Those who have been around may have noticed/followed my attempts in making a fan edit with my combining the two parts of the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Two-Face” into one forty-five minute film. I had been unsuccessful in making a high quality edit, and I believe this was a result of my initial tries with Womble while not following ADM’s instructions, followed by trying to adapt some of those directions to Adobe Premiere Elements. I still want to complete this edit. I am seriously considering getting Womble and anything else I need to do these things now, and so my first question is this: have people been successful in completing relatively complex edits with ADM’s method? The reason I ask is this…

A project I have long wanted to do is an edit of Superman III. It is a seriously flawed film, but there are some solid elements, specifically the Lana plot and the junkyard confrontation. I feel that for the most part, simple cutting would succeed in greatly strengthening this film. It’s a pity that we don’t have all of the deleted scenes in finished form, with anamorphic widescreen, as some would be helpful (I’d especially like to be able to use the extended drinking scene with Brad reminiscing about how kids used to call him the Smallville Flash–IMO, this was the most important part of this scene, fleshing out Brad’s pathetic state a little bit more. Another one I’d like to be able to use is the gag of the man knocking on the door next to Lana’s room, making Clark’s confused look when the scene starts in the theatrical version make sense). Nonetheless, I think there’s a decent film underneath the stupidity.

I hesitate to elaborate on all the changes right now, but here’s some of them.

The film now starts at the Daily Planet, much like ADM’s Superman Redeemed. When we first meet Gus, he is already working at Webster’s company (I don’t remember where I got this idea, but someone here had it already–good idea!)
Cut out the misadventures in computing when Gus tries to hack the satellite. Fighting crosswalk signals? This is Superman, not Airplane!.
Cut out Gus falling off the building in skis–I’ve already done a test clip on Premiere Elements, and it works fantastically! I’d kinda like to cut the shots establishing that the ski resort is on top of the building, but the dialogue and shots make it very troublesome.
Cut out the phone conversation between Gus and Ross after Gus gives Superman the fake kryptonite. This removes the idiotic line, “I ask you to kill Superman and you can’t do that one…simple…thing.” This also makes it so that Gus’s later move to stop them makes a lot more sense. For the most part this removes the explicit discussion of killing Superman from scenes with Superman; Lorelai does say it can hurt Superman in the ski lodge scene, but it would make sense that Gus doesn’t realize the full ramifications of what they are doing to Superman until he sees the supercomputer in action.
Cut out Gus’s Super-bragging and rejection of the job. Did this character grow at all? Gus’s last shot is him looking to the sky appreciatively and saying, “Take it easy, man.”

These are the real biggies that stand out in my mind. There will probably be other trims here and there, but I haven’t done a thorough investigation of the film yet.

There are a few effects I’d like to incorporate, and those would be beyond me, so if anyone would eventually be able to lend a hand to this, it’d be awesome. These effects would be the following:

New credits in space–it would be great if there was a restored widescreen version of the space credits used for the TV version lying around.
Fixing the effect somehow of Superman inverting the tornado. It looks really cheap, like they were just gradually revealing something that was already there, with a flat line at the top. If it could be done to make this look smoother, perhaps even getting a bit of a swirling effect and making it look more like an actual tornado once Superman gets to it, that would be sweet.
There is one last thing that is more optional, but would be really cool to pull off. I always wanted to have the supercomputer be called Brainiac. If nothing else, it would be great to see a display read “Brainiac online” or something like that. If the triangular Brainiac logo from TAS could be included that would make it even better. If we could have the actual dialogue go over it, it would be beyond awesome. At this point, it would be more a wink at the fans than anything else, but it occurred to me the other day that perhaps it could be implied that the fake kryptonite actually affected Gus while he had it. My intial thought was to have a subliminal shot of the Brainiac logo inserted when Gus receives the fake kryptonite, and possibly repeat this elsewhere. It could be cheesy, but it could work. If nothing else, just the logo on the screen would be cool.

Any thoughts, comments, advice?