Death Race 2000 - NFS Edition

Death Race 2000 has always been one of my favorite movies. I was very surprised this past xmas when my parents said they never had seen it. So I insited they watch it. They laughed and complained about how hokey and awful it was. While it was slow in parts, I still thought it was a pretty good film. They however were not happy with the way it aged.

So I decided to break it down, and it wasn't much slower then modern race films. If anything it had too much action, but these are really the strong scenes of the film and so I decided to do a cut with full blown out race action. NFS = Need For Speed. Most of the films new songs are also from the Need For Speed video game soundtracks.

It turned out there really wasn't much to cut. In total only 10 minutes from the original film was cut, which includes the original credits and I added 7 minutes of credits to my version. It was really the sound track and sound effects that needed remastering. With the exception of the dialogue which was isolated from the original SFX and film score, I replaced about 85% of the audio in the film. All races scenes and the fight scene have total rebuilt SFX and music audio.

I also took the opportunity to color correct the film as well, giving it a more modern look. More Kodak, less Fuji. I played around with some other tequniques such as ralpherization and tilt shifting, but abandoned them before the final print as I like the original foucus and film grain better. I did however leave in my pan/scan/zoom changes to aid it the change from 4:3 to 16:9 formating.