Back to Earth: The Phil Edit NOW ON YOUTUBEZZ!!!!

[Phil]

EDIT:

‘Tis done.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QIb83-2Vuw
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxpp3BOedkE
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhzXmMEjrI

————————————-
ORIGINAL POST:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btWtLNY523A
Just the intro. Which may be as far as I ever get. But let’s hope not.

[Mnoooah]

Ha! Looking forward to the rest of it.

[Seb Patrick]

Tell you what, Phil, when you’ve created a sitcom of the standard of Red Dwarf, then you can put yourself above Doug Naylor by claiming to “salvage” his work, alright?

Shame, ‘cos that was otherwise quite amusing. But there’s no need to be a presumptuous fuck.

[pfm]

> But there?s no need to be a presumptuous fuck.

ThIs.

Btw a 30 minute edit WILL be shit.

[Phil]

>But there?s no need to be a presumptuous fuck.

This was not at all intended by my choice of words, but if it’s going to be an issue, then I can easily swap out that single word in the edit. (The narration needs re-recording, too.) Of course I’m not suggesting I’m capable of producing something better than Red Dwarf…but isn’t any fan-edit a presumptuous exercise in itself?

I’d have thought that considering the edit hasn’t even begun yet it could be taken as a sort of joke, but yes, if it’s going to make people think that I believe trimming rake-scenes out of a Red Dwarf special elevates me to the level of Ultimate Television Man, I’ll switch it out.

>a 30 minute edit WILL be shit.

Well, I’m just putting my money where my mouth is. I’m convinced a 30 minute version would work better, so I’ll get in there and find out. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.

[Mr Flibble]

That’s a nice idea and quite amusing though.

[Pete Part Three]

I’m pretty impressed so far.

[Dave]

>Well, I?m just putting my money where my mouth is

It sounds more like you are demanding a refund.

[Another Phil]

You think a 30 minute edit would make BtE better?! If anything, IMO, the main problem with BtE is that it needs to be longer, not shorter (the show feels a bit too fast-paced at times, and certain plot points are rather rushed over). Personally, I’m definitely looking forward to the inevitable extended cut on the DVD.

BTW, since this is one of my first posts, I’d better point out that my username is not any sort of comment or dig, it’s just the product of having an inconveniently common name.

[pfm]

This is designed as a TVM, it’s not meant to be a regular 30min episode of Red Dwarf. Trying to turn it into that will only make it worse. I can’t think of anything major that I would want to see cut from the episode.

[Phil]

>the main problem with BtE is that it needs to be longer, not shorter

People seem to hold this opinion, and that’s fine, but I’d argue that if Doug really needed more time to tell this story, why did he spend so much time on skutters, and dancing, and hitting the crew with rakes? Why did we visit the nosemaker? If he needed more time to tell the story, I think the first priority should have been using the time he DID have more effectively.

>an inconveniently common name.

Understood, and well put.

>it?s not meant to be a regular 30min episode of Red Dwarf

It’s not meant to be, no. I’m just going to see if I can get it to function as one. I wanted to do a Back in the Red edit way back in the days of its VHS release (and–remarkably for that point in time–I actually DID have access to a pretty sweet editing deck) but I never ended up doing it, for reasons I can’t recall.

[NoFro]

I think Another Phil holds the same opinion as a lot of us. Whilst we felt some scenes could have been cut down or even cut out, at points it felt like some gaps needed filling and some bits needed adding in.

Everything in parts two and three happened very quickly. I would like to see a shorter cut just to see what it does to the pacing.

[JamesTC]

I think bits like between Coronation Street and getting to the creator were far too fast, a short 30 second scene in Car Bug could have easily bridged the gap. I think it will be much improved by the 75 minute directors cut (which was shown at the premier).

[NoFro]

Yerp. How long is the show without duplicate intro sequences, credits and with the ads taken out?

That could hint at how much extra stuff there could potentially be in the version that was seen at the premier.

