Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Edit Suggestions — Page 17

TMBTM said:

INDY: KGB on American soil? Who is that woman?

The problem is that Jones already called "that woman" by her name earlier in the movie at the Area 51. Am I wrong?

TMBTM,

You're right ... but if you look through my list of suggested edits so far you'll see I've resolved that issue by cutting out the part where she tells Indy her name and rank, along with the parts where Indy calls her by name. So now it actually makes sense that he asks who she was in the FBI scene.

Take care,
Ryan

Would it not possibly be easier to cut Indy mentioning 'who was that woman?' in the FBI scene, rather than cutting every mention of Spalko saying her name and rank and even Indy saying her name in the opening ('drop your guns, or colonel doctor Irina Spalko's dead')? It just seems like too many cuts at the start of the movie otherwise, and that could be messy.

Instead, one option would be to just cut Indy asking that one question 'who was that woman?' in the interrogation scene. This would still work:

Ross: Indy, thank God - don't you know it's dangerous to climb into refrigerators, those things can be death-traps.
Indy: Good to see you too, Bob.
Ross: Relax gentlemen, I can vouch for Indy.
Indy: What's going on? Russian soldiers on American soil? *Cut Indy's 'who was that woman?' here *

Perhaps then have a close-up shot of the FBI men, or General Ross, or even a wide-perspective shot, before cutting straight into the document on Spalko being thrown down onto the table and Ross telling Indy about Spalko, and the Kremlin's missions regarding paranormal artefacts. This way, it would still flow - after Indy asking 'what's going on?', he is now being told further information about Spalko, and this makes sense. Even his 'yep, that's her' remark would still be in place in this scenario.

topdawg193 said:

Would it not possibly be easier to cut Indy mentioning 'who was that woman?' in the FBI scene, rather than cutting every mention of Spalko saying her name and rank and even Indy saying her name in the opening ('drop your guns, or colonel doctor Irina Spalko's dead')? It just seems like too many cuts at the start of the movie otherwise, and that could be messy.

Instead, one option would be to just cut Indy asking that one question 'who was that woman?' in the interrogation scene. This would still work:

Ross: Indy, thank God - don't you know it's dangerous to climb into refrigerators, those things can be death-traps.
Indy: Good to see you too, Bob.
Ross: Relax gentlemen, I can vouch for Indy.
Indy: What's going on? Russian soldiers on American soil?

Perhaps then have a close-up shot of the FBI men, or General Ross, or even a wide-perspective shot, befoe cutting straight into the document on Spalko being thrown down onto the table and Ross telling Indy about Spalko, and the Kremlin's missions regarding paranormal artefacts. This way, it would still flow - after Indy asking 'what's going on?', he is now being told further information about Spalko, and this makes sense. Even his 'yep, that's her' remark would still be in place in this scenario.

Hey topdawg,

It's actually almost a toss up between the two in terms of the number of edits, since we'd also need to cut the second time Indy asks, "Who is she?", during the interrogation scene. In terms of complexity, I think cutting it from the interrogation scene would be harder because both lines that need to be cut are in between other lines that need to be kept during a continuous take (no camera angle changes) and nobody walking across frame to hide a wipe. On the other hand, during the opening sequence, the camera angle changes make cutting her reveal of her identity and rank and Indy calling her by name both fairly easy cuts.

The other consideration that makes me favor removing the identity reveal from the opening sequence is that it makes the villain, Spalko, a little more mysterious - and thus possibly more threatening - than walking up and introducing herself 10 seconds after appearing on screen.

Ryan

You're right ... but if you look through my list of suggested edits so far you'll see I've resolved that issue by cutting out the part where she tells Indy her name and rank

As Jack Loyd said: Oups...

I think I skiped that one, I just keep an eye on this thread from time to time. Nice work by the way.

I just wanted to bump this in a gesture of support for this project.  While I'm certainly not a hater of the theatrical cut of this film, it is clearly disconnected in MANY ways from the original trilogy.  Much can and SHOULD be done to alter this film to be in keeping with the first three films, and I commend the efforts of everyone in this group for their passion and dedication.

I can't wait to see this become a reality!

