***FAN FILM RELEASE- STAR WARS: GHOST OF THE REBELLION***

it took that long for them to get to level 3?

Um, the elevators in the jedi temple were really, really slow that day. LOL, I've seen that footage for a long time and never noticed that.

Ok, so the Jedi council in lounge chairs is a little cheesy

This wasn't the A council; the one with all of the Jedi you've heard of. This was their C council or maybe B, at best.

Great replies, keep 'em coming!

 

Ggreat trailers. This is strange. Everytime I try download the "media windows player 9" box comes up. All the trailer work in quicktime Help please.

 

What have you tried? Have you tried right-clicking the link on the first page and selecting "save target as..." or "save link as"?

 

Nice film. Gets a little cheezy, but the fight scenes are cool. I've noticed something that is almost totally unique to your film: THERE ARE GIRLS IN IT!!! How'd you do that? Accirding to the credits they're not even little sisters of the writers. Most fan films have no girls, or maybe one, but this one has a half dozen. What did you do that's so different than most of these femme-phobes that make these movies?

 

Congratulations on finishing your movie -- not many people do. It's a nice effort for a first film. I liked the story, and thought the Jedi Master actor was quite good. The choreography was OK, although the "Ghost" sometimes lacked a little in intensity.

Some areas for improvement:

The sound, as several people have mentioned. It's just as important as the pictures.

There's way too much talking. That's deadly dull in most movies, and this one was no exception. I don't mean that the whole movie was dull -- it wasn't -- but parts of it were. For example, the Jedi Master spends three or four minutes telling how he lost his apprentice. You could have said the same thing with much more power with a flashback and 20 seconds of talk. One of the first rules of filmmaking is "Show, don't tell."

Most of the actors seemed to be reciting lines rather than speaking naturally. I think they probably needed firmer direction and more rehearsal time. A few of them seemed to be working harder at remembering their lines than at acting.

The movie needed more closeups in the climactic scenes. The Apprentice in the cave -- what were his emotions? Was he scared? Arrogant? Scared but putting up a front? Scared but still arrogant? It was impossible to tell from so far away. Same thing when he was fighting the "Ghost." Why was the Apprentice running? Fear? Strategy? Again, the audience couldn't tell, because we were too far away. The flim needed to bring us in close enough to see what the character was feeling.

Anyway, that's meant to be constructive criticism. For a first movie, it was well-done, but those are some things you might want to think about for your next one.

 

Words cannot describe the hatred I have towards this film. Thanks for
wasting 35 minutes of my life. Three years? There has to be a good excuse
that made this junk take that long.

 

Hey, I have a novel idea: Don't be a jerk, kid

If you don't like the movie, at least tell them why.

 

Hey "LargeMcBigHuge" what are you talking about? I'd say there are plenty of films with girls in it...Revelations had women..Reign of the Fallen...the 'princess' motif in Star Wars is used in MANY fan films...

As for what Funk says, I have to agree. Funk always specifies what he finds fault in.

 

DarthMeekAndMild: That was an excellent critique. I'm going to take a bit of what you mentioned and remember it when I do my films. Thanx for the advice!

-IJedi

 

uh, well, I've seen worse, and I'm not sure why people are so annoyed by this one...

have you considered re-dubbing some(all) of the audio, and maybe trimming a few the longer shots// you could call it a director's cut..


..the dialogue is really hard to hear, even with my volume all the way up

 

Just in case anyone thought that I was a part of this project because of what I put in my last post... I am not.

What applies to this film can apply to many other films as well. I'd rather learn from other's mistakes rather than my own.

-IJedi

 

I've seen a lot of fan films and generally girls are pretty rare (with a couple exceptions). I'm glad this film (and those precious few others) are breaking the stereotpyes.

 

A really good movie. Thanks for this wonderful 30 minutes. I enjoyed it very much.

 

Goods

Story was quite good, I mean a "ghost" is kinda cheesy, but it was still cool.
Setting: you took the usual outdoors motif, but expanding on it with a nice cliff and water/cave.

Bads

Audio was the worst in the world, considering a majority of your movie is speech you really should've invested in some quality recordings.

Was the director your mom?
I say this because only a mom would have static distant shot that never pans and is the boringest. Like during the "you don't need my saber scene", gimme at least 3 angles, and a face or something.

I laughed a lot (not the good kind)
There were a lot of things that looked really out of place and made the film seem less like you were there and more like you were painfully watching it.

During the fight between the ghost and the master, when the ghost's saber hits the plant and it doesn't cut it. Either cut it off in AE or reflim it.

Throwing rocks? The first one looked soo cheesy and fake, and the rest were pointless.

When the apprentice runs off with that girl toward the cave, you hear the master in the background and he gets cut off ?don?t get separated?. But we later learn that he wasn?t even in the area with the apprentice.

Exit sign?
Opening crawl, no stars?

I liked how that head-of-the-something-guy talks the most of the film, and then is shot in a nonchalant way, never to be mentioned again.

Acting
Or should I say, acting? WORST, felt like I was watching soulless beings.

The long speech periods wouldn?t have been so bad if there had been some good acting.
Well the walk in the forest scenes should?ve been like 35 seconds, just say ?okay, there?s like rebels, and they are shooting, so we are being careful. The end?
But think the scene where the master tells of how the apprentice died would?ve been okay given some different angles (you NEED a close-up here, to see the emotion in his face), good acting, and good lighting (like some sort of candle flicker on his face, or dramatic effect).

The Cave Scene

Umm? wtf? Good concept, horrible manifestation. The shot through the hole in the top was cool at first, and then I expected it to zoom down into his face. Nope, okay maybe in like another 5 seconds it will?. Nope. Oh wait now the lighting changed and we can see the ghosts back? What were we supposed to be seeing? Again, the soccer-mom director prevails.

Okay so I have a long list of bads, but they were bad for a reason, I was not trying to be mean. Although most problems require total refiliming, I think that they should still be stated, because it?s almost like sections of this were directed by stevie wonder. Again, not trying to be mean, but some things (LIKE ZOOMING, OMG WOW!) are so elementary, its? hard to see how it was not taken care of.

If you somehow fixed the audio, cut down the everything by half, color corrected it, and changed some of other smaller problems, I think you could have a decent directors cut.

 

***correction***
i watched it again, and there are stars behind the opening crawl, i just had my brightness down.

whoops

 

I can't help but feel like a contestant on American Idol.

Yeah, the stars have never been as bright as I would like; got to fix that in the uber-special-edition-mega director's cut. I appreciate a lot of the critiques (although you'd don't need to be detailed about why you were laughing at my film). Many of the critiques we noticed, but refilming or redubbing is hardly an option when your actors have moved all over the country. Nonetheless, keep the reviews coming!

 

well, you could always dub the voices in with entirely different voice actors, if you re-record all the dialogue for said character, it wouldn't really be a continuity error

I mean look at the first star wars movie, most of the extras had such heavy accents that nearly every single word had to be redubbed