[hummingbird]

> at points it felt like some gaps needed filling and some bits needed adding in.

I thought so too. I’m hoping that the DVD will remedy this.

[Phil]

>Yerp. How long is the show without duplicate intro sequences, credits and with the ads taken out?

Someone else commented here (I’d have to dig it out, and that might not be as easy as usual) that it was around and hour and ten minutes without credits/ads. (IIRC)

>at points it felt like some gaps needed filling and some bits needed adding in.

Absolutely. A lot of that meandering stuff SHOULD have been cut out to make room for the additional stuff that would (hopefully) have made the episode hang together better.

I’m not of the opinion that a 3-episode treatment of this idea was doomed to fail; I think it could have worked quite well. But I AM of the opinion that the 3 episodes we actually got came nowhere near their potential, and could easily be compacted into a much shorter one.

[Anonymous]

>”But there?s no need to be a presumptuous fuck.”

And never make fun of it.

[Phil]

For those keeping score, BtE pt 1 clocks in at about 8 minutes right now.

[Mr-Stabby]

>For those keeping score, BtE pt 1 clocks in at about 8 minutes right now.

Wow really? Be interesting to see this. I recorded all the shows to my computer yesterday, and without the ads and the extra titles and recaps, the whole show clocked in at just over an hour long. I tried going through it and seeing what i could get rid of, but i couldn’t find a lot that would genuinely benefit from being deleted. Most of it that wasn’t completely vital to the plot actually had some decent jokes in.

So will be interesting to see what you come up with :)

[Phil]

Stabby, I would definitely be genuinely excited to see what you come up with as well. One, because I think your edit and mine will differ significantly enough to keep them both interesting. Two, because you’re going to absolutely blow mine away, without any question.

[Mnoooah]

May I just say that speculating on what laughter or edits would look like is one thing, but seeing these things produced in a matter of hours is just strange.

[Phil]

It’ll be a while for me to finish…right now I’m just cutting the stuff I know I want to remove. I’m definitely no whiz when it comes to editing, but I’ll do my “closer”, more careful edits probably sometime over the weekend.

[Mnoooah]

Phil, btw, I posted elsewhere that Robert said he and doug have seen the laugh track and talked about it. If you have any reservations about your intro video, well, just heads up.

[Mr Flibble]

Wow really? Be interesting to see this. I recorded all the shows to my computer yesterday, and without the ads and the extra titles and recaps, the whole show clocked in at just over an hour long. I tried going through it and seeing what i could get rid of, but i couldn?t find a lot that would genuinely benefit from being deleted.

It occurred to me that you could quite easily get rid of Katerina without too much problem.

Rimmer has been reading that “for Idiots” book – he could have found out how to make the portal from that. It would be funneh because it must be really easy if it’s in the Idiots book. Or Kryten thought of it on holiday.

The whole “dig up some dirt on Katerina” plotline was pointless and just padding, as was Rimmer killing her.

I’m sure she was there as “sexy woman quota”, but the show would have been better without her, IMO.

[Mr-Stabby]

That’s a good point. Katerina was mostly useless, but if you were to delete all that you would really need a scene where Rimmer actually sets up the dimension changing timey wimey stuff, and the scene where it all happens has Katerina in almost every shot so would be hard to get rid of her entirely.

[Somebody]

A suggestion for anyone attempting a fan edit, especially a short version as with this one:

Open with the memorial stone scene as a pre-titles sequence, cueing titles after Cat’s “Have you got a minute?” [More advanced suggestion: drop the RD logo at the start of the titles, and put that first bit of the tune over Cat…]

[Carlito]

> Tell you what, Phil, when you?ve created a sitcom of the standard of Red Dwarf, then you can put yourself above Doug Naylor by claiming to ?salvage? his work, alright? Shame, ?cos that was otherwise quite amusing. But there?s no need to be a presumptuous fuck.

I second this.

