2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Well this is interesting. And you can watch the entire cut now.

Also, I've never seen or heard of his website before. Interesting stuff.


http://extension765.com/sdr/23-the-return-of-w-de-rijk


THE RETURN OF W. DE RIJK

JAN 14, 2015

sometimes you have to cross the line to know where the line is. just ask any two-year-old.

maybe this is what happens when you spend too much time with a movie: you start thinking about it when it’s not around, and then you start wanting to touch it. i’ve been watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY regularly for four decades, but it wasn’t until a few years ago i started thinking about touching it, and then over the holidays i decided to make my move. why now? I don’t know. maybe i wasn’t old enough to touch it until now. maybe i was too scared to touch it until now, because not only does the film not need my—or anyone else’s—help, but if it’s not THE most impressively imagined and sustained piece of visual art created in the 20th century, then it’s tied for first. meaning IF i was finally going to touch it, i’d better have a bigger idea than just trimming or re-scoring.

plus, it’s TECHNOLOGY’S FAULT. without technology, i wouldn’t have been able to spend so much intimate—and, ultimately, inappropriate—time with the film. by the way, i’ve seen every conceivable kind of film print of 2001, from 16mm flat to 35mm internegative to a cherry camera negative 70mm in the screening room at warner bros, and i’m telling you, none of them look as good as a bluray played on an pioneer elite plasma kuro monitor. and while you’re cleaning up your spit take over that sentence, let me also say i believe SK would have embraced the current crop of digital cameras, because from a visual standpoint, he was obsessed with two things: absolute fidelity to reality-based light sources, and image stabilization. regarding the former, the increased sensitivity without resolution loss allows us to really capture the world as it is, and regarding the latter, post-2001 SK generally shot matte perf film (normally reserved for effects shots, because of its added steadiness) all day, every day, something which digital capture makes moot. pile on things like never being distracted by weaving, splices, dirt, scratches, bad lab matches during changeovers, changeovers themselves, bad framing and focus exacerbated by projector vibration, and you can see why i think he might dig digital.

MY ONE GIGANTIC ISSUE WITH THIS TRANSFER

is that you can see, in the dawn of man sequence, the cross-hatched patterns of the front projection screen in several shots. this is INEXCUSBALE. i never saw these patterns in any film prints—this would never have gotten past the polaroid-happy SK—and ANY transfer in which these patterns are visible no matter how your monitor/TV is set up is TECHNICALLY FUCKED AND COMPLETELY WRONG. i hate saying that about my good friends at WB, especially since the WB remaster of CITIZEN KANE is literally a revelation, BUT on the other hand the ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN bluray is a disappointment, BUT on the OTHER other hand they did remaster and release a beautiful END OF THE ROAD disc, so….



And how about this? Raiders of the Lost Ark - as a black and white silent movie?? Methinks he has a lot of time on his hands now...

http://extension765.com/sdr/18-raiders

Raiders
SEP 22, 2014
(Note: This posting is for educational purposes only.)

I’m assuming the phrase “staging” came out of the theatre world, but it’s equally at home (and useful) in the movie world, since the term (roughly defined) refers to how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated. In movies the role of editing adds something unique: the opportunity to extend and/or expand a visual (or narrative) idea to the limits of one’s imagination—a crazy idea that works today is tomorrow’s normal.

I value the ability to stage something well because when it’s done well its pleasures are huge, and most people don’t do it well, which indicates it must not be easy to master (it’s frightening how many opportunities there are to do something wrong in a sequence or a group of scenes. Minefields EVERYWHERE. Fincher said it: there’s potentially a hundred different ways to shoot something but at the end of the day there’s really only two, and one of them is wrong). Of course understanding story, character, and performance are crucial to directing well, but I operate under the theory a movie should work with the sound off, and under that theory, staging becomes paramount (the adjective, not the studio. although their logo DOES appear on the front of this…).

So I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me. Oh, and I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect. Wait, WHAT? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? Well, I’m not saying I’m like, ALLOWED to do this, I’m just saying this is what I do when I try to learn about staging, and this filmmaker forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day (for example, no matter how fast the cuts come, you always know exactly where you are—that’s high level visual math shit).

