[HPFGU-Movie] Re: CoS deleted scenes

[GulPlum]

Nia wrote:

>1. As these scenes are just a few seconds each, what, can anyone
>imagine, was the reasoning behind not adding say, the Lockhart test
>scene or Hagrid rooster scene or any of the other scenes that would
>have helped develop the story a bit better?  I realize that time was
>a primary factor, but most of these are so incredibly short, and not
>all of them need have been used, only those that helped the
>exposition of the story.  (One of my big problems with CoS was the
>way the scenes were tacked onto each other with nearly no
>transistion or explaination between--just off we go, then, to the
>next and the next and the next.)

The scenes as listed (if they depict what we think they do) wouldn't really 
have helped much with transition. I suspect that duration was the primary 
cause (without the end credits, the version seen in the cinema comes in at 
just two and a half hours). As it happens, I think some of the scenes in 
the final version movie drag on for too long anyway and could have been 
further edited. The two main sequences with the car are the primary 
examples I can think of.

>2.  Forgive me if this question has already been asked but, are
>these scenes to be integrated into the film, as deleted scenes were
>in LOTR (and worked so very well,) or are we going to have to view
>them as a string of unrelated bits independent of the main film?

I suspect very, very strongly that they will not be. The option of 
re-inserting deleted scenes into DVD movies is *extremely* rare - in my 
collection of about 90 movie DVDs, I can think of only 3 or 4 where that is 
the case, plus a couple of re-cut films like LOTR, where the additional 
sequences are permanently edited in and it is impossible to view the 
"standard" film without them. Furthermore, deleted scenes on 2 disk 
releases are usually on the second disk (which of course makes integrating 
them impossible).

The clincher for me is that the details of the deleted scenes have come 
from the BBFC site. For those who don't know or haven't cottoned on, the 
BBFC is the British film certification authority (much like the MPAA in the 
USA, although it has a slightly wider remit, and its rulings have a 
slightly different legal impact).

DVD and video versions of movies have to be re-submitted for certification 
separately from the cinema ones - although it's fairly rare, there are 
several cases of movies whose cinema and video versions have different 
ratings. There are even a couple of DVDs which have a different rating 
again because of extras (one whose title I don't recall off the top of my 
head had its DVD release bumped up from a 12 to a 15 because the director's 
commentary included a couple of expletives!). Each separately accessed 
element is rated individually, and the certification for the whole package 
is based on the element with the greatest restriction.  So on the contents 
the BBFC has rated to date, CoS gets a "PG" rating, despite 4 out of 5 
elements being rated "U". Note that CoS on DVD or video hasn't been 
certificated yet (which I find strange), although the cinema version was of 
course  a PG.

The point of that whole explanation is that if the deleted scenes were to 
be integrated into the movie, there would be no separate certification for 
them: the movie would simply be rated with a longer running time.

QED.

BTW for those who have ventured to the BBFC web site, I found the new 
design of their front page (I've not been there for a while) quite amusing. 
:-) The main frame on their front page is the current design for the screen 
shown before all films in British cinemas, and instead of "The official 
BBFC website is fully available" you have the title of the film with "has 
been rated" underneath it - of course there is only one rating rather than 
a cycle through all the available ones. ;-)