Not Another Back in the Red Fanedit

[Moonlight]

I fucking love video editing and tackling Back in the Red seemed like it’d be a fun challenge. I have the opening Starbug scene here, WIP of course, changelog in the video description. It’s about 6 and a half minutes cut down to 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

I’m not even going to try to embed a video:

Among other things, I’m reinstating some early deleted versions of a few scenes. This includes the Rimmer/Lister virus scene in the Series I bunkroom. I have edited the dialogue so Lister does NOT imply he was going to roofie Kochanski, and overall I think the more subtle early versions of this and the captain’s office scene without the salute feel much more like Dwarf than the final versions.

See in you in eight years when I make more progress.

Topic

[Moonlight]

Just for the record, here’s the complete changelog of the entire project so far:

Cut – Entire opening prison scene. 5 minutes approx right off the bat. There’s really no reason for this to be here except to show off to that they’re doing Rimmer/Lister bunkroom scenes again. It’s not any good and it gets in the way.

Cut – Compressed the opening shots of Starbug approaching Red Dwarf.

Cut – Unnecessary Holly fluff. Contributes nothing and isn’t funny enough to justify interrupting what is supposed to be a fast, exciting scene.

Cut – “Brown Alert”. We’ve seen similar, better jokes in the past.

Cut – Cat saying he doesn’t always get through stop signs in one sitting. Hahahahahah. Get it? Because he’s literally retarded now.

Cut – Unnecessary extra joke simile from Kryten about how long they’ve got left because they literally just had one in the previous line, and it was a lot better.

Cut – Kryten line about Kochanski having a teddy bear and “hurdling towards 30”. As if we could believe any of these people are under 30.

Change – Matched Holly’s motion to the shaking of the monitor on his one funny line so they’re not constantly moving in different different directions.

Cut – The following 30 seconds of scene-slowing unnecessary Holly lines.

Cut – The entire rat segment. Red Dwarf isn’t a cartoon, let’s not.

Comment – “Red Dwarf isn’t a cartoon, let’s not” is probably going to show up a lot in this changelog.

Cut – Cat doesn’t know you need engines to fly. One could argue this isn’t really unreasonable for him, but it that still wouldn’t make it funny.

Cut – The shot of Starbug’s front segment grinding across the hangar bay in a completely stationary position without tumbling. That always bothered me.

Comment – Man, that whole sequence feels really nice and tight now. I can actually buy the sense of urgency it’s supposed to have. I like it.

Cut – Removed short segment added in the Extended where Lister is annoyed that he can’t snog an unconscious woman without her consent. They immediately bail Starbug now like in the broadcast version.

Comment – We’re pretty much exactly 3 minutes in as they first meet the crew, opening montage included. That’s 11 and a half minutes into the extended version. Even though most of it is the prison scene, we’ve cut almost 3/4ths of the opening third of the episode and you’d never miss it. Expect the major cuts to slow for a while and then get common again when we hit the material from BtR Part 3.

Cut – Both pointless additions to the missing persons board joke. It was funny, don’t oversell it.

Change – The extremely pantomime megasalute is gone, as I have replaced the entire captain’s office scene with the first version shot. It feels so much more like Red Dwarf.

Change – Swapped in the deleted version of Rimmer and Lister’s scene with the positive viruses leading to Lister’s escape shot in the Series I bunkroom. Graded shot-by-shot, because if Series I was shot in black and white this scene was shot in sepia. Stars greenscreened in. Green reflection on door removed.

Cut – The second prison sequence. It does nothing but get in the way of the story.

Cut – Edited Lister’s line to end after “It is morally inexcusable to use a sexual magnetism virus” instead going on to say he was planning to use it on Kochanski next time she got drunk. I’d like the minimize the unfortunate implications of characters using a virus that forces people to uncontrollably want to have sex with you.

Cut – Lister and Kochanski in the elevator. See previous entry.

Cut – Data Doctor.

Cut – “The Dibbley family!” Please don’t.

Change – Fixed the greenscreened stars behind Hollister to actually track with the small camera movement.

Cut – “Computer programmers!”

Cut – Rimmer smashing his testicals with a hammer. Red Dwarf isn’t a cartoon, so let’s not.

Cut – The Resovoir Dogs parody, which includes the deeply painful moment where two skutters dress as Dwayne Dibbely.

