[Aberrant]: A Disturbing Behaviour fanedit

I'm most of the way done with [Aberrant], my Disturbing Behaviour edit. It's not a straight extended edition; I've swapped out as much of the soundtrack as I could (I've still got some more songs I'd like to change, but I'll need to overcome centre channel leakage and so far I've not had a great deal of success). I've also been making some small trims to help keep the tone more consistent - the screenplay seems to have been aiming for poorly-judged comedy, but David Nutter managed to bring out an ominous overtone and is mostly successful, except when the script gets in the way.

I've amended the opening so that the first scene is pre-titles, as I think it works better that way. The password on the video below is "disturbingbehaviour":


Aberrant opening sequence from That One Guy on Vimeo.

I've also done a first draft of DVD cover art, because I know some folks seem to like that.

Somehow, it's April already

I'm not sure how it's April and this is only my second post of the year, but unfortunately I've been busy with work-related stuff so haven't had much time for fanediting recently. I've been working on The Shadow Over Innsmouth a fair amount - I'm finished with at least a first iteration of the (substantial) cutting I'm doing to the original footage, and have all the footage still being used tinted according to what may yet turn out to be a needlessly complicated colour code. I'm somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 way through writing the new dialogue, making an effort to bring it more into line with the original short story.

I may try and create a sample of my opening sequence idea soon, to try and drum up some interest.

Aside from that, I'm also picking at Aberrant, my Disturbing Behaviour fanedit. I'm around 1/3 of the way through. I'm readding the deleted scenes (after converting from 4:3 to 16:9) and making a few small trims here and there, and also swapping out some of the soundtrack. I need to go back and finish my new opening sequence, which should hopefully also make for a good sample of the end result.

Mortal Kombat workprint

I mentioned yesterday that I'd done a workprint of an improved (or perhaps just decrappified) Mortal Kombat cut. I uploaded it to Vimeo to get some feedback, so I may as well post it here. It's important to note that I did absolutely no work on the audio (except for removing the song from the title sequence), so I'm aware that the sound is dreadful and would need an enormous amount of work. Nonetheless, here it is.



The password is fatality.

Stuff in progress: Disturbing Behaviour: Aberrant, Mortal Kombat workprint, The Shadow Over Innsmouth

I've started working on the Disturbing Behaviour extended edition/edit that I mentioned in my previous post, and have also been reminded of the Mortal Kombat workprint I put together last summer as a proof-of-concept for a less-silly version of the film with better (or at least less bad) fight scenes. It's currently uploading to Vimeo so I'll post it here when it's ready.

I'll also get a final version of The Equation Of Crime posted up.

I should really get back to working on The Shadow Over Innsmouth as well; most of the cuts are done, but there's still a lot to do as I have to create all the title cards for the dialogue (which may lead to more cuts to keep the runtime reasonable) and pull together a soundtrack. I'm feeling like going in two contradictory directions: on the one hand, encouraged by how The Equation Of Crime turned out, I think that oppressive ambient electronic music would work well, but on the other hand there's stuff like Mosolov's classical music that would make for a more period-authentic soundtrack. Or I might try a mixture of the two. It's kind of moot until I've finished the video work, though...

Notes towards a Disturbing Behaviour fanedit

I got it into my head recently to do an edit of 1998's Disturbing Behaviour. It's not an especially good film, but the theatrical cut still butchered what material was there by cutting out what character development was there. Add to that some badly-judged attempts at humour from a mediocre-at-best screenwriter and some dodgy uses of music, and you hobble whatever merits the film had to begin with.

In saying that, the film's not all bad. James Marsden and Katie Holmes might not be the best fit for the grungy outsider roles they played, but they do a reasonable job with them. Nick Stahl is positively excellent as the paraniod stoner. Some of the dialogue is amongst the best (or at least most realistic) dialogue given to on-screen teenagers, which is surprising in some ways. And despite the low ambitions of the screenwriter, the director did a good job of establishing a tense atmosphere.

I rewatched the film recently to make some notes and see what could be fixed. I haven't even opened the files in my editing suite yet, but I'm optimistic.

Overall goal: To strengthen the creepy, paranoid tone of the film and remove/minimise the cheesy moments/dialogue.

