"SPY WARS".......The Release

Junfanman,

Congratulations on finishing your film! It's obvious that you put alot of time into this production with all of the keying and CGI and choreography, so I applaud you for bringing such a complex piece to completion. Some comments- Typing as I'm watching...

Nice studio logo Simple but classy.
The opening crawl looked tilted back almost too far. It never got higher than the lower 3rd of the frame. Not tilting it so far will allow folks to read the scroll a little better.

Liked the opening chase sequence. The hangar shot was sweet. Most of the keying looked pretty nice. There wasn't any chewing of the edges happening.
Vader's costume was obviously the low-budget version, but unless you have about 5 grand or on very good terms with someone in the 501st, it was fine.
The shot where Vader was on the bridge and he starts to walk then he says "Tasblades", on a close up shot except he's standing still for the closeup- that was a little jarring, especially that on the next shot he's still in mid stride.
Audio was a mixed bag. Some was good and some was really muffled or overpowered by music or other sound effects.
The hologram shot looked nice.
The shots in the imperial base looked nice especially where the guy was at the control panel.
OH- nice little touch with the X wings flying above the 2 Jedi practicing.
The compositing of the Jedi in the cockpit looked nice, but the Jedi have WAAAAYY too much headroom. If they are the focus of the shot, they need to be framed better.
I dug the Falcon going to Lightspeed shot.
When the 2 Jedi are talking in the main hold of the Falcon, I kept expect someone to say, "Hey, did you see Little E. win the Daytona 500 last week? That boy can drive like a stuck pig! Yeeee-haaa!" Those southern drawls remind me of home back in Missouri, where country is king and Nascar is God. anyways...

Liked the bad guy costume. Kinda Predator meets Klingon meets Darth Blight from Duality.
The speed of the saber attacks looked great although you repeated alot of the movements. Nice touch with the tree limb catching on fire. And I didn't have a problem with the black mark on the ground. I think you could have sold it a little better if you had added a little bit of smoke.
Yum- gruesome end to the battle!
OK- the Padawan in the gun turret- that was funny! "I got you sucka!"
Cool shot with the laser coming in to the TIE and you zooming in on the eye piece. Liked it.

Well, a nice effort Tony. Tons of work and some nice shots in there. My biggest compaint was audio and your shot framing, but overall I enjoyed it.

By the way, you should sent a PM to Azeem or Fenn to see if they can put up a news article on your film.

 

Will see it tomorrow and make my comments...

However, with two swords vs. one sword, neither has the advantage. A single double handed blade can easily over power a one handed blade... while the two blades has more versatility for striking and blocking. Technically any sword fight would be as short, or shorter than any of the exchanges between Uma and Lucy at the end of Kill Bill.

That being said, for SW choreography the more blades you have the merrier. After working with a single sword against a light-staff it was pretty obvious that the staff had many more advantages, and would systematically beat a normal saber. When I pulled out my other weapon, the staff was pretty much useless against me - we couldn't come up with anything that couldn't easily be blocked and countered.

-Spiff

 

I've just finished watching the Quicktime version and I must applaude you on your film. There's a heck of a lot of work that has gone into this, and judging by the end credits it's all pretty well down to you.

Nice one.

I liked the fight and I thought your keying (although not perfect) was easily good enough to not prove a distraction, which is more than a lot of people can manage, and there where a lot of nice little effects touches throughout.

You said you are new to 3D, in which case you did well for a first timer, biting off a heck of a lot. One thing, which was stated earlier, for next time is to make sure you have motion blur checked (because there really should be a next time after seeing this ), when ships passed close to camera they stopped me since there was no motion throughout. Obviously some of the 3D looked a little better than others, but I know that all comes with practice ? the fact that what you had worked well, and that there was so much of it, was to your credit.

I'm surprised so many people have got so hung up about things like the costume and the choreography, sure the costume wasn't top notch, but (as Jeremy sensibly stated) let's cut a bit of slack. I remember getting a comment from someone saying my Emperor 'Would have been much better if I'd actually used Ian McDiarmid instead' Suffice to say we all do what we can with what we have, and the viewers should be able to look past that.

I have also always been amazed at TFN by how often fanfilm reviewers focus on sabre choreography, to the point of getting hung up about whether their opponent should have used a kenko move as opposed to a doe-ray-me. I guess I should have gone to martial arts lessons to understand the fascination, personally I thought the fight was cool (cos it was fast ) and it didn't take me out of the movie at all.

The sound was a little strange, since the dialogue came out of only the left channel, but it was definitely audible, but sometimes the (cool) effects mixing overpowered the dialogue which obviously ain't ideal.