Cut – The Blue Midget dance. Red Dwarf isn’t a cartoon, so let’s not. It is an awkward cut, but it’s far less awkward than Cat leading spaceships in a dance routine.

Cut – The claymation sequence. Red Dwarf actually is a cartoon here.

Cut – Most of the deeply tedious Theory of Relativity routine. I would have cut all of it, but it segways into an important bit.

Change – Undid that stupid stretched head on non-senile Holly.

[srmcd1]

I usually just cut the entire air duct sequence myself, but excellent work tightening up everything.

[Pete Part Three]

I just don’t watch it.

[Moonlight]

>I just don’t watch it.

I’ll have way more fun chopping bits out than I ever will watching what I leave in.

[Slainmonkey]

The best version was if you edited it down into non-existence, along with the rest of series VIII!

[Phobos And Deimos]

What’s wrong with Series VIII?

[Moonlight]

I am continuing this project. I’ve actually whipped up a full cut. There’s more to be done, but it’s basically got all the most major changes.

I might upload it to DailyMotion, if they’ll let me. I’m interested in what people think.

[bloodteller]

ooh, now this sounds really quite interesting

[Moonlight]

10-23-17 Cut (49:31)

Full changelog:

Cut – Entire opening prison scene. 5 minutes approx right off the bat. There’s really no reason for this to be here except to show off to that they’re doing Rimmer/Lister bunkroom scenes again. It doesn’t warrant the amount of time spent on it.

Cut – Compressed the opening shots of Starbug approaching Red Dwarf.

Cut – Unnecessary Holly fluff. Contributes nothing and isn’t funny enough to justify interrupting what is supposed to be a fast, exciting scene.

Cut – “Brown Alert”. We’ve seen similar, better jokes in the past.

Cut – Cat saying he doesn’t always get through stop signs in one sitting. Hahahahahah. Get it? Because he’s literally retarded now.

Cut – Unnecessary extra joke simile from Kryten about how long they’ve got left because they literally just had one in the previous line, and it was a lot better.

Cut – Kryten line about Kochanski having a teddy bear and “hurdling towards 30”. As if we could believe any of these people are under 30.

Change – Matched Holly’s motion to the shaking of the monitor on his one funny line so they’re not constantly moving in different different directions.

Cut – The following 30 seconds of scene-slowing unnecessary Holly lines.

Cut – The entire rat segment. Red Dwarf isn’t a cartoon, let’s not.

Comment – “Red Dwarf isn’t a cartoon, let’s not” is probably going to show up a lot in this changelog.

Cut – Cat doesn’t know you need engines to fly. One could argue this isn’t really unreasonable for him, but it that still wouldn’t make it funny.

Cut – The shot of Starbug’s front segment grinding across the hangar bay in a completely stationary position without tumbling. That always bothered me.

Comment – Man, that whole sequence feels really nice and tight now. I can actually buy the sense of urgency it’s supposed to have. I like it.

Cut – Removed short segment added in the Extended where Lister is annoyed that he can’t snog an unconscious woman without her consent. They immediately bail Starbug now like in the broadcast version.

Comment – We’re pretty much exactly 3 minutes in as they first meet the crew, opening montage included. That’s 11 and a half minutes into the extended version. Even though most of it is the prison scene, we’ve cut almost 3/4ths of the opening third of the episode and you’d never miss it. Expect the major cuts to slow for a while and then get common again when we hit the material from BtR Part 3.

Comment – I don’t particularly like the overly cartoonish joke about The Cat having a “cool” heartbeat, but I feel we need to see where he ended up after they were arrested.

Cut – Both pointless additions to the missing persons board joke. It was funny, don’t oversell it.

Cut – Lister only drinks the window cleaner. That was funny. Leave it at that.

Cut – Rimmer travels to Starbug and discovers the sexual magnetism and luck viruses. This is now covered in a future scene. Unfortunately this means we have to lose “The world loves a bastard!”, but episode flows a lot better this way.

Change – Added an exterior shot of Red Dwarf, which marks that we are now onto Part 2.

Change – The extremely pantomime megasalute is gone, as I have replaced the entire captain’s office scene with the first version shot. The performances are far more restrained and subtle, and as such it feels so much more like Red Dwarf. Additional sound effects to be added in a future cut.

