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Star Wars Revelations - May the Force Be With You!
n0alpha writes "For all you Star Wars fans out there, if you've been less than satisfied with the last two episodes of Star Wars, fear not. There is a new episode coming out soon -- but I'm not talking about Revenge of the Sith. On April 16th, 2005 the world will be blessed with a brand new episode, Star Wars Revelations. This is an independent film, completely put together by volunteers and organized by Panic Struck Productions, but don't let that fool you into thinking it is sub-par. Visit their website to view a trailer."
Lucas recently said the newest sequel is not for children, and given the quality of the other ones put out since about halfway through Return of the Jedi, it's not for adults, either. Die, midiclorians, die! Die, Ewoks, die! Die, Jar-Jar, die!
lather, rinse, repeat
Dog is my co-pilot.
Okay, the CGI, sound, and effects were outstanding. But the acting and dialogue made me pray I'd be struck by a passing meteorite. Wait a minute, that was a verbatim transcript of my opinions of Ep1 & 2... Maybe these folks are on to something...
The majority of free content created is, of course, subpar. The tools still need to be wielded by skilled artisans to created above average content. Regardless, as the bar continues to be lowered for entry into the field, more and more people with some degree of talent will find new outlets for their creativity.
I don't see there being any sort of mass uprising anytime soon, as the content cartels still have a lot on the distribution outlets, but the rise of the Internet has changed the playing field dramatically. The major counter-argument has been that the content cartels can merely buy up the few quality titles to maintain their advantage, but my theory is that there is enough latent creativity waiting in the wings they won't be able to stem the tide.
Well... I can dream, can't I?
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
when you get through patting yourself on the back for your hack of a singular wit, please, help yourself to a nice, tall glass of STFU
"At least we got some neat videogames out of the Matrix trilogy."
We did? I though Enter the Matrix was a piece of crap. Were there others? The MMO hasn't launched yet, and I can't believe there are people interested in playing it.
I won't argue the merits of the Star Wars universe, I admit it's pretty goofy and the last two movies lacked a lot of the fun factor that made the goofiness excusable in the first three. However, as far as games goes, I'd give the nod to Star Wars. Most of them have sucked, but several have been decent:
Battlefront (unbalanced, buggy, but oddly amusing)
Republic Commando
Knights of the Old Republic
the X-Wing and Tie Fighter series
On the other hand, Force Commander was so bad it may just negate any good from other releases.
And of course the MMO HAS launched and I can't believe there are people interested in playing it.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
This is very nice looking for a fan-made movie. It is , however, subpar to a hollywood production (CG, actors, fight scenes...). But even getting to the level to actually be compared to a hollywood movie is a huge achievement so congratulations to the crew.
I'll be sure to check it out when it comes out.
For a fan production I'd officially say "not bad." It obviously took a lot of work, and I can't denigrate that.
OTOH, it kinda sucked. I've seen cable access shows with better acting. Not surprisingly given the source material, it's pretty similar to most of the scifi crap Lucas, and Hollywood, churn out these days: blow the budged on special effects, look to Ed Wood for directing inspiration.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
About the CG: Now, I for one have always played computer and console games, going all the way back to my sega genesis. I do some 3d programming work, so I know how a 3d engine works and feels. I know how real life works and feels.
Getting to the point: In my opinion, there is something wrong about Lucas's CGI. Whatever he uses just doesn't feel right to me. My father describes it as feeling 'flat' - which he gave no such condemnation to Half-Life 2 or Far Cry. I describe it as being 'too smooth' or 'unrealistic' - but I just can't put my finger on it. It's extremly prominent in Episode 2. However, to see it at it's worst, see the original 3 remade - the CGI scenes in that, which are hacked in, REALLY feel wrong to me. Has anyone else noticed this? I think this may play a large part in the rejection of the newer films - the old ones, while a lot of it was nottoogreatlooking, it was still very real.
I find it a bit foolish to insult actors in fanfilms. I doubt the maker of the movie had an unlimited budget and could hire actors fresh out of Hollywood. Give the guy a break, he's trying.
I mean, those guys freaking suck!
(See what I did there?)
Flat is not the word you are looking for. The word you seek is "soulless". There is nothing behind the characters, no life, no personality. Even with the puppets in the first trilogy there was someone behind the mask, behind the strings. That gave them life. And made the characters more believeable. And with the scenes in the original that were updated, the same thing applies. they feel more real because they were. There were spaceships, however small, that were filmed. They actually existed. You can't get the same feel from CGI, yet, as you can from something that exists in the real world, no matter what the scale.
I agree. The CGI, Sound, etc. were all top[ish]-notch.
... = NOT GOOD
There were mainly 3 things that bothered me.
1) the Acting. it seems bland, with little real emotion. You know it's bad when you can clearly tell they are acting when you've never seen the actors before.
2) the writing. Although the writing might be good with good acting, I feel like i've got a bunch of Keaneau Reeves on the screen
3) The Lighting. Especially with the lightsabers. I know it makes sense, but having the lightsaber pointed directly at the screen just looks... awkward. The lighting otherwise looks monotone, obvious, and non-suggestive.
