SpenceEdit

NeverarGreat said:

I thought the Tyrion episode was a clever way of avoiding an expensive battle scene, and I didn't think it was deflating at all. The point of such a thing would be to refocus the story on a single character, so if it feels deflating to miss the battle, that is only because there has been too much emphasis on battles and secondary characters already.

I can see your point in the GoT example. It did save their budget, and it did focus down on Tyrion. That battle, however, didn't have many other characters to be concerned with. The reveal that Tyrion survived and that Robb had taken Jamie prisoner is more important, character wise, than what happens in the battle itself.

In The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in general, the secondary characters are part of what makes the movies so great. To have Fili and Kili die off screen, to not see Thorin fall, or to miss Bard and Thandruill working together to push the Orcs out of the city just wouldn't feel right. Those are important character moments. I do think that any fanedit of The Hobbit needs to work harder to push Bilbo to the forefront, but I don't think those secondary characters can lose the end of their arcs in order to do so.

NeverarGreat said:

The movie could be from the point of view of Bilbo, who gets knocked out during the battle and misses the fight. He recovers afterwards and finds Thorin dying on the battlefield. It's more similar to the book in that way.

 Some of the less-than-legal one film edits floating around have gone this route, and it simply doesn't work. The main character getting knocked out and missing a huge chunk of climax might work in a book (though I'd argue it doesn't) but in a film it's hugely deflating. Especially when it's the climax of so much story. I'm all for being true to the book, but this is one of the few instances where the changes were an improvement. The fight is a bit overblown but at least it was something.

Imagine if Aragorn got knocked out during Helm's Deep, then he wakes up and Gandalf is like "Oh you missed it, we saved you."? Or that episode of Game of Thrones Season 1 where they did this exact thing with Tyrion?

Hello everyone! I wanted to get back into posting over here after a long hiatus, so I thought I’d start a thread for what I’m working on right now. Like most people that own an editing program, I too am tackling The Hobbit Trilogy.

My aim with this edit is to make a good three hour film, and I’m not necessarily sticking strictly to the book.

Cut List:

- Older Bilbo is cut from the opening of the film, as is the opening prologue. It begins with Gandalf approaching Bilbo.

• Much of the Dwarves antics at the dinner is gone.
• Some superfluous dialogue removed when Gandalf is explaining the mission.
• The “pocket handkerchief” dialogue is removed. Once Bilbo gets on the pony, it goes straight to the traveling montage.
• Gandalf and Thorin no longer argue over the elves. Gandalf, as he is want to do, leaves the party briefly without explanation.
• Trims and cuts to the Troll sequence for pacing and to remove childish gags/toilet humor.
• Thorin is no longer shitty about Bilbo after the Troll encounter.
• Trims to the troll cave sequence for pacing.
• Radaghast and his necromancer subplot is entirely removed from the film.
• The Orcs chasing the party is removed from the story completely. They do not encounter orcs at all until the final battle.
• Rivendell trimmed for mention of orcs, and for some silliness.
• Rivendell scenes are cut so that Bilbo is walking around enjoying Rivendell while the Dwarves are eating. Majority of that dinner scene is removed. When Elrond asks Bilbo about not being with his friends, it’s because they are at dinner. I’m very happy with the way Rivendell turned out in this edit.
• White council and Necromancer subplot is removed, though Galadriel is introduced. Her conversation with Gandalf about Bilbo remains.
• Stone giants removed.
• Tumbling into the goblin caves trimmed.
• Goblin songs removed.
• Mention of Azog and the orcs chasing the party is removed.
• No trims to Riddles in the Dark, as it is awesome.
• Majority of the goblin caves fight is removed, save the very beginning.
• The Hobbits are not chased by Orcs after they escape the tunnels, nor do they visit Beorn.
• Many trims to Mirkwood.
• Removed Bilbo freaking out about losing the ring. It never quite felt right to me in this movie. Too dark.
• Tauriel is now just another random elf, nothing special about her. Legolas is still there, and is indeed Legolas, but his role has been trimmed to more of a cameo.
• Because of our lack of Orcs, the barrels scene had to be very heavily trimmed. There is now no more running battle and the party is not pursued.
• Much of the conversation with Bard is removed.
• The process of getting into the fish barrels is removed, they just arrive in them already.
• Alfrid does not stop Bard on his way in. If Alfrid could be removed in any way, believe me, he was. He appears very briefly throughout.
• Kili still gets injured, which causes him to fall over when stealing the weapons. It’s presented in a way that it looks like he was injured in the rapids while in a barrel.
• The suspicion of Bard, and most of the Master’s scenes, have been removed.
• Bard’s family is removed entirely from the film.
• None of the dwarves stay behind in Lake-Town. There is no celebration for them leaving.
• Gandalf still goes to Dol Goldur, but it’s not specifically about the Necromancer, as he is Sir-Not-In-This-Film. He learns that there is an army gathering there, then escapes by blinding Azog (who is not mentioned by name ever.)
• Trims to Bilbo looking for the Arkenstone before Smaug awakens.
• Mention of “dragon sickness” has been removed.
• The entire fight with Smaug within the mountain has been removed.
• To flow into the next film better, Bilbo’s “What have we done?” line has been removed.