Cut – Cat doesn’t keep going on abpout the tap-dancing. It was funny, you don’t need to oversell the gag.

Change – Swapped in the deleted version of Rimmer and Lister’s scene with the positive viruses leading to Lister’s escape shot in the Series I bunkroom. Color graded shot-by-shot, because the picture was extremely brownish. Stars greenscreened in. Green reflection on door removed. Additional sound effects to be added in a future cut.

Cut – Edited Lister’s line to end after “It is morally inexcusable to use a sexual magnetism virus” instead going on to say he was planning to use it on Kochanski next time she got drunk. I’d like the minimize the general rapeyness of the sexual magnetism virus in my fan edit as much as possible.

Cut – The second prison sequence. In a single cohesive cut of Back in the Red, there is no reason to have this. Cutting forward to Rimmer and Lister in prison comes across as totally unecessary in meda res addition to an already complicated plot.

Cut – Lister and Kochanski in the elevator in a further attempt to minimize the general rapeyness that pervades Part 2.

Change – Added an exterior shot of Red Dwarf to disguise the edit.

Cut – Data Doctor.

Cut – “The Dibbley family!” Please don’t.

Change – Fixed the greenscreened stars behind Hollister to actually track with the small camera movement.

Cut – “Computer programmers!”

Cut – Rimmer smashing his testicals with a hammer. Regardless of how numb his dick was, his trousers should be splattered with blood and semen after that move.

Cut – The Resovoir Dogs parody, which includes the deeply painful moment where two skutters dress as Dwayne Dibbely. Fucking don’t.

Cut – The Blue Midget dance. Red Dwarf isn’t a cartoon, so let’s not.

Cut – The claymation sequence. Red Dwarf actually is a cartoon here, but let’s just lose it for the sake of brevity. It makes more sense to just jump to exiting AR.

Cut – Lister telling Cat to just “do another smegging dance”, because obviously the Blue Midget dance was a completely impossible fantasy that could never literally happen. Right? We’re not seriously suggesting that in the world of Series VIII the Blue Midget dance could actually physically happen in real life, explaining why nobody questioned it despite questioning much less unrealistic things? Right? Right…?

Cut – Blue Midget’s arm-flapping run. I just don’t like Blue Midget being a goofy walker. There’s no reason for a dingy old mining ship’s shuttlecraft to have legs.

Cut – Most of the deeply tedious Theory of Relativity routine. I really would have preferred to cut this whole section, especially Kryten’s whining about fabric-softener, but it segways into some important plot-relevant stuff so I can’t.

Cut – Lister and Holly overselling the Master of Ceremonies gag.

Cut – “If I’m so stupid, explain this.” Not a bad joke, but basically identical to the “Go on, have a guess” routine from Series II. Cut for brevity.

Comment – I tried to undo that stupid stretched head on non-senile Holly, but it proved difficult.

Cut – The final scene introducing The Tank, because I’m sorry, I really just don’t like the idea of Rimmer being gang-raped as a punchline. Instead we go out to credits on Holly’s punchline “I’ve buggered this up a bit, haven’t I?”

Change – Swapped in the alternate Series III version of the closing theme. I just like it better.

[Ben Saunders]

>Taking out rat arsed
>Using the interior version of the theme
Unforgivable

[Pete Part Three]

>Cut – Kryten line about Kochanski having a teddy bear and “hurdling towards 30”. As if we could believe any of these people are under 30.

Chloë Annett was 27 when Red Dwarf VIII aired.

[Ben Saunders]

The fun thing about a fan edit, is it’s a fan edit, not a fan(s) edit, and consequently, since nobody can agree on everything, if every fan made their own edit you’d end up with about 700 different edits floating around the ‘net. Also, removing the rapiness of the sexual magnetism virus is impossible, given what it is. Even as a child reading Harry Potter, the idea of love potions/sexual magnetism viruses always felt a bit questionable to me. If you use a love potion, you’re robbing a sentient organism of its free will and using them to fulfill your dubious desires. How do they feel after the fact, do they remember? Doubly problematic is the sexual magnetism virus, which is like a love potion on steroids, the sci-fi equivalent of rohypnol.

