C is the story of Lieutenant Commander Malleck, and her radical act of mutiny aboard the
KESTROS IV. With the help of her co-conspirators, she attempts to harness this weapon of mass destruction for a grand new purpose. But when a contingent of ground crew led by Second Lieutenant Kai threatens her master plan, Malleck must use the ship against them in order to succeed.
To build the future, we looked to the past. No CGI or greenscreen was used in the making of the film; all our sets and props were built by hand and filmed in-camera. Combining new advances in digital camera technology with traditional special effects, we sought to create a unique, timeless look through lighting design, camera tricks, miniature photography, split-screen, and stop-animation. We believe that this approach allowed us greater creative possibilities on a low-budget science-fiction film.
An interesting project.
Zor
HAIL ZOR!WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL Terran Sphere The Art of Zor
That was quite possibly the least informative trailer I've ever seen.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
I looked at the title and thought "It's going to be uphill work making an interesting movie about a programming language."
Having seen the trailer, I think that movie about programming may contain more human drama. If it worked for Facebook, after all...
At a guess they're going for something neo-retro, informed by the likes of Moon and Sunshine- it actually gave me a wierd late seventies/early eighties vibe, like that which Moon and Sunshine were trying to recapture; a sort of hallucinatory out-there-ness. Which would be good, if it emerged organically. Not sure that it did.
Spaceguard/Spacewatch asteroid deflectors gone rogue? Premise is interesting enough, but there was no acting contained in the trailer at all. From the premise, the details of which sound quite mangaesque (they just do, OK?) and the absence I reckon this is going to be trying to be the new Sunshine, and trying too hard so that it hits a lot of wrong notes along the way.
No CGI or greenscreen was used in the making of the film; ... We believe that this approach allowed us greater creative possibilities on a low-budget science-fiction film.
How does refusing to use specific tools give them "greater creative possibilities" ?
Especially when they are operating on a low budget.
Possibly not using CGI and green screen saved money on the SFX they could use more 'creatively' elsewhere? How do greenscreen and CGI compare to old-school FX financially?
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
299792 Kilometers per second is the subtitle, so it's pretty clear they mean 'c' as in 'speed of light.'
I admit it isn't easy to get excited over. I assume from the title and description that the heroes want to create FTL using their doomsday-weapon ships. Of course, if there is a 'new cold war' and thousands of ships circling the system ready to MAD each other, the Earth and any associated habitats, one side could only profit from gaining FTL.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
The MAD ships could also be using giganto-LASER beams that could obliterate the other side or whatever, with the cold war aspect of "we have to launch ours before theirs hit, or we don't get our launch off" magnified by the light-speed delay.
As for using retro effects, that's not a bad idea. Movies are lookin pretty samey these days due to a small number of serious effects houses and everyone using the same software. There's potential for doing something old-school, finding new life in abandoned techniques.
Impossible to tell for certain at this point but yes, I'd deem that reasonably unlikely.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
I don't know much about movie special effects (or movie-making in general..), do traditional special effects techniques offer more flexibility than CGI for a movie made in our current time?
I suppose there's a few factors, I think cheap CGI is very accessible now, but the cheap stuff tends to look very "fake".. for low budget productions, can you get nicer effects by doing them the traditional way?
Or perhaps traditional effects cost less, but the effects artists need to be very skilled?
Spyder wrote:So this has nothing to do with disk partitioning?
"..history has shown the best defense against heavy cavalry are pikemen, so aircraft should mount lances on their noses and fly in tight squares to fend off bombers". - RedImperator
"ha ha, raping puppies is FUN!" - Johonebesus
"It would just be Unicron with pew pew instead of nom nom". - Vendetta, explaining his justified disinterest in the idea of the movie Allspark affecting the Death Star
Practical effects can look great but are limited. You can do more with cgi but it looks less authentic. Combining the two and matching strength to weakness is great but expensive. Costs money to do that.
Full thing is now up on io9; it's not a full movie- shade under fifteen minutes including the credits, not long and the actual filmed parts are intercut with footage from, I think, the TV series Cosmos, so don't be surprised when it begins with a man from the 1970's talking to camera. Eight minutes or so of original footage. The bits from the 70's are better acted.
