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Les Miserables London 1985 Stage Musical Edit

Assault Bear

Assault Bear

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I have enjoyed several fanedits, but it was watching Les Miserables (2012) that got me interested in doing one myself. The movie was powerful, the acting great, but the music was garbage. I recently finished editing this movie to over-dub all the music with studio or concert recordings. My favorite has always been the original 1985 London cast recording. So I have used that music wherever possible. In other places I used the Complete Symphonic Recordings to fill in some gaps. I grabbed one or two songs from the 10th Anniversary concert, too.

I spent about 7 weeks working on this project. I would estimate I put in 150-200 hours. It was very time-consuming, because I have thousands of edits to align every mouth-movement possible so that the music from one recording doesn't seem so jarring over the video from the movie.

This edit is complete. I will likely revise and do another version in the future, to improve some of the weak points. But the project is complete for now. I'll DM a link to anyone who comments with some interest. I guess I'm just looking for community interest, and I also wanted to share this with anyone who would appreciate it, as I have.

[Edit 5/6/21] - Here's a short trailer I put together this afternoon to give a taste:


P.S. - It was this video that finally gave me the idea to do something about the movie:

 
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Sounds interesting - i had a similar idea to do the same with the Elton John biopic ' Rocketman@ as i wasn't enamoured with the music but i liked the movie. As for Les Miserables , i have never seen the show or any movie adaptation, i did try to watch the Tom Hooper version but only got through about 30 minutes of it because -yes, you got it -i couldn't stand the music. Do you have any clips you could share in your next post?
 
Brilliant! I'd hoped somebody would do this idea (I'm sure I remember at least one person suggesting it but nothing came of it).

This set is rarely far away from my speakers:

s-l300[1].jpg


You can't beat Roger Allam and Colm Wilkinson.
 
Last Impressions said:
Sounds interesting - i had a similar idea to do the same with the Elton John biopic ' Rocketman@ as i wasn't enamoured with the music but i liked the movie. As for Les Miserables , i have never seen the show or any movie adaptation, i did try to watch the Tom Hooper version but only got through about 30 minutes of it because -yes, you got it -i couldn't stand the music. Do you have any clips you could share in your next post?
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I've never tried anything like a trailer. I will see what I can do to put some clips together that won't get copyright stricken and taken down. I think it will have to be very short, because music is the #1 searchable thing that can be pulled down easily by A.I.
 
I skipped ahead to have a watch of 'Stars' because that's the part that could benefit the most from having the audio replaced! :LOL: Great job! Some of the lip sync isn't perfect as you'd expect when pairing to different sources but 90% looks like it's perfectly synced and looks just like Crowe is really singing the song as well as Allam. It must have been tricky to edit.

It's a night scene so the visual compression of squeezing a 2hr23min 1080p movie into less than 3GB is very apparent. A larger filesize would be better.

I also had a little watch of the ending and got all choked up.

I'll watch the whole edit soon. Thanks.
 
TM2YC said:
I skipped ahead to have a watch of 'Stars' because that's the part that could benefit the most from having the audio replaced! :LOL: Great job! Some of the lip sync isn't perfect as you'd expect when pairing to different sources but 90% looks like it's perfectly synced and looks just like Crowe is really singing the song as well as Allam. It must have been tricky to edit.

It's a night scene so the visual compression of squeezing a 2hr23min 1080p movie into less than 3GB is very apparent. A larger filesize would be better.

I also had a little watch of the ending and got all choked up.

I'll watch the whole edit soon. Thanks.
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Oh man! I appreciate the encouragement. Nailing the lip-sync 100% requires way more cutting and stretching. The original video is so off-tempo that it requires tons of surgery. Sometimes every single syllable has to be adjusted to fit the music. For now, this product represents my best effort to date. Some songs came out better than others, and certain songs were so bad that I had to make real compromises just in order to leave the music in tact. A little suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy it.

I laughed that you found the darkest scene in the movie to see the compression artifacts. I used a source that was already compressed, so that compression is noticeable even in my master before I prepared it for upload. I will take this into account. Perhaps I will remaster it from a higher quality source rip next time around, and maybe I'll target 4-5gigs for the final size.

