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What got you into fan editing?

Batman Begins: Dark Cut got me into fan editing. I was amazed how a middling, flawed movie was suddenly so much better. Instantly hooked me into the idea of changing films for the better instead of just complaining about them.
 
my origin story is i remember i stumbled across this site from a google image search of Blade.
(i was at an old job and bored so i google image searched a lot)
but i think google found a banner or dvd cover art someone did. whatever it was i explored further in this site.
the first thing i dl'd was a Spider-man 3 that completely removed Sandman. my mind = blown.
and it was like nothing i'd ever seen before. i explored further, Transformers 1 (and eventually 2), Episode 1, even True Lies.
it was incredible. everything i'd been complaining about with movies now were being taken care of.
my cinematic view point can be measured in the years before finding this site and the years after.
it's changed how i rate a movie. it's even changed how i watch tv. what part of this episode is bloat and what part was truly conceived.
(though Lost kinda did that for me too. that show was clearly made up as it went along.)
eventually, like most people here do, i got to thinking, what could i do. and for the past year i've been learning, re-learning, posting questions, watching youtube, editing and re-editing and i still don't feel comfortable releasing something.
(and my personal life, the one i can't edit, really set me back for a long time.)
so i thank who ever made that Blade dvd cover art.
 
So the most direct answer is The Phantom Edit and ANH:R, but it actually goes a big further back than that.

I have a good friend and ex-coworker who was a film-making enthusiast, and self-taught editor. He did all the company's internal and promotional vides. While I had read about The Phantom Edit, my computer was old and I didn't have a DVD burner so I never really investigated it. My friend however being an editing enthusiast had made DVD copies of his LD's of the OT. He also made alternate versions of all 3 using elements of the Special Edition Soundtracks. Using either alternate takes on certain scenes (such as the alternat version of the Skiff battle in Jedi) or unused portions of the score that were recorded but ultimately left out, and then inserting music cues such as the Emperor's theme during the meeting on the Death Star in ANH (before we'd ever heard of ANH:R).

So technically those would be the first fanedits that I had ever seen.

While I was curious about the The Phantom edit, I didn't have the software or hardware required to download, let alone burn a dvd so I never really explored it and didn't want to ask anyone to download forme. In 2007 I briefly stumbled upon OT.com where I not only found TPE, but also learned there was one for AOTC and of course all the other projects. However still lacking a computer that could burn dvd's let alone had the horses/software to do anything I just kind of found it a curious/interesting community but didn't do anything about it.

Then that same friend emailed me saying he found this amazing version of ANH where a guy had done all kinds of amazing things. My friend had downloaded it and asked if I wanted copies. I finally had my 'in' so-to-speak so asked him to also download me copies of TPE and AOTPE while he was at it. When I received those three dvd's my mind was blown.

I contacted Mike Nichols directly via his email address and corresponded about the first two films and then 3 which he made clear would never be released. It was then that my creative juices started flowing and I began dreaming about making my own fanedit.

In 2009 I finally got a computer with the horsepower and a DVD burner. With my friend's tips I used Mac the Ripper to rip Revenge of the Sith and thus began my journey. My first draft was made using iMovie and was of horrible quality. I then got myself better software, made better (but still inferior) quality versions so I then searched online for help which is where I found (or perhaps re-discovered) FE.org and the rest as they say is history.
 
For me it was a career choice. I went to school for filmmaking (directing and editing) and after graduating I wanted to stay independent to pursue my own films. Ten years later I was married and had two kids and no way into editing houses. So fanediting is a way of keeping my editing skills honed.
 
  1. Originaltrilogy.com
  2. Myspleen
  3. The Phantom Edit release
  4. Fanedit.org
  5. Michael Bay
 
Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut. I grew up on the tv version of the film (also known as the ABC cut here in America), and a lot of the DC scenes are in it. When the Donner Cut was released and wasn't the Holy Grail I expected it to be, I somehow came across this site some months later. Growing up on the tv version, I remember buying the movie at the store again when I was 12 and noticed a good 20 minutes of the movie was missing. I found out about the tv versions additions in 2002 and bought the ABC cut on vhs online for 25 dollars (ouch). I hated paying that much, but I wanted to see the film as I remembered it. I also bought the 188 minute version of Superman 1 with it because I was curious to see that too. Another 20 bucks.

