ArcherEdits

Very interested 😃

[Update from my previous post on here about this from 6 months ago]

I took it upon myself to reclaim some of my childhood somewhat by getting back the specific versions of the original two Star Wars trilogies I used to watch again and again on VHS and some DVD. Though finding them myself online in any measure of good quality always seemed to be very difficult, so I admittedly had a bit of a Thanos moment and said “Fine, I’ll do it myself”.
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I saw ‘The Phantom Menace’ in the cinema when I was nearly 5 years old (I still remember the weird “Midichlorian count” line visual glitch) and used to watch it on its VHS release, ‘Attack of the Clones’ on VHS and DVD shortly afterwards, ‘Revenge of the Sith’ in cinema and DVD, and the Original Trilogy in the 1997 special edition VHS tapes in the special gold and black box.
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I did this because I’ve viewed all the subsequent releases as kind of the same: some of the changes were better than others, and others did feel more warranted than others in all fairness. But, despite that, I always found myself barely watching them on DVD or Blu-Ray because it just wasn’t the same, and they just weren’t clicking in my head the same way as before when I used to watch and really enjoy them when I was younger.
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I used the Blu-Ray as a source for the prequels, and the ‘Despecialized’ editions for the Originals. These were opposite ends of the spectrum; the Blu-Ray had changes added to it from itself and carried over from the DVD before so I had a lot of things to take away to get it right – and the Despecialized’s had no changes at all post-1983, so I had a lot of things to add to get it right.
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July/August 2022 – Episode 1: 2hrs13mins. The droideka encounter screen with the Viceroy and ‘Force-Speed’ effects are in their old state, the podrace and starting grid sequence is shortened to its original length, I took away the air taxi on Coruscant so it’s back to the original skyscraper transition from the landing platform to Palpatine’s apartment, puppet Yoda returns in the temple and Naboo, the chants of “Vote Now!” in the senate after Padmé moves for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum.
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January 2023 – Episode 2: 2hrs23mins. I rearranged the scene through the power couplings during the Zam Wessell chase on Coruscant, took Shmi’s lines out of Anakin’s nightmare (actually a shame, it does feel like it adds things and makes it better), and corrected the drawn out scenes on Geonosis with Dooku escaping – both visually and in that scene’s music.
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January 2023 – Episode 3: 2hrs20mins. Thankfully very few changes this time. I changed the transition from Obi-Wan pensive after Mustafar to Anakin’s remaining hand clawing himself up on the lava shore and knew I needed to change the appearance of the hut structure on Kashyyyk where Yoda has his long-range briefing with the Jedi Council about General Grievous on Utapau. But finding a high-res clip of the structure as it appeared before the Blu-Ray was very difficult, so I kind of had to leave the DVD clip in – it’s not perfect but thankfully it only lasts a few seconds, so it’s a good placeholder until a better-quality clip of the same hut scene emerges and I can insert that later.
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December 2022 – Episode 4: 2hrs5mins. Using the despecialised version of the film as the base, I added special effects from the Blu-Ray that were in the 1997 editions (mostly the scenes with lots of VFX throughout, like those in space), but not all of them to make sure I omitted the ones from the 2004 special edition DVD and the Blu-Ray ones that most people felt were just unnecessary. Greedo shoots first (sorry), ugly Jabba appears (sorry), audio is updated from the Blu-Ray version and imposed over the despecialised footage in some places like the Tusken attack, Obi-Wan’s dragon call, movement in the trash compactor etc.
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Episode 5: 2hrs7mins. I didn’t do anything with this as this is not mine – this is actually the fan restoration that was completed by the editor “Adywan” that I was lucky enough to find Spring last year, so all credit there goes to them and not me as it’s all their good work.
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December 2022 – Episode 6: 2hrs15mins. Principle of this was the same as the ‘New Hope’ project with it having the despecialised version as the base and the cutting and pasting different sources in certain scenes, usually in the VFX-heavy space scenes. The Sarlaac has a beak again, the lightsaber blades cross into each other when Luke tries to kill the Emperor, the ending celebration doesn’t include Theed or the old Jedi Temple or Senate Office Building on Coruscant, Sebastian Shaw’s Anakin ghost appears.
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[Update: mid-June ‘24]
Hi everyone. Just a quick and minor update. Firstly, I put back in one of the Sarlaac shots when one of Jabba’s henchmen falls in for the first time, which I missed before.
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Secondly, I’ve never been very satisfied with the way the final ending for RoTJ came out in my edit the first time around: the footage from the original 1997 galactic celebration wasn’t the best quality when I found it and the options were very limited. So the one I ended up using turned out to be very juddery in the export, and just didn’t look very good because it wasn’t very smooth at all. Luckily, I found a new one to use – in much better visual quality this time – and implemented that instead, which makes the exported version much smoother as I’m very thankful for.
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Thirdly, I left the Endor party as the Blu-Ray version pretty much all the way through the first time – I think the dopamine farm was running out on the project, so I was ending it a little short and tired. Now with the new and improved version of the galactic celebration, it’s followed up by the Endor party done properly this time. I took all the parts from the ‘Despecialized Edition’ source and put them in place of the Blu-Ray shots, keeping the audio for consistency. Because the Endor party was different from the theatrical version to the ones afterwards, I had to granularly match everything from the original as close to the Blu-Ray shots as possible frame-by-frame – but it was straightforward enough, so that’s good.
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Hopefully now the end of the film looks better, and by extension the saga can have a smoother and higher-quality send-off to the story and characters we all love so much.

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As with my work on ‘Andor’ season 1, the size and source quality of the original files means the file size of each of my exports are all on the larger side. Especially with the ‘Despecialized’ versions of the Original Trilogy films being around 20GB each in their own right, each film I’ve put out here is around 10-18GB – just to consider before you download.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught editor or VFX artist here, so some areas may be visibly mostly good, as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

What’s the total size of this project at the full feature length?

Definitely sounds better than what we got - I’d love a link if there is one still

A companion piece of sorts to my re-cut of ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ from the end of last month. This time I took the Ultimate Edition of ‘Batman v Superman’ and split it into two parts – roughly 90 minutes apiece.

As with last month’s DC project, the runtime was more or less the only thing about it I found untenable. So after looking for an edit that already met the middle of runtime/ quality of BvS’ theatrical runtime and ultimate’s depth and not finding something that ticked all the boxes I was hoping for, I had one of my Thanos’ “fine, I’ll do it myself” moments and made this.
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The project name comes from “World’s Finest Comics” from the early ‘40s to the mid ‘80s, where Batman and Superman were the leading heroes of almost every issue ever printed – and Wonder Woman was a consistently recurring character also, especially in the ‘70s run.
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The names of each part are mainly inspired by the first teaser trailer released for BvS, way back in April 2015, where Superman is spoken about as a figure of controversy – and the reactions to his existence, and presence on Earth – the good and the bad. I’ve always enjoyed that trailer very much and thought it was a fantastic way of setting the stage for the film and where everyone stands at the very beginning.
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I did keep the style consistent with my ZSJL edit as a deliberate bridge between the two projects – with the text fonts and even the same project re-cut notice from the other film. To that end, I did try to avoid redundancy by not recycling words in the title, from both projects.
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Part 1: “False Hope” – 1hr 40mins
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The film begins the usual way, with the film’s original title in the opening credits omitted, and continues through the Metropolis sequence from “Man of Steel” until after Bruce’s reaction to his wrecked Wayne Financial building. There, instead of just cutting to the ‘18 months later’, it goes to a custom title card of the two heroes’ symbols merged together, and the “World’s Finest” title – underscored by a small repeating note, intended to subtly evoke the Kryptonian world engine.
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Following that, the film continues as normal, with the Capitol Hill trial/hearing of the Metropolis incident against General Zod, Faora and the others being the ‘climax’ of sorts.
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After the Capitol Hill explosion, when it cuts to black from Bruce’s expression, instead of going into the next scene, it cuts to a ‘To Be Continued….” card instead, with the film’s end credits playing out. At the end, though, instead of the film’s original title and edition label there’s a custom title card with the heroes’ joined symbols – similar to the films’ WF title card – but with a plain background and the film part’s title laid out instead.
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I chose this name for the first half because I’ve always loved the shot in the trailer when all the voices build up before cutting out at the vandalised Metropolis attack memorial. It comes into play a lot in the first half and continuing threads from ‘Man of Steel’, in two big ways especially. First, Superman is supposed to bring and exemplify hope, but all he’s done so far is inspire anger and dread – even through very limited fault of his own. Secondly, there’s Lex’s attitude towards Superman and what he believes to be false about the power he has, goodness he intends, and how those two things go together – given his experiences with his own father.
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Part 2: “God VS Man” – 1hr 33mins
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It starts out a little bit behind, with Wally’s wheelchair exploding and everything up to Bruce’s reaction as he reads the message in the newspaper while watching the Capitol Hill situation unfold on the TV. Following that is the same Warner Bros and such opening titles from Part 1 for consistency between the two shorter films, all framed in my usual visual style for flashbacks/forwards, with 0 colour saturation and a border vignette.
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Once it catches up to that, there’s the same custom “World’s Finest” logo and title card for I made, with the same musical cue as before attempting to evoke the noise of the World Engine from the Metropolis incident very subtly.
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Following that, it picks up with the aftermath on Capitol Hill, now in colour, and the rest of the film plays out as normal until the end. Then, like Part 1, at the end of the credits, instead of the film’s original title and edition label there’s a custom title card with the heroes’ joined symbol, but this time it lingers a little longer and morphs into a different version. This one incorporates Wonder Woman’s symbol in it too, showing the trinity’s union, before fading out again.
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I chose the name for this half, right from Lex’s line I’ve always liked in the first teaser trailer, because that’s what the second half of the film is increasingly about. First Metropolis and then Capitol Hill, public opinion on Superhumans gets drastically worse - then, also, everything to do with Lex Luthor pitting BvS against one another, and him violating and tampering with nature to create the inhuman monster Doomsday through his ‘playing God’ and meddling in everything Krytonian biology.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught editor and VFX artist here, as such, some areas might be visibly mostly good – as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it, of course. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

also interested

Is this whole thing still alive? A lot of links here have expired 😕

The '97SE vhs tapes are the Star Wars OT I grew up on, but I’ve rally struggled finding a good quality version of them since, really bums me out 😕

I’m aware of Adywan’s ESB reconstruction, and it’s very good - are there any for ANH and RoTJ available?

