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Red Dwarf: Canaries (a Red Dwarf VIII feature edit)

wilhelm scream said:
Well if it makes you feel any better, it's better than any rotoscoping that I've ever done.
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I do apologise, for some reason your message didn't load in when I checked the page before. Thank you for the compliment but I'm sure you're a better rotoscoper than you think, all it takes is practice and patience. And of course it helps to have something like HitFilm where it's possible to do it very quickly and easy with just a brief tutorial to get to grips with it.
 
I can't embed this but I'll leave the link anyway - here (the link at the bottom of the message) is an mp4 file containing a section that involved some heavy compositing work that I'm extremely proud of. For context, the scene where Cassandra appears on Holly's monitor in the Time Wand scene acts as a segue from Pete Part 1 back into Cassandra. For this, I used shots of Geraldine from the deleted scenes that, as a blessing and a curse, hadn't been CSO'd onto that funky backdrop.

However, it wasn't merely a case of comping her in. Matching up the colours and creating a matte, while not as quick and easy as it probably ought to have been, had a simple enough solution. The big problem I had was Cassandra's dialogue. First, I had to edit the audio in such a way that it both made sense and said what I needed her to say (I believe some refer to this as sentence mixing), and then - the considerably more tricky part - find a way to make the movements of her mouth fit that.

Now, there are only two shots of Cassandra and one of them didn't even need tweaking - the original line was 'sorry to interrupt Arnold', so all I had to do there was to replace the t sound at the end to stop it running into the next word, and cut away to a repurposed reaction shot to disguise it. The second shot, however, would be more tricky as there weren't many more useable shots of the characters to work from.

Fortunately for me, the second line wasn't too big of a stretch. The mouth movements of Cassandra in the primary shot - 'Kryten, time to make your time bends speech' - didn't feature too much movement on Geraldine's part, and thus all it took to better match the mouth movements was to cut it at the point where the lip movements diverge, reverse the subsequent footage, and subtly fade between the two. It wasn't perfect though, so just for the finishing touch I also faded in and out an additional masked, transparent layer of just Geraldine's mouth when she says 'come in' from 'but Blood Drinker is about to come in', which, when all put together, results in a somewhat decent approximation of Cassandra saying the line 'Kryten, time to come in'. Not exactly Shakespeare, but under the circumstances I'd say it works out pretty good.

 
Okay, I'm gonna need some help making a decision here - should I keep in the Bob Dylan music I added? I put 'Ballad of a Thin Man' over Cassandra's death sequence because I thought it gave the scene more weight, and Dylan's music is certainly evocative of prison imagery ('I Shall Be Released', anyone?). I considered but rejected having 'Stuck inside of Mobile' over the credits (if you listen to the song you'll see what I mean, not exactly Dwarf-y but it fits the mood and works as an outro song), and I couldn't find anywhere to fit the aforementioned track, 'I Shall Be Released'.
 
Cero said:
Okay, I'm gonna need some help making a decision here - should I keep in the Bob Dylan music I added? I put 'Ballad of a Thin Man' over Cassandra's death sequence because I thought it gave the scene more weight, and Dylan's music is certainly evocative of prison imagery ('I Shall Be Released', anyone?). I considered but rejected having 'Stuck inside of Mobile' over the credits (if you listen to the song you'll see what I mean, not exactly Dwarf-y but it fits the mood and works as an outro song), and I couldn't find anywhere to fit the aforementioned track, 'I Shall Be Released'.
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Maybe have two different audio options, that would appease everyone
 
Well, the edit for now is about as complete as I can make it, so here's my attempt at compiling a cutlist. I've never done one of these before and I'm not even sure I'll make it all the way to the end, so please bear with me.