However, I'll probably still give it a see when it comes out on video (if?)
Concept = great
CG = great
Director of Photography = very good (composition of scenes and such is not half bad!)
Acting = apalling
A lot of the little oddities would be helped if they convert it over to 24fps, that would make it feel much more film like instead of someone's garage project... even though it IS someone's garage project. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think it's completely awesome that they've put this much effort into it.
Maybe part of what you're trying to grasp is the lack of atmosphere translating to the CGI. There is the subtle motion blur inherent in all movement filmed with a camera (digital or not), but I think the motion blur effect done with the CGI, when it is there at all, doesn't match up. This causes the CGI to stand out in ways that are hard to pick out during the action.
Somehow ILM got it right when filling in the rest of Mos Eisley, because the atmosphere of the town worked and you could really get a feel for how bad a place it really was. The rest of the CGI just didn't work -- and the Jabba scene in the remake of Ep4 was just painful to watch. I cringed in my seat at the theater and had to look away a couple of times.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
By using an established genre, they get more media coverage and potential viewers. This increases the chance that the director, special effects guy, or one of the actors will be noticed by a big name to work on something more substantial. And then they will be able to do their own thing.
I believe that in university-level art classes, you need to turn in paintings in realistic, impressionist, post-modern styles, etc, to pass the course, to show that you have more depth than just one artistic style. Even if you never paint another da Vinci in your life, you still have to prove that you can.
Consider this movie the answer to a film student's exam question: "Create a film in the style of Lucas".
Y'know what, GarageKubrick? Sounds to me like you're just a jealous, bitter, and petty.
I understand your jealousy. These people are about to embark on something enjoyable, and you'd sit there and take potshots because you're not getting their press. Them's the breaks, Oscar.
But y'know what? It's fun to dress up as a stormtrooper. It's fun to blow up TIE fighters. It's fun to give fans something they're going to clamor for. It's fun to be part of a universe that has become more of a cultural mythology. Filmmaking ought to be about originality, but it's also a labor of love. They do it 'cuz it's fun.
Piss on their parade, but they're getting slashdotted. You ain't. If this really bothers you, go and wow the press with your own creativity. I'm sure they'll eat it up. (snark!)
You've never seen Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, or Shrek, have you?
You should get dog, you could use a friend.
Imagine, just for a second, how much fun it would be working on this movie.
I'd throw in my nine bucks just to support such a tremendous labor of love and nerd fantasy made real. Well, real as in movie real. Not real as in "don't cut your fingers off with the lightsaber."
Forget SETI@Home, how about RenderFanFilms@Home? I'd be in for that. I imagine quite a few of you would, too!
-Ta0
Fear my exceedingly low UID, and my exceedingly low post count. Yes, I am the longest-running lurker on Slashdot.
or LotR:TTT and LotR:RotK. Someone else posted that the environment felt "funny" in the SW films. I think LotR was a film that had the environment pretty spot on, and the trick was using it to fill in the real props and stages. I think Jackson did the right thing using miniatures, because it helped the CGI people get the "feel" right. It let them see the light and shadows falling across a real object.
I had thought about the mixing of genres when making my comparison, but went ahead with it for a couple reasons. First, the poster I was replying to noted that ILM's work appears throughout the industry. That sort of opens up the oportunity to jump genre.
The most obvious use of CGI in Forest Gump is the effect you mentioned - mixing current footage with archived footage. But the movie was riddled with CGI. Some examples include the feather in the opening sequence, the tracers in the combat scene, removing actor's legs for Lt. Dan's post-war scenes, the ping-pong ball... all subtle use of CGI.
Sure - this is all different than what's being done in Star Wars. But maybe that's the point - it shouldn't be. Too often with the later Star Wars films, there are CGI scenes that scream "look what we can do." When the effect works, it's great. When it doesn't, it's painfully obvious. Or.. at least... obvious enough that others (to include myself) get a subconcious feeling that something just isn't right.
I wouldn't call that polished.
Although the special effects are pretty good, I don't think I'd be able to get over the high school acting. They should have taken their rescources and made an adult movie.
Do you feel that the characters in the prequels have anything behind the actor? No, there is nothing, even the parts of these movies which are "real" lack soul.
On the other hand, if you watch Finding Nemo, everything feels real, even though it's just CG fish in a CG ocean. What's the difference? Writing, story, acting, perhaps.
The idea that the problem is CG is just absurd. People said the same thing about color movies when they were first released. The problem isn't that you loose something when you use CG for effects, the problem is that you don't gain anything. You can't expect a movie to be good just because it has good special effects.
Go and watch the original movies, the special effects weren't anymore believable. The might have looked more real, but all that means is that Yoda looked like a real puppet, and Jabba the Hut looked like a real bunch of plastic with real people inside. They weren't any more convincing in the roles they were supposed to play. And don't even talk about space scenes, there's no way the space scenes look more realistic in the original movies. The only difference is that they couldn't do as much because of the limitations of using "real" models instead of CG models.
I quite enjoyed episode 1 and 2. I always kept Darth Vader in the back of my mind, and I could gradually see Anakin change - I could understand how he might end up on the dark side of the Force. And the NT constantly foreshadows what inevitably will happen in episode 3.