[Hopefully a week and a half is enough to let everyone catch up, so I can talk about all the episodes here without spoiling them for anyone]

The third and final edit of this show, and I’m sad to see it end. Like the others, I’ve grouped the season’s episodes by what feel like the most appropriate story arcs, and made two versions of each to accommodate the individual season’s alternate logo – as I like to differentiate, like my work with ‘The Mandalorian’.

There are a few surprises in this season though, I’ve found opportunities to link the three seasons together through flashbacks from archive footage that I’ve created to tether the show together as a whole. Like other flashbacks/flashforwards I’ve put in other projects, I’ve made the anachronism as visually distinct as possible from the rest of the story there, with having zero colour saturation and a vignette filter.

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For clarification: the arcs numbers here are based on, and following on from, the edits of the first 2 seasons I’ve done– 7 from Season 1, and 9 from Season 2 with the arcs themselves and the standalone episodes I added the alternate logo to. Those episodes came with the “[V2]” label of course, as will be the case here too for the same reasons.

The colour of the alternate logo this time around is more off-white – but more like a very light gold colour, since just the off-white was a little too close to the original grey to be actually visually distinct, especially from across the room.

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Arc 17: “A Fresh Start”. Episodes 1 “Confined”, 2 “Paths Unknown” and 3 “Shadows of Tantiss” all grouped together. They were all released together and worked perfectly well together (probably by design), so having them as the first arc was very easy and made a lot of sense.

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The name has a few valid references in the 3 episodes: Omega adjusting to Tantiss, what Project Necromancer could mean if it’s ever successful, Hunter and Wrecker’s search, the Clone Cadets they rescued from the jungle planet Setron – and Crosshair and Omega’s escape & what it could spell for them going forward.

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Finally, in the second episode, when H+W are walking through the jungle with the cadets they’ve found, there’s a small flashback all the way back to the end of Season 1, which I think works well and ties things together in a good way.

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Arc 18: “Cross-Purposes” – episodes 4 “A Different Approach” and 5 “The Return”.

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I slightly changed the chain of events in episode 4 to, I think, improve the story somewhat. A fair bit of episode 4 feels like it’s bulked out by people going out of their way to be self-centred assholes and – I don’t know if it’s just lingering frustration from Season 2 with all the Cid missions that always yielded no results – but can the good guys just win UNconditionally for once??

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Now, after Omega wins the money gambling, Imperial Captain Mann doesn’t fleece them, undoing their progress – he just gets the transmission about the shuttle crash and leaves to investigate immediately. Secondly, when the duo discover Batcher’s been kidnapped, the street urchin now tries to bribe the information out of them, but Crosshair intimidates him and he immediately relents, telling them where the Imperials went. I think ideally, I would cut the kidnapping out if I could because the captain’s just being an annoying sore loser and it bloats and segues the plot when the duo already have a shuttle they can bribe themselves onto. But that doesn’t match the vessel they eventually steal and escape with, and the background doesn’t match the commercial shuttle depot, so I can’t “invent” a firefight there instead and kind of must keep the kidnapping and such for consistency reasons.

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Later, on Barton IV, there are 3 very brief flashbacks to the episode “The Outpost”. This is very much deliberate because this is a site of a major event in Crosshair’s arc in the last season, it makes sense that when he returns there, it would be stuck heavily in his head every second he’s there – hopefully this conveys that effectively.

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It does feel like the first 4 episodes work well as one giant story instead, but that comes to 1 hour 40+, even with the last episode slightly shortened somewhat. This feels very long – especially with the show already having 1 “mega-arc” already with the first 3 episodes of Season 1. So having this duo instead feels like it works better as a more Crosshair-themed story – as with the name: “Cross-purposes”.

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To be specific, “Cross-purposes” is an expression where 2 or more people are at odds and have different goals/methods concerning the same thing. This feels very apt for CROSShair and Omega having to work together after their shuttle crash, and Crosshair with the squad on Barton IV learning to work together again and getting to the bottom of things between Crosshair and The Empire. In the latter episode, there are some flashbacks to the previous season – they’re very short, but hopefully with the way I’ve crafted them, they each have a big impact in making the shot/scene deeper.

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Arc 19 is split into two versions: a four-episode story from episodes 6-9, and two self-contained two-parters, because I find the four episodes actually work very well in both formats. As usual, you download and view whichever you agree with the most and works well with the rest of your collection. Also, just having the former could apply here if you like the latter half, but disagree with the choice to muddy the waters with how the ‘Dark Disciple’ novel left things on the Ventress front, so excising the latter half works better for you.

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The four episode arc: “All That Counts” is all of E6 “Infiltration”, E7 “Extraction”, E8 “Bad Territory” and E9 “The Harbinger” as one long sequence. There’s a brief flashback to Season 2 when ‘M-Count Targets’ are being discussed with Phee from Pabu, and that’s where the connection across all 4 episodes comes from, as it’s a consistent thread through them all.

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The name “All That Counts” is a play on the M-Count aspect of course, but it also as other meanings it can apply to in the four episodes. The Clone Assassin has to silence his own brother for silence’s sake and recover Omega for Hemlock – that’s all that counts, no matter the setback or the injuries. Wolffe has a clear change of heart when he meets Rex again, hears his story, and the reality of his orders sinks in: hunting a child – being loyal to his brothers, doing the right thing, and letting the target go as a show of both is all that counts, no matter the consequences. When Hunter and Wrecker meet Fennec Shand again after Pantora, the past doesn’t matter, only the present and them needing each other’s help does: the mutual benefit, especially for Omega’s sake, is all that counts. Lastly, when Ventress appears on Pabu, there’s a lot of distrust for obvious reasons, but the squad need answers and help and she’s the only one who can give it to them – all that counts is that they trust her and let her do what she needs to do.

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The first two-parter: 19a – “Teths of Patience” is just E6 “Infiltration” and E7 “Extraction” back to back, no flashbacks. The name is another play on words, because in these two episodes we see a few characters going through TESTS of patience of one kind or another at the old ruined B’Omarr Monk Monastery. Mostly the members of Rex’s Clone Underground trusting Crosshair in their presence, and the Clone Assassin trying to complete his objective despite some setbacks and injuries.

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The second two-parter: 19b – “New Allies and New Information” is just E8 “Bad Territory” in Space-Florida, and E9 “The Harbinger” with Ventress back to back, containing a short flashback in the former. The name ties into the first two-part story featuring Fennec back in season 1 “More Enemies and More Opportunities” as a kind of deliberate mirror. The allies (even just situationally) and information are both pretty self-evident with Fennec & Ventress, and everything they need to learn about this ‘M-Count’ phenomenon that’s presented itself.

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For the remaining episodes of the season: numbers 10-15 essentially create one long unbroken chain of events where each episode leads very comfortably right into the next. But this obviously creates one giant story that has a very dragging runtime of at least 2h40m, which is a huge story for a series which was made for TV and not film, and was designed to fit into ~22 minute chunks from the start.

To this end, I broke things up into smaller stories – à la The ‘Liberation of Lothal’ in my “Rebels” edit – to make the home stretch of the season, and show, much more easily digestible.

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Arc 20 begins with E10 “Identity Crisis” and goes right into E11 “Point of No Return”, and continues with E12 “Juggernaut”, before finishing with E13 “Into the Breach”.

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Conveniently, I’ve found the episode title ‘Into The Breach’ actually works very well for the entire arc for one reason or another. First, we see the moral ground Emerie finds herself on with the subjects that arrive at Tantiss, and the fact that they’re just children. Secondly, there’s the TK’s mobilising and disembarking on Pabu and the subsequent fighting and recapture of Omega after that small battle. Third, there’s a stealth-op with The Squad and Phee going to a secure Imperial world to recover a former Imperial asset, with very few options left on either side at that point. Finally, there’s going to Coruscant at the heart of The Empire to get Wayland’s co-ordinates.

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As stated above, episode 10 onwards is just 1 giant chain that runs unbroken, so having a self-contained Tantiss trilogy right at the end to keep everything very grounded and straightforward was good, and these 4 episodes before fill the gap well by proxy, so it all works out well.

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Arc 21: “Ground Zero”. The last of the show, consisting of E14 “Flash Strike” and the double-length E15 “The Cavalry Has Arrived”. It’s named as such because it’s the last trilogy’s worth of episodes self-contained to Tantiss itself and the last mission, which I think is a very fitting name.

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There’s only 1 version of this arc, since the all-grey logo from the finale, to reflect the paint-blasted armour they adorn themselves with from E13 onwards, looked great and felt greatly relevant to include. Including this for the final arc felt like a no-brainer.

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This arc does include the epilogue attached to the end this time. This is because it doesn’t contradict anything that chronologically comes afterwards in animation terms, as far as I know at least. The Rebellion pretty much began as soon as Saw Gerrera disagreed with The Empire on the very day of its founding, which we saw in the very first episode of TBB, which obviously precedes Rebels and Andor by a way, so there’s plenty of wiggle room for where the epilogue can fit in the timeline with everything else.

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Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught or VFX artist here, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

[Updated on 15/05/2024]

A project I’ve definitely been looking forward to, and I’m glad to finally get it all done.

