Alien 3: The Reconstituted Workprint

[Valeyard]

I lament the fact that I had to be the one to create this. I flagged that I might give it a shot in August 2015 on an OT.com thread.

Change list (SPOILERS!):

• 20th Cent Fox logo removed.
  
• The first 36 minutes or so conform to the theatrical version with no changes.
  
• Added the scene with convicts following the scene where Clemens confronts Ripley at the scrap heap.
  
• Returned the meeting between Clemens and Andrews to the workprint cut (no Aaron, but longer than the theatrical cut).
  
• Following Junior's attempt to rape Ripley, the establishing shot showing the prisoners entering the tunnel is returned (Golic smashing the cigerete machine is not include though, because it isn't in the workprint).
  
• The Assembly Cut version of the Bishop-Ripley conversation is used, which is intercut with Golic being confronted by the other convicts.
  
• The infirmary scene with Ripley, Clemens, and Golic is re-cut to better match the workprint, using both theatrical and assembly cut elements.
  
• Ripley says "sounds good to me" after Morse threatens her.
  
• Obviously, they trap the Xenomorph in the toxic waste tank. The Assembly Cut was used for the whole ~18 min sequence with no changes.
  
• The Assembly Cut is used from the scene where the prisoners discuss what to do (immediately after Ripley asks Dillon to kill her) through to the end of the film.
  

Basically, I cut it to match the workprint as closely as possible. No creative liberties taken.

Notable absence: The scene where the prisoners are arguing about Golic and Dillon talks to them isn't included. I couldn't isolate the scene because there's audio cues as Dillon walks over that fades out, and, there are audio cues over Ripley's entrance in both versions too. It's a shame, but it is what it is.

Another notable change is that the alien has a host in this version. In the workprint, we never find out who the Xenomorph's host is, presumably because the shot was unfinished. But, since there's no way to remove the cremation inter-cutting, the alien has a host.

In total about 17 minutes is added to the film. In contrast, the Assembly Cut runs 30 minutes longer than the theatrical cut. It's also about 4 minutes longer than the Workprint.

On MySpleen. Mega link also available, PM me.

Technical Details:
Video: 1080p AVC ~19.5 Mbps. Edited using TVSuite, thus only ~0.02% of the video is re-encoded, most is stream-copy.
Audio: 24bit 48000Hz FLAC (Lossless) made from the DTS-HD MA track. AC3 track included for compatibility. Audio edited using ffmpeg to splice and also to encode to AC3, mkvtoolnix to join, eac3to to encode to FLAC.
Size: 21.9GB.
All audio edits are seamless.

[PDB]

Well......crap. There goes about 4 months of work lol. I was also rebuilding the workprint to complete a trilogy of Alien projects. Oh well

Glad you did it Valeyard. Can't wait to watch. I like the workprint more the tc.

One question: did you cut out the egg on the Sulaco? It's not in the workprint and I was eager to remove it.

[Valeyard]

No, I didn't change the credits or opening other than removing the Fox logo. This will give you a better idea of what I did:



It's the audio list, their names are their .m2ts file, and anything marked "new" is an edit of some kind. Or to put it another way, I made 9 edits that involved more than simply switching .m2ts files, across four scenes. The first one is the Clemens-Andrews meeting, and the other one is the infirmary scene with Clemens death. The other two are more minor.

The edited wavs are all labelled "new" because the first time I cut the audio in ffmpeg it down-converted them to 16bit, stupid ffmpeg, so I had to run the commands again with the -c copy option.

[PDB]

Got ya, I was just curious the level you were cutting too. My project is a little different it seems so maybe one day...

Anyway thanks for doing this Valeyard. I've always felt the workprint is the closest the the Director's cut as you are going to get since it has many of the re-shoots Fincher wanted (ie Dog-burster) but still lacks the studio mandated shots (the "basement" and the queen chest burster) and the studio slicing the chase down.

[Valeyard]

The workprint doesn't have the dog-burster. If yours is different by all means go for it, I didn't want to have to re-encode anything - and I wanted a watchable result. I could have hacked the whole movie and the edits would no longer be seamless, or used the workprint audio, but that wasn't what I was going for. I have no way of isolating the score from the sound effects and dialogue (I can split the channels and re-combine them, but that's about it). I might actually cut the rest of the audio tracks as well, I just need to make a batchfile with all the commands to extract the tracks and cut all the ones I need to the right positions.

I'll edit this post sometime with all the timecodes for the cuts I made. Here's Part1 for a start: 23.44008333333 to end. And the ffmpeg command:

Code:

ffmpeg -vn -ss 23.44008333333 -i 00750.m2ts -map 0:1 -acodec pcm_s24le part01-00750-FIXED.wav

This is probably a better way to do it actually:

Code:

ffmpeg -vn -ss 23.44008333333 -i 00750.m2ts -map 0:1 part01-00750-FIXED.flac

That way you can avoid using wave files entirely. Plus I never would have had the problem that ffmpeg wants to downcovert to 16bit. I just didn't think of doing it that way! Audio editing was never my strong suit...

