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We Are The Night Revamped by INH5

Vultural

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In the Brit mini-series Ultraviolet, leechs are not reflected nor visible in surveillance cameras.
SWAT team handguns have small mirrors/cameras, and if vamp is not visible, the shooting beings.
Other modern depictions have been less faithful to traditional conventions, however.
Byzantium (2013) definitely broke the daylight and reflections rules,
as did Kiss Of The Damned (2012).
I do not know if filmmakers are lazy, ignorant of, or simply have no use for Stoker era traditions.

When they are on camera, could you lens flare where they are? How would that look?
Of use the Japanese trick of a convenient plant or sign for obfuscation?
 

INH5

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Vultural said:
In the Brit mini-series Ultraviolet, leechs are not reflected nor visible in surveillance cameras.
SWAT team handguns have small mirrors/cameras, and if vamp is not visible, the shooting beings.
Other modern depictions have been less faithful to traditional conventions, however.
Byzantium (2013) definitely broke the daylight and reflections rules,
as did Kiss Of The Damned (2012).
I do not know if filmmakers are lazy, ignorant of, or simply have no use for Stoker era traditions.

It could be because they don't want to deal with the hassle of either paying the special effects guys to paint out every frame where someone's standing by a reflective surface, or carefully set up every shot to avoid catching reflections on camera in the first place.

As far as this movie is concerned, if they did anything more with this, like that Ultraviolet thing you mention, I would be perfectly fine with leaving it in, even with all those visible reflections and the opening photo montage. But it's just used in 3 early scenes and then never brought up again, even when you think it would be relevant. So I don't put much value in it. This is really a minor thing, but it still bugs me, and I'd like to know if there is any way I could theoretically resolve those inconsistencies in my edit.

Vultural said:
When they are on camera, could you lens flare where they are? How would that look?
Of use the Japanese trick of a convenient plant or sign for obfuscation?

I don't think either of those tricks would work. In the scene where the cops find the camera, we see that it has a clear and unobstructed view of the room. And I don't see any way to edit or cut that scene without creating plot holes like "how did they get that footage that they're looking at right now?" or "how did they know to look for this guy?" So I guess there may not actually be any good way to do this.

I don't know if you have an easy way to rewatch this movie, but the scenes that I'm talking about are seen from 29:00 to 35:40, for the record.
 

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As a personal rule, in my vampire series, vampires cast reflections. The no-reflection thing makes no sense. It's supposed to indicate the vampire's lack of a soul, but Stoker used it but also indicated the vampire Lucy had to be killed for Lucy to find peace. Also, Angel is a souled vampire but doesn't cast a reflection either (but he videotapes just fine). Also, if no reflection = no soul, why do clothes and furniture cast reflections? And why do clothes being worn by vampires not cast reflections? And why do the clothes of Buffyverse vampires poof out of existence along with the vampires?

As for no sunlight, that's not part of vampire lore anyway. Pure movie thing.
 

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INH5 said:
The only idea I can can come up with is to make the video footage damaged and staticy and only briefly clear up when the human witness walks by the camera. This would presumably be a result of parts of the building being set on fire and the tapes getting damaged, but I'm not sure if that kind of implicit explanation is good enough.

What do you people think?

That sounds good. Trust your viewers to make the connection.
 

INH5

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Mark Moore said:
That sounds good. Trust your viewers to make the connection.

Right. I'll put that in and, after everything else is ready, show it to someone who hasn't seen the movie before. If people are still confused, maybe I can hunt around for footage of tapes/recording equipment getting burned and edit it into the scene where they're pouring gasoline over the place and lighting it up.
 

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I've been trying out an experiment with the club bathroom scene. Notice anything different?


I'm talking about the reflection visible behind Lena in the mirror at 33-35, and yes that is (very basic) CGI. I figured that a shot where the subject would be out of focus and mostly obscured would be easier to do; easier being a relative term, as this very brief animation took a lot of work, and I'm still not quite finished with the compositing.

I don't want to do something like this unless I can be sure it will work, so if this looks fake, please tell me.
 

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I went ahead and updated the change list in the first post with everything that I've either done or plan to do. I'm at the point where I probably won't be adding anything else to my to-do list, at least until I get to the preview stage.
 

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I spent the weekend working on a vfx thing that is, in terms of narrative impact, probably the biggest change that I'll be making outside of what I plan to do with the ending. Here's a video.


The eyeshine effect itself is a placeholder; the final version will have something more visually interesting than simple red dots. But I thought I should get the motion tracking, brightness levels, compositing, and so on right first. So I would welcome any feedback on how this generally looks.

So, what exactly is this and why do I want to add it to the movie? It's complicated.

The short answer is that I believe, based mostly on indirect evidence, that something very much like this was present in pre-release cuts of the movie, and I want to add it back in because I feel it makes the scene make more sense and provides important context for how vampirism works in this story.

The long answer...