  1. Added Fanedit warning, Fanedit.org ident, BBC ident, Grant Naylor Productions logo, custom Cero ident
  2. Added stock starfield video with caption 'Previously on Red Dwarf...'. Did my best to keep the look of it consistent with the series' fonts.
  3. Back in the Red: the Boys' being sentenced - converted to monochrome as it's a flashback. I was going to do a full recap but the more I thought about it the more I realised it was just dragging everything out so I kept it minimalist. The crew's back, it's been covered in the previous episode, just roll with it. It's more of a recap than Me2 ever got.
  4. Pete Part 1: the flashback of their first encounter with Ackerman - starts out monochrome with a letterboxing effect to match that of the last two shots, before converting to 4:3 colour.
  5. Cassandra: Lister quizzing Holly about avenues of getting out, slightly extended with colour-corrected deleted footage.
  6. Only the Good...: main titles (with custom titles and replacement shots for the scenes that don't feature in either this edit or KyoSo's BitR edit, which this is an unofficial sequel to) and the Hermes escape pod.
  7. Krytie TV: Lister's guitar and the appeal. Includes new 'starring' titles. Main cast, writers and director.
  8. Pete Part 2: Archie's introduction. Cut the obviously-dubbed 'untamed dino on the loose' line.
  9. Cassandra: Lister enlists everyone into the Canaries.
  10. Pete Part 2: 'We're not going in until we know what we're doing.'
  11. Krytie TV: the shuttle scene. Rotoscoped Rimmer to hide his jacket in order to keep continuity. Also, the only reference to the original Krytie TV storyline is here, and the reason for why it never comes up again will become apparent shortly.
  12. Cassandra: The Canaries arrive on the Silverberg.
  13. Pete Part 2: The extended Archie scene, followed by a shot of Lister and Rimmer walking off alone to explain where they got to as we cut to...
  14. Pete Part 1: The discovery of the Time Wand. Trimmed the "explain-the-joke" moment, trimmed Kryten's 'I have an excellent place to conceal it' (that pops up again later), and added a new ending to the scene where Cassandra appears on Holly's monitor telling them to get over there.
  15. Cassandra: basically identical to the original episode from here to the ending, with the only change being the addition of the song "Ballad of a Thin Man" over Cassandra's death. We then see the returning shuttle from Krytie TV and hear Kryten's claim that he has 'an excellent place to conceal it' as we cut to...
  16. Pete Part 1: Kryten's 'excellent place to conceal it'.
  17. Krytie TV: Ackerman's glass eye, again slightly extended but largely identical to the broadcast version.
  18. Only the Good...: Rimmer in Hollister's quarters up to almost the end of 'Have a Fantastic Period'. Cut: Talia Garrett. Nothing against Heidi Monsen but every scene her character is in makes me wince.
  19. Krytie TV: a complete rejig of the final third or so of the episode. Lister's "flours" are now in response to Kochanski getting angry over the aforementioned period gag, and Kryten's reason for getting reclassified isn't directly stated. Kryten lays out the plan to get back at Tim, and Rimmer and Cat go to the cinema alone and see film being replaced with the Krytie TV broadcast - now Lister being publicly humiliated. Lister gets his guitar back, Rimmer gets the promise of a song, and the Captain gets a tape of the broadcast which leads into...
  20. Pete Part 1: Recut the first and second instances of the captain's office together to save time and skip that pointless (and somewhat underwhelming, given RD's propensity towards unseen zero-gravity sports) prisoners-guards basketball tournament. The punishment is for Lister and Rimmer being involved in wrecking Ackerman's quarters. Lister's reason for lying is to protect Kryten. The flashback is now a short montage of previous Ackerman scenes culminating in Cat's beating. From here it's largely the same as the original episode, with the only changes being removals of references to the match and the obvious lack of Manny Celeste, which was seen earlier as part of the Silverberg sequence.
  21. Pete Part 2: Mostly based around an edit of the episode I'd done previously. Pete's rampage has been restructured to give a sense of scale to them running about, and also to give Bob more time to find the Time Wand. Lister (using a repurposed deleted scene) gets everyone captured by security with his big mouth. The captain's long-running damage report spiel is significantly reduced, because repeating the same joke several times doesn't make it funnier, Doug. Cut the 'he's right behind me isn't he' moment, which was basically just more fat jokes at Mac's expense. Replaced the 'we're not going in' section with Kockanski checking if Lister knows how to use the Time Wand from the deleted scenes. Straight to Kill Crazy and Baxter's assault, they don't steal the Time Wand, Kryten and co break off to make sure they don't come back, and Lister and Rimmer destroy the Time Wand after bringing back Pete and Birdman. The captain calls them to his office, furious about them "losing" the Time Wand but basically not issuing any ultimatums this time. You know what happens after that. We then see the extended version of the punishment duty scene. I wanted to include Kochanski's 'least enjoyable suicide mission' line here but I couldn't find a way to make it fit.
  22. Only the Good...: Lister and Rimmer are in hospital as a result of the injuries sustained in the fight. Birdman and Pete are present for the escape attempt and discovery of the microbe. I'd intended to include a shot of Blue Midget flying away with a recycled sound clip of Birdman offering Pete some seeds to infer the Boys had sent him off on his way and gone back without him, but again the timing didn't work out. From here, aside from again clipping out Talia and references to Talia (other than the mention of the escape pod) the storyline is basically the same.
  23. Custom credits over starfield.
  24. BBC licensing/distribution ident.
  25. Misc edits: some additional model shots from RD Remastered between some scenes (except in the 'classic' edit; that'll come with a separate FX cutlist when it's done); added S1-era music stings as a bit of variety.
 
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I don't know much about Red Dwarf, but this edit has me excited just on the principle of editing an episodic* show into a movie. Most edits of shows tend to cover those with a more serialized nature. If you can pull this off and manage to make it not feel episodic, I'll be impressed. I don't suppose I'll be able to just jump into this without having seen more of the show?

*I know that the show has continuity, but years ago when I started watching the show from the beginning I recall it being mostly episodic, if that's not the case with later seasons then I apologize.
 
Jrzag42 said:
*I know that the show has continuity, but years ago when I started watching the show from the beginning I recall it being mostly episodic, if that's not the case with later seasons then I apologize.
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Red Dwarf's eighth series is largely serialised, there's not many episodes in that series, but most of them are multi-parters.
 
