IT - The Losers Only Cut (Released)

Hello All,

With the release of It Chapter Two recently, I was able to sit down and complete my first full fan edit. My goal was to combine Chapters One and Two of the IT films into something that resembled the narrative of Stephen King’s novel a bit more.

I’m an aspiring filmmaker and editor and this is my first full fan edit, I’ve done a few fan edit trailers in the past, but this is, by far, the biggest project I’ve ever taken on.

Because when I began this project the only available files were the Blu-Ray release of Chapter One and the digital release of Chapter Two, my edit is extremely rough around the edges. I was able to use the two films and the soundtrack releases of the two films to complete my edit.

The current run time is about 4.5 Hours, but I’ve also split the movie up into two smaller files (my own version of Chapter One and Two if you will). I’ve currently got these files available on my Google drive and I’d love to share with any one interested, just send me a PM and I’ll send you a link to my Google Drive.

I’d really love to get some notes and advice, but I also realize this project has a pretty massive run time and we’re less than a week away from a NEW Star Wars Film! As well as the Holidays being right around the corner.

At any rate, I present, It - The Losers Only Cut, available for those who wish to watch it.

EDIT:

Here is a complete cut list for the most recent cut of It - The Losers Only Cut

• Cut a few frames that lingered on the Denbrough basement door after Georgie runs up
• Cut the title sequence from Chapter One, instead fading to white and then into the oath sequence from the end of the movie.
• Added in Title Card reading “11 Months Later”
• Added in footage of Young Mike from Chapter Two’s opening re-cap as well as Older Mike’s voiceover intercut with footage from the oath sequence.
• Cut a few frames of establishing footage of the opening murder in Chapter Two
• Created my own title sequence using Chapter Two’s title sequence
• Fade to white after Older Bill gets Older Mike’s phone call, cutting back to the Last Day of School from Chapter One. Also added in a title card saying “Last Day of June 09. 1989 1:05 P.M.” (A little nod to Dazed & Confused)
• Cut footage of Bill walking home after school and being confronted by his dad for stealing blueprints.
• Reversed the order of Older Eddie and Richie getting calls from Older Mike to Older Richie THEN Older Eddie.
• Fading to white right as Older Eddie’s car is hit, going to Younger Eddie talking to Bill and Richie.
• After Younger Ben is attacked by Pennywise in the Library there is a hard cut to Older Ben receiving Older Mike’s phone call, before flashing back to Younger Ben leaving the library and immediately being attacked by Henry and his gang.
• A fade to white on Young Stan’s face as Eddie is patching up Ben, fading to Older Stan planning a vacation with his wife and receiving the call from Older Mike.
• Hard cut to Younger Stanley prepping for his Bar Mitzvah and being chased by the scary lady in the picture.
• Another hard cut, this time back to Older Stanley getting into the bathtub and slitting his wrists.
• Cut from Older Bev to Younger Bev after Older Bev has left her husband.
• After Bev has finished cutting her hair, cut to Younger Mike biking into town and being terrorized by Pennywise and Henry Bowers in the process
• Hard cut to swimming sequence
• Hard cut from The Losers in Ben’s bedroom to Henry and his goons shooting bottles. This is the scene that I am the least sure about as far as it’s placement goes. There isn’t any exposition in Chapter Two about Henry going to prison for the murders, so I needed to set up him having an abusive parent, killing his abusive parent, getting arrested and breaking out all fairly early.
• The above scene also begins zoomed in to crop out the “August” title card.
• Hard cut to Young Eddie’s first interaction with Pennywise, which flows into Bev’s bathroom being filled with blood.
• Cross Dissolve on Bev’s bathroom door to Bill sitting down on Georgie’s bed. I did this to cut out some footage of Bill sleeping over a drawing he’s done of Bev. Part of my goal was to remove some of the more unnecessary romance scenes between Bev and Bill, this was an easy way to cut down on that aspect.
  I also cut out a few seconds of footage of Pennywise sliding back onto the Basement floor after Bill has run away.
• Hardcut to Bev waiting for The Losers
• Cut from The Losers officially forming after saving Mike in the Rock Fight to the Older Losers Reforming at the Jade of the Orient restaurant.
• Removed murder of little girl at baseball game in Chapter Two
• Fade in from white on Henry Bowers killing his father. Removed footage of Henry and his goons sitting at his car/Henry finding his knife in the mailbox
• Another fade from white, this time on Pennywise’s face on the Bowers TV to the water rushing out of the tunnel and Henry Bowers introduction in Chapter Two.
• Removed Henry breaking out of prison sequence.
• Cross Dissolve from Older Henry’s face to the Derry Town House sign
• Fade in from White on Older Bill Saying “No, Not that whole summer” to the parade sequence in Chapter One
• A cut from Chapter One to Chapter Two kid footage as The Losers Breakup, going to Bev and Bill walking home.
• Replaced Bill’s flashback footage while riding his childhood bike, removed footage of Bev clung to his back, and replaced it with footage of the entire Losers Club riding their bikes.
• Removed Older Ben’s flashback sequence to summer school. I thought this scene was strange because Ben is supposed to have been really good at school and bright, plus he doesn’t actually find a token in this scene. His token is his autographed yearbook page.
• Removed footage of Older Bill and Older Bev making out, including flashback footage of Younger Bill and Younger Bev making out.
• When Older Richie goes to the empty Temple and has a flashback of Stan’s Bar Mitzvah, I reversed the footage of Younger Bev putting the Poem into her wall, to make it look like she was taking it out of the wall to read it.
• I also removed footage of Younger Bev tucking her dad into bed, as I felt it was weird for her to be showing affection towards her abusive father. I replaced this footage with footage of the losers breaking up.
• After the above flashback sequence I’ve added in the sequence from the beginning of Chapter One where Younger Mike is chastised by his grandfather for not being able to kill a sheep. This sets up Mike’s use of the Bolt Gun and shows what Mike was up to after the break up of the Losers.
• Hard cut to Younger Bev being taken by Pennywise
• Hard cut to Younger Eddie getting “Loser” drawn on his cast
• Cut to Older Bill trying to rescue the kid that lives in his old house at the fair
• Hard Cut to Younger Bill realizing Bev is late to mate him and going to check on her.
• In the original Chapter One footage, Younger Bill realizing Bev is late comes before Eddie getting “Loser” drawn on his cast.
• After Younger Mike has thrown Younger Henry Bowers down the well, there is a cross dissolve to Older Mike waiting for the Losers in the library and then being attacked by Older Henry Bowers.
• After the Losers kill Henry and talk to Bill on the phone there is another cut back to the Younger Losers in the sewer, coming in with Stanley getting separated from the group.
• A dissolve from black as the Younger Losers huddle around Bill after “defeating” Pennywise, to the Older Losers meeting up at Neibolt.
• A dissolve from Neibolt House self destructing to The Younger Losers taking their oath.
  Removed the footage of The Losers leaving one by one and Bill and Bev making out
• Cut to the Older Losers jumping into the quarry and washing themselves off.
  This footage extends to the end of Chapter Two and the end of It - The Losers Only Cut.

