Chic, IL Feature length fan film trilogy? We need help.

We are high school students and we want to make 3 fan films, all part of a trilogy. We thought of an epic plot and we have no clue how we are going to make this... live action, cgi, cartoons.... Any thoughts?

More details are on our website at http://n.1asphost.com/swdarkstar/index.html

 

"Any thoughts?"


Make a small, 5-minute film and do it well. That's hard enough. Then work on your galaxy-spanning 6 hour trilogy.

Honestly too.

 

The thing is we have a 6 - hour fan film in front of us.. script and all.. and people say its good...

We really want to make this fan film and we dont care for the 5 minute thing. We have a great idea, great authors, and want to see it come to life.

 

I totally agree. As one of the Lucasmonkey clan, I can safely say that it takes a LOT of screwing up (and cracking up) to get filming down to a system. If this is your first time, doing anything more than a five-minute film (including editing) is going to really sap your enthusiasm.

Seriously, both Sithy and I have written nice big scripts that would yield a 20-30 minute movie, and had to scrap them because we simply don't have the 100-200 hours to work on them. Before you go bug-eyed on the "hundreds of hours" part, that's perfectly realistic. I can't recall exactly what our ratio was, but it seems like we've spent about two hours of filming, memorizing lines, and setting up stuff for every minute of footage. Then, you almost have to double that amount of time when you go to edit it (if you do a good job).

Kev, naturally you can correct me if I'm off! I've tried really hard to forget the long hours sweating in costume and editing stuff, so it's hard to remember it now!


EDIT: Just saw your message YodaDaMax--I hate to discourage you, but if we dread the idea of doing an hour-long movie, there's no way on Earth you can make a six hour movie (unless your plan is to bore everyone to death).

EDIT #2: Saaaaaweeeet, Kev! You should've told me you got Strikers posted online! I still need to get the DV for the DVD . . .

 

I understand. What I'm saying is this:

Making a film is nothing like writing a story. An author with $5 in his pocket can write a trilogy that spans galaxies, involves time-travel, and includes a battle between a 40-foot dragon and a squadron of F-16s. Essentially, all he has to do is have a pen, paper, and put all the words in the correct order.

But when you make a movie, you have to make all that real. You have to think about the lighting on spaceships, how fast they move, how they bank and turn, the color of their glowing rockets, and the stars reflecting off the hull. You have to consider the pros and cons of the different ways to shoot a 40-foot dragon and the lighting of battle scenes at night. You have to draw storyboards and re-edit your scripts. Then you have to organize 5, 10, 20 or more people to all arrive on one single day, along with costumes, props, camera, tape, lights (and access to electricity) and food. Of course, just getting everything organized isn't enough, you have to make it work. After you shoot, how long will it take you to learn how to effectively use a $500 editing program that you will undoubtedly illegally obtain? What about the visual effects you mentioned? Animation? And then even if you wrote a great script, directed the shooting incredibly well, you stil have to edit with a fluid pace and rhythm.

Listen, I'm not trying to scare you.

All I'm saying is this: There's more to making a movie than grabbing a camera and some friends. It sounds like you have a really good idea-- that's great! It's a better start than most people have. Try this: take your favorite scene out of all of the entire, full-lenth, 6 hour trilogy, and adapt it into a short film. That way, you'll still be incredily enthusiastic about it but it's more achievable given the time and money constraints of high school. If you can make that work, then move on to longer films, or stay with short films and make your next one even better.

The reason for this is (A) you'll have some training ground to figure out how you work as an artist and filmmaker, (B) you'll be able to put attention to detail in a shorter film, and (C) you'll be able to finish it.


Once again, I'm in no way trying to scare you or anything, just trying to give you some tips from someone who's "been there, done that" with an attempt at a full-length feature production and learned from it.

Keep truckin', bud.

Annnnnd, scene!

 

Well.. we do have previous experience.. however... we used a game engine to make our previous movies... Now, however, we want to do it live action, cgi, or cartoon. We'll take whatever we get though.

www.jedioutcastmovies.2ya.com

The link above is the group where we did some work... so we HAVE background experience.. we just need help getting it live action/cgi/cartoon.

 

Clearly you took to heart everything I said.

 

We know all about how much work we have to do. We're willing to do it, buy programs and stuff. If we make an animation, we can do anything we can imagine. Just time stopping us. And i resent the illegal programs comment. We're not gonna cut this down to five minutes. We'd appreciate any help doing that, but we don't need people telling us to quit. If you guys wanna help that'd be great, don't try to stop us.

 

Once again, thanks for reading my message.

Because I clearly told you to quit multiple times.

 

Well... you didn't tell us to quit out right... but you have to admit it SEEMS as you're trying to scare us out of it although you said you didn't. If you are willing to sacrifice a little time to help build an epic, please do so. It'll never work if the movie is 5 minutes or 50 minutes.... we wrote it full length, AFTER cutting it down by half, and it will NOT be shorter than the script.

 

Alright, then by all means, go ahead and try to make it. And I wish you the best-- if you do complete it, that will truly be an accomplishment!

I still stand by my advice, though, and I was merely trying to help you by speaking from experience.

