Alien 3 Workprint Cut Restoration (Project CRT)

[Jetrell Fo]

Maybe finding a way to contribute to the community instead of just coming here for stuff you want would be more helpful.

maybe you should just be a little more open! What can I contribute when I'm not even able to remove a DTS sound? I have other strengths, maybe you need help with your surround system? If you want to stay among you then close the forum, and make the membership only on invitation.

For me, Alien is the biggest movie collection, so i think is normal to ask if this here is still on live, hope to see some new Frames from a movie with a disastrous working process. yeah i am a big Fan boy, deal with it! Alien 3 is for me the best Movie of the Serie, is has the best Visualization, best Score, best mood, and for all the Franchises ho has a thrid movie is this the only one what is great This movie is so much underrated. for me only the Effekts from the alien are bad! Yeas all was Killed, but be serios, there was no space for a new "great" Story for all 3, after 3 Films and after 2 AVP evry story SUCKS, Prometheus is okay, but Covenant has Killed the Franchise

I Think PDB will understand it, you dont work on a movie when you not love it .- right =?

and as a big fan you wannt see and know all!

The concern was already addressed by PDB himself "big fan boy" .... in his response above. Had you introduced yourself first and tried lurking for a bit getting to know the place I wouldn't have mentioned it. As a member that has donated and provided resources for projects here I just get leery of folks that may not take the time to get to know folks before jumping right in for the goods. I hope you understand, it isn't personal, it's a community thing.

Cheers!!!

[deleted user]

Hmm, there's this "Alien³ - [2003] Special Edition [Restored Workprint Version] 1080p BDRip x264 DTS (oan)" floating around the web. Screenshots look like actual HD. Is that somehow related to your project? Seems 2 years old though.

[PDB]

Hmm, there's this "Alien³ - [2003] Special Edition [Restored Workprint Version] 1080p BDRip x264 DTS (oan)" floating around the web. Screenshots look like actual HD. Is that somehow related to your project? Seems 2 years old though.

That's not mine. Valeyard did a workprint project also but that date doesn't fit either. I am curious as to what it is.....

Funny you brought up Alien 3 I was just working on that.

[ablehdTVer]

Colour's look awesome regraded.

Big project to undertake, shame it was such a choppy film to get out, studio involvement really didn't help

Nice effort, best of luck

[Valeyard]

The only appreciable difference between my version and the workprint is that I left in the basement scene because I didn't realise it wasn't in the workprint. Also the egg on the Sulaco during the credits... but iirc that was in the draft scripts wasn't it? I could put out a version without basement scene and the egg in the credits and just show the facehugger? Whether you see the egg or not though, facehuggers have to come from eggs and they're not going to survive long enough outside of an egg to be a danger by the time the Sulaco has reached another colonised world. I don't know why fans get so annoyed with it - you don't need to know how or why there's an egg on board. Either the Queen left it herself, or Bishop brought it on-board, or even Burke could have sent it up to the Sulaco somehow. I think leaving it to the audience's imagination was fine personally.

[Doctor M]

Will you be using any of the completed effects used in the Special Edition version of Alien 3?

[PDB]

Didn't we have a long conversation about this sometime ago? I seriously can't remember.

The workprint is similar to the theatrical with the assembly cut mixed together in only a macro level sense. In other words, this happens, then this happens. Ripley crash lands, everyone found dead, funeral, etc, etc.

On a micro level it's radically different with a whole different edit and flow. In fact, looking at my notes (and I haven't touched this project in more than a year) it took 24 video edits alone to re-create the workprint's credits as best I could using the similar or closest next shots. That's the credits alone. And then there was the audio part. I had to really step up my game to edit the the 5.1 soundtrack.

In the credits alone, the workprint has at least 2 unique shots (both EKG/facehugger displays if I remember correctly) and is missing the TC/AC shots of the Sulaco exterior and infamous egg shot. The remaining shots that the WP and official cuts have in common are arranged in a totally different order, including the billing credit order in the WP. That was where the editing came in.

In fact, here is the timeline of the amount of edits to re-create the workprint for the first seven minutes:



(pardon the offline, I don't have that HDD with me)

What I was trying to do was re-create the WP as close as possible in HD, so I could watch what was made in HD instead of fuzzy VHS. I was even going so far as to regrade to the VHS' colors.

Valeyard's version is different in the sense it is that macro view of the movie. True to a final edit using the WP as a basis. Mine was the micro view, down to conforming shot-by-shot to the WP as much as humanly possible.

Some parts were easy, some parts were similar and some were radically different. Off the top of my head an example of this is the funeral scene does not cross-cut to the alien birth scene. That makes the editing there very difficult. Funny enough it does have the previous "who would harm a dog scene", still establishing the alien came from a dog.

Some lost shots I was able to get back from trailers, like the "for the last time" shot but others like "need a bigger cage" are totally lost. When I last left the project I was trying, to rotoscope in some VHS shots like the original alien puppet shot here:

https://vimeo.com/54295039

Since it was dark enough to maybe, possibly blend...

In the end, I haven't worked on this in a long time and I'm not sure when and if I take it back up.