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Frank Herbert's Dune - The Spence Edit

bionicbob

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In my growing anticipation for director Denis Villeneuve vision of DUNE, I decided it was time to revisit Spence's edit of the 2000 mini-series.

And I must say, it lived up to my memory and then some!

This is an excellent, entertaining, EPIC fan edit. The focus of the edit is not to be more faithful to the book, but instead distill the 3 part mini-series down to its core essence and tell a rousing and operatic tale. And it succeeds magnificently in my book.

Is it perfect? No. There are some minor technical/cut issues, not to mention John Hurt mistakenly listed in the newly crafted opening instead of William Hurt (I can not believe I missed that (!!!) the first time I watched this LOL), but these are imperfections do not detract in the slightest from the wonderfully re-imagined narrative.

Highly recommended! (y):giggle:
 

spence

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Hi all!

I have decided, after my ridiculous hype for the new film and a re-read of the first few books, to revisit this edit. I've seen an uptick in interest for this edit given the release of the new version, so why not make it the best it can be!

This will not be radically different from the one that currently exists, but I will be using a higher quality source and make it full HD with 5.1 surround sound. Some editing errors will be corrected, while some transitions may be redone or improved. I'll also have the opportunity to do more with the sound working in full 5.1. John Hurt will no longer be credited as being in this film.

This will be a complete rebuild of the edit, but again no drastic changes are intended. It's one of my favorite edits of mine, and the one I like to watch the most, so this is mostly a selfish effort to give myself the best possible version to watch. Hopefully some of you will enjoy it as well.

One change I will be making is working on the color grading to make it look more modern and cinematic. I'm toying with the idea of replacing some of the sandworm shots with better ones from Children of Dune.

This hopefully won't take too long as I have the original edit as my blueprint. All of the difficult editing decisions have already been made. I just need to replicate it and smooth it out.

Depending on how "Dune'd out" I am after finishing this, I may also tackle Dune Messiah and Children of Dune using the followup miniseries. Those will be much lighter edits, but it'll make for a cool "Dune Trilogy - The Spence Edit" set.
 

TheTVEditor

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Are you thinking of turning the first episode of Children of Dune into a Dune Messiah edit? What do you think will be cut/added in?
 

ArtisDead

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That is so awesome! I love this edit! One of my first that I watched over ten times!
 

Last Impressions

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This is great news -i got rid of my DVD and i purchased the bluray for £7.00 a couple of months ago and was going to make an HD version of your edit for my own personal use. (with your permission) ...you have saved me a job.Thank you so much.
 

spence

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Are you thinking of turning the first episode of Children of Dune into a Dune Messiah edit? What do you think will be cut/added in?
Yes, I think it'll be Dune Messiah and Children of Dune as the follow ups.

To be honest, I haven't seen those in a very long time, so not sure how I'm going to tackle it yet.
 

eternalsage

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Well, I personally and super hyped for this. I love the mini-series and I love your treatment of it, so I will be looking forward to a "beautifying" of it! Also, totally on board and pumped for something involving the sequel mini-series. Thanks a ton!
 

spence

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Well, I personally and super hyped for this. I love the mini-series and I love your treatment of it, so I will be looking forward to a "beautifying" of it! Also, totally on board and pumped for something involving the sequel mini-series. Thanks a ton!
The sequel miniseries is pretty solid as is, so it'll be a much lighter edit. They obviously got a bigger budget for the sequel series, so the effects and sets look significantly better than in the original Dune. The cast is also stronger across the board, and the direction is more dynamic and interesting. And the awesome music is already there!

Dune Messiah is just the first episode of the miniseries, so that's just going to be cleaned up, cropped, and maybe color adjusted. I'll remove some cringey effects or scenes that slow it down.

Children of Dune will need to be tightened up into one film, so that one will get a bit more attention.
 

spence

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Well guys, the hardest part is done.

jJUHleV.jpg
 

L8wrtr

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So I never saw your original, and I was very disappointed in the broadcast, so I’m very very interested in the entirety of your project.

While my love of Star Wars is well-documented here, my love of Dune surpasses Star Wars on some levels. Given your history, that gives me high hopes for what you can do for this lackluster miniseries!!
 

spence

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Here's a quick preview video, so you can see how much better the quality is now. Obviously the effects are always going to look a little rough just because of the source material, but it's definitely a big improvement!

 

spence

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Something that I'm adding to this version: Title cards for the various planets. One of the things I disliked about my first version was how much hopping around between planets there is in the first 30 minutes, but there's not really a way to cut it better to make it clearer. So I'm adding these title cards to the first establishing shot used for each location to help with the whiplash:

s5hWQMr.jpg

tw50x8s.jpg

v3zXcUb.jpg


I've also decided to add an additional scene with Doctor Yueh, so that his story arc is a bit more established. It'll add probably 3 minutes to the run time, but I can probably save that elsewhere.

Depending on what changes I make, there may be a slightly extended runtime to this version, but I'm determined to keep it under 3 hours. Honestly, 2:50 is probably going to be the sweet spot.
 

MusicEd921

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Why am I more psyched for this than the new one? I never had the pleasure to check this out the first time, so I'm lucky that I will experience this new cut in all of it's HD glory!
 

TheTVEditor

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Something that I'm adding to this version: Title cards for the various planets. One of the things I disliked about my first version was how much hopping around between planets there is in the first 30 minutes, but there's not really a way to cut it better to make it clearer. So I'm adding these title cards to the first establishing shot used for each location to help with the whiplash:

s5hWQMr.jpg

tw50x8s.jpg

v3zXcUb.jpg


I've also decided to add an additional scene with Doctor Yueh, so that his story arc is a bit more established. It'll add probably 3 minutes to the run time, but I can probably save that elsewhere.

Depending on what changes I make, there may be a slightly extended runtime to this version, but I'm determined to keep it under 3 hours. Honestly, 2:50 is probably going to be the sweet spot.
I don't want to be nosy, but I think the title cards would look better with they were better aligned, something like this:

 

spence

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Why am I more psyched for this than the new one? I never had the pleasure to check this out the first time, so I'm lucky that I will experience this new cut in all of it's HD glory!
Well this one has the whole story, which helps!

Unfortunately I'm not real hopeful that Dune 2021 is going to be the hit it needs to be to get the sequel, which sucks. It literally just stops halfway through the book.

I'm about 1 hour into this, which brings it up to when Paul first meets the Fremen in the desert. I'm making sure I've got all of that as tight as can be before moving on. It definitely looks significantly better just from the improved source, but I'm also doing a lot of work on the color and the cropping to 2:35, so it'll be a visual improvement across the board.
 
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