***LCC IX Voting and Reviews***

As I said earlier, I think this was one of the best all around LCCs we have ever had, and here are some of my specific thoughts.


1. I agree, first place, you guys had stuff in there I don?t think I?ve ever seen. Really fun to watch. Loved the sound design too.

2. I actually give you guys second place. The chorio was intricate and I enjoyed it very much. (loved the part where the guy walked into the room and instantly turned around ?)

3. Your editing was boss! Loved the pace, keep it up!

4. Great set and costumes, the execution was very intense, well done.

5. Wow, this was my overall favorite, I was sucked into the story and find it hard to criticize almost anything about the film. I wish I knew how to add that kind of intensity to my movies. Was the music stock music?

6. This film had great production value, I enjoyed it immensely. I think the story was one of the most original star wars fan film stories I have ever seen, well done.

7. You guys are so? silly? At first, I didn?t think the girls were going to be able to fight very well, but they actually pulled off a good fight! I loled many times. Love the way the camera man answered the actors.

8. Chorio was good, and I loved your slow-motion shots. That fight scene on the log must have been incredibly hard to pull off, Great work!

Well done everyone! Hope I can participate next year!

Awesome, this was precisely our aim, Thanks.

Last day for votes: http://lcc.phispace.net/voting/index.php?sid=48436

Preamble

Usually I would separate these reviews into 3 categories: ?Contenders?, ?Honourable Mentions? and ?Meh?. And I?m glad to say that none of the entries are ?Meh?. While none of them truly raise the bar on what?s come before, for once they were all fairly entertaining, and from each one there?s something to be learned. As usual I?ll try to focus on choreography vs. Other entertainment factors. My 0.02 CAD:

Top Picks

1st Entry - Spiff and Phi aka The Glove

So, yeah, not much of a contest.

Best part is Spiff and his opponent have totally different priorities in the fight. Sabeel?s simple uncoordinated aggression, and this reflects on his constantly overextending himself ? look how many times his weapon is stretched too far from his body. Spiff keeps a tight ring/circle/sphere of control around himself. Any weapon that enters that sphere is deflected, and part of Sabeel?s body that enters that sphere is punished.

Pay attention kids, this is how you portray the difference between adequacy and mastery.

Notice how the plot moves forward with the fighters subtle change in tactics: Spiff?s ?tight control? is brought more explicitly when he switches to the reverse blade grip, while Sabeel further loses control to damage the environment. Garages aren?t the natural environment for a sword duel. And notice how only when Spiff himself breaks form ? trying to end the fight ? does he loose his ground. He makes a gamble that?s not exactly a tactical error, but he?s punished for it anyways; his opponent is now broken inside the sphere, and Spiff has to ? pardon the pun ? kick it up a notch to survive.

Good stuff.

5th Entry - DX6Channel aka the Fight Inside

This one has the best filmatizm (to borrow an Outlaw Vern phrase) of the bunch. Does that equate best choreography? Not always, but the choreo, the execution of the moves, the individual beats, and the cinematography come together nicely. The plot is a bit of a wash ? another Eclipse / Dagobah tree inspired entry I?m guessing ? but then this is a choreography contest.

This has some well executed moves and, I?m glad to see, the sabre strikes are executed with cutting the other guy down, rather than stick bashing. The melee strikes have a nice impact, for an amateur level. No sequence of strikes feels too repetitive, though Skull Face?s constant unarmed challenges wears thin near the end. Very good energy, very good executions.

I?d like to critique that not enough was done to make the main fighters have different styles... buuuut given the plotting ? Skull Face might be a mirrors of the protagonist - I?m not sure if that?s fair.

6th Entry - Joel Loukus aka Inversions

This is a very interesting entry and I?m surprised it?s not getting more play. People are focusing too much on the voice over and the production values. Look: It?s the only entry, really, to have duelists fighting in different styles and where those styles portray the character?s emotions. That is something I take seriously.

And that?s where the voice over hurts the effort ? you either don?t trust your audience (not that I blame you) or have low confidence in your storytelling ability via choreo. You could have just as easily started the entry with the voice over saying, simply, ?The Jedi has found me, and my city burns.?

On second viewing with the audio muted I could appreciate the actual physical acting a lot more. Sure, individual moves are nothing I haven?t seen before, but in this particular entry stylization takes a back seat to mood. I?m convinced one of the fighters wants to murder the other. Well done.