Like my project of ‘Tales of the Jedi’ from 2022, I’ve organised the 6 episodes into a two-episode structure, self-contained to each respective character, giving both a longer length and more straightforward story. Also, I’ve taken the liberty of annotating each of the 6 time periods by year, anchoring the story further – as I also did with ToTJ before.
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“Barriss: The Wrong Path”
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The episodes ‘Devoted’, ‘Realization’ and ‘The Way Out’ all stitched together. Truthfully, when I first read the season’s episode titles, I was a little surprised and confused. The episode titles for Morgan Elsbeth felt like they were much more appropriate for Barriss and her story instead – that and her deep involvement in the “Wrong Jedi” arc in The Clone Wars season 5 made it an easy title to come up with.
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‘Devoted’ takes place around the fall of The Jedi and Order 66, making it BBY-19. ‘Realization’ takes place in an unclear time, but in the trend of why I planted the last Elsbeth episode where I did year-wise, 7 years again could work. Therefore, having it in BBY-12, 7 years after Order 66, would be viable (not like there’s anything there at the moment anyway). Lastly, ‘The Way Out’ has to be between the Obi-Wan series in BBY-9 and the time the Inquisitors are dissolved and redundant as a result of their own success in around BBY-0 or so. Continuing the trend of 7’s, sticking it at BBY-7 to mirror the second Morgan episode fits well enough to work.
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“Elsbeth: The Iron Fist”
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The episodes “The Path of Fear”, “TPo Anger” and “TPo Hate” knitted in the correct timeline sequence. The name has different meanings in each of the Elsbeth episodes, so it works well. In “Fear”, it’s pretty literal in the sense of General Grievous himself, in “Anger” it refers to The Empire itself which Morgan now joins properly in an official partnership with Admiral Thrawn, and in “Hate” it’s related to Elsbeth’s grip on Corvus, and how the system suffers under her rule.
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“Fear” takes place during the Battle of Dathomir in the Clone Wars (season 4, episode 19) so finding out that was BBY-20 was easy. “Anger” was a little tricky because of the Venators above Coruscant, but that and the Imperial Star Destroyer makes it around or following the end of ‘The Bad Batch’ season 3 at least. But Thrawn was first promoted to Admiral in BBY 3 after the Battle at Lasend Twenty-Six in the canon comic ‘Thrawn 4’ – and he only just becomes a Grand Admiral right before “Rebels” season 3 starts in BBY-2, so putting the episode in BBY-3 works. Also, Venators were still canonically in service by BBY-2 under Admiral Ahr in the ‘Age of Rebellion – Darth Vader 1’ comic from 2019, so that all checks out fine. Lastly, the episode “Hate” happens between the Battle of Jakku in ABY-5 and the arrival of Din Djarin in ABY- 9 – I haven’t put anything in ABY-7 yet in any of my relevant projects like ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ and the epilogue of ‘Rebels’, so why not just put it there by proxy?
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“Special: The Stark Mirror”
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I came up with a crossover episode blending the Barriss episode “Devoted” and the Ahsoka episode “Resolve” into one story that pendulum swings between both characters, hopefully to good effect. I had this idea more or less as soon as they announced the series and that Barriss was going to be one of the central characters, especially around the time of the Fall of The Republic, like ‘Resolve’ years prior.
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Since these two characters were friends, to the point of working closely together in the past to mutual goals, seeing them juxtaposed like this and the contrast between them that creates an interesting story. In both cases, you see the young woman starting in a low place amidst the chaos of the new regime change, going through her own trials of sorts (socially, fighting, possible discovery and moral crises). All before seemingly accepting her new destiny – at least for the time being: the agent and the fugitive – or, more precisely and aptly: the hunter and the hunted.
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Now, after this I admit I got a little carried away. Specifically I put the Morgan Elsbeth portion of the Battle of Dathomir into the Clone Wars episode “Massacre” and my own arc project “Darth Maul returns” – simply just to add depth to that story, and connect that older one to this newer one.

If you like it and see the point of it, great – if not, no foul, I did really just do it for the sake of doing it for the most part.
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Update 1: Mid-May
I checked my uploads and realised the title card for the crossover special was the one for the Barriss arc, so I promptly changed, re-exported and re-uploaded that so it’s fixed now. Also, to clear up a detail I forgot to mention; the crossover is framed as a ‘Jedi’ story, not an ‘Empire’ story, because it focusses 2 former Jedi finding their feet in the new regime – on opposite ends of the spectrum. Also the fact they were both friends when they were Jedi padawans in the Clone Wars too has a big impact.

Secondly, I noticed that I didn’t upload the shorter version of Barriss’s arc that accommodates the first story being inside the crossover episode, so I promptly uploaded that too.
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Update 2: Early June
I looked back on the special crossover episode. While I did do it initially with the story focus swinging back and forth between the two characters of Ahsoka and Barriss, I found when rewatching it properly that that method doesn’t always keep the pacing of each story and focus on each main character as well-tuned as I hoped it would when I was first doing the project, so I created a second version. This time, it begins like before: starting off with Barriss in Prison before segueing to Ahsoka on Naboo – then comes the title card – then comes all of Barriss’ story on Nur in one go with the Grand Inquisitor, Marrok and Vader – then all of Ahsoka’s story on the farm, culminating with the inflatable Grim Reaper-esque Inquisitor from Barriss’ story finding her (and failing dismally).

I think this one works well in its own right as well as the first draft: keeping everything self-contained means the stories stand together in their own ways side by side, and in a way that’s a little more straightforward on both ends, as there are no interruptions in a story you’re otherwise familiar with this time.

Me being me, I did keep the original there in the same online folder, and clearly labelled the updated version – so if you prefer the original, you can still keep it – if you prefer the new version, you can replace it with that instead – it’s all good either way. I’ve also changed the names of some of the things in the ‘Tales’ folder I have – now the specials are grouped together more neatly: The shortened version of Dooku’s TotJ story is Special 1a, while the cut of ‘The Phantom Menace’ with the last Dooku episode is listed as Special 1b for example.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught editor and VFX artist here, so some areas might be visibly mostly good, as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A project that was actually the very second one I ever considered back when I was only just starting to get into editing work back at the start of 2022 – second only to ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ with splitting the past and present properly and removing Grogu from the finale.

Now I’ve finally got to it and was able to actually bash it out in a single day this week, it’s number 52 on my total projects’ list, so that worked out very appropriately in the end actually.
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This project specifically is just splitting the large Director’s Cut into the 7 chapters it came in – with the same ‘Warner Bros.’ logo at the start and the same credits at the end of each of them. Just for the sake of consistency and to make sure they’re compartmentalised into proper chapters as neatly as possible.

There are no story changes made in this regard, it’s just the story being broken up into more digestible pieces. That said, a Heard-less version of the film would be great, same with Aquaman (2019) if even possible, with a different face faked on and voice dubbed over – probably never going to happen, but a person can dream.
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Part 1: “Don’t count on it, Batman” – 46 mins total
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Part 2: “The Age of Heroes” – 42 mins total
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Part 3: "Beloved Mother, Beloved Son” – 53 mins total
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Part 4: "Change Machine” – 40 mins total
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Part 5: "All the King’s Horses” – 41 mins total
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Part 6: “Something Darker” – 51 mins total
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Part 7: “Epilogue” – 29 mins total
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I have considered a plan of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen too, and have made moves on turning that into a series also, but I’ve ran into a few hurdles I’m not sure how to meander over.

Which version of the 2009 film to do, including ‘Tales of The Black Freighter’ or not, when it’s split into 12 chapters do I move things back/forward to more closely resemble things on the page – or leave them alone so the film flows better as a FILM etc….
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught editor and VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

The second in the trilogy of projects from this March, and my 50th overall from the last two years of video projects.

The edit of this film from 2018 is quite straightforward again, luckily – it’s mostly putting deleted scenes back in, though there are two versions of this film up for grabs, for reasons I’ll get into later.
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The first change is another extended opener sequence like the first films. This time it’s Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne on mission together in Argentina (Buenos Aires) back in 1987, acting as the first ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp’ dynamic duo together. This was an original opening sequence the studio changed, and luckily I was able to find it online and in decent quality and only have to make a few changes to it, like colour grading and adding a mirror filter to one shot that’s clearly the wrong way round as you can see by a “Stop” sign appearing backwards. It’s good to put this sequence back in, because it revolves around Elihas Starr’s lab trying to harness the Quantum Realm’s powers after stealing Hank Pym and Bill Foster’s work, before things go badly wrong.
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The second change, again, is replacing the “Present Day” annotation with the one where Scott Lang is playing with Cassie in the house while he’s under confinement – this takes place in April 2018 in the story, so that’s what the new PNG overlay states.
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The third change is at nearly 42 minutes in, and is where the film splits into two versions. In one of them, the detour into Cassie’s school to retrieve the older Ant-Man suit is left in – in the other, it’s removed. It’s certainly an amusing sequence, but it’s definitely very sidequest-y in an otherwise very straightforward part in the film. Without it, Scott and Co. see Bill Foster and get some info about the past and answers about the present – and then they go right into applying those things on the old Ant-Man suit Scott says he has, and was safe, anyway – so it’s all just more straightforward.
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At fourth change is at 51 minutes in with no school or 55 minutes in with the school sequence. Another deleted scene is put in where Sonny Burch and his men are narrowing down where the lab is and starts asking questions about who Scott is in the CCTV footage they watch of the lab shrinking. There’s no clear place in the film where the deleted scene goes before the 52 minute mark in the theatrical release where Burch shows up at Luis’ office with the “truth serum”, but it feels appropriate where I put it for two reasons.

Firstly, it leads into the office scene a few minutes later much better than him showing up there out of the blue, and the place I put it goes between Scott and Co. escaping Ghost and Foster and then suddenly being in the enlarged lab in the forest. It’s a very abrupt cut in the theatrical release between the two scenes that doesn’t really carry well, so hopefully this works better. It’s also a little better for Burch’s character to see him in this scene – we get some information why he’s after the lab in the first place: tech, money, personal relevance etc – so there’s actual development and motivation there, not just having the character as someone who shows up randomly, wants the lab for unknown reasons and keeps talking about his restaurant when nobody really asks.
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Another deleted scene plays at 1hr 38mins in (1hr 34mins with the school sequence removed) – after Hank and Janey finally reunite in the Quantum Realm and she tells him about what it’s really like down there. This deleted scene ties into “Quantumania” very well, as Janet explains that the place is bigger than they imagined, to the point of entire worlds and civilisations being down there*. Also that she knows how to communicate with the quantum creatures down there, makes sense as she seems to have domesticated two of them in her time at her little spherical homestead in the past.

