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Fan-created Star Wars Spinoff in The Works
Lazarian writes "According to an article from the Edmonton Sun, director Mark Twitchell from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology has begun filming Star Wars: Secrets of the Rebellion, a non-profit venture expected to be released in 2008. From the article:
"The 27-year-old Edmonton director begins shooting a feature-length independent Star Wars spin-off film at NAIT Saturday, and has amassed $60,000 to bring his dream to life.
"I'm the only guy crazy enough to do this, because I'm not allowed to turn a profit. The film is for hardcore fans who miss the character development of the original trilogy.""
I actually really enjoyed chapter one of IMPS: The Relentless (impstherelentless.com) but it seems to have died. It's a pity; that was probably the best SW fanfilm out now.
This has the most potential of any story I've read on /. in a while. Like many geeks, I was terribley disapointed by the three prequels. One of my bigger complaints is the heavy handed use of digital effects. Considering this film's budget, I doubt that that will be a problem.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Do not want.
"Mark Twitchell isn't a typical Star Wars fan. Rather than collect countless plastic toys or blog online with closet sci-fi nerds, he indulges his hobby in its "purest" form: film."
uh huh. Are we ignoring the past twenty years of film school students, the vast majority of whom all envision themselves as the next george lucas and at some point in high school or college made a film that references/parodies/extends star wars in some way? Gimme a break, there's nothing special about this dork... if anything he's jumping on a trend after it's already been destroyed by the new trilogy. Great news team, Edmonton Sun.
Many Bothans will die to bring us this information.
"I'm the only guy crazy enough to do this, because I'm not allowed to turn a profit. The film is for hardcore fans who miss the character development of the original trilogy."
I don't think this guy understands Star Wars at all...
Running Windows^H^H^H^H^H^H^H OSX and Linux in the home. (I don't have time for Solitaire any more.)
This certainly seems to have more potential than most, but just in case one or two people on the Internet don't already know this isn't entirely a new idea. People have actually been doing Star Wars fan films for quite some time.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
What do George's Lawyers have to say to this wee bit 'o news?
Catering (five boxes Little Debbies', two liters Mountian Dew): $7.00
Transportation: $52
Equipment: $3,401
Special effects: $2,900
Insurance: $1,200
Legal fees in anticipation of lawsuit from Lucasfilm: $52,000
60K!!! We did these Star Trek fan films on $200!!! Weeee!
http://www.commanderrob.com/
Admittedly, the acting quality from the action figures is a little...um...stiff.
Tod.
I think most Star Wars Fan films do try and not suck, but mostly all of them end up becoming a lightsaber/cgi fest with no story or plot. Ironically, much the same could be said about the "new" trilogy. The only good fanfilm I have seen that is coming out is http://www.tydirium.tv/ they actually built a huge Star Destroyer model and had real sets.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Why? That kid won his frivolous lawsuit and already has all the money/fame he deserves. Before he won it, there was still the chance he's see sense and drop it and I was for giving him a role in an official Star Wars movie. Now, forget it. He lost his chance for something real, instead of just being a jerk.
Yeah, I get that he was humiliated in front of all of mankind. I also get that he used the school's very expensive equipment wrecklessly and without permission. Maybe the school should now sue him for that $60k he just won in his lawsuit.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Shot_First
Always be polite.
My problem with the fan films is fans thinking they can act, and they can't.
Lucas had shitty, crappy dialogue in the new trilogy, and that held a lot of the actors back... Natalie Portman and Ewan MccGreggor have done impressive stuff in the past, and the reason they looked so bad in these movies was due to the poor script, the actors did what they could with what they were given.
Now, when these indie SW films seem to get fans to play the parts. Even if you have a good script, these people have no idea what they are doing, and it shows. The same way that Lucas can make his actors look bad with a bad script, bad actors can make a good script look bad.
Here's to hoping he ropes in real actors, even if they don't give to shits about SW than using a bunch of fanboys who they they know what they are doing.
"And I'm supposed to believe he can find better actors, can direct better and will write a better story than we already have."
Would be difficult to do worse than 'Phantom Menace'. Though, to be fair, it's not the actor's fault that they suck ass in the movie.
"I expect terrible actors, terrible direction and even worse dialogue."
If they can write worse dialog than George Lucas, they deserve an award.
It's not supposed to save anything. It's a fan-made film. For fans.
To heck with whatever copyright laws he may be breaking - Let's see how he does. The chances are nobody will ever hear of this movie again, and that it will crash and burn miserably. But George Lucas couldn't sell the original to studios and it turned out to be not bad for everyone. Let em play with his money. He could spend $60,000 on a car, but then he couldn't superimpose his face over Lukes as the deathstar blows up. I don't see how it could be much worse than the prequels.
What we gonna do today Brain?
Found it!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
It isn't as if the original Star Wars was a multi-million dollar production. Lucas was able to get by with a rather small budget. And let's not forget, good writing doesn't cost millions. Good direction doesn't cost millions. Young people with the hunger and the talent to make something good aren't limited by money. Other than the original Star Wars, Rocky comes to mind. There are many more examples out there.
I don't think reliance on SFX instead of plot/characters is anything new. Before CG, they just used lots of fireballs and before that it was lots of guns firing blanks.
