Avatar - Book 1, Chapter 1: The Last Airbender (not to be confused with 3D blue people)

[The Scribbling Man]

Edit 2 of my slow, plodding, muddy-ordered Avatar TV-to-Movie project is here. Would you believe this edit has been sitting 80% completed on my drive for 2 years?

Eek.

More info on the project here.

Anywho, here we are. This is the first three episodes of season 1 edited into a single, seamless narrative. The gist:

• Custom Avatar-style FE logo
• No episode breaks
• No recaps
• Tweaks to humour
• Tweaks to dialogue in episode 2 to foreshadow events of episode 3
• Re-ordering of scenes during episode 3 footage (to accommodate narrative links between episodes and suit new pacing)
• New and rescored credit sequence

Release is imminent. Full cutlist to come. I'm just checking through my render and prepping some example clips.

I'll try not to let 2 years pass before the next part comes around...

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Here's an example of one of the trickier changes in the edit, involving foley and masking. Password: fanedit

For those that aren't familiar with the series, the little girl that has been removed has had no screen time up until this point. Clearly, she is just meant to generally represent the feeling of the children of the village, but it comes out of the blue and is laughably melodramatic. Cue scissors.

Just now seen that handbrake cut off a letter on my comparison when cropping (sigh).

 

[Murikamir]

That was a good edit there, a lot of the earlier episodes had similarly cringey scenes.

 

[Dwight Fry]

This looks really good. I've been intending to rewatch the entire show and this will be a perfect way to do so.

 

[The Scribbling Man]

@Dwight Fry - a classic movie buff and a fan of Avatar? A man after my own heart.

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Custom source warning/FE logo:

A simple example of tweaked humour, via slightly adjusted comic timing:

Possibly the most extreme edit, the transition between episodes 2 and 3:

Regarding the above clip, the tweaked dialogue is to prevent an "episodic" feeling. The dialogue in the original has a feeling of "wrapping up" and alludes to later adventures, as opposed to imminent events. Their next destination is the Air temple, so I make that explicit. Re-scoring is done to aid this. The establishing shots are new, and the scene that follows is not the first scene from episode 3 - this is intentional, to help with a less episodic pace and to convey a sense of time passing between events.

 

[robulon]

Really nice work with those scene transitions! Especially the last one. I've always been intrigued by the possibility animation affords a faneditor when literally any piece of dialogue can be put into a characters mouth as long as you can fix the timing of the lip flaps. Along with the music changes that was seamless!

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Thank you! Yes, there's certainly a lot of potential for manipulation in that regard.

 

[Dwight Fry]

That's the great thing about editing animation. I have only made one animated edit so far, but it allowed me to do quite a few hard cuts within the same shot that looked completely seamless.

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Submitted to IFDB. Complete cut-list below:

