Jedi Council Forums - The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: Iris out, end credits over star field.

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Author	Topic: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: Iris out, end credits over star field.
Joel_K Registered: Aug '07	Date Posted: 7/29/08 2:48pm Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: Picture locked.
	wow.....way to ruin a ridiculously sentimental moment. -----signature----- "When life gives you lemons, choke on 'em and die. You stupid lemon-eater." - Sourpuss "The World's a mess, and I just...need to rule it." - Dr. Horrible http://www.youtube.com/user/joelkanda
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AdamBertocci Title: Manager: Fan Films Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 9/3/08 10:56am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: Closing in.
	I haven't posted anything new with respect to finishing the movie, in large part because I haven't done anything new. At long last it looks like the stars are aligning to get the last few boxes checked off on this flick. I am pleased to announce that Williamsburg-based singer-songwriter Rebecca Capua will be contributing a song from her album "Night Creatures" to the soundtrack. Not only is it very appropriate to be sharing the work up an up-and-coming artist from the area, but the tune itself (I'm not revealing which) is quite beautiful, I knew the instant I heard it that I had to have it in the movie. I encourage you all to check out a bit of Rebecca's music at http://www.myspace.com/rebeccacapua and, if you like it, buy her CD or her iTunes. Now that I officially had the finale/credits tune approved (it's all over but the paperwork), I was able to refine the final scene -- we end in classic dialogueless Star Wars style. I'd always cut that scene a little 'long' with the intent to edit it around the music, but imagine my surprise when my admittedly long cut fit 100% perfectly with the song. So much for that edit. I did color correct it more aggressively than I originally planned to, just for kicks. Managed to cut four seconds of the movie this week, mostly around the credits and a brief trim around my monologue. I would love to have this thing in under the 13-minute mark, and I now believe that can happen. We'll look at it when the score is complete. As for progress on that front, stay tuned. Rick McCallum loves you! -----signature----- "Run Leia Run", "The Chopped-Off Hands of Star Wars" and "The Fan Film Menace"... ... and now the award-winning "Brooklyn Force". Check 'em out. http://www.runleiarun.com
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AdamBertocci Title: Manager: Fan Films Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 9/10/08 8:29am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: Closing in.
	Monday night, quite out of the blue, I got a text message from Teague asking the fastest way to get me a file. And then in came some files. Yes, folks, our intrepid composer ended up in Las Vegas and consequently paid bgii a visit, and some live recording of crawl music occurred. What happened in Vegas happened. It's funny how something can manage to surprise you this late in the game. There's a slightly Western twist to the whole affair, not to mention a couple of elements I find, for lack of a better word, surfy. I just need to smooth out two transitional moments--getting us from our "Star Wars logo slam" to the main crawl, and from our main crawl into our tilt-down--and we'll have the full theme. And we use every part of the buffalo around here, too. I didn't just get one flat minute of music for a crawl, I got two different takes, extra improvisations and iterations, and from them, "Maul's Theme" is born. It's incredible, I just clipped a segment I thought might be nice from an ostensible crawl, plonked it into a Maul bit and it worked perfectly. Did the same with its sister iteration. Perfect timing. Two themes for the price of one! And to think I was planning on leaving the poor girl without any score. One of the most rewarding things about filmmaking is looking over a completed piece of music and realizing, wow--this piece of music, this piece of art, would not have existed were it not for me and my project. It's one of the few elements of a movie that one can treat as a separate artwork and appreciate out of context. Most excitingly, however, now that I have music and can time out the crawl properly and such, the movie is now running UNDER 13 minutes. Though not by much. Rick McCallum loves you! -----signature----- "Run Leia Run", "The Chopped-Off Hands of Star Wars" and "The Fan Film Menace"... ... and now the award-winning "Brooklyn Force". Check 'em out. http://www.runleiarun.com
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Teague Registered: Apr '06	Date Posted: 9/10/08 11:35am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: Closing in.
	High five, Brad. -----signature----- Teague "Fig" Chrystie Hollywood, CA http://www.downinfront.net http://twitter.com/TeagueChrystie
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AdamBertocci Title: Manager: Fan Films Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 10/1/08 7:37am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: Closing in.
