Doctor Strange and the Book of Dreams

[tremault]

This time I'm working closely with @mnkykungfu to produce an edit I could not do on my own. Whilst I'm the one holding the knife and effectively making the final decisions, a vast majority of the structure and ideas for this would not exist if not for my working partner.

The main plan is to splice the Dr Strange What-if episode into this movie as a sub plot. This ties in to Stephen's regret about letting go of Christine and helps him to learn the dangers of using the Darkhold and stealing powers. Secondary plan is to remove the majority of the Illuminati scenes and some of the more camp moments that take the viewer out of the moment. examples include the Wong transition, the Wanda looking at the camera, Bruce Campbell, The Souls of the Damned darting around Wanda making her look weak and ineffectual, the damn third eye thing at the end.

updated edit list :

• It starts with an interview with Stephen and Christine, outlining Stephen's need for control. "I'm the one you want holding the knife"
• The 'marvel' intro titles plays and shifts between various multiverses that we have featured in the movie. The one with the illuminati has x-men so the 20th century logo is used for that. the animated dream sequences are supposedly in the spiderverse so there is an animated sony/columbia clip, the dark broken world can be linked to the Hulk universe so we have the Universal logo too.
• The first dream starts, a shot of stephen approaching the book of vishanti saying "give me what i need, then a shot of America,then Christine, then...
• animated section shows a Stephen who lost Christine and decides to stop at nothing to get her back. This will link into Wanda's actions.
• As he wakes up, we see a brief flash of the symbol of Vishanti and hear some shimmering sound and a watch ticking.
  We hear the watch ticking sound every time we see Stephen's watch from Christine to suggest that this is a link with the other Stephen in the dream and it is a symbol for his regret and his need for control.
• As Stephen attends the wedding the shots are reframed to hide some bad acting of one of the extras.
• Christine's asking Stephen if he is happy is removed.
• Cutaway of Dream America is replaced with the shot that I used, that is not from the original dream sequence.
• removed America saying "that wasn't adream"
• reframed some shots in the diner to accentuate Stephen's feelings about Christine.
• insert shot of the book of vishanti when America mentions it.
• several edits to rooftop scene to remove "that wasn't a dream" and "all dreams are multiverses" stuff.
• The world that Wanda dreams of, the Illuminati world is regraded to take on a golden shimmer.
• Stephen cuts off Wanda when she is reaching for 'understanding' about Westview. The evil magic garden bit is completely removed with an edge wipe to kamar taj.
• As Wong calls Kamar-Taj into action, we cut back to Wanda and see she is using her spectral body to use the Darkhold. or is that her real body? It's the scene from the very end of Wandavision.
• all the shots during Wanda x Stephen conversation above Kamar-Taj are reframed to enhance emotional resonance.
• Wanda's attack on Kamar-Taj is made less horrific. We need her to be a sympathetic character. She isn't evil.
• Wanda does not get drawn into the mirror dimension. It seemed unreasonably overpowered for her to so easily escape from that.
• removed her line "I'm not a monster, I'm a mother" as it was just really bad.
• inserted reaction shots of Stephen as Wanda talks about dreaming of her boys. This resonates with him due to his own mysterious dream.
• recoloured one of the mutiverses as they fly through a whole host of them, it was way too normal looking.
• removed the part where America says she doesn't exist in other universes, because her justification is "I don't dream" a plot element that has been removed.
• Bruce Campbell is removed.
• Inserted Wanda's dreamwalking partway through Mordo's scene rather than after it, to make way for the second dream.
• removed Wanda looking directly at the camera. It was an obvious cut so some erratice editing was introduced that hides the cut and also elevates the distress that other Wanda is feeling.
• As Stephen is sent to sleep by the tea, the second dream begins. The symbol of Vishanti is seen, and an insert of Stephen picking up the book of Vishanti.