Also, the footage from the scene right after that, where Hank asks how Janet how she stopped the Quantum Realm messing with his head, is the same footage from the start of this deleted scene. So, to avoid repetition, I used the cut of the two of them getting into the Quantum Vehicle, but greatly slowed, to essentially paper over the cracks as best I could with the footage that was there. It’s not perfect, but hey ho
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At the very end of the film, the new title card I made is overlaid some of the footage of the film – since the theatrical title card left no room for me to overlay and then replace it, like with others. At the 1:55:15/1:51:30 mark, depending on which version you watch, I used the footage of Hank emerging from the Quantum Vehicle, because the arch-like structure in the background is reasonably similar to the theatrical ‘toy-like’ environment in that shot. Building on that, I reversed the footage to match the motion at the end of the theatrical cut, added a Gaussian Blur filter to really take the photorealistic edge off, so it’s not so jarring against the end credits in the waxworky toy style. Lastly, I made the custom title card follow the same motion as in the film: starting distant, enlarging on the screen and then continuing to enlarge very slowly until the scene cuts – with some 3D text effects this time to match the theatrical again.
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Finally, the post-credit scene involving the drumming ant has been changed, because it feels like unnecessary levity in a moment that should probably remain dire and serious for obvious reasons. Now, you see the empty Lang house with the constant blare of the emergency TV broadcast, but instead of seeing and hearing the giant ant on the electric drumkit, it cuts to aerial shots of San Francisco and keeps the blaring noise the entire time, clearly implying the entire city is in the same boat – that is to say: at least just that one city.
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To answer “Quantumania” questions that might present themselves next; the plans for that film recut are still very much up in the air and still just plans at the moment. I know what I want to do with the film ideally, and what ideas I want to put in motion with what I would change and why, but there is the big project I’ve been doing slowly for the last month that I mentioned previously. Ideally, I would knuckle down and just bash that out and finally get it done before moving onto another project in a big way.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught video editor and VFX artist here, so some areas may be visibly mostly good, as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

The first in a trilogy of projects from this March, that’s actually the 50th on my list from the last two years of video projects – the complete, the unfinished or potential ideas, and the multiple versions of projects that have gradually improved over time alongside my skills as an editor.

Honestly, it’s still a coin-flip between the titles “The Astonishing Ant-Man” and “Ant-Man – The Astonishing Cut”, because I really do like them both. But ultimately, the former works best as a group title, especially with the second film sharing the name with a new subtitle added to differentiate it as the sequel.
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The edit of the first film from 2015 is quite straightforward. Mostly the addition of deleted scenes that add good things for one reason or another, though this meant I didn’t include all of them for that same reason.
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The first change is adding the extended opening scene from 1989. After Hank Pym resigns from SHIELD when discovering Howard Stark and Mitch Carson’s work behind his back, he storms out and leaves the original Ant-Man suit in the vault in his basement, literally and figuratively closing the door on that part of his life.
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The second change is replacing the “Present Day” annotation when Scott Lang gets out of San Quentin Penitentiary – he gets released in July 2015, so that’s what the new PNG overlay states.
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The third change is around 11 minutes in, when another deleted/extended scene plays out when Darren Cross shows investors the ‘Futures Lab’, which I colour graded to match the theatrical scene as best I could. The new scene goes into more detail explaining the other uses of the Pym Particle if it were used properly: global freight shipping, biomedical surgery and waste disposal – all valid points. Another main reason for including this, is you get a lot of good shots of one of the Yellowjacket buyers from later in the film: man in a blue shirt and pinstripe suit with a Ten Rings tattoo visible on is neck. It’s a good way of tying things together universally and move it past just HYDRA wanting the tech in Phase 2 (allegedy A.I.M. was there too to buy the Yellowjacket tech, but that was never confirmed.
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At nearly 19 minutes in, another deleted scene plays at Cassie’s birthday party, where Scott talks to her properly and she says she misses him and wants to see her more. It’s a good moment that adds more weight to the father side of Scott’s character, not just the thief. Colour graded to the theatrical release best I could again.
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Another deleted scene plays at 44 minutes in – where Bill Paxton and his partner Nile start narrowing down who Scott’s “Lawyer” was before he disappeared and how there’s no record of this man. It better sets up the breakfast scene about 2 minutes later when Cassie says she hopes [Bill] doesn’t find [Scott].

Speaking of the breakfast scene, I put another deleted scene after it, where Hank and Hope talk about Scott and teaching him how to use the Ant-Man suit (and how he might be an idiot savant – or just an idiot). This is after Hank shows Scott the basement and explains the Pym Particle research, Darren Cross’ relation to him, how Hank got ousted from his own company, and where Scott agrees to help Hank. I put it here because it seemed to be the only place where it could realistically belong, as there’s no clear indicator of its position in the film, but they’re just talking about Scott learning the suit and he needs Hope’s help, so having it before he gets started with the keyhole jump sequence makes sense. Luckily I didn’t need to colour grade anything for this scene.
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Shortly afterwards, once Cross successfully shrinks a lamb without killing it, there’s an extended and colour graded scene in Hank’s basement. In the original release, Hank talks about Mitch Carson and how unless they swipe the Yellowjacket suit and erase all the data on it, Darren Cross will unleash chaos on the world – this new scene is much more detailed. Hank goes deeper into his tenure as the original Ant-Man working for SHIELD for decades around the world, and how Darren Cross succeeded where Howard Stark and Mitch Carson failed in replicating the Pym Particle work. It adds more to tie it to the wider universe again, and makes the character of Hank deeper with details of his original work, and makes Cross seem smarter and more dangerous with managing to succeed in reproducing and weaponising Hank’s buried work.
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The rest of the film plays out as normal until around 1hr 50 where there’s a new title card for the film, reflecting my work.
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The sequel has been nearly finished for almost a month, but I haven’t been into uploading much lately because I’ve been busy chipping away at another project, which has been much larger and more complex than a cinematic trilogy recut. That’s hence why I completed this over a month ago but I’m only just getting to publishing it now also.
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The only real things stopping me from uploading “The Astonishing Ant-Man: Ghosts of The Past” are some issue with one deleted scene that seems a little tricky in its precise placement, whether or not I might cut out a different (kind of sidequesty) sequence to accommodate it, and the custom title card at the end. The final point is especially tricky since the original title is hard-layered onto the background, and is obviously different from the title I’ve chosen.
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I’ve got ‘Quantumania’ plans on the go in my head too – but it’s finding the time to do it, taking the time to properly plan and execute the things I want to, and how it’s going to stand on its own next to a different version of the film that belongs to a different collection of films I’m planning.
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Specifically: I’m thinking about a “Kang Dynasty” Saga of films, to the point of already having names for the instalments thought up – but it’s all is still very much in the planning stage and I haven’t committed to it properly on any level, since it will require cinematic recuts of the Loki series’, and I just don’t know if I have that in me. Sounds like an F-ton of work.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught video editor and VFX artist here, so some areas may be visibly mostly good, as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A fairly straightforward project from this February that was mostly a rehash of the second half of my existing ‘Bad Batch’ edit project with a new coat of paint for every second season arc I already did, and the single episodes in between I previously didn’t touch. But this time, I also included some re-tweaking of two arcs specifically, which I will get into below.
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Essentially, very shortly after uploading my ‘Bad Batch’ edits, I found an alternate logo for season 2 that was less the greys and reds of season 1, and more shades of brown with the reds instead. If you’re familiar with my work on The Mandalorian already, then you know that when there are a lot of episodes of a show released, I like to differentiate and compartmentalise the seasons by their respective colours – so this was in a similar vein to that.
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As for the episode text, I tried going for the most common shade of brown in the new logo for it, but this turned out to be too light, and was very similar to the text in ‘Tales of The Jedi’ that use the same font in a tan/beige colour. Conversely, if I tried avoiding this as much as possible by going for the darkest shade in the alternate logo, it blended into the black background a little too well, especially when viewing at a distance, like across the room. So I went for a shade of brown that was more in the middle between the two, and hopefully it works well in both ways here.
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As for the arcs I changed, it’s the middle two of the second season, for actually the same reasons. The two episodes centring on the Clone Underground on Coruscant, and the two centring on the Ipsium Mine on the planet ‘Ipsidon’ both work very well as dedicated two-parters, but also have one episode each that could also be lumped in with it – feasibly, but ultimately tangentially.
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The episode “Tribe” precedes the Coruscant duo with no other episodes between them, and when we see Omega for the first time, she’s meditating in the Marauder with Gungi and ‘Tribe’’s events mentioned. That means there’s a link there to thread them together with – but because it’s quite loose, it might not be worth keeping them as a dedicated three-episode arc, so I’ve done both so you can decide what works best for you and your collection. I’ve put ‘Tribe’ up with the new logo on its own, ‘Truths and Conspiracies’ as a Coruscant two-parter with the new logo, and the entire arc as a three-parter with the old AND new logo and episode text colours as well – do what works for YOU.
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Secondly, the first time round I included “Metamorphosis” with the Ipsium Mine duo of episodes, because I always felt it leads into the Zillo episode reasonably neatly as it is. But MTMR is a fairly strong episode on its own, I’ll admit, so this might not be the opinion of everyone. To this end, I’ve reuploaded the extended three-part arc with the brown logo, as well as MTMR on its own and the shortened duo separately with the alternate style too. Again, you do what works for you and your collection.
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Because of the gaps of episodes I missed in season 2 now being taken into consideration, the numbers as they appear in the uploads are now different – but I’ve made sure to keep it clear what is what. All three-part versions of the tweaked arcs are labelled as ‘extended’, the previous season 2 work (and the now re-tweaked arcs) with the original grey logo are denoted as “V1” – and everything with the new brown logo is labelled as “V2”.
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And just a bit of an announcement: Yes, I’m currently doing the Season 3 arcs as they come, and yes, I’ll probably do differing logo ones again with how I like to differentiate things.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught editor and VFX artist here, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A fairly big project from September-November ‘23 that unfortunately got cut in half due to me hitting a brick wall with it, and had me picking it back up February-March ’24 in a mercifully easier and more straightforward second half.

To specify the structure of the season this time around, it’s still 5 episodes and the story is almost identical to the way it appears in V1: “The Droids”, “The Expedition”, “The Survivors”, “The Warriors” and “The Reclamation”. Story specifics of how the 8 release episodes became 5 edited ones are here if you’ve not read it before/recently: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Mandalorian-season-3-Groguless-Edit/id/107124. The minor story changes are below*
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This whole new take on the project came down to me discovering a tool in the editing software I use, allowing me to take the shots of scenes from V1 I’d carefully zoomed in on to excise the little green guy, but have more manual control over what was on the screen.

