The Sukaiwaka Fortress—The Hidden Fortress with a Star Wars score

[ThrowgnCpr]

moar stah woze kats, preeze.[/img]

Ask and ye shall receive! I haz a sukaiwaka:

 

[Vultural]

I read an interview with Bukowski a couple years before he died.
He had switched from his typer to a computer and spoke of the advantages and shortcomings of the latter.
Shortcomings = the computer sometimes deleted whatever project he was toiling on.
Part of this he understood was operator error.
Other times, he confessed he thought the machine was simply contrary.
He set about rewriting.
Sadly, he felt he had lost his original inspiration.
On the other hand, he often preferred his revised version.

This is just a stumble, ssj.
To paraphrase Mr Cole -
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

 

[ssj]

bukowski was the man. tenks, vultural.

I had a hard drive failure a few years back that made me cautious. While working on this commentary, I saved at least once a day to an external USB stick. because of that saved copy, I only had to reproduce an hour's worth of effort—not an hour of commentary time, as some of my commentary isn't straightforward vocal work. (purposely keeping that vague.)

since yesterday, I've created a couple other backup files on my internal hard drive and rotate my saves between the three, in case one of these gets "corrupted"—not in the usual sense of hard drive corruption, but in the act of autosaving a file after I accidentally delete something, making the deletion unrecoverable. this save rotation is in addition to regularly saving to said USB stick.

 

[ssj]

Done with the commentary! Just doing some quality checks before exporting the audio. After muxing the commentary track with the main file, I'll listen again for any probs.

The entire package, including the two audio tracks, the featurette, and the trailer, amounts to 4 1/2 hours of content. . . five hours if you count time ogling ThrowgnCpr's beautiful cover. 

If all goes well, the 720p version should be up in a couple days; the 1080p version will follow next week. Thanks to everyone who dropped by the thread to visit!

 

[thecuddlyninja]

 

[dangermouse]

....
because of that saved copy, I only had to reproduce an hour's worth of effort—not an hour of commentary time, as some of my commentary isn't straightforward vocal work. (purposely keeping that vague.)

Knowing you, it's probably interpretive dance!

 

[ssj]

Knowing you, it's probably interpretive dance!

jeejuss, i've gotta suppress these classified leaks. 

and tenkyu, candidninja! i'm so heppi to put some lucas chocolate in da kurosawa peanut butter.

 

[Vultural]

Good news!
And here's a celebration dance.

 

[ssj]

oh, come on, mega. the upload goes on for 14 hours, and literally at the last few kilobytes, you stall?

follow-up:
tried pausing and resuming the upload to see whether that would get mega to finish the job. now i'm stuck on "queued/borked."
i'll give it a few hours, but if nothing happens, i'll have to start over again.

 

[ssj]

mod(z), could you preeze move thread this to the Fanedits—Fixes, Mixes & TV subforum?

senkyu. will continue this thread with a new post re: the release.
will also submit a listing to IFDB soon.

anyone interested in the 720p version, please PM me.
1080p coming next week.

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

mod(z), could you preeze move thread this to the Fanedits—Fixes, Mixes & TV subforum?

 

[ssj]

THE SUKAIWAKA FORTRESS
by ssj​

The movie that gave Star Wars its shove gets shoved back.​

Original movie title: The Hidden Fortress
Genres: Adventure, samurai
Fanedit type: Fanmix
Original release date: 1958
Original running time: 139 minutes
Fanedit release date: September 2016
Fanedit running time: 127 minutes

Star Wars, the prodigal son of The Hidden Fortress, comes home to Papa. Through the music of John Williams and numerous subtitle changes, The Hidden Fortress is transformed into a Star Wars experience.

Intentions:
• to rescore The Hidden Fortress with music from Star Wars
• to rename major characters and places with starwarsian names: Princess Reia, General Kenobi, Atu, Situri, and more
• to make the edit family-friendly by removing a questionable scene and all curse words, and by rewriting dialogue for certain scenes
• to repurpose memorable dialogue from Star Wars
• and to improve the story’s pacing.

Other sources: Various Star Wars original motion picture soundtracks
The Empire Strikes Back—Imperial Audiophile Edition by ABC
Distant Heavy Waterfall sound effect from freesfx.co.uk
 
Thanks: To ThrowgnCpr for invaluable feedback on sound editing and for a magnificent cover; to Junko for tending to my Japanese script; to Vultural for feedback on the trailer; to ABC for creating the IAE and to darthrush for pointing the way; to Vili Maunula for spreading the word; to blueyoda, Gatos, Neglify, and njvc for inspiration; and to reave for being reave.
 
Thanks also to addiesin, thecuddlyninja, dangermouse, DigModiFicaTion, DominicCobb, Dwight Fry, Flixcapacitor, JJE-187, Kal-El, Slart, Spaced Ranger, TMBTM, TM2YC, TV’s Frink, Ugetsu, Vultural, yo_yojimbo.
 
And to Kurosawa Akira, George Lucas, and John Williams for all the amazing movies and music.
 
