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Elysium: The Bone Saw Cut

TM2YC said:
But am I alone in thinking that Jodie Foster was the best thing in the film? (Apart from the awesome scary red robot cops obviously)
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I can't speak for everyone, but my issue with Foster in the film wasn't her performance, but her character. She supposed to serve as a dramatic foil to Max, which is fine, but while Max is an honest portrayal of the group of people he represents, Delacourt almost feels like a parody of it. She twirls her mustache (figuratively) a few too many times for my liking. I feel that the film was a bit less graceful than District 9 was in delivering its message. I'm still working out what my message with the edit will be, but it's sort of coming together. :)
 
Sound's interesting, I too think Jodie Foster's strange performance nearly ruins this film. Good luck with your cut.
 
HanShotFirst said:
Sound's interesting, I too think Jodie Foster's strange performance nearly ruins this film. Good luck with your cut.
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I agree. If she had played it closer to her character from Inside Man I think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more.
 
Something that I observed in theaters (and on Blu-ray as well) was some pretty poor lip-syncing, or dialogue sounding like it was blatantly dubbed in. This was especially apparent in some of the scenes on Elysium and in a few bits with Spider and his group. Since I'm using a non-English track for 90% of the edit, lip sync here won't be as much of a concern (as long as stuff starts and stops at the right times) but I figured it was worth mentioning.
 
So, I'm hitting a bit of a snag with the story I'm trying to tell: I was thinking of Max and company stealing information from the Vice President be a bit of a plot twist, that Spider knew what they were doing, and so on. Now, up to this point, Kruger and his buddies kidnapping Frey and her daughter as leverage to get Max to surrender makes sense. Thing is, until Max actually turns himself over to Kruger, he doesn't know they have Frey. So it doesn't really matter, as Max is planning on turning himself over anyways. Now, had Max really killed a really high-ranking official, threatening to blow his head off with a grenade isn't the best idea since he's probably going to get killed anyways, and even offering Kruger the chance to become a citizen is useless because he already is (to a point).

I can keep the story relatively the same as it was in the theatrical version, with there being a conspiracy to supplant the current government, but I feel that without more scenes from the conspirators it will feel like a shoe-horned in plotline, and the reason I'm cutting all those scenes to begin with was because of some pretty awful acting. Suffice to say, I'm stuck as to what to do.
 
I've finished up my first cut of the edit. The story is pretty much the same as it is in the theatrical cut. I still have Delacourt's bits and scenes cut until Max wakes up on Elysium, since in the third act she is a necessary character, even for her short appearance. I'll see how it plays out, and of course anyone who wishes to view it is welcome to it (just shoot me a PM).

Now, here's a new clip for y'all:

I combined the flashbacks from the very start of the film and the flashback Max has after he gets irradiated so that the film isn't too frontloaded with exposition that isn't needed yet and trims down on a few redundancies. :)

I'm still planning on dubbing this into Spanish and doing English subtitles for the whole thing. Current running time for the edit is 91 minutes, and I think it will stay around there.
 
I must admit I was initially hesitant about you doing this in a foreign language, but it fits quite well! I am eagerly awaiting this edit!
 
WyndorfDave said:
I must admit I was initially hesitant about you doing this in a foreign language, but it fits quite well! I am eagerly awaiting this edit!
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I'm still a bit hesitant as well. It all works in theory, but I'm making sure that everything is in order before I swap out the audio...just in case that falls apart.

I did watch my first workprint and everything was in order. I made a few notes on what needs fixing and such. Delacourt's reduced (but still included) role works well. I think if I had gone with completely cutting her for the entire film, the entire third act would have fallen apart. Whether or not the film works as a whole for others is of course to be seen, but right now I feel that it works. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully I can have this out by the middle of June, but that ultimately depends on how the subtitling goes. :p
 
New E.W.W video on 'Elysium'...


^ Usually decent food-for-thought for fanedits.
 
Those videos are always a good time. I addressed Delacourt by mostly cutting her out...most of the other stuff needed to stay, though. :p
 
Final running time is 1 hour, 31 minutes and 20 seconds. Next step is to go through and do subtitles, which is admittedly going to be monstrously absurdly tedious, but I'm not abandoning my vision.

One of the more minor (and borderline inconsequential changes) I made was the year that the film takes place in: 2254 instead of 2154. I remember when the film came out that one of my friends had thought that 2154 wasn't long enough for the world to get into the state that it was at the beginning of the film, so I moved the timeline a bit to make it more plausible. Ultimately it makes no difference (except making the vehicles in the film even older) but there it is.
 