By using these keyframes I can assign in the footage at will, I could redo a lot of my previous work to a better standard – especially the movement shots and distance shots. Also I could recreate the zoom part of the ‘zoom and fade’ effect with each episode’s show and title cards like the released episodes – and that doesn’t hurt.
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To give specific examples of my new approach to the movement shots: in V1, when the zooms were solid and fixed, I had to zoom in to accommodate the smallest amount of ‘clean’ footage available. As in: if Grogu was absent for just 1 second at the end of that cut of that scene, that’s what I had to accommodate for all of it just to cover that 1 little shot, as I had no other choice at the time. This led to a lot of that footage being cut off by default just to accommodate the most extreme detail at the smallest point, which was a shame - because I accomplished what I wanted to, but a lot of the episodes were “lost” in the process in a sense.
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Good examples are when Din arrives on Nevarro for the first time, a few instances in the Mandalorian tunnels, when Din/Bo are meeting up with the fleet on Plazir-15 and when Din is sneaking through the Imperial Mandalorian bunker. With all of these, now it’s easier to see the whole thing because you can ‘stay with’ the characters the whole time.
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These new methods either have the camera stay with them so they stay fixed in frame despite the movement – or more like the shot starts completely zoomed out like the release. Or as soon as the character I want to keep appears, it immediately zooms in on them and stays there (so it’s following them like the former despite starting differently), or continuing to zoom in further, staying with them that way.
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All of it depends how the specific characters move in that specific shot of that specific scene.
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With how I fixed the distance shots: in V1, I had to cut out a lot which was a big shame. Even though GG did very little to move the plot forward this time, a lot of the shots with him there had him slap-bang in centre-frame the whole time, so cutting him out without cutting out a large chunk of that shot of that scene by proxy was just simply not possible.
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I worked around that this time by creating nearly two-dozen colour PNG’s to overlay the 5 respective episodes in the scenes where appropriate – in the same method as the annotative PNGs for locations in this show, Andor and Boba Fett. The colours would be identical to the background behind GG and/or his hover-pram and I could use the keyframe tool to keep them obscuring what I wanted to as much as possible – so if the camera moved, even a little, I could compensate for that. The scenes in the Mines where GG’s hoverpram has its own light source emanating from that was trickier to get right, especially with a character moving in front of the bulb in a lot of shots, but I did what I could.
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Some were simpler than others, because obviously almost all of the backgrounds of shots were unique and varied a lot by colour, lighting and complexity. Specifically: some were like rocks in the dark like the covert’s meeting while Gorian Shard attacks Nevarro, so they were very easy to get the colour of and apply the overlay – others were like the entrance to the Mines of Mandalore and much more complex with lighting and background detail factors. In fact, the complexity of the Mines entrance is why I got burned out and hit the brick wall in the first place.
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When it comes to having something to obscure the shadow GG/his hover-pram leaves in the scene, I didn’t really bother that much to be honest. Best case scenario, it felt like an afterthought when I’d already done the complex work on that scene shot so I just wanted to move on already. Conversely, in the worst case, it was like the kept characters were walking through the shadow itself, so if I wanted to obscure it every step (pun not intended) of the way – I would have to create a bespoke PNG the colour of the background, taking in the exact shape around everyone’s feet and legs for literally every 24th-of-a-second frame. Way too much work to do even once.
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*The changes to the story are all in ‘Chapter 2: The Expedition’, and they’re just intended to clean up certain elements of the new plot rather than radically reshape anything.
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The first change is admittedly not my favourite, but this was one of those times where I was boxed into a really tight corner with the footage in front of me, and the reality of what I could feasibly do with it. I wanted to clarify the scene where Din and R5 arrive at Mandalore and Din talks to the astromech, expositing for the audience while passively showing his growing tolerance for droids. Unfortunately though, there is literally not a single shot in the season where R5 is clearly shown with a space background, so I had to make my own. I took freeze-frames from the scene on Mandalore’s surface with Din and R5 both clearly visible, replaced the original background with a starry background I animated with keyframes like the rest of the colour PNGs in the other scenes. It’s really not perfect and I’d like to do it a different way if I could – but, again, what can I do?
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The second change in the story is where Din gets captures by the Kazdan Paratus-like creature in the spider tank in Mandalore’s underground. Now, he communicates with R5 and tells him to get to Bo Katan, right as the tracker on Din that R5 was monitoring from the N1 cuts out, and R5 flies away in a panic. It’s clearer now, reframed in a way that makes it a little more dramatic and hopefully just better overall.
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Lastly, when Bo encounters the Alamites, her dialogue when they’re discovered is very slightly different, and her line about wondering what else survived down there is re-inserted. I found a way to make the latter work well, and reinstating it makes the mechanical creature a bit more well-fitting in that bank of scenes, as well as the menacing implication of whether or not it’s alone down there.
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I put it in the same place as my Version 1 of the project – so if you already have that, you should also get this easily too.

Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught video editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A project from June ’23, which has been my only Phase 1 project so far, and set me on the path to tweaking WandaVision afterwards.

This one was mostly me adding extra content to, in my view, enhance the story by clarifying key details, though I did cut or change a few details I found irksome, as I do. I also made two versions of the film depending on the inclusion of one particular deleted scene – the extra details are spelled out below.*
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My main gripe/push to edit the film was the war montage in the middle of the story: Cap and the Howling Commandos are fighting HYDRA all across Europe, but we as the audience just get a bunch of mindless action with no specifics. In fact, the whole passage of time throughout the entire film can be very unclear at times, which does work against the story in some ways – so every time there’s a large time jump, it’s now specified and laid out.

To the end of enhancing the war action specifically, I added in the locations of these battles (and some headcanon dates since it’s not specified at the source) to actually give the action some depth. Now, when you see all the places they fight, you really get the impression of just how widespread HYDRA’s grip on Europe is, which frames them as a much bigger and more powerful threat than just a bunch of generic uniformed bad guys shooting at the heroes in some factories and forests.

I also took the liberty of adding those same kinds of annotations to other locations, for similar enough reasons. For example: Camp Lehigh, New Jersey is an important location in the CA mythos, and is returned/referred to repeatedly in later stories, but I don’t think it’s ever actually referred to by name in this story: the quintessential Captain America story in the MCU – so that was addressed. Also, HYDRA’s main headquarters in the Austrian Alps, not referred to specifically on screen again, so this just adds depth of the world they’ve built for the story and such.
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The first actual change I made to the story aside from the annotations is after the Project Rebirth scene around 37 minutes in. When Steve comes out of the Vita-Ray Chamber, the pec touch from Peggy is an involuntary reflex by the actress, not part of the script. As with my work on Black Panther and removing Shuri’s “white-boy” line, would that same action in that same context be permissible the other way around? I very much doubt it for obvious reasons – so I excised it.
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Now it’s zoomed in on Steve’s face more to cut out the action of Peggy’s hand, so the background music of the scene isn’t interrupted by a jarring cut. And it zooms back out to the normal view when she notices the towel the nearby nurse is holding, snapping herself back to reality somewhat. Also, when it’s zoomed, you do see Steve’s face more closely, and how the effects of the procedure are shown in his reaction to stepping out of the chamber.
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The second major change in the story, annotations aside, is 73 minutes in at the SSR main HQ in London. I reimplemented the deleted scene where Howard Stark talks about the tech Rogers recovered from HYDRA, really framing how dangerous their new weapons are and how powerful the Tesseract they’re working with is.
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I had to match the colour of the scene to the colour grading in the theatrical release of the film, which isn’t 100% perfect because there’s not really a way to directly get the colour enhancement data from the studio to replicate it directly in my editor. But I think the result of what I pulled off is good enough at least, and hopefully not too jarring at all.
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Shortly after that at ~78 mins is another tweak, I took out Peggy shooting at Steve in the bunker. Iconic? Yes. Incredibly stupid if you think about it for more than two seconds? Also yes.
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You have a car ride with the man in Brooklyn and ascertain he’s probably even more clueless with women than the usual man, and show him no open signs of liking him before or after the serum. Then, when you see someone else taking the initiative and kissing him first, you have a problem with it – and blame him and not her –to the point of firing an actual loaded gun at him for it? Yeah. No. Get out of here with that.
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Now, when Steve shows her the new, unpainted, Vibranium shield, she just coldly walks past him and says nothing.
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Around 80 minutes in is where the main bulk of the annotative enhancements are found:- each war location is spelled out by country in the canonical order the respective battles happened, and a reasonable enough amount of time spacing them apart. Now the gap of time between November ’43 when Rogers goes on his Solo mission to rescue the 107th, to the capture of Arnim Zola and losing Bucky in February ’45 is much more clearly laid out.
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The rest of the film plays out unchanged until the very end in Times Square, where I put most of the deleted scene ending back in – I say most because it seemed to drag on for just one line/question too long.
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Now in this (mostly) extended ending, Rogers and Fury meet and the connection between the modern SHIELD and the older SSR is made clear. As is where Rogers is standing – he’s in the same city but recognises none of the streets anymore as you’d expect, so it’s an understandable question. Steve asks about the war, which was a big part of his life for the last few years of him being conscious (before and after the serum) and Fury confirming the result and stating how Rogers himself helped bring that about feels like it really vindicates the main/20th century bulk of the film. I did cut Fury’s line about the world not changing all that much, though, Rogers just made the ultimate sacrifice and one of the first things he’s told is that the world is still largely the same? Bit of a slap in the face in my opinion.
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Again, as with the deleted scene in the SSR bunker, I made sure to match the colour grading to the theatrical release as best I could, though this was a little trickier now with the colours and lighting being outdoors in this scene. But I think I did a good enough job regardless.
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*As for the details on the second version of the film, it all hinges on the Azzano deleted scene around 51 minutes in, where Bucky, the future Howling Commandos and most of the 107th are taken captive by HYDRA in Italy. The reason why this deleted scene is such a bone of contention is that the VFX work from the studio towards the end of the scene is not complete.
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When the HYDRA Uber Tank aims at the Allied forces – the 3D model is untextured, and while the polygonal geometry is animated for the action, there’s no background in the scene either. As far as I know, this is the only version of this scene out there, if there is one with the completed VFX, I’ve yet to find it anywhere. The deleted scene is 75 seconds total and the incomplete VFX is only there for about 3 – if that’s something you can overlook and enjoy it all with the rest of the film, then that’s great – but if it’s untenable next to the rest of the film, then that’s fine too.
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This scene is good to include because, firstly, you get some frontline war in an actual war-era film and that doesn’t hurt, plus it fills in the gaps with Bucky and the Howling Commandos’ capture – and, lastly, shows the reality of Schmidt’s regime. Red Skull killed the Nazi officers sent to check on him and his work at ~45 minutes in, and now on the battlefield you clearly see HYDRA forces firing on the Nazi troops AND Allied soldiers, very openly showing their independence against both sides as their own radical splinter faction.
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Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught editor/VFX artist here, so some areas may well be mostly good as a result, since I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it, respectively. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A very small edit from June ‘23 that’s really just small and minor compared to my usual capers. A dedicated ‘House of M’-style edit of the series would be good (if it can be pulled off), and I am thinking a little bit about it right now, but I’m not sure what’s possible and what isn’t when you take the TV material and put it next to the source material.
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The whole purpose of this was to get rid of the Wanda apologism there is in the series, specifically in the fifth and ninth episodes.

