EddieDean

Sounds amazing, please PM!

That broken scene is now fixed and rendered - it should be uploaded by the time you read this!

I’m calling this version of all my episodes the full version 1.0, totally ready for viewing.

I’ve just checked all of the edits in the final render, and have spotted one ~5m scene in episode two, the arrival at Rivendell, which hasn’t come out right. The rest of the cuts and the quality seems to have worked great, but I’ll need to revisit that second episode, which’ll take a couple of days.

Aaaaaand that’s all eight episodes complete, uploaded, and available. I’d love your feedback.

Here’s another major change, the last one of my own changes on top of the edit I’m using for a source.

In the original, the scene where they arrive at Mirkwood has two topics. Firstly is that Mirkwood is bad, and that Gandalf should go off and do some investigating. And secondly is that Bilbo almost tells Gandalf that he has the ring, and then in a major failiure of character that foreshadows his fall to the ring, and the ring’s power, he decides not to.

Since my episode 3, ‘Riddles in the Dark’, features Bilbo’s discovery and first usage of the ring, I wanted to end on the moment where he decides to keep it a secret. But since my episode 4, ‘The Return of the Shadow’, features the Mirkwood exploration (which is quite long), I felt that the exposition about Mirkwood belonged with the episode in which they explore it.

Therefore, I decided to chop it into two scenes - one where they arrive and Bilbo fails to tell Gandalf about the ring, and one where Gandalf explores it then decides to leave the dwarves to explore it alone.

So, originally, it played out like this:

• The party arrive outside Mirkwood
• Bilbo fiddles with the ring as the ring whispers
• Gandalf peeks in a little, and identifies their path
• Bilbo says the forest feels cursed, Gandalf says they have no other option
• Galadriel warns Gandalf that something’s afoot
• Bilbo gets a little ‘ring shock’ as Gandalf explores
• Gandalf announces he’s leaving
• Gandalf notices something’s up with Bilbo, who fails to tell him about the ring
• Gandalf warns the party about Mirkwood and leaves
• The party enter Mirkwood

Now, episode three ends like this:

• Bilbo discovers the ring
• Various other things happen
• The party arrive outside Mirkwood
• Bilbo fiddles with the ring as the ring whispers
• Gandalf notices something’s up with Bilbo, who fails to tell him about the ring
   - I extended this scene a little, especially the last shots, also adding a zoom and a more ominous audio track, to let this moment have a little longer to land.
  (I think this works nicely, because the first thing that happens to Bilbo upon arriving at the location where Sauron is, is that he starts to feel the pull of the ring. It wants to be found. This scene also makes Gandalf seem more shrewd - he notices something is up with Bilbo immediately.)

https://vimeo.com/441827596

And episode four begins like this:

• Thorin/Gandalf flashback (unrelated to what I’m telling you about here, it’s just what happens in this episode)
• [Implicitly here, time may have passed while they searched for the path]
• Gandalf peeks in a little, and identifies their path
• Bilbo says the forest feels cursed [now implicitly having been near to it for a while, or having felt the pull of the ring], Gandalf says they have no other option
• Galadriel warns Gandalf that something’s afoot
• Bilbo gets a little ‘ring shock’ as Gandalf explores [reminding the audience of the events of the last episode]
• Gandalf announces he’s leaving
• Gandalf warns the party about Mirkwood and leaves
• The party enter Mirkwood

https://vimeo.com/441828979

These are definitely the trickiest cuts I’ve had to do. Luckily, the score during these scenes is very jerky and mysterious, with lots of cuts to the forest as if it’s spying on them, so I think I’ve managed to make these cuts as clean as possible while maintaining coherency.

That’s episode 2 now available. 3 is uploading and 4 is nearly complete. (If these seem quick this is because I’m duplicating existing work - all of the episodes are already fully planned out and pre-built.)

Here’s an important cut. A lot of people hate the cartoonish physics in the Hobbit, and one such scene is when Bilbo and the dwarves fall down the mountain into the goblin halls. They bounce around, when realistically they’d be bludgeoned to death. Since it’s necessary to the plot to get them into the halls, movie cuts tend to leave this shot in. However, since I’m cutting for TV, I have a few more options.

