We Are The Walking Dead (Mini-Series) FANedit

[spoRv]

Guys, sorry if I haven't posted here in a while, but was a bit busy lately... but I followed your posts, and happy to see jedeitor helped you, jerry, with this project - jed, you are a very helpful person, I want to say "thank you" for everything you made to help me as well with my projects. And jerry, you know I think you are the new "promise" as project maker, while I'm quite sure jed will start to do his own projects very soon - the problem will be to stop him!

That's all, continue with this brain storming, it's quite rewarding to see a thread with more than 100 posts and 1000+ views, considering this is a really young forum! Thanks for your contribution, guys!

[jerryshadoe]

Well, I will add another thing that doesn't feel right to me. Last one, I promise.

The opening. It fades in to two cops and immediately they hear the radio and leave. It's too sudden.

Maybe you could start in black with indistinct sounds of police radio and then fade in to the cops and to the help requeriment.

Or maybe there's an unused shot of them in silence that you could use to give a little more time to the radio to start speaking.

I was trying to edit an example but this PC just doesn't want to cooperate.

It could start with the shot of the hamburguers, but changing the audio with other shot from that scene, then go to a shot of them eating and then they receive the call.

So I just watched that entire scene in the original source footage and I now remember why I edited this the way it is in the film. I tried to start with the shot of burgers, them eating, THEN the radio call for help but it didn't work and here's why:
They are constantly talking throughout that entire scene, including the ONE shot of them eating which is right after the shot of the burgers. We see Shane eat a couple of fries after that but it's always while they are both talking. Any shot where they are not speaking for a moment is never longer than 1-1.2seconds which would mean I'd be using "snippets" of shots (with weird facial expressions that would make no sense without the dialog being in-tact and I think that entire dialog is pointless and kind of stupid - I never liked this intro in the original) Once that dialog is over, it goes directly to the radio call, which is where I faded in for this film. The footage just doesn't exist for me to be able to start this differently.

Personally, I like the fact that it starts directly with the radio call because it "grips the viewer" right into an action sequence from the moment they start watching the film, with no boring intro first. I have seen this "style" of intro in a few different movies over the years, so I know that my approach is not unique.

This doesn't mean I am "set in stone" on this intro, as if you can show me an example where this could be different I would consider using it but I honestly don't think it can be done because of source footage limitations

I will wait to start the encoding until you post a response as I really don't want to encode the 1080p "master" video two more times due to how long it takes to encode this...

Guys, sorry if I haven't posted here in a while, but was a bit busy lately... but I followed your posts, and happy to see jedeitor helped you, jerry, with this project - jed, you are a very helpful person, I want to say "thank you" for everything you made to help me as well with my projects. And jerry, you know I think you are the new "promise" as project maker, while I'm quite sure jed will start to do his own projects very soon - the problem will be to stop him!

That's all, continue with this brain storming, it's quite rewarding to see a thread with more than 100 posts and 1000+ views, considering this is a really young forum! Thanks for your contribution, guys!

No problem Andrea, we all get busy with our lives sometimes, LOL

Jedeitor has been a huge help and I am also wondering if he'll start any projects of his own in the future.

Thanx for compliment Andrea, I really appreciate it

I, too, am really happy to see this thread active and that there have been so many views of it. Hopefully, as time goes by, this thread can attract more people to this forum and get them involved not only in this project but everything on this forum

[allegedly]

Really looking forward to this, and I agree, intro dialogue is plain ole chit-chat and imo, not essential to the story.

[jerryshadoe]

@ allegedly - Welcome to the conversation and welcome to fanres.com!

Happy to see another person show interest in this. Makes me more excited about the project and starting work on the next film of the series...

[jedeitor]

I don't think I can be doing any projects soon. It's too time consuming and my life now just doesn't allow it. On the other hand, I can use some time to help on some projects.

About the opening, I did a very rough cut (just copy/pasted parts of the audio to "delete" the hamburguer shot speech) and of course would need some reworking. Now it is:

-Hamburguers shot

-Shane eating

-Them in silence (removable)

-Again in silence (removable)

-Them in silence and the radio speaks

Maybe the scenes marked as removable could be... well, removed without much problem.

Here is the ROUGH cut:

https://mega.co.nz/#!AMxyhKiA!sONM7HBooC..._BaYAcG5h4

Anyway, I did this because you seemed to want to show them in the car before the chase starts, but I would much rather an intro like this one I showed to you at some point:

https://mega.co.nz/#!5UwgAaSK!y5yYr3GErc...zyzBG8dW3s

Watch it open minded and think that the text could be other, or maybe no text at all. And also the radio message could be heard fading in before the siren.

And if you don't like neither of them, you can start the final encoding this weekend!!