	It has been some time since I last posted. No, the film's still not done yet. With the coming of the new month, though, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss a few things I've been working on while I wait for the last bits of music to come through. I cut a trailer... but I don't think I'm going to let you see it yet. Heh, heh, heh. It's more for festivals and media outlets. I'm sort of following the DorkmanScott Rule of Trailers for Shorts and Showing Too Much. I feel like if I reveal any more footage, you'll have already seen the darn film. But you can still check out the Comic-Con teaser if you like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1DApoO1hkk Also been doing Web site stuff. Wrote the press kit. God, I hate writing press kits. So obsequious. So smarmy. This is, as you may well have guessed, a project primarily for the Internet, and as such I don't plan on doing the 'film festivals' thing to the degree I normally would. But I had to turn in SOMETHING this week for a couple of festival submission deadlines, so of the two chunks with "missing" score, one was left naked and one had some temp score cobbled together from spare parts. It's not a bad temp, just not the sound I actually want. Hey. Having the actual movie on DVD for my watching pleasure meant I watched it, I dunno, fifteen times over the weekend. Some color correction and some sound mixing has been messed with. I might shorten exactly one shot sometime down the line. But the film is working. Honestly, it's so close to perfection that there's part of me that wants to say "screw music, let's just show everyone now!" But no. I've been waiting on this movie for over a year. I can wait for the rest. A strange note: As you may recall, we began shooting on March 22, which was the same date that Lucas and pals began shooting the original Star Wars. What I just realized today is that is also the date I began shooting my very first movie, back in 2000, also a Star Wars fan film. Weird, weird, weird. Rick McCallum loves you! -----signature----- "Run Leia Run", "The Chopped-Off Hands of Star Wars" and "The Fan Film Menace"... ... and now the award-winning "Brooklyn Force". Check 'em out. http://www.runleiarun.com
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VaporTrail Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 10/1/08 11:23am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: So close it hurts.
	Heh, I hadn't seen that trailer. Looks funny. At first, the re-writes of the SW dialog were just kinda silly, but you had me chuckling a bit by the end. -----signature----- Fanfilmers shoot first and talk copyright later. http://www.vimeo.com/vaportrail/videos http://thespenceleyspoileriffic.blogspot.com/
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AdamBertocci Title: Manager: Fan Films Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 10/2/08 11:13pm Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: So close it hurts. - Date Edited: 10/2/08 11:17pm (1 edits total) Edited By: AdamBertocci
	I told the actors to think of the dialogue the same way that they would think about their songs if they were in a musical. In a musical, characters express themselves and parse the world in terms of notes and meter and melody and harmony; in "Brooklyn Force", the "Star Wars" quotes stop being quotes and start being the way the characters speak. In the script, there comes a point when I stop putting the quotes in "" marks and the characters stop speaking with invisible quote marks around their words. It's deceptively difficult to do, by the way. I mean, try reciting Shakespeare in conversation without using your voice to impart the notion that the words are coming from anyone else but you. God didn't want to make the last few steps easy on me. Teague IMs some time after 9, proverbial hat in hand, and explains that his piano-to-computer hookup is giving him trouble. Being a wise man, he has already come up with solutions. Some of them involve delaying further, which is unpalatable. One involves spending money, which needless to say is a horror too deep to fathom. There's also a third option that I don't actually understand. I decide the third option sounds pretty good. So we have him feed MIDIs into his computer and I have GarageBand read them, and as it turns out it all sounds pretty nice; I know there's a stigma around the term 'MIDI' on the Internet, but it worked pretty well. We try some improvs. We do the "lightning" segment first. My request for this scene is something that says action and beat-down-ery, simple and unfettered; as it turns out, having people zap each other with lightning in the middle of Williamsburg on a quiet Saturday looks a little surreal, even for me, and my hope is that the music will ground the scene and keep the film's ostensible climax focused on the narrative rather than something vaguely Magritteish. The workflow is quite agreeable; I'm able to use GarageBand to shift the music down an octave to get the "rumble from hell" sound I want for this part of the score, and as I request add-ons, he can just add another layer of music. I'm looking for a ramp-up in singleminded fear and intensity, akin to that repeated note when Luke blows up the Death Star. I mix in GarageBand, remix in my messy-ass FCP timeline, which is accomodating layers upon layers of shots, lighting, flashes, lightning audio, screams, two