So here we have the end of my episode two, ‘An Unexpected Journey’, where the dwarves fall. Since it’s the episode end, I get to cut to black as soon as we see their initial fall into the tunnels, and just leave some far-less-egregious and far-less-drawn-out sound effects which give us the cliffhanger of a fall.

https://vimeo.com/441813664

Then, here’s the start of my episode three, ‘Riddles in the Dark’, where we fade the sound effects back in, and fade the video in on the shot where the dwarves land, straight into the action.

https://vimeo.com/441813888

This way, we get all of the plot of the fall, with none of the horrible visuals, and a whole lot less time spent falling. And, as a bonus, it’s a nice little cliffhanger, and an episode beginning which launches us straight into a bit of action.

Episode 1 is now available.
Episode 2 is uploading now.
Episode 3 is rendering now, and will be uploaded right after
Episode 4 I’m working on now, and should be finished today.
Episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8, are all now available.

Episodes 1 and 2 are nearly complete. (For those keeping count, that’ll be 1,2,5,6,7,8 out of 8 all done.)

Here’s an edit from my episode 2, ‘An Unexpected Journey’, which I’m particularly proud of: Bilbo getting captured by the trolls.

I believe the trolls scene should stay in my series, because it shows Bilbo’s first attempt at burglary, and while his attempt fails, he demonstrates some good smarts, and it begins to endear him to the group. It’s also in the book, and it’s referenced in the Lord of the Rings movies.

However, it’s full of snot jokes, and slapstick, which to me feels like unwelcome bad humour.

If you keep the trolls scene you do need to have Bilbo get caught with a sneeze, since that’s the moment that moves the plot forward and he’s also covered in snot later. So we have to accept that element.

However I’ve been able to cut the whole scene down to under half the time, without any of the other snot or slapstick, with Bilbo’s journey making visual sense, with the background audio making a full conversation, and with the audio matching with the video where lipsync or SFX are needed (except one visual sneeze which doesn’t have a sound effect, because to be honest the sound was egregious, and I’m happy to not draw attention to the visual).

I also flipped one shot from the original film, where Bilbo sneaks right-to-left, when the rest of his actions in that part are left-to-right.

https://vimeo.com/441678578

Hey! Thanks for your interest! I’ll be sure to send you a link when it’s done!

TheAlaskanSandman said:

EddieDean said:

It definitely wouldn’t look out of place in the movie!

One thing I’ll recommend/request, given that you’re going the CG route, is that you base as much of your CG elements like glows, monitor graphics, etc, on OT and ST sources, because the PT deviates a little far from the established aesthetic. I’m not talking anything radical about ship design or anything, but I feel like these movies should feel ‘Star Wars’ standard as opposed to ‘modern scifi’ standard.

IF you could give me some more detail that would help. I think the Ot and St look quite different imo. I think Rogue One and Mandalorian are much closer in aesthetic and tone. The ST, imo brought them much more into the modern scifi standard.

I was planning to make what ever edits i did with the cg ships, look like the ones they filmed for the PT. Anything else would require redesigning the ships, and replacing original shots. Best i was going to do was to make the ships in ROS look more like the originals in coloring, as those ships resemble them in design.

This shot and test is just about getting the Cg ships to look like the model ones they filmed though.

Yeah, to be fair, my comment wasn’t very helpful. I think I’m mainly reacting to the fact that your ship looks GREAT, and all the colouring is fantastic, but to my eye the moon and the thrusters on the ship look maybe a little ‘too sharp’? Too good? It’s hard to put my finger on, sorry.

It definitely wouldn’t look out of place in the movie!

One thing I’ll recommend/request, given that you’re going the CG route, is that you base as much of your CG elements like glows, monitor graphics, etc, on OT and ST sources, because the PT deviates a little far from the established aesthetic. I’m not talking anything radical about ship design or anything, but I feel like these movies should feel ‘Star Wars’ standard as opposed to ‘modern scifi’ standard.

Yeah, if people are passionate about fanedits, they’ll find us. It’s not wise to promote the community too widely.

