13las said:
I hope you don’t take anything I’ve said as a knock against you and your work — this project just isn’t radical enough for me. Best of luck to you, though! And you’ve inspired me to try my hand at my own season 2 edit.
First things first, don’t worry at all about that! I’m making this project for me, I’m just curious what others think. Glad to hear it’s inspired ya to give it a shot yourself. It’s good to hear other opinions and engage in conversation on something creative which can never be objectively right or wrong IMO.
Having seen the workprint of your edit, I do tend to agree with the feedback that you’ve left in too much. Personally, I think if you’re going to cut the crap out of something, you should go all the way. You mention your desire to preserve the season warts and all, but don’t forget that the original episodes don’t disappear when someone fanedits them! If this truly is your ideal version of the season, then that’s great. If not, then what’s the harm in a more radical approach?
Let’s theoretically go all the way. Let’s imagine a more radical version of my edit.
- No James/Evelyn
- No Little Nicky
- No ‘Ben thinks he’s a war general’ after he’s initially kicked out of running One Eye Jacks
- No Norma and Mike romance scenes
- Minimal scenes of Josie being a maid
- Simplifying Ed and Norma’s romance more
That’d probably reduce the edit by about 60 minutes to a 100 minute movie. The remaining plot would be:
- General Briggs goes missing and then shows up unharmed with cryptic warnings
- Cooper becomes investigated by the FBI then cleared of all wrongdoing
- Criminal ‘mastermind’ Jean Renaut is outsmarted by… a standard fake drug deal sting operation
- Windham Earle starts toying with Cooper
Windham Earle and the lore exploration in General Briggs’ story is cool, but the remaining plot beats feel like obvious filler material IMO. Even Briggs disappearing and reappearing in and of itself has zero impact on the story. They have a fair bit of slow, serious exposition scenes and the silly plot threads at least balance out that seriousness with moments of levity and action-ish. I’d personally find watching the 100 minute version a dour chore due to the 90% serious tone (the 10% being the wedding scenes) over plotlines that essentially go nowhere compared to the moments of lightness sprinkled in the edit at the moment. Even if half of them are cringe.
That said, I think you’re well on your way to accomplishing your stated goal. A piece of (hopefully) constructive feedback I can offer is to define whether you intend this to play like a film or like an extended episode. Because, as it stands it sort of feels caught in between the two. If you want it to feel like a film, I think the opening few minutes could really use some kind of hook — I found the first scene with Ms. Briggs in the sheriff’s station too static and dialogue-heavy to be the opening of a movie experience. Not sure how you could accomplish this, maybe a recap of the preceding events? Or something a little more atmospheric — even an abstract title sequence a la Fire Walk With Me would go a long way to helping this feel more like a stand-alone experience.
That scene you mention, while a bit sluggish, does set up important mysteries and is simply how episode 11 begins. I’m aware the edit has an odd feel which is why I described it as a TV movie on Fanedit.org. I’ll think about how I can condense things further.