Reflections

REFLECTIONS



What is it about: This is a drastic fanedit of the movie MIRRORS. About one third of the movie has been removed for a much more intense horror ride. Especially the lame family horror finale is gone completely. Get ready to be scared.
original film name: Mirrors
new film name : Reflections
film studio name : Fox
edit crew name : CBB
Date Original Film Was Released : 2008
Date Edit Was Released : February, 2009
Original Runtime : 112 min
New Runtime : 88 min
Amount of time Cut/Added : 24 minutes cut



Fanedit details:
Mirrors is a very clichéd horror movie that kind of destroys itself right from the start and continues with inconsistencies and scenes that are meant to be scary, but are not. The original feels like a mixup of a lot of things we have seen before - hundreds of times. Yet it still had some great ideas, a good cast and good special effects, which could be used to turn it into a way more believable and much less over-the-top horror movie. The pacing has been improved and the finale will be a completely new experience, because the climax has been moved. The fanedit comes in all different coloring for a colder and clearer tone.

Teaser trailer: [vimeo:280qy8ei]
The changes:
- recolored the movie (blue +40%, desaturated 30%) to get rid of the yellow tinting.
- removed beginning (reason: it was a too typical horror movie beginning and actually not scary, it destroyed the tension from the very start about the mirrors)
- replaced beginning credits with my own (although interestingly done, it again spoiled the tension and the score was over dramatic)
- cut door closing (the mirrors should not be able to do that - telekinesis was never mentioned)
- cut Ben Carson (Kiefer) on fire (the CGI fire did not look too good and the scene was too much anyway)
- cut Ben's reference to the burning (now he's just talking about the weird images)
- cut Ben explaining the magic of the mirrors to Amy (his ex-wife) (it is totally unbelievable and Ben is still sane enough to know that his wife is of all persons the wrongest one to tell that)
- cut screaming without looking in a mirror scene (the mirrors can only cause an audio sound, when someone looks in them)
- cut mirror Ben shooting at Ben in the mirror room (too much effect that destroys the scene for me. The demon wants Ben to do something, it would not try killing him)
- cut Ben's "dammit", when he is left alone with Anne Esseker's file in the car (he actually should be happy he finally has some results. This was overacting IMO.)
- cut some of the goodbye scene of Ben and his family (dragging because too much cliché)
- cut Ben saying "my family won't die tonight" to Anna (because nothing is happening to Ben's family in my cut)
- removed all the mirror horror that happens to Ben's family (especially the drowning of Michael in the wooden floor was really not working well, because the rules of the mirror reality were bent too much there)
- cut over-the-top parts from first Anna fight (mainly the ones where she is doing impossible moves)
- cut over-the-top parts from second Anna fight (dragging Ben too long, spiderwalk, tongue and where she inflicts deadly damage)
- cut third Anna fight entirely (dead is dead is dead)
- removed Ben's family happy ending



DVD DETAILS
88 minutes Single Layer NTSC 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with AC3-5.1 audio
LANGUAGE : ENGLISH (5.1)
SUBTITLES : ENGLISH (selectable)
MENUS : animated with sound
SCENE SELECTION : yes
EXTRAS: Deleted Scenes (a selection of the most interesting deleted scenes: approximately 30 minutes)
Those Darn Mirrors (an extra about the impact of villains in this horror movie: 9 minutes)
Teaser (1 minute)
CBB Overview for all 33 fanedits
COVER&Disc ART : yes, on DVD-Rom part

xvid avi details:
700mb, xvid avi, 672 x 288, 23.976 fps, 985 kbps, MPEG-1 Layer 3 114 kb/s , Joint Stereo

Fanedit history and making:
Right ahead after watching the original I knew that this was not just a bad horror movie, but that I wanted to do something with it, create a fanedit from it to make it more consistent and scarier - and maybe even worth watching.
My first idea was to delete the first night watchman beginning and the mirror world ending and the most offensive (if not stupid) parts of the family horror finale. In the end and after 7 drafts it got a whole more and quite different to that. The first night watchman is still gone, but anything else is so different now, lots of little cuts to help either the pacing or the plot and especially to remove the head shaking moments that I endured, when I watched it and could not believe what was presented to me.
Draft 6 was almost a complete one, but then I created the special feature about the credibility of a villain and came to the result that my edit needed to be more drastic, which resulted in another 3 minutes gone. The hardest part was the Anna demon fight, because it took so long and yet was never really thrilling or scary to watch. This fight turned out to be quite short now, but very effective in its new presentation.
There is an unrated version of this movie available which contains most of all a longer "rubber chin" scene. The scene is in the original already quite disgusting, so I decided to not make it longer, as this did not add anything to it.
The creation of this fanedit was quite a tough one, because the image in 23.976 gave me a hard time through interlacing issues, which when deinterlaced resulted in flickers, stutters and jumps. The final version is not 100% perfect, but the best I could come up with for all the many ways I tried.

