George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead: Extreme FanCut

[vimeo:3o1z9qbi]
George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead: Extreme FanCut

What is it about? A recently discovered film by a group of young film students that catalogues their struggles during the first three days of the Zombie apocalypse.

Tagline: The Film You'll Never Live To See!

Name - George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead: Extreme FanCut
Original Film - George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
Film Studio - Artfire Films
Editing - Mollo
Original Film Release - March 2008
FanEdit Release - Feb 2010
Original Runtime - 1 Hr 35 mins
New Runtime - 1 Hr 29 mins

DVD: Single Layer NTSC DVD - 4.7 GB

Note: There are no menus or chapter stops in this DVD release. The reasons are artistic (and quality motivated) the idea being, that the watcher has little control over the unfolding events.

AVI - 1.1 GB

Footage

Dawn Of The Dead (2004)
American Zombie (2007)
Zombieland (2009)

Conceptual Improvements/advancements of edit over original

Rather than a reflection on recent events, this FanEdit tries to to follow the unfolding events in real time. Also the editing tries to translate an unpredictable and discomposed viewing experience. This FanEdit is inspired by George A. Romero.

I will let you be the judge if this works or not.



Cuts removed/added/extended

Contains Spoilers!

1. New: Opening scenes
2. Cut: Fake documentary title
3. New: Position of gas-masked police entering apartment block to mirror opening of Dawn Of The Dead (1978)
3. Cut: Michelle Morgan's narration in entirety
4. Cut: Slow motion flashbacks
5. Cut: Opening Mummy movie being shot and the students forced arguing
6. Cut: Removed musical score from woods sequence
7. Cut: Expository dialogue and score as Jay enters student dormitory
8. Cut: Music cues as Jay enters student dormitory
9. New: Technical difficulty sequence
10. New: Reordered scene in winnebago
11. Cut: Michelle Morgan acting badly in winnebago
12. Cut: Teacher acting badly in winnebago
13. Cut: Removed inane dialogue when zombie policeman approaches winnebago "He has a funny hat" etc
14. New: Recorded earlier sequence
15. Cut: Removed inane dialogue before Mary shoots herself in the head
16. Cut: Original musical cues as the students enter the hospital
17. Cut: Removed Michelle Morgan using defibrillator on Zombie nurse
18. Cut: Removed dialogue of Jason talking to himself while alone in the hospital
19. Cut: Removed the Teacher talking about fighting in the war (which war?) and killing coming easy
20. Cut: Removed Teacher's corny speech after shooting Mary "You're stuttering!" etc
21. Cut: Flashback and Michelle Morgan dialogue
22. Cut: Montage about video cameras and Interweb in modern culture
23. New: Out of control sequence
24. Cut: Narration montage
25. New: Washington down sequence
26. New: Introduction to Amish Farmer
27. Cut: Amish farmer's chalk board gag
28. Cut: Zombie clown video gag
29. Cut: Flashback montage
30. Cut: Exterior shots entering panther militia compound
31. Cut: Romero's cameo as police officer lying about recent events
32. Cut: Some of the argument after Jason is found editing
34. Cut: Expository scene about weak hearted man on the loose
35. New: We now stay with Jason without cutting away to scenes with people looking for the zombie
36. Cut: Line about "100 thousand dollar education"
37. Cut: Part of the white man that appears from no-where giving out guns
38. Cut: Michelle Morgan scene about where her family would sit inside the car (bad acting)
39. Cut: Teacher waxing on about Eton and archery
40. Cut: Camera shuts off quicker after solider points gun
41. Cut: Michelle Morgan's speech after the soldiers leave "Zombies will go on and one and on" etc (bad acting)
42. Cut: Flashback to bloody arm
43. Cut: Satire run in woods from zombie mummy etc
44. New: Re-ordered all shots for finale
45. New: Partial credits
46. New: Full Metal Zombie

Numerous cuts and additions were made that are not listed.

Notes on Sound Design:

1. Added: New sound design
2. Added: New musical cues when needed
3. Removed: Unnecessary dialogue
4. Added: General sounds of gore, glitches and Zombie groans etc

Mollo said:

Note: There are no menus or chapter stops in this DVD release. The reasons are artistic (and quality motivated) the idea being, that the watcher has little control over the unfolding events.

Click to expand...

Interesting.

Why the change of heart?

Your take on things must have swayed him.

I'll be checking out the AVI version first once it gets released. (since it's a smaller filesize to download and I'm still not 100% sold on a Diary of the Dead edit, but I'm remaining hopeful that you managed to salvage it, Mollo)

Adabisi said:

Why the change of heart?