Those of you who've only seen the dubbed version of this movie: did you ever wonder why Louise was going around looking into people's eyes in the beginning? Or why when Louise bit Lena she got thrown into the wall by a weird magic lightning catapult thing when everyone else that they bit just kind of, you know, died? Or why during the restaurant scene they claimed that they never bite men, even though throughout the movie they bite and kill men all the time?

It turns out all those things are related. First, the line about not biting men is different in the dubbed and subbed versions. The dubbed version is "and we swore never to bite a man again." The subtitled version is "and we swore to never again bite a man who has the gift." I had a friend take a look at the original German, and he told me that the subtitled version of the line is a more accurate translation.

You may be able to figure things out from that alone, but I'll clarify anyway. The idea (which is explained in detail in the DVD bonus features and the never-released-outside-of-Germany novelization) is that only specific rare individuals are born with a certain special something that allows them to be turned into vampires. When a vampire bites a normal person, the victim just gets injured and quite possibly dies, like you would expect. When a vampire bites one of those special people with a predisposition to vampirism (I don't know of any official terms, so let's just call them "V-positive"), then we see what happens with Lena: lightning catapult, then the victim starts to transform into a vampire themselves. Vampires can tell whether someone is V-positive or not by looking into their eyes.

If you look at the scene in the club bathroom closely, you briefly see a very faint glow in Lena's eyes (see 00:19 in either of the clips I posted before). But if you watch the trailer (see 00:35 in the trailer I posted on the first page), you see a much more prominent version of this effect when Louise looks at Lena's eyes through the camera, even though in the final version of that scene Lena's eyes look perfectly normal. One of the alternate endings (the one that I will not be using in this edit) also features a very prominent and visible version of this effect, in a context that would only make sense if we had seen it like that before.

So I've come to believe that a prominent version of this glowing eye effect was supposed to be present throughout the scene, as a way of demonstrating how vampires can identify V-positive people, but it got removed from the final cut for unknown reasons. Rewatching that scene, I started to think that it would be better if that effect was added back in, so I decided to do that. I don't actually know where it was intended to be besides that camera scene, but based on Louise's line about how "your eyes reveal you with every glance," I just threw it in anywhere it could reasonably appear.

I hope that this change will help the viewer make sense of Louise's behavior early in the movie, as well as help people understand the rules of becoming a vampire in this world. I won't know if it will work until I show it to someone who hasn't seen the movie before, but I'm pretty confident in this.
 

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Thank you for explaining that.
When I first viewed the film (dubbed), my reaction was, "What does she want with that skeezer street tramp?"
Her two other companions are already prettier and/or smarter.
And I certainly did not notice flash-bulb eyes in any scene of the dubbed.

Looking forward to your enhancements, as well as your edit.
Don't have any suggestions for eyes that won't sound derivative.
 

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Here is the new version of the scene with the security camera footage, for your critiquing and viewing pleasure.


Here's the original version of the scene, for comparison:


This turned out to be considerably more complex than I had anticipated. First because it turns out that After Effects doesn't have a simple, easy to use "create static" effect. I ended up using this 3rd party plugin: http://creationeffects.com/creation-vhs-effects.html, which took a while to figure out but I think worked out well. Second, because I came up with the idea of actually inserting Louise into the camera footage using a combination of behind the scenes footage, rotoscoping, camera stabilization, and simple animation.

I still have to add static to the close ups of the TV, and do something about the reflection in the lamp on the left, but I'm pretty happy with the way the footage currently looks.
 

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Think this looks pretty solid.
Glad you keep up with your learning curve.
The joys of mastering new plug-ins.
 

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A new clip, which mostly consists of basic editing and sound mixing. Apart from one brief shot that I slowed down using After Effects Timewarp, there are no vfx tricks here.

This is a very important scene late in the movie, so beware of spoilers.


Charlotte's death scene is very touching, but the setup always felt a bit off to me. The first time I was watching, I was moved, but I couldn't help thinking, "Louise seriously can't break down that door?" The idea that Louise could be blocked by a simple steel door is questionable to begin with, given the previous feats of vampire super-strength we've seen. But the real problem is that the scene does a poor job of selling this. The sequence of Louise pounding on the door and Charlotte walking away goes on a bit longer than it has to, and some shots seem kind of awkward, particularly one moment where Louise seems to hurt her hand by hitting the door. Worst of all, the sound designers neglected to add any kind of special sound effects to the interior shots of Louise pounding on the door, even though they did for the exterior shots.

So, I made a bunch of small cuts to the beginning of the scene to remove some of the awkward moments and generally move it along quicker. I also added sound effects to the interior shots to give Louise's blows more oomph, and I mixed in some creaking metal sounds so it seems like the door is actually being affected by all this. The impression I'm trying to give is that Louise could have broken down the door eventually, but she gives up when she realizes that there's no time left.

Everything after 0:36 is unchanged from the original, but I'm including it in the clip to give the proper context.
 

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Almost from the onset, Charlotte seemed like the most in need of happy pills.
Like how you trimmed this.
You going to be doing further trimming?
Meaning the upcoming fight?
 