• The second dream shows animated Stephen going to the library of Cagliostro to find a way to break an absolute point. He goes to great lengths and starts absorbing the power of other beings to enable him to bring back his lost loved one. This mirror's Wanda's quest very closely and gives Stephen some perspective on that. It also further pushes this idea that Stephen needs to control everything.
• At the end of the dream, this Stephen looks toward the camera and says "hello?" suggesting he is aware of our Stephen watching.
• after waking up in the glass cubes, several edits and reframes are done to accentuate Stephen's feelings for Christine.
• "The Illumi-what-i?" is removed.
• As Stephen is taken before the Illuminati, they are all introduced immediately, including Charles Xavier, with no special fanfare and no fanservice. No musical motifs. No extended shots, no silly comedy.
• removed Captain Carter and Captain Marvel's confrontational remarks.
• As Wanda talks to Wong about how this chamber is meant for her, Shots are adjusted using dutch tilts, slow zooms, Wanda's voice is altered and a red glow is added to Wanda's eyes to suggest she is being influenced by the Darkhold. Music is also switched out to be more tense and creepy.
• Blackbolt's voice is heavily altered to feel more like a deafening explosion of sound,
• Wanda's attack on the Illuminati HQ is heavily rearranged so that America and Christine are about to escape before Wanda even reaches their room. Stephen's fight with Mordo is removed. It is hinted that Xavier releases Stephen and Wanda's fight with the Illuminati is removed.
• reframed some shots in the corridor when Stephen reunites with America and Christine, to accentuate his emotions.
• Removed weird spooky creepy stuff as Wanda is chasing after them under the river.
• When the book of Vishanti opens up and starts to burn, The symbol of Vishanti now flashes onto the screen and a shimmer noise is heard, identical to the noise when a dream happens.
• In the corrupted universe that Stephen and Christine end up in, the entire video frame rocks very slowly like a ship. it's very very slow to ensure no viewers get motion sickness. It is meant to symbolise how this universe is like a shipwreck and this evil Stephen is the storm that caused it. When he dies, the rocking stops. It is very subtle, so nobody should experience motion sickness from it.
• The corrupted universe is regraded to differentiate it from the snowy environment of Wundagore.
• Evil Stephen no longer asks our Stephen if he is happy.
• Evil Stephen no longer claims outright to have killed other Stephens in dreams. He just sort of implies he did something.
• We no longer see that third eye open after evil Stephen has died.
• As stephen says he needs Christine's help, one shot is reframed to accentuate the emotion.
• As Stephen is beset by souls of the damned after posessing his own corpse, he is drawn into darkness, the third dream starts here.
• The third dream shows this corrupted Stephen absorbing the last being and travelling to the spot of the car crash where Christine died. He reincarnates Christine and she is scared by what she sees.
• we cut back to live action Christine defending our Stephen's body and fending off the souls of the damned, saving our Stephen.
• We cut back to the dream where corrupted Stephen has saved Christine and she is scared. The world starts to fall apart due to Stephen's actions. As the world collapses, we see our Stephen's eyes watching the events. Corrupted Stephen is aware of this and pleads with him to help.
• As the dream world implodes and fades to black, we hear a few lines recounting how Dangerous other dr strange's are and his tendency to always 'hold the knife', then Xavier's line from earlier "We shall see what kind of Doctor Strange you are", We see the live action zombie Strange's eye as it opens. (in realisation)
• We cut straight to Wong on the mountain getting rocks thrown at him as zombie Stephen swoops in to the rescue.
• The fight here is trimmed down, removing some awkward bits with Wanda acting all campy. Wong does not tell Stephen to take America's power.
• Stephen trusts America and relinquishes control of the situation to her. America does the same for Wanda. Wanda does the same for her alternate self.
• The movie ends on Stephen fixing and putting away the watch. He does not manifest a third eye.
• In the end credits scene, the shots are rearranged and reframed to hide that third eye.
• The Bruce Campbell end credits scene is removed.

