i'm curious if anyone on this board has ever attempted his or her own fan edit...

tired of having to fast forward through scenes with evelyn marsh, little nicky, etc., i've decided to make my own fan edit of twin peaks' episodes 17-28.  my goal is this: condense these episodes and remove all cringe worthy scenes, but leave the narrative arc intact so that it flows seamlessly into episode 29, which will be left untouched.  this, along with unedited episodes 15 and 16, i intend to label ‘season 3’ (episode 14 always seemed like a logical season finale to me.)

it’s been a fun learning activity for me, as i have absolutely no experience editing video whatsoever.  cut is evelyn marsh, little nicky, nadine’s cheerleading and wrestling, ben’s civil war, etc.  leo finding windom earle has been moved to the one of the later episodes, meaning his theatrics at the cabin and silly disguises are gone (this way his presence is far more menacing). some might call all this sacrilegious, but whatever.

anyway, i'm curious if anyone here has attempted some similar.  i'd love to hear what narrative choices you made and how you dealt with the music that plays over every damn scene, which is proving to be a real pain to cut around.

and i look forward to posting my finished product so you can tell me what a terrible job i did.

cheers.

went well!  i finished this back in march but just never got around to uploading it.  i was pretty burnt out after watching the same scene 87 times just to ensure i cut it correctly... i managed to condense episodes 17-28 into seven episodes, each one ranging from 35-45 minutes, while keeping the narrative intact so that episode 29 could remain unedited.

the only issue i ran into was if i cut a scene with opening credits (such as james riding on his motorcycle at the start of episode 18).  i didn't want to begin an episode without any of the writing/directing/etc. credits, so i tried replicating the twin peaks font and overlaying on the video.  it didn't work (this is my first time editing and this proved too advanced for me).  so as a result, i think two my episodes lack these opening credits which irks the completist in me.

i'll try and figure out rapidshare this weekend and upload them if you're interested.

That´s very interesting. I always had ideas in mind on how I would trim down the second half of TP because there´s so much silly and not-going-anywhere stuff in it. I wouldn´t tinker with Lynch´s work because I think his episodes are pretty much flawless. But a lot of the stuff mainly in episodes  17-22 doesn´t help the series to stay interesting when you are watching the series completely.

 I would be interested in your edits but unfortunately I don´t have a good internet connection here and it takes forever to download something. Do you have a script or notes of how you order the scenes in the episodes? I would love to read it.

 Come to think of it, it must be pretty hard to edit those episodes together and always look if the opening credits are right. There were a lot of guest stars after the LP-case. Did you remove their credits too?

You have my respect for your work!

i do have notes.  after editing episode 17 and getting halfway through 18, i realized a particular scene made zero sense and i needed to start all over from the beginning.  so it became necessary to script out every episode in advance.  i'll look for the document when i get home.

if someone's scene got cut but his or her name was in the opening credits, i just left it as is.  i didn't want to cut key dialogue just because a credit was being displayed.  this also irked the completist in me, but i guess this will never be perfect.

thank you for the kudos!

Yea, there is a ton from episodes 19 and 20 that I cut.  Episode 24 also had a lot of flotsam... I found my outline so I'll send it to you.  I'm still creating my 'cut list' for when I upload this to fanedit.org

I also sent you a PM about the outline.