Hi [MENTION=4575]Aztek463[/MENTION],
I started watching this movie on DVD but stopped halfway, and never resumed! Why--because although it was interesting, there were just too many cliches up to the point I saw, mainly because of Jodie Foster's character (no disrespect)--it was just shaping out to be another action movie-meets-Gattaca-esque genre film. But cutting out her character and making it Spanish-- fantastic ideas! Those things itself make this movie stand out Far more--I'd love to watch your cut when its ready man! Good luck

Kris
 
I cut all of Foster's character up until the third act. The story didn't really work from that point onward (in my opinion) without her character, but she's got about five minutes of screentime, maybe. No disprespect to her intended, either. I'm sure you will enjoy it! I'm hoping to get it done and released in the next week or so. :D
 
Aztek463 said:
I cut all of Foster's character up until the third act. The story didn't really work from that point onward (in my opinion) without her character, but she's got about five minutes of screentime, maybe. No disprespect to her intended, either. I'm sure you will enjoy it! I'm hoping to get it done and released in the next week or so. :D
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Sweet, I definitely want to watch it!
 
After listening to the Spanish track a bit more (and severely underestimating how nigh-unbearable subtitling an entire film really is) I decided to stick with the original audio. Sharlto Copley just isn't the same in Spanish. Anywho, I'm priming an MP4 and a BD-25 for release very soon.
 
Aztek463 said:
After listening to the Spanish track a bit more (and severely underestimating how nigh-unbearable subtitling an entire film really is) I decided to stick with the original audio. Sharlto Copley just isn't the same in Spanish. Anywho, I'm priming an MP4 and a BD-25 for release very soon.
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bummer. the spanish audio was the thing I was really looking forward to with this edit.
 
I understand man it can be hard... Is there no way to render it in Spanish, then edit a separate srt file (or any subtitle file?). You could get the film subtitles online, open the srt file in notepad and adjust the timing on there and edit the text based on your film. They don't have to be hardcoded. So it'll be like any Spanish movie.

But again, subtitling a movie is a crazy hard endeavour, I totally hear you. Personally I'd be fine with the movie in English. The narrative changes are whats really important, and thats why Im looking forward to your cut!
 
Here's a trick I learned when subtitling my edit: First, I started with an English srt file for the movie (I ripped it from the US DVD, but you can also find srt files online for most movies) and opened it in Subtitle Workshop (along with a render of my edit so I can preview the subtitle timings). Next, I opened my edit in Premiere, and determined the "timing offset" of each segment of unedited footage. Here's an example:

20uo46b.jpg


In the timeline, I have selected a ~4 minute long segment between cuts. The window on the upper right, the Program Monitor, shows my current place on the timeline, as well as the timecode of that frame in the edited sequence (circled in red). But if I double click on the segment in the timeline, the window on the left opens a Source Monitor which displays the same frame and gives the timecode of that frame in the base footage (circled in blue). I subtract the latter from the former to determine that this segment of footage is 1 minute, 1 second, and 8 frames "behind" the original footage.

Then I go into Subtitle Workshop, select all of the lines in that section, click Edit->Timings->Set Delay, set the delay to +00:01:01:333 (since subtitle timings are not frame based, I have to convert 8/24 to a decimal), and click Apply to nudge the selected subtitles ahead to match their new timing.

I repeat as necessary for every segment between cuts that contains dialogue. However, for some parts of the edit that have a bunch of small cuts, I found it easier to manually set the timings for each line.

I don't know what editing program you're using, but I'm sure that all of them have some way to compare the timecodes of the source footage with the timecodes of their place in the edit. Obviously, the more complex your edit is, the more work this will require.

If the above technique still seems too hard, I know that Avisynth can render subtitles from an external subtitle file onto a video file. So you could theoretically take an srt file and the original source video file, and use Avisynth to render a version of the movie with "burned in" English subtitles. Then simply replace the source footage in your editing program with the subtitled footage and voila, instant subtitles in exactly the right place.

The only downside is that, since the subtitles will be burned into the footage, the viewer wouldn't be able to turn them off or adjust them. Also, it will require you to render a (presumably) lossless compression HD video of the entire movie, so make sure you have plenty of hard drive space before you do this.
 
INH5 said:
...
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No joke, I was going to come home and see if such a piece of software existed, lo and behold it does! I hated myself for giving up, but now? Well, there is hope yet. I'll include an English and Spanish option (though the Spanish track will still have some bits in English) and soft subs. May take a bit longer to figure all of this out, but who doesn't love a good learning experience?
 
I'm delighted to read that you're sticking to the Spanish-audio plan - I think it will really help this edit.

For what it's worth, if you want any help with the subs/translation from Spanish audio, PM me and I'll happily help out any way I can. I speak fluent Spanish so should be able to make easy work of anything you need.
 
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