Slashdot Mirror
Homemade Star Wars Flick/Fanimatrix Movie
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)."
I just watched the fanimatrix movie..and I gotta admit, it was pretty impressive for a fan film. While the dialogue and actual acting wasn't all that great, the fight scenes were pretty creative and well done. The first fight scene at the goth/rave party thing started out great...the cell phone gag was clever and looked pretty sweet (the rest of that scene went downhill though). I liked the film..especially the anti-climatic ending. I recommend it...best fan film I've ever seen. Anyone know how much they spent on making it?
The anti-salmon
It is a few years later than hyped, but I think this may be one of the first big examples (other than the machinima with teh QuakeX engines) of that "small/low budget production house music/movie/multimedia art extravaganza" that PCs, software, the 'net and broadband were supposed to enable.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
My flatmate showed the duality movie to me about 2 years ago and burned it onto a tiny 5cm CD which I stuck in one of the folds of my wallet.
I completely forgot about it and only rediscovered it 6 months ago. I then gave it to my sister who found it very amusing and said that the disc was "cute".
It's now residing in my wallet again. Just for the sake of it.
Actually, white haired security guard = me Erm, who's TV's Frank? I really wanna know!
The webpage/files are being hosted by myself and a few friends and quite frankly BitTorrent is the _only_ way we could have survived this. The US http mirror melted down last night under the first slashdot posting (load of 60) But then it was only a little baby box anyway. The fall of this load onto the UK one pretty much killed that too. So we regrouped, replanned and spread things out a bit better. This time round the http is doing better... However the BT's have been going pretty much solidly since the initial slashdotting and after this second one we went from roughly 200 simultaneous DLs to currently about 1700 according to the main reflector. This kind of load would have melted _all_ our mirrors. So say what you like about BT but it sure does kick the ass of stuff that sucks for this kind of distribution. Oh and to the 505 or so people who are staying online with it full shared. Thanks to you all you've helped us make this a successfull slashdot survival. As to the other http mirror admins (you know who you are) thanks heaps for your support!
Sorry, guys, but this piece of work utterly destroys Duality. It's not strictly saber-fighting in the SW canon, but quite frankly I think it's miles better than Duality. (And for those of us who care, it uses a hell of a lot less CGI.)
Frankly, I think these guys should have been taken on by LucasFilm, as fight choreographers.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
As someone who helped work on DUALITY, I can tell you neither Mark Thomas nor Dave Macomber went to work for LucasFilm after the movie.
Mark is still an artist and Dave runs a dojo in the Santa Barbara, CA area. He is a retired National Karate Champion.
Actually you can do an amateur rotating bullet time in After Effects as well, just takes a bit of prep work when you are shooting:
b ullet_time/index.htm
http://www.nccinema.ch/esfx11.html
http://www.creativecow.net/articles/kumar_satish/
Roger Corman wrote, in "How I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and never lost a dime", that a woman once applied for a job with his film company, and his assistant told him that she'd already shot two scenes from his next movie on her own. He said "I have only one question. Did she shoot them in 35mm?". Told "yes", he hired her.
So, yes, sometimes it does happen that way.
www.pulgaritrap.com, it's currently in post-production, should be out soon!
"Duality", perhaps one of the finest fan films ever IMHO, has already been parodied by the utterly hilarious "Twoness". A definite must-see for fans of fan films.
Here's a short, totally unrelated "fanimation" if you just can't get enough fan action.
Top three moments in the movie:
..where Dante sits there and fervently prays before engaging the agent. ..where Medusa busily fiddles around with nmap. For a long time. Tickety tick. ..where the operator says, "Come on man, don't do this to me, pick up the phone," while Dante is off on an Agent-killing ego trip.
:-) Love the not over-used wire work. Not so much flying through the air as in the real Matrix movies. Seems very tasteful the way they've arranged it here.
1.
2.
3.
What a great job!
The last I've watched that I found original was Donnie Darko. But perhaps there's a similar movie out there, somewhere, if you look hard enough.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!