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Buffy - The Prophecy

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NewSpock

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After reviewing Bloodlusts' Buffy season 1 turned to movie-edit, I couldn't resist longer than a month before attempting such an edit myself. I waited to see if Bloodlust would try a second attempt to tell the story in a more convincing way and then I nearly gave it up altogether.

But then I thought, what the heck, for Starwars and Superman... there are also multiple edits, all having their own interpretations and structures so why not a second edit for trying to turn Buffy season 1 into a movie.


Here it is, I call it "Buffy - The prophecy" and it's about 2 hours and 8 minutes long:

I use a 3 act-framework:


1. act: The introduction of Buffy and the world she lives in, the school, the Bronze, Buffy's mother, Willow, Xander, Cordelia, even Angel as the mysterious guy. And of course the Master and Darla.


2. act: Buffy falls in love with Angel but gets scared when she discovers he is a vampire. Darla plans to get Angel back by trying to force him to kill Buffy...


3. act: Earthquake foreshadows the master's rise, Jenny gets introduced who later helps Giles with his research, Giles discovers a book where there seems to be nothing written in it, and later deciphers it to be "The codex" with a prophecy in it, Buffy gets a nightmare where she gets buried alive by the master and then she overhears Giles and angel talk about the prophecy that foretells the slayer's death... and then the end-action gets along.


Throughout the three acts I made sure the story-arcs of each character work out:
1. Buffy handling her fate as a slayer, first being reluctant to work as a slayer at the beginning, then getting into it again in the middle and at the end having the catharsis of discovering her deadly fate and going through it.
2. Xander, being the man, having to deal with Buffy's super-strength and his vulnerability, and yet he falls in love with Buffy and hates vampires, and doubly so Angel, who is a vampire and with whom Buffy is in love, and at the end he has to overcome his jealousy and ask Angel for help...
3. Willow who is in love with Xander and has to put up with Xander panting for Buffy and who is at the beginning very insecure exemplified by her fear of the popular Cordelia, but then through the secret slaying-buiz and her finding herself to be useful as Giles's assistant and computernerd grows more secure and at the end she becomes very confident in the presence of Cordelia, which even Cordelia senses and wonders about.
4. Giles, the watcher, who trains Buffy as a slayer but over time sees more in Buffy than a tool to fight evil, he discovers her humanity and grows father-feelings for her to the point that he offers to fight the master instead of her.
5. Angel, the vampire who killed his own family, who was sired by Darla, who got cursed with a soul and who tries to get Buffy to kill him and end his misery, and who then kills his sire Darla to save Buffy...




To make it all fit some of the story of season 1 had to be cut out or changed in meaning:


1. All of the monster-of-the week-episodes are cut out.
2. The harvest from episode 2 in the Bronze is cut out and its meaning changed to mean the master's rising and action at the end of the movie.
3. The book that was meant to hold the internet-demon has now the interpretation to be the codex.
4. Jenny's introduction happens now while trying to defeat the master, not the internet-demon.


Here's the final trailer:



Password: Summers

It's finished, whoever wishes to watch it:

Buffy The prophecy can now be found as a dlc on: www.fanedit.info

It's a 2,9 GB mkv-download through the hoster mega. Password is: fanedit.org

Enjoy!:)

Other news: I've started preliminary work on Buffy 2, continuing the saga with a movie based on season 2 (I think it will be four movies for season 2 alone).
 

Neglify

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Nice man. Could be a good way for me to try and get into Buffy. Will add Season 1 discs to cart next Amazon trip.
 

TV's Frink

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Neglify said:
Nice man.

For some reason, I now picture Neglify as a giant dog, petting a little man.
 

NewSpock

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Neglify said:
Nice man. Could be a good way for me to try and get into Buffy. Will add Season 1 discs to cart next Amazon trip.

Thanks, imho Buffy is one of the best shows out there, so I think you are in for a treat.:)

TV's Frink said:
For some reason, I now picture Neglify as a giant dog, petting a little man.

You have some nice fantasy, sir! :)
 

Gatos

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TV's Frink said:
For some reason, I now picture Neglify as a giant dog, petting a little man.

Wait....haven't we all been picturing Neg that way?

And NewSpock sounds cool. I watched the show for awhile when it was on TV, i just remember there being some guy named Xander, some British librarian dude, and SMG and Charisma Carpenter
 

Omaru1982

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Cool, I never watched them on tv and then I bought them on dvd around 2006, as I started to like buffy I also ended up buying angel (which in some ways I actually prefered.) I always liked how Joss would take a cliched story arc and flip it on it's head creating something unexpected in the process.
 

NewSpock

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Thanks to all of you.:)

I finally received the region1-dvds of Buffy season 1, and I'm right in the process of redoing the edit using that with 23,976fps instead of the PAL-version I had before.

The only problem that I still didn't find a satisfactory solution for are the credits. As you can imagine using a season to make a movie, you have credits appearing where they shouldn't appear, so I tried different methods to get rid of those:

Cropping the image, ie. cutting the lower part and then stretching the image... did the job but looked awful, when coming from non-stretched part of the video to the stretched to the nonstretched again.

I thought about miniscule frame by frame recoloring of the letters, but god that is an awful lot of work, that I think is just too much for me to justify it, the time I would have to invest for that would be enourmous.