I’m not going to debate that Wanda’s acting in incredible grief and unbelievable pain – she had no choice but to do something that was probably the most painful thing of her entire life. And then when it was reversed and ultimately meant nothing and saved no one, she had to live with the consequences of it all.

But, in spite of that – she literally enslaved nearly 4000 people, robbed them of their lives & identities, and forced them to co-operate in a dreamworld – all to try and play happy family and satisfy the fantasy needs of 1 person. Heartache and trauma or not, that is not okay, and it should not be justifiable from anyone in or out of The Hex’s borders.
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10 minutes into episode 5, during Tyler Hayward’s briefing where Rambeau is also present and her testimony is read aloud, describing Wanda’s control as a terrifying and excruciating violation, the episode’s only tweak is made.
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The conversation is much more straightforward with Monica not defending Wanda. Now when Tyler states Wanda blasted her out of the Hex, Monica doesn’t defend by claiming she survived because Wanda protected her (IF that’s true). I see it as like your friend deliberately crashing the car when you’re a passenger, but you say it’s fine because they forced you to wear your seatbelt – they still deliberately crashed the car with you right there, how is that excusable at the start??
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Secondly, when Hayward points out Wanda’s holding thousands hostage, Monica doesn’t retort that Wanda created the Hex’s border, so the bad thing could have been worse – because that doesn’t magically (pun absolutely intended) stop the bad thing from being bad in the first place.
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In the finale, the changes only happen towards the end, and they’re more thorough this time.
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When the Hex comes down and Wanda leaves the house, the Jimmy Woo portion of the mid-credits scene plays out with him starting to co-ordinate helping the town. I like the character and it’s good to see him in action, and I was always on the fence about the mid-credits tease. (If it led to “Secret Invasion” and that was good, then great, or if it lead to Captain Marvel 2 and that wasn’t almost immediately panned heavily by audiences, then also great – but neither seemed to shake out, so hey ho). When Wanda gets to town, Monica no longer says anything about sacrifice – she looks at her open-mouthed (understandable for someone afraid) and Wanda just apologises and leaves as usual.
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In the mid-credits, in lieu of the Photon/Skrull sequence, it’s Wanda in the cabin in Sokovia with The Darkhold, hearing the voices of Billy and Tommy somewhere.
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Finally, in the post-credits scene, I took the teaser trailer for ‘Multiverse of Madness’ and modified it to work here. I took most of it out (since No Way Home is referenced and other non-sequential things that would be spoiled here) and just focussed on the Wanda parts. So it’s the Marvel logo -> Wanda and Strange in the “orchard” so Westview is acknowledged by both, before the focus shifts to the topic of The Multiverse -> then showing a future (or in this case, a possible) evil Scarlet Witch before the trailer title plays. It’s short, it’s punchy, it’s hopefully a good “tease” of things - and also, hopefully, this links everything together solidly between the series and film, since they definitely didn’t feel as interconnected as they could (/Should) have been.
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Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught editor/VFX artist here, so some areas may well be mostly good as a result, since I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it, respectively. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

The first of my MCU edits, from Aug’ 2022, and was actually one of the first edits I ever wanted to do when I was thinking about getting into video projects at the start of 2022, just to fix that very annoying niggle in my head the film presented with its timeline gaff. (How they even had that oversight from a AAA film studio with a global audience in the first place, I really don’t know, but that’s a rant for another day.)

Unlike other Marvel edits, I was much easier on the deleted scenes as I enjoyed the film enough in its current form as it is, so changing the story in any massive ways just really didn’t feel necessary this time.

Name of the project comes from the main reason I wanted to undertake this project to begin with. A ‘4 years later’ cut is a bit on the nose, ‘Timeline’ cut is a bit too boring but it does open the door for a reference to the wider universe, namely the Sacred Timeline, so I called it that as a reference – if very slightly tongue-in-cheek.
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I started off with an annotation placing the Damage Control flashback in 2012, before changing the ‘8 years later’ card to a ‘4 years later’ one – using the Homecoming style font at the same size and colour, with the same 4-way motion transition as the theatrical release. Now the flashback and bulk of the film are both clearly labelled with the year they canonically occur, which fixes that gripe.
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Secondly, the footage of Peter’s “Documentary” including the clash of the Avengers in ‘Civil War’ has been removed, since it goes against said film. Especially his reaction when Scott turns into Gi-ant Man and how quickly he swings into action when Tony prompts him to nab Rogers’ shield.
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Thirdly, I took the audio from Toomes’ line to Bryce when he fires him off of his crew for his recklessness to create a sound dub. Now, when Vulture remarks to Tinkerer how long it’s been, he states ‘four years’ and not eight – backing up the time card at the beginning.
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I took out Prowler’s remark about not caring ‘what’ SM is under the suit, it always just felt unnecessary in that exchange. Now Peter corrects that he’s a boy, then overcorrects that he’s a “Man” and goes right to asking who’s selling the weapons around Queens, and that’s it.
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Fifthly, at the Homecoming dance when Peter arrives, MJ now no longer gives him the finger when she sees him. Considering how they end up getting together as a couple, taking away her publicly flipping him off makes their overall story across the three films more cohesive in this respect. Now Ned sees him and waves as usual but she looks at him mostly indifferently, cutting away again before she moves her arms at all – it’s gentler than the alternative at least.
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Lastly, I took out the Captain America post-credits segment where he speaks about the value of patience, and replaced it – ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ have now come out of course, so our patience has now paid off. In its place I did put one deleted scene: the one where Prowler can’t unstick himself from his car and fails to flag someone down to help him, ending up on the phone with his nephew – openly mentioning Miles [Morales] by name – saying he won’t make it.

Including this as a substitute scene definitely felt good, bringing Miles into MCU canon like this, one way or another, and – as I stated above – none of the other deleted scenes really convinced me to change the story in a big way with them.
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

An edit from March ’23 which was my third MCU project overall

Like ‘The Eternals’ before it, I reimplemented deleted scenes I felt added things to the story – but unlike it, I also took things out which either felt needless or like they were actually working against the story for one reason or another. Total runtime is ~2hrs 19mins.
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The film starts off with an African proverb (hence the project name) that many people may have seen and gotten familiar with by now. To this day, I’m not sure if it’s a real quote from a cited place or people, but it fits the villain of the story incredibly well, and its supposed origin makes it very apt for the story also.
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The film plays out as normal until we’re in the middle of T’Challa’s ritual combat with M’Baku at the 26.5 minute mark. I cannot get behind Ramonda’s shout for T’Challa to show who he is – it’s always felt far too heavy-handed, to the point where it almost breaks immersion because it feels so obvious it’s coming straight from the writer’s room as a deliberate insert, not because it’s organic to the characters in the story. (Like when Bucky says to T’Challa in Civil War “I didn’t kill your father” and suddenly I’m catapulted out of the film into a thousand other stories which used that same line in that same context because the plot uses the same story device.) Now it’s like T’Challa’s losing, M’Baku’s gloating and the former seeing his family watching is enough to give him strength and snap out of it to win.
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Following this, the first deleted scene comes along at around 33 minutes in, after T’Challa takes the Heart-Shaped Herb and sees his father again, which he tells Zuri. In the scene, he and Zuri speak about King T’Chaka properly, from what T’Challa remembers as a child and Zuri as his old friend. It feels important to add in, because it gives development to the old king in a more positive way – rather than the rest of the film focussing on the mistakes he made more than anything else (especially with N’Jobu and Erik), and to see Zuri giving some kingly wisdom.
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The film plays out as normal following that from Wakanda to Seoul and back again, with a small tweak when they return with the wounded Everett Ross. The scene with Shuri’s remark about him is gone, since a comment about a person based on the colour of their skin in that context would almost definitely go down the wrong way, were it reversed, for obvious reasons. Now, they discuss Everett’s condition in the ‘Royal Talon Fighter’ and it cuts right to Shuri in her lab with him, ‘fixing’ him.
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It carries on as normal until the aftermath of Killmonger winning the challenge at the Warrior Falls at around 83 minutes in. There, it goes into the second deleted scene, where W’Kabi and Okoye are in the throne room heatedly discussing the future of Wakanda and the former’s crumbling faith in his former friend after the business with Klaue goes south. Here, W’Kabi’s development is shown through the effect Klaue’s actions had on him as a child, and how he can justify turning his back on his oldest friend to put his faith in Killmonger instead to get the “justice” he feels he is owed.
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From there, it transitions back into the theatrical film (conveniently still in the throne room and Okoye still there) for another 20 minutes until it gets to the eve of the clash on Mount Bashenga and T’Challa emerges, revealing he’s still alive to everyone. I took out Killmonger telling W’Kabi to kill him, because it just doesn’t work. At the ritual challenge, Erik openly talks about spending his whole life thinking, training and killing purely for the chance to kill T’Challa one day. If you just learned you failed, why would you demand someone else do it to correct your failure for you instead of jumping in and trying to do it yourself again? In principle if nothing else? Now, yes, you can argue semantics – if Killmonger said “All this death….Just so I could take the throne” or telling W’Kabi flat-out to kill his OLD friend in front of him to prove his loyalty to his NEW king once and for all, that would work well and wouldn’t need to change. But he didn’t, so it does.
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Small tweak less than a minute later: after the Dora start attacking Killmonger, the short shot of Okoye standing there and twirling her spear is gone – because I don’t really know why it was there in the first place, since it doesn’t do or add anything.
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Lastly, the film plays out as normal until the very end, when I put the third deleted scene in. Now, after the credits and custom title card, there’s an extended version of T’Challa meeting Everett Ross at the UN, and they have a strong conversation about the consequences of unveiling the reality of Wakanda to the rest of the world. Afterwards, it goes into the theatrical sequence of T’Challa taking the stand and giving his speech before the main credits.
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A pleasantly straightforward edit from Feb ’23 that was one of the first edits/tweaks from the MCU, that I may also upload soon too, depending on how reception to these edits of this franchise/genre goes.

