Sands of Fire (2011)

The Fallen One (2005)

Hey guys, it's already been 3 months since the release of Sands of Fire. We're getting a lot of feedback, mostly from the Youtube channel and we're very pleased with the comments. Looks like most of you enjoy the final movie. That makes us very happy. And again, it proves we made the right choises. In the end, it turns out to be all worth it. Thanks for all the positive comments, it really means a lot to us.

For those that haven't seen it yet, here's the embed from Youtube:

Anyway, the reason I'm putting this post up, is that a lot of people have been asking me to post some behind the scenes material. So, here it is. Some rough material I collected from the 6 years of production, and this is only a small portion of the many hundreds of gigs of data we have of this movie. Mostly it consists of testfootage we shot and quickly/roughly put together, without compositing, without any special effects, just the raw footage that we captured from the game. Many of you will definitely recognize the scenes, and I bet you'll all be amazed how the shots were worked on the achieve their final looks. Again, this is why we spent so much time on it, we wanted it to be perfect.

Well, for those interested, here we go.

1) The Intro. I think we haven't spent more time on anything else but the intro. We have dozens of different versions of the intro, all taking a different direction and look/feel. Some were done with onscreen text, others were done with voiceover, some only graphic, some text and music. The intro we ended up with was very much the same like the intro we did for The Fallen One, the flyover of the Blackhawk, we felt we had to stick with our directional style.Introducing the story or giving background information is not easily done as we slowly found out during production.

 

2) Part 1 - The Insurgent Suicide attack. As you will see, the early test footage pretty much turned out to be the final cut. Early on, we had a clear view on what had to happen and how the action should flow. The post-production made it so much more dramatic, especially the 3D explosions.

3) Part 1 - The rescue team debriefing/departs. These scenes are after the events of the attack. A recue team is sent to the last known location of the missing soldier and they will have to fight their way into town. These scenes lack a lot of shots, much action and battle/fighting shots had yet to be recorded. But this edit lay out the blueprint for what we had to accomplish, a parallel cut from the fighting happening at the mosque and the rescue of the soldier. We tried to reach a climax (the rescue of the protagonist) while at the same time, we wanted to have an anti-climax (the slaughter of the rest of the team at the mosque). Pushing on the dramatic moments of rescuing one person for the sake of loosing all others.

 

4) Part 2 - Operation Sands of Fire. For those not knowing what the title is about, well this is your answer. Sands of Fire is the name of a Military Operation. Much like Operation Iraqi Freedom or Phantom Phury. But this name is fake, we made it up. However, many of the events in Sands of Fire are inspired by real operations or events (such as the Blackwater insurgent attack and the Battle of Fallujah). These scenes are just one big exposition, establishing time and place. We tried to create a desert storm look and feel, with lots of yellow/orange and red, darker colors in general. For the final cut, we were inspired by the effects and compositing of Jarhead. For those that have a sharp eye, you can see that one burning oilfield is exactly the same as used in that movie. Yeah we copied it :). Just saying, we were going after that Iraqi desert feel.

 

5) Part 2 - Extraction. For this next clip we're skippig in time. We're in the middle of the operation and Soldiers are being extracted at various locations, by Blackhawk (fastropes) and by ground vehicules. Their goal, try and find their lost men. These men (former rescue Team and our protagonist), are hiding in a small room at the town market square, waiting for their rescue. In an attempt to make contact with their teams, they sent out a radio signal. Now the various squads have to move on and fight their way to the location of that signal. These scenes show some heavy close combat fighting, we wanted to create a claustrophobic feeling, with tight alleyways and insurgents being all over the place. One thing I really wanted in these shots, was blood, a lot of it, excessive use of it. I wanted to show the true horrors of war, soldiers being shot at close range. If you look closely in the final cut, you will see an insurgent laying on the ground with a leg torn off.