[jerryshadoe]

@ jedeitor - that first sample is a perfect example about what I mentioned in an earlier post about how weird the facial expressions are that, both, Rick and Shane have that make NO sense without the dialog they were having there. As far as the second example is concerned, I remember when we discussed a potential "on-screen text" and I decided against it because the ONLY time we hear a reference to time in my cut of the film, is when Morgan mentioned that the gas lines have been down for about a month. Other than that, I don't concentrate on that issue at all. The cut you demonstrated there seemed a little too sudden of a beginning because it starts directly with a cop cars racing down the road and the viewer has no idea why. The reason I start the film where I do, besides cutting out the boring dialog sequence in the cop car, is because of the "radio announcement" that there is a "car chase." I understand you don't like the way I start the film, although I do not understand why... I left the beginning "as-is."

@ ALL - Ok, so it has been the weekend of viruses, both digital and physical. First, both of my daughters got the flu with high fevers over the entire weekend so I was occupied with my girls. Next, instead of the encode taking around 30 hours, because of the 3 different grain levels I used in the film (which was interesting in figuring out how to change the levels from shot to shot in Vegas, without having to encode everything separately for the final encode) the encoding took nearly 42 (!) hours... Last, while reading about Andrea's issues with MultiAVCHD and wanting to make suggestions for alternate bluray authoring software; my computer got some damn virus after I was checking out some "new" bluray authoring applications. NO, I didn't download some pirated copy of "paid software" and got a virus, but instead, I was trying to test some Chinese-made application that I found on the internet and it turned out to be a damn scam. Now my anti-virus and anti-malware apps are both "blocked" in windows and not running properly, so I am having to use TrendMicro HouseCall, but the process to scan my entire system is already taking 34 hours and is only at 61% (!!!) Apparently, I already have 84 infections on my system found by HouseCall.

I do have a "brilliant" solution for most professional authoring software that offers a 14/21/30 day trial. Anyone interested in the method, PM me for details. The idea does NOT involve piracy, BUT could be viewed as "shady" by some which is why I will NOT post the information here
The ONLY reason I am mentioning it here is because I will use this "method" to author my bluray releases of this project, as I will be able to do an entirely professional-grade job which should make this more appealing to the potential viewers/downloaders of this project

Ok, now that I got all that out of the way... Even though my computer is "sub-par" right now, the encoding of the video finished before this problem started and I was able to encode the "master" 5.1 English WAV file that I will use to encode the DTS-HDMA track. I took those WAV files encoded a 5.1 AC3 file @384kbps, but I now have TWO versions of the English audio. There is ONLY ONE difference between the two and it's during the title of the film being displayed on-screen. I ripped the audio out of a recent episode of TWD where Rick says "We are the walking dead" and layered it over the music in the center channel when the title is displaying onscreen. I don't know if I like it, maybe the timing is off... I don't know... so BEFORE I encode the final DTS-HDMA audio I want an opinion. I muxed just a minute of the 1080p master video (which will be the same video as what will be used in the final release, assuming that there are no encoding errors present which I haven't had a chance to check yet) with both audio tracks. This also gives jedeitor a chance to see his work on the letters/graphics that he customized for me (again, HUGE thanx!) The sample file here is 177MB:

https://mega.co.nz/#!UAQlQZ6Q!PE9FcwjAxu...OP6dWpyT_s

The first audio track contains Rick saying the title and the second audio track does not.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts It might be a timing issue that there's too long of a pause between "we" and the rest, but that's the way it was in the original audio. I can bring it closer together, but splitting it up is not doable without it sounding like it was "spliced" because of how the actor says that line where the words are almost blending into each other.

[jedeitor]

Hi, Jerry.

I just feel that fading in to that point before the radio call seems too abrupt for an opening. You don't know those guys and you expect them to be introduced, instead a car chase starts.

Starting with the chase, on the other hand, isn't abrupt at all. Sure you don't know why they are chasing those guys, but you don't need to as isn't relevant at all. Besided I told you that the radio call could sound during the black screen, before we cut to the chase.

Anyway, I am just explaining my point of view, not trying to change anything since the video is already encoded and that is now the final version. And now IT IS set in stone.

About adding Rick's voice to the title, before watching it I thought it wasn't a good idea. Now that I have seen it I'm not so sure. That gap between "we" and the rest of the title absolutely needs to be fixed if it's going to stay. Since you can't split the other words, you should join that first one with the others. On one hand I would vote for leaving it as it is in the original, just the music. On the other hand, Rick's voice sounds kind of cool.

Maybe it would be better to leave it as in the original, so that way when Rick actually says it in your movies it will have more impact.

[spoRv]

Jerry, sorry to be the cause of your PC virus...

