Emerald City: An Oz Fanedit

[Gatos]

[FONT=&amp]Original Name: Oz
Fanedit Name: Emerald City: An Oz Fanedit
Original Run Time: Approx. 451 min.
Fanedit Run Time: Approx. 93 min.

Tagline: You’re not in Kansas anymore[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]
Intention: My intention with this fanedit was to focus on the character arc of Tobias Beecher over the course of the first season of Oz. I have always felt that his story was the most interesting of the storylines in the first season. Beecher is the average joe being thrown to the wolves, and his transformation is, in my opinion, quite compelling. While I focused on Beecher, I also included some of Augustus Hill’s narration as this is a staple of the show and felt that it was important to keep it in the edit.

Cuts / Additions: I cut out most of the extraneous story lines that didn’t directly involve Beecher. There were a few things I had to keep in that don’t directly relate to Beecher but were necessary for continuity and to fill in potential plot holes. I added some new credits in the same font style as the original credits. This was so I could include the majority of the cast that appeared in the edit (simply using one of the credit sequences from the end of one of the individual episodes wouldn’t suffice). I added a photo montage that is not part of the original series. I also added a custom “Gatos Production” logo in the style of the HBO static tv logo.

Release Info: [/FONT][FONT=&amp]SL NTSC DVD and AVI
[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Special Thanks[/FONT][FONT=&amp]:[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Rogue-theX for feedback and help and for the front cover menu design.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]Captain Khajiit and geminigod for their help with dealing with the interlacing issues and using avisynth and HCencoder.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]L8wrtr for his feedback and suggestions on the photo montage.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]TMBTM for help with the HBO style static logo.[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]The fanedit.org community![/FONT]


[FONT=&amp]Trailer:[/FONT]

 

[Rogue-theX]

Congrats on finishing, Gatos

 

[Gatos]

Congrats on finishing, Gatos

Thanks Rogue!

 

[Gatos]

Links are up for the SL DVD. If anyone is interested please PM me.

 

[Gatos]

Links are up for the AVI. PM if you are interested.

 

[higgins]

Whoa! Been waiting for this for a while. In fact, I just watched the trailer from my fanedits folder yesterday, wondering how you're doing with that... I guess I should have checked the forums instead.

But... as the trailer is basically the old one without Wittlesey's speech and there's no mention of it, I'm guessing you didn't go for widescreen?

 

[Brumous]

Grim, brutal, and unrelenting like the original, this is a story of one man’s descent into prison hell. The hardest job with a TV series fanedit is taking the “raw material”, which is a serial format, and giving it the shape and structure of a movie. Gatos has accomplished this admirably and Emerald City has a well crafted introduction, character development arc, and climax. Sometimes this means that plot threads and characters are introduced and then ignored, but on balance it is a good editing decision to tolerate some of that in order to make the scene selection and sequencing feel right.

Beecher’s story is more disturbing and repellant when consolidated this way, so the narration that gives variety and perspective to the story is welcome, and the timing and amount of narration is good. The cuts throughout the edit flow exceedingly well, and the edit creates a real sense of forward development, even though the episodic feel is not entirely removed. A thought provoking and fairly horrifying experience. 9/10.

NOTE: The fanedit page says the runtime is 358 minutes but the edit is actually 93 minutes long.

 

[LastSurvivor]

Nice one Gatos... Huge congrats on completing your second edit. As you know, I can't wait to see it, but I am still getting through the 1st season on DVD, so as soon as I'm finished with that I will definitely give this a watch

 

[L8wrtr]

NOTE: The fanedit page says the runtime is 358 minutes but the edit is actually 93 minutes long.

Fixed. Thanks for the catch.

 

[Gatos]

Whoa! Been waiting for this for a while. In fact, I just watched the trailer from my fanedits folder yesterday, wondering how you're doing with that... I guess I should have checked the forums instead.

But... as the trailer is basically the old one without Wittlesey's speech and there's no mention of it, I'm guessing you didn't go for widescreen?

Yeah widescreen was gonna be a pain in the ass. My original thought was leaving it as is. Then a lot of people were saying how if i could pull it off it would be great. But then after more feedback people steered me back towards my original opinion/choice to leave it as is.

