Friday, November 2, 2007

Hello everyone, it's time for our monthly update. And oh boy, do I have some exciting news to share with you guys :)

Where do I start... Well maybe I should start with the most interesting part! Finally, after several months of searching and doing tryouts and just when we wanted to give up we found a composer for the movie. Yes, thanks to Crazycanuck from GamerzTheatre we came across Justin R. Durban (an American composer who lives in LA). He has done quite some remarkable music in his career and not only is he a composer but he's also a 3D artist and into moviemaking himself. More recently his music was chosen to feature in the theatrical trailer from the new Harry Potter movie, The Order of the Phoenix. His music is licensed under the well known trailer company "X-Ray Dog". We are very excited to be working with him and we can't wait to hear his fantastic music in combination with our movie. You can find out more about Justins work and even listen to some samples through his personal site.

The last couple of weeks, I've also been working with Dainiuxxx. He will provide some custom made animation. Ok, before you'll start thinking,... 'Why custom animation, that's not machinima?' Well, let me tell you this. There are some crucial scenes in SoF that we tried to record but were unable todo because they were simply too complex. Therefore, I searched alternative solutions and I found Dainiuxxx. He's a very talented guy and he's very strong in manipulating models. But don't worry, aside a few shots, still 99% of the movie is pure machinima.

Then some other great news. SoF has it's own website. It's currently in development and a temp site is already online. Check it out on http://www.sandsoffire.com. This site will go live somewhere next year when the release date has been set. So, it's certainly something to watch out for! Kingdriehoek (collegue of Donkey) is responsable for the site, so please give him a warm welcome!

Ok, I'm still not done ;). I added a few new features to the Blog. One of them is the addition of a poll, check it out in the right bar (scroll down). I think it's a good opportunity to ask about the interest in our movie after the long production time we have already been facing. So definitely something you want to cast your vote on! Also, I've changed the project status (on the bottom of the page). Well, it's changed in a few places. Actually, this is a very accurate status. The filming has finally been finished (reshoots are done) so it's a final wrap. And because we have Justin working on the music now, we screwed it back to 0%. And you also may notice the 0% on the tweaking part. We will start tweaking once the music has been done and because of that the sound mixing has to be rebuild from scratch. Also a lot of compositing tweaks still have to be done once the editing/sound is done. Both Donkey and I are working on the compositing of a few major scenes of part3 (4 and 6 mins) and we hope to get it finished by the end of this year.

And to please everyones appetite, I have made a batch of new screencaps. This time it's a comparison of before/after shots. I think you will like this and it gives some insights in the hard work that goes into the compositing (again explaining the long production time).

That's it for now. You see, we've been pretty busy lately, so no need to jump on our backs and asking for updates. We'll keep you posted as much as we can. And oh, one last thing. The people that thought we would just sit down and relax (see previous update), well think again. We're pretty much alive and kicking :). Cya next time!

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! These news are great! You cant imagine how happy I am, that you make a movie like this! The music of Justin is so great! The new Pics ar great too! This project inspires me! Thank You very much for your efforts!

Your probably biggest Fan,
Jonathan :D

Anonymous said...

what, a name thief !

(my name is jonathan to >_<)


but strupie ... stop posting and start working on the movie! :P

Anonymous said...

Hi, Jaws here from The Dissidents. I sure am glad and proud that Crazy helped find you a composer, especially the caliber of Justin. All good things come to those who wait and I'm sure this will be a huge payoff in the end.

Anonymous said...

I am so looking forward to this. I just found out that I'm in a airline training school in Arizona with a LRRP member. I already asked him to steal some sneak previews :D
keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

I don't think Yoan Bridoux is a LRRP member ;)

But he's a good guy! Give him my regards!


Strup & Donk!

It's nice to read that you guys have recieved so much support, you deserve it!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the result will be as rewarding for you as the wait was long for us! :)

Anonymous said...

Nice update. Glad you've found a composer. Just looking at those before and after shots, I thought with that blue-sky-tank-pic you hadn't put the after picture in. Then realised...wow! Nice job, dont make it a 2009 release!

Anonymous said...

test

Anonymous said...

go go gooooooooooo

Driehoek said...

