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Homemade Star Wars Flick/Fanimatrix Movie

Posted by michael on from the stuff-to-download dept.

Geminus writes "There's a really cool fanmade Star Wars video called 'Duality' in the wild. The homemade video used only three props and apparently the quality was good enough that the makers were hired on by Lucas Films. The film was 90% made with Electric Image Universe, Adobe After Effects, FinalcutPro, and Commotion Pro. Of course the rest was the blood sweat and tears of the crew. I have to admit it is a very good example of what software can do today without million dollar render farms and special effects equipment." And as a followup to the Fanimatrix story the other day, the movie is now available: LarsBT writes "It's out. Get the full movie. Here's the torrents: normal mpeg version torrent (170 MB); Normal Divx version torrent (73 MB); and finally the High quality DivX torrent (135 MB)."

8 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. This is new? by monofish_X · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is extremely old news. The website to the Duality fan film is http://www.crewoftwo.com/

  2. It's a shame... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    ...that unoriginality and the borrowing of characters and concepts is what it takes to get noticed in the film world these days.

    1. Re:It's a shame... by Sgt+York · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The twist ending is nothing new; see just about any of the shows from the Hitchcock TV episodes. Although I gotta agree with you, Usual Suspects was an excellent movie. I thought I had it pegged as standard cops & robbers crap from the start, and I gotta admit they got me.

      A lot of people trash everything as "unoriginal" because they can compare it to something else (ref Star Wars is a space western, etc.). Well, hell, you can compare just about anything. An old Lit prof of mine in college once claimed that Shakespeare did every possible plot in his plays, provided you boiled it all down to the basic elements. He proved it by having the class (there were about 25-30 of us) shout out things we thought countered his claim. None of us could refute him; this was '94 or '95.

      Stories are reflections of life, hopes, and dreams. All people have had the same lives and hopes and dreams for thousands of years. Their constant reuse does not make a story unoriginal. A story filled with older plot elements arranged in a different or unique way can be, and is, original.

      --

      There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.

  3. Re:Victory for BT by BagOBones · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, It all depends on if the tracker server can take the request load. But the chances of that are far better than the chances of any single server hosting the file normally.

    --
    EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
  4. Re:Hmm by inertia187 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I felt the same way while I was watching it. It makes me wonder why ILM would hire these guys. Then it occurred to me, the reason could have been to create animatics (aka videomatics). ILM prides itself on having very detailed footage of scenes that require a lot of CG work before any animators or actors begin work. Among other things, it helps when trying to get actors in a sea of blue to understand what is expected of them.

    It's obvious the Duality group can do this. Animatics have the added benefit of being released on DVD when the time comes, so there's marketing value too.

    --
    A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
  5. You think it's bad now by uberdave · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you think it's bad now, wait until they start reverse rendering actors and scenes from old movies. (By reverse rendering, I mean taking a series of images, and creating a 3d digital representation of an actor. That 3d representation could then be animated to generate new scenes.) Imagine all new Hogan's Heroes fan episodes, or Gilligan's Island episodes. Same actors, just digitized, and animated. Imagine some of the Star Trek novels done up as movies. It may not be that far off.

    --
    "I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
  6. Re:Art of the Saber by the+gnat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hah. "Troops" still remains the standard by which all Star Wars ripoffs must be judged. It's hard to tell how good the effects actually are, given the low quality of most of downloadable version, but it feels right. And the fact that it's entirely tongue-in-cheek makes up for the utter geekiness of it being a Star Wars fan film.

  7. Copying art by mariox19 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How many great artists in history have spent many afternoons and evenings copying great paintings, sculptures and so forth? I don't know what goes on in our "modern" world, but for the longest time copying the works of the masters was the way to train and develop as an artist. Isn't this something like what's going on here?

    Maybe these guys aren't interested in story writing and are only trying to hone their skills in cinematography. What's wrong with reworking the material of others to accomplish that end?

    What they do isn't a career; it's the beginnings of one. I think your criticism is a little misplaced.

    --

    quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.