The Adventures of Superman (SHORTER VERSION!)

[Siebener]

(I ADDED A LINK TO A 5 MINUTE DEMO. SEE FIFTH POST.)

Hey guys,

I just wanted to ask, if anybody would be interested in audio-only fan edits. Let me say right away, that I am completely aware of the fact, that this is not half as impressive, as what some of you guys produce. Not even close. I know. But I thought that people who release fan edits probably listen to movie podcasts as much as I do and that some additional audio content might be welcomed.


(I'm only good at editing others, I guess, so please bear with me through this long ass explanation. I'm just trying to convince you, why you need to hear this.)

I never cared about Superman but of course I went to see Man of Steel anyway. I didn't like it. I thought the storytelling was horrible, the dialogue embarrassing and something about the way they presented his character felt off to me. That's why I spent the next few days overthinking what they did with Superman (to Superman?) in this film and finally realized what's great about him. Or at least, what I think is great about him.

Superman is a reminder to the 7-year-old in me, that I should be the best person I can be, that I should respect others and care about them, and that I should never give up hope. Totally cheesy. And totally inspiring in its cheesiness.



That's when I started listening to The Adventures of Superman, a radio serial that aired from 1940 to 1950. I immediately loved it. The voice actors are great and the stories are fun and simple. The villains are evil and Superman is exactly the hero you want him to be.

The problem is, that every episode has a runtime of about 12 minutes, including an intro and an outro, a commercial break and rather long recaps. You're basically left with about 7 minutes of actual story. Of course that was part of the appeal, when listening to it on a daily basis, but if you want to bingelisten to a whole story arc, spanning several episodes, it gets kind of jarring.

So I removed all of the unnecessary stuff and turned 11 episodes into one. I also added a few sound effects and musical cues from John Williams' score. The sound quality of the actual episodes is ... mediocre at times. I tried to remove the crackling, but at some point I realized, that it's a huge part of why I love listening to it in the first place. Nostalgia, I guess.


The episodes I picked are the beginning of a 76 episode story arc; the longest sequence the show ever did. I left out the first two episodes, though, since they are kind of slow and summed up in the first five sentences of the one I chose to start with.

It's the story of The Scarlet Widow stealing the only existing piece of Kryptonite and splitting it between four of Superman's enemies. One part of the Kryptonite is used to power The Atom Man, a young Nazi imbued with the radioactive power of Kryptonite. After defeating The Atom Man (… sorry: Spoiler Alert!) Superman tracks down the remaining pieces of Kryptonite in Metropolis, teaming up with Batman and Robin.


This is actually the first time they meet, long before they did in the comics. Another first might be the appearance of a crazy Nazi scientist, trying to take over the world. These episodes aired in September 1945, which is only four months after World War II had ended. As a bonus you also get the most offensive attempt at a cockney accent ever recorded. Forget about Keanu. Yes, it's that hilarious. Blimey!


If anybody is interested in listening to an audio-only fan edit of The Adventures of Superman, please let me know. I'd love to get some reactions to my edit, as well as the show in general.

Keep up the great work and thanks in advance, if you read until this point.


Bye, Siebener!



PS: You can find all TAOS episodes for free (and LEGAL!) download on archive.org.

__



Changes I made


I cut intros and outros, commercials (except for one), recaps and other repetitive stuff, rearranged several bits of dialogue and added musical cues and a few sound effects.


I used Episodes 804 – 814 and the intro/outro of an older episode (No. 18), because I like George Lowther better than Jackson Beck. There! (FYI: I basically just said Michael Keaton is a better Batman than Christian Bale.)

Original Runtime: 122 min.
New Runtime: 91 min.

Added sound effects

Car passing by, Car Interior, Footsteps, Door opening, Meows, Several Ocean Sounds, etc.


