Star Wars: Revelations Trailer

I am not sure I would call it a "showstring" budget perhaps "a nice pair of Air Jordans" budget.. but in seriousness .. Revelations was made with what was in my back pocket.. which was not much, other than some credit cards ..ouch!!

The issue with budget is that for our first film, and with no established background other than a good shell game, we were able to bring in people from the industry by beg, barter, steal .. and am a good con man as all my crew knows .. snowballed em all


Did it still cost me some bones?? Oh yes.. the main cost was craft services, rentals (tables, chairs, coffee makers, chaffing dishes, walkie talkies),and of course costumes, props, set construction..on and on.. it adds up, but we really kept the cost down by working closely with people and my credit cards DO have a limit .. believe me I know now, as they are tapped

The figure?? I don't even like to think of it.. but I can tell you it cost much less than Batman "Dead End" and that was 7 mins.. Revelations will be roughly 45 mins.

So you can do it with a low budget but it does require a lot of talking, networking, bartering (which I did a lot of) and simply letting people see it is a valued production that offers a lot (hopefully)

We just hope audiences enjoy it, and we do what we can with what we have.

 

For anyones info:

The "winged monkey" is real, except the wings... I was at the zoo with the kids and shot some of those crazy monkeys they have jumping around.

I then put this (using the sky I shot it against as a natural bluescreen) on a layer in AE, and tracked some wings onto the poor beast to make him a bit more alien.

The whole shebang was put into a layer in front of a fake pan on a still photo of the background (shot on location) with various additions (ruins, mountains, whatnot). I cut out some of the actors and added a bunch of spaceships... and voila we had an establishing shot which didnt exist before.

Fun, innit?

/Z

 

Wow! Cool!



















I Mackenzie Rosman

 

I've been asked the question several times, "what exactly did YOU do, Zap", so I'll lay it out here:


First is a Scene on a location we can call "location A" for easy reference... this is the scene which begins the trailer.

The establish shot (0:12 in the trailer), as I mentioned, is completely faked. Further clips from the same scene/location can be seen at
- 00:12
- 00:40
- 00:43
- 01:18

Furthermore, I'm responsible for the interior shots of that tall building (but NOT that gorgeous exterior shot!)

These shots include
- 0:37 (windows, neon)
- 0:44 (forcefield around dancer, neon, elevator door (not modelled by me, tho), windows, smoke, etc)
- 0:53 (neon, forefield around dancer, windows, windows WINDOWS)
- 01:03 (neon, windows)
- 01:04 (Some invisible effects added)
- 02:18 (closing elevator doors behind the troopers, windows, smoke, etc.)

I also made ALL LIGHTSABERS, including

- The blaster being shot out of the hand at 01:56
- The blaster being chopped in two at 01:57

While the saber shots are "work-in-progress", they for the most part look pretty much the way I want them (some level tweaks are needed here and there).

The exception is that final three-saber shot in which I think I got too much color into it... it looks a bit... well... over-saturated somehow. I think I should have let the colors blend more into just... light... right now you have like a purple corner, a red corner, and a green corner of the image, all almost ridicolously saturated. It's on my personal "to fix" list...

There is also quite a bit faux "lighting" from the sabers, although very little is actually seen in the trailer shots, except perhaps in shots where the saber passes completely behind a character, I tend to drop in a small glow "behind" the character at that point.

/Z

 

shameless bump eh zap?

 

Well, he's proud of his work.

 

aren't we all

 

Shameless?

No no, with great, GREAT shame . . . .









































. . . . N O T ! ! !

/Z

 

Hehe. I was seriously giggling with amazement while watching that.
But I do that.
Though did I notice that you changed the release date back a year? Or has it always been 2005, and I just don't remember right?

 

Best CG I've seen in a fanfilm yet. Seriously, the effects were grand. There were a few shots less than par, but of course, even they were darn good. I must say though, that I'm not all that interested. The acting didn't convince me in the trailer. Of course, the film might be a lot better as a whole(as I don't want to judge this yet). The saber fights seemed slow too. Without the effects being as good as they are, I can't say this film would be all that interesting to me, but of course this was only the trailer. If I were to rate this trailer on a scale from 1-10, I would rate it at about a 6.5

The composition of the trailer and the editing were good, and the CG was amazing. The downsides were the acting, and the saber duels. I'm sceptical on this one. I'll definately watch it though. Some films just seem to be more interesting than others. Not sure if its the story or the characters, or what, but this one just seems a little off for me. We'll see.

