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I've been keeping an eye on this thread and am looking forward to the eventual release, so I'm happy to preview a rough cut if you're looking for early feedback.
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We Are The Night Revamped by INH5
- Thread starter INH5
- Start date
Here's what I did for the final fight.
Here's the original, for comparison:
I felt that the sounds for when Lena hits Louise with the pipe were a little weak, especially the first hit. So I mixed in some fleshy impact and bone crunch sound effects. I thought that the part of the fight after they get off the wall lost a bit of energy and had a little too much downtime when they were just recovering from a blow or kind of standing there. So I made a bunch of small cuts and sped up some footage at one point to make that part of the fight "faster, more intense," to quote George Lucas.
Oh, and I also color corrected one shot that was noticeably brighter than the rest of the scene.
After Lena gets thrown up onto the next floor, I noticed that she briefly passes through a beam of sunlight, and even starts smoldering a bit*, but there are no actual burning sounds. So I added some sound effects of my own.
Finally, there's the part where Lena charges Louise and throw her out into the sun. First, using the magic of creating a 720p edit from 1080p source material, I zoomed in on the shot where Louise jumps up to make it look like there's less distance between them. Next, I added some of Louise's dialogue from the deleted scene I talked about earlier. Unfortunately, the audio quality is worse than in the actual movie, but I did what I could to make it sound better. Finally, I edited it so that Lena charges Louise mid-sentence, Hulk-and-Loki style.
I also shaved a bunch of frames off of the actual charge to make it seem shorter, and cropped one quick shot where you could originally see Louise with her arms outstretched (presumably a remnant of the way the scene was originally shot), because that always looked weird to me.
The intent is to make it more plausible that Louise could get caught off guard by this, but I also like the characterization it presents. Louise tries to talk Lena down, but Lena isn't having any of it.
* Though, looking at it again, that might just be dust that was already in the room when they were filming it. But it kind of looks like steam coming off of Lena, so it works for this purpose too.
Working on this has made me wonder if other parts of the movie which I haven't planned on changing could benefit from similar tune-ups. I think that after I get the ending to a rough-cut level of quality, I'm going to watch the whole thing again and see if there's anything else I could improve or change.
Here's the original, for comparison:
I felt that the sounds for when Lena hits Louise with the pipe were a little weak, especially the first hit. So I mixed in some fleshy impact and bone crunch sound effects. I thought that the part of the fight after they get off the wall lost a bit of energy and had a little too much downtime when they were just recovering from a blow or kind of standing there. So I made a bunch of small cuts and sped up some footage at one point to make that part of the fight "faster, more intense," to quote George Lucas.
Oh, and I also color corrected one shot that was noticeably brighter than the rest of the scene.
After Lena gets thrown up onto the next floor, I noticed that she briefly passes through a beam of sunlight, and even starts smoldering a bit*, but there are no actual burning sounds. So I added some sound effects of my own.
Finally, there's the part where Lena charges Louise and throw her out into the sun. First, using the magic of creating a 720p edit from 1080p source material, I zoomed in on the shot where Louise jumps up to make it look like there's less distance between them. Next, I added some of Louise's dialogue from the deleted scene I talked about earlier. Unfortunately, the audio quality is worse than in the actual movie, but I did what I could to make it sound better. Finally, I edited it so that Lena charges Louise mid-sentence, Hulk-and-Loki style.
I also shaved a bunch of frames off of the actual charge to make it seem shorter, and cropped one quick shot where you could originally see Louise with her arms outstretched (presumably a remnant of the way the scene was originally shot), because that always looked weird to me.
The intent is to make it more plausible that Louise could get caught off guard by this, but I also like the characterization it presents. Louise tries to talk Lena down, but Lena isn't having any of it.
* Though, looking at it again, that might just be dust that was already in the room when they were filming it. But it kind of looks like steam coming off of Lena, so it works for this purpose too.
Working on this has made me wonder if other parts of the movie which I haven't planned on changing could benefit from similar tune-ups. I think that after I get the ending to a rough-cut level of quality, I'm going to watch the whole thing again and see if there's anything else I could improve or change.
