Never Say Mcclory Again

Overall, very successful and I loved it


The bad points:

End title music was HORRIBLE and the music in the kitchen fight was way too loud and out of place. I liked the Lani Hall theme tune Never Say Never Again so to excise it completely was a shame. I saw Lani Hall getting interviewed and even she didn't like the song. Am I the only one that liked it? Bassey's History Repeating Itself was a nice touch but I could take it or leave it TBH.

Lots of video problems (not just panning) but I'd say most of that is to do with the source as my MGM PAL DVD is equally bad.


I'll add this to my collection but I will put the original titles back in if I get an NTSC disc (I only have the UK PAL) or an editing app.


I really liked the artwork here is that available somewhere?

I'm in complete agreement and would label this a good start. This movie sorely needed the Bond ambiance that this fanedit provides, and it is a much stronger movie for it.

However, the edit does suffer from bad source video (blurry images, a disinterested dvd transfer, etc.) which are not the editors fault. I'll have to pull out my version and double check on this but I'm in no hurry to see that version again.

The problem with the edit is the music selection. There's an over-reliance on the James Bond theme in action sequences, although the editors make wonderful use of the numerous orchestrations of this theme that have been recorded over the years. The problem with their usage is that the Bond theme proper should only kick in an action sequence when Bond gets the upper hand. It's about Bond kicking ass or being cool not about Bond having his ass kicked, which is often how Bond's fights begin. Also, not all fights require the Monty Norman music.

However, with that quibble aside, it is wonderful to see how well this movie stacks up against the rest of the Bond series now that if feels like a Bond movie. It really makes me wish Connery had been able to get funding for Francis Coppola's script, James Bond of the Secret Service!


Btw, Bloefeld's Cat (the editor) has an excellent site on which he details how he went about making this edit.

http://www.ohmss-007.com/

To sum up, well done, but looking forward to the ultimate remix of this movie.

Richard

Excellent choice of music! I remember watching this film on VHS with a friend of mine many years ago and playing a cassette tape of the James Bond theme during the motorcycle chase. That scene stuck out, but the film score as a whole was always painful to listen to, especially as I liked this film. Thanks for finally doing justice to the score, which was just a tad short of outstanding. I also liked the gunbarrel / opening credits sequence. Great job!

I do have a few quibbles, though. It's too bad that some 6 minutes or so were cut from the film. Aside from the fact that I don't like to see any cuts in the first place, I was unhappy with the fact that several of my favorite lines from Bond were cut. How could you omit the quip Bond made about it being 'against service policy to give endorsements'? I would assume that the cut was made in consideration of timing the musical cue properly, but still...

The only musical cues I didn't agree with were the changes made to the music Domino was dancing to in the room with the one-way mirror. God knows I would never listen to that music myself in ordinary circumstances, but for some reason I missed it.

A more serious issue was with the video encoding. Any time there was a panning shot, the picture 'pulsated' to such a large degree that it made the motion look jerky. It made the film difficult to watch for me. I don't think the problem is on my end; I've experienced these kinds of encoding issues myself, especially using ProCoder 2.

All in all, a worthy addition to my DVD library, but it won't replace the original for me. If the cut scenes were reinstated and the video encoding was better (maybe even making it DL?), the film would be good enough for me to consider it the ONLY version worth watching.

None of this is meant to be an attack on the great work done by NSMA's editor. It's just a few thoughts and reflections and isn't meant to take anything away from his great ideas.


Here's what I did to get things almost perfect in my mind. I had to go down the PAL>NTSC conversion (reinstation scenes only) as my NSNA DVD is a UK disc. If I get the NTSC I'll redo it. The results are surprisingly good.

NSMA = Never Say McClory Again [v4.1]
NSNA = Never Say Never Again


What I did (images are for approximation only and aren't timings):

NSMA (Thunderball) gun barrel opening


Cut to NSNA opening with original Michel Legrand music + titles


When Bond jumps through window cut back to NSMA (we have a snippet of the Bond music -just enough).


When Bond is stabbed cut away from Bassey/new titles and move to NSMA Banque Suisse sign



NSMA Kitchen fight (highly inappropriate music, FAR too loud and fight has been cut down (to remove the humour?))

Cut to NSNA full fight (with Pat Roach but no overblown music).


After fight (NSNA) cut to Fox saying "Nooo!". Nothing removed here but I had to wait for the terrible Arnold/Serra (?) music to finish.


Back to NSMA

When Rowan falls in the pool I cut back to NSNA...


and we end with original titles/music again...



I never cut/removed any video. I see someone has said about other cuts. I'd like those put back in.

