Jedi Council Forums - Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness

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Author	Topic: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
Qbase Registered: Mar '05	Date Posted: 3/30/05 2:16am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	RE: Michael_TSM Thanks for the constructive comments. These are most appreciated my friend. Will take on board what has been said. Will help alot with the next movie. Ta! Qbase PS: Will add your comments to our website guestbook page which should be up and running in a week or so, so keep and eye out...
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Qbase Registered: Mar '05	Date Posted: 3/30/05 2:18am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	RE: DVeditor Thanks for the constructive comments. These are most appreciated my friend. Will take on board what has been said. Will help alot with the next movie. Ta! Qbase PS: Will add your comments to our website guestbook page which should be up and running in a week or so, so keep and eye out...
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Qbase Registered: Mar '05	Date Posted: 3/30/05 2:23am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	RE: NitroBlade Thanks for the constructive comments. These are most appreciated my friend. Glad you liked the cinematography, editing and music even if the masks and puppet made you chuckle... which is good. Qbase PS: Will add your comments to our website guestbook page which should be up and running in a week or so, so keep and eye out...
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Funk-E Registered: Sep '03	Date Posted: 3/30/05 5:15am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	Wait, you're triple posting a form letter? -----signature----- I'm so adjective, I verb nouns. RIP George Carlin!
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NitroBlade Registered: Jan '04	Date Posted: 3/30/05 5:43am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	I'm glad you're taking our criticism properly. Although you're doing this for fun, which is always great, it is a film that you want people to watch. Also, about putting up our comments. Shouldn't you have asked us first before deciding that? Perhaps through PM. -----signature----- GEEKS UNDERGROUND http://geeksunderground.com [Jon Starr Films] [ http://www.JonStarrFilms.com ] [Jonathan Starr]
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Qbase Registered: Mar '05	Date Posted: 3/30/05 6:04am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	RE: NitroBlade Hello, If you have any objections about adding your comments on our guestbook, let me know please. I do not wish to offend if this is the case... Qbase
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NitroBlade Registered: Jan '04	Date Posted: 3/30/05 6:36am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	I'm fine with it. You cna use my comments. I'm just saying that perhaps you should make sure everyone's okay with having thier comments put up. -----signature----- GEEKS UNDERGROUND http://geeksunderground.com [Jon Starr Films] [ http://www.JonStarrFilms.com ] [Jonathan Starr]
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Qbase Registered: Mar '05	Date Posted: 3/30/05 6:41am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	RE: NitroBlade Hello, Point taken. Will ask first. Thanks for the tip... Qbase
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JadedAngel Registered: Mar '05	Date Posted: 3/30/05 1:07pm Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	Having just downloaded the movie I am really impressed. You guys did this in your spare time? This is a hobby? OK it's not to Mr Lucas' standard but I'm sure that if you did this stuff full time and had an unlimited budget then maybe..... Unconstructive criticism like that submitted by RocketGirl is neither helpful nor neccessary, especially seeing as she couldnt even be bothered to download the movie before passing judgement. I think that this is an amazing first shot at a fanfilm and you should be really proud of yourselves. You can see that you enjoyed making the movie and thats surely what these fanfilm projects are all about. There is good attention to detail and the music is amazing. I cant wait for the next installment, it promises to be even better than Episode IV. Well Done JadedAngel
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RIPLEY426 Registered: Apr '03	Date Posted: 3/30/05 2:55pm Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm - Date Edited: 3/30/05 2:56pm (1 edits total) Edited By: RIPLEY426
