Sorry for late reply Justicefrog been busy with work and on another project and wanted to give this your post all my attention.
Thanks for your comments, you certainly know the film well and have picked up an alot of changes others ive talked in detail to have not. One of the reasons I did not do a cut list is because I did'nt want people to know what had changed before viewing to see if it gelled.
justicefrog said:
Well on just one viewing, I've already learned a lot, LOL.
Namely, that compressing something in .RAR format splits a large file into parts, and that uncompressing creates a new file based on the sum of those parts, resulting in the 8GB file. Fortunately my laptop came with an ISO viewer (something else I learned at about 1130 last night) so I immediately loaded up your edit.
Overall I was thoroughly impressed your vision... and noticed a lot of similar changes that I would have made as well. It was like watching the movie through new eyes. It had been a few years since my last viewing, but I was still able to see some standout differences from the original version. I wanted to comment on a few things, if you didn't mind. It will probably take another viewing to absorb everything but these were just some things off the top of my head.
1. Different Universal Logo title. Caught me completely off guard. I liked it. Was this the alternate clip you had added from another film?
Yes, I added it from the Back To The Future BD, love this Universal Logo.
2. Binder jumping into the shack before it blows up, from the trailer. This was perfect, and exactly how I had imagined it would look.
3. Different music cues. Did you take these from the original CD soundtrack? Overall, I think I really liked these changes. Completely changes the mood and feeling for their respective sequences. ESPECIALLY Chance's street fight after first meeting Natasha. Keeping it closer to Woo's first cut really adds another dimension of suspense and danger to that scene, instead of it just being another scene where Van Damme sleepwalks through a butt-kicking. The two music variations I'm still back-and-forth on are the additional Creedence songs. I love CCR as much as the next guy, but I still haven't made up my mind if I like the addition or not. It could be because I'm so used to hearing Creedence in every single Vietnam War movie ever made.
Yes took the cues from the OST CD.
I wanted to add more music to help pace the scenes faster in the first half of the film. with them using creedence on the end credits i thought it would tie in nicely and add to the atmosphere. ;)
4. Different plot structure edit. I think you've convinced me to finally realize that Woo's first edit sequence was the best. Keeping the Mr. Zenan meeting before Chance's dogtag discovery makes a lot more sense, and now I'm scratching my head wondering why the US release changed things around. LOVE the transition between Van Cleef plunging the scissors in the door and Fouchon's piano sequence.
5. Mr. Zenan's hunt. I noticed right away the different sound effect you used for his gun. I like it, but again I'm kind of back-and-forth on it. I understand why you did it, since the gun has a suppressor. Speaking of sound effects, I probably did myself an injustice listening to this through headphones on my laptop. Hopefully soon I can get this baby on disc so I can listen to it through surround sound.
Took the sound effect from T2, Added it very late on in the edit once I put it in, then took it out. I missed it when I did one of my final watches so returned it.
I recommend wathing it on a Digital Surround Sound kit and use the DTS-HD track.
6. Overall lighting. I think I may have noticed some scenes being a little 'brighter', did you mention before that you had lightened up the night scenes?
I lightened up the whole film quite a lot as the DVD master I was using was to dark. It looked like it had been mastered with the wrong gamma settings. Maybe I went to far!
7. Motorcycle surfing scene. PERFECT. I saw where you had trimmed off just enough of the motorcycle stunt where Chance wasn't balancing himself while standing on the bike. That has ALWAYS bugged me and I'm glad to see that it most likely had bugged you, too :)
Everytime I watched it I would laugh for completly the wrong reasons.
8. Uncle Douvee montage sequence, when he throws Chance the shotgun. I thought this was beautifully done, and mirrors the Woo edit perfectly, but once I saw it I knew that you were going to have to make some kind of change at the end of the movie, resulting in a quick edit when Chance kicks the burning plank in half. I'm really torn on this. I like the montage in BOTH sequences, so I really don't know what choice I'll make when it comes time to put my edit together.
Tried both, went with sticking to the workprint. You maybe able to make it work better. Thought about using different shots for both sequences? maybe when/if the Bluray comes out.
9. The final gunbattle. Great as always, I didn't really notice very many changes except for the part when Chance hits Jerome at the top of the stairs. Did you flip another scene with Jerome to get that effect? I'll have to watch again to get a better look. I imagine it was probably tough to get it to look and flow just right so I commend your decision in doing that... I know that in the rough cut you can actually see Jerome getting shot but the quality is just too bad. That would probably be one of the areas I would try to work on cleaning up when I get around to working on an edit. Incidentally, there are a TON of scenes I'd like to clean up, but am wary of the time it's going to take to do that.
Yes fliped and zoomed in on an earlier shot of Jerome (Did'nt know that was his name.) and fliped the shot of Van Damme at the bottom of the staires plus added a bullet hit to Uncle Douvee from the uncut version.
10. The wipe transition when Fouchon finds dead Van Cleef. This was probably, overall, the one thing that stood out to me that I was unsure of. But you know, I am racking my brain trying to figure out what was originally there in the US version? I think it could work maybe... I don't know, it still sticks out in my mind. Maybe it happens too quickly after Chance aces Van Cleef... which might be why the US version added a short scene of something in between to break it up a little. And then again it's probably just a preference thing.
In the original version it cut to the Uncle Douvee and Natasha "I can not dance..." scene which Id used earlier on like it was positioned in the workprint. As those wipes are used earlier in the film a couple of times and in alot of John Woo films I thought it would work. Tried repeat footage ect but just did not work.
My overall thoughts of your edit are that I want to congratulate you on such a fantastic job. Changing the music cues and shifting the plot sequences back to the original cut really do wonders in making it more like Woo's original cut. I noticed even more now that I like the bad guys in this movie WAY more than the protagonists, LOL, but I just chalk that up to Henriksen chewing up his lines just as he always does. I also noticed some continuity errors that I'll have to add to my original list that might be able to be fixed in Photoshop (I'll never be able to afford something as grand as Vegas or After Effects so it'll have to be frame by frame for my version unfortunately)
But you have indeed inspired me to keep at it, and revive my efforts at making an edit of this movie, no matter how much or little time I can devote to it. As you can guess I will have a lot of questions along each step of the process, so I'll certainly appreciate any help or advice you can offer. Thanks again for all the hard work you put into your edit, you did an awesome job and I was super pumped to be able to finally watch it!
Good luck with your edit mate and thankyou for the kind words, really glad you enjoyed it and let me know if you need any help Technical/moral support while you work on yours.
Fingers crossed on the Blu-ray, lets hope Universal hear our crys lol.