I feel if you explored the morality of such potions/viruses, that could make for an interesting story. Despite all this, though, I still chuckle at a few of the sexual magnetism scenes, because it’s broad comedy, not real life. If they happened in real life it would be a whole other story. Red Dwarf is obviously better when it isn’t broad comedy, though, so obviously I’d prefer if these were replaced with more cleverly written jokes.

[bloodteller]

>Cut – The final scene introducing The Tank, because I’m sorry, I really just don’t like the idea of Rimmer being gang-raped as a punchline. Instead we go out to credits on Holly’s punchline “I’ve buggered this up a bit, haven’t I?”

honestly, “I’ve buggered this up a bit, haven’t I?” is a much funnier closing line. i actually laughed at it when watching the fanedit

[Ian Symes]

Also, removing the rapiness of the sexual magnetism virus is impossible, given what it is. Even as a child reading Harry Potter, the idea of love potions/sexual magnetism viruses always felt a bit questionable to me. If you use a love potion, you’re robbing a sentient organism of its free will and using them to fulfill your dubious desires. How do they feel after the fact, do they remember? Doubly problematic is the sexual magnetism virus, which is like a love potion on steroids, the sci-fi equivalent of rohypnol.

This is a line of thought that was not followed by the writers of Torchwood, in which the team used a combination of memory pills and sexual magnetism sprays to date-rape their way around Cardiff.

[International Debris]

It’s a good job Torchwood’s head writer hasn’t given himself the precarious task of writing a female Doctor for the first time… oh

Anyway

On the whole I liked that a lot. The general pacing of the plot was excellent, although I still felt a few of the scenes dragged a bit. The only bit I didn’t think worked at all was Reality Sucks, which makes no sense without the context of the Blue Midget dance scene (although gave me an opportunity to enjoy “Come back Mr. Sucks!” for the first time in ages). This edited version also manages to keep Cat pretty much consistent with his mid-era character, which is good. He has some pretty good lines in BitR (“Why do we care? Nothing makes any sense no matter where we are.” caught me by surprise in how well Danny delivers it).

And yes, Holly’s “buggered it up” line ends the episode brilliantly.

[MANI506]

If I ever show my wife series VIII this is the version I’ll show her. Thank you!

[cwickham]

Should Torchwood have continued after VI seconds? No.

[pfm]

There are some fucking great episodes of Torchwood! Most of them not written by Chris Chibnall!!! :D For the millionth time *yay* (not) for him taking over!!!! *YAY*….*sighathon*

[pfm]

This VIII material is a lot better than what we’ve had to put up with the past 3 weeks……:o I especially lik the edited opening sequence there. :D

[Moonlight]

The general pacing of the plot was excellent, although I still felt a few of the scenes dragged a bit.

Thank <3

This is essentially a rough cut to show off the general feel of how it’ll run, with all the major changes in place. Most of the hardcore editing is centered in the first few minutes with trimming down the Starbug scene. I still plan to go in and trim down bits and pieces, but for this cut I was focused on getting all the really important things in place so I’d have something show.

Some of the rougher edits are ones I can work to improve – particularly the cuts to establishing ship shots – while others are a consequence of the way the source episode is edited. Music and audience laughter, particularly when they bleed over between scenes, can really fuck with your ability to excise things without leaving evidence. One of my main considerations was making sure there were no jarring audio jumps between cuts, even if the cut itself was obvious. I have a very strong focus on sound design in my video work, so I had enough practice to get that part down.

The main thing I need to do is source the deleted scenes and raw FX shots off my own DVD rip rather than using one I downloaded. I either haven’t ripped Disc 3 or haven’t converted my rip of it, but the source for the episode in general is my DVD rip.

I can also hunt through the deleted scenes for any additional things I might be able to swap in or out, but I’m thinking those two major scenes I substituted in are probably going to be the extent of that.

The only bit I didn’t think worked at all was Reality Sucks, which makes no sense without the context of the Blue Midget dance scene

I can’t remember if I kept that for pacing reasons or just didn’t think to excise it.

Chloë Annett was 27 when Red Dwarf VIII aired.

My fault for thinking of the ages of the main four. But that wasn’t my reasoning for cutting the line, it was just ill-advised changelog snark.

If I ever show my wife series VIII this is the version I’ll show her. Thank you!