I think I did these cuts because NSMA feels like a bit too much like Thunderball 2. Whereas NSNA always sits as its own film for me and to remove the titles and name (essentailly this is what happens taking out the song Never Say Never Again)) damages it badly. NSNA could never be the same without so it must be in there. I saw NSNA at the cinema 1983-84 so it has fond memories.

Now with the excellent work done by NSMA's editor and a few tweaks from me it's as I imagined it would be had the original film had a touch of Eon's images and sound (ie added logo at the start and some Bond music).

I'm now happy with both DVDs and I consider both films very watchable. Having watched (I own that UK attach? case) the remastered Bonds it's sad we have such poor sources for NSNA. Hopefully MGM will see there is money to be made from a SE.

An interesting point for me is that Casino Royale (Daniel Craig) feels a lot like NSNA ie no Bond music and both have an unofficial feel about them. I reckon NSMA would fit well in my UK Bond attach? but Casino Royale would never fit in. That says a lot about what Eon have done with Bond and their reinvention (with the painful lack of Bond music until the end titles (and then we only get Bondesque).

We can also reinvent here!

dutchdummy said:

...A more serious issue was with the video encoding. Any time there was a panning shot, the picture 'pulsated' to such a large degree that it made the motion look jerky. It made the film difficult to watch for me. I don't think the problem is on my end; I've experienced these kinds of encoding issues myself, especially using ProCoder 2.

All in all, a worthy addition to my DVD library, but it won't replace the original for me. If the cut scenes were reinstated and the video encoding was better (maybe even making it DL?), the film would be good enough for me to consider it the ONLY version worth watching.

Click to expand...

Hello and thanks for the even-handed review of my project.

The encode was compromised from the start by the need to compress the video to a single-layered dvd. The quality of the version that is currently on Rapidshare and Torrented was hampered still further as a direct result of converting PAL to NTSC in Procoder 2 (the PAL version is of course far superior to the NTSC version in myriad ways).

Producing a DL version does not present a problem as I have the entire Avid project (media and timeline) archived on an external HDD. The only reason I did not offer-up such a version is that I thought it might be asking a bit much of those who were doing the uploading to Rapidshare on my behalf.

Yes, the cut and edited scenes are, like my choices of music, much debated aspects of the project but all decisions were taken for what I consider are valid reasons. For example, I had always felt that the "endorsements" related dialogue completely destroyed the mood of what was potentially a very dramatic scene. It was more at home in one of those OO7 parodies in which Roger Moore had starred between 1973 and 1985. The same can be said for Derek Deadman's encounter with Lippe at Shrublands; and I don't believe for a moment that those familiar wit the original cut of NSNA would miss the minutaie of the Bond/Fatima sex scene.

But these are the sorts of things which make Fan Edits so interesting and opens up the possibilities for change or improvement or encourages others to have a bash themselves, tailoring a film to their preferences.

Ain't modern technology great?

are you planning to release your version of NSNA?
To answer the question form your first post: All the artwork can be found on fanedit.org.

boon23 said:

are you planning to release your version of NSNA?

Click to expand...

Me? Once I give it a complete watch-through and all is OK I don't see why not.

boon23 said:

To answer the question form your first post: All the artwork can be found on fanedit.org.

Click to expand...

Thanks

Blofelds Cat said:

The quality of the version that is currently on Rapidshare and Torrented was hampered still further as a direct result of converting PAL to NTSC in Procoder 2 (the PAL version is of course far superior to the NTSC version in myriad ways).

Click to expand...

Interesting about the PAL>NTSC. I wouldn't do that unless I had to (like I did with reinserting scenes) because the PAL has already been converted from NTSC and taking it back to NTSC would be very messy unless you had some expertise in the area (I certainly don't).

The MGM UK PAL DVD is 16:9 and very bright. I have some bits of the NTSC and it's 4:3 letterbox, is that correct? From looking at both sources the PAL does look best. If the NTSC is indeed 4:3LB then that might get a bit messy too cropping it.

BC, if you send me a DL I will gladly upload it to RS and we might also probably get a team for torrent seeding (or let nex do it alone ;-)). I decided for the NTSC version because most of members are from "NTSC"-land.

And btw. welcome to the forum, BC, I am really glad you joined!

Carthago said:

None of this is meant to be an attack on the great work done by NSMA's editor. It's just a few thoughts and reflections and isn't meant to take anything away from his great ideas.

(snipped greater body of text as it appears above)

We can also reinvent here!

Click to expand...

Hello. Rest assured that I have read your comments with great interest and it's plain that you have offered your opinions in the spirit of constructive critique - which is always valid when discussing new edits of existing material and that you have given much thought to the alternatives.