The dubbed version of this movie actually came in handy. You see, one scene has some police radio chatter that I want to reuse in another scene. The only problem was that the radio chatter wasn't subtitled, and even the closed captions on the German Blu-Ray didn't bother to transcribe it. And I didn't want to use it unless I could be sure that it would make sense in the new context.
I was about to post a thread in the Editing Project Assistance Request forum asking for translation help, but then I thought to check the dubbed version. And indeed, the dubbed version does have the radio chatter in English, and it seems to match up to the German radio chatter (for instance, it talks about entering the lobby at the same time the German version says something about a lobby, which is the same word in both languages).
So now I know what portions of the radio chatter I can use, and I know what to do for the dub track version of this. It would still be a good idea to have someone who actually understands German listen to it before the final release, though, in case the dubbers "creatively" translated something. Actually, having someone who understands German watch the whole edit before release would be a good idea in general, for numerous other reasons. But that's a concern for a later date.
I was about to post a thread in the Editing Project Assistance Request forum asking for translation help, but then I thought to check the dubbed version. And indeed, the dubbed version does have the radio chatter in English, and it seems to match up to the German radio chatter (for instance, it talks about entering the lobby at the same time the German version says something about a lobby, which is the same word in both languages).
So now I know what portions of the radio chatter I can use, and I know what to do for the dub track version of this. It would still be a good idea to have someone who actually understands German listen to it before the final release, though, in case the dubbers "creatively" translated something. Actually, having someone who understands German watch the whole edit before release would be a good idea in general, for numerous other reasons. But that's a concern for a later date.
One of my clips, specifically the "eyeshine" one, got a copyright complaint on Youtube. Since it was only that one clip, and the copyright complaint started 45 seconds in, it was probably just some automatic web crawler identifying the music playing in the clip. But I don't want to take any chances, so I took them all down.
I've noticed some other people upload their clips on Vimeo, with a password required. Is that more secure?
I've noticed some other people upload their clips on Vimeo, with a password required. Is that more secure?
Here is the reason I made this edit. The original ending for this movie is one of the most disappointing movie endings I can remember seeing, and I've done a lot of work to attempt to make a better one. My plans have changed considerably since I first started out, hopefully for the better.
This is by far the most ambitious and complex editing I've ever done. All told, it includes 1 piece of alternate footage, 5 vfx shots, 1 cropped shot, 3 songs from the soundtrack CD, 5 pieces of audio reused from other parts of the movie, and 7 stock sound effects. So if you notice any technical errors or anything, please point them out.
The password is "nachtending".
For comparison, here's the original ending:
And here's the alternate ending that I used footage from (sorry about the poor video quality, but I didn't feel like uploading it when someone else already has):
First up, there's some subtle changes when Lena checks on Tom. When I watched the original movie with friends, they all thought that Lena was thinking about turning him into a vampire, and that seems to be a common reaction from what I've read online. But if you closely watch the scene, and pay attention to Lena's facial expressions in particular, I think it's clear that that isn't what is supposed to be happening. I think what is supposed to be happening is that Lena gets briefly overcome by hunger and moves to bite and kill Tom, but snaps out of it at the last second.
A big part of why people interpret the scene that way is undoubtedly the original movie's unclear presentation of how turning someone into a vampire works. Hopefully, the stuff I did with Lena's eyes in the club scene will make it clear to the viewer that turning Tom into a vampire isn't actually possible, since Lena never saw flashbulb eyes from him despite plenty of eye contact throughout the movie. But I wanted to wanted to push things a little more, so I changed the music to make it more ominous, and added a zoom in on Tom's bloody wound as a callback to the time when Lena got hungry on their date. This is another thing to add to the pile of "I can't be sure about this until I show the edit to someone who hasn't seen the movie before."
Then there are the major changes. I could list a whole bunch of things about the original ending that don't make sense or just don't work*, but the core problem is that it fails to coherently resolve or even further the story. Tom and Lena almost literally vanish into thin air, and all we get is a vague suggestion that they escaped and ran away together. Except that the sun is up, she's a vampire, and he's clearly too injured to walk, so by everything the story has established, they should not be able to leave the building. To quote a semi-famous Youtube reviewer (http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI3GAJaOTL1BoipG41OmfyA), we're given almost no information, and what little information is there makes no sense. It pretty much turns the entire movie into a shaggy dog story.