Strategy: Remove or trim video where necessary; change soundtrack at certain points; remove SFX if possible; reinsert deleted scenes.

New music options: Nine Inch Nails, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Smash-era Offspring, RATM, Smashing Pumpkins

Possible additional footage sources: 1984, A Clockwork Orange, The Faculty

Specific changes to make:

• Move initial sequence with Gavin to before opening titles.
• Either remove the SFX from the opening title music, or replace the music completely with something eerier.
• Remove/replace rock music from establishing shot of Cradle Bay High School (maybe use Offspring's "Come Out And Play").
• Trim end of scene with Gavin & Steve in lunch hall.
• Remove rock music from scene where carhead gets jumped by Blue Ribbons, replace with something eerier.
• Heavily trim Rachel dancing in the back of her truck, replace music with something less rubbish.
• See if Gavin's constant "Stevie-Boy" can be shortened to "Stevie".
• Cut the second shot of Chug's eyes lighting up.
• Swap closing shots of Chug's supermarket rampage so that scene ends with Rachel's "Toxic Jock Syndrome" line.
• Trim end of Steve's fight with the Blue Ribbons after Gavin hits him and leaves.
• Cut "I have a big Physics test tomorrow".
• Cut Chug's silly robotic-jerkiness movement after he wrecks the e-rat-acator.
• Cut the silliness in the asylum as much as possible (particularly Rachel screaming repeatedly).
• Remove Flagpole Sitta from the asylum escape scene.
• Cut janitor's "That's a big rat".
• Cut "be the ball" while Steve is on the stretcher.
• Cut janitor's Pink Floyd line before he drives off the cliff.
• Cut Steve's "Be the ball" line just before he kicks Caldicott.
• Combine footage on ferry from theatrical and original endings. Drop the Gavin-as-teacher ending completely.
• Replace "Got You Where I Want You" in the end credits.

I'm not decided on what to go for as a title yet - currently I'm leaning towards "Aberrant", but I may change my mind.

Project complete: The Equation Of Crime, final opening sequence

As of last Sunday, I finished The Equation Of Crime, my homage to von Trier's The Element Of Crime for the upcoming Cops Consecution. It's been an interesting challenge, in that I decided early on to work only with footage from Pi to force myself into more creative solutions to the various problems. It limited me in some ways like lack of establishing shots or an overt murder sequence, but this limitation forced me to come up with some ideas for split-screen sequences that I think work nicely as a complement to von Trier's use of crossfaded video segments in his film. I'll have to wait and see whether audience feedback determines that it works as a narrative, but even if the narrative is a failure, it's been a success as a technical exercise (turning a feature-length film into a 15-minute silent short with a substantially different story).

One issue I was expecting to struggle with was the soundtrack - part of the reason I really like Pi is its excellently oppresive soundtrack, and I had to force myself not to re-use it for my project since I felt that would just remind the viewer of the source film. In the end, I found I was able to use a selection of songs from DJ Rkod in a way that perfectly creates the atmosphere I was looking for.

Here's the opening sequence uploaded to Vimeo, using the song "Bullet" from DJ Rkod's album Naoise.


TEOC opening sequence (final) from That One Guy on Vimeo.
Password is "the equation".

Assuming it meets the criteria for inclusion in the Cops Consecution, this should be released at the start of December. I'll hold off uploading the full edit to Vimeo for a while after that.

I'm going to take a short break from other editing projects for the time being. The main thing I've been working on recently is a feature-length silent version of Dagon, trying to make it more in line (at least in terms of atmosphere and tone) with The Shadow Over Innsmouth - which will involve an awful lot of titles for dialogue, and still requires some work on the new script. So it's still quite a way from being complete.

I have other ideas on the boil as well, and since I've purchased a copy of Sony Movie Studio I'd like to do a simple-ish project to learn my way around the software. At the moment I think this will probably turn out to be a polished version of my Mortal Kombat edit - whether it ends up as something I can release or not is undetermined, since a lot of the changes require speeding up fight scene footage by between 33% and 200% (the choreography of the fights is reasonable, but far too many sequences are in slow-motion). But trying to recreate it should get me accustomed to the new software.

As a taster, here's my idea for a better intro/credit sequence:


MK Opening Sequence from That One Guy on Vimeo.
Password is "ultraviolent cut".