As you can probably gather from the 'v4.1' notation, I am one who believes that there is always room for improvement. If the truth be known many of the changes between versions were instigated by feedback from fans.

I agree entirely about the relative unsuitability of the music underscoring the Shrublands fight scene (nor am I particularly happy with the music of the horseback escape scene) - and I'll have a listen to the levels. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a suitable alternative from the Bond soundtrack catalogue at that point in time. As the aim of the project is to utilise established 007 music, I'm open to any suggestions for substitute tracks to underscore the forementioned scenes.

I'd be keen to have your version in my collection as well.

As has been pointed-out, NTSC would seem to be the format which affords the best possibility of viewing compatibility across the world. Procoder 3 is to be released later this months so I'm hoping that there is improved PAL-NTSC conversion capability.

Back to the tweaking.

boon23 said:

BC, if you send me a DL I will gladly upload it to RS and we might also probably get a team for torrent seeding (or let nex do it alone ;-)). I decided for the NTSC version because most of members are from "NTSC"-land.

And btw. welcome to the forum, BC, I am really glad you joined!

Click to expand...

I'll get onto this in the next few days (will also revisit the Shrublands fight audio levels).

BTW, would anyone be interested in multiple soundtrack options? The version 1 DVD had multiple audio tracks:

1) composite mix
2) isolated music score
3) isolated dialogue & effects
4) isolated original NSNA soundtrack (illustrating what of the original track was retained and what was removed entirely)

The incorporation of so many tracks on an SL disc compromised the PQ w-a-a-a-a-y too much and so was dropped from v2 onward.

As Carthago pointed-out, we can reinvent to our heart's content.

Thanks for the welcome.

I think there's very little that can be improved on this edit. Bar getting John Barry to score some extra music.

Carthago views on changing the project seem to destroy the point of the NSMA edit, especially reinstating the original title sequence. Sorry it just doesn't work for me.

Carthago said:

Interesting about the PAL>NTSC. I wouldn't do that unless I had to (like I did with reinserting scenes) because the PAL has already been converted from NTSC and taking it back to NTSC would be very messy unless you had some expertise in the area (I certainly don't).

Click to expand...

The PAL DVD will have been sourced from a film print not NTSC video.

I downloaded this over the weekend and was looking forward to it. I agree that the video problems was distracting. Hopefully that will be remedied.

Another point where I felt the music was too loud - during the motorcycle chase, there's a cut to Fatima giving orders or something. Her dialogue seems a little drown out by the music there.

As for a new DVD, I'd definitely be interested in multiple audio options. An isolated dialogue & effects track would allow people to create their own version of the soundtrack with relative ease. I read your tutorial, but since I have no access to a sound effects library, starting from scratch would be fairly difficult.

Dalton said:

Carthago said:

Interesting about the PAL>NTSC. I wouldn't do that unless I had to (like I did with reinserting scenes) because the PAL has already been converted from NTSC and taking it back to NTSC would be very messy unless you had some expertise in the area (I certainly don't).

Click to expand...

The PAL DVD will have been sourced from a film print not NTSC video.

Click to expand...

Usually but that's not my point. NSMA is NTSC but it seems it came from a PAL DVD. At least that's my understanding from Blofelds Cat's comments and why there are added problems to the mix.

When I finalised (and watched) my cut there are even more frame problems which come from conversion. So we need either a complete NTSC source (and leave it as NTSC) or PAL (leaving it as PAL).

IME PAL to NTSC is always very poor. It happens quite a lot with Region 1 distributors (especially foregin language films). I'm sure there are fixes but it's beyond anything I can do.

Carthago said:

Dalton said:

Carthago said:

Interesting about the PAL>NTSC. I wouldn't do that unless I had to (like I did with reinserting scenes) because the PAL has already been converted from NTSC and taking it back to NTSC would be very messy unless you had some expertise in the area (I certainly don't).

Click to expand...

The PAL DVD will have been sourced from a film print not NTSC video.

Click to expand...

Usually but that's not my point. NSMA is NTSC but it seems it came from a PAL DVD. At least that's my understanding from Blofelds Cat's comments and why there are added problems to the mix.

When I finalised (and watched) my cut there are even more frame problems which come from conversion. So we need either a complete NTSC source (and leave it as NTSC) or PAL (leaving it as PAL).

IME PAL to NTSC is always very poor. It happens quite a lot with Region 1 distributors (especially foregin language films). I'm sure there are fixes but it's beyond anything I can do.

Click to expand...

Just to clear things up. NSMcA was edited in the PAL domain i.e. the video was extracted from the PAL dvd of NSNA (using Cinematize to convert the MPEG2 stream into a high quality Quicktime file using the Avid DV codec); the file was then imported into Avid and edited entirely as a PAL project.