I much preferred Alternate Ending 1, seen above, from the first time I saw it, but it still had some issues. I didn't like how it just leaves Tom sitting around an abandoned building with a gunshot wound that might or might not be fatal. I don't like leaving loose ends like that, and I also want Lena fighting off her hunger to actually mean something. If Tom's going to die anyway, then she might as well drain him, since it would be faster and she has no idea where her next meal is going to come from.
So I decided to keep the part of the original ending where the cops show up, but have them find Tom instead (I had to rotoscope Lena out of some footage to get an appropriate reaction shot). Tom lives, but he's going to have to answer some very awkward questions from his old friends at the police department, and might face legal consequences. I don't know enough about German law or police procedure to speculate further.
But even those bits of footage from the original ending have problems that I want to fix. The cut to the cops outside was really badly done, as you can see, so I added an establishing shot. The only problem was that the time of day didn't match that of the shot from inside the van, so I replaced the sky and changed the levels of the latter.
To explain how the cops show up in the first place, I'm going to add some approaching police siren sounds to the earlier scene where Lena hotwires a car and escapes from the police station. Presumably, the station called for backup, someone saw Lena driving away, and they followed her. Again, hopefully it will work. At the very least, it should be better than the original's no explanation whatsoever.
Another thing that bothered me about the original ending is how small the police response is. Someone just invaded a police station and massacred at least 17 people (I counted), but the response team seems to only consist of 3 SWAT guys and a handful of plainclothes detectives. So I added some background noises of radio chatter, footsteps, and general activity to make it seem like there's a bunch more stuff going on offscreen. That's really all I can do with the footage I have.
Finally, there's the whole question of how Lena escaped from the building during the day. I thought it was really important to explain this, so I heavily altered an establishing shot from earlier in the movie to create that brief pan to an open manhole that's just barely in the shade. Also, I thought the audio in the subway tunnel scene was a bit lacking, so I added some ambient sounds.
Obviously, the credits are placeholders, and there's still some work to do with the vfx before the final release.
* A few examples: Why wasn't a manhunt called the instant that they realized that Tom and Lena had escaped from their cells? Why do they call in forensics before they've finished searching the building? And my personal favorite: why are there three shell casings on the ground when Louise only fired the gun twice?
By the way, if anyone recognizes the font used for the original ending credits, I would really like to know.
This is by far the most ambitious and complex editing I've ever done. All told, it includes 1 piece of alternate footage, 5 vfx shots, 1 cropped shot, 3 songs from the soundtrack CD, 5 pieces of audio reused from other parts of the movie, and 7 stock sound effects. So if you notice any technical errors or anything, please point them out.
The password is "nachtending".
For comparison, here's the original ending:
And here's the alternate ending that I used footage from (sorry about the poor video quality, but I didn't feel like uploading it when someone else already has):
First up, there's some subtle changes when Lena checks on Tom. When I watched the original movie with friends, they all thought that Lena was thinking about turning him into a vampire, and that seems to be a common reaction from what I've read online. But if you closely watch the scene, and pay attention to Lena's facial expressions in particular, I think it's clear that that isn't what is supposed to be happening. I think what is supposed to be happening is that Lena gets briefly overcome by hunger and moves to bite and kill Tom, but snaps out of it at the last second.
A big part of why people interpret the scene that way is undoubtedly the original movie's unclear presentation of how turning someone into a vampire works. Hopefully, the stuff I did with Lena's eyes in the club scene will make it clear to the viewer that turning Tom into a vampire isn't actually possible, since Lena never saw flashbulb eyes from him despite plenty of eye contact throughout the movie. But I wanted to wanted to push things a little more, so I changed the music to make it more ominous, and added a zoom in on Tom's bloody wound as a callback to the time when Lena got hungry on their date. This is another thing to add to the pile of "I can't be sure about this until I show the edit to someone who hasn't seen the movie before."