The other thing that might be interesting (but then again might not) is to do an edit in a more cinemascope format. I don't know why but shots just look so much more 'Star Warsy' to me when at a more 1 : 2.35 (ish) aspect ratio. This might also help alleviate a couple of shots where the cropping was a little strange (some of the falcon interiors were very generous on headroom, and the opening crawl to name a couple of obvious ones)

But other than that major kudos for finishing a film of this magnitute on your own. There are a heck of a lot of plus points, and you must have learned an absolute tonne of new stuff while making Spy Wars which will set you up really well for your next epic.

'So you are a jedi'
'And you are very observant'

Worked for me!

 

I thought the most exciting part was the black lightsaber in your fight scene.

 

I liked this one too. Yeah, the dialogue was atrocious, the southern drawls were distracting and there should have been more motion blur in the 3D work, but considering the locations, the blue/greenscreening that needed to be done and all dat, nice effort and work. There are many fan films that aren't this sophisticated and take 3D by the (ah-choo! - excuse me) and try to make the best of it as they learn. I'm not terribly confident in my 3D work yet as to post examples, but I am getting better; to release a fan film with this much 3D is commendable.

One thing I noticed with the saber sounds...I kept hearing either a saber deactivating or the sound of guts being sliced. Kind of a slurpy-slicing kinda' sound.

Also, when the Padawan is shooting down the TIE fighters, I sudden thought of MST3K - The movie when the scientist is struggling to keep his plane in the air and Tom Servo says "Should we be seeing this?"

Funny stuff.

I agree with DaftMaul, there really should be a next time and in a 1:2.35 aspect ratio framing. It might be more work, but you could redo this film (to a degree) to look as such.

Did you get your $50 Darth Vader from E-bay? Try these on for size:

Vadermaker.com
The Meditation Chamber
Vader Maker Australia

You've probably seen them, but it's a good resource those who haven't.

 

Hmm, wow. I have had very mixed feelings on this film, so I will have to divide it up. An overall score will be hard, so maybe I can find one after typing this up.

WARNING - Spoilers are sprinkled throughout, so just don't read if you don't want to hear.














Story: Here's one of the huge problems. You could argue that you had a story, but the question is, what's the point? It was once again another "Jedi in search of something in the forest, meets a Sith, they fight, and one dies" film. Some of the plot elements simply made no sense. A lot of the time it seemed things were thrown in just for the heck of it, and other things weren't checked for continuity. For example, Vader asks "Did you get the fugitive?" and then follows it up with a response that shows that he already knows they got the fugitive and how they did so: "Why did you destroy a ship?" pr something of that sort. You need to check for things like this. How many revisions did your script go through?

Cinematography: This is a mixed bag. Sometimes it was quite good (specifically referencing the final TIE fighter's destruction shot), and other times it just plain sucks (The Jedi when he finds the other thing in the ground was a bad jumpcut). Overall, it was probably on par for a beginner, so I will give you slack for that.

Costumes: Again, a mixed bag. The Vader and imperial costumes were quite good (not perfect, but I'm very willing to overlook imperfections), but the Jedi outfits were subpar. The man in black character was sort of well costumed, but he also wore a paintball mask, recognizeable to most people. I dunno about this one, but I'd say costuming was one of the stronger parts of your film.

Characterization and acting: What was the Predator thing? Why was he exactly like Predator, all the way down to those little clicking noises? Why was he Vader's apprentice? This didn't make any sense, and he had no reason to be Vader's apprentice. Every character in the film was completely flat, and the acting made it worse. The boy's acting...needed work, but I'd say the best acting came from the Jedi. Kudos to him. The rest of your characters had only one facet to them, and boring, stereotypical ones at that. This relates to the story aspect, so I'd have to say that this is where improvement is most needed.

3D: I'm not a 3d guy, but I thought it was apparent that it was your first time. Still, it was very nice for a beginner! This was a rather strong part in your film, although the action tended to move slowly.

Sound: I think everyone can agree that this was awful. Don't use an in-camera mic, and don't forget that AUDIO IS THE OTHER HALF OF FILMMAKING! It isn't 10% or 30%, it is truly half of the filmmaking process nowadays. People tend to ignore it because they think filmmaking is what you see onscreen, but try to be entertained when you have to reallllllly concentrate to understand what the person is saying. You could redub the lines of this movie, and you would probably be fine here.

Fight choreography: For me, in fanfilms, this is almost a moot point. It was great, but the thing is, it appeared that you just repeated the same set of moves, and I think one entire shot was repeated - a BIG no-no! I know ANH did it, but we can easily remember a shot that happened 3 shots before and compare it to the current one. However, the fighting was fast and entergetic at points, so I will not pick at you for this.

