First, I would like to apologize to those I never got around to sending discs to. My life, for the last few months - well it's been a long story. If those I promised discs to have not yet downloaded the torrent, please message me again with your address and I will quickly send you out copies. Again, sorry for the delay and being so damned irresponsible.
Anyways, it appears that my test disc has become the official Primitive Screwhead release.
You guys! I might have known that something like this was going to happen after I disappeared. I have to admit that I really get a kick out of how it all worked out - and having it released by none other than the world-infamous Garrett Gilchrist; I have to sincerely say - it's an honor. The guy has done some amazing work, and his encouragement along the way has meant a lot to me. Anyways, yes, I do consider the version released to be a test disc, though I never expressed these feelings to Garrett. I felt confident with the disc I had come up with and doubted that any of the testers would come up with anything major. So for all intents and purposes, the test disc was essentially the final single-layer version, though I did not want to call it final in case anyone spotted some serious problems that I had missed.So far, looks like the critiques are minimal. I'm not surprised that the multiple aspect ratio presentation is not popular with everyone. My decision to go with this format came about due to the fact that the tv version is not entirely open-matte - the first tv only sequence is open-matte for the most part, while the 2nd tv only sequence goes back and forth from a bit zoomed-in to open-matte. The way I presented it reduced the overcropping that would've occurred if I tried to fill the entire 16:9 frame, but I can see that it's a bit too distracting for some folks. On a side note, I originally tried marrying the zoomed-in shots from the tv version to the wider workprint footage. The outcome was very disgusting and much more distracting than my multiple aspect ratio solution. From the visual distortion to the dirt and screwy colour, the available workprint footage is one hell of a beast. The only shot that came out looking decent was the shot of Ash looking over his shoulder - and so it got left in as a curiosity. Anyways, if enough people dislike the multiple aspect ratio, I don't mind going the overcropping route for version 2.0.
As for the audio - it does sound a bit strange when it's coming through tv speakers, though it sounds fine to me when playing on my 5.1 surround setup. My audio editing and processing skills are a bit limited, especially when it comes to 5.1 mixes, so it's hard for me to know exactly where I went wrong in the mix. I would prefer to create a version that sounds fine on any equipment it's played on. Hopefully it wasn't too detrimental to anyone's viewing experience.
It seems like there's only a few reviews out there - If anyone else has viewed my cut, please respond here and let me know what you did or didn't like about it.
And now to clarify a few things -
1) I did not use an HD version for my cut. The majority of the footage comes from the MGM PAL Region 4 Australian release, which is visually superior to the Region 3 NTSC Director's Cut. Not only is there more detail in the R4 image, but there is also a little more picture on the left, right, and bottom sides of the video. Although PAL has more resolution than NTSC, the resulting Army of Darkness video produced when resizing the PAL footage to NTSC was still superior in detail when compared to the Region 3 video transfer, which was likely softened a tad by MGM in order to reduce compression-artifacting. Although this is unnoticeable on smaller displays, I figured it only made sense to include higher quality footage in my cut.
2) The single layer Primitive Screwhead Edition was not shrunken from a dual layer version. In order to keep the quality as high as possible, the single layer MPEG-2 video encode was made directly off of my 68gb Huffy Lossless Compressed video master. Despite the relatively low bitrate, the majority of the MPEG-2 Compression artifacts you see in the video actually come from the original sources and not my encode.
3) I do intend to create a Dual Layer version featuring a high bitrate video transfer. Although a higher bitrate won't necessarily improve the soft, lower quality tv and workprint footage, it will better present and preserve the higher detail from the PAL conversion I mentioned eariler.
Before I end this message, I just want to give a big thank you to everyone who has helped out with the project - Ocpmovie for the suggestions, encouragement, for releasing the disc for me, and also for making a copy for Henry the Red himself! Djsmokingjam, for the cover and disc art which are just fantastic. JHammondC and Molly, your comments had a big impact on the message that jump starts my cut
. I probably have some more thanks to give, but I'm dead tired at the moment and can't recall everyone - so I just want to give a big thank you to everyone for their interest and the help they offered.Also - Dark Jedi, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the movie. If I can help in any way, let me know.