And that’s episode 8 uploaded too, so the full second half done. (I appreciate there’s likely next to no interest in just watching the second half only. Still, it’d be great to get feedback on those couple of clips above.)

So that’s episodes 5, 6, and 7 complete and available. 8 is now rendering.

Episodes 1-4 will be out soon.

(I’ve done them in an odd order because I’m duplicating old work on new software, and doing the easier ones first.)

Episode 5 is now being uploaded, and episode 8 is currently rendering.

I’m quite excited by the cuts I’ve been able to make to the final battle in episode 8. Legolas and Tauriel don’t feature in the final fight at all, and a huge amount of guff is gone. I get the elven sword to Thorin by reversing a shot where he originally looked up from the floor to instead look down, then the shot of him picking up the sword after he willingly drops it later in order to throw the rock at Azog.

So now, our final battle scene on ravenhill goes as follows:

• The dwarves race their way to the top via the chariot (I cut the shot of it jumping down a small frozen waterfall)
• The main fight goes poorly, Thranduil quits, we learn that a second army is coming, Bilbo goes up to warn the dwarves
• Fili and Kili go to infiltrate Azog’s tower
• Bilbo warns the dwarves, Thorin realises it’s a trap and intends to pull the dwarves out
• Azog kills Fili in front of the dwarves, Thorin sees red and instead races forward
• Orcs attack the others, Bilbo is knocked out by Bolg
• Bolg kills Kili
• Thorin, now on the ice facing Azog, picks up an elven sword on the floor and marches toward Azog (I don’t have a problem with him spotting a sword on the floor, this is a war zone)
• The second army appears, Azog attacks Thorin with the rock-on-a-chain
• Azog breaks the ice and has the upper hand
• Radagast riding eagles with a man-bear comes, distracting Azog
• With a quicker cut, Thorin drops his sword and throws the rock at Azog, who falls into water
• The eagles and Beorn are clearly swinging the battle in our favour
• Now with sword in hand (it was at his feet, and he’s a warrior, so he can pick it up offscreen without that being a continuity issue), Thorin turns toward the next field of battle and walks a couple of paces until-
• -without any watching of Azog’s body or warning, Azog leaps up through the ice
• Thorin allows Azog to stab him in order to kill him in return
• Bilbo comes to, and reconciles with Thorin before his death
• The rest of the movie plays out as before in Adamdens’ version.

No Tauriel crying about her unwanted love interest, no Legolas silly physics, no Legolas at all (other than hanging out around the city with the other elves). And far quicker cuts to make Thorin quicker-witted and pace the fights far better.

Bolg dies offscreen but he’s not really a character so I have no problem with that. After he kills Kili and we cut away to Thorin, I do keep a little of the audio sounds of combat, so you can assume he dies then.

You can watch that clip here: https://vimeo.com/441151601 (actually 04:20, I accidentally added a lot of black after the clip)

My episode seven is now rendered and uploaded, ready for your download.

My episode five (of eight), ‘The Lonely Mountain’, is rendering now.

There’s not much to say about this episode - this one’s not got any changes in it beyond AdamDens’ original cuts. (I’m reproducing these episodes in order of complexity, the more interesting cuts will come later.)

Episode five features the arrival at Laketown, (with minimal Alfrid and the Master, and no warg attack or appearance of Tauriel or Legolas), the journey on to and arrival at The Lonely Mountain, and the White Council rescuing Gandalf and believing they have defeated Sauron. This is the final episode where we follow the Necromancer sub-plot, believing it to be wrapped up here, with the hint that Saruman may be hiding something.

I end this episode on Saruman declaring ‘leave Sauron to me’, so the end credits score I’ve chosen is The Treason of Isengard from Fellowship, hinting further at his future betrayal.

You can see that episode ending here, and let me know if the moment feels like it hits right. https://vimeo.com/441024992

I reveal the episode’s title over a wide establishing shot of the Master’s mansion on Laketown - the highest point in the city. I like the visual pun of this hated figure, sitting unloved on his own wealth and power in his ramshackle mansion - his own ‘Lonely Mountain’. It’s a cheeky joke but I think it’s cute.

