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Author	Topic: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 12:59am Subject: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Somewhere, in the middle of nowhere, George Lucas, America's number-one filmmaker has just met Frannie Filks, his number-one fan. George Lucas used to make Star Wars for a living. Now, he's making it to stay alive. It's being hosted at Ourmedia.org for the time being (Ourmedia is my new favorite service in the history of anything on the Internet ) and we sent out advance notice to a number of parties this past day or so and the feedback that has come in so far has been surprisingly good. The cast and crew is really hot for the rest of the world to check out their work, and I don't know how well this will work so far as bandwidth demand goes but it seemed to work pretty well with the Ourmedia hosting yesterday, so here goes... Don't know what else to say that hasn't been noted elsewhere, but almost four years after the idea first hit, Forcery is now a reality. That it's here is owed to MUCH time and effort, and downright sacrifice, made by a lot of good people. And I can't thank them enough for helping to make this dream come true. Especially - and I've said this a few other places too - Chad Austin who plays George Lucas, and Melody Hallman Daniel, an IMMENSELY talented actress who has performed all over the world. We are VERY thankful that she became not only a member of the cast, but as production rolled forward also an invaluable advisor and then co-writer and many other things... and a wonderful new friend most of all. Her performance here is nothing less than amazing, and I really hope and pray that Forcery might be a boon to her career somehow, because she deserves some special notice after this. Nothing else I should really add, except that on behalf of my partner and collaborator Ed Woody, fellow cast members Chad, Melody, Lisa Knight, Darla Gritton, and the entire crew that did so many things to pull off this parody of Stephen King's Misery, we at KWerky Productions are proud to present for the first time to a more or less wide-open public audience our first feature film: Forcery Click here to go to The Knight Shift blog and links to four different Quicktime versions of Forcery We welcome any feedback that y'all would have to offer. Look for a special nod in the end credits toward EVERYONE here on the TFN Fanfilms discussion board for all the advice, tips, and suggestions that you gave us during the past two years since we first announced this project here. Try to watch it all the way through (it's 54 minutes but it goes by pretty fast) without stopping at least once. Then go back and look for the various gags we hid around the film. Oh yeah, try not to blink during the car crash toward the beginning of the film. Everything else... we'll let you guys discover on your own. Thanks to a few here, especially JustinZ, for suggesting ways to reduce the Quicktime file size down. Thanks for watching our movie, we enjoyed making it for you Sincerely, Christopher Knight creator of Forcery p.s.: I once promised Chad, my best friend since forever, that someday I would make a movie and that he would have the starring role in it. We were 10 years old when I told him that, and the year was 1984. 20 years later and I'm finally making good on that vow -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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Jedi2016 Registered: Jun '00	Date Posted: 5/26/05 1:08am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Downloading. And going to bed, so I'll watch it tomorrow. -----signature----- Obey the fist! Every time you make a bad fanfilm, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens.