Then there are the major changes. I could list a whole bunch of things about the original ending that don't make sense or just don't work*, but the core problem is that it fails to coherently resolve or even further the story. Tom and Lena almost literally vanish into thin air, and all we get is a vague suggestion that they escaped and ran away together. Except that the sun is up, she's a vampire, and he's clearly too injured to walk, so by everything the story has established, they should not be able to leave the building. To quote a semi-famous Youtube reviewer (http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI3GAJaOTL1BoipG41OmfyA), we're given almost no information, and what little information is there makes no sense. It pretty much turns the entire movie into a shaggy dog story.
I much preferred Alternate Ending 1, seen above, from the first time I saw it, but it still had some issues. I didn't like how it just leaves Tom sitting around an abandoned building with a gunshot wound that might or might not be fatal. I don't like leaving loose ends like that, and I also want Lena fighting off her hunger to actually mean something. If Tom's going to die anyway, then she might as well drain him, since it would be faster and she has no idea where her next meal is going to come from.
So I decided to keep the part of the original ending where the cops show up, but have them find Tom instead (I had to rotoscope Lena out of some footage to get an appropriate reaction shot). Tom lives, but he's going to have to answer some very awkward questions from his old friends at the police department, and might face legal consequences. I don't know enough about German law or police procedure to speculate further.
But even those bits of footage from the original ending have problems that I want to fix. The cut to the cops outside was really badly done, as you can see, so I added an establishing shot. The only problem was that the time of day didn't match that of the shot from inside the van, so I replaced the sky and changed the levels of the latter.
To explain how the cops show up in the first place, I'm going to add some approaching police siren sounds to the earlier scene where Lena hotwires a car and escapes from the police station. Presumably, the station called for backup, someone saw Lena driving away, and they followed her. Again, hopefully it will work. At the very least, it should be better than the original's no explanation whatsoever.
Another thing that bothered me about the original ending is how small the police response is. Someone just invaded a police station and massacred at least 17 people (I counted), but the response team seems to only consist of 3 SWAT guys and a handful of plainclothes detectives. So I added some background noises of radio chatter, footsteps, and general activity to make it seem like there's a bunch more stuff going on offscreen. That's really all I can do with the footage I have.
Finally, there's the whole question of how Lena escaped from the building during the day. I thought it was really important to explain this, so I heavily altered an establishing shot from earlier in the movie to create that brief pan to an open manhole that's just barely in the shade. Also, I thought the audio in the subway tunnel scene was a bit lacking, so I added some ambient sounds.
Obviously, the credits are placeholders, and there's still some work to do with the vfx before the final release.
* A few examples: Why wasn't a manhunt called the instant that they realized that Tom and Lena had escaped from their cells? Why do they call in forensics before they've finished searching the building? And my personal favorite: why are there three shell casings on the ground when Louise only fired the gun twice?
By the way, if anyone recognizes the font used for the original ending credits, I would really like to know.
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It seemed like she was standing in front of "navy blue screen" from 2.30 - 2.44.
Where is she supposed to be heading?
All I saw was dark blue.
Sorry to be a dick, but can you put some pipes or steam - fuzzy, blurry - in the background?
Where is she supposed to be heading?
All I saw was dark blue.
Sorry to be a dick, but can you put some pipes or steam - fuzzy, blurry - in the background?
Vultural said:
You're absolutely right. I should put in a background of some kind, even for the rough draft version. I did a quick pass on rotoscoping her out from the temp background the source video had (I really wish the people making the dvd had put in the raw green-screen footage so I could chroma-key it, but what can you do?), then moved on to other stuff. And I guess I just got used to it, not realizing how weird it would look to someone else.
Fortunately, the source material has visible match-moving dots, so camera tracking should be pretty easy.
Another one of my Youtube videos got hit with a copyright notice (and the message says the video was manually reviewed by a rep of the copyright owner), so that probably means my Youtube account is on some kind of watch list. So, from now on everything is going on Vimeo with password protection. For this as well as any other projects I do in the future.
