Has anyone considered how much better these movies would be without the flinch-inducing romance stuff? Are there tools that would do a full rip, then allow a person to trim scenes they don’t like? Then burn it to a dual layer DVD’s? Without any loss of quality? Of course I’m not just talking about wiping out chapters, I’d like to fine-tune it more than that.
Thanks!
<edit>> whoops sorry. This started out as a movie question and turned inot a hardware question
You could probably find a program to rip it from DVD and make it an AVI then edit it with… I dunno… Premiere or Combustion or something if you’ve got the cash to get a hold of them ( or there’s Videomach if you want cheap editing ).
Then you could use a few programs to convert the video back to DVD format.
There’s heaps of resources on the net but I seem to recall doom9 being popular a while back.
One of these days I plan to do this with West Wing but edit it so it’s only the scenes Tom is in and have yakkety sax as the background music.
Or you could just look on torrents for the probably thousands of people that did this sort of thing a while back. From removing the new special effect parts and Greedo shooting first (splicing in the PAL laserdisc originals) in the original trilogy to chopping Anakin’s NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO to NOOOOOOOO, I’ve come across quite a few variations. One of them is bound to do the trick for you.
Please consider removing all the parts with Anakin, Pinard.
They did this for the Matrix sequels with “the Matrix: Dezionized.”
Sadly, I still refuse to acknowledge there was a true sequel to the Matrix.
Finding a program to rip the DVD shouldn’t be a problem. (Which itself is a problem, but let’s not get into that) Editing it however, is a whole other ballgame.
Most freely available editors probably won’t have the horsepower to cut apart an entire ripped movie. Especially one that ripped with a semblance of quality, because remember, ripping the movie to a proper format for editing is incredibly important. Then you’ll need a commercial Non Linear Editor like Premiere, Avid Express or Final Cut for the horsepower to fine cut an entire ripped movie. Those programs cost money.
Depending on how much effort you want to put into the whole project, I’d suggest finding student pricing on Final Cut Studio Pro 2, which gives you the whole editing package. Of course, it’s a mac program. Adobe Premiere Pro is also pretty good. Avid would be too much.
Premiere Elements is way cheaper than Premiere Pro, et al and would work fine since you don’t need any of the effects/pro color balancing/advanced sound mixing/etc stuff since you’re working with a movie that already been properly mastered.
It’s actually insanely easy with the right hardware. I work in film editing and we can bring in footage from multiple sources, including DVDs. With enough hard drive space, we could bring it in uncompressed and spit it back out without losing anything. The problems is knowing someone with the equipment. I’ve often thought of loading Ep 4 with all the new bits, loading the old Greedo/Han scene, and swapping the old one back into the newer cut.
I’m pretty sure it’s been done like crazy, like others have said. Unless you just WANT to do this for a project, google. :-)
The IMAX cut of Attack of the Clones cut out most of the really bad parts, and the movie just flowed a lot smoother with the shorter running time. It still wasn’t a very good movie, though.
I know for a fact that multiple versions of that edit exist already. Because I have it. Totally worthwhile.
The LotR movies could use a massive edit.
Yep. You’ll have to do a little bit of research (search for “fanedit”) to know which ones to look for. Quality varies from edit to edit, as do the extent of changes made. Some guys tend to get carried away when all you wanted were a couple of reversions. I believe there’s at least one edit out there that almost completely excises Jar Jar Binks from the prequels.
EDIT: Oops, missed secretary’s Foxtrot.
I figure that once fan editors hit that ceiling, they should seriously consider, say, taking out the “romantic” Anakin-Padme scenes and splicing in the shootout from Commando.
My buddy and I went to see I think the second of these travesties. During the lovey crap, my buddy leans over to me and wispers “he’s gonna lay some Jedi pipe!” I couldn’t help myself, I let out a huge laugh. And then the entire theatre starts laughing, it was awesome.
Are they also Machinocaust Deniers?
There wasn’t. Only two horribly-written fan movies.
You shut your filthy goddamn mouth.
DeZionized doesn’t do a whole lot to fix the script as it exists, and the first half feels too jumpy anyway. It’s more a proof of concept than a fully polished edit with subjective changes involved to fix flow and other minor problems. However, it does vastly improve the two films.
The Matrix Squared is also interesting to watch, but I don’t think anything can ever save those two sequels. The middle one was brain dead, and the last one makes Attack of the Clones’ script look like (pardon the cliche) Shakespeare’s work.
But Attack of the Phantom is definitely the most polished, well planned, successful fan edit I’ve ever seen. It actually makes that film worth watching. It’s the most radical reworking I’ve ever seen that still functions in a fully coherent way. It may as well be an official cut. Be sure to listen to both of the commentary modes too. They’re very insightful. (The Phantom Edit 1.2 also)
The LotR movies could use a massive edit.
So far, there hasn’t been much on that front that wasn’t a horrible massacre of what we’ve come to know as film. Many of those attempts aren’t even watchable from a technical standpoint.