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Kartanym Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 5/26/05 3:11am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	downloading too. looks promising guys can't wait to see it. -----signature----- United Survival: A Choose Your Own Adventure RP http://boards.theforce.net/non_star_wars_role_playing/b10755/30353484/p1
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bgii_2000 Registered: Jan '05	Date Posted: 5/26/05 5:51am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Just finished watching... Well, you had a great idea, but... I don't what to say. I downloaded your super high-res version, and I expected a lot from it. Don't take this wrong. But I didn't get very much at all. The audio was crappy. In the scene where Frannie gets mad about Han shoots first(my favorite scene), which was otherwise great... For a while I thought you had mixed the music in wrong, but then realized that I was hearing COMPRESSION artifacts and not music! What WAS that? IT'S A 720 BY 480 QUICKTIME FILE! Emperor's Black Bones and Pointy Fingernails! Your credits listed a boom mic operator but I certainly didn't hear him at all. What scene's did you use him for? Almost all of the time there was camera motor noise in the mix, which means you were using the on board camera mic. You might have made it less obvious if you hadn't kept cutting the sound in and out every five seconds. The video was better than the audio. Your keying for the car shots and the front door scenes was good but obvious. Work on both the lighting of the pre-keyed footage and the angle of the background plate that you use. I'm not going to give you crap about your direction of the car crash sequence. I'll let other people here do that for me. Why in the world did you do that shot of the sheriff getting blown away like that? You could masked the VFX out of the House of the Dead video game and had it look better. Was that Particle playground from AE? I would have started with an ECU on the sheriff's face, then BANG, and pan down to some blood on his shirt, then he falls to the ground. But red and orange polka dots exploding out of his chest? You also need to practice better editing. This is a (good) short story. It can definitly be told in under a half hour, but your film clocks in at over 50 minutes! Watching George Lucas wheel himself around in wheelchair is only entertaining for about a minute. Not 10. OR 50! Anyway sorry to be so mean. Awkward Pause I really did like your story, and I love your "Number one fan" character. Melody really acted her part out well, especially the crazy stuff. I also was impressed by the scrapbook sceen, which brings me around to another point. BEAUTIFUL cinematography! This I felt was the strongest point of your film. If not for the poor quality of the audio and video, I would not have noticed that this had been shot on a consumer camera. I also liked the costuming/makeup for George. Not bad (although I still enjoy backyard production's impersonation of him more). Keep up the good work! Be Excellent to each other and party on Dude! May the Force be with you, Bgii_2000 -----signature----- The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master. My website, blog, and movies http://www.theBradPlace.net What IS meatball? Holy crap I'm learning things everyday. - JeffCaauwe
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DVeditor Title: Fan Films Evil Overlord (manager) Registered: Dec '01	Date Posted: 5/26/05 7:04am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Downloading... -----signature----- CK Hicks http://www.ckhicks.com http://dveditor.deviantart.com TFN on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2202937735
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Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 7:18am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	About the sound... We had two shotgun microphones that we bought just for the purpose of filming this. It wasn't until we had gotten well into our second day (out of four) of principle photography with both our principles that we realized that the audio input jack on one camera, wasn't working at all. We tried everything to make it work. It didn't. And we could have tried to reshoot it all with good audio but some situations made that impossible. And over the course of the following months, due to committments by both our principles, it became impossible to get them together for a dubbing session where we could have cleaner audio. Maybe that's easy if you're dealing with multi-million dollar salaries and the like, but the fact is everyone working on this had a VERY full life outside of this production (Melody was very busy being chairperson of a fundraising walk to benefit children who are victims of sexual abuse, among MANY other things that she does, including being a college professor, and Chad is a seminary student and active marathon runner on top of full-time work for a major university) and it became extremely difficult to get everyone back together once photography had ended. We didn't have the luxury of any real dubbing time between the time the mistake was discovered and the end of filming either. So we had audio from camera that was great, and audio from another camera that could have been better. And it was a pretty blatant mismatch between the two. It's not perfect. I know that. But we had to work with what we got. And no doubt someone else could have done a much better job at it, but in spite of everything that happened to audio quality, we still wound up pretty satisfied with the end result. It's a lot better than we were expecting given the circumstances. So far as the length of it goes, there was another cut that's much shorter but everyone agreed it felt WAY too "crammed-in" and not anything like the sense of psychological thrill that Rob Reiner imbued with "Misery". We HAD to see George Lucas struggling in his wheelchair, if it was to be believable. Yeah it's a