I've shown the assembly cut to KyoSo (albeit skipping the parts from episodes she'd seen recently that hadn't been edited) and the verdict is - the narrative works surprisingly well, the edits are largely inconspicuous, and the only thing less than ideal about it is it's too long. Which is true, an hour fifty is a bit of an excess. Ideally it'd be split into parts but the way the edit's structured doesn't really allow for that, and I don't think it'd be possible to cut it down much more without losing something.

Also, I'm looking into the logistics of hosting a one-time-only closed screening on Discord, nothing's set yet though. I guess if anyone's interested just DM me? I'm not in the Discord server anymore but you can find me very easily just by typing "old viking dudes" into the search bar and seeing what comes up.
 
Just a quick update: I've finally found a suitable source for the replacement model shots of the Canary shuttle and I'm in the process of acquiring them. It's going to take some time though.

In other news, here's a trailer I knocked together in about half an hour. I've decided that I'm also going to have a go some time in the future at editing Series VII, so I billed this current edit as the third part of a hypothetical 4-part edit series which I call 'Saga Continuums' (after the opening crawl of Backwards), which will comprise of my as-yet-untitled Series VII edit, KyoSo's 'The Tolerable Cut' of BitR, 'Canaries', and finally KyoSo's BtE edit that I haven't yet seen and don't know the name of, but which she's assured me does exist. They can be watched separately, or other edits can be swapped in, but (assuming 1 and 4 come out well) I think watching them in sequence will definitely enhance the experience, and it's my hope that they'll act as a better bridge between the classic Grant-Naylor/BBC era and the solo Naylor/UKTV era. I guess we'll have to see how that turns out lol, but I'm pretty hopeful. Anyway, roll on!

 
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Quick update to let yall know this isn't dead - the revised effects shots in the alternative classic VFX cut haven't been as forthcoming as hoped. I'm currently working in whatever free time I have (I'm employed now, hooray!) compiling the model shots from a completely unrelated BBC series shot a decade earlier (Star Cops, available in its entirety on the official YouTube channel for anyone interested, sadly only at DVD quality for now) after discovering some shyster uploaded a 360p interlaced effects compilation and had the audacity to claim it was 1080p. He's a total, total - a word has yet to be invented to describe how truly whatever-it-it is he is but he is one, and a total, total one at that. Anyway, I'll keep you posted when new developments occur.
 
I found out the other day that someone else already had the same idea 5 years ago and their edit is only 73 minutes long. I'm trying to reach the editor about checking this other edit - partly for comparison, partly to satisfy curiosity.

I bet that other edit doesn't have model shots from Star Cops though. šŸ˜
 
we.tl

canariesmobil.mp4

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we.tl we.tl

Just a little something I threw together. Considering it as an easter egg.
 
Update time:

So both versions of the edit are functionally complete, I'm going to continue tinkering with it a little while to see if I can further cut down the running time by cutting some more chaff, tightening scenes, etc. KyoSo's told me she's got a friend who might be able to help me out with creating a new mix of the audio, and if that's the case then I'd be interested in trying to replace some of the stock music with actual Howard Goodall pieces. So, stay tuned.
 
You wouldn't believe what happened in the last two days. I accidentally overwrote the project file for the latest version of Canaries, but fortunately not much progress was lost, and in fact in my reconstruction over this afternoon I actually managed to trim it down even further than I could've imagined - I've shaved the running time down to a respectable 1hr35mins. You'd have to be Scissorhands Sodorbergh himself to cut it down much more than that and keep it a) seamless and b) coherent.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any model submarine shots I was satisfied with, so I had to settle for reusing the Starbug shots from Back to Reality, which of course also meant - regrettably - culling all but one of those beautiful Star Cops model shots. I'm utterly desolated.

In other news, I finally batted off an email to Mat Irvine of the BBC Visual Effects Department fame, just asking a few things about what practical models were used for the CGI work for VIII or if he knows anything about that, and also a quick question about the late Bill Pearson. If I hear anything back from him, you'll be sure to hear.

I don't think there's a lot else I can do with this edit, so for the foreseeable future, and pending any significant future developments, I'm going to consider this edit functionally complete, try and get the submission ball rolling, and of course get cracking on the as-yet-untitled Series VII feature edit.
 
I figured this might be of some interest - I heard back from Mat Irvine today. He said that unfortunately he never worked on Red Dwarf and that he'd already left the BBC VFX Department prior to 1997. He also told me that as far as he's aware, it wasn't BBC VFX that worked on Red Dwarf VIII, but rather Jim Francis and Steve Begg. He suggested I try and get in touch with Steve, as Jim is sadly no longer with us. He hadn't had much contact with Bill Pearson either so he wasn't able to answer my other question. Not the best news, but it was nice of him to get back to me about it. I've found a contact page for a team that purports to have Steve as a member, so I'll bat off a message to them shortly.
 
This is such BS. I've got more than enough space to store the edit on Vimeo, but because of the arbitrary limit on upload sizes, I can't. I'll look into getting an account upgrade as soon as my PC comes back from the repair shop. Don't worry, it's not broken this time - I just got tired of being constrained by the size and speed of the C-drive. Why the previous owner thought such a small drive suitable for a gaming PC I will never understand.
 
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