Click to expand...

Mainly to do with quality so I justified it to myself artistically. I am always prepared to change my mind especially when I am wrong.

JasonN said:

I'll be checking out the AVI version first once it gets released.

Click to expand...

The avi is up.

I'd love to know how chapter stops affect quality of the video...

ThrowgnCpr said:

I'd love to know how chapter stops affect quality of the video...

Click to expand...

The software I chose to author the DVD improved the feature FanEdit quality immeasurably but has very poor quality menu design. On pressing "Play Movie" it would automatically go to the chapter stops. I weighed the options and chose to forsake the menu etc and bonus features in favour of a high quality release.

will there be a DL with bonus features or is barebones all there will be?

Not sure yet. If there is a demand for the bonus stuff and a DL then maybe.

Mollo said:

ThrowgnCpr said:

I'd love to know how chapter stops affect quality of the video...

Click to expand...

The software I chose to author the DVD improved the feature FanEdit quality immeasurably but has very poor quality menu design. On pressing "Play Movie" it would automatically go to the chapter stops. I weighed the options and chose to forsake the menu etc and bonus features in favour of a high quality release.

Click to expand...

you need to explore some other software options. Others use Macs and do not seem to have the issues you face (i.e., PCM audio only, menu problems, etc). Its a shame to limit what you would like to do because of software, when the possibility exists to improve. It seems like you are using "artistic reasons" to excuse the software limitations...

the reasons for an artist are always artistic, aren't they? ;-)
(and this is also true for limitation, that's why I avoided drawing faces, when I drew naked women back in the days - I simply was bad at it and that was reason enough to find excuses to not draw them) :smile:

ThrowgnCpr said:

you need to explore some other software options.

Click to expand...

Thanks but I try and spend my money carefully but in some cases I make mistakes.

ThrowgnCpr said:

Others use Macs and do not seem to have the issues you face (i.e., PCM audio only, menu problems, etc).

Click to expand...

I don't see any of these as a problem.

ThrowgnCpr said:

Its a shame to limit what you would like to do because of software, when the possibility exists to improve. It seems like you are using "artistic reasons" to excuse the software limitations...

Click to expand...

This is an Artistic choice I made and I am happy with that.

boon23 said:

the reasons for an artist are always artistic, aren't they? ;-):smile:

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Yes thank you Boon.

Mollo said:

Thanks but I try and spend my money carefully but in some cases I make mistakes.:

Click to expand...

Bummer. you mean you paid for this dvd authoring software?
Have you tried IDVD which comes bundle with every mac? Might solve your problems.

killbillme said:

Bummer. you mean you paid for this dvd authoring software?
Have you tried IDVD which comes bundle with every mac? Might solve your problems.

Click to expand...

Yeah I purchased some new DVD authoring software and although the quality of the feature is much better than iDVD with a higher bit-rate and AC3 sound, the menu options are really poor.

killbillme said:

do I have to be careful what i write? It's pretty freaky! :shock:

Click to expand...

Yes, it is easy to forget previous posts but no-one should be scared to reevaluate an opinion. We are generally consistently inconsistent beings.

I'm sorry if I am coming across harsh Mollo. Thats certainly not my intent. Just trying to help make these well-thought-out fanedits more accessible.

Mollo said:

ThrowgnCpr said:

Others use Macs and do not seem to have the issues you face (i.e., PCM audio only, menu problems, etc).

Click to expand...

I don't see any of these as a problem.

Click to expand...

I'd have to disagree with you. I think the PCM audio has hurt you before, especially with Species X. At ~5GB (dual layer, just over single layer size) the majority of people either 1) shrank it to fit SL, thus resulting in a loss of quality, OR 2) didn't bother with it because they didnt want to / couldn't use a dual layer disc. Though the edit was somewhat well received, I think it could have been even bigger.

Again, I only say this to help broaden your audience.

ThrowgnCpr, no need to apologize. I understand your points and I thank you for your interest I really do. I should buy Final Cut Studio ($999.00), I was really close over Xmas but but I bottled out and purchased a lesser piece of software. :???:

We are generally consistently inconsistent beings.

Click to expand...

i like this - if we were more of a quote in sig forum, I'd use that

Strange, this SL version is slightly too large for a DVD5 - I could compress it but I just threw it on a DL.