As someone who hasn’t seen either film and was purposefully waiting for the teased official “supercut” that may or may not actually happen, or for a fan edit like yours, I’m intrigued.

Do you have plans to eventually update your edit with the Blu-Ray of Chapter 2? And if so, are you trying to hold off on that until you get some viewer feedback to make additional tweaks before updating the Chapter 2 video with the BR?

ChainsawAsh said:

As someone who hasn’t seen either film and was purposefully waiting for the teased official “supercut” that may or may not actually happen, or for a fan edit like yours, I’m intrigued.

Do you have plans to eventually update your edit with the Blu-Ray of Chapter 2? And if so, are you trying to hold off on that until you get some viewer feedback to make additional tweaks before updating the Chapter 2 video with the BR?

Currently I’d like to get some feedback before diving back in and updating, I also really want to get the deleted scenes from both films to see if there is anything intriguing there that would work within my cut.

As far as the “supercut” goes, I almost held off on this project after hearing the rumors, but I recently read somewhere that the director is not intending to interweave the stories like in the book. Sounds like he wants to split them up still, which I’m not a fan of. That’s the other thing, if the “supercut” does eventually get released, I’ll probably update my cut to include any new footage shot for that.

The Stephen King novel is one of my all-time favorite books, and the miniseries from 1990 scared the crap out of me as a kid, but it also made me fall in love with long form story telling.

Oh, I didn’t realize he didn’t intend to cut them together like the book. What’s the point then? Ugh.

