LOST I - Genesis

This was an amazing fanedit! I decided to watch this fanedit before I watch the actual season normally. It was a great decision. Radzinsky has done an amazing job with this fanedit and I'm looking forward to watching the next installments in his LOST fanedit series.

If you haven't seen LOST yet and your LOST video discs are sitting on your shelf collecting dust, then I would strongly recommend watching Radzinsky's fanedit.

I have never been able to get through LOST no matter how hard I tried. I found the pace of the episodes extemely slow and the mysteries of the plot not sufficiently mysterious to keep my attention. KUDOS to Radzinsky...you manage to keep my attention at last. Your edit has converted me and I look forward to seeing what you can do with the other seasons.

Credits didn't bother that much but I agree with the other reviewers that croping those scenes would push a perfect product to perfection nirvana.

Keep up the great work!

I love any thing Lost,great job Radzinsky looking forward to your future edits wether there lost related or anything else.I cant imagine taking on editing lost,so much going on but Radzinsky is doing a great job with it.
Namaste

Once again a faneditor cleans up the pieces that Lindelof threw against a wall and trusted us to make sense. And very similarly to Prometheus the basic story of Lost wasn't all that super complex as we thought to.
It boiled down to an story about a few survivors who became player in a chessgame of two immortal (maybe?) beings. The reason many (myself included) were so disappointed with Lost was because the show promised so much and used so little. Constant red herings and storylines that got teased yet never resolved.

A friend of mine started watching the series after it ended and got really into the mysteries like the whipsers and Walt and the Aaron and I realized just how many plotlines the producers threw in and then later decided "well the psychic who told claire to board the plane was a fraud"
Walt is another of those "mysteries" that never got resolved but instead of facing those problems the authors remained mysterious for the sake of being mysterious up until the end when they had to lay their cards on the table and present us the magical cork.

So very much like prometheus: giftbearer this fanedit doesn't change or alter anything that has come before. But it streamlines it and gives us only the things that will be important for the long run.

Personally it didn't feel episodic (aside from some credits who appear from time to time and remind you). It just felt like a super long story that gradually unfolded. The way the others are handled (or not handled) is actually quite clever as it makes the first movie completely about the oceanic survivors and only slowly introduces us to the mysteries of the island.

because the sometimes overtly dramatic/foreshadowing moments are gone there is a lot less pressure on the story. it is the story of people trapped and some of them are just survivors... not everyone needs to be a telepath.
I especially love the complete omission of Kate's entire backstory. She is one of the most pointless and boring characters in the series and every time the writers tried to give her a story it was just stalling the plot.
Many characters are very different because the flashbacks are missing. Sun and Jin become less important. But thinking of how pointless Sun and Jin became it doesn't really hurt that much. Sure they were my two favorite characters in season 1 and 2 but that was mostly because of their backstory and not becuase of what they did on the island.

Narratively Radzinsky has a lot of clever tricks up his sleeve to make everything work. This guy really has been sitting infront of a pc and going through all possible episodes because he always uses the right amount of flashbacks and dialogue so that one could watch this edit and fully understand the story.
The only thing where it kind of doesn't work for me is the not-empty coffin that Jack finds. I understand that the missing body is a mystery that never gets explained so I am thankful for that omission but the audience doesn't know that jack has brought the body of his father along with him so he just finds a coffin and it is not really clear if it is his father's and if it is then what the hell it does on the island.

The change in Rousseau's kidnapping was also well done.
Right now I am very interested in how Sawyer's backstory will be handled. it was teased that he wants to kill a man... the question is if we will see this story explained before D.B. Cooper appears on the island.

Streamlinign the story also gets rid of a lot of soapy elements. Watching the edit i remembered the subplot about shannon and boone having sex... oh my... or the watch of Jin... oh man...

Thankfully all this is gone. The use of flashbacks is very well done although it is really locke heavy compared to the rest... then again locke's flashbacks aside from desmond, ben and richard were probably the most significant.

The introduction of Jacob was also fantastically well made. It gives the series a much more complete feel since he has been there from the get go. As a series it would have probably been too obvious if his first appearance would have been that but for the sake of telling a complete story his appearance makes so much sense and gives the story a much more complete feeling than having a random guy we have never seen pop out at the end of season 5.

I can't wait for more Lost!

I want to start with the audio issue. I know a previous reviewer said they had a problem but the Admins didn't find an issue. I've double checked and made notes of everything and am confident in my findings. (Note I'm running off my HTPC via an encoded output through an optical digital cable to my receiver which decodes the signal.) My receiver states that it's Dolby Digital EX but what it's decoding isn't separated properly. The center channel is coming from the rear surround channels and the other 5 speakers sound like an even mix of all 7 channels (including center).

However please note that when I switch to a non-encoded analog signal output my receiver decodes it as Dolby Pro-Logic II (as selected) and it plays properly with dialogue from the center, effects in the surrounds and music and other effects primarily L+R. I tried this with both VLC and the PLEX media center with the same results.

That's pretty much where my skill set ends and I don't understand how a direct encoded DD signal is all wonky but when it's reduced to a 2ch analogue signal it is then decoded properly. Also note that when I first started watching this (in the digital encode) the first audio effect of the Lost 'thud' (as I call it) was very loud and blew out my front right speaker (and scared the cat). I used one of my rear surrounds to replace it so now I'm down to 6.1. BTW, the 'thud' was only an issue when I originally played it as a digital encode before switching to Dolby ProLogic II.

I'm confident in stating there is something awry with the audio and it could be some corruption in the digital encode that doesn't find its way to the analogue downmix. OR Perhaps it only effects certain setups with different types of audio ins/outs/cables/decoding methods, etc.... BUT this is the only title I've had this problem with and I've had this setup for 4 years now. In any case, on to my review....

I finished watching this last night and I'm mighty impressed. On the whole I felt the flow was nice, both the audio and video edits were relatively seamless and the picture quality was great.

There's quite a bit about Lost I enjoyed when it aired but I had major problems with many of the lead characters (who I found to be extremely annoying) and the long drawn-out flashbacks. All that is gone now and I can enjoy it and I look forward to the other fanedits of this series.

I just have 2 minor issues with the edit. I wish the credits could have been avoided and I know it would have been difficult to achieve. I know cropping would have diminished quality which would have been just as bad I think. Just wondering if they could be blurred? I've seen it done before to good effect. My other issue was that the pacing of the last 45 minutes or so felt rushed and there was no real build-up to an exciting cliffhanger, but it could have just been the fact I knew what was coming.

Those are minor qualms, however, and on the whole I thought this was great and will be watching it again as my DVD's sit all alone on the shelf collecting more dust. Thanks Radzinsky!