Remainder

2nd Entry ? KingKool

This... this is a good entry to highlight the difference between choreography and athleticism. This entry had good, nearing great, choreography, but the fighters aren?t top form martial artists. This kind of entry is always good to contrast with something like Entry 4; if KingFool?s team would choreograph a fight that Radek Smetana?s team would execute, they?d have an unbeatable entry. But,

Thank you for noticing!

I think this is a really interesting sentiment, and I would have preferred to make the film the way you suggest here, experience has taught us to curb that tendency, though. You're 100% right. I'm doing the Shakespeare thing here, repeating everything three times for my drunk, half attentive audience.

I have a film right here that was made with this kind of sparse information, and I think it illustrates nicely how the audience can't handle no information when it comes to character dynamic.

Tranquillity: http://www.vimeo.com/20672050

The following are the results of the popular votes:

LCC IX Popular Vote Results.

Congratulations to Spiff and Phi, DX6Channel and Whiteley79.

Thanks again to Phi for the voting page. She's been a great help.

This is what's fun about preferential balloting - Whiteley actually got more "first place" votes than DX6Channel, but he came in third behind DX6Channel.

Maths!

In the future, perhaps it should go 4, 2, 1 - instead of 3, 2, 1.

Wow.
I totally flaked and completely forgot to vote. I watched all of them, too!


Doesn't look like it'd have made much of a difference, but I'll try to write up my comments soon.
[headdesk]

You can play with your own weightings as the vote counts are all right there, but it might be worth noting that 4,2,1 would't change these results.

Here is the HD version of The Fight Inside.

Some of you have not understood the story; basically what happens is the good guy (Micah) gets knocked out and has a nightmare in which he gets defeated by someone who says he is Micah's worst nightmare. Micah wakes up to find that his nightmare has come true.

Movie
http://vimeo.com/29027422

Bloopers
http://vimeo.com/29128661

I can't speak for these people, but I understood that fine by the end.

1. Certainly the best choreography, but... dammit, it goes by so fast, I can't get into it. By the time I start thinking, it's already over. Give me some stakes. Give me some build-up! It's obviously very good, but it's so beautifully minimal, I can't get ramped up the second you see it. If the moves were showy-awesome style, it would have immediately engaged me.

2. Mine. Skipping it for now.

3. THIS is why I don't like Force Lightning. People stand twenty feet apart and point at each other for thirty seconds and THEN the fight starts. Raking the guy's face against the brick is pretty rad. I liked the brutality in the later scene. But there is a LOT of wasted time in this one, and it's hard to pull out any specific bit of choreo to praise. I wasn't a huge fan of Manhunt from last year, but I don't consider this to be strictly better than that one. The moves are faster, but when the choreography actually starts, it's so close, you can barely tell what's going on. To be concluded... GUH.

4. While watching them again, I think my problem with all the entries (including mine) is that the styles of all the fighters quickly becomes apparent. It starts to feel like we're seeing the same moves more than a few times. I did like this entry very much, but there's a LOT of spinning aorund. I think while choreographing this year, lots of people got locked in a certain style. I think the double-handed lock at 1:20 is my favorite move of this competition. (though the ending was somewhat anticlimactic)

5. This one kinda bugs me, because I thought DX6's entry was one of two that didn't get enough love last year. There's some fun stuff once it gets going, but I was underwhelmed by what I think is LCC's first lightwhip. Also, if you're going to bother having dialogue, could it be more compelling than, "You know who I am? I'm your worst nightmare!" That could have very easily stayed silent.

6 This one is nothing special, and the voice-over was REAL annoying. (not the writing itself, the flange). This entry frustrates me because it's clear the filmmakers are competent. Despite the rage the characters are supposed to feel, all the hits are gentle and anticipatory. And what are those gloves made of, exactly?

7. A silly entry, but fun. How could mine not be the only entry with hair-pulling? Again, the choreography is not in the same ballpark as last year's entry.

8. I liked this one. Sadly, with the sound desynched, I had to listen to it muted the first few times. When I talk about not getting invested in Entry 1, this is a good example of doing something to give it that something I'm looking for. Once they walked out on the log, I was like, "Nice." It's still fairly standard, but the half-staff saber gave some nice stuff. I would have tried to give this one some love in the voting, if I had voted.

There wasn't really a "Duel of the Dorks" this year, an entry that I just loved completely.

Some info on my entry:

I find it amazing that Trey mentioned that scene in the Protector with the long unbroken shot, because the goal for this year was to do a lightsaber fight in one unbroken take. We went through some tests to see what we could do without a cut. We wanted to do a pipe chop, but the halves of the stick wouldn't stay together well enough to spin or not look pre-cut.

