Originally posted by: Esn
You might want to tell potential reviewers to download the iPod/PSP version, then, because the image quality on the regular google video is indeed horrible (much worse than on YouTube).
I do like your version better for the most part... a fair amount of minor annoyances that I had with the Recobbled Cut Mk. II are corrected here (this is not to belittle the many, many things that Garret did right in his version). The Tack/YumYum scene, for example, as well as the scene where King Nod is explaining the mission (it seems to flow more smoothly). Lots of little things. There are some exceptions:
-1st scenes with Tack & Cobbler (as mentioned before - far less effective without music)
-Zigzag inside the One-Eye tent (not sure what it was exactly, but the music didn't seem quite as smooth - may have been my imagination. Minor detail.)
-Zigzag saying "the greatest wizard has to know, etc" at the end (I think the animation wasn't bad in this case and not different from the storyboard, so it could've been kept. Also, it cut to ZigZag in the pit too soon after he fell into the hole - it didn't seem like he had time to actually fall)
-lack of... something in the war machine/thief scene (I'm not sure as I never watched the Williams workprint all the way through, but isn't there something where ZigZag conjures a dragon to fight Tack? Since the whole Calvert fight was cut out, perhaps that could've been added back in to balance things out)
-after the thief steals the film, the sounds stops for some reason so we don't hear him run away. I'm not entirely sure that this is a negative, to be fair - was it intentional?
There are two things that I don't like about either version, one being the musical choices for some of the comedic thief scenes (as I said in more detail in a recent post a little way back). I think I've found the perfect music to accompany the scenes with the thief and the polo ponies games, though - on my CD of Scheherazade (by the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded in 1967), it's about 6 minutes into movement 2 (movement 2 consists of "lento" - "andantino" - "allegro molto" - "vivace scherzando" - "moderato assai" - "allegro molto ed animato". It's either "allegro molto" or "vivace scherzando", I guess). I'd like to try adding it to see if it does indeed fit... are there any free programs that I could use?
The other is MeeMee saying "ugh, maybe something died". Quite frankly, the shot makes NO sense at all, since she was cut out of the previous scene (which I agree with). I don't understand why you would cut her out partially, but not completely. A viewer who hasn't seen the film suddenly sees someone answer YumYum, but has no idea who it is. The voice is different, and the way she inclines her head makes it clear that she is replying to someone, so it's pretty clear that she's not YumYum.
Well, I just wanted to see how many little differences I could find. Anything I changed just corresponded with the workprint... but it's just a temporary until I've shown it to some people. Then, I'll put up the regular Mark II version. I don't want some of these reviewers to mistake some of the interpolated animation as part of the actual footage, nor a handful of sequences that were supposed to be left out.