Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Intro Revisit

All in all pretty pleased with this movie, but the intro (which is great) had some things that really stood out for me at least. I have made a re-edit of the intro if anyone is interested in adding to their own copy. The edits that I think really make this thing pretty solid, are as follows:

• Traditional Paramount peak/logo transition added as the intro into a shot from the film and then that small shot not used later as to not duplicate. This was a big one for me, since all Indy films should start this way with that peak blending into some point, mountain tower (whatever). It’s the James Bond gun barrel of the franchise in my opinion. When I saw the Lucasfilm logo attempt to fade to black and then a padlock In the theater, I thought it was a trailer to another movie (was that noticeable for me at least). The padlock is still their of course, we just need a real Indy intro to make it feel authentic.
fits

• Removed the “tick…tick…tick” in the beginning" that did not make any sense and replaced with just fade in bombs and explosions’ in the distance. A good friend pointed out this is probably an artistic way to show passing of time or a “time theme” like he is dreaming it all or something ( does appear to be the same ticking from the clock in New York Bedroom)…but it still feel it is out of place as we don’t get that in intros in other Indy films (intros are all flashbacks that are not a dream or are happening in real-time. (It’s a small edit but fits the mold).

• “1944, France” title added in to be consistent with every other Indy intro that has the date and location. I also added in “New York, 1969”, since the intro moves to this time and it was done for Crusade when “Intro” jumps. The exclusion of these titles were a another big deal for me. We should not have to listen to bonus features to find out the dates. It was such a simple edit that I can not believe got missed. I downloaded the actual font from Raiders that someone had online to use as well for this.

• Fixed audio sync issues on first shot of Indy and old Harrison voice in some spots so it’s not an 80 year old voice with a ~45 year old Indy. While I did have to do some syncing, the Voice AI credit on 4 lines has to go to a Youtuber “Jason S” who did the voice fix, to which I could not do better even using 11labs(not sure what he used). This really helps I feel. Rest of Indy is fine though - almost like Ford got better at “raising his voice to a higher register” in the shots other than the intro.

-Fixed Indy’s mouth not moving in some spots at the very end of Indy “Come on Baz” “Let’s Go”. It’s very subtle thing but if you look at the original on a decent size screen, his mouth does not move when talking at the end, so tried to at least fix some of it.

• If you have the latest edits of my Indy series they have been edited so the “Lucusfilm LTD etc”) all happen at the same time. This was the case for all films (even Dial) but Temple of doom was off by a few seconds. I have made it all consistent. This shows how much they really wanted these film to be consistent even down to the timing and why I think having the start of these film follow the pattern is so important. Hat’s off to the editors of the original films trying to keep this all consistent. Probably no one else noticed this one though 😃

PM if you want a link to check out the dial intro.

I enjoyed the link you sent me to the opening adventure in 1944. The changing of Indy’s voice makes all the difference in the world and really helps sell the illusion we are watch a younger Harrison Ford play Indy on the big screen again. Why they did not change the voice to a younger Ford in the theatrical release with all the money at their disposal I will never know.

One thing that did not work for me was the removal of the subtitles for the German soldiers. There is a good bit of coversation in the opening in German and while we can surmise the gist of the conversation, I believe these should be reinserted. Overall, nice job and I look forward to seeing how the final cut turns out!

What are your other ideas beyond the editing of the intro to improve the theatrical release? Too bad there are no deleted scene I am aware of that have been released beyond the cut scene from the trailer.

Darth Sadifous said:

What are your other ideas beyond the editing of the intro to improve the theatrical release? Too bad there are no deleted scene I am aware of that have been released beyond the cut scene from the trailer.

thanks

honestly not to much to change other than if I can find a “One more for the grand daughter” line at the bar which was a deleted scene from the trailer. Still looking for one that does not fade early to black and have music behind it.

so when I ripped the movie it did not grab the subtitles and/or the MKV may have it buried and the MP4 (required for editing) does not have. It’s funny you bring that up as I was wondering about it during editing and thinking there were some in the theater when I saw it. I have watched 3 times without subtitles and my wife and other friends and they never knew the difference (no other indy film has it for german dialogue) so it was kind of a break from traditon on this film. Not sure why they even tried to do it. Be curious for those that speak German if it was accurate what they are saying.

I may try to see to if I can find the sub titles in my MKV copy and see where (how often it occurs and if needed). I do recall a couple spots where English would have been nice (they actually did German and then ended the sentence in English …weird choice

also I do believe archamedias has subtitles at the end as well and maybe a soldier yelling about the planes being dragons. (not a big deal at the end as helena does so much paraphrasing in English when talking to archameidas it was actually weird in the theater because you saw the subtitles and she was then trying to translate. Not needed there at all, but may I may take a look at the intro and consider…cause I know what your saying. I am big fan of consistency and like I said there are no subtitles in any Indiana jones film ever so kind of hesitant to do. I would be more open to capturing their voice and using Ai to do English over subtitles. Why Disney did not do that is beyond me (I think they spent almost 300M on the film or something like that and yes on the AI ford they should have just done a little more effort I feel to make that work. But luckily we have tools to correct 😃

Thanks for you feedback

Since this movie doesn’t have deleted scenes, are you planning on slotting this intro in with the rest of the movie as an edit? Or would you prefer to make some other changes in a hypothetical edit?

When you do intergrate the edited opening into the rest of the film, I’d love to have a copy. If you can add the German subtitles back in that be a bonus!

Jar Jar Bricks said:

Since this movie doesn’t have deleted scenes, are you planning on slotting this intro in with the rest of the movie as an edit? Or would you prefer to make some other changes in a hypothetical edit?

only other deleted I know of is “another for the granddaughter” and the atlas scenes…the bar scene always has music and talking behind it so waiting for someone to surface with a clean version.

For others…yes I have considered adding subtitles to the german, but I struggle with that as it is not in any other indiana jones to have subtitles. Disnay should have not tried to make it so exclusively german. No disrespect to german speaking…what I may look at is if we can do AI redo of the actors just saying english lines so you can understand. Again I hate to make this the first ever Indy film that has sub titles but I know young Indy had them so maybe?

Right now I lost so hard drives that starwars work on them and depirately trying to recover from that. It’s major so when I do get back to indy it will be after that. I do hope you (who asked for links) to download the new paramount peak intro like it. I think that really helps plus the AI ford voice o correction, but currently I am on star wars recovery at the moment. I do not have a full movie file download for those who want the new intro, but if you have any editing software that can combine two files I would assume you could just add the two clips (intro and rest of movie) together on your own. It is obviously where it stops and i did not change any of the rest of the film. I would reccomend that for now if you want your own version with the new intro.

Just following up to see if you ever intergrated this back into the full film and if it is now available for download? Hope you were able to recover the data lost on your drives.

Darth Sadifous said:

Just following up to see if you ever intergrated this back into the full film and if it is now available for download? Hope you were able to recover the data lost on your drives.

not yet, was hoping to wait for the above mentioned additions. Been moving over to the Starwars trilogy to try and make some headway there. I have recovered files from a year back and working to get back to where I was was the hardware failed. I have original source material, but it has been a challenge to redo a lot so are focusing on that with ESB the one I want to try and get done first