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Vultural said:
Almost from the onset, Charlotte seemed like the most in need of happy pills.
Like how you trimmed this.
You going to be doing further trimming?
Meaning the upcoming fight?

I've been cutting a few lines/shots that I didn't care for here and there throughout the movie. For instance, when Lena reveals herself to Tom, I cut the line "I can't explain it in words," because that line always seemed clunky to me (she can totally explain it, he just wouldn't believe her) and I think her facial expressions say enough.

As far as the fight between Lena and Louise goes (I assume that's what you're referring to), I shaved a few frames off of the part where Lena rushes Louise and throws her out into the sun at the end, because I think it made it flow a little better. But apart from that I haven't touched it. Though now that you mention it, I think I will take a look at the rest of it. Are there any issues in particular that you had with that scene?
 

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I appreciated a lot of the final fight sequence.
Especially the multi dimensional aspect.
Yet it was a wee stretch to think Lena could "take" Louise.
Louise always struck me almost as an vincible Valkyrie.
 

Vultural

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I'm getting the feeling you are fairly along with this now.
Not meaning to wind you up, but will you be adding an additional dubbed track? Even if it is mangled?
I think it will attract a wider audience that way.
Not to be harsh, but there are few foreign films onsite.
Rumble In The Bronx and A Better Tomorrow mash come to mind, as well as an in-limbo Tampopo.
You have been exemplary with comparison edits.
Are you aiming for this to be on a DVD-5? Will there be a cut list?
To me, this edit strikes me as "in the works" and ought to be labeled as such.
A couple members here will help you with artwork.

imgshw.php


Applaud everything you are doing so far.
 

INH5

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Vultural said:
Especially the multi dimensional aspect.
Yet it was a wee stretch to think Lena could "take" Louise.
Louise always struck me almost as an vincible Valkyrie.

One thing I've noticed from watching the fight a bunch of times is that Lena is way more into it than Louise is. Louise doesn't really start fighting back until halfway through, and even then she's clearly going easy on Lena. I think Louise still had some vain hope that somehow things could still work out if Lena just calmed down, whereas Lena just flat out wanted to kill her.

But yes, I agree that the "death throw," as it were, did seem a bit too easy.* I'll take a thorough look at it, and the rest of the fight, and see if there's anything I can do to improve things.

* Interestingly, a deleted scene (which I don't intend to use, because it's not written or paced very well) reveals that the way the scene was originally shot, Lena and Louise mutually decided to commit suicide, jumped outside together, then Louise threw Lena back into the building while in the midst of their sideways fall. This is why we have Lena catching herself on a convenient piece of scaffolding and then doing a wacky sideways/downwards front flip to get back to Tom. Lena's actress was available for reshoots, but Louise's wasn't, so they had to work with what they already had.

Vultural said:
I'm getting the feeling you are fairly along with this now.
Not meaning to wind you up, but will you be adding an additional dubbed track? Even if it is mangled?
I think it will attract a wider audience that way.
Not to be harsh, but there are few foreign films onsite.
Rumble In The Bronx and A Better Tomorrow mash come to mind, as well as an in-limbo Tampopo.
You have been exemplary with comparison edits.
Are you aiming for this to be on a DVD-5? Will there be a cut list?
To me, this edit strikes me as "in the works" and ought to be labeled as such.
A couple members here will help you with artwork.

Applaud everything you are doing so far.

Yeah, this has been in the works for a while. I should probably update a few things on the first post. At this rate, I actually think I might a few weeks away from completing a "rough cut" suitable for previews, if all goes well, though the visual effects work will take a while longer to fully complete.

I will be adding an English dubbed track, and everything will be dubbed, if at all possible. If so, I plan to redub a few especially poorly translated lines in the original movie, in addition to dubbing the new scenes. After rechecking the existing dub, I no longer have any worries about audibly different voice actors. Anyone willing to put up with the sound-mix of that dub shouldn't have much problem with something like that. Though, of course, I'll try to find sound-a-likes if I can.

As far as the release goes, I'm currently thinking DVD-5, possibly also DVD-9 if I have something extra that need more space, as well as AVCHD (in 720p), and AVI/MKV (also in 720p). I'm not bothering with a Blu-Ray release, as I don't own a Blu-Ray burner and I'm not willing to upload something that I can't test myself. There will absolutely be a cutlist, and I've been keeping track of all the changes that I've made.
 

INH5

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Also, Vultural, I'd like to thank you for all the advice and feedback you've given me. I'm really touched that someone would watch a movie they've never seen just to help me with a project.
 

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You're not the first person Vultural has touched.

tumblr_mglsufcvf71s3ou18o1_400.gif
 

Vultural

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This is a nice site for feedback and assistance.
Usually a member - or flock of members - will weigh in on any given project.
Depending on what the project is.
An editor overhauling a Clara Bow silent will receive less critiquing than someone trying to repair Star Trek Into Darkness.
I suspect more folks are following your thread, and looking at clips, than let on.
On any given forum, there is a large percentage of lurkers.
More FE members are interested in your edit than you would know.
 
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