Episode six, ‘The Desolation of Smaug’, is also complete and uploaded.

This is the final episode where I don’t deviate from AdamDens’ cuts at all, so again, not much to talk about.

It begins with Bilbo encountering Smaug, then essentially gives us a full half hour of the engagement with Smaug (with none of the forge nonsense) up to Smaug’s death, then a little of the fallout - refugees, dwarves regrouping, etc. It ends on the moment where the dwarves realise that the refugees are flooding towards them.

This is a nice place to end the episode because previously we’ve been operating under the assumption that the plot is simply ‘kill the dragon’, but at this point we realise that the situation is more complicated than we initially thought. For its credits, I extended the existing track, The Ruins of Dale, allowing the moment to sit for longer in the audience’s mind, to the sound of an ominous, military-sounding track.

You can see that episode ending here, and let me know if the moment feels like it hits right. https://vimeo.com/441030864

Technically ‘The Desolation of Smaug’ is a place, not an action, and they arrive at that place (and name it) in the prior episode. But hey, it can be an action too, and this is the Smaug episode. Besides, a dragon can cause more than one desolation, and it certainly desolates Laketown.

I reveal the episode title at the moment Bilbo starts wandering onto Smaug’s gold pile.

Next up: Episode 8, with improvements to the final battle.

Links above now working; Google wasn’t a fan.

Right, let’s take a look at some edits from my episode 7 (of 8) from season one (the Hobbit season). This was the first episode I recreated in Vegas for the proper 23.976 fps video output.

Episode 7, ‘The Battle of the Five Armies’, begins shortly after the killing of Smaug, and the prior episode’s cliffhanger that refugees are pushing onto the mountain. It features the build-up to the battle, Thorin’s descent into madness, Bilbo’s betrayal of the group, the initial skirmish between men, dwarves and elves, and the first half of the orc attack on both the battlefield and within the city where the refugees are. It ends on a quiet moment amidst the fighting, where Bilbo gives hope to Dain and Gandalf.

(Episode 8 picks up after, with Thorin coming to his senses and the party dwarves joining the battle.)

The only real change I made to AdamDens’ source for this episode is trimming some of Dain’s dialogue.

https://vimeo.com/440990625

These are just a couple of simple cuts, to remove Dain shouting “Sodding off” and calling the elves “bastards”. I don’t think it really suits the Middle Earth setting. Gandalf himself calls him unreasonable, so it’s appropriate to maintain a sense of that, though I think this version better shows both Dain and Thranduil as equally unreasonable and arrogant in this conflict. I’d like to have removed “Pointy-eared princess” (since that rings as almost a racial and sexist slur), and “Ya buggers” (in my episode 8) but I couldn’t find a clean way to cut around them while preserving their scenes.

Here I cut from Dain’s “How are we all?” (taken in this context as a sarcastic but implicitly aggressive address) to Gandalf’s “Come now, Dain” (now taken as an immediate attempt to calm an unreasonable belligerent). I think this still works since Dain here is marching for war, with an army behind him. The threat is implied before this dialogue.

I then cut from Dain’s “You here that boys? We’re on!” to his commander’s war cry. I think that’s perfectly clean, and having it be an immediate response implies a little more martial discipline than in the original, where the commander didn’t respond till he said “Let’s give these bastards a good hammering”.

Now, since I’ve not shared them yet, let’s also look at how I’m planning to do my titles and credits:

Here’s the opening disclaimer transitioning in to the start of the episode.

https://vimeo.com/440996878

As AdamDens did, I’m using the LotR font throughout, matched to size and colour where necessary.
This opening scene does have a couple of light touch cuts - I took out an Alfrid shot and slid forwards the establishing shot to allow the scene to open out of the disclaimer onto the music, which I think lands quite nicely. I’m not sure if it was an AdamDens or original score here but the use of the Rohan ‘refugees’ music track does a good job of reminding us that these are refugees, as well as maintaining that connective tissue with LotR.