Diary Of The Dead: Extreme FanCut by Mollo

review by boon23

Prologue:
I finished watching this fanedit this afternoon, but did not have the time to comment on it yet - also was not sure what to write. However, the comment/review by Istvan6 on fanedit.org is IMO makes me want to write down my own impressions. I have a split opinion when it comes to Mollo fanedits. This does not mean that they are not all great for someone else, but for me they are sometimes terrific and sometimes not so terrific. I am a huge fan of his LAND OF THE DEAD fanedit - and it is still one of my favorite fanedits of all-time. Now Mollo is back to editing Romero - and of course I was excited about this. I did not hate DIARY OF THE DEAD as much as LOTD, but it was an unimportant movie, which I easily could and also wanted to forget about. Some neat shocks, some interesting stuff from the zombie universe, yet nothing innovative, some truly bad acting, some truly bad scenes. The most amateurish movie Romero ever made. His attempt to jump on the "docu-live-footage" train in the spirit of Blair Witch, Cloverfield, REC and now Paranormal Activity is weak, because his actors did hardly ever behave like real people.
So I sat down and watched "Diary Of The Dead: Extreme FanCut", not sure what Mollo could have done to it, because I had not read the list of changes to have an unspoiled watching experience.

As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

The edit:
My biggest disadvantage when watching this fanedit is that I am a zombie buff. Mollo mixed a lot of sources and I discovered and recognized them all so easily. It was a tough one to get into the movie and sense its own atmosphere, when it contained so much known footage. The beginning has a lot of scenes from News reports - and these soon raise the one question, who actually edited that video. This question remains active for the most part of this fanedit and it does not get answered. The students, who are obviously the leading characters of the movie film their own documentary. It is nowhere said that they combined it with other news. The news reports have very different quality and aspect ratio, which I think should have been corrected for a more consistent viewing. Also the news reports are in the way I got it, often more progressed in the action than the students. When finally after a few minutes the students appear for the first time on their c-horror film set, they also hear news, which are describing the awakening dead as a mistake, which contradicts what was shown in the news reports before. There are lots and lots of breaks throughout the beginning (and later on). Mollo uses them as a style to make the footage appear even rawer than it originally was. But why do some of the student scenes have score? I know this was a critique of the original movie as well, but in this case it gets even more obvious and feels even more wrong.
The students get into the van and start their ride, the zombie action starts pretty soon with a burned cop zombie and 3 people who were run over by the car, which was obviously not the one of the students, especially because the scene was not properly introduced to make the driver#s reason to just and without breaking run them over plausible.
Plausibility is one of the weaknesses of this fanedit anyway. A lot of scenes were cut and by this also took away the life and motivation from the characters. The interruptions by the news reporters also took away from the "live" atmosphere.
I found the first 30 minutes of this movie confusing and a bit boring. Too much reports, not enough of the students. This gets better later on. The more we see of the students, the better the fanedit is and I for one was able to stay entertained enough to enjoy some parts - especially when they are at the one girl's home and she gets attacked by her brother and mother. The barn scene with the farmer before was weird, because the farmer was not introduced at all and dies without having said a single word. This felt wrong.
The ending worked kind of well and kept me entertained. I enjoyed the beginning of the end credits that were too long in the end for me to stay put.
So, while this edit does have a lot of flaws and inconsistencies I see it also as a great experiment that kept me entertained. It is not superior to the original, yet I consider it not a waste of time for a zombie fan to give it a watch.
editing: 7 of 10 (a lot of forced cuts that were meant as a means of style, but did not work for me. Some inconsistencies in the plot, some news footage contradicts the Romero universe ("some lose the ability to speak", running zombies), end credits were too long).
entertainment: 6 of 10 (I was a bit entertained to watch it. Some scenes and styles annoyed me or did not work for me, but overall it was pleasing)(original: 6 of 10)

Image and video quality:
I watched the DVD, so I was expecting great quality, especially because a high bitrate was used. Image quality was overall ok, but the news reports should have been anamorphic and the colors corrected to make ti all better fit together.)
Video quality: 7 of 10

Audio editing and audio quality:
audio quality was great. Mollo is an audio specialist and it shows. I did not like the additional Dawn Of The Dead music, but it was ok, where it was.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio

presentation:
This release is barebones with cover art. No menus, no extras. Nice starting and end credits. The music was a bit too loud on the end credits. The info on FE was quite detailed and comes with a nice trailer.
10 stars maximum -3 for missing menus, -2 for missing extras.
To sum it up:
A lot of room for a better presentation, especially the menus were really missed. Info, cover art, trailer and credits were nice. This could have easily been great.
resulting in a 5 of 10 for overall presentation

Final result: 7 of 10
This can be enjoyed by Zombie and Romero fans.

you can find my review here