For the record, the entire Spanish dubbed version of this movie has been on Youtube for 7 months now with more than 400,000 views and counting. Yet even though that hasn't been taken down, they care about an unlisted 2-3 minute clip? I never understand these things.
For the record, the entire Spanish dubbed version of this movie has been on Youtube for 7 months now with more than 400,000 views and counting. Yet even though that hasn't been taken down, they care about an unlisted 2-3 minute clip? I never understand these things.
I added a background to the final green screen shot, as well as a few more ambient sounds to the sequence. I'm also trying out a different way of arranging the credits, as I wasn't very comfortable putting my name before of the director and so on.
Password is nachtendgs.
Also, please ignore the watermarks faintly visible in the background. I got the steam from a stock footage website, and I want to get it to look right before I pay $40 for the full resolution footage.
I don't have enough weekly storage space left to show it in this video, but currently the fan edit credits start about 90 seconds into the credits, after the "title card credits" but before the scroll. I'm basing it on how l8wrtr did the credits in his Star Wars edits.
Password is nachtendgs.
Also, please ignore the watermarks faintly visible in the background. I got the steam from a stock footage website, and I want to get it to look right before I pay $40 for the full resolution footage.
I don't have enough weekly storage space left to show it in this video, but currently the fan edit credits start about 90 seconds into the credits, after the "title card credits" but before the scroll. I'm basing it on how l8wrtr did the credits in his Star Wars edits.
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Yes, that looks very nice. Steamy sewers.
I think however you insert yourself into the credits will be fine, unless you use some monster sized font.
Still maintain a lot of members are following your progress on this.
Eventually, the FE Academy might inquire about banner or DVD art.
Have you given any thought about those?
If you're uncomfortable with that, select some images and perhaps contact a couple of the art guys here (Rogue, OnlyOneKenobi, etc ... )
Note: Apologies for the very tardy response. When the Tournament is underway, I am out to lunch. My Cats have made it to the Final Four, which further pulls me away.
I think however you insert yourself into the credits will be fine, unless you use some monster sized font.
Still maintain a lot of members are following your progress on this.
Eventually, the FE Academy might inquire about banner or DVD art.
Have you given any thought about those?
If you're uncomfortable with that, select some images and perhaps contact a couple of the art guys here (Rogue, OnlyOneKenobi, etc ... )
Note: Apologies for the very tardy response. When the Tournament is underway, I am out to lunch. My Cats have made it to the Final Four, which further pulls me away.
Convenient timing. I've just finished putting together and uploading a rough cut. If anyone wants to take a look, PM me. It's in German with English subtitles, for the record.
I also updated the change list on the first page with everything that I've done or plan to do as of the rough cut. Some of the vfx work still hasn't been finished, but everything important to the story is at least at a rough stage.
I haven't really thought about cover art before, but I guess now is a good time to start. I'll have to take a look at the available images and think about what I want the cover to be like.
I also updated the change list on the first page with everything that I've done or plan to do as of the rough cut. Some of the vfx work still hasn't been finished, but everything important to the story is at least at a rough stage.
I haven't really thought about cover art before, but I guess now is a good time to start. I'll have to take a look at the available images and think about what I want the cover to be like.
I've now started working on some of the more advanced vfx work that I've put off before. First up, making the final painting in the intro sequence actually look like a painting, instead of something you'd see on http://www.psdisasters.com/
Password is "nachtpainting".
The original, for comparison:
Another thing you might notice is that I also removed the voiceover. One time, I watched this movie with some friends, and I don't think a single person there paid any attention to the opening voiceover. But they didn't have any trouble following the movie at all. And when you look at it, it doesn't tell us anything we don't find out later or say anything particularly interesting. Also, I just think it sounds better this way.
Password is "nachtpainting".
The original, for comparison:
Another thing you might notice is that I also removed the voiceover. One time, I watched this movie with some friends, and I don't think a single person there paid any attention to the opening voiceover. But they didn't have any trouble following the movie at all. And when you look at it, it doesn't tell us anything we don't find out later or say anything particularly interesting. Also, I just think it sounds better this way.
