wmgan

As I mentioned in an earlier post (about my “Phantom of the Opera” edit), I made a “Special Abridged Edition” of LOTR. My goal was to condense the whole saga – including some essential footage from the extended editions – into a single, unified and coherent three-hour movie that does not necessarily adhere to the novel (and yes, I am familiar with the novel – as well as Ralph Bakshi’s animated fiasco – and the animated “Return of the King” – and new stage version in Toronto, though I made this edit some months before that opened). So please spare me, purists. (And for those of you who are curious – I loved the stage version. By a twist of good fortune, I got to see it twice for the price of one admission. It has its flaws but it is an incredible work of theater, and it has some lovely music in it. I never thought another composer could do justice to Middle Earth after hearing Howard Shore’s soundtracks, but I was wrong.)

Mine is a minimalist approach to LOTR, so all I have is all that is essential to the central story threads. I left out the characters of Faramir and Denethor entirely, though I humorously acknowledged that fact in the end credits (and coincidentally, those two characters are not in the stage version either). I excised the most material from The Two Towers, omitting the battle of Helm’s Deep altogether.

There are moments in the various characters’ journeys when I superimposed maps showing their route (taken from the extended DVD extras) – though on retrospect, I may have overused that effect just a little.

I did include some of the new footage from the extended editions that I felt were important to the story (actually, I only used the extended editions and not the theatrical cuts as my source) – for example, more Gollum; the additional scene of Frodo, Sam and Gollum in the Dead Marshes when Gollum talks about how, once the Ring takes a hold of you, it never lets go (and in my edit, he’s interrupted by the Nazgul flying over the swamp); Pippin and Merry discovering Saruman’s storehouse of food (I used that merely as a way to transition into The Return of the King, with the two Hobbits celebrating when Gandalf and gang arrive at Isengard); a thoroughly altered version of Saruman’s parley with Gandalf; the Witchking’s confrontation with Gandalf; and Aragorn looking into the Palantir.

I completely rearranged the order of many of the scenes, especially in The Two Towers and the first half of The Return of the King. I attempted to juxtapose some scenes in such a way as to bring out the dramatic irony – for example, right after Elrond tells Aragorn to “become who you were born to be”, I cut to Gollum about to work his little scheme to get rid of Sam, “becoming who he was born to be”. I also juxtaposed Aragorn entering the Paths of the Dead with Frodo entering Shelob’s lair, and intercutting between those two tunnel scenes (amid shots of the ongoing seige of Gondor). At a later point in time, I intercut between Eowyn’s confrontation with the Witchking and Sam’s battle with Shelob in such a way that the two heros stab their enemies almost simultaneously, and we see both villians writhing in pain. (I know, I know, that means that the Shelob’s lair scene is spread over a greater period of time than it should have, but that can easily be attributed to a greater distance – color timing is not really an issue here because it’s always dark near Mordor.)

Gandalf now battles the Balrog immediately after he falls in Moria, and when it cuts to a wide shot of the two plummeting down into the watery depths, I fade slowly into the rest of the fellowship making their way out of Moria in despair. I cut out a lot of redundant lines of dialog, much of which will probably not be noticed except by the most hardcore fans of the movies.

I altered the color timing of some scenes to match the surrounding scenes, though I rarely had to do that.

For those who loved the multiple endings (and I’m actually one of them), sorry – I ended the movie at Aragorn’s coronation.

I will describe my edit in greater detail at a later time. I’ve stayed up far too late. Namarie – for now.

Hi, this is my first post to the Original Trilogy forum. (Man, I signed this petition long ago but how could I not have checked out this awesome forum?)

Anyway, last winter I made fan edits of the recent “Phantom of the Opera” and “Lord of the Rings” movies that some of you might be interested in. (I’ll talk about the LOTR edit in a different thread.)

One of my biggest gripes with the POTO movie (directed by Joel Schumacher) was the quality of the singing – especially that of the title character. Really, Michael Crawford has no equal in that role! So I synchronized footage from the movie to the original London cast recording. Although I initially considered using a hybrid soundtrack, I ended up using only the cast recording, so there are no sound effects of any kind – just pure singing of the highest caliber. I had to leave out some parts of the recording that I had absolutely no footage for (the reprise of “Notes”, for example, and the rehearsal for Don Juan), occasionally get creative when I didn’t have enough footage for some scenes (or when it was simply impossible to get them to match), and even (daringly and hopefully convincingly) synchronize some words to completely different words spoken by the actors in the movie (most notably at the end of the Masquerade scene, after the Phantom makes his appearance). For the most part, however, I basically had to stretch and speed up segments of the video to match the audio.

In my edit, the chandelier falls at the right time – at the end of the first act! At the end of the Phantom’s reprise of “All I Ask of You”, the camera pans down from the rooftop of the opera house, and I sort of zoom-faded through the walls of the opera house into the theater, where Christine is taking her curtain call (using footage from earlier in the movie), and made the chandelier flicker wildly before having it fall (using footage from later in the movie, of course). After the chandelier strikes the ground, I fade to black, and have the words “six months later” flash on the screen before the Masquerade scene.

I had the most fun with the swordfight scene at the cemetery (and here’s the part that you Star Wars aficianados might be interested in). As some of you may recall, in the stage musical, the Phantom shoots fireballs at Raoul from his skull-topped staff. In the movie, they trivialized that into a much less suspenseful swordfight (in which Raoul actually WINS, heaven forbid!). Having only footage of the swordfight, I made the best of it by rotoscoping the Phantom’s sword into a flaming sword (a la lightsabers) and having fireballs fly out whenever his blade strikes Raoul’s.

Finally, my edit ends where the movie should have ended – with Meg picking up the Phantom’s mask! I zoomed into the mask and fade into a final shot of the Phantom and Christine together (from the “Music of the Night” scene), with a titlecard crediting the voices of Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford.

The only time I tinkered with the audio (besides seamlessly editing together some disjoint portions of the soundtrack) was relegating a portion of the title song (the portion that was cut from the movie) into the background with added reverb, while I used footage of Meg discovering the mirror-door in Christine’s dressing room.

I would be happy to trade a DVD of my POTO edit for other fan edits or OT preservations. Please PM me to discuss that. And I would be happy to hear your thoughts.

Screenshots to follow. . . .