I have finally got around to viewing your fanedit. Excellent overall, however, I have some minor notes for you to consider if you ever wish to update again.
For Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire, you attempted to remove the orcs, but then decided not to hide them. My only suggestion here is if you are no longer hiding the orcs, maybe 1 or 2 addition orc closeups are warranted? One whom may have viewed this edit without reviewing your updates may assume that you meant to remove to orcs entirely but accidentally left in a few seconds of orc footage by mistake. Dispersing a couple more orc shots throughout the scene would leave little doubt.
I can’t recall how it was exactly in the official version, but in Mirkwood the transition between the company’s battle with the spiders and being ambushed by the elves was quite abrupt. I was actually momentarily distracted during that cut having looked off screen for about 5 seconds, going from the fight to the ambush struck me oddly and kinda caught me off balance, lol. If you could manage to maybe throw in an additional shot of the company fleeing the spider’s den the flow of the cut would become alot smoother.
The transition between Barrels Out of Bond and A Warm Welcome lends itself a bit to the obviousness of cut footage. Partially in the somewhat quick cut from the company trying to keep afloat on raging waters to drifting on calm in the next shot. Not much can be done about that I imagine, given you can only work with so much footage available to you. But the thing I noticed most of all is the music transition with the orchestral track seeming to ramp up into something, yet fading away as the next chapter begins. You probably been over this yourself, but again, if you can find a way to smooth this transition, the editing seam here might be made invisible to those who may have never seen the originals.
The battle sequence around the 3:27:10-25 mark is oddly quiet. Quiet as in, there is a huge battle raging in the scene, yet the only sound we hear is of things in the shots that are obvious. This may be how the sound was in the official version, but the shots feel off because of this. I feel that these shots (and maybe a few others shots in the chapter overall, to a lesser degree) would benefit having additional battle sounds (the clang of steel, orc shrieks, etc) added to the sound mix to add to the fullness of the battle.
To restate, I thought the edit was overall excellent. If you somehow patched up some of these seams (some of which you may have already attempted to do previously) I would say that this edit could conceivable be found in an official studio home video release. Also overall, I to prefer this edit to the previous Hobbit edit I have seen, so great work!
Thank you so much for watching and giving feedback. That means a ton. I’m just gonna go through it and reply, might as well:
-Out of the frying pan:
Yes! I 100% agree. I updated this and must have done it after you downloaded haha. I thought to myself that, since the Warg pack is re-occuring at the start of part 2, and Thorin calls it an “Orc pack”, then I shouldnt actually remove every single Orc and try to hide them. Sure in the books it was only wolves, but it’s perfectly acceptable in a PJ adaptation to throw a few Orcs in, maybe they are just “herding” the wargs. So if you download the update, there are a few more shots of Orcs, and one main close-up reaction shot of an Orc’s face when they start the fire
-Mirkwood:
In the original film, the Dwarves were fighting, then it cut to Bilbo fighting a baby spider and going rage-mode (because he dropped the ring next to it), then we cut back to Thorin saying “it’s clear” and get this Legolas stunt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_sVsU0m0IQ So yeah mine is trimmed down to remove the Bilbo part because it’s out of character and trying too hard to be like lotr, but there’s nothing else that goes there showing the Dwarves. I think if you didnt get distracted it wouldve flowed fine, because you see Kili killing off a spider, then we cut to Thorin with a few other Dwarves, who say “we’re clear” because they got rid of their spiders, and so it works fine IMO, because the audience can assume just as Kili stabbed that spider it was one of the last ones, then suddenly the hidden elves pop and boom the rest plays out.
-Barrels Out of Bond:
Yeah I agree I’m not as happy with this transition as it could be (musically speaking).
Its supposed to be a “a lot of time has passed we now went from harsh fast waters to soft calm river” type cut but the soundtrack makes it difficult. I’ll try to revamp it if I can.
-The battle sequence:
I’ve actually updated mine with minor things so the time stamp you have is not what I have on my screen, could you let me know visually which part it is? Is it after the dwarves charge out? Is it the “sad montage” (because I didnt touch that part’s audio, I can sorta see what you mean where theres not a ton of sound, I think its a stylistic choice)?
Thanks again for watching!