Nash, TN Anyone want to do a fanfilm?

I have DV camera and editing software. Does anyone want to put together a fanfilm. Email me at:
linnaeus@concentric.net

Jonathan

 

Funny you should ask... elanrai, penzargrat, and I are just finishing up a fan film called Star Wars: Quest for Vengeance. Hopefully, the trailer should be online within the next month, and the rest of the movie shortly thereafter.

So yes, I'd be interested in doing a fan film. In fact, I was just sharing an idea for a quick 6-minute SW comedy skit with Jay this morning. It's based on the skit "Ti Kwan Leep" by The Frantics, which I call "Jedi Kwan Leep." I have the .wav file of the original skit if anyone wants me to send it to them. Probably ICQ is the best way for me to send it to anyone (my number is 95121404).

 

I might, my friend and I are in the early stages of preproduction with our own. We might be interested though. He and I had a little choregraphying back in our Tae Kwon Do days, and we sword fight some

What software do you have?

 

There is definitely room for some actors in the next installment of our fan film. We'd be more than honored to have your help.

For Quest For Vengeance we are using Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, Ulead Mediastudio Pro & Video Wave. I can almost guarantee I am leaving out one or two though. Hama-Ryu Kinnebi is working on our opening crawl (with Adobe After Effects) as we speak. It looks to be an interesting debut fan film for us. We plan to use bluescreen more in the next one. We basically are doing this just for fun and nothing more.

 

I have Final Cut, Premiere, and After Effects, I am still learning. I have done some rudimentary green screen work and some rotoscoping(the infamous light saber). I am really impressed with how it is possible to get a light saber effect that is as good or better than the original Star Wars movie. Now I wonder how I can do a Blaster...

 

I do all of my laser blaster rotoscoping within Ulead Mediastudio Pro. It has a nice onion-skin tool that makes it easy to path the shot from a blaster.

If I had a Mac, I'd probably use Final Cut Pro too.

 

I also have a PC but have found the Mac to be a really awesome tool for both Photo and Video editing. I certainly don't miss the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" I experienced frequently while running Windows. I am a recent Mac convert but still use PCs. Do you have any samples of laser blasts you could send me? I would really like to see the effect. If you want a Light Saber demo I could send you one if you don't already do saber effects.

Thanks,
Jonathan

 

Sure. I can send you a clip featuring the blasts that "we" use. Now, granted, this may not be the way ILM does it, but it DOES get the job done.

I use Photoshop for all lightsabre effects currently. And yes, I'd be most definitely interested in seeing some of your work. I love to learn how others do this!

I am off work tomorrow (Thursday) so I will find a decent server to post it and send you the link. What is your email?

 

My email is linnaeus@concentric.net. I use Photoshop for my light saber effects as well. I wish I could find a faster way to do it without having to edit it frame by frame. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jonathan

 

Have you tried filming models against a blue or greenscreen? I am working on it but want to find a good way to simulate motion without having to build a motion control setup like ILM uses...


-Jonathan

 

I know what you mean with the Photoshop. It truly isn't set up for doing video editing unfortunately. I have heard that people get generally good results with using After Effects, but I don't have a clue about that program. Photoshop is tedious. I just wished it had an onion-skin tool like Ulead's Video Paint. As for other options, Clay Kronke (big lightsabre rotoscoper) uses Ulead for pretty much ALL his effects. I think Ulead has MANY useful effects but I still think the quality of Photoshop's sabres are much better.

Actually, penzargrat, the writer/director/producer of our fanfilm is trying to do this now. This is really all that is left to film are the models. I am not to adept at blue/greenscreening as of yet. I am sure by the time this movie is finished, I will have some concept of it.

 

Aren't there 2 ways to do lightsabers in photoshop?

Like Darel guys way (under the Premiere example)
or
The frame by frame Outer Glow (under the Photshop examples)

My friend and I are using the premiere way since you only have to do outer glow once, but you have to use Gaussian Blur a lot.

 

As far as I know, there are 2 ways to do it.

I found Darryl Finley's example to not give me good results compared to the layering way I do it. I paint the sabre on one layer, triple that layer, run different gaussian blurs and glows on each. It seems to work except it is really hard to see the sabre from the previous frame and it's exact location in comparison to the frame you are working on. That is only a problem if I can't see the sabre real well in that frame.

 

Ok schrodinger_I,

I have the link uploaded to a site. It should be in your email right now. It isn't perfect but it got the job done for us.

 

Ok I will take a look when I get home. If you ever have the need to film some miniatures, I know a guy that is really awesome at constructing models from scratch (styrene sheets) and could help. He has a small vacuum table to form any custom parts needed. I am trying to get him to help me build a large vacuum table so we can make a batch of Storm Trooper armor. If you know of anyone who would be interested, let me know...

Thanks,
Jonathan

 

Funny you say that. We really need some mini-city structures. I think penzargrat may already have done this.

I'd be more than interested in helping out, but of course I am quite a few miles away. Maybe we can plan something sometime.

 

Elanrai, could you post your blaster clip so myself and the others could look at it?

 

Sure thing. This footage may take a while to download due to the server. If so, let me know and I will move it another one.

Blaster Test Footage

Oh yeah, make sure you right click-Save as.

 

It says it is not available and www.questforvengence.com doesn't work either (I'm guessing they are the same, with a redirect domain)

 

Wow. I do not know what happened there. It sure is down. Let me look into it.

EDIT: Unbelievable!! Geocities erased the whole site!! Oh, man this bites. Let me find another server for the footage as WELL as the site itself.

 

I hope you've got the site backed up on a disk or something. Have I mentioned lately that GeoCities sucks?

EDIT: No? Well, it does.

 

Needless to say, I created a new account there to host the site. If anyone has any other suggestions that doesn't cost anything, let me know.

 

Yes, Hama. I have it all backed up. THANK GOODNESS!! I am going to re-upload the footage to our fan film site. Just make sure you click the link from our site. I think direct linking to geocities' sites gets your account banned or something.

If you need a direct link, here is the 69megs.com one. Granted, this site is slow but it'll do until I get a better host.

Blaster Test Footage

 

www.f2s.com

You get 15MB (I think) a subdomain and no banners/ads!!

You have to use FTP, which is the only down side.

 

Thanks, zmgba. I will check it out.