FINAL WARRIORS 2004 - Semi-humorous edit of GODZILLA FINAL WARS (Released)

While not the most seriously engineered of fan edits, and the video quality may leave something to be desired (I used downscaled  .avi content for the majority of the feature instead of full res .mpeg stuff), it’s running along rather fluidly.

So a bit of perspective. Space Warriors 2000 is an unapproved '80s compilation film of old Ultraman shows with new footage spliced in at some points, along with different sound effects, a stock music score and the inclusion of bizarre dubbed monster voices. For this edit, I’m doing pretty much the same, in an attempt to recreate that schlocky, late night TV movie feeling.

I’ve edited the overpadded film down to about 97 minutes (I’m still chopping away at it) and have completely overhauled the sound design to scratchy mono, with a new DeWolfe library soundtrack. For the time being, I’ll be dubbing the monster scenes myself, with a very painful script to follow. A contact of mine is doing his own edit of the film, and when that version’s completed, it’s our plan to smash the two edits together in a very haphazard fashion, almost like a Godfrey Ho film.

Most of the first and third acts in my cut are heavily trimmed for pacing reasons, deleting a lot of the human drama and a few action scenes, including Ozaki and Kazama’s partnership subplot. The opening is slightly tampered, with a new credits sequence and some shuffling. New dialogue and narration will also be dubbed in.

I’m using the German version of Godzilla Final Wars for the picture (Original source being the 2006 Splendid DVD. It lacks many instances of onscreen text and those dreadful color filters), with the .ac3 track of the international dub from the Sony DVD for the dialogue. While it’s out of my means to eradicate the the original music score completely, I’m doing my best to hide it by using the center 5.1 channel exclusively.

Now, onto the primary sound editing. I’ve substituted the standard Hollywooden sound design with a mishmash of classic Toho sound effects, cartoony plus realistic Hanna Barbara stuff, and a few from the Source Engine library for some instances.

I used mkvmerge and mkvextract to slow the down the PAL frame rate to 23.976 fps and Sony Vegas 10 for principle video and sound editing. To keep consistent with Space Warriors 2000, the aspect ratio is very inconsistent, the majority being 2.35:1 squeezed to academy, but some segments are in squeezed 1.66:1 with added panning.

Clip #1: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11f64e (No monster dubbing)

Clip #2: http://vimeo.com/68271930 (No monster dubbing)

This is my first large fan editing project, so critical feedback and recommendations are encouraged.