The problem is that CG still (typically) doesn't look as good as using scale models, puppets and costumes. The ships in the original trilogy look realistic. The new movie's ships look like cartoons; effectively, that's what they are. Another example, loook at the difference between Chewbacca in the original and JarJar in the new movies. Again, one looks real, the other looks like a cartoon. (Or compare the original Jabba with the CG Jabba). Or...
It's not that CG is better than the old ways of doing things, it's just more cost effective to use CG instead of scale models and puppets. To me though, most CG looks like ass, and I think SFX have taken quite a few steps back with their over reliance on CG.
"Making films ain't like dustin' crops boy!"
"It's as if a thousand Lucas lawyers suddenly cried out, and then were silent."
"That's no Lucas bomb, it's a fan flick!"
"He better get those Mt. Dew Bottles to editing by tomorrow morning, or there'll be hell to pay."
And finally, said the director of the fan film to Lucas: "Would someone get this walking carpet out of my way."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
There are some "Official" Star Wars actors in the movie.
Included in the cast:
Zach Jensen: Jedi Master Kit Fisto (Episode 2)
AND
Jeremy Bulloch: BOBA FETT!!!! Ok...he won't play Boba Fett in this movie.
"I'm the only guy crazy enough to do this, because I'm not allowed to turn a profit."
Actually, you're not the first and only guy, and I doubt you'll be the last. Come on, this was only a year ago! Star Wars Revelations
If I'm not mistaken, that one sucked too
I'd really like to see Space Opera make a comeback, but it seems unlikely with the failure of Serenity at the box office.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Sorry about that, as the others already said, the server checks the referrer. I have referrer logging disabled in Opera so it didn't happen to me. Here it is rehosted on imageshack
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category= 3&id=35849&type=0
Rick McCallum, George Lucas' longtime Star Wars producing partner, told SCI FI Wire that future projects are a ways off, including a live-action TV show that is at least a year and a half away. "Star Wars TV series, probably not for a couple of years," McCallum said in an interview at the Saturn Awards in Universal City, Calif., on May 2. "George is starting to start the basic concept of it. ... We're interviewing writers. We're seeing a lot of people. But I'd say it's not going to be happening for another at least 18 months."
McCallum also denied rumors that the new series would focus on members of the Skywalker family, but repeated that the show will take place in the timeframe between Episode III and IV. "All-new characters," he added. "That missing 20-year period when Luke is growing up. ... Think bounty hunter. That's all I can tell you. There's nobody else that you'll know [in it]. At the moment. You know, it's still [in] really, really early stages. He hasn't really sat down to think about which direction [he's going]."
Help me Slashdot, I'm confused...
Am I supposed to hate this because it is "new" Star Wars and will have lots of CGI, or am I supposed to love it because it is a fan film and not Lucas?? Tell me what to think!
Please hurry, I want to make up my mind before I see it...
"But this one goes to 11!"
It's exactly the other way around. CGI looks too good. A real warship has some paint peeled off, there's some rust around, someone's coffee's been spilled on the gunner seat, there's dried muddy footprints going around the place and duct tape holding together some odd device, some doors make a screeching noise when they move no matter what you do...
A CGI ship looks like it came straight from the shipyard. No, scratch that, it looks exactly like the engineer dreamed it would - like no real ship ever can. It's geometrically perfect. It has clearly never seen a battle - heck, it has clearly never been used at all. Sure, you can add dirt and defects, but they all make the model more complicated, and no matter what you do, you'll never quite catch the infinite complexity of real-world defects.
That's how you can tell a computer-generated image from a real human. Does it have visible skin pores, some of them clearly abnormally large ? Odd decolorations of skin ? Dirt beneath its fingernails ? Visible blood vessels ? Split hairs ? Old scars ? Some fat that jiggles where solid muscle should be ? Barely visible limp ? If not, it's not a human being.
Computer generated images are perfect, and in reality nothing is perfect. That infinite depth of imperfection, which makes real beings so interesting, is simply impossible to model with a computer with current techniques. A polygon-based human is never going to pass for a real one, no matter how much effort you pour into it; there's always going to be a feeling of something being not quite right with it.
Actually, Jar Jar is quite convincing, simply because it's not human and doesn't try to be. Pity that Jar Jar was written to be a clown with no history or personality either; with some real character Jar would actually have made a pretty good character despite the unrealness - or maybe because of it; Star Wars is, after all, at least as much fantasy as it is sci-fi.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
BZZZT, sorry but that was the wrong answer, please play again. The question was, where is the GRAMMATICAL error in my post, not where is the TYPOGRAPHICAL ERROR. Bob, is there a consolation prize for our player?
(The poster DID specify grammar error! I love these games, it makes me a better speller and writer!
I'm in the movie, and I don't know if I should say... but I don't think I'll get in trouble if I tell you that your concerns will be assuaged in a manner involving deep space and a fortuitous high-speed collision with a starship.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Because I'm not quite sure yet: Are you in this movie? ;-)
That isn't true. Take for example Battlestar Galactica. The ships in BSG look like they've gotten the shit kicked out of them on more than one occasion, and they're all done in CGI. Scale models can look just as pristine as CGI. It's all about the level of detail the producer deems necessary. Ron Moore gives a shit about his product and George Lucas obviously doesn't. That's all there is to it.
Yes, kids, the universe is going to collapse, we're all going to die, and it's all princess Leia's fault.
All is forgivable to the goddess of the metal bikini, heathen.