My main motivation for picking this back up is because I’m watching through Red Dwarf with a friend who’s never seen it. Even though I could arguably skip from VII to Back to Earth with frankly less jarring of a journey, I felt like they ought to at least see some of Series VIII because there’s still plenty of good stuff hiding in there. The problem is I’d be _embarrassed_ to sit through the full uncut episodes. Really I just want to make sure he has enough frame of reference to appreciate that joke “The Beginning”.

What the fuck do I do when we get to Timewave?

[International Debris]

Apologise in advance. A lot.

[Moonlight]

If it weren’t for the huge disparity between the look of the models and VIII’s CG, I would swap in original model shots of Red Dwarf. I could even use the Starbug approach from Series V for the opening shot.

If I wanted to really put in my time I’d take Series XI’s raw model shots and composite my own Starbug approach. And I would absolutely give it a go just for the hell of it if I had any capability of ripping a Blu-Ray. Even if I could find a copy of the raw model shots online, if I’m going to be doing bluescreen compositing I absolutely want the sharpest image quality possible.

The only reason those greenscreen window shots I did with the inferior quality deleted scenes worked is because they were extremely brief, but don’t pause while Rimmer passes that window. Soft edges are a compositor’s arch-nemesis, and they definitely show here. Yet even for that quality of result I had to do some cleaning with garbage mattes.

[International Debris]

Re: VIII, have you considered doing the rest of the series? I remember someone here doing a 60 minute cut of the whole series, and although it was probably a BIT too tight, it almost worked. I think with a few structural changes you’d be able to get Pete & Only the Good down to a single story like these. For all their (many) problems, I think Cassandra and Krytie TV do work as individual stories with structure and all.

[Moonlight]

My issue with doing other VIII episodes is that I have serious creative issues with storytelling and characterization that extend far beyond what a simple trim could do.

For example, in a Krytie TV edit I’d first and foremost want to rewrite the entire story to be centered around Rimmer sucking up to the Ackerman and becoming the prison snitch in exchange for privileges.

If anything, this edit has shown me how much better the storytelling in Back in the Red really is compared to the rest of Series VIII. It’s nothing great compared to Red Dwarf in general, but compared to the likes of Pete and Only the Good? Oh yeah. The mountains and mountains of padding drag it down beyond all belief, but cut down to its intended length it’s actually a pretty good episode. For VIII.

A VIII: The Movie edit however could potentially work, although the main challenge would be structuring it to actually flow as a single entity. But then, maybe a disjointed, unfocused narrative cycling through random ideas and quickly moving on without adequately exploring them might just be the perfect distilled version of Series VIII.

[Hamish]

> ill-advised changelog snark

Name of your autobiography, there.

[International Debris]

The mountains and mountains of padding drag it down beyond all belief, but cut down to its intended length it’s actually a pretty good episode. For VIII.

Yes, fair. It has a clear beginning, middle and end. I’m trying to work out if you could cut out most of the Captain’s Office bollocks and actually make Pete mostly about the time wand and dinosaur. I suppose it’d still be a fucking mess, comedically, so maybe not worth doing anyway.

[Ben Saunders]

The Time Wand scene would be SO much better (or less shite) if they’d done it with clever editing, rather than having the actors do it – it’s quite a hard thing to do, and even then they did it incredibly poorly. I get the appeal of wanting to do it in front of the audience to get genuine laughs/not just have them watch the entire episode as VT, but I feel they should have done it on the night AND as a pre-record, as I think they did some scenes that way for XI and/or XII.

[(deleted)]

It could actually be fixed with some post-production – just manually freeze with cut-out masks, and snap cut or fade/morph back into the live action.

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah, it’s similar to the White Hole “what is it?” scene, in that (I think, purely inferred from having watched it with the DVD commentary on) they filmed it all the way through with the actors delivering all the lines on the audience night, and then edited it so that they really were just repeating clips from earlier whenever lines were spoken again. Either that, or Craig Charles’ multiple deliveries of “spewing time back into the universe” are uncannily accurate to one another and the man deserves an Emmy

[bloodteller]

>The Time Wand scene would be SO much better (or less shite) if they’d done it with clever editing, rather than having the actors do it – it’s quite a hard thing to do, and even then they did it incredibly poorly. I get the appeal of wanting to do it in front of the audience to get genuine laughs/not just have them watch the entire episode as VT, but I feel they should have done it on the night AND as a pre-record, as I think they did some scenes that way for XI and/or XII.

the Time Wand in general would’ve been so much better if they’d done interesting things with it, instead of just “it can turns birds into dinosaurs and humans into apes”. the only clever thing really done with the idea is the delayed fight scene.