There will probably be another version, but not for a while. I got pretty burnt out doing this, and I needed to make a product and separate myself from the project.
 
Welcome @Assault_Bear ! I've moved this project to the ITW thread. The Fixes, Mixes & TV forum is for approved editors. Sounds like you are well on your way with this project. Happy editing!
 
TM2YC said:
I skipped ahead to have a watch of 'Stars' because that's the part that could benefit the most from having the audio replaced! :LOL: Great job! Some of the lip sync isn't perfect as you'd expect when pairing to different sources but 90% looks like it's perfectly synced and looks just like Crowe is really singing the song as well as Allam. It must have been tricky to edit.

It's a night scene so the visual compression of squeezing a 2hr23min 1080p movie into less than 3GB is very apparent. A larger filesize would be better.

I also had a little watch of the ending and got all choked up.

I'll watch the whole edit soon. Thanks.
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I also had a quick glance through the beginning and agree with everything @TM2YC has already said. The lip syncing is pretty well done and i feel like i have the urge to now fully watch Les Mis again - my bluray has been gathering dust . My download seemed a bit choppy as if their is a frame rate issue. Maybe my computer was just lagging at the time and i'll give it another go...As a man with unlimited bandwidth i would appreciate a higher quality larger file to download if possible in the future....preparation is the key - when it comes to these projects..Placing the best quality file on your timeline is always the best way to start a project. You mention there was a lot of manipulation in the scenes..pacing, slowing down etc. So it may not be possible to just drop a higher quality uncompressed bluray rip into your time line. You can do this in Vegas with a few clicks of the mouse.

Where some of the lip syncing is a bit off - would it not be possible to maybe crop or pan & scan the scene to remove the mouth - maybe just a shot of the eyes etc...im thinking out loud here...and in any case the editing will probably get choppy. You would also have to reduce the quality from 1080P to 720p which wouldn't be a problem.
 
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Last Impressions said:
I also had a quick glance through the beginning and agree with everything @TM2YC has already said. The lip syncing is pretty well done and i feel like i have the urge to now fully watch Les Mis again - my bluray has been gathering dust . My download seemed a bit choppy as if their is a frame rate issue. Maybe my computer was just lagging at the time and i'll give it another go...As a man with unlimited bandwidth i would appreciate a higher quality larger file to download if possible in the future....preparation is the key - when it comes to these projects..Placing the best quality file on your timeline is always the best way to start a project. You mention there was a lot of manipulation in the scenes..pacing, slowing down etc. So it may not be possible to just drop a higher quality uncompressed bluray rip into your time line. You can do this in Vegas with a few clicks of the mouse.

Where some of the lip syncing is a bit off - would it not be possible to maybe crop or pan & scan the scene to remove the mouth - maybe just a shot of the eyes etc...im thinking out loud here...and in any case the editing will probably get choppy. You would also have to reduce the quality from 1080P to 720p which wouldn't be a problem.
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It might be the h.265 causing it to get choppy. h.265 is all I use anymore, but it is harder to decode than h.264, because not all hardware can natively decode h.265 yet. It typically has to be done by CPU software decoding. When I remaster it, I will stick with a slightly less extreme bitrate and h.264.

I also literally can't watch the original film. It's so cringy horrible to listen to, ...I just can't.
 
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I have just finished a re-encode of the whole movie from a new Blu-Ray video source rip. I have maintained a higher bitrate throughout, to reduce the compression artifacts. DL file size is now 4.39GB, vs the original 2.82GB. Video bitrate is 4000kbps vs 2500kbps. Audio is now 96kbps/channel vs 64kbps. And the codec is now h.264 for greater standardization, vs h.265.

The artifacting isn't completely eliminated, of course. It is reduced to maybe 1/3 of what it was, which was already minimal in my opinion. But I'm not going to go into the range of 10GB+ filesizes just to reduce the remaining tiny flaws further. Honestly, I don't have the bandwidth or the storage for it.

