Ladyhawke: RESCORED (Released)

I started a thread over at FE.org and figured I’d mention it here for anyone that is interested in this edit and following it’s progress.

Ladyhawke came out in 1985 starring Matthew Broderick (in top billing!), Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. Directed by Richard Donner, this movie is quite a gem lost among other films like Excalibur and the awesome Willow. I would really go out on a limb and say that the music choices for this film is what really kept it from being more well known.

This edit was attempted a couple of times by other editors, but they seemed to have stopped pretty early on. Here is my goal: RESCORE as much of the film as I can using only music from Jerry Goldsmith’s work in the film Lionheart.

I’m about 25 minutes into the film and have utilized about 50+ new sound effects as most scenes require being rebuilt from the ground up with foley work, as best as I can to get some dialogue isolation with no clear center channel and the inclusion of the new music.

Here are clips to give you an idea what I’m going for:

Password: fanedit

Clip 1: https://vimeo.com/613876044

Clip 2: https://vimeo.com/615212030

Clip 3: https://vimeo.com/621833685

Clip 4: https://vimeo.com/632098365 (please note that the clip says 9 minutes, but it’s really only 3 and a half minutes)

Please let me know what you think!

Vultural said:

This was always an A film.
Do you plan to cut or alter much?

Not much at all really. I’m about 36 minutes into the film and had to make a few little snips to align with beats of the music, the main bad guy yelling Navarre’s name because I couldn’t extract the audio clean enough, and a little bit of Mouse’s talk with god after seeing Isabeau for the first time because I felt like it went on a little too long.

I really love the story of this movie, but I really can’t get past the music. My wife and I just kept cracking up whenever it came on.

Update!

Here is another preview! This is the ambush scene after Mouse escapes from Navarre with the help of Isabeau. This shows a combination of some of the original score hits that segue into the new score.

Password: fanedit
https://vimeo.com/621833685

Vultural said:

You are one of the old school members. Chances are you were active during the Boon tenure.
What are you making with Ladyhawke?
An mp4? Or a DVD with menu and trailer?
Fewer craft the latter nowadays.

I’m just going with an mp4 at this point. I used to do the whole DVD menu with special features, but with the advent of blu ray and bigger files, I stick with just mp4’s. For what it’s worth, when I’m finished, I will be making a trailer while I do some test previews and sound checks.

Vilgefortz said:

musiced921 said:

I’m just going with an mp4 at this point. I used to do the whole DVD menu with special features, but with the advent of blu ray and bigger files, I stick with just mp4’s. For what it’s worth, when I’m finished, I will be making a trailer while I do some test previews and sound checks.

What size of mp4?
I really hope you won’t crop black bars (because that makes things complicated with blu-ray conversion).

I usually do full Blu-ray with menus, but mp4/mkv half the size of it is usually first to be released. When I’ve announced Blu-ray of JLG (which has much better compression - twice the size and two-pass encode) literally no one was interested. Well, their loss, not mine.
Anyway, any edit interesting enough to watch it more than once, I like to have burned as regular Blu.

The size is too early to say. The file I’m working from is 22gb mp4 after I converted it from a 33gb mkv.

I didn’t and won’t be cropping anything. No way lol!

If you like my edit and want to make it into a blu ray, I’d be honored if you shared the finished files and I’ll share it as an option for others in the future.

Vilgefortz said:
Maybe you could consider doing similar thing as wakeupkeo did with his WW84 edit? I mean, un-scored audio track as a bonus feature?

I have certainly been considering it!

Vilgefortz said:

By the way - do you cut anything or is that re-scoring only? (hoping for the latter)

VERY little is being cut. The movie is awesome and wonderful and lots of other positive adjectives. I’m cutting just a tiny bit of Mouse’s musings when he talks to himself because sometimes it goes on just a little too long and anything else that is cut are either a frame here and there to sync up with the rescoring and if I have to cut any dialogue that can’t be isolated due to the original score (example being when Marquet yells Navarre’s name after the first big fight scene).

Another thing is I want to cut anything that hints at Mouse’s attraction or intent to woo Isabeau because that bothered me a little. I haven’t gotten to those scenes yet, so I’ll keep you updated when I get there. 40 minutes into the movie now and just past the ambush scene where Isabeau, as a hawk, was wounded with an arrow.

Vultural said:

Ah! If you do subs, please share.
And I’m one of those for whom large filesizes are problematic.
Usually they are OK, unless internet goes out and I lose the whole damn thing.

The new ambush preview sounds good, by the way.

I was thinking about using Handbrake to make a smaller file size for those that don’t want to wait for a 25-30gb file to download.

UPDATE!

I’m about 87 minutes into the edit with 25ish more to go. I’ve updated my original post with 2 more clips for your viewing pleasure!

Outside of an occasional update, I will not be posting anymore previews. There’s still a decent amount of work left to do, but I am extremely happy with how things are turning out!

I hope those of you that are following this are excited about where the project is headed and for the finished product!

I do have a pretty big update! I finished going through the film and rescoring it! I would say that by the end, 95% of it has new music all from the score soundtrack from Jerry Goldsmith’s Lionheart.

I have rendered the file and I am going through it as a viewer and making notes of any tweaks I need to make. I was able to view about 35 minutes worth before getting distracted by the kids and wife, but it’s coming along.

If you want a taste of the wonderful score, give this a listen: https://youtu.be/43fKTXB6-L4 (4:47 is where it gets REALLY good).

Hello all!

Just some updates:

*THE EDIT IS DONE! I haven’t had a chance to upload it to MEGA, but it will be up there either tonight or tomorrow. Please send me a PM if you’re interested and I’ll respond with a link as soon as it is up!

*The edit has been retitled to “Ladyhawke RESCORED”

*Please consider leaving reviews once you’ve had a chance to view the edit!

*If you’d like more specific info, please check out the thread over at FE.org and the IFDB listing.

EDIT IS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST! PM me if interested!

I had a chance to watch this recently and I have to say the sound editing exceeded my expectations. There are very few instances where the sound effects are lowered or removed completely, but nothing that is distracting in any way. The dialogue is clear and the musical levels are good. I was surprised by how well the music matches up thematically in certain scenes. So kudos to the editor for hitting those marks.

To me watching this reminded me a lot of the Legend debate in terms of score. If you grew up with the contemporary Tangerine Dream score you probably prefer that vs the Jerry Goldsmith score which is more classical in approach. Having grown up with Ladyhawke, it’s very hard for me to remove the memory of the original score.

Overall, I did enjoy watching this edit. While the Lionheart score at times does feel a tad dated, it definitely is a more classical approach and provides an interesting alternative to the film. Great job to the editor and thank you for putting this together!

saffordboy22 said:

I had a chance to watch this recently and I have to say the sound editing exceeded my expectations. There are very few instances where the sound effects are lowered or removed completely, but nothing that is distracting in any way. The dialogue is clear and the musical levels are good. I was surprised by how well the music matches up thematically in certain scenes. So kudos to the editor for hitting those marks.

To me watching this reminded me a lot of the Legend debate in terms of score. If you grew up with the contemporary Tangerine Dream score you probably prefer that vs the Jerry Goldsmith score which is more classical in approach. Having grown up with Ladyhawke, it’s very hard for me to remove the memory of the original score.

Overall, I did enjoy watching this edit. While the Lionheart score at times does feel a tad dated, it definitely is a more classical approach and provides an interesting alternative to the film. Great job to the editor and thank you for putting this together!

Thank you so much for posting a review! SUPER appreciate it!