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Army of Darkness - The Primitive Screwhead Edition (Released) — Page 4

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Originally posted by: DrakeRetro
I don't know if anyone else has ever had this idea, but since I don't plan on doing an extended AOD cut anytime soon I'll throw it out there.

There is away to use both endings to AOD.

Here is how, You start with the Original ( unused ) ending, Ash drops one tomany drops, falls asleep, Then fade into the smart ending. As the smart ending fades out it crossfades into ash awaking as he dreamed it all up. Then ofcourse he gets out of the cave realizing he is in a post apopcolyptic future.

I think that was actually done on a German release or something.
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Here is a capture from what I got Let me know if it will work.

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q32/suntechC6/AOD.jpg
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Originally posted by: DrakeRetro
I don't know if anyone else has ever had this idea, but since I don't plan on doing an extended AOD cut anytime soon I'll throw it out there.

There is away to use both endings to AOD.

Here is how, You start with the Original ( unused ) ending, Ash drops one tomany drops, falls asleep, Then fade into the smart ending. As the smart ending fades out it crossfades into ash awaking as he dreamed it all up. Then ofcourse he gets out of the cave realizing he is in a post apopcolyptic future.



Seriously, that's a great idea.
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Originally posted by: DrakeRetro
I don't know if anyone else has ever had this idea, but since I don't plan on doing an extended AOD cut anytime soon I'll throw it out there.

There is away to use both endings to AOD.

Here is how, You start with the Original ( unused ) ending, Ash drops one tomany drops, falls asleep, Then fade into the smart ending. As the smart ending fades out it crossfades into ash awaking as he dreamed it all up. Then ofcourse he gets out of the cave realizing he is in a post apopcolyptic future.


I'm not too hot on this myself - it sounds interesting in theory, sure, but I think I prefer the idea of this edit being an alternative to the Director's Cut and hence using the S-Mart ending. Especially since it's only ever been attached to the near-unwatchable (at least to me) 81-minute version. Though if you're using the deleted opening from the DVD, maybe you should, given it would only really fit tonally with the apocalyptic ending?
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I have always been partial to the S-Mart ending, the other ending was alright also, but I much prefer the S-Mart. It is also better suited for the possibility of a sequel. What would be interesting, though I am not sure how it could be done, would be to go about with the apocaliptic ending, then to fade to the S-mart scene where Ash is telling the guy his story. It has been a while since I have seen the movie, so I am not sure of the actual dialogue there, so it may be impossible to do. This way it would be like Ash was making his story more elaborate and adding things to it. Though I think I would give preference to the dream sequence then waking up and realizing he over slept over the regular over slept ending. The more scenes the better when it comes to evil dead.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Strange - my recording has some different qualities.

The first pic is from my 2004 recording, the second is suntech's

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v326/RidgeShark/ScottsCopy.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q32/suntechC6/AOD.jpg


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Thank you for the information djsmokingjam. The information from the Evil Dead Companion is very interesting. Some of it I've already heard, but still some stuff I haven't. Also - as far as alternate endings go - I'm really going to try to put both on the disc via branching. If possible - I'll edit them both into a different ending with Ash dreaming the S-Mart stuff and then waking up - so it will have a total of 3 endings the user can choose from. Still - I have a long way to go before I can make a functioning disc that branches decently.
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One last post before I call it a day -

I'm not sure if this is going to work right, but I've uploaded something special for you all. It's the work I've done on the deleted windmill sequence that is exclusive to the SciFi version. There is no audio, just video. Also - it's a vob file (89.7mb), so you'll need to play it in something that can play dvds.

Click Here It'll take you to a website where you can download the file.

As you'll notice -

The framing isn't the full 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The video is anamorphic, but the framing is something more like 1.55:1. I did this to reduce the cropping I would have to perform on the full frame image. An added benefit is that the video is slightly sharper than it would be if I had cropped it further and resized it to fill up the entire frame.

In one shot - the image is the full 1.78:1 aspect ratio. I was able to add the edges from workprint and have the whole image look pretty decent. I've tried doing this with other shots but the results are usually less the satisfactory so I didn't include them.

In order to remove the SciFi logo from the video, I've had to employ some visual trickery. You'll notice a small blur on the bottom right hand corner of the video, but hopefully you will not find it distracting.

Anyways - I'm looking forward to your thoughts and opinions. The video should be up for 7 days.
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I can't seem to get the clip to play. Its just the Quicktime logo with a question mark over it?
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Originally posted by: Troy
I can't seem to get the clip to play. Its just the Quicktime logo with a question mark over it?


That's strange. A few min ago I downloaded the video to make sure it was working and it downloaded just fine. I tried playing it in different programs, including Quicktime and PowerDVD and it worked in both. Is anyone else experiencing any problems?
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If it's supposed to download to my computer, then it's not even doing that. When I click the link it opens another page, says it's downloading then like I say the quicktime thing comes up.
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Just click the link - it'll take you to a different page - then right click on widescreen.vob and save it.

Is the link working for anyone?
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RidgeShark got the scene up and running for me. (Thanks again!).

Well what can I say, it's amazing, I didn't notice any enhancements to the picture and if the rest of this edit is half as good as that scene it will be a winner I'm sure!
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Right-clicking didn't work for me at first - it just asked me to save an HTML file - so I let it run until the QT video with the question mark came up. Then I copied the URL of that video onto a window where I could right click it, and it saved fine, though for some reason it was as an MPEG rather than a VOB. The video looks great, like it came straight off a professional DVD. Can't wait to see the rest.

