Synopsis:

From the original edit page: "Zach Braff’s charming “Garden State” is retold with a more serious and emotional undertone. This edit uses deleted material and a new soundtrack to create a more intimate and revealing view of Large’s journey." Same as before, but now in high definition!

Intentions:

Also from the original edit page: "This edit is designed to explore the emotional turmoil of Large’s character. I greatly enjoyed the original theatrical version which is quirky, charming, funny, and tender, but I always felt that the movie lacked the emotional punch that Large’s character arc suggests or hints to. Although it is stated that his character has been medicated for the better part of 13-15 years, he comes out of the haze quickly and seems to have little emotional ill-effects, while making an incredible leap of personal insight. I’m drawn to stories of redemption, personal growth and reconciliation of father/son relationships, so I wanted to explore that thrust of this film. The result is a version which holds true to the theatrical; it is still charming and quirky, but now has a more serious tone and exposed emotional vulnerability which helps the viewer experience Large’s journey through to the end, which I have drastically changed to remove the stereotypical Hollywood ending." “Large’s Ark” was produced in early 2011 so the only available source material was the DVD, meaning that it was made in standard definition. This version simply upgrades the video to Full HD, the majority of the footage coming from the “Garden State” Blu-ray with a few segments of deleted material upscaled and adjusted in other ways to blend in.

Change List:

This list includes details both relevant to the only to the remaster and native to the original 2011 edit. The total 9 minutes of cuts and additions include those to the opening and closing credits. • 0:00:00 Original studio logos replaced by edit-specific ones, almost all aircraft audio playing before the opening scene (barring the last few seconds) has been removed. o 0:00:01 Upscaled fanedit warning plate from original edit. o 0:00:13 Upscaled “Digitally Enhanced for Superior Storytelling” plate from original edit. o 0:00:26 Upscaled “Fan Edited - Fanedit.org” plate from original edit. o 0:00:37 “Soggy Noodle” by Paul McCartney plays over the final two new plates. o 0:00:40 Upscaled L8wrtr plate from original edit. o 0:00:53 Upscaled “Red Doctor Inc.” plate from original edit. • 0:01:11 “St. Agnes and the Burning Train” by Sting replaces “Ganesh Vekar” during turbulence scene. • 0:01:21 Overlaid dialogue from the original ending of the film over the turbulence scene, the former is deleted in this edit so the dialogue meaning is now ambiguous. • 0:01:36 The turbulence scene, now just a single shot, fades out before Large reaches up to adjust the airflow. • 0:01:40 Fade in onto the telephone in Large’s room. • 0:02:30 “Save Me” by Aimee Mann replaces ”Don’t Panic” by Coldplay, plays now until first audible dialogue during the funeral scene. • 0:02:52 Cut scene of Large driving in traffic. • 0:02:53 Replaced original title card reading “Garden State” with edit one “Large’s Ark” (the working title for the production before being discarded). Upscaled from the original edit. • 0:02:58 Deleted scene of Large meeting friends/colleagues at a restaurant in LA. Added new shot of plane landing. Upscaled from the original edit. • 0:03:48 Cut shot of Large’s aunt singing “Three Times a Lady” during the funeral scene, the audio of which throughout the scene has been removed as well in lieu of “Save Me” from the previous scene continuing, with ambient outdoor sounds added. • 0:05:39 Brought forward scene of Large meeting his father in the latter’s office so it now happens before the scene where he talks with his aunt and gets his shirt. • 0:08:28 Fade to black from the shot of Large in his shirt against the wall, makes a smooth transition to the new next scene, which starts dark before Large turns on the light. • 0:09:31 Large in the garage, replacing him meeting with his father (now happening earlier). • 0:08:41 “Sometime Around Midnight” by The Airborne Toxic Event replaces “Caring is Creepy” by The Shins, plays up to the start of the second shot of Large at the party. • 0:09:07 Cut from Large riding the motorbike to him arriving at the party, he no longer gets pulled over. • 0:31:32 “Tatooine” by Jeremy Messersmith replaces the acoustic guitar piece in the original that plays when Large picks up Sam on his bike. • 0:42:13 Removed line “I guess I haven’t even told you that yet” during Jelly the hamster’s funeral. • 0:45:36 (Verbatim from original edit page) “Replaced scene where Large is looking into the fridge and surprised by his father. This scene is clearly intended as the beginning of Large’s last day as he A) states it his last day, and B) is wearing the shirt that he wears throughout his last day. This scene is replaced by a combination of existing footage; Large looking at photos and then walking into his parents’ bathroom, and then the deleted scene of his father surprising him and then discussing her death.” • 0:46:34 Deleted scene of Large in his parents’ bathroom and being surprised by his father. “The deleted scene has a few minutes cut, primarily the awkward exchange of Large implying that she (his mother) killed herself. They both pretended to not be saying it, now when Large insinuates it his father immediately gets it and Large doesn’t pretend to not be saying it. Also cut the portion of his father talking about his dream and wanting everyone to be happy, again, too on-the-nose, and added in audio of continuous dripping of water”. 6 minutes duration, entirely upscaled SD footage. • 0:52:46 Back to original scene order, Large with his two friends at the graveyard. • 0:58:56 Cut scene of Large not being able to swim. • 1:04:18 “January Rain” by David Gray replaces “Fair” by Remy Zero as Sam “tap dances” in front of the fire. • 1:06:05 The scene where Large is looking through the fridge before being surprised by his father now takes place, effectively swapped with the ones of him looking at photos then walking into his parents’ bedroom and bathroom (moved forward). • 1:08:39 “Indefinitely” by Travis replaces “One of These Things First” by Nick Drake as Large and company ride around. • 1:21:02 “Singalong Junk” by Paul McCartney replaces “The Only Living Boy in New York” by Simon and Garfunkel at the end of the Ark scene. • 1:21:43 Cut the screaming into the Abyss scene. • 1:23:01 Used extended version of the bathtub scene with Large and Sam. 1 2/3 minutes longer than the theatrical version, as much native HD footage was used as possible, the remainder (in three chunks) was again upscaled SD footage. • 1:34:27 “One” by Aimee Mann replaces “Let’s Go” by Frou Frou as Large leaves Sam at the airport and heads off to his plane, plays through to the start of the credits so also replaces “Winding Road” by Bonnie Somerville and David Weisburg. • 1:35:11 Last shot (camera approaching Large sat down on the plane) plays at 77% speed (slowdown starts on preceding shot of his father before the fade). • 1:35:28 Cut Hollywood cliché scene of Large returning to Sam instead of leaving. • 1:35:36 New fanedit credits added. ~1 minute duration, upscaled from the original edit. • 1:36:49 Original credits now play at 115% speed. • 1:37:15 “Dynamite Walls” by Hayden added for the rest of the credits, also (as well as “One” by Aimee Mann) replacing “Winding Road” by Bonnie Somerville and David Weisburg.