It's hardly worth spoilerising- Spoiler
to be honest I'd put it down as "interesting wasted opportunity"; we don't get to see the other side, or even if there is one. They could be attempting to deter the Moon Nazis for all it ever gets touched on. Computer displays called it an RKV, and the mutineers decide to steal the ship and go interstellar by firing it backwards. They jettison a perfectly good antimatter pion drive engine and proceed to invert the polarity of their big honkin' space gun, firing it out of the stern of their ship through what passes for a breechblock/reciever, which seems to matter not at all, and try to fly it to the stars at very, very sublight speed. It's going to be a long, slow death ride. Good riddance.
Not many external shots of the ship; maybe a minute and a half, two minutes? Pencil design that seems to owe a lot to the Valley Forge from Silent Running. Mutineers have no clear reason or explanation for what they're doing or why they're leaving everything they know behind. Nothing is argued over. Gunpoint answers all questions. In heroes, that's not a good thing, the movie is most interesting in the questions it thinks it doesn't need to ask and can afford to take for granted.
Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Full thing is now up on io9; it's not a full movie- shade under fifteen minutes including the credits, not long and the actual filmed parts are intercut with footage from, I think, the TV series Cosmos, so don't be surprised when it begins with a man from the 1970's talking to camera. Eight minutes or so of original footage. The bits from the 70's are better acted.
Would it be fair the summerise it as the makers trying to prove that not using greenscreen or CGI automatically makes something good and predictibly failing.
I may be an idiot, but I'm a tolerated idiot
"I think you completely missed the point of sigs. They're supposed to be completely homegrown in the fertile hydroponics lab of your mind, dried in your closet, rolled, and smoked...
Oh wait, that's marijuana..."Einhander Sn0m4n
For all the model work that was in it actually, that's not what it stands or falls on. The effects are good enough- and I suspect there was more post- production than they're admitting to, the establishing shot for a start with Jupiter for backdrop for one-
but the characters behave like they were examples in a thought experiment, or as if they've only filmed the last third of a longer script in which all the thinking and arguing and doubt and convincing got done earlier, and only the denouement is left to appear on screen. It is a gimmick movie; the gimmick works, but it's not backed by everything else that would go to make it good.
I liked the look of the effects, in particular blast doors that snap right shut instead of closing ponderously to get across the idea that they're thick and heavy.
I really would have liked to have time to get to know any of the characters, their grievances or even the setting. A part of me likes how much we don't know as the mutiny goes forward (good mutinies involve as much confusion to the other side as possible) but some answers after things calmed down would be nice.
Instead we have this lovely exchange. "Why are you doing this?"
"Do you believe a warship can be turned into a vessel for mankind's progress? You're a born colonist."
(Former) Loyalist grins slowly.
Riveting. I love how they don't deal with the fact that everyone who didn't sign on to the mutiny is basically being kidnapped on a one-way trip out there.
I could be wrong, but it looked to me the way the weapon was set up and the engine module that they couldn't have backfired it with the engine block still on.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
Looking at this movie I have to wonder why firing the main gun out the rear was necessary. I can't see too many good reasons why the ship couldn't have turned 180 and fired the weapon the normal way keeping their engines and power source. The only two reasons not to do it is thinking that it might prompt the fleet to fire on you faster or that the added mass would actually lead to a much slower trip in the long run.
It did seem like it was to keep the loyalists from retaking the engine room and ending the mutiny. However, it does still seem horribly, horribly shortsighted.
That's part of the problem, we have no idea if the mutiny was the culmination of a decade's planning or something thrown together in an hour or two and we have no idea if their actions are carefully planned or rushed and desperate.
We don't know who these people ARE, why they're out there in space, why they want to leave or how they justify bringing everyone (including the captain?!) along for the ride. What was it the Operator said, "nonlethal force, we'll need them for the gene pool?"
The captain says he kind of always suspected the operator might be political, before she says this is nothing to do with politics, but he couldn't see how she'd recruited the engineers.
All we really have is the narration about how humanity is vulnerable to extinction as long as we're confined to one star system.
"Any plan which requires the direct intervention of any deity to work can be assumed to be a very poor one."- Newbiespud
FaxModem1 wrote:It did seem like it was to keep the loyalists from retaking the engine room and ending the mutiny. However, it does still seem horribly, horribly shortsighted.
At that point you just keep your engineers in the engine room and have them drop the blast doors and set traps for the security team as they come through, or just have the engineers pretend they don't know what's going on, lure the security team in, and welder stun them. Either way seems better than what the mutineers did.
