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ocpmovie

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22-Sep-2004
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10-Mar-2008
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Post
#205557
Topic
Request: The Punisher (1989) - anyone have the Unrated Japanese Laserdisc?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205557/action/topic#205557
Time
Comic book films, at their best, are films of imagination. B-movies are movies made by people without imagination.


The two are incompatible.



A lack of imagination has ruined every comic film of late, apart from the Spiderman films and Sin City. The worst crime a comic book film can commit is to be lifeless and dull.



I'm talking to you, Batman Begins.
Post
#205540
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205540/action/topic#205540
Time
The psychological effect of "ones" ...




Some of the worst crimes Fred Calvert committed against this film were done on "twos." Richard animated most of this film on ones, and Calvert cheaped out, creating shots intended to be done on ones, on twos.


For my rough cut, I was able to make a Calvert shot of the war machine on fire, which was done on threes and looked terrible, look good, merely by superimposing two other versions of the shot over itself at 1/3 opacity, one and two frames forward respectively.

Meaning: each frame, instead of being on threes, gradually dissolves into the next one. Since this is a fire effect which should look smooth, it suddenly was on "ones" and looked great.


But that's just an effect shot, a static shot. It wouldn't be possible to fake inbetweens on real animated shots.


But ...


For the rough cut, I tried it anyway, superimposing the shot over itself, 50% opacity, one frame forward .... to make "twos" dissolve into each other.


It looked awful.




For the final cut, I tried something different. Instead of putting it over itself at 50% opacity ... I thought, what if it was just at 12% opacity? Or some low number like that?

Just a shadow of another frame, just subliminally there.



I've tried it, and it does look better. It's subtle enough that it doesn't draw attention to itself and look cruddy, but the brain does see the action as looking smoother. This takes some of the "edge" off the worst Calvert shots.


It's kind of a dumb trick, but I'm gonna keep doing it. I think it works. We'll see.
Post
#205539
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205539/action/topic#205539
Time
Attempted the first scene with classical music (Verdi) rather than Folk. Didn't like it as much. Folk stays.



My first instincts are usually right with the music, which is nice.



Factoid of the day - An early storyboard for the Thief stealing the Golden Balls showed an aloof, distant, confused king, unaware that they might be stolen. He is shown smoking a hookah, walking out of the Maiden from Mombassa's tent. He calmly calls Zigzag, who answers "Yes, oh steed?" King Nod says "I've been thinking ... we should beef up security."


Over the years Richard realized the scene would be more dramatic if the king was worried the balls would be stolen, as they were being stolen, to set up how vital the balls were, once again.


Another fun fact - just as there were two Princesses early on, so there were two Grand Viziers .... India in the Nasruddin film also had a kingdom with a grand Vizier so devious "he outwits himself."

It is possible that Kenneth Williams (Goblet) originally played the Vincent Price role. POSSIBLE. I've seen one reference to this in print which could be wrong.





I'd like to thank people in this thread for kinda giving a crap about this little minutiae. When you're doing this kind of edit, most of what there is to talk about is the weird little minutiae, which is also what I like talking about most. So it's nice to know that people care about this film, and will sit through some of my blabbering.

Rock on, thread.
Post
#205526
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205526/action/topic#205526
Time
The electronic distortion was due to noise reducing the hissy sound of the Gomez workprint. It made everything sound very electronic and weird.

None of the sound from the Gomez workprint has made it to this version. The Emule workprint and the Stanch workprint have both been noise reduced, and you can hear some electronic crud in the Stanch workprint, but in the Emule workprint you can hardly hear any ... there was very little noise to reduce.

Gonna sound much better. =D



I'm gradually taking out more of the Robert Folk Arabian Knight score and replacing it with classical selections. I've used some suggestions by Justin and Patrick ... and am following my ear, trying to match a certain sound with the right scene. Different music certainly gives the material a different feel. A lot of it is from Scheherezade as usual.

I'll be leaving in some Folk music (folk music - heh) but by the time I'm done, probably not a large amount. If I'm using audio from Princess and the Cobbler you'll hear Folk, but otherwise you won't hear him as much.
Post
#205523
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205523/action/topic#205523
Time
Nice work on the presentation! Knocked 'em dead, I'm sure.




Princess Meemee has been cut out of the film.

In my new cut, there was only one shot where you could still see two Princesses. I used a quick matte to paint Meemee out of the frame - quick and dirty and not that well. It's less confusing this way, but I will miss her and her angular features.

As promised, I have restored the Thief "tree" shot in the polo sequence. It's not seamless, but it is pretty good. It has taken a lot of work to do ... almost akin to the "One Eye's Eye" shot which I was never happy with ... and still am not happy with.