<O.T. mode on>
About that, I discovered that MultiAVCHD doesn't like not-perfectly compliant files... I discovered that what caused all the problems was the clip that will be used for the animated menu... after I replaced it with a previous version, everything worked well... at least, the software could say something "Hey, you are using a not compliant file... please fix it, or I'll crash in the next step without let you know anything about the cause!"
<O.T. mode off>

[jerryshadoe]

@ jedeitor - I could always encode it one more time, LOL
But, seriously, I will not. I checked the center channel (where the police radio "announcement" is) and there are too many other sound effects during that to use just the radio call. I tried to see if it can be fixed, but that causes massive sound degradation and just wouldn't work. Also, the timing of the call, relative to the beginning of the car chase, would be very tough to cut together. Could it be done? Probably, but it would take a long time to get it "just right" and I don't feel it's necessary.

Honestly, I wish there was a little more source footage to work with for the beginning of the film. Also, in the original series, it starts with the scene of rick getting out of his cop car, looking for gas, and finding the little walker girl. Here, Rick isn't really introduced and we don't know anything (other than he's a cop because of the uniform) about him either. I guess you could say that my film starts just as "mysteriously" (as far as the characters are concerned) as the original source, LOL

If this is the only problem that you find with my film, than I am happy with the result as I'm sure everyone will have their "one thing" that they don't like or might want to see different. Personally, I wish I could have done it a little differently but the source footage is just not there

On matter of title: I cut out the silence between the "We" and the rest and it sounds better now. I understand what you mean about it having more impact to hear Rick say that once we actually get to that scene in the fifth film(wow, I'm not completely done with the first one and we are already "discussing" the fifth one, LOL) BUT, on the other hand, IT IS the title of my film series. But I am split on whether to use it or not. I REALLY like it because it does sound pretty cool and gives the intro a more "personal" touch and helps separate it from the tv-series. I will show it to a couple more people and get some extra opinions before I make a final decision. Maybe someone else here has an opinion...

@ Andrea - It is NOT your fault!!! Yes, I wanted to help you, BUT I was looking for a better bluray authoring program for this project anyway and this problem would have happened sooner or later anyway. I'm glad you managed to figure out your problem with MultiAVCHD

Personally, even though it's awesome that the program exists and gives the option to author a bluray for FREE, IMHO the program produces very unprofessional menus. What I mean by that is the fact that EVERY video title inserted onto a project is treated as a SEPARATE film. There is no way to properly add "bonus" stuff into it's own sub-menu the way you can do with nearly any DVD authoring app. Instead, everything is lumped together. This was a problem that I noticed when authoring my LOTM project, where I had many extras, and it really bothered me. I have researched this online and, apparently, this is an unfixable issue in the app and the "bonus" is really a "titles" menu, as in ALL titles on disc (unless you hide one in that menu, which is problematic if you hide the "main feature" because then you can't make chapter menus for it because it's an invisible title) There are also other issues that bothered me, such as (mainly) compatibility and certain customization of menus, esthetics, etc.

Really, the main one is compatibility and unpredictability of that compatibility. What I mean by that is I have attempted to see the consistency of the program authoring properly by making the same project (with the same files for that project) three-four-five time in a row and looking at the results. So, the app has a 50-50 chance of making a compatible bluray disc regardless of source files, even we burning each onto the same brand of discs always using ImgBurn. When I tried to author my LOTM project, I did exactly the same thing each time and the first disc didn't read in any player except the PC. The second was fine and worked on PC, PS3 Fat and Slim, PS4, and on three different stand-alone players. Third disc, again only worked on PC, the PS3 Slim was able to read it, but took 2 minutes to load and nearly 3 minutes to skip between chapters/menus. Fourth disc, worked on everything just fine, except the PS3 Fat where the load times were about 40 seconds but it did play. Fifth disc played great on everything but sixth disc only played on PC. Just to be clear, this wasn't an issue with the discs, because I actually re-authored the project six separate times, all with the same source files and same menu structure.
Not only that, but based on all of the project notes I have read, including yours Andrea, I have noticed about the same pattern with MultiAVCHD; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The fact that it doesn't have a pop-up stating "Hey, this disc will not be compatible!" is the main problem I see here because you are always playing a game of "will it work this time?" This is why, I will be using a more professional paid app, that will help solve this problem and also gives me much more options for customization.

@ ALL - now I will be starting the work on the foreign language tracks. There is a lot for me to do there, but everything (including this) from here to release is the "down hill" part of the project. The main film is edited and encoded, which was the hardest, most time consuming part of the project. Granted, some of the work ahead of me is "time-consuming" but this is all the easy stuff now and in comparison to the rest of the work already done, really is nothing.

[jedeitor]

Jerry, about the title, if you finally use Rick's voice, I think you should let the whole title appear and then make him "read" it. If he starts speaking as the word "WE" appears, he will say the full title before we see it on screen, and that would be odd.