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As I stated in my publish text for my ‘Book of Boba Fett’ edit, I always thought ‘The Eternals’ had a very particular problem for the same kind of reason as TBBF. It seemed to not really work as well as it could, because it felt like it was trying to tell two stories at once in the past and present to basically make up for lost time and use the former to fill gaps in the latter. This often came across like the time jumps being jarring and disruptive to the pacing, rather than smooth and serving the story well. Lastly; a film where you’re trying to get the band back together – when you’ve never had a film actually seeing them together properly in the first place – rarely feels like it actually works, it might have for ‘The Blues Brothers’ in the 80’s, but not this.

To this end, I devised a chronological run of the story and split it in two: a half-hour ‘short story’ from 7,000BC Mesopotamia to 1945AD Hiroshima - and a single present-day only story from Sersi in London, to the Clash of The Eternals in Socotra, Yemen. I’ve always felt like a dedicated film (or even miniseries) detailing The Eternals’ history and guiding the human race over millennia would have been better – with a second story/dedicated film focussing just on The Emergence might be better and more straightforward also.

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Eternals I: Shepherds of Humanity, 30 Mins.

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The portions of history and nothing else, as there are no deleted scenes of the film that relate to any of the sections set before the 21st century.

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The full sequence is 7000BC Mesopotamia -> 575BC Babylon with 400AD Gupta Empire -> 1521AD Tenochtitlan -> 1945AD Hiroshima -> small credits and ending title card. I implemented the short credits from the film that shows the murals of their impact on history because it feels much more appropriate here than having it in the second film here – from cave paintings to ancient civilisation sculptures to more recent cultural phenomena, like Harry Houdini posters from the turn of the 20th century.

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Eternals II: The Emergence, 2hrs 13mins.

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The main bulk of the film from the 21st century with deleted scenes reinserted because I feel they do add something good to the story at large or to the characters themselves/the dynamics between members of the group.

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The first deleted scene is around 4 minutes in, “Small Talk”, where it cuts from Sersi giving her Apex Predator class to Sprite talking to Dane Whitman about Deviants – a conversation alluded to in the theatrical release but never shown. It gives an insight into TE’s impacts on history, on and off the Deviants’ side of things, and gives Dane a bit more screentime since he always felt very underutilised and underdeveloped (I get they probably planned to fix that in the next theatrical TE story by properly making him Black Knight and such, but still).

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After meeting up with Ikaris, Kingo and Gilgamesh & Thena, the second deleted scene comes in around the 43 minute mark on the Amazon river: “Movies”. It’s very short, but it adds to the group dynamics and contrasts between the respective lives and lifestyles between Kingo and Gilgamesh.

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At the 1hr 13min mark, after recruiting Druig in the Amazon and meeting up with Makari again at the Domo with her library of lost historical artifacts, the deleted scene “Nostalgia” comes in. This was great to include because Sprite talking to Makari about their life in Babylon all those centuries ago creates a good link to the past/other film and gives the team development with the city that used to be their real home on Earth. There’s a debate on whether or not humanity is worth saving after everything they’ve done to themselves and each other, with some points on both sides. And Thanos and Endgame are mentioned, which openly ties it into the rest of the universe.

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At the 91 minute mark, the deleted scene “Gravity” plays. This gives good development for Phastos as a father and the result of the life he chose to make for himself compared to the others. Also it plays into the scene in the theatrical release where he suddenly comes to Sersi with the “Uni-Mind” idea much more smoothly.

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From there, it’s the normal chain of events as the theatrical release except the short credits put into the first film. Here, Sersi gets abducted by Arishem in front of Dane, there’s a small snippet of the short credits to give the film its name (with custom title again) and then we meet Starfox & Pip the Troll and it’s the normal credits afterwards.
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It’s a Mega link like everything else.

Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

[New information in the 1240 and 1263c portions as of 28/02/’24]
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A project from November ’22 that fixed quite a big problem in the show’s first season.

I went into everything blind, not having read any of the novels or playing any of the games, so keeping on top of everything when the timelines suddenly hopped around at random was quite difficult more than once.
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Like some of my other projects, I’ve done multiple versions of some episodes. I know some of them are generally straightforward and true(ish) to the source, but others are quite padded with original material that may or may not improve the story. This means the season has gone from 8 episodes to 14 total, with 2 of them being alternate versions. As usual, because I’m nice, you can choose which one is best for your collection and download at your own discretion.

To keep things neatly sequenced, I sorted everything by the year on the Continent’s calendar, specifically in accordance with the Netflix timeline they drew up to accommodate the adaptation and its changes.
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1206.
“Four Marks” – 34 mins
The Yennefer portions from the second episode it shares the name of. Seeing her meeting Istredd, being sold, trained at Aretuza and her struggles academically & socially. The original episode’s artwork is of the eels the failed ascendants become and/or the snakes that are one of them’s biggest fear, as Yennefer states, so keeping that for this edit of the episode was very simple.
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1210.
“Big Changes” – 23 mins.
The Yen pieces from the third episode that sees her burgeoning relationship with Istredd, the revelation of her Elven blood, her transformation and securing a place at Aiden’s Court.
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The artwork in the brief title for this episode is of Yennefer’s amulet, which fits and it already a similar enough style to the rest of the episodes’ looks.
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1231.
The Last Wish: “The Lesser Evil” – 35 mins.
The Geralt portions of Episode 1 in Blaviken with Renfry and her seven ‘companion’s, and Stregobor. I kept in the final section that showed Ciri as Renfri’s words about her echoed over Geralt as he left Blaviken, but I used a vignette and black & white colour filter to make it clear it’s anachronistic. Also, there’s some music from the games while Geralt is carving through Renfri’s men, just as a bit of fun/easter egg.
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1240.
The Last Wish: “The Edge of The World” – 17 mins.
The Geralt and Jaskier portions of Episode 2 in Upper Posada, fighting “the devil” and meeting Filavendrel, before being released and parting as (greatly asymmetrical) friends.
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“Unlikely Relationships” – 28 minutes.
The G/J portions of Episode 2 and the Yennefer portions of Episode 4 when she’s trying to outrun the portalling assassin with the death beetle. The NTFX timeline states the latter also takes place in the year 1240, so using them to break up the G/J portions and beef up the (otherwise very short) runtime felt like a good idea.
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I created new artwork for this episode that ties in very well with the main bulk of this episode. I found a good heraldry crest of the region of ‘Dol Blathanna’ – the area of the continent containing Upper & Lower Posada which includes the ‘Edge of The World’ – and used that as a base. I used the same photoshop-style trickery as the 1263c episode’s new artwork I did first to make it the same visual style as the other episodes – with colour, texture and gradient filters & overlays. This took it from smooth and coloured with greens, whites and yellows – to greys, black and with a haggard and rough visual motif, hopefully making it much more at home amongst the other episodes’ symbols as they released.
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1243.
The Last Wish: “Her Highness The Strzyga” – 43 mins.
The Geralt portions of Episode 3 in Temeria with King Foltest and Triss Merrigold. I took the name from a sidequest in the first video game, with the proper Slavic spelling of the monster’s name for authenticity, because having an episode of The Witcher just called “The Witcher” after the respective short story just sounds dull.
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1249.
The Last Wish: “A Question of Price” – 38 mins.
The Geralt/Jaskier portions of Episode 4 in Cintra with meeting Calanthe, Pavetta and Duny. I actually got very lucky with the artwork for this episode’s title – I found a Manticore artwork (like the conversation between the two quarreling Lords Geralt has to stop himself correcting to stay out of trouble), on Pinterest of all places. I flipped the artwork horizontally and erased a half-encircling shape along its border, just to make it more visually distinct than the last episode’s wolf title.
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1256.
The Last Wish: "The Last Wish” – 45 mins.
The Geralt/Jaskier/Yen portions of Episode 5 with the former meeting the latter for the first time in the city of Rinde and all of the funny business with the Djinn.
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1262.
Sword of Destiny: “The Bounds of Reason” – 47 mins.
The G/J/Y story of the dragon hunt in Episode 6 in the land of Caingorn.
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1263.
This episode is the second split into two versions, in 1263a the bulk of both is the Geralt/Cintra portions in Episode 7, and the Ciri/Cintra portions in Episode 1, but this time with the whole story. As in: in Episode 1, certain scenes and conversations were skimmed over because they’d be shown in proper detail later – and in Episode 7, conversely, certain scenes and conversations were skimmed over because they’d already been covered. In both cases, as Ciri escapes Cahir, the footage of Renfri’s words over Geralt in Blaviken from 1x01 appears again, but this time the colour and vignette are reversed: Geralt is in black and white, and Ciri is in colour – he’s the odd one out now, and it’s her time.
a1). The Slaughter of Cintra” – 1hr 4mins.
The Geralt/Ciri portions of the respective episodes in Cintra/Marnadal, with Yen at the Dwarven Monolith site in Nazair, the backstory in Aretuza with the meeting of the Northern Mages leading up to the Battle of Sodden Hill with Vilgefortz and Fringilla.
a2). Sword of Destiny: “The Sword of Destiny” – 42 mins.
Just the Geralt/Ciri portions of the respective episodes in Cintra/Marnadal, no extras.
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This is where things start to get tricky with putting them in the right order. I did my best, some clues were very obvious and clear so that’s good – but after the Slaughter of Cintra especially, nailing down the exact ‘whats and whens’ takes a bit more imagination.
To this end, I had to be creative with sequencing things to make everything work in an at least somewhat feasible single chain of events, while taking into account a lot of different factors. With this I had to balance Geralt, and Ciri, and Yen, and Sodden, and Cahir (before AND during Sodden), and Yurga with Geralt while his wife and then son are with Ciri at the same time, and so on….
b). “Chase of The Child” – 41 mins.
Firstly, we have 1x08 with Geralt in Cintra after failing to find Ciri in the chaos, before he leaves and encounters Yurga in the woods, unfortunately waking some undead beasts and being bitten. Then it’s the title card. Next it’s all of Ciri’s 1x02 portions (the line to Dara about her not speaking to anyone in three days has been excised, because it messes with the timeline). Next it’s Geralt on the back of Yurga’s wagon in 1x08 where he’s told he got bitten and hallucinates about his mother and her food. Next, it’s Ciri waking up in 1x03 and getting entranced into Brokilon Forest, seamlessly continuing into 1x04 with the Dryads until that night where she and Dara speak about Calanthe. Next it cuts to Geralt in 1x08 at night time, dreaming of Renfri and Visenna and speaking to Yurga when he wakes, who offers him The Law of Surprise for saving his life. Then it transitions aptly back to Geralt’s ‘Child of Surprise’ in 1x04 in Brokilon, having her red hallucination and hearing the banquet that willed her into existence. When the waters of Brokilon have no effect on her, Cahir and Fringilla’s Mages use Calanthe’s body back in Cintra to find her while they have Mousesack captive, and Ciri has her desert tree dream.
The artwork for this episode was the same sword-tree as the 1240 chapter(s) since it ends on that episode’s Ciri portion – but since it always had something to do with her more than anyone else, it makes more sense and fits in better here.
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c). “Not out of The Woods yet” – 40 mins.
The following day (1x05), Cahir enlists The Adonis to take the form of Mousesack, which he does that night. Then comes the new custom episode title card – a Nilfgaard sigil I found, which felt very appropriate here, and got my hands dirty changing with photoshop-style tools to change the visual style and colour to match the other symbols from the other episodes. Next, “Mousesack” arrives at Brokilon while the Dryads’ are discussing her and whether or not she’ll be allowed to stay – he lures her out of their borders and protection, with Dara in tow. Next it transitions seamlessly into 1x06 with Ciri nattering “Mousesack”’s ear off with a thousand questions and everything Ciri from 1x06 plays out in one go – with discovering the Doppler and trying to escape, tricking Cahir and him forced to kill a whole house. After Fringilla tends to his wounds that evening and Cahir declares war, it transitions into 1x08 with the boat of Mages heading to Sodden and Yen’s conversation with Vilgefortz on the stone beach. Next, Ciri’s walking through the small town in 1x07, failing to steal food, trading Pavetta’s ring for new gloves, meeting Yurga’s wife and stealing a horse. Next, the Mages are walking through the woods and Yen remarks it’s been hours (so it works well sequentially) and the Mages get set up at the old Elven Keep at Sodden Hill with the day going well into the evening. That night, Ciri in the marshland in 1x07 laments not trading the ring for food to the horse she stole, before she’s accosted by an old face and uses her dormant powers to defend herself, eliminating her would-be attackers.
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d). Sword of Destiny: “Something More – 43 mins.
Lastly, this final episode is all from 1x08, but with some portions out of release order, to accommodate the deliberately sequential changes made with the other parts of 1x08 across the last two episodes. It begins with Ciri waking up in the marshland with Yurga’s wife finding her and taking her with her. Then there’s the final title card where all the season’s symbols join together. Then it’s the night at Sodden Hill where Yen makes more arrows out of magic and has drinks with Triss, while Cahir is poised ready to attack. Next, Ciri is with Yurga’s son Nadbor in the stable while they witness Nilfgaard’s first attack, and the Battle of Sodden Hill begins. The sequence continues as normal with Yen being sent to the tower, but instead of cutting to Geralt, it goes to the archers and Triss using her poison powers and Cahir fighting Vilgefortz – once Fringilla drops the ear worms, it moves to Geralt. The earlier portion of Yurga mentioning the unnatural fog is moved here instead, and it prefaces the sequence of Geralt being told about Sodden and pouring his potion on his bite wound, flashing back to Vesimir finding him. Next is the Sodden sequence with Coral dying, Triss creating a vine gate & getting burned, Fringilla’s earworms working on Sabrina and the two boys & Yen stumbling out the foggy gate in a pause of the battle while Vilgefortz loses his temper on a wounded Mage, and it transcends into night with Yen needing Tissaia. Up next is Nilfgaard almost succeeding in charging the Keep that night, but Yen holds them back with fire magic just as Foltest arrives with his army. From then it plays out just as it did in the original episode: Ciri in bed in Yurga’s house, her dream about Tissaia, Geralt and Yen at Sodden, leaving the house in the morning to go into the woods to find Geralt just as Yurga’s wagon arrives, and the two finally come together.
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It’s a Mega link like everything else.

