M: Energy's re-cut ending of The Golden Compass

[Energy]

And now Variety is saying New Line cut about thirty minutes from the movie. Now, Weitz has said that a full, completed cut could run two and a half hours, so by my count there's twenty minutes unaccounted for here. I guess that it's those twenty minutes that could eat the $15-17m, given that the ending seems to have been pretty much finished. Incidentally, I doubt that the ending would take more than twenty minutes itself, so maybe New Line had pretty much finished another ten minutes or so of scenes they then cut, thus arriving at Variety's thirty minutes figure?

I still don't see how the minimum of twenty minutes of presumably dialogue-heavy scenes could possibly cost more than $10m to finish. Maybe Weitz was talking in theatrical terms, and a blu-ray completion could run far less.

In any case, the badmouthing continues, and even with the bajillions New Moon is making Weitz, a director's cut seems further off than ever.

There's a lot of scenes that could require special effects and tweaks, and 30 minutes in my opinion is about right... this is not a wish list I can find evidence of all these scenes, clips images, behind the scenes - I've also restored some of the scenes

All of these scenes are confirmed to exist you could see how 30 mins would fill up quick:
* The alternate intro would build up slower (cat walking between worlds)
* Lyra exploring the retiring room more
* Extra dialogue in the retiring room (Lord Asriel talking with the master infront of the scholars and then stating * some more of his intent up in the north *possibly grumans's head but that's unconfirmed*)
* Mrs Coultler's dining room scene is longer with Lyra talking about her parents etc...
* The master having a longer conversation with the other scholar as the lyra's airship leaves, with more tension as a magesterium army breaks into the college and captures the master
* Montage of lyra in london would not be a montage any more! (yay) including footage of the first attempt at reading the alethiometer and her managing it!
* Lyra on the gyptian boat reading the alethiometer and finding out about the gyptian spy
* The arrival of the dying gyptian spy (the images of this scene look quite cool), leading into the spyfly
* Gyptian spy dies so lyra comes up on to deck to then be greeted by serfina
* Serfina's scene would be extened including the arrival of corham cmoing up deck only to start crying as he can smell Serfina's there, he goes below deck again and serfina is visibly shaken
* Extended talk scene inside the magestrium, this scene is currently only a 3rd the length that it should be

my mind is going sketchy on details now but once up in the north
* Extended camp sequences of lyra looking at the gyptian's camp
* Ma Costa finding billy is cut down, Billy does not know who she is, but they cut this out as it was too upsetting...
* Kids escaping bolvangar is longer and more scenes with the rest of the kids escaping
* The end of the battle with tatar guards is shorter, there's scenes of lyra returning the kids to familes etc
* Also at the end Serfina and Coram meet up - this time they talk, 'I will protect her' promises serfina as she flies off and joins the ballon
* Ballon and storm scene, lyra falls, and then is captured by the bears
* Possibly a flash back scene with iorek losing his rightful place

* After battle with bears, lyra talks to iorek and they go find lord asriel
* All the meeting lord asriel, capture of roger etc
* As lyra gets to the ice bridge there is a long scene where iorek says goodbye to lyra
* Then the actual ending...

The ending in itself is probably around 15 minutes in full - my edit pieces together a total of close to 10 and there are gaps in. I am still working on making an extended version of the film, restoring a few of these scenes, I showed what I'd done to a friend recently and she got very excited. Wish I could share it all with you guys!

But yeah I can see why it'd cost 15 million and I could see it being slightly longer than 30 mins extra. Then again the removal of lord asriels capture scene would knock a few minutes off.... this film could be amazing though...

[sfsraffie]

Awesome post; nice to finally see a list of confirmed cuts. Thank you!

But I still don't see completing blu-ray effects going anywhere north of $10m.

[Philharmonic]

the lyra falling scene, by the way, had nothing to do with cliff ghasts. always wanted to see what they look like. (i imagined them as looking a bit like the battle section of the USS Enterprise - ask alexSP for details)

and i dont think thered be a flashback scene, that was just in that rubbish game they made.

[Energy]

the lyra falling scene, by the way, had nothing to do with cliff ghasts. always wanted to see what they look like. (i imagined them as looking a bit like the battle section of the USS Enterprise - ask alexSP for details)

and i dont think thered be a flashback scene, that was just in that rubbish game they made.

I've restored most of the falling scene, an early version is sitting on my youtube account (I still plan to upload the new one at some point when I feel it's finished). And yeah no Cliff Ghasts... At the moment Lyra just falls out of the balloon from being buffetted by the storm, a bit weird really.