I'm just updating this to let anyone interested know that there is a higher integrity master now.

{Edit 5/8/21] - I'm pulling down the "Higher Bitrate" version that I attempted. It is off by 1 frame in many of the tighter cuts, resulting in a worse end result. The miniscule artifacting in V3 will have to remain, until such time as I can do a complete V4 edit from beginning to end.
 
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A note on "Stars" - I haven't done a complete list of cuts and changes yet, but here's one example of a critical change. In the movie, and in many recordings, the words at the end of the song are "This I swear by the stars." In the London recording, the words are "Keeping watch in the night". So what looks like the lips are out of sync is actually completely different words being synced up. It can never be 100% with different mouth movements, but I have synced them up so it's like watching a puppet-show (think ventriliquist) or maybe an Anime (the lips are moving in general, not in specific; the words could be anything).

I have a long-term goal to go through the whole movie and make a list of all my edits, but it's a lofty goal. There are 1803 video clips, and 93 audio clips.
 
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Having watched a few more all-time critical classic Italian movies recently, I have to say that the lip-syncing in your edit is about a billion times better than these Academy Award winning films. You've probably got it as close to perfect as can be achieved IMO.

What is your source for the music? Is there some super deluxe version I don't know about? It might be my imagination but it sounded like there were some lines bridging the main songs which I don't remember from my 2CD set.
 
TM2YC said:
Having watched a few more all-time critical classic Italian movies recently, I have to say that the lip-syncing in your edit is about a billion times better than these Academy Award winning films. You've probably got it as close to perfect as can be achieved IMO.

What is your source for the music? Is there some super deluxe version I don't know about? It might be my imagination but it sounded like there were some lines bridging the main songs which I don't remember from my 2CD set.
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I used 3 different sources. My main one is the 1985 London 2CD. My second source is the 1988 Complete Symphonic Recording 3CD. This one would count as the "super deluxe" you refer to. It was my go-to to fill in those gaps. And a couple times I pulled from the 1995 Dream Cast 10th Anniversary Concert.
 
TM2YC said:
Brilliant! I'd hoped somebody would do this idea (I'm sure I remember at least one person suggesting it but nothing came of it).
<snip>
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Someone made a start almost 10 years ago, but it wasn't quite the same project as this... I think the last one just removed Russel Crowe; they had an actor friend record all of the Valjean lines and planned to dub over him only.

It didn't make it to a release, though.

I'd be very keen to see this edit, though.
 
This is a great idea! I've toyed with doing the same thing with Jesus Christ Superstar, setting it to the original Ian Gillan album. Of course, the music in the JSC movie is nowhere nearly as bad as the Les Mis one, but I can't help it, it sounds like muzak to me in comparison to the Gillan version.
 
Wow this is a fascinating thing to do! In watching the trailer, I was surprised how quickly my brain stopped caring that the "lip-syncing" didn't line up perfectly.
 
You know, even with the few moments where there was a 'hard' edit, from a slowed scene to a quickened one, this was will 100 times better than the original. Russel Crowe's voice made the film unwatchable for me. It was a shame to lose SBC and HBC's songs, but a price I was willing to pay. If you ever release this formally or do the v4 edit, and want an IFDB review, give me a shout. (y)(y)
 
The 1995 Dream Cast In Concert Laserdisc is completely uncut (DVD and CD are missing bridging segments and an intermission), and has what is said to be an amazing PCM Stereo mix.
 
I've recently started my own remix of Les Miserables but going at it from a slightly different direction. Instead of trying to match the video to a pre-recorded edition, I've used AI models to strip the vocals out of some cast recordings, modified it to match the video, and then re-inserted that as a replacement for the video vocal track. The results are promising and I'm going to continue to work on that edition, but I'd also love to see this version to compare.

Here's my proof of concept. I can do better now that I know it works, so I'm starting at the beginning and replacing all of Jean Valjean and Javert's parts. After that if I still have the motivation I'll probably replace some of Cosette's solos. She did a fine job where she sings in a duet or trio but her extreme Snow-White style vibrato is annoying.
 
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