The direct link, before anyone asks, is: http://filelodge.bolt.com/storeanonupload/2006/12/07/Widescreen.vob
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Thank you Troy and djsmokingjam for the comments. I'm sorry that it's been a hassle getting it to download - I'm glad you liked it though.
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Yeah, looks great. I can't wait to see the complete thing!

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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I just captured Army of Darkness off WGN last night at 1:30, and was happy to find many of the Sci-Fi deleted scenes. I'm sorry to say my capture is not as clean as yours:

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i82/thegreathunger/54984a85-WGN.jpg

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i82/thegreathunger/7a987d46-WGN.jpg

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i82/thegreathunger/AboveShotWGN.jpg

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i82/thegreathunger/AshReflectionWGN.jpg

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i82/thegreathunger/AOD-DV-WGN.jpg

Could be any number of factors, from the TV station to my pc. Most likely it's that my family has split our cable line too many times and that has introduced some nasty noise. Does anyone know how to boost the cable signal to keep it clean? Any tips on getting the most out of TV broadcasts would be very helpful. I also lost a lot capturing to DV, and I'm thinking about installing my old MJPEG card.

Besides cleaning up my capture pipeline, I’d like to know how RidgeShark made his footage look so damn pretty. Any tips? Perhaps a full-blown guide? You said: “I have spent months researching different techniques to filter the SciFi footage and I have recently reached a point where I feel happy with how the footage looks.” I’m dying for the details! And also, how are you editing VOBs in Vegas w/o recompression?

I know OCP is gone now, but the alternate opening he put up on youtube intrigues me. I love the "Time-Warp" shot of ash after the titles and before he falls. Is that on the Sci-Fi cut? I didn’t get that on WGN, I just got the “Ash vs. Arthur” from the beginning and the “Windmill” sequence.

If anyone is interested, it’s playing again on WGN Monday morning at 4:00am.

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Originally posted by: droidguy1119
What's going on with this? This is perhaps my most anticipated release...


Yeah... Me also. This sounds like such an amazing project. Can't wait to see the end result.

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Originally posted by: evilmouse
Originally posted by: droidguy1119
What's going on with this? This is perhaps my most anticipated release...


Yeah... Me also. This sounds like such an amazing project. Can't wait to see the end result.


What those guys said.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Can't wait for this release and offer my services to PIF it.

I've got better things to do tonight than die! - Springer, Transformers the Movie

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I'm glad to see that there's still interest in this project - I can't wait to be finished with it and show you all the finished product. School has been taking up a lot of my time, but I still find some time to work on it every now and then.

Lately I've just been working on cleaning up the other SciFi exclusive scene - Ash and Arthur's first confrontation. It now looks just about as good as I can get it - and I am now 98% happy with it, like I am the Windmill scene. I tell ya - cleaning up those compression artifacts is extremely tricky. Video filters can certainly clean up the video, but it comes at the destruction of detail. Since the SciFi footage is merely standard definition, there's very little fine detail and most of it is easily smudged and smoothed away by your average video filter. Luckily, I've been using the avisynth filter, FFTD3D, by Fizick - FFTD3D Info . It nicely cleaned up a lot of the video noise and compression artifacts in the Windmill footage that I uploaded a few months ago - and now it's done a nice job with the Ash and Arthur scene. When used right, it can preserve most of a video's detail while suppressing video noise and compression artifacts.

Today I watched both of the filtered SciFi scenes on a 100" screen, being projected onto by a 720p projector - which was connected to an upconverting OPPO DVD player - and the results were very good. That isn't to say that the footage looks like it was mastered from HD or anything like that - but considering that the footage is originally from a highly compressed, standard defintion DirectTV source, it looks damned good and holds up nicely!

And mcfly89, thank you for showing what your recording of AoD looked like. I think it's fascinating to compare different recordings of this movie (yeah, I'm a nerd). Anyways, the corresponding images on my first post were from an earlier period when I had decided to kind of redesign the color scheme in the movie. I thought the movie would look better if it were more colorful and technicolor-ish - sounds crazy right? I just think of the movie as being more in-line with an earlier period of fantasy filmmaking - I honestly could see it has a fantasy film from the 50's or 60's. So I did kind of pretty-up the footage by altering the colors. I've long since abandoned that idea and I'm going to remain true to the original color scheme. The only problem is that each dvd has a different look.

The Anchor Bay Theatrical DVD and MGM Director's and European DVD's usually have a bluer/cooler look - while the Universal DVDs (original non-anamorphic, and new HD-DVD/DVD combo) usually have a warmer/orangish look to the footage. The TV version sometimes has a warmer look, but not always - the night scenes look more like the MGM DVD footage. So it's a bit of a toss up as to what the movie should actually look like. It's not a big deal - just gives a few options as how to present the movie.

Anyways, I don't have time to write a guide as to how I've done it all, but definitely look at that link in this post about FFTD3D - learn about it and avisynth. Also - as for how I'm getting the vobs into vegas - I open the dvd files in DGMPGDec (lots of options in this program, use it wisely) and then save the project as a d2v file, and then I convert that d2v file with VFAPI Reader into a usable, dummy AVI file than can then be used in Vegas. You can find DGMPGDec and VFAPI Reader at Video Help's Tools Section So that takes care of the video - dealing with the audio is one whole other headache.

Also - the Time Warp shot of Ash - as far as I know - isn't in any official version of Army of Darkness. It was just a nice little addition that OCP threw into his version. As far as I know, the version shown on WGN is exactly the same as the SciFi version.
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The director's cut originally opened with this image -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v326/RidgeShark/DinoDe.jpg

Does anyone know of any other movies that began with this company logo? I'd like to use a high quality source for this project.