2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most amazing films ever made.
It doesn’t half drag on a bit though. That’s why I tightened it up a bit,
cut out the boring parts, made it a little snappier, and altered the sound
track.
2001 seconds is a complete re-edit of Stanley Kubrick’s
original Space Odyssey from 141 minutes to 33 minutes 21 seconds.
Click HERE to download 2001 Seconds
Editor’s notes
I did it
mainly because it’s a bit of a laugh. There’s no actual reason to why I
decided to edit 2001 down to 2001 seconds. I think there were several
justifications, but no real reasons. I did it to amuse myself mainly, but lets explore the other reasons:
Firstly; let’s
not beat around the bush. 2001 isn’t good for a casual watch. If
you’re a fidgety bugger like me you start thinking about if there are any
ice-cream vans outside or anything after about 20 minutes of Monkeys. I
mean, watching all that scene setting is fine for the first watch if geek-core sci-fo’ is your thang, but The
Sentinel, the Arthur C Clarke book on which the film was built, was a short
story not a huge ponderous epic.
Secondly, I really
love the film. When I first watched the scene when Dave Bowman encounters
the monolith I was beyond blown away. Somehow, some in-conceivable genius
had been able to put into vision the process of a shape for a force which has
no shape teaching a mere mortal the absolute everything and infinite, then
guiding him through his own death to be reborn as that space foetus thing. Fucking awesome.
In the edit I’ve cheekily weaved in some stacks from Llamasoft's
uniquely cool Neon, a light synthesizer and music visualiser
in the XBox360 and PC. The stack affectionately known as ‘The Mind Of God’ sits alongside the original slit scan effects
wonderfully well I think, and I’ve also used a stack which features a monolith
against a pulsating background.
Thirdly, nerd baiting is
quite fun! Tee hee!
I’ve changed a
lot of the music in the edit and messed around an awful lot with the
soundtrack. A lot of it I did a little squiffy
so I can’t recall the boring details to regale you with. I loved the
music in the original film, but as the impish elf part of me was trying to rid
the film of as much boring bits as possible, I took great delight on seeing how
different music could completely change the gravity, pace and vibe of each
scene. Effort went in to synchronising action
with the music, but as my dodgy copy of Premier crashed literally every 10
minutes this was not always that easy. Luckily stoned perseverance
overcame the technological inadequacies, and within a weekend I’d edited the
entire film down into several 4 minute chunks. The final task was to whack
it in Virtual dub and spit the bugger out. It wasn’t until a month later
I found out I could compress the audio to make the download a sensible
size. This was after all the first go I’d had at video editing. I
just figured if I didn’t do it someone else would. Admittedly probably
better ;)
It is now that
this lighthearted little edit of 2001: A Space Odyssey is offered out for
people’s fun and enjoyment. It’s a parody, but also an
homage
Mr.Swith
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