First movie:
Of course the first movie starts with the episode Anne, but I let it start with Giles visiting Joyce telling her about the Oakland flight and that he didn't find Buffy and then Joyce blames Giles for taking Buffy away (great scene) and Giles replies that he didn't make Buffy who she is and Joyce asks back "Who is she really" and then I let it go over to the scene where Buffy is walking on the beach in broad sunlight and Angel appears...
From then on it's all about Buffy, I cut out all that happens in Sunnydale, like the scoobies trying to fight vampires, or Xander and Cordelia's attempts at getting back together... cause it's not only superfluous but also severely reduces Buffy's story and atmosphere...
The other change is that when Lily throws down her tormenter in the hell dimension he stays dead, he doesn't come back for Buffy to kill him with that Gandhi-joke (awful!).
"Dead man's party" is not as bad an episode as many people think, in fact I think it's great from a character-interaction point of view. The major problem with it is imho the plot about that dead-rising-zombies and that right when the scoobies have their fight they are interrupted by these zombies and Buffy kills them, breaks the spell and suddenly they all hug each other. Didn't make any sense.
So I just got rid of all that zombie plot.
Even though I cut all that zombie-stuff out, I let Buffy find that dead cat in the cellar and let her and her mother bury it, cause it was thematically interesting. But of course I didn't let the cat come back to life.
Instead of letting the zombies interrupt, I let Cordelia defend Buffy and I let Giles arrive on the party witnessing the argument and then showing Giles visiting the school’s principal trying to force him to let Buffy be reenrolled for school.
Another thing changed is at the end of "Faith, hope and trick": Buffy puts down that ring she got from Angel in that place where she killed him... and then in the original the picture grows dark around the ring and then a moment later after Buffy left it gets bright again and Angel is thrown back into the world.
I think that robbed the scene of Buffy of its emotional power. So here I let it grow dark and it stays dark and the movie ends.
I guess the structure of the first movie is pretty much that "Anne", "Dead man's party" and "Faith, hope and trick" get formed into a movie.
