The WC4 'Price Of Freedom' Movie Project

The fighting scenes are not as long as the video sequences. And there were left out some things. That could have been done better.

So.. which things were left out that you wanted in? If the fighting scenes were longer than the video sequences, the final movie would be six hours long, and people have expressed that the fight sequences get repetetive after a while.

People have been trying to put something like this together for a number of years, and Queeg put in a hell of a lot of time and effort to make it happen. If you don't like it, that's fine, but you should probably spend some time providing some actual constructive criticism so he can improve later.
 
Works fine for me in divx as well. Fantastic work Queeg, finally downloaded it today, will be seeding it as much as possible. Only watched the intro so far, gonna watch it in bed later with the wife, see what she thinks about it, shes into games but never played Wing Commander, altho i keep trying to get her into it! If it works, then i shall not hesitate to call you a legend Queegster!
 
... to call you a legend Queegster!

You THIEF!!
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Nah, just kiddin' ... ;)

But you're right about the legend remark!

On topic, still not at 100% though I have been getting fairly good speeds of as high as 100+ and as low as 10, but most of the time around a solid 50-60 k/s. Soon I'll have the completed file and the seeding can continue and the watching can finally commence. Yeehaaaw!! :D
 
Yeah, I have it installed, which might explain why it works in both DivX AND Windows Media Player on my system. I've been seeding the full file for about 6 hours now at about 25 kbps upload speeds, so hopefully no one's finding it too hard to get the file, there are 6 seeders as of 00:30 GMT (19:30 Eastern Time (?))
 
Just finished watching it.... and all i can say is GREAT JOB! I had watched the Price of Freedom when it came out a few months ago and was surprised you got this one up so fast. I like this edit of the game, a lot of the key scenes were kept and most of the cuts seemed to make sense.

Technical-wise ... it wouldn't play for me until i downloaded the player listed in the above posts, and even then it had to "fix" the avi file before it would play. I'm guessing my download got halted on my end (was on wireless at the time) and thus there was a glitch in the final file i got.

Just one question. What is the first song that plays during the credits? I really liked that one, but didn't recognize it at all.


-Joe-
 
After watching the first five minutes, this movie lit a fire in me to play the full game again... great job.

Any kind soul out there willing to post this movie as a burnable .iso so we can watch it on our DVD home theater systems?
 
After watching the first five minutes, this movie lit a fire in me to play the full game again... great job.

I almost did the same thing after watching the intro movie. It really pulls you right back in.

Although I did find some of the editing choices odd. Especially in the first half of the movie.
 
Hi guys and gals. Am I doing something wrong here? When I click on the link that says "here" in the last news story for the movie, I try to save it but only get a file thats 803kb. I have the WCIII movie and it was great so I can't wait to see WCIV. Thanx for any help you can give me.
 
Lots of Effort, some qualms none the less...

First and foremost, Queeg, you put it a lot of time and effort to make these movies happen (WC3 and 4), and that's awesome. I just watched a version (I think the second, but not final) of the WC3 movie and it was fun. An interesting trip down memory lane. Just to contextualize it, I got so excited about WC3 coming out that I made myself sick with anxiety, and "had" to stay home from highschool that day. Which was convenient, because I could spend all day playing that mofo. WC4 came out when I was at film school, and we were impressed by the production values. I even had an opportunity to interview Terry Borst.

Anyway, about your WCIV edit. The first thing I noticed was that the dogfight sequences have a new space background luma-keyed behind the actual gameplay visuals. Not a bad idea, makes space a little less, well, dark, cold, vast and uninviting. That is, nebula and swaths of color break up the monotony. But it was driving me CRAZY to see that the ship was clearly maneuvering, rolling, banking, yawing, and space was staying in the same spot. It made me dizzy. How can a pilot pull a 360 and see the same thing out of the viewport during the entire maneuver? Honestly, I would recommend either taking out the fancy space overlay, or attempting to track it to something else (a particular star or planet that's actually in-game) so it doesn't come across as so entirely fake.