Added music

Superman The Movie, Original Score by John Williams
Prelude and Main Title March
The Planet Krypton
The Fortress of Solitude
Lex Luthor's Lair
Super Rescues
The March of the Villains
Sonic Greeting
Misguided Missiles and Kryptonite
Superfeats
Super Dam and Finding Lois


Man of Steel, Original Score by Hans Zimmer
Look to the Stars
You die or I do


(I'm not a Hans Zimmer hater, but his score is a joke. Try listening to it without the movie. I also love the title of the second track I used, inspired by a quote from Zod: There's only ONE way this ends, Kal. Either you die, or I do. I'm still not sure, if the audience was supposed to learn that Zod sucks at math. )


About The Adventures of Superman


Much of the mythology associated with Superman and many of the supporting cast of characters originated in his radio adventures. Daily Planetcharacters such as Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, along with Inspector Bill Henderson, were originally created for the radio series. Superman first discovered his greatest weakness, Kryptonite, in his radio adventures before it appeared within the pages of the Superman comics. He also regularly teamed up with Batman and Robin on radio before the trio joined forces in the comic books. The radio series' influence also extended to the big screen. The Fleischer Superman movie-cartoons were nominated for Academy Awards, and featured voices from the cast of the radio series, while the screenplays of Columbia's 1948 and 1950 Superman movie serials were adapted from the radio program rather than from the stories within the comic books.


First broadcast for a trial period in 1938 on some out-of-the-way radio stations, then brought back on February 12, 1940 as a thrice-a-week juvenile serial. Mutual never realized at the time how popular the show was and discontinued the program on March 9, 1942. The public, by submitting thousands of letters, convinced Mutual executives to continue the program. The series was revived on August 31, 1942, as a five-a-week, fifteen-minute series and continued till February 4, 1949. TAOS was broadcast on Mutual as a sustained serial until Kellog's Pep began sponsoring the series on January 4, 1943. The series shifted to ABCSaturday evenings on October 29, 1949, and then returned to afternoons, twice-a-week on June 5, 1950, continuing on ABC until March 1, 1951.

 

[TV's Frink]

Just a heads up, black text is very hard to read hear. I've taken the liberty of fixing it.

 

[Radzinsky]

This actually sounds quite interesting. I'd love to take a listen if I could.

 

[matrixgrindhouse]

Cool stuff. I had no idea that Batman and Superman first met in an adaptation, rather than the original source material. That's really interesting. I'll give this a listen when its done, certainly.

 

[Siebener]

I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to be "black text". The formatting doesn't look like what I posted ... at all. (?) No idea what happened there. Fixed it.

 

[Siebener]

Here's a five minute demo so you get an idea of how I used the music and the sound quality of the original files.

https://soundcloud.com/that-audio-guy

 

[greenpenguino]

That is really cool. I would love to hear more once it's done. Maybe more audio fan-edits will come about after this.

 

[Siebener]

I need your help, guys.

One of the moderators suggested I put this into the IN-THE-WORKS-FORUM, to see if people were interested in an audio-only fanedit. Thanks for your reactions so far, but I'm not really sure what to wait for now, since the thing is actually done.



I read all the rules as well as the part about first submissions, but I still don't know what to do exactly. It says: First time faneditors works need to be reviewed and that an Academy Forum Member will contact me.

What do I have to do, to make that member realize I'm done? Just this? Mentioning it here? Or do I have to create a new thread in some other forum?

Thanks for helping me out, guys!

PS: IF ANYBODY WANTS A LINK TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE THING JUST CONTACT ME.

 

[Kal-El]

Not to nitpick, but Zod was still right: one of them has to die, and that's ONE way, i.e. death. He just used wrong phrasing.
Plus, someone already did the Star Wars radio dramas as a fanedit. Instead of a film, you just get pictures instead.
Might be a good way to keep people fixed to the television/computer screen, otherwise you might as just release it as an audiobook or fan edited radio drama.

 

[Siebener]

I guess fan edited radio drama is what I meant by audio-only fan edit. I'm not going to add pictures.

 

[Neglify]

In my opinion this would fall under the category of "Special Projects" and could go on IFDB. I see that you submitted it about a month ago so I'll add it to the list of edits needing to be reviewed by the Academy. Read these if you have any questions about why fanedits need to be approved:

http://www.fanedit.org/forums/content.php?185-In-the-Spotlight-FE-Quality
Using This Site - Sections "Listing A Fanedit" and "Listing Processs".
FE Academy New and Improved - Section "Review First Time Submissions"

 

[seciors]

Superman was actually my favorite superhero as a kid growing up.

