Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1: The 90 Minute Wicked Edition

stankpac jul 21 2011

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

shortround24 jun 28 2011

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

geminigod jul 20 2011

I finally got around to watching this. (In fact I watched it with my mother!)

1) I think the Lumos! extra feature was my favorite part! The creative fun you had with it really showed. It also technically impressed me. I’m still not really sure how you fluidly worked the split screen like you did! And it was set brilliantly to the chosen music.

2) Presentation-wise, this fanedit is brilliant. The menu and extras (including the hidden easter egg video) is fantastic! AEmovieguy is definitely not short on creativity.

2) As far as the movie goes, I was pretty excited about the plan for this edit. After watching it, I had two separate feelings. For me personally as someone who is familiar with the book and theatrical release I was overall grateful for the cuts made, glad it was shorter, and sometimes wishing it were even shorter yet. But simultaneously I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps he cut too deeply unnecessarily in some scenes at the cost of character, story development, and dramatic tension, and not enough in a couple spots surrounding your camping cuts where the characters’ reactions now don’t make sense. (There were also a couple awkward fades in the camping stuff.) I fear that someone watching this who had never seen the original or read the book would be very confused and feel that the movie felt disjointed. This seems to be one of the more challenging concepts with fanediting. Because of the audience here, faneditors can often get away with leaving certain character or story threads a little splinched, but when taken in as an original story and graded soley on its own merit, critics would probably respond less favorably.

3) I watched the AVCHD version. The audio sounded excellent. Strong work there. Visually I suspect this edit looks great on DVD. On AVCHD it doesn’t look bad per say, but just not as good as it could given the blu-ray source. This is more apparent in some scenes due to your adjustment to the luma levels, but that color correcting effect seems to just be enhancing some other underlying compression or resolution data loss that occurred prior to applying the effect. This is evident in the Lumos extra video comparing both versions side by side.

With all that in mind, I rated this edit 7/10.

AEmovieguy put an impressive amount of work into this and it shows. It is not perfect in my opinion, but it is well worth the time to watch for anyone like myself who felt the source material for this story was flawed and who does not want to see an exact reproduction of The Deathly Hallows book.

aztek463 jun 21 2011

I’ve been a Harry Potter fan for a long time, since the first film came out and for a few years before that as the books were published. I thought Deathly Hallows Part 1 did the best of all the films (except for maybe the first two films) of adapting the books, so when I saw this as a WIP, I was interested, though hesitant. I’ll admit, it was difficult to remain objective on this one, and while there WERE a few things about this I didn’t care for, this still worked excellently. So, let’s start!

VIDEO/AUDIO:
The video has been level corrected from the original transfer on the Blu-ray disc, and even on the SL disc, it looks GREAT. It was much easier to make out what was actually going on in the darker scenes, which was a real challenge on the DVD release. The quality drop was noticeable in a few spots, but given that this was compressed from a Blu-ray source, it’s DAMN good regardless.
Audio was audio. I don’t have a 5.1 set up, so I couldn’t properly check the surround levels, but it all sounded good. The only variation was sound was on the deleted scene but…it took me a while to notice it anyways, so that was fine.
9/10

THE EDIT:
Okay, settle back, pop a cold one, and get ready, ’cause this is gonna be a lengthy section.

Right, so, how does the story hold up having been cut by 42 minutes? Wonderfully. Upon watching this, I realized just how bloated the original film is. What’s even better though? All the action and character beats (well, most of them) are intact even with all that was cut. The pace was improved consistently, and it definitely felt like a build up to something grand. The end result DID leave me feeling a tad empty, but…considering that the original left me feeling that way too, it’s fine. That was kinda the point of this being part 1 of 2 anyways.

There were a few bits that didn’t work, and while nothing too distracting on the whole, things worth noting:
When Bill Weasley talks about Fletcher fleeing and then mentioning Mad-Eye was dead just felt awkward. Granted, the original scene wasn’t perfect either, but I just felt that worked better.

Another awkward bit was the part with the flesh memories of the Snitch. It was noticeable that Hermione wasn’t actually speaking when they were discussing it outside of the tent, but it was fast and not too out of place.

Those two are the most standout, and while they certainly don’t detract in an extreme way, it’s something to make note of. Now, there’s a few other cuts I didn’t agree with as a fan of the book, but that’s purely subjective and in no way is going to bear on my score, especially considering the editing was seamless: no hard cuts, no bad audio fades, nothing. Perfect. In fact, this inspired me to do my own HP7 edit, though a combo edit of parts 1 and 2 when 2 is available on DVD.

I feel compelled to give this two scores:
As a Harry Potter fan, I give this a 7/10. There was a lot of story essential bits that were cut that I rather missed or that were important to Harry’s character.
But as a fan edit? I give this a 9/10 for smooth editing, great pace, and solid story that works well in the format. So, for a score, I’m going to compromise and give this an 8, and more than likely a vote in the FEOTM poll next month. Keep it up mate! :)

While there are few awkward edits around Rons storyline, overall this edit is better paced than the theatrical cut without loosing the meat of the story. A fantastic edit.