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Old July 7th, 2004, 07:21 AM   #1
 
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first scene from our feature

Check out the "trailer-scene" for our World War II horror feature - CLICK HERE TO SEE "Horrors of War". How many times have you seen a trailer & then the movie sucked? We want to demonstrate that we can actually tell a story, so we choose to do a teaser scene from the beginning of the movie and use that as our "trailer".

3 min 30 sec scene (plus a seperate 1 min FX demo)


CLICK HERE TO SEE CLIPS

- Peter John Ross
www.sonnyboo.com
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Old July 7th, 2004, 08:15 AM   #2
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I want to comment you on the scale of what you are trying to
make. I thought a lot of the gun shots looked good (only one
looked fake) and I had some minor other issues with effects
(which I'm not sure are done) like the final plane impact and
the fire on the building. But after watching your FX reel I was
impressed by the crowd replication and scenery / building work!!

Now I've never been in a war but I felt it was a bit unreal,
perhaps. The way the guys talked to eachother and especially
how "clean" they looked (heh). I thought the ending of this
scene was very well done and cut.

Looks interesting!
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Old July 7th, 2004, 08:17 AM   #3
 
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<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : I want to comment you on the scale of what you are trying to
make. -->>>

Comment or commend?

: )


THANKS!
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Old July 7th, 2004, 08:19 AM   #4
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Sorry... commend. Heh. No native English here! So can you tell
us a bit more about the production and what kind of equipment
and software you where using?
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Old July 7th, 2004, 08:37 AM   #5
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Wow, I thought that was pretty cool. Some camera work was too reminescent of vomit-inducing Blair Witch for me, but I much enjoyed the rest. I agree with Rob about the airplane crash, but couldn't find fault with the gunfire.
Good luck!
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Old July 7th, 2004, 08:59 AM   #6
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Wow really cool stuff I like teh story too, can't wait to see the finished stuff.
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Old July 7th, 2004, 12:55 PM   #7
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Hey!
Looks good so far. I'm looking forward to watching it on a DVD though, it's a shame to see your 35mm work brought down to a web clip.

I'll third the comment on the plane. WHen it crashes, the explosion dissapears too quickly. I suggest a huge cloud of black smoke around it. which should linger.

I appreciate the work your F/X guy put in on the gunfire. I'm editing an action short that I just shot, and we're going to be doing the same thing (at least someone is, not me! :)
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Old July 7th, 2004, 02:02 PM   #8
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Very nice beginnings. Can't wait to see the entire movie. One question - Where did you get that plane footage that you overlaid. That really looked impressive.

One thing I thought was a little fake was it seemed the Americans were outnumered by a group of Germans that were entrenched and dug in. It seemed too easy when they ran in, killed everyone and conquered. Wasn't believable. Plus I agree with Rob that they looked too cleancut.

Ending was great and really piqued my interest.
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Old July 7th, 2004, 02:39 PM   #9
 
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That was 100% CGI planes.

The guys look a little dirtier in full 35mm/16mm film. We put mud on their faces et all.

There were only 3 GI uniforms there that day & we had guys swapping out every few minutes. We did do some KEYING set work to have 2 GI's die, but those shots aren't done yet. Ther eis also more sound design work being done to the scene.

The FX clip demonstrates some of the CGI techniques for creating the planes and also multiplying the guys.

http://horrorsofwar.sonnyboo.com/fx_windows.php

Don Drennan did all FX work and he is quite the guru.
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Old July 7th, 2004, 03:32 PM   #10
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Very impressive 'taste' portion.
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Old July 10th, 2004, 07:23 AM   #11
 
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thanks
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Old July 12th, 2004, 11:17 PM   #12
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Hate to be the only naysayer, but...

Your leads "gristled" voice is contrived and sounds it. The ears are far less forgiving than the eyes and if you wanted someone to sound the part, you should have cast a smoker or naturally gravel-throated actor despite his looks or acting ability (or downplayed this aspect altogether in favor of better acting/character development). Take note of Capt Winter's generally smooth vocals in the Band of Brothers series. What makes him compelling as a character -- and indeed as a real man -- is that he was a thinking man's soldier, and didn't need the ephemeral cliche's of a screen soldier to be interesting.