   

6) Part 2 - The final battle. These are the big battle scenes at the town market square, a map that was especially created for this movie. And it took us forever to capture. If Peter Jackson had his Battle for Helm's deep, we had our Battle at Market Square. Seriously, we were going nuts on the days of recording. Sometimes we had to manage 30 different players at the same time and put them all in place for the acting. Imagine how stressful that was. But eventually we got the shots that we needed and we were perfectly satisfied. It helped us a lot to have a storyboard in these huge scenes. Some of the shots in this clip will actually show some of the storyboared shots I'm talking about. So don't make a funny face if you see them :). As it turned out, soundfx and music would be very important in this scene. Lots of things happening, explosions, weapons firing, soldiers getting hit, soldiers dying... If I remember correctly, the final battle scene runs 11 mins, and we worked on it for almost 2 years.

 

Isn't it amazing how all these raw images turned into the final movie? I still can't believe how much work and time we put into this. I still have lots and lots of stuff to show and talk about, maybe one day we should release a bluray version with all the extras on it. I can only hope ;)

Anyway, hope you liked it, leave a comment or post any questions you may have. I'll be happy to answer them for you!  

Finally, after 6 years, the wait is over! SoF has been finished and released! This is our way of saying goodbye to Battlefield2, the game that we so much loved.

update: A streaming version has been uploaded! Thanks to Sharpless for helping us with the link.

Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQxJhXWWv2M

Mirrors:
AtomicGamer.com: http://alturl.com/jvkf6
BF-games.net: http://alturl.com/wqn6y
Failcom.de: http://alturl.com/d56ef
Die-german-crew.de: http://alturl.com/tb4d9
Umadrama.com: http://alturl.com/t3zc2
Netload: http://alturl.com/5k23t

Torrent:
Gamehalle.de: http://alturl.com/45ehz

The movie is 43mins in length, weights 2,5gb and is encoded in MP4.

While downloading, we would like to take the opportunity to say a few words and to thank everyone that has been involved in this project one way or another. Especially all the members of our former BF clan [LRRP]. Two big thumbs go up for their hard work and perseverance. Without their support, this Machinima would never have been possible. So once again, thank you guys, you're the best, all of you!

Furthermore, we would like to thank all the BF communities that have been following us from the start. It hasn't been an easy journey, the movie has been postponed many times, but in the end, you all sticked with us, and that earns our deepest respect! So thank you for making this journey with us.

And without getting too sentimental, we would like to thank YOU! All the hardcore fans that have been with us since, well probably, the early days. The day that we released The Fallen One, almost 7 years ago. Many of you were probably still young on first hearing about SoF. I guess most of you turned from boys into men, started families, having kids, doing more important things in life besides gaming. We know you guys had to go through a lot during this production, speculations about whether this movie would eventually be released or not. But here we are, many years have passed and we survived. For all of you that are still with us, after all these years, thanks for not giving up on us. We made it, you made it and we're ready to celebrate this release with all of you! And to all the new fans out there, welcome to the wonderful world of Machinima, a medium that's slowly fading away.

As you'll probably know, we put a lot of effort in the post-production, explaining why this movie took so long to make. Not only did we spend a lot of time in creating the final movie, we also spent a lot of time in the trailers, work-in-progress movies, featurettes, wallpapers and other pieces of art. We all did it just to please YOU. We always tried to find a way to come out with something new, fresh and entertaining. We think you can all agree on that.

There are a lot more people we need to thank that were in some way important to our project but that list would be too long. But in particular, I would like to thank two very talented guys, who helped us to create the visual imagery. Dainius Gintalas (3D Animation) and Shwan Rasheed (Artwork) both contributed a substantial amount of work. They helped us to create the visuals we weren't able to pull off ourselves. Their contribution in this project is phenomenal! So thanks again guys. Also, an honorable mention goes out to Rich Metcalfe, the person that opened up our eyes on the right moment, at the right time. Without him, we probably wouldn't be talking SoF right now, so bro, Amen! 

Anyways, releasing this movie feels like closing a chapter in our lives. Six years of our still (well, maybe not) young lives seems so much, yet so little. All things come to an end, and so does the production of this movie. We've finally finished it, we're very proud we did. And we owe it all to you, the fans. This movie was made for fun and we hope you're having fun watching it. Remember, we're still no professional editors, we're still doing this out of passion for movie making, and no, we're still not getting any money out of this. Just saying, this movie came to existance because these two crazy creative minds collided and decided to make Machinima.

