This graphic design project to design a DVD cover was actually part of a much larger project which was never completed. In 2007 when I decided to try and produce a composite edit of the 1978 George A Romero film Dawn Of The Dead, by editing together the three differing cuts of the film; the Theatrical version, the European (AKA Argento) cut, and the Extended (AKA Cannes) cut from the newly released Anchor Bay 'Ultimate Edition' DVD box-set.

I began the editing on May 11, 2007. I copied the three 'Ultimate Edition' box-set discs to my hard drive, with each one having MPEG-2 interlaced video running at 29.97fps, then used DGindex to produce a D2V project file, then ran this through TMPGEnc's inverse telecine processor, saving it as a TPR project file, then used VFAPI to produce a frameserving 'fake' intermediary AVI file which acted as if it was progressive video running at 23.976fps.

This 'fake' AVI file could be opened & edited by Adobe Premiere, then re-encoded back into progressive MPEG-2 using Cinema Craft Encoder SP2, all of which meant only one re-encoding of the source video through the whole process to keep any generational degradation in quality from the source footage to a minimum. In order to get the longest edit possible I imported all three versions into an Adobe Premiere timeline and edited each version at every cut, then added spaces to sync up frame for frame each shot in all three. this meant it was easy to see which of the 3 had the longest version of any one shot (even by one frame) and obviously where some had shots that others didn't also. Using this method I ended up with the longest version possible by being able to switch versions from shot to shot (and even fitting together two halves of the same shot from different versions), but this stored up a massive headache when it came to audio editing. The 16:9 anamorphic widescreen from the source was preserved, along with the one Dolby Digital 2.0 audio track, with the intention of releasing it on one dual layer DVD. I worked through editing all the video (leaving the audio editing to a second editing pass) completing it on June 23, 2007.

The audio editing pass was far more difficult than I had anticipated. I only had a small number of score tracks to work with, taken from one or other of the 'The Complete 1978 Soundtrack' 49 track Theatrical version, created by an American fan, Chris Stavrakis, the 2004 Trunk Records 'Unreleased Soundtrack Music to the George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead' 14 track CD, and the 17 track 1978 Zombi Soundtrack by Goblin. This was still some years before I had put together my 'Dawn Of The Dead - Extended Cut Ultimate Soundtrack', although I did make contact with Chris Stavrakis who was able to give me a couple of the additional tracks I needed to make certain sequences work. By far the most difficult section ran from Wooley going nuts up to Peter & Roger talking after the SWAT member shoots himself. In that section each of the three source versions had different backing music and I was switching between them almost shot to shot. In the end I had to rubber band out all the audio, overlay one backing music track from the Goblin Zombie score CD across the whole sequence, then rubber band back in any speech or sound effects I could separate out enough from their backing tracks as to make them sound 'clean'. Then I used sound effects CDs to replace some of the missing sound effects, and copy and pasted in some sound effects and bits of background speech from elsewhere in the audio tracks and then added in some ambience noise to fill it all out. I even recorded myself making zombie noises (!) to use for the sequence when the footless and the female zombie attack in the apartment as the source speech was too quiet to separate out its music backing track. I got around 13 minutes into the film and decided I just couldn't realistically give the project the justice it deserved, using the source materials I had available, an was unwilling to make a poor job of it just to get the project completed. Having edited all the video, I know the finished version would have ran at 161m 54s 28f (24P NTSC). Without any new source material being found, that would be the longest composite edit anyone could make, and that was using the three versions plus a couple of shots from the German trailer and some additional footage from the Document Of The Dead documentary neither of which are in any of the three versions. There have been two other composite edits produced and I know that my version would have been longer than both. The German language Astro 'Ultimate Final Cut' DVD from 2001 running at 154m 38s (PAL or 161m 14s NTSC equivalent) which is about 40 seconds shorter, and the fanmade 'Extended Mall Hours Cut' DVD released in January 2008, edited by OfficiallyUnofficial running at 154m 35s (24P NTSC), which is about 7½ minutes shorter.

I have always admired the concept design used in the Dutch Filmworks 2 disc DVD box-set, and planned to draw on it for my DVDs artwork. In anticipation, I used Adobe Photoshop to design a DVD cover for the release of this project. I assembled it as a 6463px by 4351px image at 600dpi, with the SWAT team member at one side, and the zombie at the other, implying a battle & transition between the two extremes. As the project was never finished, the DVD cover is really the only thing I have to show for it. Not all was lost though, this project later morphed into the Dawn Of The Dead - Extended Cut Ultimate Soundtrack project a few years later in 2009, mainly due to the couple of library tracks I had been kindly sent by Chris Stavrakis.

In August 2020, I put a few hours into upgrading the old DVD cover artwork, into a Blu-Ray cover. While the overall editing project is still in the same limbo it was back in 2007, I came across some higher quality source artwork, using it to give the upgraded cover a little polish. If you're interested in any of my fanmade projects, you can contact me via email at , or through the Rob's Nostalgia Projects Facebook page. Check out & 'like' that Facebook page to see the latest in-progress updates to any current projects, and check out my Wants List to see if you can assist me with any future projects or upgrades.