tracks of music oh God what a mess. Our intrepid composer, meanwhile, turns his attention to the 'seduction' scene, wherein our Emperor analogue tempts our hipster to join the corporate side of the Force. The result is heartbreaking, and I can tell you right now it will take me half a day to cut it down to just the bits I need for the movie. My God, it actually makes it look like I can act. (Miraculously, my tempermental computer doesn't freeze ONCE the entire evening, by the way.) All seems in readiness, except the verrrry end of this scene, back in the 'action' portion. I need some percussive pounding to cap off the climax. I pick up my microphone and sing "bum-bum-bum!" in time to the music to illustrate what I need. It's the little bits and pieces that make a movie, these tiny fragments of art that flash by you at twenty-four dreams a second. It's never been about money or formulas or what you think other people want. It's about two people up past midnight, playing a symphony one note at a time, doing anything that comes to mind to explain in detail these short bursts that will pass by in six, eight frames. Because filmmakers know deep down that every decision is important work, that to make a film is to turn your back forever on "this aspect doesn't really matter". I hope the younger audience, the kids that stumble across TheForce.Net after idle YouTubing or with hopes of making a nifty saber duel in their backyard, will read this. I know that at this point, this epic of a thread is mostly for hardcore cubicle jockeys and late-night obsessives. But I've tried to, as the green fellow said, pass on what I have learned. And so, to our young members, who represent the future of this community: I'm not asking you to care about my film. Honestly, I'm not. I'm merely charging you to care about yours. Anyway somewhere in here we also had some masturbation humor. Some time after 1 in the morning I play with these last few notes, which I've called "thudthud.aif". I'm not finalizing the scene, just making sure I have enough material to do so. Well, I do. If there are any more touchups on this scene required, I know where to turn. That's a minor thing. As for major elements required to finish the movie? Those, I've got. So now I can finish this movie. If I don't die first. Given the luck I seem to have with this project, I'd say it's a pretty even bet, honestly. Rick McCallum loves you! -----signature----- "Run Leia Run", "The Chopped-Off Hands of Star Wars" and "The Fan Film Menace"... ... and now the award-winning "Brooklyn Force". Check 'em out. http://www.runleiarun.com
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AdamBertocci Title: Manager: Fan Films Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 10/4/08 8:31am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: The meaning of life. - Date Edited: 10/4/08 8:33am (2 edits total) Edited By: AdamBertocci
	This is not the "meaning of life" post. For the meaning of life, check the post above. Here, in a special TFN exclusive, I reveal my horrifyingly messy timeline. Please bear in mind that I am a professional editor and as such should probably keep my own house a little tidier. Here is the action portion of our confrontation scene. The little one-and-two-rame bits you see littering the timeline are flashes of light that I strew about. In general, audio tracks A1 through A4 are for "in camera" audio, A5 is for lightning. Note how I edit the music in tracks A7 through A12; I have two main components of the tune, and I surround it with incidentals (seduction.aif, thudthud.aif...) Would it make more sense to handle the sound editing in Soundtrack or something? Probably. But I am comfortable with FCP, so this is how I roll. Here's a closeup of some lightning zapping Luke. The plate of our sexy hero is 5ZA-1. Above him is some lightning. I was too lazy to go into After Effects and render brand-new lightning for this shot (it takes a WHILE at HD), so I have some stock shots I made in advance against black that I can composite within Final Cut and rotate, move, whatever. For example, you can see that I took some lightning initially designed for our Sith's right hand in shot 5X3, and stuck it in here. You can also see, in the top layer, my flashes of white and blue that I sprinkle in with the same ease that I do with any other editing. Some lightsaber work. This requires explanation. The three layers of 5U-2 are for color correction. In V2 is the unmodified plate; above it are two blurred layers, one set to Screen and one to Soft Light. This makes Carolyn look heroic and especially hot. I named my two main 5U lightsaber shots, which weren't particularly slated, "geeky" because I looked geeky and "useless" because on first review I thought I'd never use it. Hmm. "Why did you cut your lightsaber plate (5useless.mov) into pieces?" you ask? Because my rotoscoping out of AE wasn't quite perfect, but I was able to just adjust a few frames in FCP. Whee. Rick McCallum loves you! -----signature----- "Run Leia Run", "The Chopped-Off Hands of Star Wars" and "The Fan Film Menace"... ... and now the award-winning "Brooklyn Force". Check 'em out. http://www.runleiarun.com
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VaporTrail Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 10/5/08 5:47am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: The meaning of life.
