The Hobbit Fan Edit - ...till your eyries receive you at t

VIDEO DESCRIPTION:

Play, download and edit the free video The Hobbit Fan Edit - ...till your eyries receive you at the journeys end!.

This is undoubtedly the hardest part of any Hobbit fan edit; the transition between An Unexpected Journey and Desolation of Smaug. I have gone through countless drafts of this and this is the one I have settled on right now. I have replaced the original music (which I did love by the way) with A Good Omen off the soundtrack as I just feel it fits better following on from Out of the Frying-Pan. As such I have had to replace all of the wings flapping sounds throughout the scene.

The trickiest part was knowing how much of the ending of An Unexpected Journey to use without it feeling too final or conclusive, yet not cutting it back too much to the point where it feels to quick. Some of the shots of Thorin's face I have used from M4's The Hobbit edit who very kindly made all of the additional VFX work that eric1894 made public for anyone too use. So full credit is given to M4 and eric for the less wounded look of Thorin, due to the fact he never actually fights anyone during Out of the Frying-Pan. I have used the sound of a Red Tailed Hawk for the shot of the eagles flying away. I did try using many different eagle calls but it seems like even Peter Jackson used the much more cliche'd Red Tailed Hawk sound for the eagles in The Lord of the Rings films. As such, I have also used one to maintain a sense of continuity.

A big task here was also the music. Due to smoothing out the music, I have had to remove Bilbo's line of 'Is that...what I think it is?' as he looks at the Lonely Mountain in the distance. I have tried isolating this through Adobe Audition and it just doesn't sound good. If I can get a clip of this from M4 then I can reinstate the line, as I know he has a 6 audio track of the films. Another line I am hoping to add in once I can get a good Ian McKellen voice impersonator is to add the line in from the book as Gandalf watches the eagles flying away; 'May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks.' It's not a line that is integral, but if I have the means to do it then I will add it in. Originally I had the original film music and a segment of A Good Omen overlapping each other but this muddied the sound and felt like the two songs were at war with each other. As such, I cut and looped segments of A Good Omen and had the songs overlapping at the end of the phrase; matching the brass section with the timing and notation of the original film music as best as I could for a more seemless feel to the sound. I also remove the scene of them watching the thrush fly towards the mountain as I have used this exact scene at the end of the film during the epilogue.

Drone footage of New Zealand was also used for two shots of the transition. I believe I have matched the location as best as possible with the location they filmed the Beorn section which if memory serves is Paradise in New Zealand. I have been sure to keep shots of the stoney ford across the river in my edit to match geographical consistency with the book as much as possible. I am not too keen on the Gandalf voice over providing the transition between films, but with what I'm trying to do there is no way around it as I am adamant that I don't want the Beorn chase scene in the film. I have also remove Gandalf description that Beorn is sometimes a 'huge, black bear' and instead altered it to 'sometimes he's a huge bear' due to the fact that Beorn's bear appearance changes from a black bear in Desolation of Smaug to a grizzly bear in Battle of the Five Armies. Thanks Peter Jackson(!) I have also used the establishing shot of Beorn's house from the chase sequence and slowed it down with an optical flow so that we still get an establishing shot of the house and location.

From here, I cut directly to the extended edition footage of Beorn's introduction. It is here that we deviate from the flow and structure of the film, as I wanted to match the pace of the book more. We want to get right into the introduction of Beorn and get the story moving. As such, the party take refuge at Beorn's house before they are introduced, which differs from the book greatly. In the book, they are introduced and then invited in, which makes way more sense, but I am also beholden to the footage I have to work with. Gandalf at least references that they took refuge in his lodgings the previous night, so I guess we can infer that Beorn was out being a bear and so the company snuck in during the night. The scene where the company is sleeping is moved slightly later during the Beorn scene.

Overall, I'm happy with this transition for right now but who knows, it could change many more times from this. I'm interested to know what you all think of this transition and if anything could be changed.

Download, play and edit free videos and free audios from The Hobbit Fan Edit - ...till your eyries receive you at the journeys end! using RedcoolMedia.net web apps