**The Rendarian Backlash** Official Release Thread

Thanks for the comments shwanzi.

I wasn't sure how people were going to react to the music selection for the movie. I love the Armageddon score. It was a great inspiration during the production process.

As I mentioned earlier, the AT-AT attack scene was one of my favorite scenes. I'm suprised that nobody has ripped me for the fact that it's simply a picture composited in the background with no animation at all. (I promise, I am learning to animate )

The female lead was actually supposed to have twice as many scenes as she did. That is why there are hole in the story line for her character. "Production difficulties" forced those extra scenes to be deleted and re-written for other characters. This brings me to the next lesson that I've learned:

Finish all principle filming before going to post-production. When filming began, I was still in the excited "must see myself with a lightsaber" state. I would start working on effects after a scene was shot instead of continuing on the filming. Anyhow, lesson learned.

By the way, have I mentioned how much I appreciate all this feedback? Every suggestion and comment further fuels my drive to start a new and better project.

Keep them coming!

Jeff

 

Cool.

Don't get me wrong, I thought it was kinda cool.

Don't forget to check out my topic reagrding my upcoming fan film. The title of the thread is 'New Fan Film in production in Northern Illinois'! Take a look.

 

I'm hesitant to be honest, considering that cool objective criticism is consider flaming to certain people. But, if filmmakers can learn something, then job accomplished if it makes their movie better.

Because you used an old camera and converted it to a digital format, it makes the film almost unwatchable. Yes, like you said, borrow a DV camera, retire the old computer and look for other resources. Colleges offer educational discounts on great software, and there is no sin moving between MAC and PC (in my work, I must do that).

As for directing, go to your library and find a book called "On Directing" in the movie section. Or read Robert Rodriguez's "Rebel without a Crew", especially his "Ten Minute Film School" chapter. The best lesson you can garner from this book is to push yourself, use what you have, then go beyond your expectations. It's a good book.

Your story needed a lot of work. I didn't understand the relationships between the characters. And they didn't have personality! Luke Skywalker, from the moment we met him, had personality. Han Solo had personality. Leia had personality. And why? Because they were written with a past, an experience (meaning each character spoke from their lives) and distinct opinions about how things should be. Unfortunately, many a FanFilm forget to give their characters even a sense of humor or motivation other than stopping evil from running rampant. Check out James N. Frey's "How to Write a Damn Good Novel" and the section about writing characters. You probably don't need to go in depth as he suggests, but it might help.

When you see a movie, especially one you like, enjoy it the first time. The Second time, question every shot, every nuance of lighting and every word spoken. Why did the director set up the shot this way? How does it flow into the next shot? What do the characters say that tells you what kind of person they are? Dissecting movies on your own time can actually inspire you to try new things.

Also, becareful of using ships and CGI just because you can. It's cool to try and world-build and create an environment. However, having ships fly around for no reason other than to fill up space or to make it look Star Wars-ish doesn't add to the movie, lest it's a transition or leads to the next scene. But if it makes you happy...

There are a few gems in the movie. As people have mentioned before, The AT-AT scene was cool, as well as the Sunset scene. Some of the Lightsaber duels were cool too.

Don't get discouraged or down on your own movie. It's quite the accomplishment to finish one. There are probably many more movies shelved because of one reason or another, but you still managed to finish and get it seen by Star Wars fans from everywhere. That is something to be proud of.

On that note, check out the second disk to either "Unbreakable" or "The Sixth Sense" and watch M. Night's early films. Everyone must start from somewhere.

Good luck.

 

Once again, I'm glad that almost everyone is finding a little something that they liked about TRB.

SamS, thanks for the comments and the references on directing and writing. I'll definitely look some of these titles up. On some of the comments:

1. I have been strongly considered buying a more powerful computer that can be used only for movie making purposes. I just haven't decided which format to go with (all of my software is for pc so I don't want to jump until I fully understand the compatibility issues). Honestly, I would love to try a mac. As for the software comment, I'm way ahead of you. I've just started learning lightwave and after two days, I was already rendering scenes that looked better (in my opinion) than what we had in TRB.

2. "Because you used an old camera and converted it to a digital format, it makes the film almost unwatchable." I was sort of confused about what you meant by "unwatchable." Please feel free to clarify if you want. I know that others have mentioned the screen ratio.

3. "Don't get discouraged or down on your own movie." I definitely won't get discouraged from making amateur movies. Everyone does have to start from somewhere. For me, it is TRB. I won't necessarily get down on the movie, but I will be very critical when doing my next project. Don't get me wrong, I am very proud of this project for many reasons. I truly believe that we did a good job for this being our first venture in filmmaking.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's all about learning experiences. I'm going to take all of this into consideration for future projects.

Thanks again everyone! Keep those comments coming. I like the variety of comments I'm recieving.

