[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.

Idle Fanedit Ideas: The Europa Report

After seeing Gravity in the cinema recently, I caught The Europa Report on Netflix. Overall I enjoyed it as a good rather than great science-fiction film. It had a lot of promise, but was let down by a couple of silly uses of the Idiot Ball for plot progression.

I'm obviously still in short film mode, because I came away from the film thinking that the best thing to do with it would be to cut together a short from it, using just the lovely Bear McCreary soundtrack, and perhaps put it in a collection of several such shorts. Certainly I think Prometheus would be at its best if presented in such a fashion, and Gravity would probably work like that as well. Possibly Oblivion would fit too.

Cinema/Idle Fanedit Ideas: Gravity

I managed to catch Gravity earlier this week, at one of the few 2D screenings to boot, and was mostly pretty impressed with it. Some magnificent visuals, and while some of the technical details were undoubtedly dodgy it was a pleasure to see a film in which the nature of sound in space wasn't ignored for the sake of lazy storytelling.

Having said that, I have a nasty streak when it comes to this sort of film, and there's a part of me that wanted it to just end with a fade to black when Stone made it to the Soyuz capsule and realised it was out of fuel. Which would probably work, but make the film feel too short, and thematically weird - Stone would essentially come to terms with the fact that she has to work through her grief over her child's death, and then give in and effectively kill herself.

Which got me to thinking that one particularly challenging but interesting option would be to borrow the idea for the conclusion from Berberian Sound Studio, and go for the full absurd/surreal approach to imply this darker ending. Things like dropping the score for exterior scenes (because the score and its use in the third act was a load of old bollocks, to be honest - typical overblown dumbed-down guff), adding shots or entire sequences from other films like Alien (particularly the segments toward the end where Ripley is on the run from the xenomorph), 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Trek: Into Darkness, fading in and out voices in different languages on Stone's helmet radio, and more. Essentially veer completely away from the "real" ending and instead have the final sequence be one long CO2-induced hallucination such that at the end you don't actually know what's happened to her. If nothing else, it would be more ambiguous and subtle than the hamfisted rebirth motif Cuarón chose to wrap up the film.