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Your painting definitely needs art restoration -- in a good way.
Voiceover, there were no subs in the clip so I couldn't tell if she was giving clues, insight, or pointing out the obvious to lazy or ADD viewers.
I did not miss it.
I did notice the volume on the original was louder.
Don't care one way or another, just something I noticed.
Are you still aiming for 5.1 sound?
I did DL the rough cut, by the way, and shall try to watch over the weekend.
Voiceover, there were no subs in the clip so I couldn't tell if she was giving clues, insight, or pointing out the obvious to lazy or ADD viewers.
I did not miss it.
I did notice the volume on the original was louder.
Don't care one way or another, just something I noticed.
Are you still aiming for 5.1 sound?
I did DL the rough cut, by the way, and shall try to watch over the weekend.
Vultural said:
The volume is probably due to different audio sources or upload settings. I only replaced the audio from 0:10 to 0:53 in my clip, everything else uses the original audio. The original clip was uploaded by someone else, as I don't want to push my weekly vimeo storage if I don't have to, and I'm still reluctant to use my Youtube account after the copyright strikes.
Yes, I am aiming for 5.1 sound. In fact, the rough cut mkv has 5.1 sound, assuming I set the audio encoding settings right. I haven't actually tried it out on a surround sound set up yet, though. But I tried to set up my new sound effects to use the surround channels as best I could.
Oh, and, if you're curious, here are the subtitles for the opening voiceover.
"If there was only one person
in the world who would make you happy,
who was made for you,
what would you sacrifice
to find him?
How many centuries
would you search for him?
And if you were
to ever find him,
would you let him go?
Wouldn't you hold him as tight
as possible with both arms
and never, ever let him go?"
in the world who would make you happy,
who was made for you,
what would you sacrifice
to find him?
How many centuries
would you search for him?
And if you were
to ever find him,
would you let him go?
Wouldn't you hold him as tight
as possible with both arms
and never, ever let him go?"
I'm not a fan of the writing either, though I'm sure this kind of thing is hard to translate. And I have no idea why the subtitles (taken straight from the US DVD) use male pronouns. Probably some kind of translation issue, but it's one I'm glad I don't have to try to fix.
Here's a quick update to let you guys know that I've been chugging along with this. I've had some real life issues over the past month, hence why I haven't posted much lately. but this is still getting done. Right now, I've got nearly all of the vfx shots complete, with the exception of the final greenscreen shot, which still needs some touch-ups. Aside from that, I still have to put together an English audio track, and make custom titles and credits. As well as making cover art, figuring how to publish to a DVD, etc.
Here's some good news: A while back, I tried to extract the English dub audio from both the US and UK DVDs, but due to issues with frame rates and file formats I could not get them to sync up with the German Bluray footage. I eventually got fed up and imported the French Bluray, which has German, French, and English audio tracks. When the disc arrived in the mail, I found that it not only has an English audio track that I can use, but that it also has all of the deleted scene and alternate ending footage in 1080p HD resolution, whereas the German Bluray only had them in SD. I set to work inserting the higher quality source footage, and while I was at it did another pass on the color correction. As a result, the deleted/alternate footage looks a lot better than it did before.
Before:
After:
Also, here's a look at some of the finished vfx:
Password: nachtstatic
Password: nachteyes
The last one has English audio, so you can hear what it sounds like.
Here's some good news: A while back, I tried to extract the English dub audio from both the US and UK DVDs, but due to issues with frame rates and file formats I could not get them to sync up with the German Bluray footage. I eventually got fed up and imported the French Bluray, which has German, French, and English audio tracks. When the disc arrived in the mail, I found that it not only has an English audio track that I can use, but that it also has all of the deleted scene and alternate ending footage in 1080p HD resolution, whereas the German Bluray only had them in SD. I set to work inserting the higher quality source footage, and while I was at it did another pass on the color correction. As a result, the deleted/alternate footage looks a lot better than it did before.
Before:
After:
Also, here's a look at some of the finished vfx:
Password: nachtstatic
Password: nachteyes
The last one has English audio, so you can hear what it sounds like.