Jeff

 

About the movie being unwatchable, I must take some of that back. I watched it again, and at normal size (viewed the way it was downloaded), it's decent. I guess watching it over double the size and with it's compression rate and aspect ratio distortion, it looked muddy. What concerns me when working with video is that VHS isn't as good as digital anything, be it MiniDV, DII, Digital8 or even digital movie capture through the computer. When VHS is transfered to a digital medium, the analog imperfections are magnified. The image is fuzzy, the lower number of scan lines becomes apparent, there is more image noise and sometime the contrast goes way up or down, muddying the colors or the darks. Sizing it down for internet can hide some of that, but when it comes to a project that should be playable on TV, all the imperfections can stick out like a Hawaiian shirt at an opera.

That's all I meant by that. But upon viewing it again, it wasn't as bad as I thought.

 

I had planned on having the movie made into a dvd but when I tested putting it back on tv, it didn't look so hot. So yeah, more than one reason to get a new camera

Jeff

 

Hey bud, I'm not sure if this was mentioned or not on here already (i tried to read everything but some of those posts are long anyway, I'm not sure where you got your actors but it always seems like a good tip to not just "cast your friends" when doing a fan film. I would suggest posting something at a college that has a theatre program, college actors are usually pretty decent and more than willing to do work. and that way if you don't like the actors you get from a college then just look for another one on your next film.

Like I said though, i'm not sure how you casted the film. Oh, and a college with a good Mass Communications program would be a nice place to try also. Unfortunately there is only so much a director can do with a "bad" actor.

keep up the good work, I know you have a lot to work on, but it looks like you are ready to do the work so I say get crackin another film will do you good.

 

Wheelchairboy, just to summarize, I did use my friends (none of which had any experience) for the movie. I don't regret doing this because it made the process a lot of fun. Of course I want to learn (and I'll probably get actual actors next time), but I am really doing this for fun at this point. Funny thing though, after other friends started to see what we were doing, they all wanted a part in the movie.

Jeff

 

i think its cool that all your friends want to help out. You should be thankfull that they are there. I'm sure a lot of filmmakers have trouble finding help. I'm not saying that you CAN'T use your friends in your films, just maybe not as the lead roles...you could give them small parts if you want, that way they get to be on set and help out and have fun but the bulk of your cast would have experience. another option you have would be to write characters EXACTLY like your friends...so they don't have to act...however this would be extremely hard to do.

I think you definately have directing skills. your opening scene wasn't bad at all (sure there are the problems that people have already brought up but I kind of liked the way you set up your shots) You will get better at it. Keep up the good work.

 

I am extremely thankful for everyone that helped out on this movie. They were real troopers. They gave up their time for an amatuer project and braved the elements to make it happen. One scene that we spent hours and hours filming was done at night in the freezing cold. We were freezing and the saber props kept breaking. After all that, not to mention all of the effects that went into it, the scene was deleted from the final cut. It was a double bladed fight scene (in the trailer briefly), so I'm sure many of you won't mind that it's gone.
Definitely, be nice to your cast whether you have 4 or 100 people in it.

Jeff

 

Just wanted to see if there were any more comments.

I have the small web page up with all the links, our movie poster and some screen shots (thanks to JediTAC for the heads up on tower host).

The Rendarian Backlash

Jeff

 

I just re-watched you're film (second time), and enjoyed it just as much as the first.

I agree with the other posters that there are lighting problems (especially bright backlighting in some scenes, making silhouettes), that the dialogue was hard to hear at times (could you post a script online?), and breaking the 180 degree rule was confusing (you know all about that now, though).

But what really struck me was that you had an story line. A real story line! Something that can't be made better by equipment, but that very few fan films seem to have. Some of the scenes were amazing. The flash back with it's music was so emotional, I almost cried during that sunset shot. As others have pointed out, the final lightsabre duel was impressive. I had to slowly re-play the move where Kol spins the lightsabre out of Bon's hands. Very well done.

All in all, I felt that the goods outweighted the bads. This film inspires me more than other fan films that I know I can never approach in visual quality (BA, Duality, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera), because it demostrates what can be done by someone with just a camera and a good idea. (Alright, and some other pretty important things too, like friends and computers, definately in that order)

Now for my request: Could you recompress your movie at a higher quality, and with the correct ratio? Yes, I know, you already recompressed it once for QT5, but please? I would download it, and appreciate it. Perhaps a divx version would keep size down with better quality.

Thanks for sharing your movie,

Phi

 

-Phi-

First off, thank you for watching and posting your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Your comments are very inspiring to say the least. I still feel the way you did when I see the sunset shot .

I have decided to add one more version of the movie since I have my own webspace. Brendan (Micus Narok) was nice enough to host two versions of the film. That's why another version hasn't been posted. I'll correct the screen size but I can't promise that the quality will increase. (All of my master files have been cleared for new projects that are in progress. ) I'd like to post a smaller version so that more people can see it. I'm still on a 56K and I know how it sucks when a movie takes forever to download. I'll hopefully the new version up within the next couple of days. Until then...

By the way, why hasn't anyone grilled me about my brother being a jedi with glasses? Man, the compression must have been pretty bad!

Jeff