It feels good to be part of the SOF-team, but now I have to work on the good atmosphere in the team, so I can't piss-off Donkey that much anymore.

I'll start behaving from now on.



No seriously, I don't think so! Donkey will still get his portion of bad publicity from me, bringing me on the team didn't change a thing.
I'm happy to be able to help out with the website, and I'm also glad there is a composer involved now, because the parts where Donkey is doing some musical-style singing in SOF really made my ears bleed...

So to Justin and myself... welcome to SOF.

Anonymous said...

Hey! Good work guys, one thing though, I think you have contorted perceptions of what machinima is (if you dont mind me saying so). You mention that the introduction of custom animation forfeits the actuality of this film being machinima, ah... Machinima is any computer generated video/film as far as I am aware. Over the years the iamge has developed that machinima has to be created inside a computer game, unfortuanetly this is not true. Just thought I'd mention this, your views are welcome...

StRuPiE said...

@ anonym:

I don't think I'm with what you are saying... and I think you misread my post. I din't say it forfeits SoF of being Machinima... I said that with the addition of custom animation still 99% of the movie will be machinima and 1% will be animation. So SoF will still fall under the category 'Machinima' and NOT animation... this for clearing things up.

On the other hand, I don't think what you are saying about the image of machinima is true. You are right though on the part that machinima are more and more created outside computer games, but basically the definition of machinima remains 'movies created by rendering computer-generated imagery (CGI) using real-time, interactive (game) 3D engines (source: wikipedia)'. So, based on that, SoF is made exactly on that principle.

Anonymous said...

Ok dokey! Great work anyways, keep it up.

Anonymous said...

How long will the movie be ?

Anonymous said...

you can have read that in last month's post. About 45 minutes.

Anonymous said...

thanx

Anonymous said...

oooh. the waiting time is soooo long :/ bf2 is already beeing swapped out with other games. but im still looking forwards to see the end resault of this production :D

Anonymous said...

Have you guys ever thought of getting a producer and selling this? :P

stlava said...

I've been so busy I totally missed this months update! The WIP pictures look absolutely amazing, especially the tank one.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

Have you guys ever thought of getting a producer and selling this? :P

I think EA might look down at that.

Anonymous said...

this movie will be forgotten in 1 week :( BF2 totaly dead.

StRuPiE said...

BF2 may be dead but it doesn't really matter because this movie is much more than just a BF2 movie.

stlava said...

Amen to that strupie. The amount of publicity that the movie will receive will be astronomical. From the screenshots and clips you can tell they put lots of work into it and its becoming a masterpiece.

Anonymous said...

lol slava. And who are you to tell that they will get alot of publicity ?

Anonymous said...

sup uncle joe... guess who :P

damn i remember waiting for this movie since the first trailer. i always forget about it for months on end, then say "omg sands of fire is probably out by now". then i check and see its not out until next year

lol oh well. it'll be worth it... even tho no1 gives a shit about bf2 anymore, the sheer quality of this will make it extremely popular

stlava said...

@Krazy: whats up? Its been a while...
@Anonymous: Truth be told no one does but lets look at the facts. The clips and wip screenshots they have released look amazing. You can tell a lot of work has been put into every single frame. The film will attract a lot of machinima fans as well as general gamers. But I believe word will spread and if the story line is good this movie will really catch the eye of a lot of people.

StRuPiE said...

Thanks slava for backing us up... and you're right, no1 can really tell if this movie will be a hit and get lots of publicity. And frankly, that's not what we are after. Don't forget, we're making this movie just because we love the process of moviemaking. We're no attention whores but we'll take whatever comes our way, the good and the bad. I'll be happy when I can sit back and say... 'Man, these 3 years have been fantastic, I really have accomplished something.' It's that feeling that I'm trying to fulfill.

stlava said...

Strupie, Donkey, I have an idea for you guys. Why not try to see if a TV network would be willing to air SoF upon its completion. I haven't heard of a machinima film being aired before and it would really bring some attention to the entire concept. I know here, in the states, there would be a lot of red tape to go though in terms of our TV ratings system. I would try contacting G4tv, SpikeTV (US) or Techtv Canada as they are geared towards geeks and gamers. Or a TV network in another country.