Footnote: I am merely a self-taught video editor and VFX artist here, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

I think what you’re suggesting, adding two substantial Thorin-centric prequel sequences into M4 The Book Edit might possibly undermine Bilbo’s story rather than improve it.

I haven’t seen that, no. But, on top of the explanations for reinserting those Erebor and Moria pieces I’ve already given - Thorin may not be the main character and the story of ‘The Hobbit’ is not his journey, he is still a very important character in everything. I’ve always seen him as a deuteragonist in the story since so much revolves around him: his kingdom, his throne, the Arkenstone which is now ‘his’ as the king’s jewel, Smaug is now his archnemesis as the usurper of his kingdom and its wealth etc.

Reinserting the Erebor and Moria sequences just helps to add weight to the character and really stress his importance and show him as the king he is - working to help his people when they’re displaced, trying to set up another kingdom for them and earning the right of kingship in the eyes of others on the battlefield. Hopefully not to the detriment of Bilbo directly, but just to show Thorin as the kind of man (or Dwarf) he is and show him as the power-player in the story that he is, that’s all.

I’m interested in this - though I am curious why film 3/season 2 was the odd one out with being adapted that way? Was that season in particular especially bloated and not adapted as well as the others?

A project from June ’22 that was mercifully very straightforward next to my others, as almost all the work is from other projects.

The main bulk of the project is the 258 minute “The Hobbit M4 Book Edit”, which makes up at least 95% of the whole thing and is widely considered to be the most book-accurate take on the trilogy done by a fan. So, obviously the editor ‘M4’ deserves a huge chunk of credit, and I freely acknowledge my edit would probably not be at the level it is without their very hard work.
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To get more into specifics on what I’VE done with this and why, I split it into two parts – as was the original plan of the studio – and re-inserted parts of the theatrical or extended releases that, while maybe not strictly novel-faithful, do still add something.

Luckily it’s quite sparing, and happens for what I would consider a good reason – logically, narratively or to more evenly balance the respective runtimes between these new two halves.
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Part 1: A Long Journey – 2hrs 33mins.
This starts off with the Erebor introduction from the extended edition of “An Unexpected Journey” (so Thranduil and the white gems are seen properly, since it’s important at the climax later). It’s not included in the novel, but it does set the stage of everything very well and works very well as a very ‘cinematic’ introduction – and since this is a film of the book, and not the book itself, it feels good to put it back in.
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It then transitions seamlessly into the M4 edit where it continues for half an hour, going from Old Bilbo writing in the Red Book of Westmarch to the reminiscence of his younger days, meeting Gandalf and everything until their first night camping.
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Then it’s the full campfire scene from the extended edition of AUJ which includes the Moria flashback – only 6.5 minutes total. Including this creates a solid link to the LoTR stories, exposits Thorin’s namesake, and it gives a name to a face with the Pale Orc, who doesn’t appear in the M4 edit as much as the original films (as they added a lot of padding there that wasn’t in the book), but he’s still the commander and main villain towards the end.
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Next it goes back to the M4 Edit for 68 minutes, until the ‘interlude’ that was put into the original 4hrs 18mins edit project. There’s a slow fade to black, a pause for a few seconds and then a slow fade back to the next part of the M4 Edit after the interlude: the beginning of the ‘Desolation of Smaug’ film story. The M4 Edit continues for another 26 minutes, going through Beorn’s house and Mirkwood forest until I decided to put the end of the first film in. It ends with the Dwarves captured by the Elves, Legolas checks the bridge at the gate again as Bilbo slips in, the door to the Mirkwood realm heavily closes and the screen fades to black on a cliffhanger ending.
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It ends with the credits sequence from AUJ – the soundtrack is better and there’s only a tiny bit of the DoS story included by now, so going out of the way to include those credits just for a handful of new characters feels redundant.
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Part 2: There and Back Again – 2hrs 10mins.
This film begins with the opening titles from ‘The Desolation of Smaug’, since the music for it seems more suited to the cliffhanger situation we’re now picking up from. This motif has the ominous twinge of both TDoS and TBoTFA, but not as much as the latter, which makes more sense since this is now only halfway through the story. So while the party is in a bind (pun not intended) they still haven’t faced a huge evil through Smaug, Thorin’s change or the armies converging on Erebor, the overall stakes are lower at the moment, so the softer ominous music works better.
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The main bulk of the film is the M4 Edit for almost all of it – uninterrupted from Mirkwood to Laketown to Erebor to Smaug to the Battle to the Funeral to the Shire.
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Finally, I ended it with the credits from ‘The Battle of The Five Armies’, as it was a shame to lose them and it’s another consistent link to the LoTR stories.
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Why not use the original ending point? Good question!
The original plan for ‘An Unexpected Journey’ had it end after the Dwarves escape from Mirkwood, with the barrel ride being the climax of the film and the final shot being Bard and his bow standing ominously over the Dwarves on the rocky shore.
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There were two reasons: Firstly, having a sweeping establishing shot that naturally ended up at the riverside didn’t seem to be available, so I’m guessing they maybe just didn’t film it when they restructured it from two films to three in the first place. The same goes with a way of opening the scene with Bard and the Dwarves before it goes right into their sharply-cut conflict that’s over as soon as it begins.
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But, mostly, it would make the runtimes of each film more disproportionate than they already are. It’s another 10 minutes from walking into Mirkwood and meeting Bard, so that original structure would lead to a film that’s 2hrs 40 followed by one that’s 2hrs 0 – the gap is definitely wider.
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It’s a Mega link like everything else.
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Because of the size of the massive original source file and the usual 1080p quality I work and export in, both halves of this edit are very large in their own rights; around 20GB(!) each.
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.