I'd like to think that Weiss would look down on us and take it as a compliment, people don't fan-edit unless they see something outstanding in the original. At least none of us take away the originals, a'la' Lucas...
Well, I've been whittling away at TMP and Wrath of Khan. (I have to switch around, because I've seen the movies waaaay too many times).
As always, whenever I try to participate in geekdom, Real Life jumps on me with both feet.
But movie editing is fun. (More fun than editing my messages. :-)
I hope to eventually condense the first 7 movies into Phase II's.
I started by putting off most of the fancy stuff for hypothetical Versions 2 and 3.
TMP has generally been easy to edit, so far. The leisurely pace makes it easy to find a place to put the scissors.
The others have been a PITA, even at the notes stage. Plenty of stuff I want to do. But several scenes which need to be trimmed, or split for rearrangement, aren't put together in a way that makes it easy (possible?). But I've had some neat "little victories"...
I think I could use some inspirations, from you guys, for #2 through #7.
What? Edit Wrath of Khan? But it's so dang good! Yeah, I think I might be able to squeeze it down to 96 minutes. I've already cut almost 4 minutes!
I have some issues with it (mostly small stuff), as with all the movies. And the pacing needs to be brisker, in the first half, to fit a television format. There's a little bit of audio, from the German dub, that should enhance a certain scene... I think I'll include spoiler lists for people to test themselves against.I'm troubled over how to fit Wrath into a series with the whole training-vessel/Captain-Spock thing... but I might need to keep the cadets-subplot for one issue. Maybe if it was, for example, the 4th-season opener...
You'd think Search for Spock could be cut down to 48 minutes... I plan to minimize Neo-Saavik. Ideally, I'd loop in a different name, and transplant Kirstie Alley into a couple silent cameo shots on the Enterprise (I know where). But I'm not optimistic about looping words (composited syllables) into sentances. I doubt Alley would mind a fan moving her over 1 hour, but she'd charge the studios a fortune to do it in real life. Yeah, well, in any case, I probably wont take it that far anyway...
Voyage Home has me stumped. The jokes quit being funny after about 20 times. But I don't know where to start, or how much to cut it.
One could jump from the time-travel, to them plucking the whales from the ocean. But without some diversion and tension, it's going to be too blatant of a way to get the charges dropped. (OTOH, a full trial would've probably exonerated them, anyway). Perhaps I could cut Kirk & Spock's adventure out, right after they sell the glasses. The movie could concentrate on the other quests, but how do you rescue Checkov from the hospital, without Gillian in every shot? You could beam him out in time, but then the plot gets too basic, again. In any case, a Trek series wouldn't pass up the opportunity to have them experience the past to some degree...
I suspect that #5 might come very close to Marshall's edit. But I see where I want some significant differences.
I dislike quite a lot of little things in #6 . I may be in a minority there. But I think I can improve it, at least for my tastes.
I would like to insert the confrontation with Kang, at least, from Flashback. But I don't know what CBS would think about that (They now own the UPN library, at least, the rest isn't clear). Also, of course, most of the acting is Voyager-style (I wonder if I might be able to drop frames & morph to at-least get the timing closer to human speech?). And Janeway would have to be matted out of every shot. (Version 2 or 3).
I'd like to get Generations down to 48 minutes, as a Phase II episode (as my answer to "The Kirkless Generation." :-); then recut it into a TNG episode; and then trim it to a 2-hour version which would've aired as a special movie-version "which closed both series-es". But I'm not sure I can drag out the "production timeline" that far. #2, #3, and #4 have to be consecutive episodes.
Kirk's first death, in Gen, was awesome. His second death was not. So, I hope to be able to keep Kirk alive, at the end. The ideal would be to have Picard say "You have a few friends in this century." (McCoy might still be alive, Scotty should be, Spock surely is, but he's unreachable. And Demora would be glad to see him, if her heart could take the shock). Then, after the Starships leave, we'd briefly go to a little mountain cabin where the echo of the-echo-of-Kirk is chopping wood...
First Contact is an unresearched possibility. I would want to eliminate Not-Zephram-Cochrane. Ideally, I'd like to steal the real one's actor (Glenn Corbett) from something else, for the ending. I suspect it would be too choppy, though. And stealing actors's images seems like a good way to inflame Hollywood...
Insurrection? Well, I don't know, because I keep falling asleep.
Nemesis, IMO, is a Special Effects Reel interrupted by the worst horror-movie cliches.
