The Official DUALITY Comments Thread

Jeepers, Max. You made me blush...

 

Quite a way with words there Max.

 

I think I'm allowed one emotional outburst per year.

 

I'm sorry, but this is certainly NOT the best fanfilm ever. I, for one, was quite disappointed. That is not to say that the film is totally lacking in any good qualities, but the bad and the ugly far outweigh them.

First of all, the fight looked fake. We've seen twirling double lightsabres before - in fact, Darth Maul twirled his a little too much. In Duality they couldn't exchange more than a couple of blows without doing a totally useless fancy twirly move.

Then there's the flips. Bouncing, flipping, jumping everywhere. Who are these people, Kerri Strug? Acrobatics go a long way in a fight, but this really pushes the limit.

And then there's the total WIMP who once he disarms his enemy can't so much as touch him with either of his lightsabres.

If you want to see two double lightsabres going at each other, watch A Question of Faith. The fight scenes are much more convincing and dramatic, and it has a decent plot line - something Duality is sorely lacking as well.

Granted, the special effects were outstanding. But that calls to mind a piece of advice George Lucas once gave: A special effect without a good story behind it is just another special effect. Duality: Case in point. I was expecting a decent fan film, but instead I got a showcase for somebody's special effects talents with a lightsabre battle thrown in. I guess I'll just have to keep on waiting for Knightquest...

 

Dualität ist der beste Ventilatorfilm überhaupt!!!

 

//Force choke

 

Personally I though the plot was strong. It takes its strength from the great backstory of the Sith and expands that backstory showing a Sith master that has chosen a new sith apprentice even though his previous has not been killed. For me it brings up interesting questions about EpII and EpIII. Plus, on a different point, that was a damned cool droid.

MarsViolet: I prefer it to a different color background. That is simply to harsh for my tastes. BTW, I don't ask that you believe in me, only that you worship me daily and make annual donation accounting to 25% of your pre-tax income.

 

Yeah, I thought Gita was kidding, too. Then I checked my account balance.

 

So, you guys thought I was pretty good, eh?

 

\\faints\\
wow, i had to keep reminding myself that this was BLUESCREEN, and that they WEREN'T in a big, huge, and utterly convincing room. :-D

Wow, enough with the double sabers though. But otherwise, VERY cool.

~Sithman~

 

Truthfully, I thought you were average.

 

I haven't seen Mr. Star Wars post in months. Welcome back...

 

The SFX were absolutely amazing! Duality will popularize Star Wars fanfilms like never before. The movie will become the standard for SFX in fanfilms for a long time.

Great work guys!

 

I will applaud this film on many fronts: CGI, saber effects, and my personal favorite would have to be the sequence with the remotes... i think that this forum isn't giving the director enough credit for camera angles and keeping the action frantic during the heightened moments. There was a real sense of timing on this one, something which takes real talent, not a computer upgrade.

Yeah, if you wanted to get nitpicky, some of the fight looked strained and a little TOO flashy.... BUT SO WHAT?! This film has so much going for it that I'm too busy going "Now how did they do THAT?!" to care that it's probably the 50th double blade duel i've seen. Yes, AQOF had a "better" fight choreography. But that's what its focus was. Duality was going for looks, and by golly it hit its mark. I give you guys full marks for finishing this obviously huge projects. My thanks.

-Chris
P.S. Don't listen to any of these guys, using the ROTJ droid voice was a GOOD THING!

EDIT: Oh, and just to rub it in, I d/l the big version at 350k a second.... EAT THAT dialups! Hee hee..... i'm fine now.

 

That fanfilm was awesome!

 

I felt the addition of ROTJ's TT-8L droid voice was an intelligent decision. In an atmosphere very dissimilar to the Original Trilogy, the familiar droid voice provided a recognizable link to the films from which Duality was spawned.

 

That was the best fan film I have ever seen.....I watched it over 10 times when I first got it and I am still amazed! It was better than TPM.....Crew Of Two should really consider making a longer film, with a real plotline.

The CG environments were awsome...George Lucas is gonna have some pretty deep competition with these guys if they decide to do more with what they've got here....

 

I've got a ton of questions for C², but I think I'll save them for later. I'll bet they're all pretty tired after all of this excitement.

 

Shoot, Max. I'm a little tired, but its fun sitting here not feeling guilty 'cause I'm not working on Duality.

 

- What does the Aurebesh around the fighting circle read?

- Where'd you come up with Darth Blight's killer mask?

- Did you end up with any cutscenes?

 

>> What does the Aurebesh around the fighting circle read?

I don't remember, you'd have to ask Mark. He did that one. Now, the stuff in the Halt Droid's POV, that I know...

>>Where'd you come up with Darth Blight's killer mask?

I'd storyboarded the fight, and had drawn him with this sort of menacing mask, but didn't know what we were going to do to create it. One day, I was at Big 5, a sporting goods store, buying my 5 year old a frisbee. The stand happenend to be near the gun section, so I went to the rack they were stored on and knelt to look at the one's on the lowest hooks. I glanced to my right, and Blight was looking at me -- a paintball mask stored in the glass counter. That's not the one we ended up using: one of the guys that made our lightsaber handles owns a paintball store, and we got it from him. We didn't have to alter much -- the main thing was the addition of window tinting on the lens.

- Did you end up with any cutscenes?

Yep. Remember that shot from the trailer of me walking away from the ship? Gone, baby...

Eventually, we'll be adding a bunch of stuff to the Crew of Two site, including scenes that didn't make the final cut of the film...

 

Here's my question for the Crew of Two. Ten months ago when you released the trailer for Duality, you said that once the film was released you would write up tutorials on all the effects.

Do you still plan to do this?

GREAT FILM by the way, you can read my further comments on page 1.

 

Thanks for the info, Dave.

- Azeem hasn't posted tonight. Is he hammered over at your place?

 

Ok, I'm gonna get picky.. I'd only watched it once before when I posted because I had some guys over to get their cd mastered.

Well, it's the best as far as CGI, and overall appeal I meant. But I wouldn't compare it to some of the parodies, as they're totally different.

But, there is something which has ruined it for me that I've noticed. When the remote ball things (whatever they're called) explode at 3.10, 3.28 and 3.29, the explosions are smaller than the balls themself. On one, I could see the ball just vanish behind an explosion sequence which was smaller than the ball itself. I had actually noticed that it looked a bit dodgy whilst playing the film for the first time, but had to check to be sure.

With everything else being so precisely well done, I can't believe that you'd both overlook something like that? I've done shots like that in the past and know how those explosion image sequences can get a bit pixelated when made large, especially if they're small ones you can download. But anti aliasing usually takes care of that. If not, a bit of blur would do the trick.

Maybe a special edition with those fixed would be worth doing?

 

::runs and hides::


I don't know how detailed the tutorials will be, but its likely that we'll take the approach of illustrating strategies that we took for various shots and effects. We ended up coming up with a lot of cheats and shortcuts that might be fun to share...