Paranoia (a Truman Show fanedit)

[PaulisDead2221]

PARANOIA

“Let’s go home, Truman. Where it’s safe.”

A Truman Show fan-edit in the style of a Hitchcock/Lynchian thriller.​

The intention of this fan-edit is to reimagine Peter Weir’s classic The Truman Show (1998) as a paranoid thriller. All explicit references and evidence to the viewer that Truman is part of an elaborate reality show centered around his life have been removed. By removing the dramatic irony of knowing what’s going on behind the scenes of Truman’s life, the viewer experiences first-hand Truman’s growing paranoia as he begins to suspect the world around him is not what it seems.

password: fanedit.org​

The film has been completely rescored to feature the music of Bernard Herrmann, sourced from Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and Taxi Driver (1976). A piece by John Barry is also used.

The edit incorporates extensive color correction to the film, fluctuating between a high-contrast black and white filter for “hidden camera” shots and a partially film-faded “Technicolor-esque” filter for the rest. The intention is to invoke both the classic colorful look of old Hitchcock films like Vertigo (1958) and the more postmodern look of films like Eraserhead (1977) or Pi (1998), all while evoking the frantic intercutting between the two ala Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (1994).

The idea for this project came while I was rediscovering some Hitchcock classics. I had already been interested in doing a version of The Truman Show without the behind-the-scenes elements (there are one or two similar projects floating around on the internet), but the project came into focus after comparing The Truman Show to classic Hitchcock themes and better understanding the terrifying and bizarre reality in which Truman exists.

Original Running Time:
103 minutes

Fan-edit Running Time:
73 minutes

Time Cut:
30 minutes

 

[DigModiFicaTion]

Now this is intriguing! I love the Hitchcock vibe you've got going on here. I haven't felt this hyped in a while about a fanedit! Let me know if I can help in anyway.

Would you possibly consider doing the entire edit in black and white, adding 50's era film grain, etc? Is the crackle constant in the audio?

 

[ArtisDead]

This definitely sounds interesting. Very excited to see how it turns out.

 

[Dwight Fry]

Absolutely love this project! It's the kind of stuff I wiah I had come up with. Amazing first ten minutes and impressive credits sequence, yet if possible do fix the misspelling both there and in the poster: "Carrey", not "Carey".

 

[PaulisDead2221]

Thanks for the encouragement, everybody .

Now this is intriguing! I love the Hitchcock vibe you've got going on here. I haven't felt this hyped in a while about a fanedit! Let me know if I can help in anyway.

Would you possibly consider doing the entire edit in black and white, adding 50's era film grain, etc? Is the crackle constant in the audio?

I definitely might consider doing an alternate version fully in black and white. The only thing I would need to consider is potentially having to do an alternate credits sequence, as the opening sourced from Vertigo kind of demands the full color effect, or it could work just fine either way.

The crackle is consistent, but I've already dialed it back considerably in my current drafts (and I botched the loop transition so it's on my list to fix).

Absolutely love this project! It's the kind of stuff I wiah I had come up with. Amazing first ten minutes and impressive credits sequence, yet if possible do fix the misspelling both there and in the poster: "Carrey", not "Carey".

Lol. I can't believe I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. This would have been the second time I've done that too. After I messed up Carrey's name in the credits of my Batman Forever edit I swore I would never forget.

 

[PaulisDead2221]

As of right now I'm just about at final cut for the edit, having addressed some technical issues and reworked a sequence or two that wasn't working before. I still might mull it over and let it breathe a bit before submitting to IFDB, but in the mean time I have a second clip to post since my Vimeo weekly limit reset.

password: fanedit.org​

 

[PaulisDead2221]

The edit is complete and available for anyone interested. Just PM me.

 

[GelflingHand]

A brilliant idea and very well executed. I wonder if the final conversation could/should be edited to remove the remaining TV show references, and leave the real nature of Truman's artificial world ambiguous? The current reveal feels a little anticlimactic, which is unsurprising since it was shot with the assumption that the audience would know all along.

 

[Kal-El]

Wow, this sounds amazing! Can't wait to see this

 

[Kaby]

This is one of the coolest fanedit concepts I’ve heard in quite some time — excited to check it out!

 

[UnwokeCyberman]

I am a huge fan of the original movie, it was hard for me to watch this edit without that knowledge. With that said, I absolutely loved this edit. It makes me wish that the original movie would have left you in the dark as to what was actually going on in the background, this way we too could have been on this adventure along with Truman feeling confused and a bit insane.

 

[JustKeatz]

Very nicely done. Goes to show how much high drama and tension Bernard Herrmann's score brings to Hitchcocks visuals.