Battle of the Five Armies Footage Plans:

• Bard never gets sent to jail, so he bursts into action immediately.
• A black arrow is no longer fired by Bard, he shoots Smaug with a real arrow, finding the spot where a black arrow knocked his scale loose.
• A lot of Thorin’s freaking out will be removed. Just keep enough to establish that he’s obsessed with finding the Arkenstone.
• We find out later in the story that Bilbo has the Arkenstone than we did before.
• The people of Lake-Town go straight to Dale after the city is destroyed.
• Obviously all the white council/rescuing Gandalf stuff will be gone.
• All of Legolas and Tauriel’s subplots will be cut. I will only keep the scene in the battle where Legolas informs Gandalf about the Orcs marching on Ravenhill.
• “Dragon Sickness” is no longer a thing. Thorin just becomes a bit of a greedy jerk, then later has a change of heart.
• HUGE trims to the battle. It goes on way, way too long. This will be very challenging as it will have to all make sense geographically.
• Alfrid and Bard’s family is removed throughout the battle.
• Fili and Kili still die. Kili is killed almost immediately as he charges for Azog.
• Trimmed down the Azog fight. Because he hasn’t been a main antagonist throughout the series, I dont’ think he needs quite as epic and lengthy of a fight. Still cool though.
• Radaghast and Beorn removed from the Eagles charging in. It now seems a bit random that the Eagles arrive without prompt, but I don’t know that I’m against that. They sort of tend to do that throughout the Middle Earth series.
• Azog popping up through the ice happens faster. It feels silly how long Thorin spends staring at him.
• Bilbo sitting next to Gandalf at the end of the battle is removed. I don’t care for that scene for some reason, the bit where Gandalf cleans out his pipe.
• Shots of the Dwarves surrounding Thorin’s body will be during the scene where Dale plays Thorin’s horn theme.
• New ending: Once Bilbo reaches Bag End at the finale of the film, we go to Old Bilbo looking at picture of his younger self. I then used some footage from Fellowship to make the last scene Bilbo beginning to write “There and Back Again”. I feel like this flows nicely into the trilogy but is also a fitting cap to the end of this story.

The only major plot hole I’m finding at the moment is that Thorin suddenly gets his elvish sword back in the middle of the battle. Because I cut Legolas, I also cut the explanation of how he got the sword back. I’m not sure if I want to create some complicated pseudo scene just to fix that. If that’s the biggest problem with turning 9 hours of movie into 3 hours, I can deal.

I also recently completed Frank Herbert’s Dune - The Spence Edit, which turns the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries into one cinematic film. As of right now it’s my favorite edit that I’ve ever done, so if you’re interested I encourage you to check it out!

I look forward to being on the boards here more often and checking out what projects are going on at the moment.

... maybe.

;)

yes.

and the only thing that can defeat the empire are little fucking teddy bears.

ben_danger said:

i wonder if the star forge plotline could eventually tie to the death star?

 Remeber when I said I thought it was getting too ambitious? :)

I do want a little bit of a call back to the Emperor's death in ROTJ though, I think that would be cool.

Exactly. That's part of the point, to give the heroes/villains a bit more purpose.

In the crawl, it's going to say basically that when the Republic realizes what the Naboo have found is part of the Star Forge, they begin to discuss destroying it. The Federation wants it so they can build a giant droid army quickly and accelerate their plans to rule the galaxy.

Something I'd really like to do, but I'd need some help with, is have Maul's death tied to the Star Forge's destruction. I was thinking if when he falls down the pit, a big explosion of force energy (a la ROTJ) could shoot out. Then maybe some shots of the big power columns where the light "dims" to sell the effect.

I'm worried this thing is getting too ambitious, haha.