-Bane

 

I must say I'm really mixed. I don't like it as a trailer, but I do like it as a representation of what it will be. I know that Revelations will be fantastic. It's practically a given. However, I just didn't care for this piece as a trailer. Wasn't bad or anything; it just wasn't as mind-blowing as I thought. I don't know if I can be objective here, but I'm trying.

~Neszis~

 

Very nicely done trailer!! The CG looks amazing with the tie-fighters chasing after that larger craft giving me goose pimples.

Almost everything in this trailer shows a slight glint of what promises to be an amazing fanfilm.

The only thing's I didn't like was that the Palpetine hologram looked like a puppet, the lightsaber fight scenes looked a lil slow.

 

I'm a little curious, actually. That was supposed to be the Emperor, right?

EDIT: Not to be sarcastic. It could just be a rather deformed Sith. Seriously!

~Neszis~

 

Can I get a big DUH!

 

DUH! Oh...that was rhetorical...

 

I thought I'd pop in and address some of the comments about the trailer. While they may not have been posed as questions since this is a film forum and many others here are in their own process of making films perhaps some of the answers I give can help them out in their own ventures

1. The trailer didn't tell me much.

Actually, there's a lot of information in the trailer but you do have to hunt for it The director, myself, and my co-writer have a personal aversion to trailers that tell you so much of what's going to happen that the audience ends up not even being interested in the journey. So...it was a deliberate choice to skew this trailer towards a slightly more "action movie" type of trailer rather than one that gives a lot of dialogue and info away.

You know that movie voice over guy *easily* helps clarify your plot but again, we opted for no voice over to clarify our own movie.

After showing this trailer to a variety of different audience bases it's never been more clear to me why Hollywood makes several trailers geared towards different viewers. Check out Moulin Rouge's trailer for the states vs. Japan. That's 2 different movies!

2. The Emperor
We debated several ways of shooting this. From probably the most common way of putting an actor in a dark robe, to hiding the face so completely in the hood, to filming only the actor's back we finally had an opportunity to use prosthetics. We jumped on it. The special fx makeup artist does incredible work. He cut us a deal (who knew it cost so much <G>) and said we should send the actor to his workshop where he'd do a lifecast and custom make the prosthetics to fit him.

Wow. Yeah. Until we realized how impractical it was to ask a volunteer to go 4 hours to get a lifecast and then have the fx artist drive four hours down on the day of filming just to put the makeup on this actor.

You have to make a choice sometimes and this time we asked the fx artist if he wouldn't mind doing the role himself. Then he could work at his own pace to get the pieces done. So yes, he's got a rounder face than Ian does and once you put those prosthetic pieces on they can round you out even more but we are pleased with the effort and result. It's not perfect...but it was a great learning process.

3. It's not very Star Warsy.
Hmmm...well...I agree. There's definitely a lot of effort put into maintaining a Star Wars "feel" in certain aspects of the film. It should be a universe that you recognize. However, we did extrapolate and take a bit of license in expanding upon that. There's a reason and a deliberate choice made behind everything you'll see in the movie. From costumes, to hair to CG models to locations, to fighting styles, etc. we gave it detailed attention to make sure it fit within our story.

There's definitely some non-Star Wars cinematography going on which was a good catch by some of you.

All in all, "Revelations" was and *is* about living a dream. Instead of sitting around for years talking about making a movie (and it was a few years <G>) we opted to take a leap of faith and see if we were even capable of making one. It's truly been a thrill and an absolutely *incredible* learning experience for us. I know that the director and I feel very honored and blessed to have worked with so many talented, extraordinary, and generous folk as those who have volunteered their time, talent, and resources to making this film.

We've been told by folks who've worked with us that they are now inspired to work on their own movies. That being on set with us has taught them a lot of do's and don'ts but most importantly they feel it is within their grasp to get it done. That's pretty exciting to hear Whether you love it or hate it perhaps "Revelations" can help you see how you'd like your own vision to come alive.

