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Star Wars: Revelations Available Online
Lemming Mark writes "Panic Struck Productions have just released their first Star Wars movie, 'Revelations.' The movie has been produced on a not-for profit basis by a team of volunteers and is available for free download. Despite its humble origins, the production appears extraordinarily professional. The film is over 40 minutes long, complete with space battles and lightsaber fights -- need I say more?
See more details at the official site, or jump straight to the download mirrors." (As promised last month.)
jump straight to the download mirrors
t ions_film_QT_large.mov.torrent
t ions_film_large.wmv.torrent
Or better yet, jump straight to the torrents. I'm getting ~500KB on both of them. I'd probably get more but my cap is set at 4mb/sec.
Quicktime
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap/revelations/revela
Windows Media Player
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap/revelations/revela
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap/revelations/revelat ions_film_large.wmv.torrent
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~zap/revelations/day-1.m ov.torrent
Carousel is a lie!
Clicky
If anyone were to make subtitles for this, it'd be best to make them in .srt format -- supported by many media players such as BSPlayer. It's also easily convertible to subtitle tracks for inclusion on a DVD.
Not unheard of, but an .mkv (www.matroska.org) file might be a bit more suitable for the job.
No, they're standalone files. Windows Media Player supports the SAMI format natively -- subtitle workshop can convert among the various formats easily.
There are a number of formats that support both multiple audio and subtitle streams in the same file. The most popular two would be ogm and mkv.
No, i don't believe you can embed subtitles into normal playable formats right now. What happens is you make an srt file of the same name as the avi/whatever and then use BSplayer or whatever to play the subtitles, picking up on the name
I'm posting the dialog for use in subtitling. The made-up languages are quite difficult to understand at times.
http://www.incompetech.com/swtext.txt
The acting is terrible. The plot always centers around a couple of dorky Jedis. Because even the fattest nerd can fit into the robes.
The effects are always good, but haven't we learned by now that the effects are not what makes for good Star Wars movies? It's the characters. Specifically, it's Han Solo.
Without someone as cool as Han Solo, Star Wars is just lame. The new movies lack anyone to fill that role, and so do all the fan films. The ultra-serious Jedi are fucking boring.
Since everybody else is talking about problems downloading it, let me be one of the first (I think) to write some kind of a review of the movie itself:
The special effects are more than impressive. The CG modeling is on a professional level. This is particularly obvious in the space battle -- dozens of finely detailed starships flying around in considerably more elaborate flight paths than I've seen in any fan film yet. The camera tracks and follows the ships in a nice theatrical manner rather than 1990s-style videogame CG. Earlier, there is also a very impressive fly-through of a large, futuristic city with nearly as much detail as was seen in the Fifth Element. A sequence seen later on of a spaceship flying towards and landing on a planet is on par with the non-character CGI of the Final Fantasy movie.
The most strikingly impressive special effects come in the form of blue screen. There seems to be extensive use of real-life sets (which are on par with most television productions), and the camera moves around quite freely (sometimes it's hand-held). The CG effects in the blue screen windows, as well as other little additions (holograms, neon signs on walls, etc) follow the camera movements extremely well. This in itself makes this superior to every other special effects-driven fan film I've ever seen.
The storyline, as with most fan films, is entirely irrelevant (unless you pay attention to storylines in videogames, of course). The whole point of the story here is to move the characters from one cool location to another (night club, ancient Jedi temple, etc), have them meet up and give them a reason to fight each other. The film heavily borrows elements from movies like "Unbreakable" and recycles plenty of scenes and dialogue from existing Star Wars films, as is common practice among most fan films. Other than that, it feels like a storyline from a Star Wars videogame, only shorter.
The acting is obviously not going to be that good, and the creaters once again continue the fine tradition of fan film casting by employing chubby, goatee-sporting geeks and goth girls to stand around and attempt to recite the cheesy lines given to them, though some try harder than most to sound convincing.
The lighting is also very nicely done, matching the CG and real-world sets quite well. On a greyish-yellow planet (all CG), for instance, the characters do not stick out like sore thumbs and generally blend in quite well with their surroundings.
Light saber battles are not the best. If you want to see how real light saber fights should be done in a fan film, watch "Art of the Saber", whose choerography and combatant skills match those in The Phantom Menace.
Overall, I'd say that this film is an extremely fine technical achievement. The production design has a very expensive look to it. The ending credits are downright HUGE. This is a fine achievement, and shows exactly what big budget fan films can accomplish. Copyright issues and the whole Star Wars labeling apart, this looks like something that could easily have come from a production company that works for the Sci-Fi Channel. It may not be as impressive compared to the real Star Wars, but it is definitely not any worse than, at the very least, cable television production.
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They allow for it so long as it is non-profit...
Although, I hear this one was looked at and watched very carefully....