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Wolf Dancer

boon23

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WOLF DANCER
by CBB

This is a new take on DANCES WITH WOLVES, the famous 4h Western/Adventure that is so similar in its story to Avatar. Condensed to 2h30 minutes this is a much faster paced intense movie with no voice overs from John Dunbar, no irritating madness and less over-the-top scenes. The conflict of the two worlds and clashing cultures has been toned down to a more realistic, but still highly emotional take.

tagline: Silence says more than a thousand words.
original film name: Dances With Wolves (Director's Cut)
new film name : Wolf Dancer
film studio name : MGM / Tig Productions
edit crew name : CBB
Date Original Film Was Released : 1990
Date Edit Was Released : February 2010
Original Runtime : 236 minutes
New Runtime : 151 minutes
Amount of time Cut/Added : 85 minutes removed

poster:
wolf%20dancer%20poster.jpg


Cuts removed/added/extended (all explained):
- cut suicide attempt beginning (because it's a strange beginning and the madness contained is not needed. The scene was probably used to establish John Dunbar's relationship to the army, to make it obvious how special and how daring he is and that he is willing to die for a thing he believes in. All of this though gets clear later on.)
- removed all voice overs of John Dunbar telling us of his experiences and journey (it is a not needed influence and keeps the atmosphere from being quiet. It influences the audience and stops them from thinking and seeing for themselves. Without the voice-over the scenes have a different, but even deeper impact.)
- cut the madness of Major Fambrough (because that guy is utterly confusing and weird for no true reason)
- removed all scenes of Captain Cargill and his men at Fort Sedgewick (Dunbar will find it deserted and like the audience wonder why that is <-- like in the theatrical cut. The deserted fort has much more impact than the explained one.).
- cut Timmons throwing away the empty can and John Dunbar being shocked about it (environment protection is a good thing, but it's not needed to have it so obvious, which is historically also not accurate)
- removed Timmons wake-up butt poke scene (unneeded dumb humor and a bit wrong for Dunbar's character).
- cut mystical wind experience of John Dunbar, when he is standing in the field (it serves no purpose and mysticism like that is repeated only in the deer-in-the-lake scene, but never explained or continued).
- cut first Wolf appearance, when he watched the soldiers leave (continuity).
- cut second wolf appearance, because he is later on introduced better (pace).
- cut part of "drawing dead deers out of the water" to get rid of voice over (the dead deers are really weird, yet the scene is needed for the fireplace surprise that follows)
- removed funny parts of Dunbar discovering he is naked after scaring off Kicking Bird (unneeded in-the-face humor)
- removed Dunbar hiding the goods (the scene was getting too long. Pace.)
- removed the Lakota scenes, after Dunbar hid the weapons(because we will encounter them when they meet Dunbar - the edit focuses mainly on him and it is good to keep the rather peaceful intentions of the natives a mystery for now <-- pretty much like the theatrical cut. Pace.)
- removed the Lakota scenes after the 2nd attempt to steal the horse (pace.)
- removed "Stands With A Fist's" flashback (it's a good scene and sure adds some action to a long time without fights, yet it is not really needed. Pace.)
- cut "Two Socks" feeding scene, Lakota bringing gifts and Dunbar writing in his journal (all not needed. Pace.)
- shortened road to buffalo killing ground (pace)
- removed killed white fur hunter scenes from pre-buffalo hunt celebration (while surely historically accurate,such a brutality was really strange and would have probably led to Dunbar not being able to join the tribe later on. Continuity and pace.)
- cut Lakota kids being beaten to get away from the buffalo hunt (historically inaccurate)
- shortened buffalo killing scenes (where they were mainly just riding with the bulls without shooting. Pace.)
- removed "fire dance" (it was always a bit weird scene and is not needed. Pace. You can see it as the main menu in full.)
- removed Dunbar's arrival at Lakota camp with voiceover talking about the upcoming war with the Pawnee and him being given his own tent (which unfortunately contained important information)
- added arrival scene (repeat shot from first approaching the Lakota, which is a continuity error there, because "Wind In His Hair" wears Dunbar's jacket, so it is pretty fitting here now. continuity.)
- removed part of the speech training (pace)
- cut Dunbar brooding over "Stands With A Fist" not speaking to him (pace)
- removed wedding preparations (pace)
- removed ride invitation of "Kicking Bird" (pace)
- removed poachers hut (Poachers were not that unusual and their being "bad" is too obvious and not needed. Pace and continuity.
- cut entire journal mentioning in the soldier camp and later on (it is just gone)(Dunbar considers it private and will not ask for it, because it could endanger the Lakota. Continuity and pace.)
- reduced Spivey heavily from being a villain (he was never convincing and way over-the-tio, making him deeply annoying, which was unneeded as a reason to kill them all later on. pace and impact.)
- reduced soldier badness (they are bad enough already. impact.)