I'm working on deliverables for a 3d modeling project right now, which is why I haven't posted in the past few days. I should start posting stuff again on Wednesday or Thursday.

Ryan

I hope to get the chance to go through this properly sometime soon too, and post some thoughts soon after.  Too tied up with Ady's 'Empire:Revisited' these last days!  :)

And I'm back.

Ok, I left off last time with all those pics I posted showing I think we could remove lines surrounding Indy saying of Spalko, "That's her ... who is she", which required some complicated edits. One might debate whether those particular edits were entirely necessary, but I didn't like the lines so I worked out a way to remove them.

Now ... onward and upward with the last bit of the scene:

From here we move on to Indy asking, "What exactly am I being accused of besides surviving a nuclear (said as nucular) blast?"

- As an academic, it's highly unlikely that Indy would mispronounce nuclear, so I think this should be removed ... unless someone can find an audio snippet of Ford saying nuclear properly ... preferably not in a Russian accent :) Maybe he says it in interviews on the special features, but I think we can just remove it. I propose we have him say, "What exactly am I being accused of?" and cut if off there.

- After Indy asks, "what exactly am I being accused of?", I propose we skip the next stupid comments by the FBI, saying all of his activities are suspicious including the war, Ross' response about how many medals Indy won, and the FBI asking if he deserves them, followed by Indy's wounded look. I think we should skip from Indy's asking what he's accused of to FBI 1 saying, "Dr. Jones, let's just say for now that you are of interest to the Bureau" but we should cut off the "Dr. Jones", which is said before the camera switches to FBI 1. Now the exchange goes...

INDY: "What exactly am I being accused of?"

FBI 1: "Let's just say for now that you are of interest to the Bureau."

FBI 2: "Of great interest."

And thus we have finally come to the end of the FBI interrogation scene.

PHEW!

Ryan

COLLEGE LECTURE SCENE

I don't really have any problems with this section. The one thing I'd like to change is when Charles says at the end of the scene in the college, "Henry ... I resigned", I'd like to see if we can change it to him saying, "Indy ... I resigned." If we can find a good audio clip, the movement of his mouth would work just as well with "Indy" and it does with "Henry". We might consider pulling a clip of Marcus saying Indy from a previous movie. I think their voices are close enough that you could pass it off ... If not, some slight adjustments to the pitch of Marcus' voice should fix the problem.

Ryan

AT INDY'S HOME WITH CHARLES

Just a few things here...

- I think I remember someone saying there's a better reading of the line "I never should have doubted you my friend" on the bonus features. If so, the take that's currently in the film should be replaced. The whole line reading is off. However, even if there's a better take in the bonus features, I'm not sure that "my friend" should be left in. It seems unnatural ... but I guess I'd have to hear the one on the bonus features.

As a side point, does anyone have any idea how crazy it is that there's an Indiana Jones movie on DVD that I haven't bought? But wait ... is there REALLY an Indy movie on DVD I haven't bought? I'm not so sure. But there WILL be when we're all done with this.

- Ok the promo shots of Henry Sr. and Marcus on Indy's desk have GOT to go. I wouldn't mind one of the promo shots for Crusade of Ford and Connery outside Petra. Yeah, it's a promo shot, but it looks like a legitimate picture that they very likely would have taken when they were there. Only potential problem is I'm not sure that what's on screen in Crusade allows for them to have taken that picture. I kinda think it doesn't, so we might want to go with a different picture.

Ryan

I think the train platform scene is fine.

DINER SCENE

- This seems fine up until Indy's line, "Nice try kid, but I think you just brought a knife .... .... .... to a gunfight". He pauses far too long to allow the Russians to show the guns that he already can tell they have. Fortunately this is a pretty easy fix. After Indy says "knife" the camera switches to the Russians as they slowly pull out their guns, followed by the rest of "to a gunfight" said off screen. We just need to grab "to a gunfight" and move it to immediately after the camera change. That way there's only the tiniest hint of a pause in the line, which seems pretty natural to me.

