Five Doctors and Awakening HD Versions

Now available to download on my vimeo site these are the final HD versions of Five Doctors and Awakening Short Form edits.

You can find my reasonings behind the Awakening edit in my previous article.

If you have any comments or feedback on either of these please do respond to this article!

I have started work on two further stories -

• Three Doctors - but it's annoying the hell out of me
• Warriors of the Deep - this is going well and about a quarter of my way through!

Will be sure to update when there's more news to be had! :)

Doctor Who Missing Episodes

Ok, so I wouldn't normally report news as there's lots of other places where such things are more than capably reported but this morning's breaking news is kind of relevant as the discovery of lost episodes provides more opportunity for those thinking of editing classic Who!

So, what's happened? Well the BBC news story covers quite a bit about the finding of Enemy of the World and all but one of Web of Fear!

But what about the finders? It is our understanding that Television International Enterprises Archives (TIEA) provides an archiving service to broadcasters. They dedicates a lot of time and resources in this effort and as a result I do not knock them for seeing a good business opportunity and pursuing it.

• TIEA discovered a number of missing Doctor Who episodes a little while ago along with a whole load of other "lost" TV programmes. Since then TIEA have been assessing and logging the finds to make these available again to broadcasters as appropriate. 
• When recently deceased Patrick Moore stated he wanted to see an Arthur C. Clarke interview he did on an episode of Sky of Night, TIEA kindly made this available to him.

Today's news may well mean that there's more Doctor Who out there. I am firmly of the belief that it is all out there, albeit private, undiscovered or under assessment.

I for one fully support and respect the endeavours of TIEA and wish them every success.

Awakening Short Form - UPDATED Final Edit (Probably)

Ok, so now available is the (probably) final version of my Awakening edit, now including the new titles.

You will be able to access and download it on my vimeo page or view it in the player below.

To give a brief overview of the edit of The Awakening and the decisions taken:

As this was only two 25 minute episodes we were editing down from 50 minutes. As a result it was less about restructuring the story and more about trying to move the action along a little more quickly through better editing

• First type of change - scene length reduction. A good example of where the overall scene has been reduced is at the start - the original story had some great ideas for dramatic effect at the beginning but Jane's searching for Ben is just too slow. By retaining the playing of these scenes between those of the arriving riders and some judicious editing I think we achieve a better intro.
• Second type of change - straight scene splits. In some cases we have taken some lengthier scenes and spliced them between the action of other scenes. The overall benefit of this is to take the action forward in a more pacey manner, making for a better overall story. It is worth noting that as I worked through The Awakening I noticed that within the story we already move on quite quickly from one scene to the next - for example when the Doctor and team are "arrested" outside the church they arrive over at the house pretty quickly. Where possible I have tried to address issues like this but in some cases this was unavoidable.
• Third type of change - lengthened scene splits. A good example of this is when the TARDIS is first landing. When splitting this scene for dramatic effect, there's actually a good couple of seconds that appear in both scenes ... which works quite well!
• Fourth type of change - darker interpretation. One thing I did try to do throughout was to make the protagonists seem darker. As a result I have taken some of their nicer banter out to make them more menacing.

Much of the action towards the end of the piece has been retained as it was as the pacing is pretty good. However I did have to make one edit I didn't like to use my closing titles as unfortunately Davison's words are lost into the end credit howl of the original. As a result we cut the end of the programme with Will's comment on tea sounding pretty awful. Not ideal but unavoidable with the technology available to me.



As always feedback much appreciated!

Cheers

Adam

Five Doctors Short Form - UPDATED Final Edit (Probably)

Ok, so posted up tonight is the (probably) final version of my Five Doctors edit, now including the new titles.

You can access and download it on my vimeo page or view it in the player below.

As mentioned previously I'm not going to get into the decisions taken on this edit here as I'd much rather you gave it a look and then let me know what you think! :)



As always feedback much appreciated!

Cheers

Adam

Short Form Titles Sequence

As you may or may not guess one of the challenges of creating these short form versions of classic Who is that introductory sections end up with "part one" and such at the beginning, meaning that you have to cut the into sequence short ... and it also makes for a lot of hassle when different fonts have been used throughout the tv series

So I have two choices ... either live with it and spend a lot of time trying to find/match fonts etc or create my own version title sequence. Sadly I am again in the world of primitive technology so I've made a fair stab at creating a generic Short Form intro and exit sequence. The idea is to take the original sequence, add some fx to it and deploy ... you can find these sequences on my vimeo page or view below



I know they aren't amazing but they are simple and I hope that simple means good! ;)

Awakening "Short Form" Feedback

Here's the place for you to provide feedback on the short form edits of The Awakening!

You can find the latest versions at https://vimeo.com/agentpurple. As you need to sign in there to provide feedback, you can provide any comments or queries here instead!

So what have I done with The Awakening? After working on the first edits of Five Doctors I wanted to turn my attention to something which should be a little easier. The Awakening was only a 2 part story so we were starting out from a total of around 50 minutes of material. As a result my main focus was to try and make the one episode pacier and as a result have ended up producing something which comes in at just over 40 minutes. 

Much of the editing was led by removing some lingering shots as well as splicing some of the scenes to keep the action flowing. It's not the best story on the planet but to be fair I did find myself developing some affection for it as I went along ... albeit with some pretty rubbish characters!! I will also note that as I got to the end the last 10 minutes are pretty good and pacey so did not see a lot of editing!

Please note that I have simply edited the material and have not re-mixed the music soundtrack or played around with special effects.

All feedback very welcome but please do be constructive :)

Five Doctors "Short Form" Feedback

Would welcome any feedback on the short form edits of Five Doctors, so here's the place to do it! You can find the latest versions at https://vimeo.com/agentpurple

I have also added a full 1hr version which you are probably better to download rather than trying to stream.

As you need to sign in there to provide feedback I'd be very grateful if you can provide any comments here instead!

As mentioned previously the purpose of this edit is to try to recreate this classic serial as a one hour special. Also please note that I have simply edited the material and have not re-mixed the music soundtrack or played around with special effects.

A few people have asked me to provide some information on what I have done with the edit, however I'd rather ask you to view this version without my summary bringing to your attention what I have removed. What I will say is that top priority in my mind was that the story flowed and made sense. When you take that view, some well loved scenes are bound to be sacrificed I'm afraid!

All feedback very welcome but please do be constructive :)

Cheers

Adam