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The second in the trilogy of projects from this March, and my 50th overall from the last two years of video projects.
The edit of this film from 2018 is quite straightforward again, luckily – it’s mostly putting deleted scenes back in, though there are two versions of this film up for grabs, for reasons I’ll get into later.
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The first change is another extended opener sequence like the first films. This time it’s Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne on mission together in Argentina (Buenos Aires) back in 1987, acting as the first ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp’ dynamic duo together. This was an original opening sequence the studio changed, and luckily I was able to find it online and in decent quality and only have to make a few changes to it, like colour grading and adding a mirror filter to one shot that’s clearly the wrong way round as you can see by a “Stop” sign appearing backwards. It’s good to put this sequence back in, because it revolves around Elihas Starr’s lab trying to harness the Quantum Realm’s powers after stealing Hank Pym and Bill Foster’s work, before things go badly wrong.
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The second change, again, is replacing the “Present Day” annotation with the one where Scott Lang is playing with Cassie in the house while he’s under confinement – this takes place in April 2018 in the story, so that’s what the new PNG overlay states.
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The third change is at nearly 42 minutes in, and is where the film splits into two versions. In one of them, the detour into Cassie’s school to retrieve the older Ant-Man suit is left in – in the other, it’s removed. It’s certainly an amusing sequence, but it’s definitely very sidequest-y in an otherwise very straightforward part in the film. Without it, Scott and Co. see Bill Foster and get some info about the past and answers about the present – and then they go right into applying those things on the old Ant-Man suit Scott says he has, and was safe, anyway – so it’s all just more straightforward.
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At fourth change is at 51 minutes in with no school or 55 minutes in with the school sequence. Another deleted scene is put in where Sonny Burch and his men are narrowing down where the lab is and starts asking questions about who Scott is in the CCTV footage they watch of the lab shrinking. There’s no clear place in the film where the deleted scene goes before the 52 minute mark in the theatrical release where Burch shows up at Luis’ office with the “truth serum”, but it feels appropriate where I put it for two reasons.
Firstly, it leads into the office scene a few minutes later much better than him showing up there out of the blue, and the place I put it goes between Scott and Co. escaping Ghost and Foster and then suddenly being in the enlarged lab in the forest. It’s a very abrupt cut in the theatrical release between the two scenes that doesn’t really carry well, so hopefully this works better. It’s also a little better for Burch’s character to see him in this scene – we get some information why he’s after the lab in the first place: tech, money, personal relevance etc – so there’s actual development and motivation there, not just having the character as someone who shows up randomly, wants the lab for unknown reasons and keeps talking about his restaurant when nobody really asks.
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Another deleted scene plays at 1hr 38mins in (1hr 34mins with the school sequence removed) – after Hank and Janey finally reunite in the Quantum Realm and she tells him about what it’s really like down there. This deleted scene ties into “Quantumania” very well, as Janet explains that the place is bigger than they imagined, to the point of entire worlds and civilisations being down there*. Also that she knows how to communicate with the quantum creatures down there, makes sense as she seems to have domesticated two of them in her time at her little spherical homestead in the past.
Also, the footage from the scene right after that, where Hank asks how Janet how she stopped the Quantum Realm messing with his head, is the same footage from the start of this deleted scene. So, to avoid repetition, I used the cut of the two of them getting into the Quantum Vehicle, but greatly slowed, to essentially paper over the cracks as best I could with the footage that was there. It’s not perfect, but hey ho
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At the very end of the film, the new title card I made is overlaid some of the footage of the film – since the theatrical title card left no room for me to overlay and then replace it, like with others. At the 1:55:15/1:51:30 mark, depending on which version you watch, I used the footage of Hank emerging from the Quantum Vehicle, because the arch-like structure in the background is reasonably similar to the theatrical ‘toy-like’ environment in that shot. Building on that, I reversed the footage to match the motion at the end of the theatrical cut, added a Gaussian Blur filter to really take the photorealistic edge off, so it’s not so jarring against the end credits in the waxworky toy style. Lastly, I made the custom title card follow the same motion as in the film: starting distant, enlarging on the screen and then continuing to enlarge very slowly until the scene cuts – with some 3D text effects this time to match the theatrical again.
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Finally, the post-credit scene involving the drumming ant has been changed, because it feels like unnecessary levity in a moment that should probably remain dire and serious for obvious reasons. Now, you see the empty Lang house with the constant blare of the emergency TV broadcast, but instead of seeing and hearing the giant ant on the electric drumkit, it cuts to aerial shots of San Francisco and keeps the blaring noise the entire time, clearly implying the entire city is in the same boat – that is to say: at least just that one city.
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To answer “Quantumania” questions that might present themselves next; the plans for that film recut are still very much up in the air and still just plans at the moment. I know what I want to do with the film ideally, and what ideas I want to put in motion with what I would change and why, but there is the big project I’ve been doing slowly for the last month that I mentioned previously. Ideally, I would knuckle down and just bash that out and finally get it done before moving onto another project in a big way.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught video editor and VFX artist here, so some areas may be visibly mostly good, as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.