I’d be happy to check out your edit and give you some feedback. Might be useful to get feedback from someone who’s never seen either movie, too! Just gotta buy the movies first and then I’ll give your edit a spin sometime this week (probably after Rise of Skywalker comes out, honestly, but I might be able to get to it sooner).

Hey everyone,

Quick update, I made a little trailer for my cut, take a look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDqIvEAwzyM

Thank you so much for the link.

Okay, I finally gave this a watch the other night. Bear in mind that this was my first viewing of either film, I’ve never seen the Tim Curry version, and I only read the book once, years and years ago (and can’t remember if I finished it).

Overall, I really liked it and feel like the studio’s choice to split the story up by era probably severely harmed it, especially part two, since the older Losers’ story exists primarily as a framing device for the younger Losers’ story until the ending, and splitting that off on its own can’t have worked very well.

However, this edit isn’t totally seamless. I didn’t take specific notes or anything and don’t know if I’ll revisit your cut anytime soon to do so, but here are my general thoughts:

The biggest issue I have is that it often didn’t feel like there was much rhyme or reason to tie together the “flashbacks.” We’d get a bit of 2016 material, then it would flash back to 1989, but it didn’t feel like a natural progression, like “this is what Richie is remembering” Instead it was more, “Richie is remembering something, now here’s 30 minutes of the kids, 15 of which don’t involve Richie at all.”

Then there are things that are shown out of order/context that were confusing, like when Bowers is arrested by the cops but keeps showing up in the 1989 timeline. I assumed I’d missed a scene where he escaped from jail or something, but by the end I realized that it apparently took place after the Losers’ 1989 battle with IT. The structure is already nonlinear, so as much as is possible, the 1989 and 2016 stories should both proceed linearly in parallel unless there’s a good reason not to.

Finally, there was a lot of inconsistency in how the switching between timeframes happened - sometimes it was a dip to white, sometimes it was an organic transition that I can only assume was as it’s presented in the second movie, sometimes it was just a cut. These should be made as consistent as possible, if at all possible.

I’m also not a fan of putting fan edit titles over actual title screens, but that’s a personal nitpick.

NOW, I don’t want you to think I’m just shitting all over your edit - it was very well done for a first edit, and I absolutely know I enjoyed this far more than I would have enjoyed watching each film individually, I just think there’s room to make it even better!

ChainsawAsh said:

Okay, I finally gave this a watch the other night. Bear in mind that this was my first viewing of either film, I’ve never seen the Tim Curry version, and I only read the book once, years and years ago (and can’t remember if I finished it).

Overall, I really liked it and feel like the studio’s choice to split the story up by era probably severely harmed it, especially part two, since the older Losers’ story exists primarily as a framing device for the younger Losers’ story until the ending, and splitting that off on its own can’t have worked very well.

However, this edit isn’t totally seamless. I didn’t take specific notes or anything and don’t know if I’ll revisit your cut anytime soon to do so, but here are my general thoughts:

The biggest issue I have is that it often didn’t feel like there was much rhyme or reason to tie together the “flashbacks.” We’d get a bit of 2016 material, then it would flash back to 1989, but it didn’t feel like a natural progression, like “this is what Richie is remembering” Instead it was more, “Richie is remembering something, now here’s 30 minutes of the kids, 15 of which don’t involve Richie at all.”

Then there are things that are shown out of order/context that were confusing, like when Bowers is arrested by the cops but keeps showing up in the 1989 timeline. I assumed I’d missed a scene where he escaped from jail or something, but by the end I realized that it apparently took place after the Losers’ 1989 battle with IT. The structure is already nonlinear, so as much as is possible, the 1989 and 2016 stories should both proceed linearly in parallel unless there’s a good reason not to.

Finally, there was a lot of inconsistency in how the switching between timeframes happened - sometimes it was a dip to white, sometimes it was an organic transition that I can only assume was as it’s presented in the second movie, sometimes it was just a cut. These should be made as consistent as possible, if at all possible.

I’m also not a fan of putting fan edit titles over actual title screens, but that’s a personal nitpick.

NOW, I don’t want you to think I’m just shitting all over your edit - it was very well done for a first edit, and I absolutely know I enjoyed this far more than I would have enjoyed watching each film individually, I just think there’s room to make it even better!