Here’s the episode title, in its context in the episode.

https://vimeo.com/440997349 (skip to 1:30 to get to the point quicker)

Since Middle Earth was captured in books before films, and I’m cutting the films into episodes, I’ve opted to go with bold, large titles, to give the impression of book chapters. I think this works nicely - especially in the Hobbit season, where it breaks down into very clear thematic chunks.

As a rule, I’m trying to drop my titles within the first 10 minutes of a 45-ish minute episode, and they’re always centred, with ‘The Third Age’ appearing a second before the episode title, then six seconds of full display.

I break this rule once in episode one (‘The Hobbit’), where I place it right of frame next to a Bilbo in left of frame; and in my final episode eight (‘There and Back Again’), where I place it very close to the end of the episode. This latter allows the Battle to conclude unimpeded, with the episode’s title only appearing as Bilbo finally returns to the shire. To my mind this plays out as a kind of subtle, subconscious catharsis.

Here’s the transition to end credits.

https://vimeo.com/440991842 (main transition at 1:30 to 1:50)

A bit less interesting, but still necessary. Having had a good ten minutes of battle by this point, I end this episode on AdamDens’ beautiful hope scene, a natural break in the conflict, before the flow of the battle changes at the beginning of the next episode.

You can see here how I’m crediting myself - “a fanedit by JAM the HUMAN based on a movie edit by ADAM DENS”. I don’t think it would be appropriate to do any less, since I’m so reliant on his work, and I certainly don’t want to be passing it off as my own.

Since we end on Bilbo giving a little hope, I chose a far lighter, Hobbity, innocent track for this episode’s end credits. This serves to give us a little reminder before the final episode of how far we’ve come, and what Bilbo is now fighting for. This is in contrast to most of my other episodes, which tend to land on a darker moment which I follow with a darker track, since I’d like the majority of my episodes to emphasise the growing threat. It’s important to pick a thematically suitable track for each episode’s credits since, by nature of cutting the movies into episodic chunks, I need to allow what could otherwise be a fairly abrupt stop to feel like a moment that has a little longer to land.

You can also see here the credits I’ve created. It would be too much to place ten minutes of original credits at the end of each episode like the movies do, so I’ve tried to find a middle ground. Faneditor’s credit, then the production team’s credits, then ending on the visual credits for the production companies, for 1:30 of credits in total. My final episode in each ‘season’ will use the beautiful hand-drawn credits and all other credits in their full original length.

As always, feedback is very welcome.

SparkySywer said:

JakeRyan17 said:

I know most people here hate TLJ

I always thought this was a more TLJ-friendly website.

We’re a friendly-friendly website. So long as you can comport yourself with respect for others’ opinions, your own opinions will be welcomed here.

I’ve now started my duplication in Vegas (to achieve smoother video output at the correct 23.976 fps), and have now finished, rendered and uploaded my first episode using it.

(If you’re interested in watching just that episode standalone, it’s episode 7, chosen because it was the simplest technically).

I’ll be done shortly Anakin so feel free to watch mine and see if they satisfy what you were setting out to achieve. I’ll welcome any feedback you give, I really want these to satisfy folks who wished the Hobbit was a worthy predecessor to LOTR.

If the blade remains crackly when passed to Ben then it works really well as a metaphor/imagery.

He’s always wanted to emulate Vader, but failed => He’s always had a red blade, but broken
He finally rejects his darker legacy => He throws his red blade into the ocean
He begins to turn to the light and embrace Rey, but he’s still broken => Rey hands him her blue saber, but broken

Plus, we know he’s always considered the Anakin saber his birthright - this way he finally gets it, but incomplete, imperfect.

kewlfish said:

I saw everyone talking about making Rey’s lightsaber have a crackly blade. I’m a hobbyist, so not professional work but definitely a neat concept. Super early draft.

https://vimeo.com/438802140
pw: fanedit

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

The full first pass of my Hobbit season is finished! I need to make minor tweaks to the titles, and may make a couple of small edits to the final couple of episodes if I can pull them off, but these are certainly in a review-ready format. I’d be very grateful for any feedback. The video may stutter a little in part, especially if cast to a TV, so watching on PC is best, though I plan to duplicate my work with software which will output to the right FPS within a couple of weeks.

*Leia 😉