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Star Trek: Picard - Season 2 "The Watcher"

asterixsmeagol

asterixsmeagol

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  • Media owner ArtisDead
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An AsterixSmeagol Masterpiece
Art by ArtisDead

Back in May, I posted this in the Star Trek: Picard thread:
asterixsmeagol said:
Now that it's over, I'm trying to mentally construct a season-to-movie edit, and I think my previous statements about what can be cut still work. A rough outline is
  1. Move the Elnor backstory we finally got in episode 8(?) to the beginning as a prologue
  2. Season 2 credits
  3. Cut Elnor from episode 2 and all of Raffi's visions of him
  4. Cut the entire ICE arrest and chase
  5. Cut everything about Guinan, jump straight to Talinn being the Watcher when Picard goes looking for her
  6. Cut the entire story of Picard's mother
  7. Cut the entire Kore storyline
  8. Cut the long, unnecessary Jurati singing scene
  9. Cut the entire FBI storyline
  10. Try to minimize the more outrageous parts of the storming of the vineyard, like Borg beamed into the walls (how could that be explained?!)
  11. Maybe cut the drone from Soong's final plan to streamline it for time
Click to expand...

I just ordered my Blu-ray copy of Season 2, hopefully it arrives soon so I can start working on these rough cuts this weekend. This is my first feature-length edit, so I expect it will take me quite some time and several passes before I can get it down to a reasonable runtime that still feels like a cohesive story.
 
Sounds good! Are you sure you want to cut all of the Picard's mother storyline? The overarching theme of the season was Q's test/helping Picard, and his mother was the past event that Picard needed to face up to.
 
I'll have to watch the last scene with Picard's mother and father to see how it plays for me on a second viewing. If it really clicks for me this time, maybe I'll keep it.
 
The Blu-rays have all been ripped using MakeMKV. I'm now in the process of converting all of those mkv files into mp4s using Avidemux (copying the video stream and convering the audio to 448 mbps AAC). Is there a way to batch convert these? It's frustrating to have to keep coming back to the app every 20 minutes to load the next file.
 
This is exciting. There were certainly some odd detours in Season 2 and it definitely felt like they were struggling to extend the core arc across the full 10 episodes. For me, Season 1 was a solid 8/10. Season 2, 4/10. It was hard to stay excited for it, and my partner and I went more than a week between episodes. Will be interesting to see if you can stitch it up in a way that makes it work.
 
Wow, I didn't realize how much filler material there really is a on weekly basis in TV shows. These 10 episodes clocked in at 7:54:26 combined, but after removing all of the opening and closing credits (except one of each) and the "previously on" recaps, the runtime is already down to 7:09:26. That's basically one whole episode's worth of material removed already before I even get to work!
 
I'm done with my first pass, just removing the the ICE and FBI arrests, Young Guinan, and Kore. That brings me down to 5:57:24.

Still to do:
  • Remove: Picard's mother and father, Elnor halucinations, Jurati singing
  • Re-order the Jurati singing episode into chronological order
  • Move the real Elnor flashbacks to the beginning
  • Trim long chase scene at the vinyard
Once I have all of that roughed out and have a run time, I'll figure out how much I need to cut from the first two episodes of setup to get to a reasonable final length. Then come the hard part of actually making all of the cuts flow naturally!
 
I've made my next pass through the season and removed a couple of Elnor scenes (I'm sure there are more that I missed), reordered the gala episode and removed Jutati singing, and removed all of the scenes with the young Jean-Luc and his parents, as well as the scenes where his dad is a psychiatrist in his fever dream. That brings me down by another full episode length to a running time of 5:12.

Watching the again, I think I am actually going to remove everything about Picard's inner struggle/hallucinations and Talinn's ear/brain device and make the injury physical alone. I also think I have a plan for basically removing the entire second episode, but I'll have to watch the end of the first one again to see exactly how I'm going to make it work.
 
In a season full of filler, that was the worst offender. And she nailed the song! It just had no business being in the show.
 
I'm down another hour and a half to 3:45. Unfortunately my initial idea to reduce episode 2 drastically doesn't work because Elnor is sprinkled throughout it, they clearly say 5 to beam up, and I can't figure out how to cut him out of the fight and remove his post-death scene. I'll keep playing with it. The next pass through I'm going to try to cut down more Jurati in 2024, and then try reordering some scenes to introduce Renée Picard and Soong earlier. As it stands they don't arrive until almost 90 minutes in and it feels weird.
 
It's been a busy couple of weeks and I haven't had much time to work on this, but I'm still making progress. Mostly working on audio right now so I haven't had a lot of time cut but looking through the transitions I've noticed a couple of shots that weren't needed and I've reduced the runtime to about 3:30. I'm getting burnt out with the audio so I may give this a watch as a rough work print to take some notes on where scenes need to be shuffled around/trimmed before I keep digging into the audio details.
 
