by Croweyes1121
What is it about? This fully integrates all televison footage back into the film coupled with the film’s original 2.0 mono soundtrack.
member ratings: (2 votes, average: 7.50 out of 10, rated)  Loading ...

Original film name: The Natural
New film name: The Natural – The Extra Innings Edit
Film studio name: Columbia / Tri-Star
Edit crew name: Croweyes1121
Date Original Film Was Released : 10-25-1978
Date Edit Was Released: 04-19-2007
Original Runtime: 138 mins (Theatrical Cut), 144 mins (Director’s Cut)
New Runtime: 150 mins.

Amount of time Cut/Added:

12 minutes added to the Theatrical Cut (or) 6 previously excised minutes of the Theatrical Cut reinstated to the Director’s Cut. Supposedly, there was 15 minutes of new footage added to the Director’s Cut. The reason my version only has 12 minutes of new footage is because some of the additional scenes were alternate cuts from the original prologue. Now that I’ve reinstated the original prologue back into the film, their inclusion was redundant and unnecessary. Also, the new credits sequence added time to the Director’s Cut and deleted footage from the Theatrical Cut, but the new sequence simply takes place over a blank screen, so I wouldn’t exactly call it “new footage” personally. The only “new” scene that didn’t make this cut was a few additional lines of dialogue between Roy and Harriet on the telephone in the scene before Roy is shot. This was not impossible to include without a jarring edit due to the editorial decisions in the new cut as opposed to the old one, so I made an artistic decision that a few extra seconds of dialogue wasn’t worth the trouble.

Cuts removed/added/extended:

1. Director’s Cut Tri-Star logo and “The Natural” title card.
2. Director’s Cut footage of Roy going to his old house and getting Wonderboy. All flashback scenes and all overlapping audio from the flashbacks have been excised.
   *see note at end of this list
3. Theatrical Cut’s opening shot with Roy sitting on the platform with “Robert Redford” credit coming onscreen.
4. Theatrical Cut’s credit sequence and entire prologue sequence with no abridged scenes up through Max meeting Hobbs on the train.
5. The new scene from the Director’s Cut with Roy and his trainer on the train where they talk about Roy’s dad saying one day he’d be the best who ever played the game.
6. Theatrical Cut from the train stopping through the entire scene with Roy being introduced to Pop Fisher (the “16 Years Later” title card is there as it should be).
7. The Director’s Cut uninterrupted from here on, beginning with Roy picking out his jersey.

• *In order to accomplish this, it was necessary to replace the existing audio with the audio from the Director’s Cut opening credit sequence, and as a result, only ambiant, outdoor sounds remain during this scene. This may seem odd at first, but it has grown on me a lot. It’s almost as if Roy is a ghost at this point in the film. Like he doesn’t exist without the game. Which kind of goes in with how we have no idea what he’s done for the 16 years he was out of baseball. Then, in the next scene, with the sounds of the train coming in gradually, the film slowly builds to his comeback through nature…then man-made noise…then voices…then music. It’s a methaphorical transition to Roy’s rebirth from silence to crescendo. Or maybe I just like the new opening. lol I actually had to cut and repaste/overlap several sections of the ac3 stream here to make the audio play out long enough to fill the sequence. Definitely a huge challenge for a newbie like me.

Fanedit details:

• No menus, just the film in VOB format suitable for burning.
• 16:9, untouched video.
• Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (the Theatrical Cut’s audio has been reencoded by necessity, as all Theatrical Cut footage was originally 4.0 – the Director’s Cut footage was 5.1 already and so was left untouched).

Your intention for this fanedit: To fully restore all scenes from the original Theatircal Cut of the film while adding the extra material from the new Director’s Cut wherever possible.

Your way to achieve your intention: The only really complicated area was the first three minutes of the film (see item #2 under the “cuts” section). Everything else was simply cut and pasted together with DVD Shrink and Womble, respectively.

Hardware and software information:

• DVD Shrink (for cutting),
• PGCDemux (for demuxing the ac3 elementary stream for editing),
• Nero Wave Editor (for editing the ac3 elementary stream),
• IFOEdit (for remuxing m2v and ac3 streams),
• Womble DVD Maker (for reassembling all title sets and reencoding all 4.0 audio to 5.1 on the fly).

Time needed for the edition: Three days.

Persons involved: croweyes1121

Buy the original DVD and support FANEDIT.ORG:

IMAGES:
cover art by boon23 (download here):

FANEDITFORUM LINK

You must own the original movie before acquiring any FanEdited movie. We here at FanEdit.org respect the company’s copyrights, and don’t want to infringe on any company’s rights. Thank you, FE!

Maybe downloadable from Fanedit.info through Rapidshare (enter and download at your own risk and responsibility)