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

[Me Own Stunts]

I’m so sorry because I do respect the effort of trying to fix Series VIII. I’m not trying to be a cunt, but I need to be honest. I am criticising Series VIII, not KyoSo.

[Moonlight]

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.

That’s not a cut. That’s punching a hole.

Too plot relevant.

[Ben Paddon]

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

Or just cut it. It doesn’t add anything to the episode.

[flanl3]

I’m willing to defend the cat heartbeat scene only because the Hollister performance is so lovely.

[Moonlight]

It is though.

[Lilly Queen]

Yeah, actually his dance is probably my favourite part of series VIII.

[Lilly Queen]

I’ve sent you a message KyoSo. It’ll be from PlatinumSnowcat.

[Moonlight]

I’ve become good friends with Lilly, who has still not watched my edit the miserable bastard.

I’ve been working on trimming the lengthier unedited sections, and I’ve got the entire thing down to 47:01. That’s exactly 2:30 shorter than the cut I released, but it’s all material that was bogging down scenes that flow so much better without it. A line here, a few lines there. All the big, giant cuts are well out of the way.

Notably, the Kryten / Dr. McClaren scene and Cat’s medical exam have been vastly improved through cuts. I cut the second ground controller, because as pointed out it makes no sense without the first. I _tried_ to cut Lister figuring out the drugs were in the envelope (because that’s a bit of a stretch), but I forgot that it comes back after they get out of AR in a way that can’t be cut without breaking the episode.

I don’t feel like this is yet enough of an update to warrant an updated upload. I at least want to rip my VIII bonus features disc so I can source the raw CGI and deleted scenes from a better source before I go and upload it again.

Pretending like they’re setting up for the six of them stuck on Blue Midget, cramped and low on supplies like the Starbug of Series VI, almost feels like a cruel joke in light of the latter half of Series VIII. Cassandra actually feeling remotely like an episode of Red Dwarf feels like a cruel joke in light of the latter half of Series VIII.

[Rubber]

I love you KyoSo but I think you should stop doing this fanedit.

[bloodteller]

something i noticed about Kyoso’s fanedit is that the “theory of relativity” discussion is so chopped down that it literally makes no sense at all.

i get that it’s a bit of a shit joke but the scene just comes across as really disjointed and nonsensical with most of the dialogue cut out of it

[Moonlight]

i get that it’s a bit of a shit joke but the scene just comes across as really disjointed and nonsensical with most of the dialogue cut out of it

Disjointed I can see, but I don’t see how it could be called nonsensical. There’s certain situations where I err on the side of getting past the shit bits as quickly as possible even if it leaves you with a slightly awkward edit (i.e. the Blue Midget escapes).

There’s also the fact that fan edits almost inherently come across as disjointed when you know the source material very well. I have to repeatedly go over certain edits before I can get the “IT’S DIFFERENT AND THEREFORE WRONG” feeling out of my head, and actually judge how good I think the edit actually works.

This is really just one big editing experiment, and Back in the Red is almost the perfect candidate because we know for a fact that it was relentlessly padded out beyond its intended length. Most of my serious editing experience has been in abridged parodies, and that’s whole different kind of editing when you’re turning something into something else entirely. Especially with cheap animation where half a given episode is just a still frame with a mouth animated over it.

What I _really_ wish I could do is have all the rushes for a given episode and try to build my own cut out of them. Working backwards from the final product makes things insanely difficult, ESPECIALLY with the audience laughter making the simplest cuts difficult to hide.

Or, y’know, actually get to edit a brand new thing that doesn’t already have a final version stuck in my mind as how it’s “supposed” to go.

[Rubber]

I just can’t see an advantage to spending so much time and energy on scrutinising such an unrewarding episode.

[Hamish]

> I just can’t see an advantage to spending so much time and energy on scrutinising such an unrewarding episode.

Might as well stick that in the Recommendations box, because that describes half of what goes on at Ganymede & Titan there.

[International Debris]

I just can’t see an advantage to spending so much time and energy on scrutinising such an unrewarding episode.

The previous edit that was posted almost makes it an enjoyable episode. It’s still a long, long way from Red Dwarf gold, but it’s no longer embarrassing to watch.

[bloodteller]

i do like the edit but mainly because it adds in the deleted scene in the I-II bunkroom, which i really liked. the scene also has new-rimmer find the original’s diary, which actually explains why he’s suddenly telling the Captain about future echoes and backwards universes later in the episode. as far as i know, they never explain this in the episode as broadcast?

[Ben Saunders]

Lister tells him? He has access to the crew’s files and the other Rimmer’s diary? One of those is definitely stated. I think.

[Moonlight]

Lister tells him? He has access to the crew’s files and the other Rimmer’s diary? One of those is definitely stated. I think.

It’s kind of implied that Lister was feeding him the information, I think, but Rimmer discovering and exploiting the diaries himself is a lot more satisfying and in-character. It’s almost surprising how much more like himself he feels in Back in the Red than the rest of VIII.

I just can’t see an advantage to spending so much time and energy on scrutinising such an unrewarding episode.

The advantage is that I come out the other end with more editing experience in an area I haven’t had particular focus on. The other advantage in studying something that doesn’t work is to fully understand why it doesn’t work, and apply those lessons to your own writing.

As a writer who has historically had a bad habit of overwriting excessively lengthy dialogue scenes that didn’t move the plot forward (which I specifically picked up during my phase of youth where VII and VIII were my most-watched series), I find it relevant to spend time scrutinizing something bloated and trying to reduce that bloat as much as possible.

I did the same kind of edit with a behemoth YouTube parody I made years back that ran just short of 30 minutes in its original, glacially-paced form. After cutting it down this year just to see how it would turn out, I got it down to 12 minutes without losing anything important. Disappointingly, that best material I’d boiled it down to was still lackluster compared to the stuff I’d made the _previous_ year.

But it was still cathartic to take a failure I’d poured my heart and soul into and render it somewhat watchable.

The TL;DR is that I’m doing this out of an interest in editing far more than I am doing it to try to make a halfway decent version of Back in the Red. That’s just a pleasant side effect.

[Author]

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