"Five to beam up" works just fine if you count the Borg queen! As I recall, there was a line about, "and a Borg queen." Just cut that.

Cutting Elnor out of the escape sequence is pretty easy if you sprinkle in some footage of Raffi from elsewhere. It's shocking how unnecessary he is.

How do you intend this cut to be viewed? 3h30m is longer than Americans generally accept for movies, with special exceptions for much-loved epics--which Picard S2 never will be. So will you cut this into two movies, or several TV episodes, or...?
 
My next watch through I'll make another effort to fully remove Elnor. And you're absolutely right about "Five to beam up." He says "Five to beam up. Plus the Borg Queen." Of course you can just clip off the second sentence. I can't believe I didn't do that.🤦‍♂️

I'm also going to try reduce some more of the repeated exposition that we get in 2024. I agree 3:30 is much too long, my goal is to get the run time down to ~2:45.
 
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I've had a rough couple of months and had to put this aside, but I'm finally getting back to it. I think I've cut everything I want to now, with the exception of cutting Elnor from episode 2. I think I could get him out of the scenes on board La Sirena, but it might require some cropping that I'm not sure would look good. And more difficult than that, I can't figure out how to cut him out of the scenes at the presidential palace where he's right next to Raffi the entire time they're outside. And if I can't show her outside, it doesn't make any sense for her to be in Jurati's basement Borg lab, which means I have no way to get her up onto the ship.

Any ideas?
 
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I haven't touched this for a couple of months and I have no idea where I left things. This past week 3 separate IRL friends who I mentioned this project to before Christmas asked if I was done with it, so I've rendered myself a preview copy of the last saved version of the project to watch on my home theater tomorrow as version 0.1. I'll My plan is to take some notes on big stuff that still needs to be fixed, any pacing continuity issues that I notice, and then re-render a quick version 0.2 to hand out to my friends as guinea pigs. One two of the three only watched Season 1 so they're going in cold and should be able to tell me if there are any plot holes I don't realize I've created by cutting so much out.
 
It turns out that I left it in rougher shape than I remembered. I've smoothed out all of the audio transitions, but noticed some plot holes I inadvertently created so I'll need to take another pass through to add back some scenes, and hopefully remove some others that I don't think were necessary. Unfortunately I'm going to have to take out some monologues I liked that don't advance the plot at all to get the runtime down.
 
My first draft is finally complete, and it clocks in at 3:23, which is significantly longer than I had hoped. I'm giving a copy to one of my previously mentioned friends to preview this weekend, and then depending on his thoughts I may make some minor tweaks and get a preview copy for anyone on this site who would be interested, or if he hates it I may head back to the drawing board for a major overhaul. Fingers crossed.
 
I've incorporated all of the tweaks my friend suggested and now I have a version that I'm comfortable sharing here as a workprint. Would anyone be interested in previewing it for me? Maybe The Warlord , DigModiFicaTion, or Wraith? Or is the proper way to do this to submit it to the Academy for review so you can sort it out yourselves?

Basic outline of changes:
  • Picard's mother and father cut
  • Soji cameo cut
  • Picard/Laris romance cut (even more necessary after Season 3)
  • ICE storyline minimized (I couldn't quite cut it all as intended)
  • Young Guinan cut
  • Picard/Guinan FBI arrest cut
  • Raffi acting crazy (mostly) cut
  • Raffi hallucinating Elnor cut
  • Soong's introduction moved much sooner
  • Soong's daughter cut
  • Seven/Raffi relationship minimized (don't think this is because it's same-sex; it's because it's boring)
  • Borgati singing cut
  • Wesley cameo cut
  • Rios's death being told like it's a funny anecdote cut
  • Many little trims of repeated/unnecessary dialogue or dramatic looks
  • Commercial breaks cut

The edit is still longer than I want, but I'm not sure of what else I could cut so that it still makes any kind of sense. My friend suggested that I further trim down Raffi's erratic behavior, the Borg Queen's over-the-top moments, and Rios' romance, but I'm not exactly sure how to do any more on those. Removing any more of Raffi basically cuts her out entirely (when isn't she acting crazy this season?), I don't want to cut anything more of Annie Wersching because it's her last role, and if I cut any more of the Rios story I'm afraid his decision to stay behind seems even more out of left field.
 
I've decided to title this edit "The Watcher", but I need some help getting it to look ok on screen. I want it to appear just below the show title during the opening credits, but I'd like it to have particle effects added similar to what's going on with the rest of the graphics on screen. I tried playing around with some of the built-in options in Vegas, but nothing looks very good. Any tips?

The Watcher Title (need help).mp4

drive.google.com drive.google.com
 
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