If my CG skills were up to date I'd make some that come in the storm and start attacking the ship... knock lyra out and chase her as she falls. Maybe then an external shot of the ballon with gun shots from scrosby or something like that. That's taking it out of the realms of using official footage though...

As for the flashback scene - I have a few theories that say otherwise. I haven't played through the game in full and no real intention to, so these theories are not linked to them. Philip Pullman himself said that his favourite scene was the meeting of young Coram & Serifin, in the Alethiometer sequences I think you see the barest of glimpses of this. My feeling is that after each alethiometer reading there was originally intended to be a flashback sequence. The alethiometer shots with the dust effects were some of the last things to be redone when the theatrical edit was made.

This would make sense as I have a few shots of bears that have no real link to the film from what I can tell. So the flashback may have existed in the film and not just been some game level (which until today I didn't know existed!). Unfortunatly these flashbacks, if they do exist, I have hardly any information on.

Awesome post; nice to finally see a list of confirmed cuts. Thank you!

But I still don't see completing blu-ray effects going anywhere north of $10m.

Thanks, don't see that as a full list, it's just most the scenes that I have come across in my research for my edit. As said though I can prove nearly all of them exist. I'm sure there are probably more and I'm sure I've forgotten a few! lol.

You miss one important aspect... daemons are very expensive to produce. That's why this film was so expensive in the first place... Also another special effects company got invovoled towards the end and did a few effects for the theatrical version and changed what had already been done. Some scenes such as the rescuing of the children were not as 'epic', but when it became the climax things needed to be changed... so a lot more people were in that scene etc... A team of animators and effects guys, someone to edit the film, was the score ever completed? , ADR , promotion... $15 million easy.

Then again they did do test showing with workprints... so worst they could do is release one of those like bladerunner did!

[TheRealNeo]

this is not a wish list I can find evidence of all these scenes, clips images, behind the scenes - I've also restored some of the scenes

Could you show us these evidences.

And when will we get to see more from your cut?

[Energy]

Could you show us these evidences.

And when will we get to see more from your cut?

I can't easily put all my research up on this forum, although I plan to put up a website with a lot of the lost scene evidence when I get close to the end of my cut. That will list all the evidence, screen shots etc.
Are there any particular scenes you would like to see evidence for? Happy to do a few scenes.


As for seeing more of my cut, soon, very soon. I'm working on two very exciting scenes at the moment, but both are a lot of hard work... I was going to keep this quiet but here's a little bit of what I'm currently working on. They're the toughest part of the film yet!

Two scenes -
1 - We have 3 clips of behind the scenes footage of Serfina meeting coram after bolvangar, now whether I'll put this in my edit remains to be seen. However all the footage is shot on a green screen. The clips show a far shot of the two talking then a close up of serifina, then a clip of her flying away. This is going through a few stages of development.

• Clean up the footage, remove the wires from serfina, remove the camera man who walks into shot.
• Add some extra actor elements on to the green screen
• Take some other footage and build up a background in photoshop of the aftermath of bolvangar
• Add some mild animations to this
• Apply the background to the clip, motion track it to the camera and actors etc...
• Remove the audio from two of the clips (not needed, just crew noise)
• Eq the dialogue to make it sound better
• Pull sound effects from other bolvangar scenes
• Edit it all together
• Add background music
• Add a mild film grain to make it feel like the rest of the movie...

Could be interesting hu? I hope to upload a clip of this once it's done, and the clip will show all the stages from the behind the scenes footage to the final thing. As said, whether this clip will fit or not is unknown. At least it will make for an interesting task!

2 - The new opening, my version does not start like the theatrical version. It starts closer to how the film was meant to start. Although I'm having to use some creative lisence as many shots are missing, this clip will once again show exactly how far I'm going to make this as acurate as possible.