I'd be willing to listen to your submission but need to clarify something first - you say in this thread the submission is about 90 minutes, but the submission for approval says the length is around 220? Maybe you filled out the form wrong since from everything you've said here it seems you submitted a story based on 11 episodes (which would make a 90 min runtime make sense)

Also, I know you have already stated you don't want to add stills to the edit (which *would* push it into the "traditional" fan edit that this site up to this point has been about, though there's no reason why that cannot be changed!). Can I ask why you don't want to go this route? I guess it would be a lot of work for sure but I listened to your 5 minute demo and the quality is very good; adding visual stills (from say scanned images from comic books, or caps from the old superman TV show, or even modern movies with appropriate modification to fit the style (for example I know lots of image apps have filters to give a comic book effect or, or line art, or plenty of other approaches) would make this really cool I think. But that's obviously your call.

Anyway, the main thing I'm wondering for the time being is the true length of what you submitted for consideration to be approved.

 

[Siebener]

I’m sorry if it was unclear. It‘s 11 episodes, each with an original runtime of 12 minutes, that included intros, outros, recaps and commercials. Those 11 episodes had a runtime of about 220 minutes all in all, but I cut out the repetitive stuff, added music, rearranged some of the dialogue and put everything together as one long episode. This episode has a runtime of 90 minutes.

The 11 episodes are the first chapter of an 76 episode story arc. I originally intended to submit the second chapter which was a couple of more episodes that coincidentally were about 220 in their edited form.

About adding images: I think you guys underestimate how many people listen to podcasts or audiobooks. I listen to more than 12 hours of podcasts a week : in my car, when I work out, when I’m doing stuff at home ... basically all the time, but I would never (ever!) sit in front of my computer listening to a radio serial staring at stills. Maybe that’s just me.

 

[seciors]

Hi Siebener,

Sounds interesting; I've sent you a PM.

Also, I have no doubt that people enjoy purely audio creative endeavors, and wasn't trying to imply otherwise.

Also, I wasn't trying to imply your work wouldn't qualify as a real fan edit (I shouldn't have use the word "true" in my post, and am going to correct that) -- "special projects" are real fan edits too! I guess what I was trying to say was that adding a visual component would make it more of a "traditional" fan edit for *this* site. I agree with your sentiment that there's absolutely no reason why a fan can edit audio-only material! So, I apologize if it seemed I was implying anything otherwise.

At any rate, I look forward to listening to what you have come up with.

 

[Vultural]

Siebener, I just finished listening to your edit.
Very nice, and your use of layering background music was well done.
There were a couple characters I would have preferred to have heard less from, Sniggers and Jimmy Olsen, but I realize they were often stand-ins for children, who were the main listeners of the Superman series.
Are you going to continue with this? At least for another installment?
I ask because the narrative now swings into his conflicts with Atom Man, considered the finest storyline of the entire serial.

This set drifted into the music store several years ago, and I had a chance to buy it, but it was priced at $30.
I passed, and bought Stars On Suspense, a 30 CD set that was hopelessly underpriced at $2.99.

 

[seciors]

I wish reviews would automatically appear in these threads, but since they don't, here's my review of Siebener's edit, which I really enjoyed:

---

Superman was always my favorite superhero growing up, and probably still is. That's why I was intrigued by Siebener's edit based on a Superman radio program from the 1940s. I had no idea it existed! But I'm glad I had the privilege of listening to his work, as it provides not only a new perspective on the "Man of Steel" for modern-day audiences, but also serves as a well done enhanced version of this long forgotten but still entertaining material.

AUDIO/VISUAL QUALITY - 10

As usual, I rate quality compared to the original source. All the "defects" one can hear are from the original (I did listen to some of the original recordings to compare!). But Siebener actually enhances the quality by reducing the background static in places so it is never overpowering. The original voices and sound effects are very clear. Siebener also integrates music from the modern movies of Superman, and the quality of these additions is top notch.

AUDIO EDITING - 9

Siebener's audio editing is terrific, to say the least. He has taken 11 separate episodes, each with a canned beginning, canned ending, as well as "catch up" material that would be repetitive in a single edit, and reduced that to a single cohesive story. With regards to his editing, I could detect absolutely no hard edit points at all, and the same is true for the musical score he added. Truly a stupendous job considering the task at hand!

I have very few criticisms in this area. Perhaps in a few places the audio levels could have been tweaked just a bit more; and while there were no hard edit points, once in a while I could tell where there was a joining of two different episodes, or an early fade out. Finally, while the added music was generally outstanding and nicely varied, one particular musical selection (to me) felt just a bit overused.

But I must emphasize how small these few issues factor into the overall superb editing job that is on display here. Excellent work, Siebener!

VISUAL EDITING - 9
N/A - set to the same as AUDIO EDITING per instructions by the admins.

