The Gill-man: Silent Jaws Edition

Updated
The Gill-man: Silent Jaws Edition
Faneditor Name:
Original Movie Title:
Fanedit Type:
Original Release Date:
1954
Original Running Time:
80
Fanedit Release Date:
Fanedit Running Time:
31
Time Cut:
49
Brief Synopsis:
This is a Silent Movie edit of “Creature From The Black Lagoon”, re-scored using John Williams’ “Jaws” soundtrack. It makes even heavier trims to the narrative than my B+ edit, removing a further 20 minutes, resulting in a sort of atmospheric “super-cut”.

Narratively, I’ve gone for a different twist on the prologue, aiming for a similar tone to that of Metropolis. Where possible I have also tried to make dialogue reference notable lines from Jaws. Scene-wise I’ve been more liberal with the cutting, removing whole events and pairing up scenes in order to make my new, shorter narrative fit.
Intention:
When I was doing my B+ edit of Creature From The Black Lagoon, I couldn’t help but notice both visual and musical similarities between it and Jaws. Parts of the film also had a generally Spielbergian flavour to them, so I thought that it would be an interesting and fun experiment to merge the two films into one entity.

After watching TMBTM’s silent edit of Star Wars: Episode VII, I knew that the silent format was perfect for showcasing these similarities – thus “Silent Jaws” was born.

My other intention was that I wanted to go beyond fan-fixing and do something a bit different – challenge my editing skills. It’s been a fun and challenging process, and I hope to do more fan-mixes in the future.
Other Sources:
Jaws: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Some MIDI percussion
Special Thanks:
Special thanks to ThrowgnCpr, Sinbad and DigModiFicaTion for their feedback during the in-the-works process, as well as to anyone who contributed to the discussion on the thread.

Also special thanks to TheRyaney, DigModiFicaTion and jswert123456 for their combined efforts on the concept and design of the poster art.

A shout out to TMBTM, who's Silent edit of Star Wars Episode VII heavily inspired me to take this direction with the edit.

Finally, thanks to my brother for pointing out grammatical errors prior to me finalising the edit for release.
Release Information:
Digital
Special Features
MKV has lossless audio.

Double DVD in-the-works.
Editing Details:
From the start I used a lossless render of my B+ edit as the source, occasionally using bits from the theatrical cut whenever I needed extra footage.

Old film effects during the prologue were done using BCC’s film damage filter.

Inter-title font is "Lilith" (same font used for Fritz Lang's Metropolis).
Cuts and Additions:
For a large chunk of the cuts, see the cut-list for my B+ edit of CFTBL. I used that as the basis and then made many more trims in order to make the visuals fit the pace of the music.

The gist:
- Inserted new “silent” inter-titles, using the same font as was used for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (the font is Lilith).
- Re-scored using Jaws music – occasionally I mashed up multiple bits of pieces from the score.
- Sparingly used some MIDI percussion hits, cymbal swells etc. to help blend/emphasise certain moments better (such as gun shots and water splashes). Some of these samples were just taken from parts of the Jaws soundtrack.
- Altered dialogue in order to reference lines from Jaws (and a couple of other cheeky references)

Some changes I recall that are unique to the Silent Jaws edit:

- At 3:34 there is a shot of the fossil photograph which fades directly into the fossil itself – in the theatrical/B+ cut, the scene transition is completely different and features a “fish tank” establishing shot.
- Cut the entire dive sequence in which they take a photo of the creature and skip straight to them planning to drug the water.
- At around 25 mins is one of the most significant narrative leaps (that I recall). Just after David dives, I used a shot of Mark which actually occurs prior to Davids dive in the theatrical. I did this to avoid the scene where Mark and Dave fight while changing, since I didn’t feel that it added anything to the edit and I didn’t feel that any music in the Jaws score suited the scene.
Cover art by theryaney, DigMod and jswert (DOWNLOAD HERE)
image

Trailer


Silent Jaws Edition (Password: silence is deadly)

User reviews

5 reviews
Overall rating
 
9.3
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.2(5)
Audio Editing
 
9.2(5)
Visual Editing
 
9.2(5)
Narrative
 
9.4(5)
Enjoyment
 
9.4(5)
Overall rating
 
9.4
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
The translation of "Creature From The Black Lagoon" into a silent movie was excellently done, very well-paced with a great use of the title cards. My favorite thing about this edit (other than the gorgeous Julie Adams) was the use of John Williams's "Jaws" score: it worked surprisingly well and synced perfectly with the story beats. Highly recommended.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
B
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 1 0
Overall rating
 
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
Well constructive, with good pacing.
It was nice to swap in the speech cards.
The music was used very well, without becoming repetitive.
A very unique viewing experience, what what was an ok original.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
P
Top 500 Reviewer 19 reviews
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 0 0
Overall rating
 
9.8
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
10.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
As other reviewers have said, this is an impressive job, with great use of John Williams soundtrack ot "Jaws." Coordination between sound and images is pretty stunning. Nice use of title cards, Great job.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 1 0
Overall rating
 
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
8.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
10.0
Enjoyment
 
9.0
Overview - As kids, my brother and I used to buy 8mm reels of movies. They never had sound, so we put on a movie soundtrack and hoped for the best.
Seeing this reminded me of that time, except Scribe’s selected score is superior.

Video - 712 X 528p AVC. First off, this is a very sharp print. (The file itself is a smallish 582 MB mkv) Thank you for not “damaging” this to make it appear old. The editing is excellent, sticking to the essentials of the story, never losing the thread, keeping the tempo cruising along.
If you opt to revise this at one point, please consider tinting. Green for water scenes, blue for night or cave sequences. Spot tinting for fires or lamps.

Audio - 320 kbps (best guess, using Spek) AAC. 2 Channel stereo. No subs, but Inter-titles, yes! The Inter-titles stayed onscreen long enough to digest, and the font was large and quite readable. Good job! I hate to say this, I found the sound range too dynamic. Quiet to the point of “eh, what?” followed by blaring. I think this would have been well served with compression. Barring that, normalization.

Narrative - Distilled to a compact thirty-one minutes, what really impresses is how smooth, how coherent, the edit is. No plotholes, no logic flaws. Perfect episode for an anthology.

Enjoyment - I enjoyed this edit very much. The film itself, not so much. I always viewed the humans as interlopers. The creature is minding his own business, when these air breathers invade his territory, in all likelihood pee in his lagoon, shoot him, cage him, plan to display him like the Fijji mermaid. Jerks.

Thank you for the B movies you seek out, Scribe.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
Owner's reply September 01, 2019

Thank you for the review, Vultural! I must say, I never expected "too dynamic" to be a complaint ;) - This is probably my favourite of my edits: most time and effort required, and most satisfied I've been with the end product. However, I will consider revising it sometime and bear in mind your comments.

I can't believe I never thoughts of tints. That's a great idea, and I'll certainly look into that sometime. I've no idea when I might get around to it though. My ideas for B+ edits are piling up, so I really want to churn em out while they're fresh!

Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 1 0
Overall rating
 
9.2
Audio/Video Quality
 
9.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
A wonderful attempt at making a silent film out of the material, and the re-scoring using John Williams' haunting Jaws music is brilliant. The way it's incorporated is nothing short of aces.

User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
Report this review Comments (0) | Was this review helpful? 1 0