The other things I'd like to mention were that in the WC3 cut I saw, I noticed two major continuity errors. First, there's a mission where Blair is flying with Flint on his wing. He returns to the Victory and then in a discussion with her she compliments him on his flying, saying it's hard to appreciate it from the deck. She then requests being reinstated. Huh? But, wasn't she just on his wing? That didn't make any sense to me. Second, Melek briefs Thrakath on the liberation of the prisoner before they actually fly that mission. Again, I'm all "huh?" I thought you had just decided to cut the scene of them rescuing dude, and divulge the information by way of the Kilrathi cutscene. However, then, several minutes later, we're on the planet surface and Vagabond is punching the "good doctor" in the jaw during the rescue op. Wow, those Kilrathi are really prescient, clairvoyant even!

Minor details -- the font was annoyingly gigantic and out of character.

Likewise, the font at the head of WCIV was sort of a poor match. Check out dafont.com -- I'm sure you can find an approximation.

This may seem like a whole boatload of complaining. I'm an editor and fx artist professionally, and throughout the 90s, Wing Commander was my favorite game series, so, these projects are near and dear to me. Ultimately, I'm just glad you made these things happen (I've long since lent my games to unscrupulous types that don't return them), because I've always wanted to go back and see them. Especially now that I've got to wait forever for the next season of Galactica. Ha. What a dork.
 
Oh yeah, and the WC3 b/w flashbacks just seem kinda corny.

For instance, it's clear from the narrative that Vagabond and Blair are old chums, and it's painfully clear from the overwrought scene of Vagabond losing a game of cards that he's always lucky... until that moment when his luck runs out. The flashback doesn't ADD anything.
 
Morning all, good to see the film has taken off nicely with the new extended cut :). I have been reading up on the different comments and there are of course some mixed feelings, although the general atmosphere seems quite positive :).

Anyway, I really appreciate the constructive critism and suggestions and I'll post some responses now. Oh and regarding the technical issues with the AVI, my apologies if there have been a lot of problems, I expected there would be some trouble in that area, unfortunately when working with AVI's the results can always be unpredictable and theres not much anyone can do about it.

Anyway time to acknowlage some responses

maltinator said:
The fighting scenes are not as long as the video sequences. And there were left out some things. That could have been done better.

A little blunt as Chris Reid mentioned, but still a good point. There were thing's left out like the hostage mission and the superbase etc. Regarding the mission/fighting scenes though I'd have to agree with Chris

ChrisReid said:
If the fighting scenes were longer than the video sequences, the final movie would be six hours long, and people have expressed that the fight sequences get repetetive after a while.

Exactly, I don't think it would be possible to put in more mission footage without them becoming boring, theres only so much you can do in WC4 missions and it's mostly just blasting enemy after enemy.

gingersonny said:
Works fine for me in divx as well. Fantastic work Queeg, finally downloaded it today, will be seeding it as much as possible. Only watched the intro so far, gonna watch it in bed later with the wife, see what she thinks about it, shes into games but never played Wing Commander, altho i keep trying to get her into it! If it works, then i shall not hesitate to call you a legend Queegster!

Glad it's working, I hope your wife likes the film, hopefully it won't be difficult to follow if you haven't played the game now that there's not too much uncut footage :).

JCool said:
Just finished watching it.... and all i can say is GREAT JOB! I had watched the Price of Freedom when it came out a few months ago and was surprised you got this one up so fast. I like this edit of the game, a lot of the key scenes were kept and most of the cuts seemed to make sense.

Technical-wise ... it wouldn't play for me until i downloaded the player listed in the above posts, and even then it had to "fix" the avi file before it would play. I'm guessing my download got halted on my end (was on wireless at the time) and thus there was a glitch in the final file i got.

Just one question. What is the first song that plays during the credits? I really liked that one, but didn't recognize it at all.

