Hey everyone! New to the site...kind of. But NOT new to FanEdits!
I guess you could say that the first "FanEdit" I ever saw was possibly the best "bootleg" of Halloween 6: The Producer's Cut that one could find in 2006. I don't know who put it together; the back of the cover references a no longer functional website, onegoodscare.net, but no individual responsible. I was so excited to have it I made a LightScribe DVD for it (remember LightScribe??), and printed out the DVD cover and slid it into a case, and put it all together to fit in with my DVD collection. The edit was bewildering to me. They used the theatrical DVD for all of the common footage and seamlessly blended in the footage from the best source of the Producer's Cut they could find. It was amazing! I felt like I was in on a secret that only a few people knew about. I felt like I was a part of something underground that was built by people like me, people who had a love and passion for movies...only they had technical savvy and could make these projects. Still, I felt like I was in.
It wasn't until a year or two later, I believe, that I came across what is probably the gold standard of FanEdits, though at the time I still didn't really know that there was such a large community. It was Star Wars, Episode IV - A New Hope: Revisited by Adywan. Halloween 6: The Producer's Cut was one thing; that was a bootleg of a cut of a film that just hadn't been professionally released, something that would circulate around conventions that I could never attend. ANH:R was something else entirely. Color correction, audio fixes, rotoscoping laser beams that had sound but no visual, removing lame Special Edition changes (and further subsequent studio edits) that didn't add any real value or even made things worse. The list of edits was so long my jaw hit the floor when I read them all. This wasn't just a new cut of Star Wars...this has become the DEFINITIVE cut of Star Wars, Episode IV. It was also my gateway drug to the FanEdit world.
FanEdit. Fan Restoration. FanFix. Preservation. FanMix. So many styles of editing a movie to tweak it one way or another, and I enjoy many different styles. I like aDigitalMan's extended version of The Terminator, and others like it, like Captain Khajiit's The Last Of The Mohicans: Hybrid Cut and Adabisi's extended cut of Se7en. I'm also enamored by the choices made by editors like JMB with Batman Begins: Dark Cut; using footage from another movie to change the way events unfolded in one small scene to make more sense of the story was brilliant! And I love how Dr. Sapirstein was able to use footage from the trailer that didn't end up in the final cut of the movie to make Evil Dead that little bit creepier.
I've always been a movie fanboy, and I love that there are talented people out there who can make these cuts and restorations so that OTHER fans can enjoy those movies in other, and sometimes better, ways. Arrow, Criterion and Scream Factory don't always get their hands on some of the movies that need to be restored or reassembled from other cuts of the movie that got lost to time. The super active members of this community (like admin spoRv) are the people who might be able to make it happen first, or even at all! And sometimes a fresh perspective on a movie makes it better for me to enjoy when I didn't fully enjoy it the first time, like Avid4D's Man Of Steel: Recut (which I can't find anymore!). I might not be able to contribute much, but I want to be a part of this community in some way. It would mean to me what these movies mean to all of us.
I guess you could say that the first "FanEdit" I ever saw was possibly the best "bootleg" of Halloween 6: The Producer's Cut that one could find in 2006. I don't know who put it together; the back of the cover references a no longer functional website, onegoodscare.net, but no individual responsible. I was so excited to have it I made a LightScribe DVD for it (remember LightScribe??), and printed out the DVD cover and slid it into a case, and put it all together to fit in with my DVD collection. The edit was bewildering to me. They used the theatrical DVD for all of the common footage and seamlessly blended in the footage from the best source of the Producer's Cut they could find. It was amazing! I felt like I was in on a secret that only a few people knew about. I felt like I was a part of something underground that was built by people like me, people who had a love and passion for movies...only they had technical savvy and could make these projects. Still, I felt like I was in.
It wasn't until a year or two later, I believe, that I came across what is probably the gold standard of FanEdits, though at the time I still didn't really know that there was such a large community. It was Star Wars, Episode IV - A New Hope: Revisited by Adywan. Halloween 6: The Producer's Cut was one thing; that was a bootleg of a cut of a film that just hadn't been professionally released, something that would circulate around conventions that I could never attend. ANH:R was something else entirely. Color correction, audio fixes, rotoscoping laser beams that had sound but no visual, removing lame Special Edition changes (and further subsequent studio edits) that didn't add any real value or even made things worse. The list of edits was so long my jaw hit the floor when I read them all. This wasn't just a new cut of Star Wars...this has become the DEFINITIVE cut of Star Wars, Episode IV. It was also my gateway drug to the FanEdit world.
FanEdit. Fan Restoration. FanFix. Preservation. FanMix. So many styles of editing a movie to tweak it one way or another, and I enjoy many different styles. I like aDigitalMan's extended version of The Terminator, and others like it, like Captain Khajiit's The Last Of The Mohicans: Hybrid Cut and Adabisi's extended cut of Se7en. I'm also enamored by the choices made by editors like JMB with Batman Begins: Dark Cut; using footage from another movie to change the way events unfolded in one small scene to make more sense of the story was brilliant! And I love how Dr. Sapirstein was able to use footage from the trailer that didn't end up in the final cut of the movie to make Evil Dead that little bit creepier.
I've always been a movie fanboy, and I love that there are talented people out there who can make these cuts and restorations so that OTHER fans can enjoy those movies in other, and sometimes better, ways. Arrow, Criterion and Scream Factory don't always get their hands on some of the movies that need to be restored or reassembled from other cuts of the movie that got lost to time. The super active members of this community (like admin spoRv) are the people who might be able to make it happen first, or even at all! And sometimes a fresh perspective on a movie makes it better for me to enjoy when I didn't fully enjoy it the first time, like Avid4D's Man Of Steel: Recut (which I can't find anymore!). I might not be able to contribute much, but I want to be a part of this community in some way. It would mean to me what these movies mean to all of us.