Hardware and software information:
Hardware:
Windows XP computer
with an AMD phenom 940 quadcore cpu
and 4 GB of RAM on an ASUS board

Software:
Ulead Media Studio Pro 8.0
Vegas Video 7.0
Cinema Craft Encoder
Virtual Dub
Adobe Audition 1.5
Pro Show Producer
Jasc Paint Shop Pro
PhotoZoom Pro2
DVD Lab Pro 1.52
Cyberlink Power DVD
Irfan View
PGCDemux
AnyDVD
DGPulldown
TMPGxpress
ffmepggui
Auto GK

Time needed for the edition:
editing: 8 days, extras: 3 days, DVD menus: 2 days, quality checking and further corrections: 3 days.

persons involved: boon

color comparison:


Maybe downloadable from Fanedit.info

very cool. I picked up this movie because it looked mildly entertaining, though I knew going into it that it was a bit turdish. I have yet to watch my original disc though. I will probably give this a spin first. What I really love here is the color change. The original is very yellow, which lends to a warm atmosphere and mood. And that seems like very much not what we have here. The cold blue seems to fit it so much better. I am looking forward to seeing this one.

...and great cover art. few good images to select from for this one.

Tried watching it last night, scared the crap out of me, finished watching it this afternoon. I never bothered watching the original, so I can't say if it's better. All I can say is that this is a pretty intence and scary movie that I loved. Can't wait to watch it with my friends, some have seen the original and warned me to stay away from it, so I'm curious what their opinion would be about this version. I can't find a flaw in this edit. The story was making sence, the pacing was good, the technical stuff was flawless. All and all it's the best edit I've seen so far. Oh, and I havn't seen many but I have a feeling that would change. 5/5

Boon's hand is delicately unseen (again) in his most recent edit "Reflections" a fanedit of 2008's "Mirrors".

I thought the original film was a cliched stinker and there isn't alot of improvement to the story here, but thats no fault of the editor. Boon has managed to greatly increase the mystery of what is going on through the removal of many scenes that gave away too much, were unnecessary or were just plain stupid. Trouble is, its hard to care when the Wife is a bitch and the villian is lame...

We now have a better version of the film which is more interesting and more suspenseful than the original, but its still not really a "good" movie. Reflections is average horror at best - except for the ending, I really liked the ending.

On the technical side its another great looking fanedit with top notch audio and a nice DVD menu w/ deleted scenes and a fun featurette dissecting the films villain.

******************

Audio/Video - 10/10 looks and sounds great, color correction was a nice touch.

Editing - 10/10 the editor is invisible.

Entertainment - 6/10 while better than the original (which I would rank a 3/10), this is still a weak film and no amount of editing skill will change that. Boon has done some nice turd polishing here and his skill and efforts are to be commended.

thank you for the review, elbarto1. Yes, it'll never be a masterpiece, but if you had a little fun then I am more than pleased having released it. It was actually my plan to make it endurable and watchable (because I felt some scenes were really strong and, yes, that ending was cool, but in the original movie it felt kind of lame after what happened before. Now it is in the focus of attention), so I guess so far I can call it: succeeded. Nice words. Really appreciated.

****SPOILERS and OPINION follow******

Well, I was prepared to write a detailed review of this, but I see El Barto has pretty much done it for me! I agree with all of his points about the edit. In summation: Semi-entertaining but still flawed thriller with a few really cool moments and an improved ending, technically solid edit.

The only thing I would consider changing about it would be the taking of the nun by gunpoint. It would be smoother (IMO) if she just agreed to go with him after hearing the plea about his family. Maybe just cut to them driving back to the city right there? It seems a bit disjointed and unnecessary to have him pull a gun and the have her suddenly be totally willing to help him out. Deep down, she knows it her fault. It should be her conscious decision to help, she shouldn't have to be taken by force.