Working on the sound. The Emule workprint's soundtrack is full of nasty pops, clicks and errors all over the place, so I'm switching to the sound from the Stanch workprint pretty constantly. It's missing the first Tack/Yumyum "love scene" (and Thief material afterward), and Yumyum and the brigands after the witch ("Gentlemen, we must return at once!") up to the beginning of the war machine scene ("Ready the positions!") ...

All this has to be gotten from the Stanch workprint. This is actually all storyboards apart from The Thief putting his cloak back on and "Ready the Positions," so no great loss.



That said, the sound is of a much much higher quality. The difference is remarkable.
Post
#205522
Topic
Help: looking for... 'The Cure for Insomnia' movie
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205522/action/topic#205522
Time
I did a TV version in seven parts, intended for cable access. It never aired anywhere though.

The story worked quite well this way because people feel more ready to spend more time when it's TV episodes rather than a movie, they feel they can stop wherever they want. Which I think is silly, but hey.

I didn't reinstate any deleted material, apart from a few scenes of the Clifford character performing his stand-up act, which I used to open some of the episodes.

Anything I cut I kinda cut for a reason ... like the original ending which didn't work ... the reason was usually pacing, to speed things up ... to put anything back in would be eh. (Also I was too lazy to do any more editing on it.)

Places are welcome to show it if they want! ... it's kinda my baby tho' so I haven't been willing to sell it to crap online distribution places ...


I can't believe we're talking about my movie in a thread called "A Cure For Insomnia." Welcome to my life.
Post
#205514
Topic
Help: looking for... 'The Cure for Insomnia' movie
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205514/action/topic#205514
Time
I know, I know, I know.


Hey, I've done short films too.


But, well ...

I happen to tell more complex stories .... I'm more inspired by shows like Twin Peaks and The Sopranos which set their characters up, develop them, let them live life realistically. Being TV series, they have the time to do so, and I found that Gods of Los Angeles may have actually worked better in its television version.

Gods of Los Angeles is a long film because I had a lot to say in it. I cut about an hour out of it to get it to its current state. The first hour is all plot and doesn't interest me as much, but couldn't be cut down much because of plot ... the rest of the film is all character, and is what I'm proud of.

2.5 hours is a pretty standard length for an ambitious film ... if not for an amateur film, but then I wasn't trying to make the usual amateur film.

That said, I did learn a lot from Gods, and will try to tell simpler stories in the future.


(And with THAT said, one of my more recent scripts, a fantasy epic, would definitely be longer than 2 hours and probably become two films.)


For the interested, I tend to give away samples of my films for free with DVD orders to those who ask nicely.

Because of this, a lot of people reading this probably have copies already.
Post
#205287
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205287/action/topic#205287
Time
Maketorrent is Windows only as far as I know. I'd like specifically Mac related help.




Well, once again I've kicked the quality of this edit up a notch.


A major bugabear for me with this edit is that the pan & scan image on the Princess and the Cobbler DVD is a really cheap transfer which goes dark on the sides - the right and bottom sides of the image in particular are much darker than the center, like a bad telecine.

Thus no matter how much time I spent placing the pan & scan image just so on the widescreen workprint and color correcting both to match exactly, the dark sides of the pan & scan insert always gave it away, and made all my best efforts look like junk.


I've solved that now.


I went into my pan & scan video files and looked for frames which were mostly just one flat color with nothing in it. I found one quickly for the main film, though for the end credits which are in widescreen, I had to hunt and create one in Photoshop from bits and pieces of frames.

Both were flat blue skies, darker on the right and bottom.

In Photoshop, I created a matte from this .... white for the light areas, black for the dark ones.


I applied this matte to the pan & scan image in Final Cut Pro. Using the matte, I lightened up the dark areas separately using color correction on a different layer, leaving the light areas unchanged.

The result? No more dark edges! The image looks like a clean transfer, transferred the same on all sides.



I replaced the files on my hard drive, and voila -- shots which looked merely good before are now seamless. Damn straight.



This has emboldened me ... I might even take on the "tree" shot in the Polo game, which I'd previously given up on as impossible to get right.
Post
#205166
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/205166/action/topic#205166
Time
I know the feeling.



Video editing on part 2 is basically complete. I'm still going over it, tweaking and fixing, fixing and tweaking.

I have to do new credits and I might do some new shots, improve the editing in, say, the scene where King Nod talks about the witch -- that scene has stuck out as needing work.

This doesn't mean that the final cut is done ... I've got a lot of work left to do, mostly on the sound, which I haven't really started yet. I have to reedit the entire soundtrack for both parts almost from scratch, and creatively I'm going to be changing music cues, including more classical tracks, which I have to put some thought/time into.

It's all just refining at this point, though. The big stuff is done. Not much longer now ... if I had to show this cut at a public screening tomorrow it would be approvable.

I will spend extra time making sure it's as good as it can be. Double and triple checking. I'll be making menus for the DVD, doing interesting stuff.

Gimme some time to tweak and polish rather than rush these last steps. But it's close now ... quite close.