Post-Production Documents

 


 

Post-Production Documents

The following documents relate to the film’s post-production process. Scheduled shooting had ended, which left only final editing to piece together a film that fit within time and rating constraints. Most importantly, it had to make sense.

Most of these documents were acquired through screenwriter Parker Bennett, who alongside writing partner Terry Runté did much of the last-minute script revisions and post-production writing. With direct correspondence from the producers, Parker and Terry were the guiding force in bringing the film to its final form.


 

ADR Revisions Document

Goomba Subtitles

Animated Dinosaur Prologue

 

1/4/93--ADR Revisions Document

This document is an explicit outline of the extensive ADR dialogue that Parker and Terry wrote to either condense dialogue in the film or to more thoroughly explain the narrative. As Parker put it in our 9/8/2010 interview,
Terry and I wound up going back and we did this incredible amount of looping, because the story wasn’t quite tracking for people - the whole "parallel dimension thing" - the producers were worried that nobody was getting it.
So, we had a situation at the end where any shot that was a long shot or a character turned [their] back, we were putting new dialogue in there to try make the story make sense. The post-production supervisor said that it was the most ADR-looping she'd ever encountered on a film. So, it was a struggle to make the story come together even as much as it did."
Most notably, this document contains evidence of many scenes that were ultimately cut for theatrical release. The fact that ADR-work was considered at all for these scenes suggests that they were very likely a part of the master cut until the last minute.

Download Document

   

2/18/93--Goomba Subtitles

If you listen closely, it’s clear that Goomba-Toad says to Luigi and Daisy “Here. Take a gun. Go. Go!” as he gives each of them a de-evolution gun at the end of the film. Now, imagine if every Goomba in the film were given subtitles in the same fashion.

While an interesting concept, even Parker and Terry realized that it could only go so far before making the film even more inconsistent and confusing. Still, it was clearly an idea that the producers thought would add something to the film, so the two writers listed five alternative ways to execute the idea; the fifth being “don’t do it.”

 

Download Document

 

 

3/17/93--Animated Dinosaur Prologue

Judging from the date given, the animated dinosaur prologue was the final addition to the movie during the post-production process. According to Parker, the producers had held screenings of the film that left audiences confused. In order to avoid theatrical frustration, they opted to add the prologue to the beginning of the film to simply spell it out.

This prologue never existed in any of the early scripts. Rather, the film was meant to start on a primordial setting complete with realistic dinosaurs before a meteorite catastrophically obliterated the landscape. A brief portion of this original opening can be seen at the end of the animated sequence.

Parker and Terry offered only three different versions of the animated prologue in this document, with the only difference being slightly different dialogue between the talking dinosaurs.

 

Download Document