At some point you will say to yourself or someone THIS LOOKS AMAZING IN BLACK AND WHITE and it’s because Douglas Slocombe shot THE LAVENDER HILL MOB and the THE SERVANT and his stark, high-contrast lighting style was eye-popping regardless of medium.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Pretty cool, but how does Soderbergh get away with this, given that he doesn't own the rights to any of these movies?

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Yeah that's the ridiculous aspect. Even if it's for educational purposes, he's still putting these up in their entirety.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

He makes a good point with this that Raiders of the Lost Ark looks fantastic in B&W

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

He's rich. They can do anything. #duh

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

I'm confused (and I don't have the time/means to watch it right now)...
What exactly did he do to 2001?

Raiders is easy... but 2001? I'm not sure he even says what he did in his write-up. I guess he mentions the cross-hatched patterns. Is that it? That's the only thing he's "fixed"?

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

..... yeah. I'm on my phone now but he doesn't say wtf he did to 2001.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

I watched all of his 2001 last night and it is a bit baffling. He cut about 30 minutes out of it and changed some sound effects. He took a movie that has almost no dialogue and cut out most of it so now there is nearly no dialogue. 2001 is a big, epic 70mm studio sci-fi film made for all audiences that happens to have some existential issues at its core that are more befitting the art house then the megaplex. Soderburgh's version is a 110 minute art film. Strictly for connoisseurs who like ambiguous story structure and enjoy watching action occur without knowing any of the motivation.

His point seems to be that 2001 can still be understood without most of the dialogue (which has often been criticized for being stilted) but the problem is that it becomes a film that would allienate almost all audiences. 25% of 2001's original audience was confused and/or alienated by the film, if this version were released the number would probably be around 95%.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Quick run down of what he changed:

He cut the famous opening title and music. The film now opens cold with a shot of Bowman's blinking eye, a supper tight close-up of HAL, and then cut to the Dawn of Man sequence. But the "Dawn of Man" title has been removed.

The biggest alteration to the Dawn of Man sequence is that he cuts out the entire first conflict between Moonwatcher's clan and the other clan. It was originally structured like this:
Moonwatcher's clan gets chased away from the water hole.
Sequence showing the clan languishing.
Sequence where they encounter Monolith
Sequence where Moonwatcher figures out bone/tool/weapon
Sequence where they take back the water hole with their weapons, killing another ape in the process.

SS cuts the first confrontation. So now the scene of them languishing seems unclear about WTF is going on and the latter confrontation makes Moonwatcher's clan seem much more aggressive. We never see them lose their water hole. As it was originally constructed I always took the scene to be a victorious retaking, the more evolved species wins over the brutish thugs who ran them off, survival of the fittest, Masters of the Universe, etc. Now it seems more like as soon as Moonwatcher's clan figured out weapons the first thing they did was go look for another clan, beat the shit out of them, and steal their water hole. SS's makes them offenders instead of defenders.

The famous jump cut to the future is the same. Nothing is cut from the Blue Danube sequences.

The space ship docks with the space station as usual. The first line of dialogue in the film (where the flight attendant says "Welcome to the space station" or whatever) is cut, the scene where Floyd is met by another dude is cut, all we see is a brief bit with the video screen that asks his name, origin, and destination. He says "Floyd, Earth, the Moon" and that's it for the whole space station sequence! No video phone call, no discussion with the Russians, nothing.

The trip from the space station to the moon is substantially cut. No shots of Floyd on board. No shots of him eating space food, no zero gravity toilet, no shots of him talking to the captain. Just exterior shots of the ship and the landing.

Then it cuts to the conference room. The only thing SS keeps is the guy taking pictures of the people in the conference room. A dude says, "Gentlemen let's get started shall we?" and then it cuts to the next scene, so all the exposition about the discovery on the moon is gone.

Next is the scene on board the shuttle to see the Monolith. The only dialogue kept in is the discussion about the sandwiches. All the other expositional dialogue has been cut.

They see the Monolith. Nothing cut. Monolith reacts and cut to 18 months later. Unlike with the Dawn of Man Soderburgh keeps the title card.

I should pause right now to point out that all throughout the film up to this point SS has inserted extreme close up shots of HAL's red eye. During the Dawn of Man sequence even. Fucking strange choice.

From this point on very little is cut. If anything was cut it was little bits here and there to speed things up. For instance Poole's birthday party recording scene is not cut but seemed to be missing something.

