Price of Freedom Movie

M

Mousey333

Spaceman
I am currently working on my version of a WC4 movie. I have posted a link at the bottom to an xvid file containing the first 25 minutes of my work. This is not a rough cut, but a fairly accurate representation of the final product. I know there may be some places I may fix, probably in spaceflight. This preview only goes to the first briefing, with no spaceflight following it as of yet. I'd like to mainly hear your reactions on the spaceflight capture I've done and its widescreen conversion, as well as general editing of the scenes. All of the cutscenes were of course taken from the DVD version of the game. I'm certainly open to any suggestions or comments, and ready to answer any questions you have regarding the project. Just FYI the editing program was Premiere Pro 2.

Once finished, I will post links to either a divx or xvid file, whichever you guys prefer, as well as two DVD ISOs. One 4.7 and one 8.54 DL both containing fully mixed dolby digital 5.1 surround sound.

Also, I plan on doing this for WC3 and Prophecy. However, to better tie them together I'm planning on replacing the titles from the originals and inserting my own. Eg. "Wing Commander: The Heart of the Tiger" I've done this in the preview file I've linked to and I'd like to hear your reactions on the idea and it's execution here.


Download: WC4 Movie Preview
 
I would look at it but the link doesn't work... says the file is currently inaccessible. it could be that that site has a very small download quota and that you already surpassed it.
 
Grrr

Yes AD, you're right, I didn't realize that they have a 1 GB limit. Grrrr. I guess I'll try to upload it to filefront and badongo, but that will take a few hours. I'll post the link when I finish.

Sorry about this....
 
Yes, I've looked at queeg's movie and the footage from AD's stuff before I even started working.

Ok, here we go, hopefully these will work. I had to split up the file into 7 separate rar's, but hopefully you can get them all from filefront.

If anyone has any suggestions on hosting the Bigger files when I finish, I'd appreciate it. I would do a torrent, but I can leave my computer on to host it, it really slows down my router.

Anyway, enjoy!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Sorry again about this guys, but I'm kinda new to the whole file uploading thing.
Hope you like it!
 
Ok, I can see on FileFront only two people have actually downloaded the whole thing, but several have either looked at downloading or have downloaded the first couple parts. I just want to know if it's something with FileFront or what because I'd really like some comments on my work before I go any further.
 
Well, first of all, 1GB for a 25 min Xvid is rediculous for a sample. There is no reason for this file to be that big or for people to waste time downloading it when you could easily have provided the same segment at a fraction of the file size at good enough a quality for people to get a sense of your project. Save any big downloads for the final product. Besides which having to download 7 separate larger files is really tedious.
 
Ok heres what I think:
It was pretty dissapointing to get all those files for a 25 minute video, I thought I was getting the whole film - but thats been covered so I wont go on. I liked the transitions as they were smooth but didnt like the fact that the gameplay was in widescreen, not sure why you went that way as it all looks skewed. That was the first time ive seen the hi-definition version and enjoyed that. Why did you not include the simulated fight with maniac? I thought that scene was well scripted. The "moral" choices were that that I would make.

Good effort so far but please try to keep the video quality up and size down. Looking foreward to more
 
Ok, to answer the questions.

The widescreen: I want to make this a true film not just a movie of a video game, as much as I can manage anyway. Thus, making everything widescreen.

Fight with Maniac was well scripted, but I have to think about run time here, and I didn't think it was that important to the story. There's alot of story to cover, and I'd like to stick to the main plot as much as possible, also, there's plenty of other places in cutscenes where maniac reveals the cockiness of his character.

And I've figured out the video size thing, so that shouldn't happen again.

Thanks for commenting!
 
Daimo said:
Ok heres what I think:
It was pretty dissapointing to get all those files for a 25 minute video, I thought I was getting the whole film - but thats been covered so I wont go on.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was covered in the first line of the top post in the thread.

Daimo said:
Good effort so far but please try to keep the video quality up and size down.
Click to expand...

It should probably depend more on what he's releasing. Sample things like this should be tilted more towards reduced file size, while some final product should be more on the side of increased quality.

Mousey333 said:
The widescreen: I want to make this a true film not just a movie of a video game, as much as I can manage anyway. Thus, making everything widescreen.
Click to expand...

This is potentially a little bit misguided. The aspect ratio of your movie isn't widescreen - the black bars above the video are hard coded into the movie. So nobody with a widescreen monitor could actually watch it in widescreen. The effect instead is that there is just a thick black frame around everything. I'm not sure there's a lot of benefit to that. There seems to already be vertical bars encoded in the picture as well. And just on general principle, I would suggest people avoid taking recorded video/images and squish or stretch them if it can be helped.
 
Ok... I have a number of thoughts, but it depends on where you are going with this thing. I've though long an hard about alot of these sequences and there are some spots I made to go in a completely different direction. Other area's I couldn't help but think that you took some Ideas from my project which is fine by me. The stretched spaceflight stuff is really ackward looking and part of why I simply opted to keep the 4:3 ratio with the black bars encoded into the movie sequences and the spaceflight full screen. I don't know if its still available but I had put up the first 30 - 40 min. of mine a while back (sans music) with some experimental stuff I hadn't decided on keeping. Did you get a chance to see it?

I honestly have been somewhat sidetracked but if theres anything you want to ask about it, or if you haven't and want to see it and it's not available, I'll look into putting it up again.