NARRATIVE - 8

Siebener does a commendable job piecing together a story that spans across 11 episodes so that it becomes one tale, told without repetition, and without plot holes.

Siebener also includes a couple commercial breaks, which I found to be fun and entertaining. Nice touch!

That said -- and this is no fault of Siebener's -- due to the nature of the radio program itself, there are parts that for me seemed to drag on a bit. I'm sure this is because for each installment, a specific length had to be met. Thus we get some areas that have a bit more exposition than I'd prefer. But generally speaking, the story moves along just fine. I just would have liked it to move a bit faster.

ENJOYMENT - 8

The best part for me was experiencing the Superman universe from a whole new perspective, that in many ways is very different than all other mediums. Siebener's added music really helped me get into the story. Of special note is the introduction, where Siebener expertly synchronizes the most famous of Superman themes from John Williams' fantastic score with the narrative beginning, which for me was quite exhilarating to listen to! But throughout the edit, the added music really serves to pull the listener in; without it, I think this would have been a completely different (and not nearly as enjoyable) experience.

As this show was primarily meant for kids, I cannot take too much off for the fact that I found the story a bit one-dimensional. While it is not a comic book, I felt the story was similar in terms of depth and plot development. That's not a bad thing; it's sometimes fun to re-experience one's youth (as I did read Superman comic books all the time!), and in a different way (e.g., audio vs visual).

Additionally, one cannot help but notice how the radio show was influenced by the current events of WWII; this story takes place soon after the end of the war, and the idea that Nazi's were still a menace plays a part. I found this to enhance the listening experience, as it was similar to watching a movie in a specific period.

Finally, I found it interesting to hear how all the characters (Clarke, Lois, Perry, Jimmy, Superman) interact differently than what I'm used to. As Siebener points out, most of the events that take place in the radio show predate the comic books (and of course, the movies!)

OVERALL RATING - 8.5 (8.4 auto-calculated)

Overall, I found this to be a very enjoyable listening experience, and I have to say Siebener did an excellent job all around; his attention to detail is truly amazing, and I applaud him for introducing this site to a whole new category of fan edits.

I am definitely looking forward to the next installment in this series!

Great job, Siebener, on your first of what I hope to be many edits!

RECOMMENDATION

I can definitely recommend this edit to anyone who has a remote interest in Superman, and/or what radio programs were like in the 1940s. Also, given the uniqueness of this edit on fanedit.org (being the very first audio-only edit!), I would encourage everyone to give it a try.

Again, well done Siebener!

 

[Siebener]

Thank you fo listening, Vultural!

I know the image of the CD you posted. Judging by what it says on the cover, I assume they put the unedited storylines of The Atom Man and the Atom Man in Metropolis on those CDs. The Atom Man is going to be the next chapter in my KRYPTONITE SAGA (it's almost done actually) and Atom Man in Metropolis is going to be Vol. 3.

The Atom Man has 19 episodes with a runtime of 224 minutes that I managed to trim down to 87 minutes, without losing anything of the actual plot. Yes, it's that repetitive. Several plot points are explained over and over again by the narrator or in dialogue, and many episodes are drawn out way too long or are nothing but a constant back and forth. (I don't believe you! - But you have to! - No, ... it can't be! - I tell you it is! ...) The cuts I made in Vol. 1 were rather broad, but on this one I worked on a line by line basis, re-arranged the chronology of the episodes or the dialogue itself to make it flow better.

I don't think anybody will go back and listen to the original episodes, right? If you are interested I can put together some before/after sound samples, so you guys see what it actually is im doing.



Atom Man in Metropolis was then followed by Looking for Kryptonite (28 episodes) that I originally wanted to turn into the final chapter, but the sound quality is a lot worse than I remembered. I might need some help cleaning up those files. That storyline is interesting because it has Superman team up with Batman and Robin.

 

[Vultural]

. . . I don't think anybody will go back and listen to the original episodes, right? If you are interested I can put together some before/after sound samples, so you guys see what it actually is im doing.

Original episodes of serials, be they Silent era, Republic, or OTR, can be pretty tedious, especially when binge watching / listening.
You could provide samples, but to me that's just more bandwidth, and most listeners will switch off after two or three minutes.

 

[Siebener]

Thanks, seciors!

 

[seciors]

Sure, no problem!

And shouldn't this be moved out of the unapproved section since it IS an approved edit now?

Mods/admins?