So I settled for a compromise: I put a black ovale-mask over the appearing credits, it's not optimal, but imho definitely better than leaving the credits as be or cutting and stretching the image.
 

xDeeMx

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Sounds nice. Buffy is one of my favorite shows of all time but even though the first season (and, to a lesser extent, the second one) is really charming, the freak of the week format just makes it hard to keep myself motivated watching it.
 

emphatic

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NewSpock said:
The only problem that I still didn't find a satisfactory solution for are the credits. As you can imagine using a season to make a movie, you have credits appearing where they shouldn't appear

I know the feeling. :( Here's what you can do:

* If there's a credit appearing as someone is talking, keep the audio, but try to find footage of the person listening and have that on screen instead, used slow motion if the footage is too short
* Some editing software (like Vegas) can zoom in on your footage and you can move the "camera" around the credits so you can keep faces and other important stuff in frame - this should look crap on season one of Buffy though due to it being shot on 16mm film
 

NewSpock

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TomH1138 said:
Hooray! I look forward to seeing it!

Thank you, the movie grew a little due to last touches and due to the slower speed of 23,976 fps, it's now 2 hours and 25 minutes long. Now I'll just have to rar it and upload it someplace and then you can preview it.
 

NewSpock

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Finally, it's now rared and uploaded on mega. Downloading from it can be done with Chrome or Firefox with the mega-addin installed or what I would prefer, with the best downloader-app out there: jdownloader (using the newest updates, it supports mega).

TomH1138, I'll send you a pm with the links so you can preview it.:)
 

NewSpock

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I usually don't like to watch trailers these days , as they tell and show too much, so I tried to make this trailer here very short and not really tell or show much of the movie, the intention is only to show the atmosphere and the main-character.

So, does it work as such a short "teaser"-trailer or is it already telling too much or too little and how are the audio-transitions? And do you prefer a trailer to be with some text between the scenes making strong statements or do you prefer an overdubbing voice telling something... And how do you like it in general? And what could I have done better?
 

NewSpock

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I've finally found out how to lift the restrictions for embedding vimeo-videos. And I removed the password, so it can be played back directly in this forum.

But where's the feedback? I need it, don't spare my feelings.:)
 

bionicbob

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NewSpock said:
But where's the feedback? I need it, don't spare my feelings.:)

Honestly, it plays more like a series of clips than a trailer. And why the production title card at the end?

I think the clips need to be shorter, the pacing tighter and faster and most importantly, it needs to be all tied together with some unifying music.

On the flipside, I think the opening shot of Buffy in the bedroom and her Mom's voice is an excellent idea for the opening.
 

NewSpock

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bionicbob said:
Honestly, it plays more like a series of clips than a trailer. And why the production title card at the end?

I think the clips need to be shorter, the pacing tighter and faster and most importantly, it needs to be all tied together with some unifying music.

On the flipside, I think the opening shot of Buffy in the bedroom and her Mom's voice is an excellent idea for the opening.

Thanks man, that's the criticism I need. I've finally found a way how to import external music into Final Cut Pro X, so I've redone the trailer using music as well:


Password: Summers

What do you think?
 

bionicbob

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For me, the song is too slow (it also ends very abruptly) and not really Trailer material or even feels very Buffy-ish.
Also, you will have to manipulate the music audio levels, bring the music down whenever there is dialogue or a specific sound f/x you want to emphasize. In its present state, I had a hard time hearing the dialogue.

A trailer needs to grab the viewer's attention, tease them the basic plot and leave them wanting more.
This current version still feels too long and clip showy.

My suggestion, my not just use the actual Buffy theme music?

Then recut your above trailer to fit, make it faster and tighter, making cuts according to the music cues?
Also scatter some titles cards through it to convey to the viewer more clearly what the fan edit is about.

Maybe look at some of the other many fan trailers on the site to get a feel for the style and how a trailer should play out?
 

NewSpock

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bionicbob said:
For me, the song is too slow (it also ends very abruptly) and not really Trailer material or even feels very Buffy-ish.
Also, you will have to manipulate the music audio levels, bring the music down whenever there is dialogue or a specific sound f/x you want to emphasize. In its present state, I had a hard time hearing the dialogue.

A trailer needs to grab the viewer's attention, tease them the basic plot and leave them wanting more.
This current version still feels too long and clip showy.

My suggestion, my not just use the actual Buffy theme music?

Then recut your above trailer to fit, make it faster and tighter, making cuts according to the music cues?
Also scatter some titles cards through it to convey to the viewer more clearly what the fan edit is about.

Maybe look at some of the other many fan trailers on the site to get a feel for the style and how a trailer should play out?

Music is always a question of taste, the one likes fast, the other likes slow, I chose this song because its lyrics and melody fit perfectly the footage and because it perfectly displays the psychological state of mood of Buffy. Besides, it's indeed part of the Buffy soundtrack in season 2.

Regarding the audio-levels, you are right it's a bit too loud with the music. Regarding the dialogue, I deliberately muted the dialogue completely with the exception of the beginning and Giles and Buffy introducing themselves to each other, cause the song's lyrics tell already all there is to tell.

But you are right, that it doesn't feel like the usual trailers (it feels now actually like a music-video:oops:) and the ending could be less abrupt. I'll lower the audio-level a bit for the music and try to make the audiocue end better, but I grew fond of this trailer for most of its part and style.
In order to reduce a bit the feeling of a musicvideo, I inserted some more instances of audible dialogue and made the normal audio audible at the end to go out with a little bit of audioflash.

I think I will then try and make another trailer in the more usual way with faster cuts and more marketing...

Thanks for your invaluable input, bionicbob, and keep it coming.:)
 
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