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1995 original and 2006 Special Edition: A Comparison
By Richard Sargent
The original version of The Silent Years, made as a student film at Leeds Metropolitan University in the 1990s, was sixteen minutes long and had many faults and imperfections caused by the inadequate production techniques available at the time. There were no post-production facilities, the filming all had to be done in-camera with little time for reshoots and without the luxury of editing (it was all taped directly onto one master tape!).
So it was no surprise that myself and Simon, although we were reasonably proud of our acheivement in finishing the film, both felt that we could have done better. With the advances in technology that came during the next decade, and the exciting new DVD format, we took the opportunity to revisit The Silent Years and to remaster it for a 'Special Edition' release. The new version, completed in 2006, is twenty-six minutes long and quite far removed from the original. But exactly what are the differences?
We hope that fans of the 1995 original will watch the new version and not be particularly distracted by what's new; in fact we've gone out of our way to create a seemless cut of the film that simply tells the same story in a clearer, more leisurely, better presented way. But for those who are interested, this article covers the many changes, large and small, made for the new 2006 version...
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The credits: We had no way of laying credits onto our original film. Instead the individual credit captions were printed out at college (yes, a LOT of black ink!) and then filmed by the camera in a basic point-and-shoot way. It was simple enough with computer software to remake the credits and we even embellished them with a touch of colour and some slow movement. The shot of the Rose window from the church was filmed especially to be the illuminated backdrop of 'The Silent Years' logo, again with added zoom movement. Incidentally, that logo - also used on the cover of the DVD - comes straight from the miniature prop book seen in the original film, where it was a hand-drawn title barely two centimetres square!
Top right: 1995 credits. Bottom right: 2006 version |
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We carried the 'Special Edition' credit over into the first proper shot of the film, which like most of the original 1995 shots has been extended so it's on screen longer. The extensions of existing shots were sometimes a straightforward percentage slow down of the entire shot, sometimes picked apart frame by frame in order to prolong specific moments and keep other bits at 100% (such as speaking/singing). Any jumps or wobbles between frames in the picture, caused by unintended camera movement during the original filming, were smoothed out on the computer as a matter of course. Colour grading was done to ensure that new footage matched original material. Most of the shots from 1995 had their contrast levels upped to bring out the detail; ironically the new footage was still so noticably sharper that a subtle 'Guassian Blur' filter has to be applied to blend it in! Many of the camera shots from '95 needed repair work to disguise 'blank' pixels (tiny spots of missing picture that show up as white flecks, caused by damaged receptors in the actual camera that was used).
The join between miniature book opening and full page calligraphy caption was quite abrupt in the '95 version, so we decided to blend the two things together via a digital zoom on the book and a dissolve into our captions. We used the same captions as before, except this time they were scanned into the computer for a sharper image rather than just filmed by the camera. There is a tool for creating digital page-turn effects in Final Cut, and we were able to overlap those shots with the next images so they appear 'behind' the pages, something we certainly would have done originally if there had been a way. |
| The establishing shot of the monastery seen from a distance was not only slowed down but also repeated, in reverse, to extend it even more. We also added a zoom towards the Gatehouse to help the transition to the next shot. As a rule we wanted to keep all the material from the '95 version, improve it and add to it. One notable exception is here with the Gatehouse, where we removed entirely a close up shot of the miniature Gatehouse complete with extremely unconvincing miniature Novice (less than a centimetre from head to foot!) knocking. See image top right. This was because we still had the large-scale Gatehouse set, and wanted to properly show Novice approaching. The replacement shot, bottom right, was finished off in post-production by adding a 2D animation of a flying bird onto the sky (a piece of animation I had drawn specially which was re-used again later on). The following scene featuring the doorhatch was extended to allow a sound effect of jangling keys, and a last quick glance through the hatch at the end. We also added a dissolve into the next shot; no dissolves were possible back at LMU, so this is another benefit of computer editing. It should be mentioned that we remade the soundtrack from scratch in stereo, so a lot of additional effects can be heard on the Special Edition, such as Novice's feet echoing inside the Gatehouse as he walks through it. |
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The next alteration we made was to put in a new shot showing the towers at the front end of the Church, which comes as Novice approaches the Cellarium, accompanied by thunder to give some foreshadowing of the coming storm. See top left.
Then, as he is ushered in by the Master of Novices and the door closes behind them, there was some wobbling of the set wall and a 'jump' of the broom as it suddenly moves. Simon felt that these errors could and should be corrected, and indeed he tackled them very successfully using Photoshop.
Middle left photos: Before the characters emerge into the cloister we inserted a new scene featuring the first attempt to dress Novice in a habit. The interior of the Cellarium had not been depicted in the original version of the film, so no set existed. Instead we made use of the Warming House interior, which although it is much smaller features the same style of vaulted roofing and could be enlarged through visual trickery such as mirrors and computer aided compositing. The shot where a sign is hung outside the Refectory has been slowed down more than most, just to reinforce the point about Novice not having a meal.
Bottom left. We have inserted a new sunset shot between the cloister scene and the haircutting to emphasize the time of day, and also because in the original film we felt that nightfall fell too suddenly without warning. |
| The exterior monastery shots had some very ineffective 'rain' in the 1995 version, see top right, which we have supplemented with a new digital rain element. Bottom right. The sky behind the buildings has also been digitally enhanced with moving clouds and new lightning. There was some slight recutting in the Dormitory when the thunder and lightning lights up the window. Rather than just a static shot of the window we digitally added a skewed zoom in and out, with a couple of white frames for a flash effect. For the wake-up scene we did quite a bit of work on the camera move across the exterior wall of the Dormitory. Panning the animation camera left and right, and tilting up and down, were easy enough on the rig at college, but this particular shot had called for a diagonal move. Despite our best efforts the result had always been annoyingly juddery, but now on the computer we could reposition each frame a few pixels up, down, left or right to try and smooth out the overall movement. |
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Prayer & Meditation in the cloister. We inserted a new shot here of the bell tower on the Church, complete with owl. See image top left.
The next alteration was the dawn service in the Church, where Simon has added a second bat flying in the background (a duplication of the first) as well as removing the wires which held it in the air but were unfortunately visible in the old version of the film. The following shot, bottom left, of Novice in the choir stalls being buzzed by a bat is a new addition.
Moving on, for the exterior sunrise in the cloister we added the new 2D animated bird into the sky.
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