Reveal message: text bomb

- 0:00:00 - added custom source warning
- 0:00:11 - added custom FE logo
- 0:00:17 - added Scribbling Man branding
- 0:01:35 - added faneditor credit to titles
- 0:01:43 - changed episode title to reflect edit title
- 0:07:10 - cut episode break
- 0:10:01 - Tweaked comic timing of Sokka's attempted objection
- 0:13:36 - Cut "call me gran gran"
- 0:17:32 - Straight cut to penguin sledding (rather than fade-to-black and back in) after Sokka says "He's kidding, right?". Shot is lengthened slightly to accommodate.
- 0:22:00 - Katara no longer says "Aang let's get out of here" twice. Now after cutting we just hear her say "This place is creepy"
- 0:22:00 - cut fade to black and "to be continued". Straight transition into next episode.
- 0:24:06 - Cut Aang's "you should try it sometime". Manipulated frames to help in merging the two shots of Sokka together.
- 0:25:15 - cut Aang's failed attempt to make Appa fly, as well as Sokka's mocking reaction.
- 0:25:19 - Cut "Aang! I'll miss you (wah wah)" from random minor character we've never seen before
- 0:25:26 - Masked out little girl from shot of her and Katara watching Aang leave, then cut to shot of Katara's face as Gran Gran arrives (in order to dodge the shot where she and the little girl cross paths)
- 0:31:09 - Cut episode blackout after "no way" (sokka)
- 0:31:46 - Trimmed Katara's expressive grunts before "no, Aang - don't do this!"
- 0:32:18 - kept cut to black, as it is a fitting transition. The wait before fading back is paced differently though
- 0:36:00 - Tweaked musical cue, cut blackout, smoothed audio into next scene
- 0:42:48 - cut "we're in this together", partly to tone down the cheese of the scene, partly to lessen the feeling that the episode is coming to a close
- 0:42:48 - Tweaked Aang's mouth movement and masked sky in background to accommodate. This was to allow his dialogue to spill over into the next shot, while still having the complete animation of him jumping down and unrolling the map.
- 0:42:51 - rescoring starts here (same music) in order to give me full control over the dialogue. Aang points to one spot on the map instead of three. Aang no longer describes several "fun" locations for their next trip (which aren't relevant to the edit's narrative)
- 0:42:52 - kept Katara saying "what's there?". Shot is very quick in original, as are others which have now been cut, so shot is lengthened slightly to work for new pacing of scene.
- 0:42:53 - Tweaked Aang's mouth movement. Masked sky in background to keep its movement consistent. Aang now responds with "the southern air temple" which is where they actually go in the next episode.
- Changed ending music queue
- 0:42:55 - kept and trimmed reaction shot, removed dialogue
- 0:42:57 - kept wide shot of appa, different scoring
- 0:42:59 - cut episode 2 credits and replaced with a very brief day-to-night montage to imply the passage of time. Utilised audio swell from elsewhere in series. Shot of sun is cut and recycled from later in episode 3. Shot of moon is the blood red moon from season finale now colour corrected to be a "normal" moon.
- 0:43:03 - to further help convey the shift in time, the first thing we see from episode 3 is Zuko and Iroh docking to have their ship repaired. Length of shot is extended slightly. The original episode opens with the avatar gang waking up.
- 0:44:20 - we now cut to the original opening scene with team avatar.
- 0:45:12 - instead of cutting to Zuko and Iroh, we stay with team avatar as they approach the temple
- 0:46:40 - Aang no longer announces they are at the southern air temple, since this audio was used earlier
- 0:46:43 - extended shot to aid new crossfade. merged establishing shots to help pace of transition. We again transition to the gang at the temple as opposed to going back to zuko and iroh
- 0:48:28 - we cut to Zuko and Iroh instead of staying with the gang. Rescoring and foley to accommodate.
- 0:49:50 - we cut to team avatar, but a different scene than in the original episode. Establishing shots lengthened and score tweaked to accomodate. Pan down to Sokka and Katara is tweaked, and there is some masking to allow Sokka to start speaking sooner (mainly to allow some of my audio edits to work)
- 0:55:16 - cut episode break; Katara no longer says "you're making a sound!" when told to keep quiet. A bad bit of humour and a moment of stupidity during a potentially dangerous situation. Tweaks to score and masking to accommodate
- 0:56:09 - the chasing of Momo now happens uninterrupted.
- 0:58:03 - cut to Zuko, as in original episode, but a different scene.
- 0:59:26 - lengthened shot of zuko, tweaked music cue to aid transition into next scene
- 1:00:24 - instead of moving to the final scene, we cut to agni kai
- 1:03:12 - cut to "wrap up" with the avatar gang. Some foley and tweaks to score to accommodate transition
- 1:04:23 - white out to main credits, skipping past the usual preceding ones. Rescored to keep the vibe from the ending scene. Regraded mountains backdrop to be the same time of day as the ending scene. Credits updated to reflect all three episodes. We eventually transition to another piece of music from the soundtrack.

I'll be sorting English subtitles for the edit over the weekend.