[PDB]

You are right it doesn't have the cross cutting to the dog-buster in the cremation scene but does have guy discovering his dog has been impregnated, which was part of the first round of reshoots. Sorry that's what I meant. The workprint makes the coming and goings of the egss/facehuggers even more mysterious since there is no egg on the Sulaco, no facehugger on the EEV/crane shot.

Anyway I ran into the same problem of re-cutting the audio to match the major changes so your solution is far better then anything I can do at the moment. Thanks again.

[Valeyard]

You are right it doesn't have the cross cutting to the dog-buster in the cremation scene but does have guy discovering his dog has been impregnated, which was part of the first round of reshoots.

Murphy discovers that "something" has happened to Spike, he doesn't know what though. Using Babe as the host though does fit the theme of the movie better as the alien's birth then happens in an abattoir. However, it wouldn't fit with that scene, hence I didn't use it.

The workprint makes the coming and goings of the egss/facehuggers even more mysterious since there is no egg on the Sulaco, no facehugger on the EEV/crane shot.

That's just because it was an unfinished rough cut though. If you showed the movie to someone who had never seen an alien film before they would have no idea what's going on. As it is people probably have a hard time understanding how the alien gestated without prior knowledge of Alien or Aliens. The Assembly Cut version with the lead-in showing Murphy holding the facehugger I imagine would help viewers who haven't seen Alien or Aliens make sense of it. The film does a good job in concealing that Ripley is impregnated until late in the second act though.

[PDB]

This is fun. Alien 3 trivia is my jam

Actually the egg scene and the facehugger are both later pickups and weren't conceived of at the time of this workprint. Neither are in the original script and both were done post dog-burster reshoot (1st pickups) but pre-alien queen ending re-shoot (3rd pickups). All of the on set creature effects and the puppet composites were already done. That of course entails the bambi-burster instead of the dog-burster. What wasn't finished were all the optical and miniature effects (also the sound, music and finished tiltes/credits) which on the workprint are half done.

The publicly available workprint (there are actually 3 different copies floating around) was a cutdown version of the "true" assembly cut. I say "true" assembly cut since the assembly cut for the DVD/BD is a frankenstein creation and contains parts (basement, egg, etc) that weren't filmed at the time of the that assembly cut was finished. That's not a dig against the DVD/BD's AC, it is still amazing to watch.

The assembly cut was put together after photography had finished in the UK and the production moved back to LA. When the true AC was done it was then decided that an alien from an oxen was not scary enough (per Fincher) so even though the film was way over budget they decided to use the first (of several) pickups to film the Murphy/dog scene and then planned to do the dog-burster. Fox called a halt to the filming again and balked at money needed to film the dog-burster scene. To see where they were with the editing they cut together a new workprint (the one available) now with the Murphy/dog scene and removal of many longer scenes like the original beach beginning (much to the chagrin of Rawlings). The beach was changed to get the movie into the story faster. So you are right in saying that the WP was meant to have the dog-burster scene.

While the dog-buster was being filmed in the second round of pickups, it was felt there was a need for clarification as to the facehugger's appearance on the Sulaco (I think from test screenings). So they filmed the egg shot to explain it. The egg was rumored to be leftover from the original Alien 3 cocoon scene that ADI built props for. The cocoon scene was intended to be filmed as late as possible in the shoot. When it was looking too expensive the script (Hill/Giller) was rewritten to remove it. Dillon who was originally going to die in this scene would now die in the lead works.

The basement scene was then added as a replacement to pad the time and have a one-to-one conflict with the alien. That's why it was not in the workprint (or true AC) since it was filmed in the 2nd group of pickups. Never thought of until after the WP was done. The problem was in the original script there is no egg, the facehugger just was there. You assume hitching a ride with the queen...maybe. It certainly was mysterious as much as it was confusing. When they shot the egg, it just became confusing since there is little justification for an egg being in the mess hall.

The facehugger on the EEV shot was also a late add for very much the same reason of clarify where the Alien was and tell the audience outright since the dog barking and the new Murphy/dog scene were considered too subtle. Like you said difficult for non-Alien fans to figure out without know about the facehugger and what it does.

For total information overload, the second major scene removed but still in the final script and meant for pickups was the how Ripley got impregnated. From the original script:

10a. then - the EEV hits the water with great velocity l0a

11.     then - Newt's twisted, drowned face-- she screams in slow
motion under water   -- a fetal Queen emerges -  
11

lla. then - Ripley's floating face - the fetal Queen forces her jaws
open -- disappears inside ... lla.

12. then - the man stops to look at the sea, something catches his
attention 12.

That actually made it to the comic which was based on the earlier script:



And you can see ADI's embryo queen here:



So that was never filmed (again too expensive?) but the audience was suppose to know Ripley was infected when she didn't. All versions now at least hint at that still. But again that's gone. So as much as I love Alien 3 at no point with any cut of Alien 3 is the comings and goings of the facehugger(s), alien or queen explained with any rational.

[spoRv]

Guys, thanks for the insight... it's so good to read some interesting info, and to see how passion there is in this forum...

[CSchmidlapp]

None of this information mentioned in the mammoth documentary on the blu ray!
Big Alien fan and always great to hear something you don't know.
Thanks for the information, I love this forum.