Knowing the elements Boon has removed here it is a no-brainer that this is better than the original by far. And as with the last 2 recent CBB edits I watched, I was pleased enough- but I still wait for Boon to tackle a film that will be a real masterpiece when finished. This is not meant as a jab or to demean his edits- they achieve exactly what he wanted to- I'm just saying I am eager for him to really blow my mind with material worthy of his skills.

thanks, jmb.
Well, poor Anna... is it really her fault? Was it her fault to be posessed? Was it her idea to cured? If she remembers ANYTHING about this time, I am sure everyone will understand why she would rather die at once than sacrifice herself. And let's not forget one thing: she is not even a nun by choice, so her devotion for belief is questionable. It is her last resort to stay away from mirrors. I think the gunpoint thing makes sense. Maybe she could have been a bit more reluctant in helping later, but I saw it as her having a bad conscience and being very split in her opinion about what is right and what is wrong.

You did a flawless job with this one, thank you. I was eagerly looking forward to Mirrors and was left disappointed. This edit is the movie I wanted to see.

One thing that drives me up a wall about fanedits is poor transitions with no regard to the audio. I didn't notice any of those occurrences with this edit. You did just phenomenal. I'm off to see what other edits you have done.

Thanks for a great alternate viewing experience!

I'm pretty sure that I had commented on this at the main site but I just wanted to chime in over here and say now much I had enjoyed this when I had watched it awhile back.
I had watched both Drag me to Hell and Trick 'r Treat this past halloween weekend and this was more exciting to watch than either of those two other movies.

wow! Thanks for the praise on this little horror movie that I so much felt the need for altering it. I am very happy you were able to enjoy it.

this is now available on multiupload, which is an awesome new service I am trying out.
Multiupload has a great, quick and easy upload tool and it will spread the files to 6 file hosts:
Rapidshare, Megaupload, Hotfile, Depositfiles, Zshare and Uploading
Premium is not required.
Download with jdownloader works great, you can with just one click split the hosts and have the links for RS, MU, whatever neatly paired up.

I think this is super comfortable.

all links are inter changeable
should be on fanedit.info soon.

Wow! that service could seriously make our lives easier. What a great tool.

I had come across multipupload when the RS drama began.

To be honest, I didn't quite "get it". Maybe I was tired but I do recall reading something like "blah blah blah...."

Anyhow, this looks like a really cool service.

I assume that you upload once and 6 full copies end up going online?

Instant backups... heh :-D

I assumed it just spreads the files around the different services, rather than uploading everything to each service. But maybe I misunderstood.

Nope. But I did think the same thing that you did at first.

So I tested it by loading DVD links for Reflections out of curiosity.

Each service has the whole DVD and jD just downloads a file from the first location that it is able to download from.

In all likelihood, jD will be constantly be downloading from somewhere at all times at probably maximum speed and maximum number of downloads that you set in jD.

Oh and that zShare is freaky.
If I only load the zShare links, and set the number of downloads in jD (at the bottom "Max. Dls.") to 11, zShare will allow jD to download ALL the files at once... at my maximum download speed!

In all likelihood, strictly loading MU and zShare links will be all that I need to load, since loading RS or hotfile links will just slow things down with wait times and lower download speeds.

WOWZ!

Edit: Ha, looks like zShare and MU are kinda related. Both in Hong Kong and the look of the sites are similar.
Just compare their pricing pages:

http://www.megaupload.com/?c=premium
http://zshare.net/overview.php

And hey, they BOTH will RESUME downloads with free or anonymous downloading.

Edit 2: Add the Direct HTTP links as being great too!
They are fast (full speed download as well!), allows mulitple downloads at once and resumes.

So I would be loading only the directhttp, zshare and MU links.

I am dying to see this but the files are missing, anyone know where to get this?

Raven Faust said:

I am dying to see this but the files are missing, anyone know where to get this?

Click to expand...

Last time we checked the links were all still there.
There are also several versions of this fanedit AVI, DVD (rapidshare, multiupload etc...) at least one of them is surely still online.
But if really none of them are (I find it unlikely though), you can always try at the faneditor own website: http://faneditartists.com/reflections/

boon has his own (new) website? When did this happen?

he has had it a while. Nothing big, just some place to keep all his work, and potentially comment about it. He still directs people to use fanedit.org though as well.

Darn, I wanted to rip him for taking credit for the first prequel trilogy edit