Order of the Sith started in Dec 2002, after our friend John brought his digital camera to our band practise. I (Marcus) had just finished building myself a lightsaber, having been somewhat astonished at being asked to pay £400 for what amounted to little more than a metal tube. I took the semi-finished article along to show it off, and John filmed it for 5 seconds or so. The result looked fantastic - all 3 of us frothed at how great it looked on film. So Rob and I decided we should film a reconstruction of the Carbon Chamber fight for a laugh. Except we took it a lot further...
I decided that we might as well make a fanfilm of sorts. Bearing in mind I had never made a film before, I had no idea what to do, or how to plan. But I didn't let it stop me - I wanted to be in a Star Wars film! After we'd decided a rough premise, we had a mental checklist of everything needed to make a proper Star Wars movie:
- Lightsaber fights
- Darth Vader
- Space battles
- Space station exploding
- Bad acting
With all elements in place, I had to figure out how on earth to achieve it. First, with no experience of 3DStudio or Lightwave (and certainly no money to buy them), I decided to use videogames as the main workhorse. X-Wing Alliance comes with a fantastic film room, and all the craft upgrades from sites like Darksaber's Opt Station made life easier. I had to write my own mission in an editor, play it through and film it. Then I used Fraps to capture the screens. For the inside of the station, I used Jedi Outcast as a virtual set.
Armed with a rough storyboard, plenty of masks and neon tubes, we covered a warehouse in hardboard and painted it green. And then proceded to act badly. The sound was a bit easier for me as I had recorded 3 albums of my own beforehand, but syncing with the video files proved to be a nightmare...
After a year of messing/faffing and generally winging it, Order of the Sith was finished.
VENGEANCE:
What a year its been. Right from the completion
of OOTS I wanted to do a trilogy. I learnt quite a bit doing the
first film and wanted to try and improve on matters. I spent a
good deal of time writing a script (believe it or not) with tongue
firmly in cheek. I bought a miniDV camera for improved resolution
and some new software. and some lights! Still had the orange suit
overalls though......
There seemed to be a problem with fanfilms that
budgets were spiralling out of control and becoming less and less
like 'fan' films, and more like not-for-profit SW films made by
amateur and professional film-makers. I read somewhere that some
films have budgets in excess of $20000. There was no way I could
compete with that, so I began to look for something that would
make Vengeance stand out. Apart from our already fine acting of
course. The answer lay in original trilogy cast members. I'm just
about used to it now, but having the men that played such
important parts in the original films in my own SW film is, quite
frankly, awesome. Not believing my luck, I wanted to use it to
help charity if possible - and finally settled with Save the
Children.
With the SW actors onboard I tried to use the
fact to get myself some Stormtroopers. Rob and I headed down to a
convention in Birmingham to see if we could enlist some help. Thankfully Neil the
trooper accosted us on the way out and offered to help us out. He managed to persuade some others to
help. The scary thing was, they had all seen the first
film....... I almost felt like a proper
film-maker directing the troops about, but I was always aware that
they were doing me a great great favour. Rob did point out that
maybe I shouldn't have shouted 'this is better than playing with
the toys!'.........
I am extremely proud of this film - its been a
lot of hard work sat in front of my PC night after night after
night after......you get the idea.....but it has definitely been
worth it. I know it isnt technically awesome. It isn't a
professional production, and it's not trying to be. But hopefully
you will get a kick out of it, and smile to yourself seeing Dave
Prowse, Jeremy Bulloch and Michael Sheard all together again for
the first time since Empire Strikes Back. I know I do...... |