	I have watched the movie, now. What was good: visual effects. (allthough you sometimes didn´t do certain things right. For example: the big General Grivous Subsitute- I´m still not sure if he was meant to stand or fly. Some overlays, like steam or whatever tended to look unreal at the second view. The clip just repeated itself... Those little things, you know.) Some "to-be-real-" shots that were done with Matte paintings didn´t look real at all, to me. The keying was good, sometimes only acceptable. The ship fly bys and all that stuff was quite well-done but at the same time over-done. The first 10 minutes looked great (in terms of effects). The "fire planet" background could have been more egdy and less smooth, if you ask me. Nice mixture of snow and fire, by the way. I don´t know if you got that idea from me, but I liked that you took styropor for one set somewhere in the temple :-D Very creative. The keying and compositing was good, but the animations could have been better (and worse, so you got 6 points here). I liked the "new Jedi Look" that contains backpacks and black suits. (more to come, I´m tired) The bad things: -Audio. Crap, Sometimes the audio was so bad that I almost turned the movie off. I´m on RocketGirls side here. You seem to have dubbed the movie in post. Didn´t work all the time. The volume went from too silent, to enough and just sometimes to "off". So, fix that. [EDIT] Forgot something. Listening to the elephant- tie fighter- sound 20 times was disturbing me a bit :-) [/EDIT] Sometimes it felt like there were 12 things to be audiorized (sorry, what´s the right verb for that?) in one shot and you kind of added sound for about 2 or 3 of them. There´s a droid farting out gun fire and an explosion and all I can hear is ONE blaster shot and a lightsaber in the background. Remember, Sound is 50 percent of the movie! (Allthough I liked that you inserted some background noises in the woods). The movie is tooooooooo long. Some scenes, for example the one the Master Jedi walks along in the woods and is being pursied by that probe droid... It was like 2 minutes of no real action except of walking, you could have cut that down to 15 seconds. The whole movie could have been cut down to just 25 minutes, if you ask me. including all the titles and stuff. It was just like, redundant shots and redundant dialgoues that could not even understand (audio). The Jedi youngling (that´s what he was called) had a strange voice. It is distracting to have a Mr. T voice for the Padawan. So, where did that movie play, actually? Was it Mars? (of course it was Yavin, but you used Mars) Anyway. I saw an Aliens Atmosphere Converter, a waste 300 years old ATAT, the shield generator from ENDOR and some temples from South Africa (yeah, that´s the Masai temples). I don´t want to mess around anymore, now. Sorry, but I´m tired and I didn´t take notes, sadly. Anyway. I think you should reedit your movie. Really. Most Fanfilmers don´t do that when they´re told by several people. Cut out at least half of the movie, even if it hurts (since you did all the effects )! Your movie will then flow like a smooth river and not be so.. boring at some points. As hard as it sounds but it´s a fact. One gets bored after a while of no action and plain walk- around. And why was there a Tie Fighter? Just to have a tie fighter? It didn´t make any sense. Anyway. You get the Golden Bear for effects and Golden Raspberry for unused length (and audio problems). Reedit the film or it will end up in the dark and huge corner of "Two Jedi walking around in the forest and having a bad feeling about it"- fan movies. By the way, I´m having a work experience at a movie and TV productions firm and I recently showed my own video movie to them (which is 78 minutes long) and they liked it a lot and got some vocal applause because of the good audio quality. And I had music all the time. And for the voices and dialogues I only used the camera´s microphone and told the actors to speak louder than they would in real life. It´s a movie. Not life. Audio makes at least 50 percent of the movie! -----signature----- http://www.darkmoonfilm.com
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RocketGirl Registered: Jun '02	Date Posted: 3/30/05 3:20pm Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	Unconstructive criticism like that submitted by RocketGirl is neither helpful nor neccessary, especially seeing as she couldnt even be bothered to download the movie before passing judgement. Excuse me??? Maybe you missed the entire point of my post, which was that the trailer doesn't give us enough information to make a judgement. If I judged anything at all, it was the trailer and not the film. As for "not downloading" it, what do you expect, that I DL the entire 320 megs in five and a half minutes? It took two and a half hours to DL the @#$%er using GetRight (would have been a lot longer without GR) and then I decided to wait until this morning to watch it. Which I did. And it wasn't worth it. Stylistic choice or not, the slow pacing killed this for me. There were other problems, too, but that was the final straw. If you watch narrative movies with director commentary on, the one common thread you will find in all of them is scenes being cut out for time, to keep the story moving. You do NOT want to bore your audience. There were many scenes, and even individual shots, that should--not could, but rather should[i]--have been cut way way down. I spent most of the flick muttering "Get on with it!" under my breath. I think it was only that I was doing my hair while watching it that kept me from simply turing it off and putting on Patriot Games instead. What are George Lucas's famous words? "Faster, and more intense." That's what you guys need, here. Next, sound. Quite honestly, there were times when the dialogue was nigh inaudible, even when it [i]wasn't covered up by ambient sound. If I can't hear dialogue, I'm not seeing a