[Pete Part Three]

>Open with the memorial stone scene as a pre-titles sequence, cueing titles after Cat?s ?Have you got a minute?? [More advanced suggestion: drop the RD logo at the start of the titles, and put that first bit of the tune over Cat?]

This could work. We’d lose the opening tracking shock, sadly. But also the awful opening scene with the ironing.

Part of my problem with BTE was the lasy rehash of Back to Reality. Would have preferred it if the stuff about the despair squid was ditched and it was simply Katerina responsible for this. You’d never be able to edit it into this though.

[NoFro]

I’d say most of the stuff that could be cut is in the first episode. Some great stuff, but not necessary to the story. As mentioned, the first scene isn’t needed and having the memorial garden as an opening would be brilliant in my opinion. But I don’t think it needs to be before the opening titles.

Also, I think if about 4 lines were taken out the kids on bus scene, it would be a lot better for being that small bit shorter.

[Ian Symes]

Since when did “not vital to the story” = “expendable”? There’s such a thing as pacing, and I just can’t see how *reducing* the running time of BTE could possibly improve it.

[Phil]

>Since when did ?not vital to the story? = ?expendable??

Well, it doesn’t. For myself, it’s more of a “not vital to the story” + “not very funny” = “expendable.”

Again, as I’ve said before, I’m not putting something together to replace BtE; I’m trying to get out of it a half hour of television that *I* would conceivably have enjoyed more. We’ll see how it turns out.

>A suggestion for anyone attempting a fan edit, especially a short version as with this one:

I was actually going to do something very similar to this, Somebody, but in the course of trimming things down moved it somewhere else entirely, for better or worse. I tried to move a few things around (without giving away too much of the edit yet) but wasn’t always able to do so, due to dialogue giving certain things away. (A better editor than me would probably be able to shuffle the dialogue around, too…but I ain’t he.)

Again, for those keeping score, the rough cut of all three eps has clocked in at around 33 minutes. I DID however lose one scene that I really wanted to keep, so hopefully tightening things up during the weekend will leave room for me to plop it back in.

[Phil]

Also, I’d have to wonder if a fan-edit of The Pete Epic would result in me being called a presumptuous fuck. Somehow I don’t think it would, despite the fact that that gesture is no more or less presumptuous than cutting up Back to Earth.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s the word “salvage” you’re taking issue with. I should have remembered we’re on G+T, where exaggerations are simply not tolerated.

[Tyrell Corporation]

Phil, you’re more than welcome to create a fan edit.

But please, shut up about it and fuck off.

[Pete Part Three]

Ok, I’ve finished Part 1 of my edit. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0k1MvoRo2c

[Tyrell Corporation]

I see what you did there.

[Ian Symes]

But please, shut up about it and fuck off.

As much as I agree with your general pro-BTE sentiment, please don’t tell people to fuck off. If anyone’s going to tell people to fuck off, it’ll be the G&T staff…

[Tyrell Corporation]

My apologies.

You can fuck off as well.

[Zombie Jim Undead]

I enjoyed Back to Earth a great deal…but will be very interested to watch this. Fan edits are good fun.

(You fucker).

[Mr Flibble]

There?s such a thing as pacing, and I just can?t see how *reducing* the running time of BTE could possibly improve it.

There’s two sides to this argument. The first is that BtE moved too fast, there was little exposition etc. The other is that BtE is full of superfluous crap that really isn’t very funny, and doesn’t need to be there.

Therefore whereas BtE needs to be the same running time, it needs different contents in order to make good use of that time.

BtE shows beautifully how Doug Naylor cannot pace a show properly. Comedy was often shoved into BtE at the expense of exposition, and with little regard to how fast or slow the story moves. This needs rectifing if Doug writes more Dwarf, and especially if he is ever let loose on a movie.

I don’t mean to be negative as a whole, but the pacing really was awful.

[Anonymous]

‘His funny robot’ made me lol.

>”For those keeping score, BtE pt 1 clocks in at about 8 minutes right now.”

