Shot Like a Movie -- On Film, Not Video (January 19, 2016)

KrisV

Administrator
The Documents Archive is where we try to keep track of the various development and promotional materials that we cover in our daily news updates. We've already rounded up a good selection of classic advertisement materials, but from time to time something new shows up. Late last year, gaming hub VGBounceHouse shared these two printed advertisements for Wing 3 and 4. The WC3 ad is for the PlayStation port of the game and is pretty concise, having just the box art and a selection of in-game screenshots and movie stills. The ad for WC4 also showcases some game imagery, but it also highlights various appealing technical properties and production facts. If you still have your old gaming magazines lying around, and they contain Wing Commander advertisements that we don't have yet, please send them in! We're especially interested in international (non-US/UK) ads.





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Original update published on January 19, 2016
 
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Are these relevant?

20160120_213349.jpg 20160120_213232.jpg 20160120_213303.jpg 20160120_213328.jpg 20160120_213338.jpg
 
Sure, I don't think we have the Zanart ad in our archive, so that definitely qualifies. However, those particular images are quite blurry. Do you have the ability to scan those?
 
Oh my gosh, the Zanart! With the wrong URL on all the shirts! :)

I actually only just finished my collection. For years I had three of the 'silver frame' Chromarts and one of the discount ones... I finally ended up buying a cheap eBay lot of Star Trek movie poster Chromarts to strip an identical frame from. (The three or so remaining ones from the Star Trek collection got sent upstairs to Toast and Lando as they were moving in.)
 
Does anyone have pictures of the set showing the cameras being used for confirmation on the whole "filmed" thing? I have very sharp eyes for that stuff and I've always doubted that claim. There is quite a lot of video noise in WC4 which tells of VHS being used, there are several scenes with blue interference which would not be a thing if they had filmed it. This could be the transfer method, but from what I've seen with the DVD versions of it, I see it even more because it's clearly running at least 30 frames per second, not 24, the speed of film. I've never seen any grains of film missing in a couple frames, going somewhere else. That's a big one right there. No matter how high the budget is if it's filmed you will see missing grains randomly show up in different spots. Just wondering if there are pictures showing them using film cameras.
 
You can see a camera early on in this Behind the Scenes video:

I don't have any doubts, though -- Chris was the one insisting on 35mm as a condition of doing the thing, EA was just trying to use it as a selling point after investing so much money. :) (They also did screen tests with a 35mm camera on Wing Commander III, Joe Garrity has two reels of it in his museum!)

Also have all the receipts for the equipment around here somewhere...
 
Thanks for the link, I've never seen a behind the scenes for WC4. It would be great to get a hold of the original film reels and transfer it to HD. That would be quite an undertaking for any scenes featuring CGI, but if someone did that, this could turn into the best looking live action game that was ever, or will ever be made.
 
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