+ many more tiny cuts for faster pacing.

700 lines of dialogue were removed. That is about 60%.

The former voice-over scenes that were kept have all fully recreated sound effects and score.

The DVD:
main movie: 2h31minutes runtime, NTSC 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen, Ac-3 5.1 audio (upconverted) English, Sioux-to-English subtitles, full English subtitles.

special features (explained):
Spivey - the deleted villain (5:58): is a deleted scenes feature about the most over-the-top villain of the movie.
The journal (14:50) - a slide-show that contains all 24 journal entries spoken by Kevin Costner.
The deleted mad major (5:47) - is a commented feature about the incredible insanity of this guy.
Audio editing (5:46) - an extended look at the audio work that went into the creation of Wolf Dancer.
CBB overview - information about all 38 CBB fanedits.

menus:
main menu, extras menu, chapters menu (5 acts), subtitles menu

cover and disc art (created from the Italian poster of Dances With Wolves)

The mp4:
975mb h264 with AAC audio
720x360 (sar: 2.0 / dar: 2.428)
712 kpbs video, 165 kbps audio (2.0), Sioux subtitles selectable

Intention:
To tell Dances With Wolves in a new, faster paced, plot condensed version that gets rid of exaggerations, focuses on John Dunbar and his journey from being a soldier to joining a Sioux tribe, and to let the audience experience the turn for themselves without the voice-overs that take away any thinking of their own.

Fanedit creation history:
after watching Avatar I was reminded on this wonderful movie and realized that I hardly ever watch it, because it is just too long. I thought about fanediting it, condensing it and maybe remove some of the weird parts that always bugged me a bit. When I watched the movie again, I realized that these voice-overs are a bit annoying, especially because they happen all the time and leave the audience no option to feel or see anything the way they want to. So I decided to get rid of them. I also realized that my original DVD was truly bad quality and purchased the bluray to work from a great quality source. It truly shows. This fanedit looks by far better than the original DVD.
here is a comparison:

I asked my friend, ThrowgnCpr several times if he would think this or that would work - and his input has helped me (and this fanedit) a lot. It was for example his help that led to the deletion of the flashback scene of "Stands With A Fist". The input from Mollo on the forum was also great and helped shape it some more (although I did not do anything about Mary McDonnell and her Bonnie Tyler look - sorry, dude). But like me he felt that the mad major Fambrough needed the full editing treatment to be bearable. He actually suggested to skip him entirely, which I did not do for plot reasons, to give John Dunbar a true soldier beginning and the audience some needed moments to get to know the character and his intention for his voyage. "I am here on my own request to see the frontier before it's gone." is a key sentence to me that must be in the movie.
My initial goal of 2h was not possible without sacrificing too much important plot and atmosphere, so the final runtime is around 2h30min. The plot focuses a lot more on John Dunbar. I removed many scenes with "cute Indian" humor, because they did not add to the intensity and distracted from the depth. My take is more serious, faster paced and deeper than the original.
The questions always were: is this scene needed? What does it do for the progress of the movie? Is it important for the atmosphere?
The removal of the voice-overs and fully recreating the audio of these scenes was a huge undertaking. It took hours for a few seconds. Overall I used more than 150 different sound effects.

