Finished through “Friday” (approximately 16 minutes in). The good news is that it seems the further in the video I got the first time around, the better attention I paid to lip-synch which means less work for me now, but it also helps that I’ve found my editing groove again and things are moving much faster. I’m hoping this project’ll be done by mid-November, but there I go setting dates again.

Some noticeable changes to this version include some altered timing after a few lines (Ash pauses a bit after Keanu’s “fanboys, not fanmen” line, for instance), sound effects during the Kite scene, and a full remaster of the “Do You Remember Love director’s cut” scene from the R2 DVD (Finally, got to use it for something!). I also fixed an amusing continuity error. Since our dialogue scenes often feature shots from different episodes, every now and then I have to flip a shot horizontally so that the eyelines remain consistant (in other words, if a character begins a scene facing screen left, they need to keep facing screen left throughout unless we see them move). Not being the experienced editor I am now, I would often flip the shots of Jet, despite the fact that he is the most asymmetrical character design of the Bebop cast. So when we do the clock wipe from Ash sitting on the couch fully clothed to him sitting in his boxers, I was horrified to see that his prosthetic arm switches sides mid-wipe! I went back to edit the scene just before so that Keanu is now flipped, and Ash is aligned as he should be. Note to self: all dialogue scenes must be edited around where Ash is looking.

And since I love split screens so much, here’s another one.

Hey Minmay, what did the five fingers say to the face?

Just completed all of “Thursday”. Spent a lot more time on lip-synch than I thought I wanted to, but then I’m much more of a perfectionist now than when I first made FBBB. Ash’s “That didn’t come out right, did it?” is much funnier in synch, methinks. It’s fun to edit these characters again. It feels good to be editing something period.

I actually rerecorded some dialogue for the ASUX promo due to pops I couldn’t filter out. I’m content that I was able to match my old performance, though I did have to work a bit at “dirtying” up the audio to match the crappy microphone I used the first time. I might still have it buried in a closet somewhere, maybe I should dig it out should the need arise to rerecord something else.

Speaking of perfectionism, I decided in a fit of self-loathing to see what FBBB would look like if I were to recapture the footage from DVD rather than from the MiniDV master I’ve been using. The result is enough to make me sigh, but not enough to make me reconsider. It would be sharper and the colors more natural, but the contrast is not as night and day as ReDux was to its original. Again, I am resolved to press on, in the hope that the time I save in not having to recapture everything can be applied to getting a new project rolling.

I circled what stuck out to me the most, how the lines on Ripley’s bathrobe are blurrier in the MiniDV master, but overall, the difference is slight. At least, slight enough.