My interest in editing films, or just knowing about alternate takes goes back much further. As a kid, I'd always notice when movie trailers would have scenes that weren't in the films, or different takes (same dialogue but delivered different). My earliest memory is the scene from Bambi when the older deer keeps telling him to get up. "Get Up Bambi" he'd say. But when I saw this clip in a Disney feature that showed clips from all the different Disney films, the deer's voice was different than the one in the actual film.

Also my dad's friend who is a huge movie buff (he loves fan edits as well) used to get us bootlegs of movies while still in theaters, and back then the bootlegs were usually workprints of the films. To this day I still still get weirded out when I watch Space Jam or Men In Black because the workprints that I watched a million times were slightly different in effects, dialogue, and soundtracks (and in some cases, better). In MIB's workprint when Smith catches up to the punk/alien he chases at the beginning, instead of having his gun drawn when he opens the door, the alternate take showed Smith leaning forward, out of breath and says "Hey...what's up?" very breathlessly, while cocking his gun. Much better/funnier take IMO. In Space Jam's workprint they play the beginning of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" as Jordan makes the winning dunk. I just thought the song fit perfectly (I have a thing for music videos as well. Nothing excites me more than the perfect syncronization of audio and visual. It's truly magic to me).

I can't remember when I heard about the producers cut of Halloween 6, but I can remember looking up websites that would have rare, out of print stuff regarding films, be it workprint versions, director's cut, or anything else not publicly released during the early days of my having a computer, like the early 2000's.
 
yads said:
Batman Begins: Dark Cut got me into fan editing. I was amazed how a middling, flawed movie was suddenly so much better. Instantly hooked me into the idea of changing films for the better instead of just complaining about them.
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I really don't understand all the hatred towards Batman Begins. Still, I'm glad you were inspired!

Q2: Boy, I hear ya. I wish I could do this for a living, too.

L8: Did Nichols say why he was never going to release an Ep. III?

Great stories, everyone!
 
The reason he stated in his email to me was that he felt his changes didn't do anything significant to the story and that was it. He didn't elaborate on it our exchange was only a few emails each, but at the time I was absolutely shocked/excited that he responded and carried on a short dialog with me.

Rumors are that he had a meeting with Lucas sometime after his Episode II edit. By coincidence or design, he has publicly distanced himself from fanediting, doesn't consider himself a faneditor and of course, never released his episode 3 edit which he did acknowledge making during our email exchange. Sadly I didn't keep those emails :(
 
L8wrtr said:
By coincidence or design, he has publicly distanced himself from fanediting, doesn't consider himself a faneditor
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of course. b/c he's a phaneditor. :oops:
 
Ha - mine was the standard expected route: Episode 1 sucks -> What is The Phantom Edit.
But, like L8 I had no way of d/l it at the time, and forgot about it. Until the abysmal Matrix sequels. When I remembered the other Great Disappointment, and started searching again for the Phantom Edit. That lead me to fanedit.org. And then I stayed. And then tried my own hand at editing - my first fanedit was Spiderman 3 - no sandman edition! (Glad it blew your mind baileym43 and did enough to get you hooked. :))
I think the first edit I watched was one of CBB's (Boon, the father of fanedit.org) and it opened my eyes to the possibilities....
 
dangermouse said:
Ha - mine was the standard expected route: Episode 1 sucks -> What is The Phantom Edit.
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LOL! That's terrific. Why wouldn't that motivate someone to get online and find fan edits, even if they didn't know what one was? TPM was so bad, it cried out for people to start looking: "But there must be a better version of this movie somewhere!"

dangermouse said:
Until the abysmal Matrix sequels. When I remembered the other Great Disappointment, ...
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Ha ha ha! LOVE it! I'm sure that the makers of those movies would be thrilled to hear you calling them "the Great Disappointments." (Notice that I'm not arguing with you, though . . . ) :)
 
Can't remember if I already posted this, but I got into fanediting for the cheap yet elegant hookers.
 
Shhhh! That's the real reason for us all, Frink, but we're not supposed to SAY that! Ixnay on the ookershay!
 
1. Myspleen
2. ADM (Harry Potter, Dark Side of Oz, and SW Prequels
3. Fanedit.org
 
It's all thanks to Bob, and his Trek edits. Just thought I'd try my hand at it.....and failing so far :lol: But, I'm enjoying the experience so far, and the skills I learn as I go, will only help me do bigger and better edits....and failing them as well.
 
This thread looks about due for resurrection...

I, like many others, first learned about fanediting when I heard about The Phantom Edit. The idea really intrigued me and I ended up at fanedit.org after scouring the web searching for a copy.

