UPDATE: Morgan Spurlock came up with a great name for this cut -- the #SuperDuperCut. So I updated the title to reflect this. Original article below.
Copernicus here. Wow, it has been a crazy few days with not one but two new previews—the international trailer and the first TV commercial giving us plenty of new STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS material. My Science Vs. Cinema partner, James Darling, has again worked his editing magic to create a supercut of all footage released so far:
After the international trailer was released, Newsweek basically insisted we release a new supercut. So James starting putting it together on Saturday, and we went back and forth in email and over the phone tweaking it for hours. James decided to sleep on it, and then Lucasfilm released that TV commercial with even more new footage on Sunday morning. So it was back to the drawing board. But the new footage solved some problems in the old edit. We went back and forth in email again, and ultimately came up with what you see here.
As before, scenes are loosely grouped together if they look like they are related so that we can see if putting the footage back to back tells a larger story. But for all kinds of reasons, it isn't strictly chronological. He had to balance a linear narrative with hitting the right emotional and action beats, and of course weaving together things with existing effects and music. And somehow, through a bunch of different kinds of trickery, he even managed to remove the subtitles from the international footage.
I think the result is pretty great. I know our YouTube Channel is being dominated by supercuts these days, with this and the one for Spectre James recently did (which you can see here). But of course, our main focus is science in movies. So if you haven't seen it yet, I hope you'll check out our pilot episode of Science Vs. Cinema on the science in THE MARTIAN.
-Copernicus, aka Andy Howell.