parody, but a somewhat dark parody. Part of "Misery"'s magic is that you have this guy, who is crippled and in a wheelchair, and is by all other appearances helpless... and he has to fight so that he ISN'T all that helpless. That's what we tried to convey here too. Is "Forcery" perfect? I'll be the first to admit that it isn't. But what fanfilm is? What full-length feature film is perfect, for that matter? They all have mistakes, and more than their fair share of things that could be better. But "Forcery" wouldn't be here at all if we weren't satisfied until EVERYTHING was fixed, just like no film would be here if that was priority #1. And if I went away from "Forcery" learning anything, that I finally needed to understand about life, it's that I finally know what it is to be able to forgive myself and not beat myself over the head when something goes horribly wrong. So yeah, it's a baby with a few lumps on it. But, it's still our baby, mine and everyone else at KWerky Productions that believed in making this, and some of whom drove at least 90 miles one-way on several occassions to make it. And it was too good an idea NOT to do it, and if no one else would... well, I guess we had to. All that said, knowing what we do know about what could have been better, we are still proud of ourselves for having made this, and we're very happy with it. And we hope that you'll be happy with us for making it and have laughed a little after watching it -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 7:24am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	And there was another version of the "dead Sheriff Boozer" clip but ummm... I think it was BCC Particles plugin that was used in After Effects. That's what you're seeing now. The original clip of the same scene... was a lot more harsh. We felt compelled to tone it down a bit. If it's too difficult for my wife to look at, it's too difficult for my audience to have to be made to look at it either. The original gives ME the freezing willies, just thinking about it. What the heck were we thinking? -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 7:41am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	And hey, it is our first film after all Ed had done a little video production when we were students at Elon University (back when it was still Elon College, if anyone's curious) but otherwise had never done anything on this kind of scale. I've never done anything like this before. Had never even contemplated it. We went in as babes in the woods. We came out knowing a LOT more about things like lighting and camera angles, and how to use Premiere and AE, and everything else that most of you guys were already real pros at. We weren't pros at all. By the time editing was done, we felt a lot closer to you guys' level than we'd ever been before... and that gave us a whole new appreciation for you and every other filmmaker out there. That's one of the biggest things that, for me personally, I ended up with after finishing "Forcery": a new appreciation for YOU, the longtime dedicated filmmakers. And all the sense of tragedy and triumph that you guys have to experience in doing this. I appreciate you more and I appreciate your work more for doing it. It was enough to make me want to join your ranks all the more. Enough to make me want to try and pursue this as a lifetime career, even. Point being, "Forcery" is where we learned how to do things for the first time. It still came out looking pretty good. The next film will look (and sound) even better -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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bgii_2000 Registered: Jan '05	Date Posted: 5/26/05 7:46am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY - Date Edited: 5/26/05 7:50am (3 edits total) Edited By: bgii_2000
	Well if it gives you the heebie jeebies than just don't show it at all. Wasn't it Alfred Hitchcock who showed us that what we don't see is more frightening that what we do see? But no polka dots! Anyway I hope I wasn't too harsh, I still like your film a lot. Also I didn't mean that you had to cut your film down to be an action flik that lasts 5 minutes. I simply was drawing attention to the fact that quite a few of your shots were overly drawn out, prompting, not suspence, but boredom. I still do really like that scrapbook scene. The camera work and the acting is at its best here. When George discovers what he's really dealing with, the dawning terror on his face. It's great. Bgii_2000 EDIT: You post fast. Hey, it was a GREAT first film. And a whole lot better better than a lot of other "first films". Good Work! -----signature----- The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master. My website, blog, and movies http://www.theBradPlace.net What IS meatball? Holy crap I'm learning things everyday. - JeffCaauwe
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Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 7:58am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	No you do good to point this kind of stuff out bro 'Cuz if we don't know what doesn't work, now, we won't know how to make it so that it DOES work, the next time we do it! This kind of feedback means a lot to me, bgii_2000. It takes a lot to tell someone when they're doing something wrong. I, for one, am thankful that you're doing this. I can type 120 words a minute, on a good day. Today isn't a good day -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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bgii_2000 Registered: Jan '05	Date Posted: 5/26/05 8:05am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	What's next? -----signature----- The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master. My website, blog, and movies http://www.theBradPlace.net What IS meatball? Holy crap I'm learning things everyday. - JeffCaauwe