[International Debris]

It can really scrooOoOOoooOooh you up.

[bloodteller]

it’s bizarre how the timewand, a machine that’s established as being able to alter timestreams and freeze people and speed up events and stuff, later on in the episode is turned into a machine that just sort of reverses the process of evolution

[Ben Saunders]

The delayed fight was funny, I would say.

But then I would say that, wouldn’t I.

[flanl3]

There were a lot of funny things which would have been better if they were there for more purpose than just to be there.

Has anybody ever asked why Hollister is spending so much time worrying about the prison when he’s got the whole rest of the ship to run?

[Lilly Queen]

Hey KyoSo, I’m a fellow lover of video editing and Red Dwarf fanedits. Missed this thread last year for some reason. Haven’t had a chance yet to look at your edits but I’m intrigued. I also did an edit of Back in the Red last year for a friend who was watching for the first time. Needless to say, he was still fairly unimpressed. God knows what he would have thought if I’d shown him the original.

I’d like to help you out with your bluray ripping problems. I know how important it is to have footage in the highest quality possible. What would be the best way to get in contact with you privately so we can talk about this?

This is your youtube account, right? Could I send you a message there?
https://www.youtube.com/user/Smegerama

[Moonlight]

Absolutely.

[International Debris]

The delayed fight was funny, I would say.

The delayed fight was great. Excellent Dwarf concept, and one of the few times in VIII that a broad performance is actually beneficial to the joke.

[bloodteller]

yeah, the delayed fight scene was pretty good. shame there wasn’t more stuff like that in Pete.

[Ben Saunders]

Was Pete the episode where all their clothes got eaten, or was that Only The Good? Either way, I found that pretty funny as well.

[bloodteller]

Pete was the episode where all their clothes got eaten by a virus, Only The Good was the episode where the ship (and presumably the prisoners) got eaten by a virus

[International Debris]

Clothes getting eaten could have been good if it had been set up well and didn’t have that hideous music soundtracking it.
Also, giving Hollister the same virus could have worked had Rimmer shook his hand at the end of every office scene. As it is, it’s so tediously laboured it kills it.

[flanl3]

What if the chameleonic microbe didn’t attack the ship, but instead some of the programmable viruses getting a tad glitchy, or even the nanobots thinking they’ve not done a good enough job so redoing their work?

[Me Own Stunts]

“The Time Wand scene would be SO much better (or less shite) if they’d done it with clever editing, rather than having the actors do it”

This is like trying to pluck the dog shit from a vast dog shit that has had a thin layer of icing sugar sprinkled on top.

If you love icing sugar so much just have some icing sugar. That’s what I say.

[bloodteller]

wait a minute, isn’t Pete Part 2 just a slightly more shit version of the Super Mario Brothers Movie?

[bloodteller]

(i mean by the fact that they have very similar plotlines and ideas, not by that they both have dodgy acting and are widely regarded as awful)

[Me Own Stunts]

“Comment – I don’t particularly like the overly cartoonish joke about The Cat having a “cool” heartbeat, but I feel we need to see where he ended up after they were arrested.”

Solution: Cut the scene after “Those are his nipples, Frank”. Narratively, no more is needed than that.

[Me Own Stunts]

If I was editing this, I would be removing more instances of screws going deep into the ground.

[bloodteller]

>Solution: Cut the scene after “Those are his nipples, Frank”. Narratively, no more is needed than that.

but then the scene would be incredibly short and feel rather pointless.

[Me Own Stunts]

“but then the scene would be incredibly short and feel rather pointless.”

It’s a pointless scene already. May as well get it over with, no?

I’ve just sat through Kryten re-corrupting his files through the profundity of ambivalence again, so I’m not in the most generous of moods. That needs to be cut as well.

[Me Own Stunts]

(It’s almost as if Series VIII has no comedic or narrative worth whatsoever.)

[Author]

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