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Greetings fellow LOST fans! š
After many years of Jack Shephard level obsessive focus, I am beyond thrilled to finally present, āCausalogically Lostā; a re-edit of LOST, following the chronological experiences of the characters, rather than a strict ātimeā based structure. For example, If anyone happens to travel through time, we travel with them, always moving along with whatever āpresentā the characters are in, regardless of what ātimeā they are in.
As many LOST fans did, I wondered what it would be like to watch it in chronological order. Not long after LOST finished airing, a very devoted fan did just that, with the now well known āChronologically Lostā project. I loved that a fan had put so much effort into creating that, and it was super fun to watch, experiencing my favorite show in a new way. Indeed, the title of this project is, in part, a tribute to that original edit. Only with a causal twist, so to speak. š No doubt about it, watching that project inspired me to build my own.
As much as I enjoyed that version of the show, there were a few things about it that werenāt exactly how I would have preferred. Although it was fun to see the placement of each scene strictly chronologically, this also had an opposite effect; many of the characterās stories were now out of order. This project aims to maintain a logical story, following the journeys of our characters, from start to finish. And I wanted it to be a cohesive flow of events within each episode, without breaks, to make it feel as much like it was meant to be watched this way as possible. And it grew and grew and grew from there.
Here are some specific details, so you can have an idea what to expect.
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There are 81 episodes, totaling 275GB in size. The episodes average around an hour each, though some are longer or shorter, depending on the events happening at that time. The structure and story were always the focal point, being far more important than uniform episode length.
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I constructed the entirety of this project from scratch in Adobe Premiere Pro, using uncompressed 1080p Blu-Ray files to maintain the highest video quality possible. The exported episodes I will be sharing are compressed, being that most people wonāt want to download/store 920GB, which is the size of the full quality exports. Rest assured, it is very high quality 1080p HD, and I did a great deal of testing to find a reasonable bitrate that did not show any noticeable loss of quality. I wouldnāt share this at all if it didnāt look fantastic, as having really high quality video was one of the big reasons I wanted to make my own version to begin with. I might be willing to share the full quality version at some point, if there winds up being demand for that.
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The exported audio is AAC surround 5.1, VBR 640-1024bps. The audio sounds fantastic and is free of any artifacts.
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The episodes are in .mp4 format, for maximum compatibility.
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There is no split-screen used in this edit. All events happen as ongoing scenes, edited together as flowing events. I tried to make these ānewā versions of combined scenes feel like they couldāve been part of the original show.
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To make scenes that were originally shown over several different episodes match appropriately (like during the day of flight 815), Iāve done some subtle color correction. This was only done in these cases, as I wanted to maintain the original look of the show at all times, while also allowing these kinds of scenes to match properly.
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In an attempt to make this a unique experience, and to feel as professional as possible, I have removed all act/commercial breaks (cuts to black). In addition, all flashback/forward/sideways noises have been completely cut out (with a few select ones left in for dramatic purposes). This provides a seamless flow of scenes, bridging naturally, with no distractions.
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Though the producers of LOST did an incredible job with continuity throughout this incredibly complicated show, when re-editing chronologically, the few little mistakes they did make become much more obvious. To address this, Iāve cut select lines of dialogue, or very slightly altered a scene, to remove the continuity breaking elements.
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To make transitions between scenes feel more natural, as well as provide context to scenes that played differently in their original form, Iāve used selections from the Official LOST Soundtrack albums to insert additional score. All added music is 100% from LOST, by genius composer Michael Giacchino. In an effort to maintain LOSTās brilliant musical dynamic, I tried to make sure the added score is relevant to the characters/themes happening on screen.
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The āMissing Piecesā bonus scenes (released between Seasons 3 and 4), the deleted scenes for Season 4, and āThe New Man In Chargeā (series epilogue scene) have all been included. I would have loved to use ALL the deleted scenes, for every season, but the remaining ones available are very low quality and look horrible along side the lovely HD footage, taking the viewer out of the experience.
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Because any current methods of removing on-screen credits are inconsistent, most of them have been left as is. This means there will sometimes be cast and crew credits across the screen at varying times throughout episodes. As much as I would have loved to remove them completely, there is not a satisfactory way to do it currently that doesnāt look bad in one way or another.
There is so much more to it than I could possibly list here, but these are the main details I figure most people would want to know ahead of time. There are plenty of fun surprises all throughout that will be better to just experience while watching it. That said, if thereās anything else youād like to know, Iām always happy to answer questions!
To get the needed information to access this edit, please send me a private message here on the forum. I will get back to you ASAP with the details. š
I want to give a special thanks to fellow forum user PiEater, for providing enormous support to myself and this project! The time and effort spent watching through the entire thing (many episodes more than once) with laser focus (while documenting everything) during our ābetaā test, providing so many great ideas and suggestions along the way, and beyond all that, the enthusiasm, have made all the difference in this project finally reaching its conclusion. And finally, for coming up with such a fitting, awesome title! Thank you so much for everything!
I wanted this to be a special experience, for new and old LOST fans alike, and have spent countless hours (over many years) doing everything I could to make it so. Iāve scoured through these episodes dozens of times, and I am incredibly proud of the end result. And now Iām beyond happy to be able to share it with all my fellow LOST fans! I hope you love it with as much love as I put into it! ā¤ļø š