You are, as far as I know, the first person, besides myself to have actually made it through the entire thing. I completely agree with all of your notes, in fact, I never actually stopped working on it after posting here originally. There’ve been a few other versions since then. The most recent version fixes the Henry Bowers problem. It took me awhile to solve, because there was no exposition from the adults about him being arrested, I felt like I needed to set it up early. However, after watching it several times and moving things around, I think I’ve finally gotten it.

Completely agree with your notes about the flashbacks too, that’s something I’m still needing to work on. I thought about maybe color correcting all of the flashback sequences to make them stand out a bit more, but I have no experience with that. Thank you for your notes! They’re incredibly appreciated! And above all, thank you for taking 4 1/2 hours out of your day to watch this, it means the world.

No problem! And yeah, I know a lot of these things are issues inherent in trying to mash two movies together that were written, filmed, and edited to be a single film each - we don’t have access to all the footage that was filmed, so our options for transitions and the like are limited. (I also wish there were clean opening sequences with no on-screen credits, but at least they both go up front.)

I think I might tinker with doing a version of this myself - if I do I’ll happily share with you any ideas or solutions I come up with for some of this stuff. (Not saying I’ll make a thread on or even publicly release my version, this just sounds like a fun puzzle to work on!)

I’ll definitely download your updated version, but I can’t promise I’ll have the time to sit down and watch it terribly soon.

ChainsawAsh said:

I think I might tinker with doing a version of this myself - if I do I’ll happily share with you any ideas or solutions I come up with for some of this stuff. (Not saying I’ll make a thread on or even publicly release my version, this just sounds like a fun puzzle to work on!)

A fun puzzle to work on is exactly how I would describe working on it. It was maddening at times, but I also feel like I learned a ton, not only about story telling, but about the inner workings of premiere pro too. One day I’ll take the time to type up the story of my failed 1080p version and the mysterious variable frame rate that neither I or an expert friend could figure out.

I wholeheartedly enjoyed the Loser Only Cut, the way you made the scenes from both movies flow together really worked well in the edit’s favor. If you are going to make any changes in a future edit, I’d suggest moving scenes back to where they originally were or making use of deleted scenes if you have a copies of the film that have those.

For example, the scene where Henry gets abused by his dad in front of his friends before killing him a scene late should be left where it was like in the original film. And if you want to show Henry’s abusive relationship with his father, there’s a deleted scene that establishes this. Otherwise, this was pretty good for a first fanedit, and good luck with it in the future!

NickRome said:

I wholeheartedly enjoyed the Loser Only Cut, the way you made the scenes from both movies flow together really worked well in the edit’s favor. If you are going to make any changes in a future edit, I’d suggest moving scenes back to where they originally were or making use of deleted scenes if you have a copies of the film that have those.

For example, the scene where Henry gets abused by his dad in front of his friends before killing him a scene late should be left where it was like in the original film. And if you want to show Henry’s abusive relationship with his father, there’s a deleted scene that establishes this. Otherwise, this was pretty good for a first fanedit, and good luck with it in the future!

Completely agree with you about the Henry Bowers scene, his footage was what I struggled with the most. In my most recent version, I’ve got all of his scenes split up properly and it completely changed the cut for me. Because Older Henry is introduced so early in Chapter Two, I felt compelled to keep his introduction in roughly the same spot.

Thank you for watching!

Hi. I’m interested in watching your fan edit. How would I obtain a copy?

Yeah this sounds very cool, would love a link also.

Hi, i would like to have a copy of the fan edit, im sorry if my english is bad. Thank you! 😃

Can I get a link to this as well, please? I’ve been looking for this kind of edit for a while now.

Can i get a link to this also - I read the book way when I was a kid and enjoyed the new movies. Would really like to see this cut.

Thanks!

I’ve enjoyed the new adaptions of the evil clown 🤡 I truly did wish there was a supercut, but I doubt we will ever see that.
I still love the original TV series of IT with Tim Curry, he did a fantastic job!

Hi Dreamsnake,would love to see your edit, Would it be possible to get a link please😁.

Hey! After reading the book I was so disappointed the movies were edited the way they were. Would love to see this edit if you could send the link 🤡

I would really like to watch your edit of this film! As a film student and editor myself, fan edits always seemed cool to experiment with and watch. Especially for these two movies that I always thought would work better together then separate.

I’ve been looking for a great edit of the It movies and yours sounds awesome! Could you send me the link please?