point to watching the movie. Bump up those sound levels, especially when you main character was talking to himself and Artoo at the beginning. Speaking of characters...did they have names? If they did, I didn't catch anybody actually saying them. The only names I have for them are "dark-haired Jedi" and "blond might-be-Sith-turncoat-but-seems-to-be-a-Jedi guy". Maybe this was a problem with the audio being so quiet, but I think their names were just never said. Which, honestly, isn't good for hooking your audience or keeping us interested. An aggressive indifference to your characters gives the audience no reason to care if they live or die, win or lose. I will admit that I rather liked some of the musical choices; some of the tracks presented are ones you don't hear in fan films very oftenbut that certainly have a lot of value. I won't even discuss the plot or the costumes or the animation. While these things are important, they're not enough to kill a movie for me. The things I have discussed certainly are. Couldn't hear the characters, didn't know who they were, and really didn't want to sit through the slow pacing; that's enough to make me want the forty three minutes I spent watching this (I know it's longer than that; QuickTime gagged on it 43 minutes in and I honestly couldn't be bothered to load it back up and try again; I've got my own fan film to work on.) Now, I appreciate the amount of time and work that goes into making a fan film, but honestly, guys...it's not enough to just have an idea, a camera, and a computer. It might be possible to re-edit what you have into something orth watching, but right now that's not what you've got. -----signature----- Introducing new Dark Side RocketGirl™: Quicker, Easier, More Seductive!™ "Duuude, the fat guy totally just blew up!" -Pink Five My YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/BionicDance Read my webcomic: http://kanirabaxter.comicgenesis.com/
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TheMcguffin Registered: Sep '04	Date Posted: 3/30/05 4:42pm Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm - Date Edited: 3/30/05 4:45pm (1 edits total) Edited By: TheMcguffin
	I agree. This one was deleted quickly from my machine.
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Jedi2016 Registered: Jun '00	Date Posted: 3/30/05 4:54pm Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	Since RocketGirl and I have many of the same "turnoffs" for fanfilms (except for VFX, I think.. I'm incredibly nitpicky in that regard), her review is enough to convince me NOT to download this film. A quick note on sound, however, if I may. A common mistake in fanfilms is, as she mentioned, extremely quiet, unintelligible dialogue. The reason this often makes it into the film is because the filmmaker literally does not realize there's a problem. The director/editor knows exactly what was said on set.. he wrote it, he was there, he could hear it all. So it's easy for him/her to understand what they're hearing during the editing and sound mixing process. The problem is, that same "trick" doesn't work with a person that's never seen the film before. And you get a lot of complaints about unintelligible dialogue, as you did here. Without even seeing the film, I can almost guarantee that this is what happened: You could understand it, so you didn't bother fixing it. -----signature----- Obey the fist! Every time you make a bad fanfilm, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens.
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RocketGirl Registered: Jun '02	Date Posted: 3/30/05 10:28pm Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	Yep. That's my theory, too. Heck, this happens in Hollywood movies, too (and thank goodness for subtitles on DVDs!). This is why I always try to not watch the rough cut of my fan film for a couple of days and then watch it "clean". I will also be showing it to a test audience before it's ever released to the internet, for EXACTLY this reason. -----signature----- Introducing new Dark Side RocketGirl™: Quicker, Easier, More Seductive!™ "Duuude, the fat guy totally just blew up!" -Pink Five My YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/BionicDance Read my webcomic: http://kanirabaxter.comicgenesis.com/
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JadedAngel Registered: Mar '05	Date Posted: 3/31/05 1:44am Subject: RE: Crimson Contention IV: Spirit of Darkness - New Fanfilm
	Surely the whole point of a fanfilm is that it is made by 'fans'. It is an homage to that which they are a fan of. They're not professionals. If they were then it would not be classed as a fan film. I think I'm right in saying that this is Qbase's and his friends first shot at making a fanfilm. Not bad for a first attempt I think. You live and learn so the next installment of their trilogy will be better. I'm sure they'll take on board all the CONSTRUCTIVE criticism they have received and adjust their film accordingly. But it is a hobby right? People get enjoyment from their hobbies yes? At least thats the way it should be. Maybe some of us should just chill out and applaud the makers of fanfilms for having the dedication and the balls to make a film at all. JadedAngel
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