Once I familiarized myself with the procedures around here, I started checking out everyone's edits of the PT and even some of the OT. I started with TPM. I was impressed by the Phantom Edit, then the Phantom Re-Edit, then the Magnoliafan edit, then several others including JasonN's, Q2's, L8wrtr's, and so on. (I haven't had a chance to see seciors' yet)

Then I started looking at all the AoTC fanedits. This is my favorite film of the PT and initially I didn't think there was a whole lot that needed editing. Of course, upon reading some of the cut-lists I was reminded of the terribly written [creepy] "love scene" dialogue between Anakin and Padme and some of Anakin's more immature complaining throughout.

I watched 3 or 4 edits of AoTC, and while they were all really good, none of them quite had the perfect mix of cutting enough and keeping the right things. (the asteroid chase scene being entirely cut strikes me as a little excessive, personally) So, I've recently started editing AoTC myself and I'm having a blast. It took me a little bit to get the hang of getting the sound mix right (a tip - cut the video and center track but let the music tracks run through as long as it still fits the scene) and to figure out some of the finer details of choosing cuts, and I'm only maybe 20 minutes into it, but it's coming along nicely.

My compliments and thanks to everyone who contributes to and maintains these forums. The technical information has been invaluable. I was able to fairly easily copy the audio and video from the blu-ray and split the 5.1 sound into 6 mono wav files. (very important) I didn't re-encode it to an .avi format as some of the tech posts suggest - instead choosing to work straight from a .m2ts file.


I now have 17 different fanedits of Star Wars movies. (Not counting cartoons or specials) And thanks to my ADD, I just found another TPM version to watch from ModernKnife. (The Phantom Redux v2)

I've also enjoyed a few other (non Star Wars) movie edits. I'm glad to be here and to have found this site. (and a fun hobby)
 
Welcome DeQuosaek! Your story is definitely a pretty common one around here. I too discovered fanedits through The Phantom Edit. Congrats on getting your feet wet with editing. It is a frustrating, time consuming and fun hobby. If I could give you one piece of advice it would be to take your time. Good luck!
 
Gatos said:
Welcome DeQuosaek! Your story is definitely a pretty common one around here. I too discovered fanedits through The Phantom Edit. Congrats on getting your feet wet with editing. It is a frustrating, time consuming and fun hobby. If I could give you one piece of advice it would be to take your time. Good luck!
Click to expand...

It certainly can be all of those things. Just last night I spent hours poring through tons of archival footage from the AoTC Blu-Ray bonus disc before realizing that the deleted scenes I was looking for are apparently only on the 2nd disc of the DVD version. Luckily I was able to find them on my DVD easily enough, but it's going to be a pain in the arse upscaling and matching them to the blu-ray footage. As they say, "Welcome to fanediting!"

While I'm at it, if anyone has already upscaled (1080p / 5.1 preferred) the deleted scenes from AoTC, please PM me if you can assist, so I can avoid re-inventing the wheel. Though I suppose with so many AoTC edits out there, I'm kind of already doing that to a degree. Which reminds me, seciors' AoTC sounds different and pretty bold with the ordering and arranging of a few things and I'd really like to see it, so if anyone can help me with a different method than what is available on info I'd appreciate it. I sent him a PM quite a while back, but it looks like he's not been on in a while.
 
An obsessive need to "fix" things, born out of an obssessive need to criticise lol.

I love a failed project. Something anticipated, with a dramatic and often destructive creative process. Something that you can see got lost along the way and you wish you could save. Things like the Matrix sequels, lol. I started with playlists for albums, re-ordering tracklists and sourcing leaked material. Spent 6 months painstakingly recreating Nas' "I Am" album to the double disc autobiography it was intended to be before leaks forced his hand.

When I moved on to video editing, it was all about fixing those god-awful aforementioned Matrix sequels. I've tried a few times, but I always ended up at the same place: Weak ending. Still haven't found a way to edit around such an anti-climax, but you never know haha.

The one editing project I actually finished and was satisfied with was with Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. It's well documented that the show had a troubled start, and Joss himself considers episode 6 as when the show really found it's feet. A fantastic scrapped pilot intruiged me, and I set about editing the first 5 episodes of the series down to a pair of episodes that would seamlessly bridge the original pilot into episode 6. I took the two most important stories and spliced in the important continuity from the other 3 and it came out pretty well.

Hoping to re-aquire the software so I can get back to it. Not sure my poor old laptop could take it anymore though :(
 
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