IFDB Review: Raiders of the Lost Skull:

I've been watching fanedits for about 5 years now and reading reviews in earnest on this site but I have never submitted one. Well that's changing right now as after seeing this excellent fanedit from my (I believe?) fellow Aussie compadre njvc I could no longer contain my love for the art form under cover of silence. But I digress, on to the edit... AUDIO EDITING: Pros - What drew me to the edit was the score change. As someone who regularly works with audio editing software and someone who has tried (will hopefully be finished one day) to remove and alter music for fan editing purposes, I understand how incredibly difficult this can be. FX can be replaced, but dialogue generally cannot so if the music and fx are particularly dense and you're trying to isolate dialogue amongst all that you're in for some very tough work even with the top audio editing plugins at your disposal. This would have taken a very large amount of time no doubt and to my ears all the cuts were quite smooth. More to the point, the changes enhanced the film greatly on an emotional level and that's really all that matters in the end, isn't it? So very well done, mate. Cons - I do have two very small gripes, however. First is the ant attack scene. When the bad dude is devoured in the ant hill, his screams become noticeably lower in volume until they are themselves all but 'devoured' by the music. I realise that there is probably a very good reason for this.. that you had to turn up the music to cover the original score, so it was most likely unavoidable. I suppose the only other solution would be to replace the scream. At any rate, a very minor quibble. The 2nd gripe is merely an echo of another reviewer on here and that's the somewhat excessive use of the "mystery" theme. I felt by the time we were getting near to the end of the film it had started to lose some of its effectiveness due to overuse. To my mind, the edit would actually benefit from putting a small measure of the original score back in to amend this, or simply choosing some other parts of the Raiders (or the other two films) score to work in its stead. Well, perhaps should you ever do a version 2… VIDEO EDITING Pros - I do not have the experience with video that I have with audio but after watching fan edits for some time and teaching myself some editing software I believe I have gained at least an elementary understanding. There were no noticeable hard cuts that I could detect. The new colour correction is a vast improvement (though like some others have mentioned, I would love if it could be taken further). The skull montage is work of absolute genius! Cons - The awful jeep on a tree scene - I really wish that was cut (I quite liked how TMBTM dealt with this in his edit). There were some other cuts that I felt were somewhat abrupt but I put that down to narrative more than editing technique. So, onto narrative…NARRATIVE Pros - Well, where to begin? Everybody's most offensive moments are gone, the pacing is greatly improved, and the ending is far more inline with the franchise. I even managed to get through the whole movie without my attention wandering, and for film as severely hampered as this, that's really saying something. Cons - As is often the case with many fan edits, the film now feels a bit short (though considering how much was cut, not as much as short as you might think). Marion's character feels somewhat empty in this edit. I'm not exactly sure what you could do about this as I can't remember the original film clearly enough, but I felt she needed just a bit more screen time, a bit more of a chance for us as an audience to identify with her, and if that means putting back in some cringe-inducing dialogue that might be the lesser of two evils? The ending - though much improved - also felt a bit abrupt. Again, not sure what you could do about this exactly. Perhaps cut away to a slow shot of the mountain from earlier in the film (if there is indeed a suitable one) just to buy you a few more seconds to let the music carry the film off better? I don't know it's a tough one. VIDEO QUALITY I downloaded the AVCHD. Excellent quality. ENJOYMENT I thoroughly enjoyed this edit. It's quite amazing how much of an improvement it is from the original film. Most certainly is now my go-to version and there can be surely no higher praise for a fan edit.

More...