 

Maybe he's too nice to try to scare you out of it, but I think if nothing else works (and it's not working), I might as well try. First of all, you should listen to Kevin. He's going to a very well-known film school to become the next George Lucas, and he knows what he's talking about (and I do too) from a lot of hard lessons, plus, he knows more about the technical aspects of lighting and setting up a shot than quite a few people. Here's a few basic guidelines, and please don't take this as an insult--it's just the stuff that we know from doing almost ten films (been there, done that):

A) Don't ever use video games to create scenes from a movie, no matter how good the graphics are UNLESS you know how to make changes to the engine and script your own cutscene. When you insert video game footage, everyone goes, "whoa! where'd the Rogue Leader footage come from? That looks cheap . . . "

B) Write films that you can handle. For your first film, try to make a 2:30 film. Seriously--you won't believe how many days it'll take to film, and then it'll take you a week or two to make it to the final render. You'll probably think it's terrible (or if you don't, other people will do it for you--nobody makes anything short of stinking crud on the first try), and vow to redo it next time.

C) Look at the people that are way better than you and imitate them. Even the guys who created Duality would NEVER try to tackle a film that's even close to standard (2-3 hour length)--especially not on their first try! It's not possible! You could have 30 people and a six-hour project (assuming that you actually have people say things and do stuff and you employ those extremely complex editing procedures called scenes, cuts, and transitions . . . lol) could easily take you years. I mean, c'mon . . . a typical Hollywood movie takes a few years from start to finish, and that's with a little thing called "freakin' enormous mounds 'o' money!"

Aparently, you know very little of what you're getting into. I'm not trying to be mean--just trying to save you a lot of frustration, because if you really do give this movie a good shot, you're going to be so burned out that you might never try again.

 

Speaking as someone who's handled gaffing and PA duties on a handful of friends' short (and mostly terrible) films, I'd like to second just about everything Team Sithy has mentioned in this thread: even the shotest of films are tough beyond your wildest dreams.

I'd wish you gentlemen luck, but there's probably only one kind of luck that'd come near you right now.

-Le Penguin
"The beauty of the digital revolution is that now everyone can make movies! The problem is that many of them do."

 

Actually, Shwanzi is probably CF's leading Star Wars fanfilm maker (he just sent me the teaser for his new film Pathways).

But, to answer all your questions in one fell swoop. It goes something like this. Swanzi's the expert, so, he can correct me if I'm wrong.

Basically, when a man and a woman love each other, and they want to have a baby. The man kisses the woman in a special way. In a few months a baby comes out.

I hope that helps.

 

If you are brave, you can try the Fan Film Forum.

~H~

 

Can I say something even more discouraging?

I think spending the time required to make a six-hour FAN FILM would be totally wasted.

I respect filmmakers who make fan shorts, whether they be in it for the experience or the fun of it.

but to expend the time and energy required to create a six-hour epic IN SOMEONE ELSE'S UNIVERSE is to me insane, insane, and also insane. And a GIGANTIC waste of time.

Have you no original ideas percolating in your brain? No stories waiting to be told that you can claim as your own?

Hell, can you even take the ideas you have for a SW fan film and make them into your own? Being insanely derivative of Star Wars for six hours is better than making a Star Wars fan film; at least some piece of it belongs to YOU.

Open your mind to the creative possibilities of film and storytelling. George Lucas didn't launch his career into the stratosphere with a Flash Gordon fan film; he took elements of what he loved from those old movie serials and a bunch of other sources and mixed them into what we know and love as Star Wars. Go even further back and look at his student films from college; they're innovative, unique, and wildly creative.

I'm halfway across the country right now trying to chase down a career in the entertainment industry, and I would give my right kidney to be able to go back in time and start trying to write films and TV shows when I was in high school.

Your age and energy are both tremendous gifts. Use them wisely.

and if you've read this entire thread and the great insights from experienced filmmakers who want you to succeed, and you still want to go ahead with your idea, then I weep for our youth.

or maybe I weep cause i'm drunk. i forget. al;sdjkf aosdfj ;aosdfj aosidfj ;a.

 

We get the point, live action takes a lot of work. We're also willing to do an animation, if necessary. With Flash MX we could make decent films, without all the cameras and needing everyone together at once. Now you can start saying how impossible that is, UNLESS SOMEBODY WOULD ACTUALLY LIKE TO HELP OUT.

 

ROFL! Frankly, no, and you're hopeless.

*so he suggests something even harder*

Doing a 6 hour flash movie is not only absurd, but sounds incredibly boring both from a production and a viewers standpoint. What makes you think that you're going to be able to make a flash movie (or anything short of live motion) in significantly less time than what it'd take you to make a normal movie?

You seemed bound and determined to make a fool of yourself in SOME way . . . you know, it wouldn't hurt to try our advice--it won't delay your grand scheme by a lot and it'd give you good practice in handling a camera. If you make a good short movie like that and still want to try the six hour epic, then knock yourself out.

 

There's a dude on this board named RabidWolverine. He might be able to help you.

 

OK, thanks for all the discouragement. I'm trying to ignore that for now. Anybody wanna help out?

 

Yeah, ask RabidWolverine. He could do the soundtrack to your film.

 

You know, its not discouragement. It is the reality of the project you are undertaking. You came on here and asked for help and people whom are experienced in such matters reply. They tell you it will be hard as hell, you still want to do it. They tell you seriously, it will be hard as hell.

If you wanna keep going, thats great good luck to you. Just remember, reality is a harsh mistress sometimes. Also remember, I've seen a multitude of fan films in my day and ALL have sucked.

Good luck.

 

George evidently liked "Pink 5"...

 

I'd LOVE to help.

I'll need a plane ticket to Chicago, a hotel room in a pretty swank joint, $200/day stipend, and funny money at the local Scores.

 

Sorry Matt, his website says, "Be warned, we cannot pay anyone."

Be warned indeed.