I didn't want to reuse the location, but when doing it all in one take, I didn't want to move between the rooms and have everything go dark and make it look like there was a cut. We'd hoped to shoot in a local mall, but they closed before we could ask. (This meant we lost a callback to the elevator gag, and some choreography with both of us standing on an escalator.) The gym is indoors, it's reasonably cool, it has high ceilings. Except for the lousy acoustics, it's ideal.

In the version without cuts, Brendon had the makeup on for his burn and would rip open the tape when we hit that mark, but it smeared (why can't we film these things in the fall, when it's cooler?).

We got three complete takes of the cutless version of our choreography, but I wasn't happy with any of

Awesome, KingKool. I always get a kick out of your entries.

I have a fight choreography channel up on vimeo with a bunch of subscribers. I'll feature any of the fights from the competition if they are put up by the original creators.

http://vimeo.com/channels/fightfilms



"And what are those gloves made of, exactly?"

Saber resistent metals are canon, there are multiple types.

I'm aware of that. From what I've read, most of the saber-resistant metals and whatnot would cause a saber to short out and deactivate (this appears to not be the case, only cortosis does this)

It does make one question what the physics in that situation would be like if the saber didn't just deactivate. Would the force of the strike push the arms away if the blade has no mass, or could the striking force be put on the side of the glovewearer, tossing the blade away with a strike? Would the gloves get hot after repeated strikes? How thin could the material be and still work effectively against the lightsabers? Would it degrade from the initial strikes until it was pocked and scuffed beyond use?

Good questions all. I've envisioned a pair of specially crafted gloves that would be useful for holding a pair of light-chucks, but that might be too silly, even for me.

Here comes the lightsaber geek in me.

There are several saber resistant materials. The most famous is cortosis, of which there are two types. The first can resist and stand up to the high energy charge a saber gives on impact, but its not completely immune. It can take five or six hits, but it eventually will break or be melted under constant pressure or cut a certain way. Luke skywalker would later learn the techniques needed to bypass cortosis in one blow. The second kind can shoet out electronic components, but the saber can be "rebooted" in a sense after a minute or two. Cortosis is actually very brittle as well, so convential weapons or force techniqes can break it.

Mandalorian iron, or beskar, is much more sturdy then cortosis, and has some of the same attributes as the first type of cortosis. Its also extremly rare and fiercely protected by the mandalorians. Because of the way its mixed and crafted, it is also very susecptable to the force power Shatterpoint.

Last is phrik (sp?) Which is what the magna guard staffs aremade up of. It normally doesn't hold up well to anything, but when charged with a power source, can completely resist lightsaber energy. However, the charge drains with every hit, and if it does not recharge quick enough, its just like any other metal.

So all in all, yes there are metals out there that resist lightsabers, but they all have their weaknesses. Of course, a good fight choerographer will welcome and use that to full advantage. (Sorry for any typos. Sent from my phone)

I'd never heard Luke learned how to get through cortosis in one strike. I don't suppose you recall the details?


And if I were to do saber-chucks, I'd likely just keep it simple and have one side with a traditional grip and the striking side be the blade. You couldn't do a lot of fancy two-hand chuck moves, but you get the spinning/flailing bit and I'm sure there's plenty to be done with that.

That weapon seems too dangerous to yourself to be practical, though. Along these lines, I'm kind of hoping Spiff'll revisit his tri-saber at some point.

[image=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SLhcQfuSGcE/TbC9VER0R9I/AAAAAAAAAB8/l4Wio43GSIA/s1600/facepalm_picard2.jpg]

What? I read (too many) Star Wars books and retain a lot of (worthless) information.

I sort of started it, but I share Ryan's sentiment.

At least when Weebs and I sat down for drinks, we talked about real materials for lightsaber props.

//secretly jealous that we didn't incorporate an argument over lightsaber resistant materials in Duel of the Dorks.

I guess I haven't found the line when it comes to being too dorky about a subject brought up by other users in a thread about critiquing grown men(and women)waving around laser swords. My mind has just been plagued for the last twenty minutes thinking up choreo, gags, and beats around some kind of saber resistant material. God help us all.

What's sad is I already knew everything Whiteley said, and he didn't even go into Ultrachrome, Orbalisk carapace, or Force imbued whatever, and don't even get me started on Sith alchemy. If you start going into that stuff, you'll notice that there's straight up Magic in Star War.
Edit: Oh, and I almost forgot Songsteel. Why do they keep creating new saber resistant stuff?

Because deep down everyone jealously hates Star Wars.