Overall: B-. I am fairly liberal with my grading because any completed fanfilmmaker gains respect in my book, and this film deserves it. The thing is, individual frames without actually playing the movie tend to be great, but when you actually watch it things become real eyesores. However, I am sure you gained a huge amount of experience from this, and had a lot of fun, too. I'll bet you'll be making another one of these, and I look forward to it a lot.

~Neszis~

 

Thanks for the replies!

It is so good to read some constructive advice! Thanks.

I really appreciate the comments from Daft and Jeremy..good critique and constructive advice without the sarcasm. You are so right about the Vader outfit. If I would?ve had 5000 bucks extra, It probably would have looked better! The problem is not in where to get it?that?s the easy part, it?s the funds it takes to do this at a higher level i.e. costumes etc. I?m so glad you understand that.

Jeremy, I didn?t have much to choose from as far as actors go. Just a bunch of southern boys with southern tongue! We really struggled with that I must say! What I really hate though is watching a movie that is set in the south and watching someone trying to talk southern! That?s funny! Good post Jeremy.

I totally agree with you on the cinemascope format Daft, it could really use that. I don?t know what?s going on with the sound coming out of the left channel?I am going dig into it. Yes the motion blur was very lacking. I really struggled doing some of the effects; I was trying to learn so much so fast.

Much of the sound problems are due to the compression, I just have a hard time getting a good compression, especially the QuickTime format. Other issues are probably due to the location where the indoor filming took place?echo. For the record, I did NOT use the onboard mic; it was an Azden SGM-2x Boom Mic. All of the outdoor scenes should sound fine but hey, that?s me J

Neszis, I guess the story would be in the crawl ?although you may not be able to read it, it is in my original post?sorry bout that J As I mentioned in my original post, the film is NOT canon so that?s why the characters are like they are. If you?ve read the crawl, you will find that there is more to the dark character than an apprentice, and maybe it just don?t make sense to ya J I agree with you about the acting, it?s the best I could do with non-actors J There was NO repeated shots in the fight scene?guaranteed! It may look that way, but it didn?t happen. Thanks for the ?B? Nesziz! A ?B? is good! J

Thanks for all of your suggestions and thanks for watching!

Peace

 

All I can say is that the speech lifted from "Enter the Dragon" just isn't the same without Bruce Lee's accent and the "finger pointing towards the moon" line.

I could re-itterate some other comments from the board, but there's not really any point to that.

-Spiff

BL "Kick me"
<thwack>
<Bonk>
BL "What was that? An exhibition? Try it again. This time with emotional content."
<THWACK>
<Bonk>
BL "I said emotionl content, not anger"
<THWACK>
BL "Gooooood. How did it feel?"
Student "I think..."
<Bonk>
"Don't think! Feeeell. It is like a finger pointing towards the moon!"
<Bonk>
"Don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory."

 

Now where have a seen an opening scene like that before? OH YEAH, I REMEMBER!

 

Whoops- bandwidth exceeded. When's the site coming back online?

 

Hi Jeremy, the site should be back up today. I have purchased an additional 20 gigs of bandwidth so I'm waiting on the reset. I don't know what is taking so long, I contacted the host yesterday evening. Sorry for the inconvenience, it just slipped up on me! I didn't know what to expect but apparently I didn't have enough. In two days, my account was drained of 25 gigs. I will be better prepared next time

Peace

 

That'll get you another 2 days.
Wow- that's alot of downloads.

 

Hi Jeremy, I think the downloading may be tapering off but if it don't I will buy more

The bandwidth went up so high because I submitted it to the AlAMDV website. Lots of downloads came from there.

Peace

 

Well, the story wasn't the best, just another generic Jedi in the forest looking for a Sith to fight, and then we have the whole story just being told in the crawl. The CG was alright, I can't do CG so I won't start slamming yours. But at 11:46 the Jedi pops out of the picture in the last frame in the cockpit and all you have is the background. The black saber thing also distracted me.

The main fight was pretty good. This was probably the most enjoyable part of the film. You shoulda probably talked to Ben Fletcher about Vader's voice, otherwise I just didn't buy it was Vader. The dialogue was pretty bad and I couldn't get past the southern drawl.

The kid also looked funny firing the lasers. And I didn't like the TIE-fighter just having like a gray T-shirt on with that huge helmet. And I know Obi-Wan always refers to Anakin as his "Padawan" but he still has a name. Give the little boy a real name, don't just call him Padawan. He called him Christopher like once I think, but he called him just "Padawan" to many times, mix it up a bit like "my young apprentice" or "my young padawan learner".

But I will give you credit on the bad guys' costume, the big saber fight, the sabers, and pretty much doing every single thing yourself. You did a lot of hard work and its enough hard work just to complete a film.

Overall grade: C