Wing Commander Remixed (August 28, 2007)

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Eric Sparks, an indie filmmaker and fan of the Wing Commander movie, was kind enough to e-mail us about a project he's recently finished: an entirely new cut of the Wing Commander movie! He's created this new version as part of the fanedit.org community. He says:
It is called "Wing Commander: Countdown to Invasion". Basically I tried to focus the film more on stopping the coming invasion, and less on the "Top Gun meets Melrose Place" aspects of the pilots' lives. I've cut 29 minutes from the film, leaving a runtime of 71 minutes.
This sounds like a fascinating project - similar 'fan' editing jobs (including one on Wing Commander's contemporary, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace) have managed to make significantly different films out of the same material as the original. You can download the trailer here (WMV, 11 mb) and then find Torrent/Rapidshare information for downloading the full movie here.

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Original update published on August 28, 2007
 
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Hmm, this is pretty interesting.

I'm still waiting for the torrent to complete (currently at about 98% after a slow drip of data for the past two days -- will continue seeding for a couple of days though) but have been able to watch the first ~20 minutes as the first substantial VOB file has completed. It's been rather competently done so far, with quite a bit of unobtrusive and fluid editing during the Diligent passage/jump sequences and then there's a fair amount cut out once Blair arrives on the Claw before this first VOB ends.

Will have to watch it in totality to get an better feel for whether the new edit flows well, but am looking forward to seeing what else Eric has done. If you want to be nitpicky, there's probably a bit to gone on, e.g. towards the end of the first 20 minutes Maniac mentions Forbes ("you know I got the desire") but the viewer hasn't seen her yet in this cut -- not really major and I can understand why it was kept as removing it from the rest of the scene would be awkward to do.

I suppose this should be directed to the Fanedit community, but what's the legal status of these fan edits? There was mention on the site of them constituting fair use as derivative work for personal use presumably, yet why distribute the edited DVD VOBs rather than a smaller DivX/XviD version? The DVD menu is neat, but I would think releasing (region-free? still need to confirm) VOBs, which contain considerable unaltered portions of the original production is more likely to draw the ire of the studios than a more lossy XviD? I realise that questioning this edit betrays some hypocrisy when I have readily consented to the work of others without question (e.g. Queeg's WC3 movie) and pursued my own derivative stuff with EA's game content from WC3, WC4, etc; I'm just concerned that this could be much more contentious than putting together a Wing3 music video.

On a related note, I know the CIC staff have talked about keeping in touch with EA re: legal concerns for certain projects (e.g. the Academy TV show, Prophecy DVD videos, Queeg's WC3 Project) at different times on the forums and IRC before, but as far I know there isn't anywhere on the site that outlines or gives guidance as to what EA allows/expects in this regard and what prior approval they have given for other releases, such as the Academy episodes. Is this in fact mentioned somewhere on the site, as I have seen it pop up on the forums here and elsewhere (recently regarding Queeg's WC3 movie) and if not, perhaps it is something worthwhile for the future?

Either way, thanks for sharing this with us, Eric -- I look forward to watching it from start to finish and will update with comments and thoughts in the days ahead.

Cheers,

Bryn
 
Oh wow! :eek:

Apologies for the thread resurrection and for reneging on my original intention to post an update way back then. While backing up one of my hard drives today, I noticed the original DVD torrent of Eric's "fanedit" as well as the Xvid transcode I put together. I had another quick scan through the film (which runs to just over 70 minutes in this cut) and further to my original comments, there's been some interesting (and usually fairly subtle) trimming throughout the rest of the cut.

For example, the rec room and hot-dogging/Rosie death sequences have been removed amongst others, while a much reduced landing bay de-pressurisation scene ("the doors are failing...!") and a number of other small scene changes have been affected. The Snakeir chase has also been cut, while the Venus jump point battle has been re-jigged. Anyway, I'm sure there's a bunch more changes if you were to analyse this cut and the original more closely.

If it's okay with the CIC crew I'd be happy to upload my Xvid encode of the fanedit. I've kept the original Dolby AC-3 tracks that were present in Eric's fanedit and have also encoded his trailer and DVD menu separately. The total filesize is just over 700MB. If it's okay, I'd probably split it up in to a segmented RAR file for upload to Filefront in 3 to 4 parts, i.e. 175-240MB per part to avoid any timeouts during the upload.

Cheers,

Bryn
 

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Sure, we could host that - but we may not be able to post it immediately. Our server is taking a hit from thousands of people downloading the Outlander trailer right now... and we're getting ready for some big files from EA Mythic!

(... and, oh yeah, we have a slightly longer cut of the movie in our possession now...;))
 
Sure, we could host that - but we may not be able to post it immediately. Our server is taking a hit from thousands of people downloading the Outlander trailer right now... and we're getting ready for some big files from EA Mythic!
Heh, I saw the link on AICN amongst other places. Anyway, AD has done an excellent job with the site, which by all accounts appears to be the premier Outlander website. :)

(... and, oh yeah, we have a slightly longer cut of the movie in our possession now...;))
Ooh, I can't wait to see it! :D Is this the original cut with the Pilgrim traitor sub-plot scenes? I'm uploading a three-part Zip archive of Eric's fanedit now and will post the links once they're online and I've verified them.
 
OK, here we go:

- Part 1 (214MB)
- Part 2 (238MB)
- Part 3 (238MB)

They're segmented zip files, so any zip application should be able to extract the compressed files. Depending on the codecs installed on your PC, you may need AC3Filter to hear the audio track during playback in your media player.
 
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