Question: What if Breaking Bad was from Hank’s perspective?

Note: No files are included in this post aside from PNG thumbnails.

Intro:

• A project I’ve been working on and off of for a long while now.

• Answering the question posed at the beginning of this post, as well as one posted on various comment sections and forums over the years. In which we see the show through Hank’s eyes, chasing down the elusive Heisenberg, before realizing he was right in front of him this whole time.

• After seeing the idea so much, I figured I’d take a crack at it. Like most things I dive headlong into, I figured it would be fairly easy and have it done in a month or so. I am also a fool and also wrong. Taking roughly 6-7 months once all was considered.

Sources:

• The main source for this project is the “complete series” Blurays. Released after the show finished airing (I’m unsure which version it is exactly, as there have been several BR releases)

Tools Used:

• The main bulk of the video editing was done in various versions of Kdenlive. Audio editing was done in Audacity. I also made thumbnails for each “episode” in photoshop. (which you can see here

Edit Info (Spoilers Below):

I edited the show down to basically 6 parts, each the length of an average BrBa episode. Episode names and details are as follows.

Part One: Operation Icebreaker

• Hank and Gomey finding the cooksite, also looking into Tuco and busting Jesse for his involvement. Also dealing with Hank’s mental state after the Tuco shootout, ending with him chucking Tuco’s grill into the river.

Part Two: One Step Up

• Hank arriving in El Paso, realizing he is out of his element and not fitting in. Culminating with him leaving after the traumatic events he experiences down there. Hank starts a mental down-slide and a bit of PTSD from these events. Continuing into investigation, discovering the RV and Jesse’s connection.

Part Three: Not the Man I Thought I Was

• Hank staking out Jesse’s place, discovering the RV and almost busting Walt. If not for a fake call warning him of his wife being in the hospital (set up by Walt and Saul). Hank assaults Jesse, it put on leave for his actions (despite those around him subtly nodding to him not having to). Cartel shootout, leaving Hank and one of the twins wounded. Ends with Hank in the hospital, surviving the attack while the other twin dies.

Part Four: Two Steps Back

• Hank recovering from his injuries, and leaving the hospital (against his will). Also learning about Gale and his involvement from Tim. Ending with Hank and Walt discussing Gale’s notebook and Walt having the worlds worst poker face.

Part Five: A Certain Degree of Bias

• Hank initially throws in the towel on the investigation. Until 2 scenes later when Walt and his big mouth gets Hank thinking again. Hank picks up his investigation once again, looking again into Gale’s possible connection with Los Pollos Hermanos and Gus Fring. He presents his theory to the DEA, who initially don’t believe him but think that there might be something there. Eventually bringing Fring in for questioning. Despite his DEA colleagues buying Gus’s story as to why he is involved with Gale, Hank remains unconvinced and continues on. Hank gets Walt involved to drive him around and track Fring. Episode ends with Walt intentionally crashing the car to keep Hank from the laundry.

Part Six: Chasing Monsters

• The investigation comes to an end. Including a threat on Hank and his family from “a DEA informant”. Walt believes it to be nonsense and doesn’t go. Gomey investigates the laundry on Hank’s behalf. The lab is found and Hank is proven to be right about his theories. He is promoted to ASAC, but continues his investigation to an extent. He starts to look into those connected with Fring, including Mike and those at the laundry, but still missing the last piece to tie it together. Episode ends with Hank discovering once and for all that the man he’s been looking for this whole time is his brother-in-law.

Project Details:

• The original idea was just: “oh, edit all of Walt’s scenes out and just have Hank’s”. Which in hindsight was a terrible idea. As simply cutting those scenes together makes for a horrible story. I then expanded the concept to scenes with Hank and those that pushed Hank’s story forward. Which led to scenes involving: Jesse, the cartel, Gus, and even Mike. Pretty much everything involving Hank, but also cutting out most instances of Walt except for a few scenes (usually those which wouldn’t seem like clues to Hank.)

• Originally had a first edit done in July or August 2022, then dropped it and didn’t look at it for months. Went back to it around December and realized I wasn’t anywhere near done. Re-edited pretty much all of it from scratch. Fixing up transitions and whatnot. Eventually upgraded the source I was using to a higher quality one and dropped in those new clips. At one point, this was close to 6 hours long, though after much editing and trimming, its been cut down to 4.5hrs. Going back through and re-editing to trim some scenes down or cut unnecessary ones out. In addition going into the audio for each clip and removing cues and sound effects that couldn’t be cut otherwise (Like if I needed a scene to go a bit longer, but the original faded in to another scene with overlayed audio). Included with this is cutting out incidental music or effects which sounded odd when cut. Example being Hank at the ATM, which has this music fade in at the end, which transitions to a scene at Walts house with various effects. I wanted to clean these up so that the cuts wouldn’t be as drastic. Another example being Jesse at the hospital, which I cut out SFX in order to cut at the scene of him staring through the door at Hank.

A Certain Degree of Weirdness:

• There’s still a few weird cuts that really couldn’t be avoided. I cleaned them up as best I can, but still not perfect. One is at the hospital earlier when Walt leaves to say goodbye to Gus (which is actually a ploy to ask him about business). Another is Walt walking into Pollos as part of Hank’s investigation, couldn’t show Walt inside because it shows a connection between him and Gus.

• In both cases, I use a simple “cut to black + fade in” to hide these.

Closing:

• I hope this is of interest to someone. I was gonna post parts or clips on youtube but that idea was shut down immediately by copyright strikes. So, I briefly recapped each part above, I hope that will do. Thanks for reading