more fruitful than I hoped. I’m now certain I’ll be able to achieve it, and I’m even able to include a couple of shots of the thrush from the end of the first film, to which I’ve been able to match the graded shots. It’s far from finished, but I’m honestly a bit flabbergasted that it’s possible at all. I’ll post some stills here soon.

The biggest news, however, is the addition of “The End of the Beginning” to the grieving scenes. I was far from certain it would work at all; it is, after all, a very different style of piece from Howard Shore’s score, and it was more just an experiment than anything. But holy smokes, does it work! The timing fits almost perfectly with the sequence as presented in the Extended Edition, and the few edits I wanted to make (fixing a continuity error, removing the horn-blower in Dale, etc.) took complete care of that “almost”. When I played back the result, I honestly got a bit choked up. I mean, Martin Freeman knocked it right out of the park to begin with, and the whole sequence was masterfully directed, shot and edited to begin with (apart from the continuity error mentioned, where Ori briefly teleports). But the Floyd just adds another level of resonance to the emotional gut-punch of the sequence.

And if that weren’t enough, it frees me to use the existing score for that scene (including the horn-blower) under the flashback that is to follow it, depicting the portion of the battle Bilbo missed, which I’ll be working on next.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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I’m happy enough with the “doorstep” scene to post a preview of it. It now takes only three minutes of film to get from Esgaroth to opening the door, but I don’t think it feels particularly rushed. I’m mostly interested in feedback on the editing and colour grading; I’ve done some work with the sound, but it’s nowhere close to a final mix as yet.

This is definitely one of the signature features of this edit, so I want to make sure I get it perfect. Let me know what you think!

Linkski.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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I think it looks great; the pacing seemed fine as well. I am looking forward to the final product!

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I love love love what you did with the narration in the teaser!!

After being beaten and battered by prequel hate, I promise not to be that to the next generation.

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Thanks, guys!

Having played around a bunch more with Davinci Resolve, I’ve now decided to attempt to not just regrade a substantial proportion of the picture to better match LOTR, but to attempt to do a time-of-day regrade on some of the prologue scenes I’m using with the Misty Mountains song (to show Smaug’s initial attack occurring at night), which ought to help with making the flame effects look a little less animated/fake (in large part by the simple expedient of brightening them up the proverbial). I’ll be doing similar flame-brightening for the pine-tree scene and the destruction of Esgaroth.

If I can’t pull them off to my satisfaction, then that’s fine, and they can stay as they are. But I’m so impressed with this piece of software — especially running on a tiny old laptop — that I’d be mad not to at least give it a try.

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition

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Any update?

After being beaten and battered by prequel hate, I promise not to be that to the next generation.

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The day-for-night grade is a success; I’ll post some comparison stills soon. I’ve been insanely busy with my day job lately, but that will hopefully ease up in a month or so. Thanks for asking!

The Hobbit: Roadshow Edition