Hardware and software information:
Hardware: a good quad-core computer
Sofware (mainly): Sony Vegas, Adobe Audition, Virtual Dub, DVD LAB pro, CCE

Additional Comment: I am a true fan of the original and this has not changed. My version is not meant to improve the original, but to create a different version that can be watched easier than the full 4h and also cause a different atmosphere.

Time needed for the edition:
source preparation: 2 days
editing: 16 full days
menus, subtitles, extras and dvd authoring: 7 days

thank you: ThrowgnCpr, Mollo
also thank you: Uncanny Antman, Winnie, Nono, Heinrich

Additional download links: here is the first part of the extra feature about audio editing:

Images:
cover art by boon23 (download here):
3D_wolf_dancer_art_by_boon23.jpg


available on fanedit.info through RS (DVD, mp4), Megaupload (mp4) and Bittorrent (mp4)

enjoy.
 

elbarto1

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awesome, cant wait to give this a go. havent seen the original in years due to is length.
this looks like a great alternative to the original.
 

Captain Khajiit

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Wonderful! :) I was thinking of what the film would be like with the voiceover removed when I saw the blu-ray, and had thought about getting round to editing the film the future, when I could afford to edit in HD... Now maybe I don't have to do so. :smile:

As you had a blu-ray source, will there be an HD release? I really hope there will be, as I love the way the German blu-ray looks.

All of these cuts sound excellent. I love the 236 minute version of this film too, but there absolutely needs to be an alternative shorter way to view it. I take it everyone knows about the new blu-ray release that includes the theatrical and director's cut versions?

http://www.blurayreviews.ch/reviews/dan ... review.htm

It's only problem appears to be the same inactive LFE channel in the director's cut audio mix from which the earlier single disc version suffered.
 

Uncanny Antman

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I'm not sure what I did to get a thank you in the credit block, but you're welcome! :lol:
 

boon23

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spelledaren said:
Wolf Dancer is Great!
First review here...so what to say? Great concept, good editing choices and superb editing skills at work here. I do not believe that I will ever watch the original Dances with Wolves again. You may say that the intention isn't to improve the original, but with this one I strongly feel that this is the case.

Some comments about the cut list..."removed all voice overs", is really what stands out the most as the major change. And it really really works. The added emotional depth for the movie is great, just by saying less! Keeping the focus on Dunbar's experience also helps us (me) to connect emotionally. The added arrival scene (repeat shot from first approaching the Lakota) was perhaps needed but I actually noticed it when watching (that it was a repeat). It might be possible that I was being very alert, looking for changes and how it was presented, and that a viewer in general wouldn't catch this one. "cut entire journal mentioning in the soldier camp and later on". Not entirely sure about this one, as the journal is his reason for going back. It makes movie sense for them to be talking about it, and I wondered later on what had become of it, since it was so important to him. But I'm sure you had good reasons for leaving it out. "removed "Stands With A Fist's" flashback". At first I was a little confused here, but thinking about it I agree that this version works a lot better, and we don't see flashbacks in any other part of the movie.

As I said earlier, lots of other good editing choices.

I was also struck how much better this story is constructed and played out than the one in Avatar. Your editing has highlighted the best parts of that story. Thank you.
In total this recieves a 9/10 from me. Great version of a good movie, but it didn't totally blow me away for a perfect 10. Though giving this a 9 makes me question some other 9s I might have given out :p
thank you very much, spelledaren. I am glad you liked it. No, I am ultrahappy, because I put so much effort in it and when it comes to releasing, you never know how it will be received.
I would like to comment on some of your remarks, just to give my thoughts, not to argue or criticize anything:
the repeated arrival scene... yes, bugs me, but it was so needed and there was no other. The next scene shows him in the tent and it felt awkward without an introduction of any kind. Probably the most obvious "flaw" in my fanedit.
the not mentioning of the journal in the soldier camp: I spent a lot of time thinking about this one and based my decision on the statement Dunbar makes before to Stands With A Fist, where he says: "The journal. Stands With... Wait! Words are important! The words in the book are like a trail for people to follow. Now, it tells everything about my life here. I must get it."
The way I understood it, this also could mean to expose the Sioux and endanger them. It is a very private thing and when the soldiers behave that hostile he of course would not at all mention it to them. And since they do not mention it, it has obviously not been found. Now with the soldiers in Fort Sedgewick there is no way to retrieve the journal ever. It is probably well hidden and gone for good. Made sense to me - and I so wanted to get rid of the poor Spivey scenes.
SWAF flashback: you said: "and we don't see flashbacks in any other part of the movie" - exactly! :)

Once again, thank you for your quick and positive review.
 

