Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Revisited

I've always been a Potter fan, but nothing too hardcore. I saw all the films in the theater, read all the books, etc etc. I haven't watched "Sorcerer's Stone" in a while because it can't hold a candle to some of the later films (especially "Prisoner" and "Deathly Hallows"), although it's nowhere near as cringe-worthy as "Chamber". So now, Andreas has set out to bring "Sorcerer's Stone" more in line with the later films, primarily by way of rescoring and color grading, along with some nips and tucks, and beefing things up with a nice flashback sequence.

A/V quality - 8
There's a lot of compression artifacts in this 8 GB MP4, and I suspect some of it is due to the color grading. It's not terrible, but image quality could have been much better.

Visual editing - 9
Not a lot of footage has been cut, mainly the visual editing is the color grading, which for the most part looked fantastic. There were a couple of crossfades that were decidedly un-epic and drew attention to themselves, but aside from those the cuts were seamless.

Audio editing - 10
Absolutely wonderful. If you showed this to a Potter newb, or even somebody who hasn't watched the flick in years, they wouldn't know this was rescored. Only one or two musical cues felt out of place, but the rest was flawless.

Narrative/Improvement - 9
Overall, Andreas keeps the story and characterizations intact, and strengthens the overall mood with the improved music. The biggest narrative change was the new Potters/Voldemort flashback, which was fricking excellent the first time we saw it, but by the fifth time it showed up, it felt repetitive. (And no, I didn't need a tissue for flashback #5.)

Enjoyment - 9
A refreshing way to revisit HP1, highly recommended for Potter-heads. Jolly good show chap!

When I first heard you were attempting to bring the tone of the film more in line with the others in the series I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, Philosopher’s Stone is my 2nd least favorite movie, but I was worried that you might possibly go too far in the attempt to darken the movie. I’m glad to say that my fears were completely unfounded. This is quite a brilliant edit, and though it has it’s problems, it’s so well done that those complaints don’t amount to much. Reworking the first few scenes of the film was an inspired choice and it works really well in changing the tone of the film. I also really loved the insertion of exterior shots from later movies in order to help make the changes between the 2nd and 3rd film less jarring. The musical score changes and additions are welcome. Most of the time it’s done seamlessly enough that if I hadn’t seen the movie over a hundred times (not exaggerating here) I wouldn’t have noticed.

That being said there were a few sections where I could hear the original track underneath the new music, and several times the new music would only play for a few seconds before disappearing which left me confused as to why the soundtrack changed there. The only music choice that I felt was bad was when they see Hogwarts from the boats. Mostly because the tone of the music doesn’t gel with the visuals at all. The school is lit up all nice and warm and you can see the smiles of joy and wonder on the kid's faces as they approach the school. If you were going to change it I think using a less foreboding theme would have been best.

I thought the removal of Norbert was an interesting choice. I’ve never even thought of removing that scene, but it works really well. There were also a few narrative decisions that didn’t quite work. The last act suffers a bit from the removals that were made. Removing the scene of Hagrid telling them how to get past Fluffy makes the pace moves a bit to fast and makes the trio look like complete idiots for trying to get past Fluffy with no idea how to do so, but the removal of Norbert, as well as the fact that Hagrid’s hut is in a different location from later films, necessitates this. Also, the flashback was used a bit too often.

The only other complaint I have is really minor and doesn’t affect my rating at all but I just thought I’d mention it. I wish you had used the Philosopher’s Stone edit instead of Sorcerer’s Stone but again that’s more of a personal preference than anything else. I still prefer the extended cut of the original movie, and this is mostly because a few important scenes for both the pacing and narrative structure were removed, making the film feel a bit too fast. That being said I’d still give this edit an 8/10 and would highly recommend it to anyone who’d like a different take on the film. I can’t wait to watch Chamber of Secrets Revisited and take a look at both Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix Revisited.

Terrific job of capturing the feeling of the middle films. Perhaps just a bit too much visual repetition, but this is a very minor complaint. Great work!

The amount of continuity errors unfortunately took me out of the movie but not entirely though as to the continuity errors themselves.

The first occurred When Ron was attempting to turn Scabbers in one scene the sweet box comes of his head but in the next scene that shows him with Hermione standing outside the door the sweet box is back on his head.

When McGonagall says your house will be like your family it should have cut to the Great Hall doors opening to make for a smoother transition and to quicken the narrative pacing.

During the scene where the Troll takes a second swing of its club at Harry the sudden cut to Ron casting the spell felt a bit jarring to quick as another scene could have been added before he casts the spell.

Well I thought the scene with the Mirror was done pretty well the use of Jame’s actor from Sorcerer’s Stone contradicts the flashbacks as his appearance is different between those scenes, digitally removing Jame’s Sorcerer’s Stone actor from the Mirror and digitally placing his actor from the later films would be a good way to fix this continuity error.

When Hermione reads the book on Nicholas Flamel the various text in that book reads PHILOSOPHER’S STONE creating some plotholes the first being why everyone keeps calling it the Sorcerer’s Stone when Nicholas Flamel refers to it as the Philosopher’s Stone and it also makes it seem like Hermione can’t read properly and that she and everyone else in the Wizarding World are trying to discredit the author and call the stone by a name that they prefer, these plotholes could be fixed by either digitally altering the text in Nicholas Flamel’s book to read SORCERER’S STONE or through burning and editing a DVD of Philosopher’s Stone.

The scene where Malfoy appears outside should have played until he leaves with Harry than stating his name as it than cuts to Hagrid saying oh dear instead of him going over to the table as it would have made for a smoother and quicker transition.

During the Devil’s Snare scene the immediate cut to Hermione’s face after she tells Harry and Ron to relax felt way to fast and jarring as another scene could have been placed after she told them to relax before transitioning to the scene where the Devil’s Snare swallows her up.

As for the flashbacks well they certainly are an interesting element you decided to incorporate into the edit I felt that there was to many of them as it would have been better if the flashbacks were used more sparingly such as the scene where Hagrid is explaining to Harry about his parents and when Harry meets Voldemort for the final time in this edit.

As to what I enjoyed your choice of music really gave a lot of emotional power and resonance to the scenes that accompanied them as I was completely blown away and the darker filter gave the film a more consistent and mature feel that the films from Azkaban onwards while preserving the magic that made Philosopher’s Stone or for those outside the UK Sorcerer’s Stone so great in the first place.

First of all: Andreas, you definitely know how to use the tools. Especially the audio editing is so flawless, great work. In the point of video editing I noticed some hard cuts and surprisingly some blockiness in dark areas, although it's in HD, but this is just minor nagging.

Now my very subjective opinion: Your edit is more away from the book by JK Rowling than the original movie. This is ok, but for me it makes it even harder to watch, because I've read the first book just after it came out, long before there was any discussion about making a film out of it. And by the first watch of the movie it was too short for me, because it left so much. (That's the point of making a film from a book, you have to leave things out.) Despite of this I was blown away by the film. And it was a film I could watch with my 8yr old children, because it's charming, we see nice and beautiful magic, underscored by its color palette - some might call that cheesy :-). For me the whole series of books ranges from Harry's first contact with magic, which gives him hope for a bright future as a wizard, to the last chapter, where everything seems to be dark and hopeless. So does the series of the original movies. If this range goes from, e.g. 1 to 7 your edit narrows this range from 3 to 7.

"HP and the sorcerer's stone: revisited" is not a children's movie.

If your intention was to make a version that matches the tone of the later movies, you definitely came up to the scratch.

I recommend this edit for everyone, who didn't like being the original a children's movie.
And for everyone else to have a different look at the story.