Pity. It’s the only ep I really liked.

[Phil]

Well, that actually went much, much more quickly than I would have thought. The edit is basically done after just a couple hours’ work. I’ll give it another look-over sometime before the weekend, hopefully, and I have something I’d like to add to the end, but it’s there.

Overall time: about 31 minutes.

And it’s not just time-cuts, so hopefully a lot of you (well…some of you. One of you. Maybe…) will enjoy it. I took a different approach to this edit, not intending it at all to necessarily sit next to the other 52 episodes in a lineup. Whether or not it’s well-received, I’m at least happy that I achieved what I was going for.

See you this weekend.

[Jo]

If you’ve cut my cameo out, I’ll break your legs.

[Phil]

Ah well, nevermind the cleaner edits. I was going to spend some time ironing out the rougher moments, but it’s basically done.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QIb83-2Vuw
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxpp3BOedkE
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhzXmMEjrI

Hope the whole world enjoys!

[pfm]

And your Guybrush Threepwood-esque voiceover makes it a better edit how??

[Jo]

Soon you’ll be wearing my sword like a shish kebab!

[Somebody]

*watched about thirty seconds of it*

No. Just… no.

[Phil]

>a better edit how??

Not better in itself, but I used it to fill in whatever information I lost by cutting otherwise unnecessary scenes, which is what led me to give it the Arrested Development (or as you know it, The Secret of Monkey Island) treatment instead of standard Dwarf.

Also, do I actually sound like Guybrush? I’m not sure I ever played any of the talkie games…intriguing if so!

Also:
Potato will indeed have two legs on her “to break” list.

[Jo]

>If you?ve cut my cameo out, I?ll break your legs.

Right Reed, I warned you!

[JamesTC]

That was a bit crap.
The narration was just an excuse to cut parts essential to the plot out and sometimes you added a narration when they were not needed.
The music was annoying at certain points because you overlayed it against the previous music.
Specifically I hated the scene with Swallow being cut out, not because it is very good because it is one of the lesser scenes but for one you cut out the bus scenes just before which are funny and add to the plot (Kochanski is alive) and the fact that you left in that zoom into picture scene without it serving to the plot, if you wanted to trim it you should have cut the picture zoom scene with the nose world scene.
Oh and what was he point in taking out the Kryten dance and putting it in the end, if you just had Kryten coming in and Lister saying he was back then that scene would not have the amazing appearing Kryten.

You have proved that BtE cannot be made into a 30 minute episode, it barely fits into 70 minutes.

[Phil]

My legs are elevated and waiting.

[Phil]

Object: I’ll address a few of your points, as they’re good ones.

Swallow was cut, but the picture sequence was left in. Mainly because I didn’t think the Swallow stuff helped anything (at all), but the picture sequence was (IMHO) a comic highlight of the three-parter. I thought it was worth keeping for the laugh…

The bus was indeed a major loss; I would like to have kept that. I was going to use that as their transition to Corrie, but went with Carbug in the end instead; it saved me having to cut out references to Starbug’s arrival on Corrie.

But yeah, the bus was one scene I definitely would have kept if I had the ability to edit around it better.

>You have proved that BtE cannot be made into a 30 minute episode, it barely fits into 70 minutes.

I’m not sure that’s entirely true as the plot is pretty much there; there’s very little missing in that specific respect. As I’ve said before, this particular story could have worked VERY well over three episodes; I’m just not convinced that the three episodes we got were the right ones.

[Mnoooah]

Not half bad, really, although I liked your opening and the ending best; when you’re having fun with it, rather than compressing it.

[Phil]

>I liked your opening and the ending best; when you?re having fun with it, rather than compressing it.

I’d like to have done more of that kind of thing (indeed I had a few ideas for them…) but figured it wasn’t worth investing TOO much time into what was basically an experiment anyway.

Regardless, thanks! And even the negative feedback is interesting; it’s been a pretty fun little exercise.