Mollo

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Wolf Dancer by CBB A Review by Mollo

Dances with Wolves in its original form is a perpetuation of the long-standing myth of the American west. It embodies overt revisionism and romanticism. At its heart, it reeks of fantasy and sentimentality. It also continues the insidious myth popularized by western screenwriter Frank S. Nugent, that white women once captured by the American Indian inevitably go mad.

The problems I had with the original film mainly focused on four issues. The opening American Civil War sequence, the Mad Major scene, the vaudeville villainy of the American troopers and Mary McDonnell's poor acting and Bonnie Tyler hair.

Boon's idea that Dances With Wolves could do with a FanEdit is a solid one and I eagerly anticipated its release.

The opening titles of Wolf Dancer are superbly done and the introduction of our hero reminds me of westerns of a bygone era. This also removes the American Civil War sequence, which in my opinion is a major improvement.

In Dance With Wolves, there are constant references to Costner as a benign Christ-like figure and the more of those that are removed the better in my opinion.

So far great stuff but this beautiful title sequence leads us to the "Mad Major" scene. Boon has radically culled this scene of its nuttiness but in doing so has altered the pacing, which now appears somewhat rushed and abridged. The line "I want to see the frontier before it is gone" needs a reaction shot from the Major or a pause before he rapidly suggests the wagon master. Also Costner's salute but mainly his reaction is at odds with the new content of the FanEdited scene.

From here the FanEdit settles into a confident stride with solid narrative flow and seamless editing. I began to become engaged in the film rather than being aware that it is a FanEdit. This feeling of completeness continues right until the end credits and I was very satisfied with the over-all result.

The problems that remain are inherent in the original, as mentioned above but these cannot affect the consistent improvement Boon has achieved with this FanEdit.

The removal of the narration is perfectly done and the sound editing is faultless. I would have added a bit more of a thump when the young brave is pulled off his horse, maybe even the sound of bones breaking but this is subjective. The enormous amount of work that has been done with the sound design of this FanEdit is really excellent and in my opinion sets a new standard in CBB productions.

So in conclusion this is a healthy improvement over the original apart for the minor issues with the "Mad Major" scene. Wolf Dancer is now my preferred version. Not perfect but damn near close.

The picture quality is very good. I have not compared it with my PAL Special Edition but it is really crisp and bright.

9/10
 

boon23

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thank you very much, mollo.
Here are some of my thoughts, not meant to argue or criticize (because a watching experience is always just what it is):
The opening titles of Wolf Dancer are superbly done and the introduction of our hero reminds me of westerns of a bygone era. This also removes the American Civil War sequence, which in my opinion is a major improvement.
Thanks a lot. I was very daring with the title credits, but wanted them to play like a true Western would in an old fashioned way. The movie actually starts with a recreated sound section that moves into the true sound of the movie. A very difficult beginning, because it could have so easily been obvious and spoiled the entire watching experience from the very start.
So far great stuff but this beautiful title sequence leads us to the "Mad Major" scene. Boon has radically culled this scene of its nuttiness but in doing so has altered the pacing, which now appears somewhat rushed and abridged. The line "I want to see the frontier before it is gone" needs a reaction shot from the Major or a pause before he rapidly suggests the wagon master. Also Costner's salute but mainly his reaction is at odds with the new content of the FanEdited scene.
I fully agree to what you wrote here. It indeed feels a bit rushed (because it is). I have tried hard to remove the scribbling sound from major Fambrough to get some more lines from him, because they would have truly added to it. Unfortunately this was not successful at all, because it left me with a metallic sounding voice that I could not use. I spent a long time with this scene, trying to get a bit more from it, yet there was nothing that I could find to improve it. So the way it plays now, the major asks but really is not interested in the reply and sends him off right ahead. I thought it made sense to have Dunbar looking a bit startled about this rudeness.
From here the FanEdit settles into a confident stride with solid narrative flow and seamless editing. I began to become engaged in the film rather than being aware that it is a FanEdit. This feeling of completeness continues right until the end credits and I was very satisfied with the over-all result.
Biggest possible compliment for a faneditor! WOW! Thank you.
 

