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So I know that there are fuller story arcs available in Spice Diver's cut and a couple of others, but I don't really enjoy them - Not fully. For one thing I'm happy to view the book and the film as separate entities much like Electric Sheep etc. Yes Thufir Howatt's restored scene is a good watch and a compelling resolution, but it just looks like shit. These edits by fans of the book are well founded and very well structured and deserve every praise, but the whole feature has to be intentionally lowered in quality to feel consistent when you propose throwing in a tonne of sub DVD quality deleted scenes.
But Dune in hi definition looks bloody lovely and mostly sounds fantastic too. I wanted a version that had nothing to do with the grotty deleted scenes. And the Extended version portions I want still have a lot of tidying up to do, but mostly on the audio side, and that much is very doable. I haven't put in every extra bit from the extended version as much of Alan Smithy's work is a bit crap
but a lot of it can be used to make the original breathe a little. I see it as a deluxe Theatrical so the viewing experience aims to stick to the basic look and feel we've always been accustomed to. I've made a surround mix of the expanded soundtrack and am trying to use it to improve upon some of the poor Smithy decisions with score, but the mix is all over the place and it takes time to track down the optimum vibes and tones and some centre tracks are just riddled with poor score cues that you just can't pull the dialogue from cleanly, and in other examples the score stays conveniently on the left and right channels. Also the older Bluray DTS tracks on the theatrical cut sound fantastic in places, yet the rear channels are often falling apart with a simple lack of digitized cohesion. The recent releases have channels that show similar problems so the source was obviously always impaired.
So most of the work needed seems to be to match the Extended version audio mix to the theatrical - And of course baby's got Fremen eyes - which aren't blue where they need to be. Also the old French Bluray release has a very dark look, due to what looks like a dense print not letting much shadow detail through at the time of scan. But the colour is spot on - much more filmic than the most recent release that has pink skin (Like a lot of recent remasters) and too much bling in the Emporer's gold finish. So I've had to augment the old print with some shadow detail from the newer remaster - You'd be surprised how two versions of the same film need to be locked off at an exact 24fps interpretation on the timeline to get them to even halfway sync with each other. Also, matching the Extended footage to this grading has been pretty successful so far, thanks to the very versatile Lumetri filters we have in Premiere now. Though you usually have to push your processor with multiple layer filters.
I'm about 2/3s through the thing, but of course the Fremen eyes are going delay this a lot. I've included lots of extra footage of desert sands to augment the arrival at Arakkis into a more trippy blend that takes it's time - Using the Prophecy surround mix I made, I included some of the extra reverend Mother dialogue, but not all. I don't think the audience needs every last bit of technical detail from the novel spoon fed to them. The gist of these details is there and at different points through the film the scope of the houses and guild interactions are established. Similarly with the fourth stage navigator's voice over in the Extended version. The voice isn't a patch on the Theatrical and the the spice panic in his angered dialogue is vastly over rated as exposition. Again the gist of their relationship to the spic is covered in partial increments.
So these are my thoughts and intentions so far. And of course fan edits are always a good excuse to design a new poster...early days yet though.
But Dune in hi definition looks bloody lovely and mostly sounds fantastic too. I wanted a version that had nothing to do with the grotty deleted scenes. And the Extended version portions I want still have a lot of tidying up to do, but mostly on the audio side, and that much is very doable. I haven't put in every extra bit from the extended version as much of Alan Smithy's work is a bit crap
but a lot of it can be used to make the original breathe a little. I see it as a deluxe Theatrical so the viewing experience aims to stick to the basic look and feel we've always been accustomed to. I've made a surround mix of the expanded soundtrack and am trying to use it to improve upon some of the poor Smithy decisions with score, but the mix is all over the place and it takes time to track down the optimum vibes and tones and some centre tracks are just riddled with poor score cues that you just can't pull the dialogue from cleanly, and in other examples the score stays conveniently on the left and right channels. Also the older Bluray DTS tracks on the theatrical cut sound fantastic in places, yet the rear channels are often falling apart with a simple lack of digitized cohesion. The recent releases have channels that show similar problems so the source was obviously always impaired.So most of the work needed seems to be to match the Extended version audio mix to the theatrical - And of course baby's got Fremen eyes - which aren't blue where they need to be. Also the old French Bluray release has a very dark look, due to what looks like a dense print not letting much shadow detail through at the time of scan. But the colour is spot on - much more filmic than the most recent release that has pink skin (Like a lot of recent remasters) and too much bling in the Emporer's gold finish. So I've had to augment the old print with some shadow detail from the newer remaster - You'd be surprised how two versions of the same film need to be locked off at an exact 24fps interpretation on the timeline to get them to even halfway sync with each other. Also, matching the Extended footage to this grading has been pretty successful so far, thanks to the very versatile Lumetri filters we have in Premiere now. Though you usually have to push your processor with multiple layer filters.
I'm about 2/3s through the thing, but of course the Fremen eyes are going delay this a lot. I've included lots of extra footage of desert sands to augment the arrival at Arakkis into a more trippy blend that takes it's time - Using the Prophecy surround mix I made, I included some of the extra reverend Mother dialogue, but not all. I don't think the audience needs every last bit of technical detail from the novel spoon fed to them. The gist of these details is there and at different points through the film the scope of the houses and guild interactions are established. Similarly with the fourth stage navigator's voice over in the Extended version. The voice isn't a patch on the Theatrical and the the spice panic in his angered dialogue is vastly over rated as exposition. Again the gist of their relationship to the spic is covered in partial increments.
So these are my thoughts and intentions so far. And of course fan edits are always a good excuse to design a new poster...early days yet though.