So that's about long enough for a release speech I guess :)

Still here? Go watch the movie already and let us know what you think!

Davy and Daniele signing off,
Thanks for watching!

And it all comes down to this...

 

6 years of work for a 43 mins movie!

Almost there!

The release of Sands of Fire is finally coming closer! I'm currently wrapping up and expect to be finished this evening. Tomorrow there is a last check-up with Daniele and if everything goes as planned and we don't encounter any technical difficulties, a release is scheduled for this weekend or beginning next week. As we promised, before the release of BF3 :)

We will keep you posted on the process, so make sure to visit us frequently.

Are you excited?

Just wanna give you guys a quick update now that we're getting close to the release of BF3. We have locked part2 yesterday. Yes, the editing is finally done! We still have a few weeks of work left on fixing/tweaking the soundfx. But it's finally coming together and I'm really excited about that.

So for those unaware, we will release part2 AND part1 as one big movie. We will not release part2 seperately, for one simple reason. The two parts should be seen as one. There is a separation of almost 1,5 years between releases so for those not familiar with part1, this is an opportunity to see the full movie.

It's getting closer guys, finally getting closer. Almost there, almost done. :)

Hi there everyone!! We're back! Yes, we have finally found our way back to the blog.

I guess we owe you guys a bit of explanation. Alas, we've been away for more than a year without notification or updates. So here it goes. Last year in august, I became a father for the first time. This event lead to a point that choices had to be made. Obviously, the choice was to spend more time with wife and kid and spend less time with other stuff that I was occupied with. One of those things being SoF. With much regret I had to step back from the production of SoF. As a result, Daniele was the only one left in the production. It also lead to a shitload of work that had to be done by one person only. Furthermore, Daniele, in his personal life, changed work and became a full-time teacher 3D Animation/Effects and Machinimator in a school for afterschool students. Not to mention his work for this school and project preparations raised a lot.

So we hit this point where we both had no clue what the future of SoF part2 would bring. Honestly, we didn't want to mention this on our blog. We didn't want to dissapoint all the fans that stuck with us all those years. That would be heartbreaking to us, and I guess also to you. So we decided to put it in the freezer, well, sort of.

As weeks and months passed by wihtout update, people got suspicious of our situation and started to speculate. Would SoF part2 ever see it's birth? Well, I have some good news for you! Yes it will! Yes it definitely will!!

Why the sudden change? Well, a couple of reasons. First off, my kid is almost one year old now and it allows me to focus on old habits again, like working on the movie. Secondly, Battle-f*cking-field 3. OMG guys, this game will blow everyone's socks off, without any doubt. When we first saw footage of BF3 it blew our minds. We didn't ever think it was possible with the frostbite engine, but oohhh boy, did the techies at DICE made one hell of an updated engine! Sadly, it also made us aware of the fact that SoF (and BF2) looks outdated, oldschool in a way even. But that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.

Daniele on the other hand, has finished his schoolyear and now has 2/3 months of non-school spare time. That allows him too to focus on finally finishing SoF part2. And he already converted all the shots in HD (which took a really long time). We decided that SoF part2 has to be released before the release of BF3. It's in a way funny that SoF will close the current BF2 period, just like The Fallen One was the closer of the BF:Vietnam period before the release of BF2. I guess it's meant to be. :)

So that leaves us doing what? We are now trying to get a locked version out of the current cut. Then we'll have to do a lot of tweaking/fixing (which already has been prepared on paper). Afterwards, it's fine-tuning and getting ready for release.
All this should be done before the release of BF3, if everything works out as currently planned. But reaching that goal or not, I'm pretty sure, you'll all be thrilled by now, knowing the release of SoF part2 is imminent rather than not having a release at all.

We promise you that part2 will continue the epicness of part1 and will be the final chapter in one of the greatest Battlefield war stories ever told.

Stay tuned for more updates as we're getting closer to the finish line, finally. Davy and Daniele signing out!

New update will follow shortly...

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that has downloaded or watched our movie over the last couple of weeks. We've seen a huge amount of comments and are very pleased with it. It's much appreciated and we are looking forward to finishing Part2.