[Jo]

Guybrush Threepwood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rREKIPsDi6g

[Mnoooah]

You’re welcome. Like the laugh track experiment, now we know what it would look like. The creative bits though can stand on their own, so if you’re inclined, make them anyway. You don’t need your legs to edit, right?

[Mnoooah]

Oh my god, they’re right. You’re a fictional pirate that has somehow escaped the video game world.

[Phil]

>Guybrush Threepwood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rREKIPsDi6g

…wow.

[hummingbird]

Only watched the first part, but I think you’ve missed the point of most of part 1.

You’re taking for granted that the audience for BtE is as familar with RD as you are.
Not every viewer will be have seen the show before or will remember it well from 10 years earlier, and Part 1 serves to re-establish who these characters are. While you may think that scenes you cut are superfluous they actually serve that very important function.

The opening scenes and the tentacle/holiday scene for example: in the first scene the Rimmer/scutter and Rimmer/Lister exchanges do a great job of telling us exactly who these people are, and likewise for Kryten and Cat in the tentacle/holiday scene.

In addition, they needed to establish the set-up as a whole for an unfamiliar audience. Cutting straight to the diving bell at the beginning does nothing to explain where they are or what they’re doing, whereas retaining those first few scenes does.

[Seb Patrick]

See, what you’ve done there, is you’ve confused “editing Back to Earth down into half an hour that’s still Red Dwarf” with “turning it into Arrested Development”. An easy mistake to make, I’ll grant.

[Pete Part Three]

>You?re taking for granted that the audience for BtE is as familar with RD as you are.

Didn’t Doug do this in Part Three?

[Phil]

>Not every viewer will be have seen the show before or will remember it well from 10 years earlier, and Part 1 serves to re-establish who these characters are.

I actually agree with you on the structural desirability of those scenes…I just didn’t think the quality warranted them. The skutters and Rimmer hanging the picture were pretty lame. The tomato gag was overlong and (hey, again, IMHO) awful.

The Cat stuff had some good jokes, and was one of my favorite scenes form the weekend, but definitely needed trimming.

And honestly, I’m not sure Red Dwarf NEEDS an intro sequence for people unfamiliar. (This is a discussion in itself, though.) Very few people, comparatively, start watching the show with either The End or Psirens, but they seem to stick around and pick up the characters without any problem. If the material is good enough, the audience will want to find out about the characters and will watch more carefully. If the material isn’t good, a direct “here’s specifically how these characters are going to try to be funny” isn’t much help down the road to enjoyment.

>?turning it into Arrested Development?

It was remarkable the way the intro I uploaded a few nights ago night concealed that surprising fact, wasn’t it?

[Seb Patrick]

>It was remarkable the way the intro I uploaded a few nights ago night concealed that surprising fact, wasn?t it?

Yeah, but I thought that was a one-off gag – not the WHOLE gag. And if it was your intention to basically make an elaborate joke along the lines of “the way to make BTE half an hour of TV that I enjoy is to make it into Arrested Development”, then didn’t you ruin that by showing us the intro in advance? I mean, you’re a pretty funny guy, Phil – you must have SOME idea about comic timing, right?

[Phil]

>an elaborate joke along the lines of ?the way to make BTE half an hour of TV that I enjoy is to make it into Arrested Development?

Actually that was just my solution (successful or not) to the problems caused by editing the footage. Music would jump around, characters would snap from one position to the other. Once I realized I’d need some way of smoothing that out I figured I’d do so with narration, which led me to think I could also have some AD fun along the way. The music, obviously, became another easy fix. (If I didn’t have to for cutting reasons, I would have been happy to leave the actual music from the specials.)

It’s just a way of smoothing over those moments (again, successful or not, they’re smoother than they WOULD have been with my small amount of editing experience) and having fun with the format.

[Dave]

It’s slimmer, but not better.

[thomasaevans]

Dorksville springs instantly to mind.

[Author]

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