I don't want to use any KOTOR footage, just use the name of it and have it mentioned as the new power source. Then there's a bit more to it instead of "hey, they found a random power source"

I like "Feel, don't think. Use your instincts." Maybe he could say "Anakin" before that to get his attention.

Alright, that's going in I think. I like it.

Also, what if the new power source was a fragment of the Star Forge from KOTOR? Then it gives some context of what it can actually do, and why the TF would want it (build an unstoppable droid army.)

I wouldn't mind Qui-Gon giving Anakin some direction. Any suggestions for a quote from Mr. Neeson, be at TPM or otherwise?

The way I see it, Bioware as a company have never let me down. As a fan of pretty much everything they've ever made, and knowing how much care they put into their products, I can't imagine a situation where this turns out disappointing.

I'm looking forward to getting in on it. This is replacing the Saga Edition RPG for my friends and I.

Look for ValSpence Yage the smuggler tearing up the place!

Oh and you won't get a KOTOR 3. The guys at Bioware consider this to be KOTOR 3-12 and so on. But... if you read up on the game a little more, you'll find that they are making it truly in the spirit of KOTOR. It plays very similar, it continues and expands on the original story, and the characters from the old ones make appearances. You can recruit a team of characters to help you on your quest, craft items, and choose your morality.

Actually, the only thing that is different is that the galaxy is bigger and populated with new and old friends. How is this bad?

Not like, Grindhouse grain. It'll be a little bit of film grain to make it look like a remastered version of a black and white movie. Think a good transfer of Casablanca or Touch of Evil.

If I grindhouse'd this, Frink would probably kill me.

TheoOdo said:

Those twitter comments...Wow...

Yet more proof that even the lowly mortals of OT.com are more professional by far than the folks at Lucasfilm...

 My concern is that people like that guy she argued with are what lucasfilm thinks WE are all like.

Most of us here don't feel the need to be violent (sarcastic maybe) or abusive or confrontational to Lucas and his offspring, we just want the movies. I feel like these people might be ruining it for all of us.

If you feel like everyone is attacking you and demanding the original versions, are you going to give it to them, or fight back?

Now if everybody stays polite and says please over and over again, are you more likely to consider it?

I'm still of the mind that these original versions will not see a proper release in George's lifetime, but it doesn't hurt our chances to be nice about it.

So the Blu-Ray has broken all kinds of records, which means George will continue to ignore us.

... Can I buy the set for the special features now?

I have an MKV of the Blu-Ray, which I'm trying to get into Vegas. I've got the video in MP4, but the audio is stuck as a .DTS that I can't get into a Vegas format.

I'm a little technically stifled right now. Still can't get my soundtrack in a manageable format. I might just have to take the mix from the DVD version and use that. Hopefully it all syncs up right.

Ok, this is starting to drive me crazy, and I know it's a little off topic, but my blu-ray rip has .dts audio and I can't get it into a Vegas friendly format. Anyone know how to easily convert it to a 5.1 wav or something else vegas handles? The video looks great.

Always low prices. Always.

I'm gonna stick with Maul. Great evil name.

Couldn't get any editing done yesterday, but all of my sources are converted and ready to go in Vegas. I'll start working on it tonight, and I'll post a test clip of the opening tomorrow or the next day. The Neimoidians are going to be subtitled, as I let someone borrow my microphone.

I see what you mean, but why even risk it?

Agreed, dude. Do not give fanediting a bad name and a harder time with the studios just because you think Lucas is a jerk. This is what will get us in trouble. You want to download a fanedit, you buy the original. Then nobody is losing any money over our hobby.

Stop it. Stop it now.

I'm going to remove any references to Padme being elected, and any references to how old Anakin is. We might as well just not bring it up at all, I guess.

Duel of the Fates is going to occur where they are harnessing the energy source, which makes the columns and the exhaust doors make sense.

And in this situation, I will be keeping Yoda and Mace's exchange, but without the close up of Palpatine at the end.

Maul's voice will be pretty similar to his original voice, I can do a fairly close version of that. I like the calm and collected voice. It makes him even more sinister, I've always thought.

So we have a clear, active and really badass villain, a clear plot structure, a kid, a cute robot, awesome fight scenes, great music, and Natalie Portman.

Sounds like a good movie to me.

doubleofive said:

The official title I think will be ANHRHD, but ARSE just rolls off the tongue!

 Keep it PG, dude.

I think it's awesome, personally. Just wanted to know what it meant.

I'm hoping my Frink one catches on.

Can anyone report if any of the TPM deleted scenes are in remotely usable quality?