Thank you, glad you managed to fix the AVI, as you said it probably just got a little but corrupted when downloading. That can screw up the file a bit. The song in the credits is 'The Best Damn Thing' (Karaoke version) :).

rjspring said:
After watching the first five minutes, this movie lit a fire in me to play the full game again... great job.

Any kind soul out there willing to post this movie as a burnable .iso so we can watch it on our DVD home theater systems?

Yeah I might start playing the game again now that the DVD version works on windows vista. I could make an ISO from source files, however, we would need a server that had plenty of space and a lot of bandwidth and speed since the torrent took almost a week for the AVI to get any seeds.

Chillyche said:
First and foremost, Queeg, you put it a lot of time and effort to make these movies happen (WC3 and 4), and that's awesome. I just watched a version (I think the second, but not final) of the WC3 movie and it was fun. An interesting trip down memory lane. Just to contextualize it, I got so excited about WC3 coming out that I made myself sick with anxiety, and "had" to stay home from highschool that day. Which was convenient, because I could spend all day playing that mofo. WC4 came out when I was at film school, and we were impressed by the production values. I even had an opportunity to interview Terry Borst.

Anyway, about your WCIV edit. The first thing I noticed was that the dogfight sequences have a new space background luma-keyed behind the actual gameplay visuals. Not a bad idea, makes space a little less, well, dark, cold, vast and uninviting. That is, nebula and swaths of color break up the monotony. But it was driving me CRAZY to see that the ship was clearly maneuvering, rolling, banking, yawing, and space was staying in the same spot. It made me dizzy. How can a pilot pull a 360 and see the same thing out of the viewport during the entire maneuver? Honestly, I would recommend either taking out the fancy space overlay, or attempting to track it to something else (a particular star or planet that's actually in-game) so it doesn't come across as so entirely fake.

The other things I'd like to mention were that in the WC3 cut I saw, I noticed two major continuity errors. First, there's a mission where Blair is flying with Flint on his wing. He returns to the Victory and then in a discussion with her she compliments him on his flying, saying it's hard to appreciate it from the deck. She then requests being reinstated. Huh? But, wasn't she just on his wing? That didn't make any sense to me. Second, Melek briefs Thrakath on the liberation of the prisoner before they actually fly that mission. Again, I'm all "huh?" I thought you had just decided to cut the scene of them rescuing dude, and divulge the information by way of the Kilrathi cutscene. However, then, several minutes later, we're on the planet surface and Vagabond is punching the "good doctor" in the jaw during the rescue op. Wow, those Kilrathi are really prescient, clairvoyant even!

Minor details -- the font was annoyingly gigantic and out of character.

Likewise, the font at the head of WCIV was sort of a poor match. Check out dafont.com -- I'm sure you can find an approximation.

This may seem like a whole boatload of complaining. I'm an editor and fx artist professionally, and throughout the 90s, Wing Commander was my favorite game series, so, these projects are near and dear to me. Ultimately, I'm just glad you made these things happen (I've long since lent my games to unscrupulous types that don't return them), because I've always wanted to go back and see them. Especially now that I've got to wait forever for the next season of Galactica. Ha. What a dork.

Oh yeah, and the WC3 b/w flashbacks just seem kinda corny.

For instance, it's clear from the narrative that Vagabond and Blair are old chums, and it's painfully clear from the overwrought scene of Vagabond losing a game of cards that he's always lucky... until that moment when his luck runs out. The flashback doesn't ADD anything.

I definately see where you're coming from with the stationary space backgrounds. I did consider attempting to make them move with the ship (like you can see when it goes into autopilot) but when I watched it and had a second opinion it didn't seem too noticable, I do have to say it was kind of a sloppy job but It was quite time consuming just putting in the backgrounds alone. So perhaps it isn't worth exploring that further.

Now I was hoping that no one would ever notice that Flint was on the behemoth mission, as I didn't even realise myself until the movie was already finished and on torrent etc. So there wasn't a lot that could be done about that. The second problem with the kilrathi discussion way before the mission took place was actually fixed and the file was replaced, I think the one in holovids is the correct version if that helps.