I think you are too caught up in the fact that the NT is not made the same way the OT is. It's not supposed to! The NT is telling a completely different story on a completely different level.
There was a discussion about Star Wars the other day, and amidst all the +5 insightful "SW used to rock, but now it sucks" comments, I found this gem, where the poster explains how things fit together, and why it's done this way. It makes a lot of sense!
The OT could be watched separately, but the NT is a real trilogy, where you won't get the whole picture, or indeed appreciate it all, until you actually see all the movies.
Presumably :)
Clever signature text goes here.
Name someone who worked on a Star Wars / Star Trek fan film who has been discovered by a big name and gone on to make a theatrically distributed motion picture.
Rather, individuals out there may borrow from other genres or sensibilities or influences but they invest within it their own unique consciousness. Ask a Kerry Conran (Sky Captain) or Shane Carruth or for that matter a James Cameron or Peter Jackson. The latter two who were enormously influenced and inspired by Star Wars to go out and become filmmakers on their own terms. But neither decided to create their own little Star Warrs film, despite having had the ingenuity to do so in their youth on the 16mm shorts they made.
This isn't to rain on anyone's parade - there's some wonderful technical achievement present in the discussed trailer. But the usual community theater level acting and rather silly casting. But what galls me is that the tools for personal, singular, unique filmmaking have fallen into the hands of people who have a chance to challenge the central authority of the studio system; and united with enough friends and volunteers something truly astonishing can be made - but all the geek community does with that opportunity is spit out more and more fan fiction films. We can do better.
Any film school that would insist students ape and mimic other filmmakers rather than develop their own unique voices will find they aren't producing many working filmmakers at the higher level. Much filmmaking by its very nature is derivative... Asking to actuallly bury yourself in one of the most annoying atrributes is pointless.
And what of Star Wars fan films in particular? Remember when George Lucas chose a cartoon which extolled the virtues of Star Wars merchandising as the most creative of the bunch? What's that director up to now?
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
"Good animation and effects + bad story + bad acting = total flop"
Are you sure that's right? Lucas himself has been using precisely this formula for deacades with amazing success, and he's not the only one either.
That was classic intercourse!
If only we could get the original Trilogy on DVD....
...sigh. My VHS tapes are wearing thin.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
But is it too much to ask that he be consistant in his own stories? Just because it's a movie doesn't mean attention to detail should suffer. In fact given the enormous, dedicated following that the Star Wars films have, and how detail-oriented sci-fi fans can be, one would think Lucas would strive to be as true to his own storyline and not contradict himself.
It's called pride of workmanship. Yes, they are fictional entertainment. But why bother writing a series if you are going to change the details in every book/movie? Just make completely seperate works. That whole "People make mistakes" mindset is just an excuse for shoddy work.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The overall problem that I have with the CG in the NT is the lack of attaintion to physics.
For example, when the 2 jump down into the loading bay on the ship before stowing away to go down to the planet, see if there is any acceleration to their falls.
It's also painfully aware in the droid b'kars (or however they are spelled). When they roll and move, there is no acceleration, just 2 speeds: stopped or rolling 100%.
Many more examples could be given. (I'm not even going to touch it when he tries to ride that critter in the field with Padme looking on.)
Now, think of Shrek where they (according to the commentaries) wrote their own 'mud' simulations for the arena fight when Shrek breaks off the spout from the beer barrel.
Attaintion to physics detail. It's what's missing in the CG in the NT. Character modeling is fine, but someone just didn't pass their physics class.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
Take the asteroid sequence in ESB -- fabulous! You get a sense of real depth and motion, to the point of tipping back and forth in your seat and feeling your stomach drop at times, like watching those roller coaster films on an IMAX screen. That was all done with models and real cameras.
Take the asteroid/ring belt scene in Clones. Visually, it's a nice piece of eye candy, to be sure. But I was immediately struck by how flat and/or soulless it felt as compared to the ESB scene. There was no spacial impact, if you get my meaning.
I don't know if it's a fundamental flaw in CG vs real models and cameras, but until it's solved, I really think models are better in some cases.
However, the creature CG effects can be done pretty well. I think the CG Yoda in Clones was 95% there. I'm really hoping the latest movie will have it nailed.
Method of processing duck feet
Watching the OT the universe seemed so much bigger than the characters. In Star Wars just the opening scenes allude to many things that were not explained until the prequels, and some not at all. You get a sense that there is a whole universe of things going on and you are just following the adventures of a particular group of people.
Episode I & II seem to be more pre-packaged. There is no sense you are following the characters on their adventures through the universe, it is presented more as if the universe revolves around the characters.
I think that's a good one. Also it didn't help that the places they went to in episode 1 were completely dull.
I think that's where the Lord of the rings films fell down: there was no universe like in the books, they only ever went to the places that had something important to do with the script. There were no farmlands, no houses and villages, hardly any roads, it was as if the entire middle-earth consisted of a bunch of fortresses connected by plains.
Part of the appeal of such fantasy things is that there's a universe that sucks you in, if you don't have that, you've nothing left but cliches and one-dimensional characters. The plot is often less important than the world you create.