The EVA's where they go outside are shortened a bit. The portion of Bowman's space walk where he actually grabs the large antennae and removes the AE-35 have been cut. As are all the close ups of him space walking, the shot of his face mask going from clear to tinted, etc. Soderburg cut a lot of little but good stuff here. Also, SS somehow removed most of the repetitive pinging that is heard when they fly the pods. Both EVA sequences are much quieter and feel very different without the incessant beeps. I think this is a pretty massive alteration from Kubrick's intent.

Poole's murder, Bowman's recovery of his body, the crew's murder, Bowman's reentry into the ship have no noticeable alterations. Bowman's deactivation of HAL is untouched.

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite title card is maintained. From this point on I didn't notice any changes. The orbiting around Jupiter before the Star Gate sequence may have been shortened a little.

There are no end credits. The title 2001: A Space Odyssey is never displayed on screen.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Very interesting...

I'd have to imagine that a greater percentage of people than that were confused when it was originally released. There're a lot of ways to describe Kubrick's film, but I'd never think of it as very accessible or mainstream.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Perhaps audiences were confused by it, but the film was mainstream and a hit. It was #1 at the US box office for 1968. It premiered at #1 it's first week of release, held the spot for three weeks, and retook the #1 spot during its sixth, eighth, and tenth weeks. How often does that happen?

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

So essentially what these are, are fan edits. Still waiting on Topher Grace edit of SW I II II

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

And when the star child arrives at Earth, he inserts that annoying closeup of HAL yet again, destroying the drama and majesty of the final shot.

Raiders looked incredible in black and white. Skipping randomly through it I landed on the scene where Indy rescues Marion in the tent and reconsiders it. Works perfectly as a silent movie scene, even with the horribly inappropriate music.

Overall, would say the entire endeavor is pretentious as fuck.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

This was the 1960s. Arthouse movies made box office. A couple years earlier the number one movie was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Did you observe and record all that yourself? That's a lot of work. Thanks.

He re-edited a couple of the greatest movies of the last 50 years. How could it not be pretentious? I'm sure he knows that he's gilding the lily.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

So Jabba shoots first.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

I know, but I wanted to refute the common assumption that the film baffled audiences and wasn't terribly popular and only later became a cult film thanks to drugs. That's a pretty common perception people have that is actually bullshit.

Thank you. I know the film really well. Watched it a shit load during high school and college. When you know a film really well any changes jump right out. I couldn't do that with a film I've only seen a couple of times. I actually have a really hard time noticing the differences between the versions of Touch of Evil for instance. I've only seen it 3 or 4 times and didn't watch until I was in my 20's.

I don't think Soderburgh's experiment was very insightful. I suppose it's a helpful exercise for him. Kind of lame how he posted it without giving any explanation for his rationale.

The bottom line is that Kubrick spent a year and a half editing the film, he must have considered a lot of possibilities during that time. Soderburgh probably did this over a weekend.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

I would pay to go so a B&W re-release of Raiders in a theater. It looks better I think, and may even fit the content better than color.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Not only that, but we have to assume Soderbergh doesn't have access to all of the original footage. Meaning, he used the Blu-ray to make his cut, which only has the shots that Kubrick ultimately used. He couldn't extend any cuts or use alternate takes or anything like that. In other words, he's limited by the official cut of the film, not the source footage itself.

That doesn't make it any less interesting, though.

I wonder if he's gotten any sort of unofficial approval to post his "educational" versions of these films. Raiders has been online for quite awhile now, with no indication that it's going to be taken down.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

I tried to watch the 2001 cut, but had to bail when HAL started talking. Soderbergh gives him full-on echo, and it's tiring to try to understand him (even though I know what he's saying). Completely pointless. And the constant shots of HAL's eye as if he's an all-seeing god that is behind the monoliths. Silly and distracting. One of the worst fan-edits I've seen.

The film is hard enough to figure out sober, I can only imagine how it'd play if you're high :p.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

I forgot about the echo. That seems to be a mistake. It goes away after awhile.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

It must take an incredible ego to reedit a Stanley Kubrick film.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

Especially when he expects people to watch 2001 on a computer screen.

Re: 2001: A Space Odyssey/Raiders of the Lost Ark - The Steven Soderburgh Cuts
 

^ There are vimeo apps on Roku and other devices, I'm sure. You can watch it on your HDTV or projector, no problem.