- After they exit the diner and before they get on the bike, Indy says, "Your mom didn't escape. They let her go, so she could mail the letter and you could bring it to me and I could translate it!" He seems to be spending a lot of time here with a punctuated and paused delivery of exposition and then he gives this blinking look back towards the door of the diner as though he's forgotten that they have a problem. Mutt then has to tells him, "Get on gramps!". It's one thing for Mutt to say this as part of his attitude towards Indy ("Hey old man" on the train platform), because he doesn't know him ... but we shouldn't be thinking it too, but we do, so something should probably be done. Instead of me taking too much time to figure out exactly how to improve this, let's just note it as something we might want to change and we can figure out how later.

We're now 33:32 into the movie. Woohoo! We passed the half hour mark. And only about 100 changes or so :|

Ryan

BIKE CHASE

- This scene is pretty good. Don't really have any problems with it. Anyone have any thoughts on the Marcus statue and head falling in the lap of the Russian? It doesn't seem particularly clever and just ends up being a pointless defacing of the statue to have the head fall off. I think we could cut it so that the car crashes into the statue and stops, but we don't see the head falling off. Mutt's resulting smile and Indy's not so happy expression still fit even without the head falling off the statue.

- After the bike crashes and slides under the table in the library we have another of those unrealistic pauses where Indy says, "If you want to be a good archaeologist ... ... ... you have to get out of the library." We should figure out a way to reduce the pause to no more than second and not make it seems like he's waiting for camera setups to give his lines.

As you might be able to tell, my tiredness is making me lazy in just pointing out a problem without coming up with an exact solution. Since I don't want to abandon the detail I was using in my ealier suggestions, I think I'll stop here for now and pick up next time with an exact solution for this problem before moving on.



Anyone have any comments on all the stuff I've posted tonight?

Ryan

I mentioned the line read of "my friend".  It's on-set audio, on disc two, and actually sounds something like natural dialogue.  The level is a bit low, though, and I haven't messed with it myself yet, but absolutely worth a look.

jones1899 said:

Heks, I assume you've seen the photo swap done by Laser on one of the first pages of this thread. I think this works much better than the lazy way they did it in the movie. 

As far as the Marcus statue head thing - I found the effect looked cheap like they sped up the camera or something. And I'm don't remember there being much of a point in having the head fall off either. Kind of a rude way to treat old Mr. Brody anyway.

Sounds good though. Nice detail as always. 

Hey jones1899,

Yes, I have seen that photo swap test. I downloaded it when I originally came across it and checked it out again. I think the execution is great, but I'm not convinced we've found the right pictures yet. I find the Connery pic looks a little too modern in its pose ... possibly like a headshot that would be given to an agent or part of a magazine photoshoot. The Marcus pic looks more time-appropriate, but still looks a little too posed, like a glamour shot or, again, a picture that would have been given to an agent back then.

I agree with you on the statue stuff. His head coming off looked dumb and there was no point to having it fall in the lap of the commie. I think we should just have the crash and then jump to the expressions on Mutt and Indy like I suggested above.

Take care,
Ryan

In regards to the cliff scene, I think it would've been better (and more exciting) if it was edited similarly to the scene in this TV spot (@ 0:22):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT2EeiFqD-8&eurl

The Golden Idol said:

In regards to the cliff scene, I think it would've been better (and more exciting) if it was edited similarly to the scene in this TV spot (@ 0:22):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT2EeiFqD-8&eurl

I think that's  a pretty decent guide to follow. We'd need to make it a bit longer to flow better, but I generally like the order from what I saw.

Ryan

HeKS said:

The Golden Idol said:

In regards to the cliff scene, I think it would've been better (and more exciting) if it was edited similarly to the scene in this TV spot (@ 0:22):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT2EeiFqD-8&eurl

 

I think that's  a pretty decent guide to follow. We'd need to make it a bit longer to flow better, but I generally like the order from what I saw.

Ryan

 And I like how Indy's cut off and goes straight to screaming. It cuts out Marion's horrible "trust me" line.

The Golden Idol said:

 And I like how Indy's cut off and goes straight to screaming. It cuts out Marion's horrible "trust me" line.

Agreed. I'm still a ways off from this scene, but when I come to it I'll keep all this in mind ... assuming someone actually doing an edit (rather than a list of changes) hasn't already gotten this done, cause I know laser was working on this sequence.

Ryan