 

Wow. That looked pretty spiffy!

The only weirdness that caught my attention was the Emperor (he looked grumpy vs. evil) and the dual saber fight between the female leads towards the end. As a concept I have no problem with it, but there was a shot or two where it looked as if they were simply clashing blades together rather than fighting. Maybe in context it plays better, but I watched it twice and it seemed odd to me both times.

Otherwise, cool trailer! Can't wait for the movie.

L8r

 

Well said I'm really looking forward to this film, I expect there will be DVD's?

The CGI is amazing, some shots rival EP II IMHO. I agree that the sabre fights are a little slow an uninspired, but with clever editing it could be made to look pretty good.

Another shot that caught my eye was when (cade?) is firing what appears to be a rappeling cord towards the camera. The amount of detail put into thay was inspired. Fantastic work.

Btw, how long did it take to make the sequence where Declans ship is being chased by tie's?

 

awesome cg

 

Icephoenix:

You asked how long it took to do the Declan ship/ties bit for the trailer. That one actually took only about 3-4 weeks to do. which is pretty good.. however we have about 20 more shots like that still to completed for that whole chase sequence. ( a lot of work yet to do )

 

In reply to Icephoenix:
Another shot that caught my eye was when (cade?) is firing what appears to be a rappeling cord towards the camera.

Thanks for your comment; I'm really surprised at how many people have remarked how much they like the ascension gun shot. I have labored longer and harder on other shots (like the Corvus landing at the prison) to a lot less fanfare. It was a very quick three or four hours worth of work to model and animate the grapple and cord, and maybe another hour to composite. But I guess it works. =)

Btw, how long did it take to make the sequence where Declans ship is being chased by tie's?

If I had to put a guess, it was probably about four to five hours to animate that particular shot (most of which involved creating the lasers). Three hours of rendering time, another couple of hours compositing, and a few hours of tweaking. I got a very nice model of Declan's ship from Adam to work with and we used the Bassett TIE mesh, so the raw materials were there.

==\dub/==

 

It's not very "Star Warsy ???

I need to look back through the threads and find out who said that.
By who's standards is the "Star Warsy" feel of a film set by?


In my opinion, AOTC was not very "Star Warsy" when placed along side the preceding four films. Not to get into a whole debate on this topic (please), but in my opinion Lucas went way overboard with the CGI characters throughout the film - especially the Geonosis Arena scene (I don't think I will ever enjoy those overdone CGI monsters (especially the fuzzy-wuzzy kitty kat)).

As far as the "original" trilogy goes, I spent some time watching all three films last weekend (because it was raining like no other here in Southern California). Anyway, given the fact that each film had a different director, the fact remains that the "feel" of each film is distinctively different from each other.


My point is that it seems to me that "Star Warsy" is constantly being redefined with each consecutive "official" Star Wars motion picture .... so why not with FanFilms. I have watched the REVELATIONS trailers several times, and each time I enjoy the feel and amazing effort that has gone into the set locations/decorations, costumes/prosthetics, etc. Of course, the final Judge JediTAC assessment is pending the final product ... but so far, REVELATIONS looks to be an amazing project that could quite possibly fit nicely within the established Star Wars Universe.



JediTAC

 

JediTAC--

That's nothing compared to what I saw posted on a 3D forum elsewhere, where one guy complained that he didn't think Cade's goatee was consistent with the Star Wars universe. That was a real groaner!

It'll get better, I'm sure. The first time I saw the Naboo starfighters or the twin pod cloud cars of Bespin, they were a bit jarring at first. Now I accept them as part of the SW continuity. And the first time I saw the Enterprise-D set to the Alexander Courage theme... <shudder>

==\dub/==

 

DUB.. someone posted somewhere " he didn't think Cade's goatee was consistent with the Star Wars universe??" Oh man that is just too funny.. you have to hit me with a link to THAT thread.. I could use a good laugh like that.. (wipes tears from eye) goatee not star wars .. oh man that is good! ROFL

 

Yeah, man, Dickigeeza actually had a whole laundry list of stuff at this URL, including taking your goatee to task!

Check it out.

Not surprisingly, my poor TIE explosion fares no better here.

==\dub/==