Sequence of my intro is:

• New Line credits
• Crowded streets of oxford (currently sourced from the prerelease video)
• A cat walks through their legs
• The cat walks down the alley way towards the library (the same as the alley way where you first see the window)
• The cat approaches the window and jumps through, this goes to the same area as lord asriel in the tunnel area. We see the 'do you think we'll see the child?' scene
• We see sunrise over jordan college
• Lyra is running through the college, we see the cat pounce on pan. 'that's odd it's like she'd never seen a daemon before' scene plays. Lyra runs off...
• We cut to lyra running through the fens (White Northern Lights title appears on the screen)

That's the current sequence and most of it is now pieced together, minus the cat going up and aproaching the window. None of this has been released... so what's a guy to do??? well I'll tell you what.. at the moment I have storyboards. Not great I know, however I have taken the rough texture off the cat in the 'that's odd it's like..' scene. This texture will then be applied to a 3d model of a cat. I'll be going to oxford and take a few high res images of the scene, this will allow me to work as a background. The 3d model of the cat will walk down the alley and jump through the window.

quite difficult to get the movement of an animal right, especially one that jumps through an invisible window... Well what about the mobile phone footage of the cat jumping through the window that someone recorded with their mobile? It was the first footage that we saw of TGC being filmed. I'm going to take the motions that the cat does in each frame of that and apply it to the model. So the 3d cat should do exactly the same. I then place it in the right place... and hopefully it will look passable.

The intro is going to be the hardest bit to make, but lets see what I can achieve shall we?

[Australis]

Entertainment weekly recently talked to Chris Weitz about the DVD release of "New Moon", and he had this to say about GC:

In many cases, movies like this (NM) have two editors because of the sheer amount of footage. At the very beginning of the process, I think Summit expected me to have two editors. But I had a huge amount of confidence in Pete — we worked before on a cut of The Golden Compass that never saw the light of day — and in part because I felt I owed him one for sitting with me through my dark night of the soul.

He hasn't let go of it yet - the question is, of course, will this cut ever see the light of day?

[sfsraffie]

Sorry, but nothing in that quote indicates he hasn't let go of it. At the time of editing New Moon, maybe. But not necessarily now.

[Energy]

I'm with sfsraffie, I don't think he's activly persuing it. It's a bad memory for him.

I've recently got a load of pics from the ending and if they didn't do much CG on it there is a lot still needing to be done... expect more info on that soon (keeping it under wraps for now as there is a big suprise coming soon)...

[Michael555]

OMG!! Can't wait to see what you've gotten!

New pictures that have never before been seen?

[Energy]

Pictures that you're unlikely to have seen... there is a possiblity you may have seen them, but I don't think you have. There is also a little twist... I so want to spill but I want to present it in the right way... hmmm...

Just a little tid-bit that I came across...
You know the scene where Lord Asriel was captured? Well it appears that what may have been originally planned is that he over-comes the men but is taken down when Ragnar appears himself... (Which I believe is the one scene that was re:filmed?)

[Michael555]

http://tessendorf.org/papers_files/aurora.pdf

Anyone look at this?

[Michael555]

Pictures that you're unlikely to have seen... there is a possiblity you may have seen them, but I don't think you have. There is also a little twist... I so want to spill but I want to present it in the right way... hmmm...

Just a little tid-bit that I came across...
You know the scene where Lord Asriel was captured? Well it appears that what may have been originally planned is that he over-comes the men but is taken down when Ragnar appears himself... (Which I believe is the one scene that was re:filmed?)

Are they from those books that were released? Those movie tie ins?

I've seen those...but if they're from else where...PLEASE,PLEASE, PLEASE SHOWWWWWW THEM!

[Energy]

Are they from those books that were released? Those movie tie ins?

I've seen those...but if they're from else where...PLEASE,PLEASE, PLEASE SHOWWWWWW THEM!

They are not from the movie tie-in books... I promise they're coming soon.

I'm contenplating redoing my ending video with these new images entwined. An exclusive Bridge to the Stars version of the video... hmmm maybe.

Your aurora PDF could be very useful. I've already extracted the images. Very interesting (considering I've just completed my masters I'm too used to reading documents like that).

[Haku]

http://tessendorf.org/papers_files/aurora.pdf
Anyone look at this?

There's this link as well, then :
http://tessendorf.org/papers_files/daemondeath.pdf

[TheRealNeo]

When can we expect that new material Energy?

And can you say where you got it?

[Energy]

Soon. Expect rerelease of both the ending and the scene of Lyra being taken to bolvangar. Both will be released exclusively here. There's scanning and more involved for the ending sequence.

Found lots of short clips and images recently. Just very busy at the same time. Hoping to get something big out in the next two weeks at the latest.

[Energy]

Sorry for the double post - did a bit of editing this weekend, releases are coming along. Just a final technical issue with the edit. Won't take long... promise! ^_^

However I thought you would like this (currently being coded on the side):
Click to preview

Anything anyone wants from this?

[TheRealNeo]

Cool!

[Michael555]

WOW. I cannot WAIT for this. I'm sure it's going to be amazing.