Once complete, I exported the Avid timeline as a Quicktime Reference file (a rather nifty little container that directly references the Avid-digitised media), which in turn was dragged into Procoder 2 and encoded as a PAL MPEG2 stream via 2-pass VBR encoding.

NTSC didn't enter the equation until I was informed that, unlike Australian, UK and European DVD players, US players were not capable of dual system playback and so a separate NTSC version had to be produced. This was achieved by the same encoding process outlined above only with an NTSC dvd parameter selected instead of PAL. Procoder took care of the standards conversion but the software has a known issue when it comes to PAL > NTSC conversions, hence the stepping during optical panning and other defects. I'm hoping that the conversion issues will be resolved in Procoder 3 (available later this month).

The PAL version of NSMcA is the superior disc but the NTSC version guarantee's higher compatibility for downloaders.

I am, as I write, encoding a new PAL MPEG2 stream for a dual-layer version of NSMcA; this will be followed by an NTSC stream. Hopefully there will be significant improvement in PQ wih the higher avrage bitrate.

will keep everyone posted via this thread.

cheers.

I have the PAL version and it's very good quality.It certainly doesn't have any the defects the NTSC apparently has.

I have a question actually. In scenes which originally contained music and dialogue did you use any software to isolate the voices or was it just a question of dialling out the sound either side of the dialogue? There were one or two instances where sometimes the voices were accompanied by what sounded like little blips and screeches. I imagine this is unavoidable to a degree however.

Dalton said:

I have the PAL version and it's very good quality.It certainly doesn't have any the defects the NTSC apparently has.

I have a question actually. In scenes which originally contained music and dialogue did you use any software to isolate the voices or was it just a question of dialling out the sound either side of the dialogue? There were one or two instances where sometimes the voices were accompanied by what sounded like little blips and screeches. I imagine this is unavoidable to a degree however.

Click to expand...

You have raised a valid and interesting point regarding re-edits of existing soundtracks where one or more individual components of a composite soundtrack - in this instance, music - are to be replaced.

While it is very easy to add music to scenes that are unscored, the difficulty increases when it comes to scenes that are scored. The level of difficulty in replacing music is variable and ranges from:

1. P!ss Easy
unscored scenes

2. Straightforward
scenes which do not contain dialogue and therefore require 'only' the building of a new effects track.

3. Challenging But Achievable
scenes which contain dialogue & music, where the latter is relegated to background or where percussive or strident notes are not coincident with frames containing dialogue.

4. 'F#@king Near Impossible'
scenes which contain dialogue & music, where percussive or strident notes are coincident with frames containing dialogue.

Okay, so that's a simplified breakdown but point '4.' goes a long way to accounting for the sonic artifacts you have described. There is only so much filtering that can be done to limit the intrusion of existing percussive music into the spoken word and it is sometimes impossible to achieve clean dialogue. Notable examples of this occur in the scene of Patricia Fearing's late night visit to Bond and, more obviously, during the Domino/Bond kissing scene aboard Largo's boat (where 'disco' music is blaring at high level for dramatic impact). In retrospect, I should have left both scenes as is and I may well reinstate the original soundtrack for both scenes in the HD version - if the film is ever given a decent HD release.

A bit more information than you expected but I hope it has been of some use to readers.

Blofelds Cat said:

and, more obviously, during the Domino/Bond kissing scene aboard Largo's boat (where 'disco' music is blaring at high level for dramatic impact). In retrospect, I should have left both scenes as is and I may well reinstate the original soundtrack for both scenes in the HD version - if the film is ever given a decent HD release.

A bit more information than you expected but I hope it has been of some use to readers.

Click to expand...

I noticed those areas were problem areas, however I'd rather have them and the track from FYEO over the original disco music. I loved the inclusion of 'Make It Last All Night'. It seemed to fit the mood of NSNA better than FYEO.

Blofelds Cat said:

I am, as I write, encoding a new PAL MPEG2 stream for a dual-layer version of NSMcA; this will be followed by an NTSC stream. Hopefully there will be significant improvement in PQ wih the higher avrage bitrate.

will keep everyone posted via this thread.

cheers.

Click to expand...

Any updates on this new encode? I would very much like to have the dual layer PAL encode and try my hand at encoding to NTSC. I would also be interested in making it available for trade as downloading a DL disc would be pretty time consuming.

I dunno what everyone's talking about with distracting video problems... the only one that bothered me (and that I actually noticed) was the jump in the pre-titles when Sean stands up behind the bush. The opening titles could be done better as well, especially now that the Thunderball UE DVD has them without captions.

But I've always had a soft spot for this cut... I watched it so many times, my DVD of it stopped working.