	Are you comping your lightning effects in with FCP, rather than rendering out a completed shot and replacing the raw footage? That's what it looks like. -----signature----- Fanfilmers shoot first and talk copyright later. http://www.vimeo.com/vaportrail/videos http://thespenceleyspoileriffic.blogspot.com/
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AdamBertocci Title: Manager: Fan Films Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 10/5/08 8:38am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: The meaning of life. - Date Edited: 10/5/08 9:47am (2 edits total) Edited By: AdamBertocci
	Yes. I'm doing that with every effects shot. This allows me greater freedom in screwing around with editing, and (in the lightning's case) allows me to be lazy and "borrow" renders from shot 1 and put them in shot 2. I could color-correct the original footage, using FCP's color correctors, without having to go back into AE. Things like that. The only shots in the movie coming directly from AE are the crawl and the tilt-down. Since I am the only person touching editing or effects on this project, this is okay. I know this workflow wouldn't pass in the professional environment, and I'd kill any assistant editor who left me with a timeline like this without so much as an explanation. It's just, I'm one of those editors who's constantly refining and shifting little things, and it happens with timing and direction and flashiness of lightning as it does anything else. EDIT: Of course it does suck when you sit down one idle Sunday and your computer's decided to delete a gig's worth of render files Rick McCallum loves you! -----signature----- "Run Leia Run", "The Chopped-Off Hands of Star Wars" and "The Fan Film Menace"... ... and now the award-winning "Brooklyn Force". Check 'em out. http://www.runleiarun.com
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AdamBertocci Title: Manager: Fan Films Registered: Feb '02	Date Posted: 10/14/08 9:05am Subject: RE: The "Brooklyn Force" pregame thread: The meaning of life.
	It's done. A few statistics: the final run time is 12:53, the total "negative cost" (i.e. money spent on making but not releasing/promoting the movie) is $597.34, and the final file weighs in at 4.28 GB. Did that statistical rundown remind you of how a newborn baby's height and weight is recorded? Well, that's how it is. This has been 'my next project' since August of last year and now it is 'my most recent project'. I'm making DVDs for cast et al. I've already uploaded it to AtomFilms for their review. No turning back now. It's not perfect. It's not going to set the fan films world on fire on the order of "Duality" or "Revelations". It's not going to singlehandedly save Brooklyn, either. But I'm proud of it, warts and all. I showed my parents the all-but-final cut the other day to get their thoughts before finishing. I didn't exactly expect them to get it, as their familiarity with SW is minimal at best, but my dad actually had a couple of very insightful comments. So of course I started re-editing. I got two seconds out of the confrontation scene, and made some surprising changes in a Carolyn-Lisa scene toward the end. Dad felt that Lisa's monologue needed to be preceded by a little more bonding and welcome-back-to-the-fold-ing from Carolyn, which I didn't have, of course. So after Lisa quotes the wisdom of Yoda, she slyly adds, "Star Wars... good dialogue," and Carolyn shoots her a "very funny" glare. The entire exchange is manufactured from spare parts. I got the first two words from spare parts of Lisa's own work and managed to fit it into her mouth beautifully. But "good dialogue", recited off-camera, I got from CAROLYN's performance in "Love: The Movie". Remarkably the illusion works, although you can hear the audio is differently textured, if you know to look for it. You see, the power of editing is a cornerstone of the cinematic art form, and when we can suspend the viewer's disbelief, we, oh, screw it. Anyway, the very last change to the movie, if you're interested, was removing some sign text in that scene. It was blue text against dark glass so I just desaturated and darkened the blue to match the glass. I realize that none of these stories are relevant except as stories. This is pretty much the end of this blog (I'll make different threads for pre-promotion and for promotion of the film release itself). I hope you have learned something from this thread, and that you enjoyed being part of it as much as I did. Rick McCallum loves you! -----signature----- "Run Leia Run", "The Chopped-Off Hands of Star Wars" and "The Fan Film Menace"... ... and now the award-winning "Brooklyn Force". Check 'em out. http://www.runleiarun.com
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