Additional Notes:

Creative choices and editing (all the hard work) by L8wrtr, visual rebuild (copying and pasting) by ParanoidAndroid. From the original edit page: “The DVD has a ton of deleted material, and in my opinion most of it was correctly left out. However, there were three scenes that speak directly to Large’s journey: • A confrontation between Large and his father in the bathroom where his mother died. • An extended version of the conversation in the Ark. • An extended version of the conversation between Large and Sam in the bathtub, I elected to stick with only the scenes in the bathroom. While the material of the Ark scene clearly helps give direction to Large, the dialogue is too on-the-nose and doesn’t feel natural. These characters which we’ve never met say exactly the right metaphysical comments, opening their intimate views to a total stranger; it is clearly the screenwriter talking, not the characters, so it felt false to me. My goal was to make this movie feel as real as possible, so I decided to leave the Ark scene as it played theatrically. Unfortunately, all the deleted scenes were in letterbox, so had to be blown-up and distorted in order to match the aspect ratio of the rest of the film. The scenes do stick out visually, particularly the one between Large and his father, but the emotional content was critical to the story I set out to tell. Because the 5.1 audio kept all dialogue on the centre, with only a few instances of the music bleeding into the center, I was able to replace a significant amount of the soundtrack. I love the original soundtrack, each song is wonderful, but as I crafted the story, trimmed scenes and rearranged them, the tone of the film went became more serious and I wanted more introverted songs to match the tone at each point in the journey for Large.” This HD remaster was made by simply copying and pasting the relevant sections of video to match the 2011 version. Certain sections unique to the edit (plates and deleted/extended scenes) were upscaled, and also stretched and recoloured where appropriate, to match the rest as best as possible. The text plates for the new title and ending credits actually had to be slightly softened after upscaling in order to not stand out from the rest on the Blu-ray, gate weave was also added for the same reason. The audio was unaltered from the original edit, to avoid generational loss its soundtrack is muxed together with the new video.

Special Thanks:

Also, from the original edit page: "DwightFry 78, Herowithoutacause and Elbarto1 each provided invaluable feedback. In particular Dwight provided some keen story observations, and Elbarto was a great inspiration for some replacement tracks which were giving me fits." Many thanks as well to BionicBob, without whom the redo would have not seen the light of day!