I'm also doing some colour grading on the other multiverses to help give them a different feel.

This one they pass through gets a hue shift.

The one where Wanda sees her boys and where stephen and America first end up is tinted yellow and blue tones are very subdued.

The multiverse broken by the incursion or whatever it's called, has lowered contrast and the reds are subdued

Here is the intro as I have it

 

[ArtisDead]

Your examples aren't coming through, JessicaRabbit.

 

[tremault]

Your examples aren't coming through, JessicaRabbit.

Thanks for the heads up ^^
I'll upload them to the gallery here and fix the links.

 

[ArtisDead]

They won't show up. The gallery is for approved edits only now.

 

[ArtisDead]

Use imagebb. It's good for temporary files.

 

[tremault]

oh right! ok, well it seems to have worked for now, but I will go put them on imagebb now. thanks

 

[ArtisDead]

How did you do that? Seriously.

 

[tremault]

How did you do that? Seriously.

I'm not sure what you mean.
do you mean uploaded them into the site gallery? I just clicked add media.
but these are on imagebb now.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Cheers, @tremault . I like the color grading so far! About the "yellow" reality... as this is the one with the happy family, maybe lean in to the theme a bit more and turn that "yellow" into more of a "gold"? Not sure exactly which settings will help with that, but something like increasing the luminosity, maybe increasing the warmth will make sure scenes don't tend to feel like sickly yellow, but more glowing?

For the final verse, I would just be concerned about the MCU pattern of having final confrontations in these dimly lit, hard to make out places. Decreasing the contrast too much could make some scenes just look dark and underlit, and I think that Stephen and Christine shot in particular is veering in that direction for me. Maybe as well as lowering the contrast a bit, you could give a slight tint to that realm? Less red, so...more green? Or purple?

 

[tremault]

yes I can make it more golden. I can bring in a bit of red in the darker areas and raise up the light levels.

I can't fix the lighting in that broken world, but I can certainly avoid making it worse. perhaps I can separate teh channels and create a harsher contrast while still keeping the dingy look. This place is broken so it should be dingy, but more importantly, it needs to contrast against Wundagore. The producers seemed to think it was okay to have this all in a snowy and bland environment and then have the broken world in a similarly bland environment. not sure what they were thinking, but It's an unnecessary amount of additional stress on hte viewer to keep track of who is where. I'll put some more work into it.

 

[mnkykungfu]

This place is broken so it should be dingy, but more importantly, it needs to contrast against Wundagore

I'm less concerned than you with the color-grading of this movie; mostly I was just irked at the writing and some performances. But I totally take your point on this, it's a good call!

 

[tremault]

I have some more to share.

This clip is an adjustment to the audio of Blackbolt's powers.

 

[futon88]

I really like the idea of making the different universes look a bit more varied. Such a missed opportunity, there. It's a movie about the multiverse, and we spend most of our time in a universe that looks just like ours except the street lights are different. ~headsmack~

 

[tremault]

I've adjusted the colour grading a little. made the 838 more sparkly and given some contrasting light values to the broken world.
i've included the previous screenshots underneath for comparison.

 

[WhatTheActualMark]

This is a personal gripe of mine, but is there a possibility to remove the "Illumiwhatti" and the part where Strange says that he and Mordo are enemies? It's just it didn't seem like Mordo is now a sworn enemy in Strange's eyes and all their conflict has happened off-screen.

 

[tremault]

This is a personal gripe of mine, but is there a possibility to remove the "Illumiwhatti" and the part where Strange says that he and Mordo are enemies? It's just it didn't seem like Mordo is now a sworn enemy in Strange's eyes and all their conflict has happened off-screen.

yep.
I'll be removing that illumiwhati line and I'll take a look at that conflict between the two. this might be a whole thing actually, as I may be removing the fight between Strange and Mordo and imply that Charles has actually physically let him go.

 

[WhatTheActualMark]

Also, for changing the title in the title sequence, here's the sequence without text. It can be useful. It also has one for Ant-Man: Quantumania for your other edit. (Although, the title card for Quantumania is still there but you can change fiddle around with other textless backgrounds to change it)

 

[WhatTheActualMark]

You've also said that Darkhold of Dreams is a temporary title. My title for this movie would've been Doctor Strange and The Book of the Damned to avoid any multiverse hype and confusion. Let the audience speculate it themselves and assume the only multiverse link is America Chavez when there could be much more.

 

[tremault]

Also, for changing the title in the title sequence, here's the sequence without text. It can be useful. It also has one for Ant-Man: Quantumania for your other edit. (Although, the title card is still there but you can change fiddle around with other textless backgrounds to change it)

Thank you, that's really useful!

You've also said that Darkhold of Dreams is a temporary title. My title for this movie would've been Doctor Strange and The Book of the Damned to avoid any multiverse hype and confusion. Let the audience speculate it themselves and assume the only multiverse link is America Chavez when there could be much more.

That's really interesting!! Well I am still not sure what will be, but the themes we're working out is something like 'letting go'. so the title I end up with may reflect that somehow.

 

[ArtisDead]

Doctor Strange in The Art of Letting Go.