Maybe I'm completely out of my element with this one, but was the phrase "headshots" a common one in 1944? To my ears it sounds like a missplaced, contemporary relic associated with phrases like "frag" and "railgun." "Shots to the head" or "two to the head" might have been better -- and more generally, pepper talk among the men with slang consistent with the times -- either verbal relics of the era, or phrases that parrot the kind of talk common.

My grandfather was in he war and he and many people of his era prided themselves on their sharp, dry wit -- he had a million phrases carried over from his parent's era that were oblique references to common things, and was constantly finding creative ways to express mundane ideas. For instance, if someone stated that they owed him money that he felt he'd given as a gift, he'd say "chalk it on ice." If someone was ugly, he'd say "oh boy, cover your watch" (their face will break it/stop time...)

I think your camera work/sound design are lacking in the face of Speilberg & Company's work on the battlefield. I know you're probably reading that and thinking "Listen jerk, if I had his budget..." but my criticism comes from watching your work and thinking how far it falls flat compared to Speilberg's stuff only because it looks like you're trying to sneak off with some of his moves -- except what you've done here is a somewhat half-baked version of the kind of thing we've seen in BoB and Saving Private Ryan. You've gone just far enough to recall Speilberg's stuff -- but never far enough in any direction to mark your work as uniquely your own.

I think if you're going to do this -- which I'm all for appropriation, homage, theft, nods, whatever -- either do it right or not at all. Go further and destroy the image more -- more frenetic cuts, place the camera closer to the action, give it more abrupt shakiness, and a bleach bypass it in post. Either do all that, or seek an original visual syntax for the battles that's all yours...

On a final nit -- for my tastes, the concept of the film is a little shakey, as well. I find that, given the enormity of the very real threat of Naziism, bringing cyborgs/undead/whatever into the genre -- or more specifically, a real time and place -- puts the work on very tenuous ground -- laughable and in a way, offensive. I know Holocaust survivors, and their children, and the realities of Naziism were far more threatening than any imagined ugliness -- I know you're going for fantasy, but I can't help feeling a bit dismissive about the material in light of its particular history. Maybe this makes me uptight, a snob, but so be it -- where comedy or fantasy might trivialize something so big, I'd tread lightly.

Now, if you set it in present day, that might be different...

- jim
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Old July 13th, 2004, 01:57 AM   #13
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Jim: I would just like to add that it has been done in some movies
already to link Nazi's with all kind of weird stuff and expirements.
Just recently in the Hollywood movie Hellboy.
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Old July 13th, 2004, 06:41 AM   #14
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Rob,

I don't think I made it particularly clear that my last point was the most personal/subjective -- that, while others may be doing something similar, for my tastes it seems rather careless. I've since edited it a little.

I know plenty of people treat this kind of material lightly, but that doesn't make it any less bizarre to my mind. Just three years ago real people were running in horror from an advancing wave of dust and rubble in downtown New York -- real lives were torn and shattered -- and it didn't take long before Roland Emerich exploited a similar image for cheap thrills in The Day After Tomorrow. It's not that running in horror hasn't been done before, that it's a staple of the disaster genre -- it's that in light of its proximity to real events, using that kind of imagery is suddenly weighted differently.

I know it's likely the most reaching and slippery of my points to many who'd care to read it here, but I figured it needed to be voiced not in spite of my being alone on it, but because I'm alone on it.

- jim
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Old July 13th, 2004, 06:45 AM   #15
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I think I totally understand where you are coming from, Jim. My
grandparents where in the war. I'm in Holland which was
occupied at that time. I just wanted to indicate this has been
done before and seems to be somewhat "accepted" as a movie
topic, that's all.

I can understand that it might offend some people or be difficult etc.

My apologies to anyone if my remarks seemed without "heart".
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