One thing, your editing software blends the audio between cuts nicely
 
The editing in my opinion was perfect, all scenes blended into one another perfectly. Even the transition from CGI to spaceflight wasn't too blunt. However, there was quite a discusson on the whole widescreen spaceflight and squashing it doesn't really work. Another option would be to pan and scan the FMV to make the whole film a square, but as you said, then it wouldn't seem like a real film.

I thought cutting out the Maniac play fight was the right choice, it's an unnecessary 5 minutes and the film needs to be cut down as much as possible. So overall great job, editing was pretty much flawless especially the cuts where you would make a decision what to say. Keep it up :D
 
The effect instead is that there is just a thick black frame around everything. I'm not sure there's a lot of benefit to that. There seems to already be vertical bars encoded in the picture as well
Click to expand...

I could make it widescreen if I wanted to, I just didn't encode it that way, a problem I see now, thanks for pointing that out. I figured most people wouldn't like the widescreen, but I thought I'd try it, since I really want like this to feel like a movie you can watch at the theater. Since all the FMV's are movie quality, it just felt awkward switching the aspect ratio.

As for the vertical bars, that is because I'm planning on making this a DVD release for someone with a home theater system, so I wanted to keep everything inside the title safe area. I think when I release the regular divx file, I'll stretch it all the way out.

Yes AD, I've seen your project, and enjoyed it quite a o,t, and it's really what made me want to do this project. That, and the fact that this whole thing was originally encoded in surround, and everybody else here seemed limited by technology, (no fault of their own, big business like to keep prices high >.>) I thought I'd help out the best I could. I did take a lot of things from yours, but I wanted to make sure I didn't parrot your cuts, hence why I chose the briefing that I did.

I think when I release the files, I'll release one set with the regular spaceflight encoded 4:3, and then one actually encoded 16:9, not just black bars on top and bottom. What do you think about that?

Also curious as to reaction about the title sequence/font or whatever, does it seem to work, and do you think I could pull it off with the other two?

Thanks again for all the comments!
 
I don't think many people would appreciate squished spaceflight scenes. They might also not fully understand the difference between the two until they've downloaded the wrong 8GB file. This is also where you need to consider the practical side: you want to have DivX, single layer ISO and dual layer ISO versions. That's over 13 gigabytes. Having two versions (4:3 and 16:9) would bring it up to 26 gigabytes. How are you going to distribute this?
 
Easily, through my megaupload account. I've got 50 gigs of storage there, and I would post them all with very specific filenames so no one would get confused. I understand the resistance to "squished" spaceflight, but I personally feel disoriented when trying to watch a film, and the aspect ratio changes every time we go into spaceflight.
 
Mousey333 said:
I think when I release the files, I'll release one set with the regular spaceflight encoded 4:3, and then one actually encoded 16:9, not just black bars on top and bottom. What do you think about that?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't do that.

Mousey333 said:
Also curious as to reaction about the title sequence/font or whatever, does it seem to work, and do you think I could pull it off with the other two?
Click to expand...

"A film of Chris Roberts game" is missing something. What other two are you referring to?

Mousey333 said:
I understand the resistance to "squished" spaceflight, but I personally feel disoriented when trying to watch a film, and the aspect ratio changes every time we go into spaceflight.
Click to expand...

Did you find it disorienting when you played it like this during the game?

Mousey333 said:
Easily, through my megaupload account. I've got 50 gigs of storage there, and I would post them all with very specific filenames so no one would get confused.
Click to expand...

You need to look into this some more. Distributing that amount of data is not easy. From the megauploads website:

What is the maximum file size I can upload?

If you'd like your file to be downloadable by everyone, make sure not to exceed the limit of 500 MB. Larger files can only be downloaded by premium users.
Click to expand...

So if you hvae 50 gigs of storage, that means you have a Light or Bronze account: http://www.megaupload.com/business Light claims "unlimited," but obviously the cap is much less than the plans that cost much more. For $29.99 a month, you get 1 terabyte worth of data transfer. Just for your information, 500 people downloaded Queeg's WC3 movie from the CIC in the 24 hours after we announced it. If your movie was 2 gigabytes or larger, your megaupload account would be shut down in one day.
 
I of course did not find the transition from wide to fullscreen disorienting because I was playing a game. I don't want my movie to feel like a game. But I'll just drop it and give you guys the fullscreen spaceflight, since no one wants the widescreen, I'll just keep that for myself.

Maybe I should keep the DVDs for myself as well, judging by the file restrictions on megaupload. I just wanted to do something for this site that hadn't been done before, but apparently it's just better to release a divx file until i can figure out a way to seed a torrent.

Thanks for the reactions guys.

By the way, "the other two" refers to my planned movies of WC3 and WCP.
 
You would think that you'd get used to the squashed spaceflight like you get used to watching fullscreen 4:3 stuff on a widescreen TV. Also because of the whole black bar frame thing everything is squashed slightly further. So what if you cut about 15% of the width of the regular movie clips and then stretch them to make the clips taller, then after you have re-encoded the film with the widescreen pixel resolution and made the spaceflight as tall as the FMV, it won't look as stretched and maybe people won't really notice much.

Just a thought, something maybe to try since having seperate ratios in one video file can be trouble when attempting to use on a widescreen tv or monitor.
 
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