So yes its in 4:3 fullscreen.

I ended up changing the trailer back to the old one that included Whittlesley's speech (Although on the DVD, i included the "newer" trimmed down trailer).

I hope you enjoy the edit!

 

[Gatos]

Grim, brutal, and unrelenting like the original, this is a story of one man’s descent into prison hell. The hardest job with a TV series fanedit is taking the “raw material”, which is a serial format, and giving it the shape and structure of a movie. Gatos has accomplished this admirably and Emerald City has a well crafted introduction, character development arc, and climax. Sometimes this means that plot threads and characters are introduced and then ignored, but on balance it is a good editing decision to tolerate some of that in order to make the scene selection and sequencing feel right.

Beecher’s story is more disturbing and repellant when consolidated this way, so the narration that gives variety and perspective to the story is welcome, and the timing and amount of narration is good. The cuts throughout the edit flow exceedingly well, and the edit creates a real sense of forward development, even though the episodic feel is not entirely removed. A thought provoking and fairly horrifying experience. 9/10.

NOTE: The fanedit page says the runtime is 358 minutes but the edit is actually 93 minutes long.

Thanks for the review Brumous!

One question for you:

Reveal message

Did you watch past the end credits? There's a little easter egg i put in there.

 

[Gatos]

Nice one Gatos... Huge congrats on completing your second edit. As you know, I can't wait to see it, but I am still getting through the 1st season on DVD, so as soon as I'm finished with that I will definitely give this a watch

Haha. Don't rush through the season on my account! I hope you enjoy the edit.

P.S. I just rewatched my Quantum of Solace DVD so I will be watching your edit in the next day or two.

 

[Brumous]

One question for you:

Yeah I caught that, though it ain't got much to do with "easter" or "eggs". :-o

 

[Gatos]

Yeah I caught that, though it ain't got much to do with "easter" or "eggs". :-o

Hahahahahahah. I legit laughed out loud when I read that!

 

[higgins]

Does anybody else have slightly out-of-sync audio for the .avi version? Using VLC.

 

[Gatos]

Does anybody else have slightly out-of-sync audio for the .avi version? Using VLC.

I checked with VLC and GOM Player. And the audio seems to be very slightly out of sync in the first minute or two. But after that it seems to be fine. Maybe I'll try converting a fresh avi, and see if the audio is in sync. Honestly in the first minute or two it its almost imperceptible and as i said it seems fine after that. But I understand that even very slightly out of sync audio can mar the viewing experience so I'll try fix it up. Also just an FYI. The SL DVD is only 3 GB. In case you want to try that instead.

But if anyway else has downloaded the avi, please chime in.

 

[Gatos]

Hmm. So im noticing problems at the end of the edit too. So anyone who has already downloaded the avi, please don't watch it. As there are syncing problems. I will contact the mods to take down the dlc for the avi. And i'll try another conversion, and go through it carefully to make sure there are no problems/issues with it. For those who already downloaded the avi (and those who have limited bandwidth to spare) i sincerely apologize for this. This was my first attempt at encoding/converting to avi. My computer is kind of old so that could potentially be part of the problem as well. If you can spare the bandwidth i encourage you to download the DVD as there are no syncing problems with it.

 

[L8wrtr]

The AVI links have been removed from the site an will be restored once a replacement AVI has been uploaded.

 

[Gatos]

I made a new avi conversion and previewed it from start to finish. There are no syncing issues with this new avi. It is 700mb (the old avi was a bit larger at ~ 1GB). Sorry about the problems with the old avi. I have sent the upload links to L8wrtr so I assume links will be up for the new avi sometime next week. (You can also PM me for the links if you don't want to wait for the dlc to be put up).

 

[higgins]

A great edit! Just two things I'd mention. The jump to the variety show seemed kinda abrupt, but I can't imagine what kind of filler or hint one could put before that anyway. Second, I didn't quite get the point of the blue tinted flashback with the Beacher in the hole. Just seemed to repeat all the stuff that was shown barely a minute ago.

Damn... made me want to make an edit focusing on Kareem Said... but he doesn't have as good as intro as Beacher does and I simply hated how his storyline ended.

Reveal message

Eamonn Walker was written out of Oz so he could film Tears of the Sun.