Ripplin

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Once in a while, I like to go through the entire list of fanedits and see if there are some I just sort of 'missed' before or maybe some that have a new relevance to me as time passes. I forget what prompted me to get this... Maybe just because I've heard nothing but good about it. But anyway, I'm downloading this one right now and will comment on it sometime. :)
 

boon23

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this is now available through USENET (or newsgroups).
I will upload most of my fanedits there now, because there they are safe from deletion for at least 2 years. Download and upload are easy and super fast (but not free). Enjoy!

NZB should be on fanedit.info soon. Or you can search on binsearch or newzleech for "fanedit"
 

alshim72

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Congrats!
This was an awesome edit.
What a novel idea... let the visuals and music tell the story instead a REALLY dull narrator.

The whole time I was watching it, I was thinking...
How great would it be if you did the same for Dreamworks animated "Spirit"?
Matt Damon's narration was just as dreadful.
Especially when you had great animation and SONGS that helped tell the story.
Sorry about the digression.
Again... great work!
 

Neglify

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This edit is available on Megashares, thanks to Throwgncpr.
 

geminigod

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It was my vote for fanedit of the year, but it lost. I highly recommend it to all.
 

maxie09

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I saw this was No.8 on the current Unofficial FE ranking list, and I haven't seen the original movie in a looong time, so I had to check it out.

What can I say? The narrative flows flawlessly without a single cut or break. If I had to nitpick one thing, it would be the opening credits - too large and wrong type (font). It's suggesting a genre Western, and that the film doesn't deliver. I can't remember what the originals looked like, but a more classical approach - not exactly Trajan or Garamond, but a wide classic serif font - would suit the mood and style of the film better.

As to the oft-criticized "noble savage" clichés, they're of course much less prevalent in your cut, and I'm glad you did take so much of the "image of evil" stuff out. A little lust for glory and less serenity in the Dakotas would have made for an even better film. Dan Simmons makes it a particularly stingy remark in his novel "Black Hills" that these Sioux are so tender and un-warlike it's embarassing to their descendants. What little Indian "evil" we have comes entirely from the Pawnee (and when we see the Dakota return from their - regular? - raid against them, there's not a single hoot heard or scalp displayed!).
"Magua" Wes Studi is of course great at portraying the other side of the Indians, and I never saw his dying scene quite in the light that I see it now. He could have easily escaped, but bravery and braggadocio made him delay too long, so he gets clubbed to death instead of a glorious duel. So the "good" Indians don't always look so good if you watch closely, or this cut. Still, I think there could've been more from the Dakota that would have offended our white hero's east-coast sensibilities. You left our the civil war prologue, so we see him more as an adventurous bookworm than a disillusioned(?) ex-soldier.

9 and three quarter points out of 10. :D
 

rgw825

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Anybody know what the password is? I downloaded it from Megashares and it password protected. Thanks
 

rgw825

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Neglify said:
Try fanedit.org or fanedited.com

Duh why didn't i think of that. ;-)

I'm kind of new here. I will say i just got done with all 4 discs of FVJ and i loved it. :thumb:
 

Neglify

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Awesome. :) Remember to leave reviews for the fanedits you watch at the Internet Fanedit Database.
 

reaper18783x

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its asking me for a password to unzip it does anyone know what it would be please as i am really looking forward to this movie
 

reaper18783x

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sorry posted that before i read the last couple of threads thank you neglify
 
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