The Nines, recut
Since before its debut at Sundance, one of my goals for The Nines has been to let viewers recut it to their whims. It’s a film that lends itself to wild reimagination, so I suspect there are some fascinating versions out there waiting to be assembled.
We were able to do it to a small degree with the trailer competition, but I’d ultimately love for an editor to load in all of the assets and go crazy. 1
This spring, we’re going to do a test run. In USC’s Advanced Editing class, students will get every frame of dailies for The Nines on their Avids, so they can work through the process of making a real feature with the real footage. Editor Doug Crise and I will visit to help explain some of our choices, but it will be up to the student editors to figure out what movie they want to make and how.
Given its relationship with filmmakers, USC’s School of Cinematic Arts has done this with many features over the years. But my hope is to find a way to make it possible without the infrastructure of a film school, so that any aspiring editor could get her hands on the real footage. There are legal and technical obstacles, to be sure, but I’m looking forward to seeing how this dry run goes.
- Yes, an ambitious cutter could rip apart the footage from the DVD — that’s how most parody trailers are made — but it’s not the same as having the real footage. It’s like rewriting a sentence with only ten words and two pieces of punctuation. ↩
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October 29th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Sounds cool. Are the recut versions of the film going to be available to the public?
October 29th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I’d really like to recut a whole Movie. Would be really cool.
If there is a way please let us know :-)
October 29th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Very cool stuff. Recutting of films, in their entirety, by fans (“ripping apart the footage from the DVD”, as you put it) goes on quite often. Fanedit.org is the main hub for these sorts of things on the web, and there’s a very active forum dedicated to the topic there as well.
October 29th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Is there going to be a chance for other, worldwide fans to recut too? Maybe an internet download available of the footage in AVI/MPG format we can download and re-cut, hell, i’d even pay for it.
October 29th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I would love to participate. But I’m not a USC student. Maybe you should consider to put it up as an OpenCut competition (www.opencut.org). I’m sure they would love the idea.
October 29th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I just came across your site and ended up checking out the trailer competition you had. At the end of it you said:
“Even though the official contest is over, I’ll keep seeding the footage, so if seeing these trailers has inspired any non-participants to try their mouse at it, by all means go ahead.”
does this still stand? can I get the footage?
thanks,
Nick
October 29th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Gotta be honest here… I cannot think of a more dire act than re-cutting an entire feature film. Let alone somebody else’s! The Nines was great. Why meddle with it?
October 29th, 2008 at 11:39 am
@Nima:
The USC class has specific not-for-public-consumption restrictions, but I’d want people to be able to show their work. There may be some solution with resolution compromises or required notices to handle it.
@Shaun:
We’ll see how this goes, and continue to look at the best way of distributing. There’s undoubtably some level of less-than-everything (maybe limiting it to one take per setup) that would help keep it a manageable size. Still, I suspect a Blu-ray or big cheap hard drive is much more viable for this incarnation of the internet.
@Nick:
The torrents are down, but the direct downloads still work. Check the original post.
http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/trailer-competition-details
@Johnny:
The point isn’t to make a better version — though it’s possible — but to explore ideas the “real” movie didn’t.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Wow, this sounds fantastic! I’m an Editing student at Chapman University films school. For the first time since I picked Chapman, I wish I went to USC now. I would love to take a stab at recutting The Nines. One of my favorite films of all-time. Please consider Chapman sometime. You have a lot of fans down here.
October 29th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
@John
I think it’s great that you’re providing film students with footage from a current movie. Shit, when I was in film school I had to cut a scene from Gunsmoke. On a moviola! I just think re-editing a bad movie to make it work would be more educational. And more fun. Besides, isn’t that what real editing is all about…saving the director’s ass.
October 29th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
It’s wonderful to be able to edit a project from a real, produced feature film. I’m doing this right now in an advanced editing class at Emerson College. As someone who both writes and edits, it’s interesting to see how stories get created on both sides of the production process. Thank you, John, for giving others the opportunity to interpret your footage.
October 30th, 2008 at 5:15 am
I would love the chance to cut a version of the flick. How far from reality is this idea – are you just thinking out loud? Am I being overly excited for nothing?
It would actually be cooler to at least get a couple of print takes of each set up, unless the actors did the same performance every take.
October 30th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Check out this http://www.thetraceyfragments.com/ and click on the re-fragmented link.
October 30th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I can say that I definitely enjoyed participating in the trailer contest. I would love to get the rest of the necessary software and really cut the movie. I didn’t get to really edit the audio or add better music. Unfortunately my college days are past but it would be a very interesting thing to do.
I offer thanks for those who do get to participate.
October 31st, 2008 at 7:48 am
I would love to be able to do this.
I’ve been working through The Tracey Fragments. My only complaint is they didn’t organize their footage very well AT ALL – plus the only script they gave us was a “final dialog” script. But it’s been interesting and fun to think about and do. I haven’t watched the actual movie yet so I can keep my edit free from the ‘actual’ edit and see how it turns out.
Anyway – I would really really enjoy being able to have a crack at ediitng The Nines. I like the movie a lot – shown it to many people actually. So this would be very enjoyable for me.
November 1st, 2008 at 8:06 am
Hey John. I’m a film student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. The editing classes we have are taught by a great editor and teacher, but the footage available isn’t always the best. I would love it if this footage could be made available to our school as well. If you’re looking to try this at another film school, I could most certainly get you in contact with the editing teacher or even the head of the film school. Good luck with this.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Hey i go to that school…Hey I might be taking that class! This is awesome!!! This is why I applied only to USC things like this happen at no other place. John thanks hope to see you in the spring!
November 4th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I’m very excited that you’re doing this! Let me know if I could help again with bandwidth.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Any chance of offering raw stuff on a DVD set to be bought? Sort of like a theatrical release, but with a much small scope of an audience. There could be all sorts of disclaimers built in, but it might be a small residual market to play with. I would pay for a DVD like that. Would that get past a lot of the legal hurdles? A small residual revenue stream is still a revenue stream.
As a even farther out idea could you imagine taking raw footage from a bunch of different movies and trying to tell a story with that? Something like an ensemble piece with parallel story lines. That would be kinda funky.