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Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 8:22am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Two fanfilm ideas, one of which I wanted to have ready to submit to the fanfilm competition at Celebration 3 but we weren't able to get it into production in time. It'll be FAR shorter (less than 15 minutes) but be warned: it'll be the WORST put together fanfilm in the history of anything! Which would be intentional. It could not be "good", and still be good. We may have this one online by the end of the year. I think that in total we spent about $2000 across two years to get "Forcery" done, most of that was scrounging around on eBay and the like. The next one will be true bargain-basement filmmaking (but NOT the same way that "10 Dollar Fanfilm" was, which I like a lot ) Should I mention it? I mean, would I be tipping the hand too much if we gave away the title now? It's already been in the works for the past seven months or so already anyway. Okay, here goes: our next project will be... Ed Wood's Han or Hannah? The other is a real, more "mainstream" Star Wars story, and something experimental in nature. I want to try to convey something that looks and feels like real Star Wars, while keeping everything to a bare minimum. Ed (Ed WOODY not Ed WOOD!) and I want to make KWerky Productions into a serious film house, with "Forcery" as our first product but there's some other things we're interested in doing too. There's also some documentaries ideas that KWerky Productions is looking at doing, and maybe pitch them to PBS. One of them is a project I've had on the backburner for the past 10 years or so: a film about Primitive Baptists here in North Carolina, which really is a dying denomination and if no one documents them now, there may not be much of a record at all a few decades from now. Didn't know until a few years ago how much my family was Primitive Baptist until about two generations ago when we became either Methodist or mainstream Baptist. That's more of a personal project though, but still something that others might find fascinating. The other documentary I'm dying to do centers on a particular individual that, you guys just wouldn't believe the stories I've heard on this dude. It would be, bar none, one of the most outrageous things ever done with short film. I want to attempt something in time for Halloween too: shoot an entire short film about Hellboy in a single night, and have it edited and ready to put online in less than a week. We have a story already, and have thought through the logistics and it'd be a lot of fun to try and pull off. That it would be all shot in one night is part of the reason I want to do this. -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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bgii_2000 Registered: Jan '05	Date Posted: 5/26/05 8:28am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Wow, if I hadn't just seen your film I would have called you a n00b. Of course, relative to me, the term doesn't carry much weight. -----signature----- The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master. My website, blog, and movies http://www.theBradPlace.net What IS meatball? Holy crap I'm learning things everyday. - JeffCaauwe
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Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 10:43am Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Speaking of sound, did you happen to catch the Wilhelm scream that we stuck in there? -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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bgii_2000 Registered: Jan '05	Date Posted: 5/26/05 5:42pm Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Huh? I musta FFWD by it. Is anyone else going to review this film? "RocketGirlian where are the stinging arrows of thy scathing reviews? Has great durbamemnon fallen to the sword of Funkilles, his skull split to the bone, as his dark blood rushes forth? Why have the great gods Ryanus, and Hanelthenes not come down in their impenetrable cloud of fog to grace us with choice words? Oh, hath Hades not cast its eye upon great VaporTraileos, that he would could deliver upon Chris his wrath!" Sorry I laughed my way through the Iliad, it was just too funny to take seriously. -----signature----- The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master. My website, blog, and movies http://www.theBradPlace.net What IS meatball? Holy crap I'm learning things everyday. - JeffCaauwe
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Chris Knight Title: TFN Humor Staff Registered: Jul '98	Date Posted: 5/26/05 5:57pm Subject: RE: KWerky Productions proudly presents the world Internet premiere of: FORCERY
	Well, some of our crew are wanting to review it, but we might be more than a little biased After watching it through a couple more times, bearing the comments about it being too long in mind... it really does seem to work perfect as it is. Any shorter would have made it feel "rushed" but I know exactly what part you're talking about: from the time you see Lucas in the wheelchair to when Frannie helps him back into bed is a ten-minute long stretch, most of that is just Lucas rolling around the house on his own. That was easily the toughest part to edit in terms of pacing because (a) we had to get the feeling that Lucas really was free to do that while (b) not making everyone fall asleep But it does set up several important things for later on: Frannie's taste in music (somebody left a comment on the blog wondering what was I thinking to make her a fan of Slim Whitman ), the item that Lucas hides in his sling and establishing that Frannie is a certified nutcase (and there's a TON of in-jokes hidden in that sequence for fans of everything from Star Trek to the old JMS series Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future). Would love to hear what others have to say about it after taking a look -----signature----- Chris Knight - TheForce.net (retired staffer) The Knight Shift blog: http://theknightshift.blogspot.com
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