I have to disagree with you on the flashback though, I think it's a nice way to commemorate Vagabond's character. Anyway, I'm glad you could give a professional analysis of the film, please remember that I am still an amature when it comes to video editing and so there isn't a great deal more that I could of done with the movies. Thank you for going into detail though, it has given me much to think about. Although I felt that the sarcasm in places were a little unnecessary.
 
Just my luck I guess. I've tried mine, my brothers and a friends computers and all I get is that 803 byte file. Maybe I'm not meant to see this wonderful movie. I'll keep trying though. I like to tempt fate anyway.
 
That's pretty strange. We've had more than 500 people download from that link and nobody else has mentioned any problem. Are you using an unusual browser or something? Have you tried plugging it into GetRight or a program like that?
 
Hey. I wasn't really trying to be a brat with anything sarcastic. My quip about the clairvoyant Kilrathi was just meant to be a joke.

Upon rewatching these bad boys, it has become somewhat clear to me that despite the fact that I LOVE Wing Commander, these games had some pretty cliche and/or cheesy stuff in them. I can't expect you to go back and reshoot some of the scenes, and even doing small edits to take lines out would jack up the underlying background audio, so more likely than not, it wouldn't work. Although, I'd try to take out the "You never lose at cards, Vagabond" line that Blair gives, as it's clear from everybody's surprise that this is not a normal event. But, it'd probably be a choppy edit with a sloppy music cut, so I could be persuaded to leave it in.

Again, I just wanted to say, Queeg, THANK YOU for spending so much time on these and for posting them, because that was really awesome of you. When I first saw the old gameplay sequences in the WC3 movie it made me (very briefly) consider trying to find some meshes from that game and doing some renders of some dogfight sequences. You know... Special Edition style. Then I realized I don't even have 3DSMax on my computer any more.

Sigh.

Now, if only you could go back and re-edit the Wing Commander movie with Freddie Prinze, Jr and Matthew Lilliard, and take out all the suck, and replace it with awesome.
 
Oh, actually, you may still be an amateur filmmaker, but these are really big projects you've undertaken, and you've done a great job. Believe me, there are PLENTY of professionals (some I have worked with) who are not capable of putting together something like that.

I was going to ask what software you're using, and also, how you ripped the DVD footage.
 
Wow, I didn't mean to sound offended earlier, infact the kilrathi joke made me chuckle :), just wasn't sure what you meant by it. I agree that there are some really cheesey lines/scenes in wing commander (although it seemed to work more for WC3 than 4) infact a couple of the lines they come up with make me cringe like panthers speech "so you really think the good will win?" if Blair has positive reply.

Anyway not to sidetrack, it does mean a lot to me that you think I did a good job, as I did put in my best efforts and wasn't sure how it would go down. Anyway, thank you for replying, to answer your last question - footage was never ripped. Ulead's software let me import the individual VOB's directly into the project (from an ISO of course, not reading from the hardware DVD drive) and I was able to edit them that way so there would be no quality loss from source to final product.
 
Wow, I didn't mean to sound offended earlier, infact the kilrathi joke made me chuckle :), just wasn't sure what you meant by it. I agree that there are some really cheesey lines/scenes in wing commander (although it seemed to work more for WC3 than 4) infact a couple of the lines they come up with make me cringe like panthers speech "so you really think the good will win?" if Blair has positive reply.

Anyway not to sidetrack, it does mean a lot to me that you think I did a good job, as I did put in my best efforts and wasn't sure how it would go down. Anyway, thank you for replying, to answer your last question - footage was never ripped. Ulead's software let me import the individual VOB's directly into the project (from an ISO of course, not reading from the hardware DVD drive) and I was able to edit them that way so there would be no quality loss from source to final product.

You don't even have to make an ISO though. You should just be able to copy all the files in the VOB directory to a folder on your harddrive.
 
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