Release details:
Video: H.264 MP4, 1280 x 534 and 1920 x 800
Feature audio: stereo, 256 kbps AAC
Commentary audio: stereo, 128 kpbs AAC
 
Special features: It Is Wonderful to Chronohop, a making-of featurette
Commentary track
Trailer

Changes—cuts and additions
Added:
• music from Star Wars Episodes I, IV, V, VI, VII
• 44 new subtitles
• custom title screen and end credits
 
Changed:
• 217 subtitles, generally to add Star Wars flavor but also to make the edit more family-friendly
• full names presented surname first
 
Removed:
• several scenes of climbing and descending hills
• bickering in the ditch
• bits of overacting
• parts of the spear fight
• discussion of violating the princess
• any singing beyond the fire festival
• serial horseback arrivals to the overlook

TRAILER​

[align=center]FEATURETTE​

[align=center]COVERS​

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

Awesome! congrats on finishing it up. Folks here are going to love this edit - it's a lot of fun. I look forward to viewing with the commentary this weekend 

 

[ssj]

thanks, throw! i appreciate all your help—your kick-ass cover and superb editing advice.

and thanks to everyone who visited the thread!

 

[Canon Editor]

Congratulations on finishing your edit!!!

 

[ssj]

thanks, C Editor! i had a lot of fun putting it together.

i think this is the only full-length edit of a kurosawa film on FE; can't remember whether there were any short edits.

anyhoo, hope to see other faneditors take on kurosawa films. i don't think i'll be touching yojimbo for a long-ass while.

 

[ssj]

the 1080p (well, 1920 x 800) version is now available. please PM me for the arcane invocation spell.

and a shout-out to akirakurosawa.info for the hospitality, for spreading the love.

 

[ThrowgnCpr]

my review posted to IFDb:

Our resident word-twister ssj has achieved far more than he likely set out to do with The Sukaiwaka Fortress. What initially began as a fun idea to inject some Star Wars into, arguably, the franchise's biggest inspiration, has resulted in not only an incredibly entertaining film, but an almost academic investigation into the Kurosawa-Lucas connection and film-making in general.  As a preface, I should state that I usually approach these wild ideas with skepticism because they typically result in an interesting, but not-always-so-successful product.  Even the best intentions and most-skilled editors have only commercially released end products to work with, not all the individual components that the original films' editors had at their disposal. As such, some ideas can not be executed, and others are left muddled or clunky in their delivery. That doesn't seem to be the case here.  Perhaps The Hidden Fortress was easier to work with because of its sparser scoring, but I suspect it brought its own set of challenges and I believe that ssj handled this incredibly well. His familiarity with the source material, instinct for character motivations, and apparent expertise in linguistics (please peruse his forum posts...) helped create the perfect storm - a wonderfully enjoyable film experience that is respectful to both The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars.  

Rather than drop bits of dialog from Star Wars verbatim into The Hidden Fortress, our faneditor has skillfully manipulated them to feel at home in the 16th Century setting. Some references may pass over casual Star Wars fans, while fan-boys and -girls will likely chuckle audibly at some of the phrasing. Similarly, the new music has been expertly added, and at times reworked, to seamlessly enhance our adventure set a long time ago in a country far far away.

As for the IFDb categorical review points:

• A/V Quality - I watched the 720p mp4 version, which was produced with a pleasing crispness. The stereo audio was quite nice and the audio quality was more than sufficient for this film.
• Visual Editing - Seamless.
• Audio Editing - Impressive, most impressive. There are a few lingering blemishes resulting from the original mono mix, but nothing to complain about, and they will be inaudible to most viewers.
• Narrative - Not much has been excised from the film, but ssj has actually done quite a bit of subtle trimming and reshaping to fit The Hidden Fortress into a Star Wars adventure. The resulting narrative is very successful.
• Enjoyment - I absolutely loved this.

There were a number of new lines of dialog (via subtitle) that I loved, but I won't list them here so that viewers can enjoy the surprises themselves.  The same is true of the commentary, which is an absolute must watch (listen?). What I enjoyed most about the commentary, and indeed the edit itself, is that it isn't simply a different outlet for the editor to say "I changed this" or "I needed to fix that" or "well, that obviously had to go." ssj goes through what seems like a bit of exploration into these films, and continued discovery about their details through discussion about his motivations, his editing, and his exploration of why the characters may have done what they did either in the original story or in the alternate universe we are presented with. The delivery is very soothing and enjoyable, and I couldn't help but feel like I was listening to an evening program on NPR. I guess that gave even more authenticity to what felt like an academic exploration of these films.

I feel honored to have been included in some of the previewing stages, and I can't recommend this edit enough. Thanks ssj!

 

[DigModiFicaTion]

Congratulations ssj!

anyhoo, hope to see other faneditors take on kurosawa films. i don't think i'll be touching yojimbo for a long.... while.

Bummer, I thought your picture below was a cryptic hint at a seven samurai ssj edit.

[img=100x100]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uVB4iBD2D...AAhY/g_4e-ZfJo24/s400/ToshiroMifune.jpg[/img]

Well someone, possibly an Amazing faneditor named @"ssj" could put the magnificent seven sound track in Seven Samurai?

Now to go purchase the Hidden Fortress and watch this amazing feat.

 

[ssj]

thanks, DMF! no, i don't think i'll be working on any solo edits for a really long time; i like to decompress between projects. (i'm planning, though, on a collab with thecarbonatedninja. the project's so secret i don't know what it is yet. ) but if there's a kurosawa film you'd like to take on, i'd love to see your eventual edit!
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wow, throw, thanks for the kind review! you grokked my project. and glad my commentary didn't put you to sleep!
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one user reported a corrupt zip archive for the 1080p version. anybody else having this problem? if so, please let me know.