The first Reviews are also rolling in and if you want to contribute yourself, just head over to our Forum and start posting. I will try to add my own comments.

This is a Review submitted by Mervin (Gas) where I added some comments to his remarks that you might find interesting. It gives more information on some of the decisions we made during the production.

It's time! Time for the release of SANDS of FIRE - Part One.

It's been a long journey. A journey with lots of obstacles. But we finally made it! And we are very proud we did. Today, we present you the first part of a two part movie that will unfold the story of a captured American soldier. Watch the movie and witness the true horror that American soldiers experienced during the first Battle of Fallujah.

There are lots of fans and community sites that have been continuously supporting us but we had to make a choise and we 'exclusively' selected BF-games.net as first BF-community site to host our movie! They have supported us all these years and never turned us down, even during the more difficult times and we are very grateful for it. So here it is... SoF - Part One on BF-games.net.

03/30/10 Update! - Streaming version Online!
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Mirrors - 2GB MKV HD 720p (incl subs in ENG/GER/FRE/DUT/POL)
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Link provided by our sponsor Clanhost.nl / Direct link

Machinimyte.net
Failcom.de
Moviefactory.fr
Battlefield-X.de
Totalbf.hu

Rapidshare:
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Update! 200MB Linklist / 100MB Linklist

Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part01.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part02.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part03.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part04.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part05.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part06.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part07.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part08.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part09.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part10.rar
Sands_of_Fire_Part1_Final_HD.part11.rar

Torrent:
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Gameupdates.org

Have fun! And oh, for additional comments please visit our Forum.

Well guys, the wait is almost over!

Update on the release:
DONE
- Movie is done. We faced a few technical issues but the final tweaks and corrections have been added (= reason for delay).
- English/Dutch/French/German/Polish subs are done!

WIP
- Still waiting for the Spanish subs to come in (hopefully today).
- Official Site needs links to final release (our guy is working on it).
- MKV file still needs to be created (once we have all subs).
- Release of Youtube and FLV versions (will happen after the initial release).

SoF Pt.1 will exclusively be released on selected BF sites before official release. These sites will be announced on the blog! Maybe later today ;)

Important NOTE!
We will release the Movie initially as a MKV file (matroska). This type of container is NOT supported by WMP and you need a 3rd party Media Player to watch it. We encourage you to install VLC media player or any other Media Player of your preference. You can download VLC at this site.

One more thing. We don't want the movie to be converted to other containers or video formats without our knowledge. We have worked too hard too long to see it popping up in lower quality. So please respect this dicision. Don't go spreading it around in other inferior formats than the ones we (will) provide. A youtube version will be uploaded soon after the release (but not on the same time) so please be patient. Also, if you're the lucky owner of a Media Tank (Popcorn Hour, HDX, etc...) / Home Theatre setup, you can play the file with fullest picture and sound quality on your system. And I strongly encourage everyone to watch it on a Big Screen on first viewing. It will certainly add to the viewing experience!!

Watch the blog for more updates!!

Good afternoon everyone! As promised, here's the latest status update on Sands of Fire Part One. And so far, it's looking good... really good! We've been working like mad dogs last couple of weeks and this weekend we reached our first Milestone in the 5 years of its production. We have finally wrapped editing and this means we are almost ready for release :)

We call the current version SoF1 RC1 (Release Candidate 1) because some minor things still have to be fixed (like framing issues, bad timings, visual artifacts, etc...). But these are rather small adjustments and don't take a lot of time to be fixed and we are hoping for a SoF1 RC2 soon after. We are also looking into the music with our composer Justin R. Durban and this will probably take a few more weeks.

I also have more details concerning the release format. We have decided to go for 3 different formats. First we will have a HD 720p streaming version on Youtube (without subs), Second is a flash version in lower quality on our main site (also without subs) and last but not least, we will have a MKV (matrosjka) version ready to be downloaded on various hosting sites. Why did we choose MKV and not WMV or AVI? Well, we wanted to have the best viewing experience possible and because we wanted soft-coded subtitles we decided to go for MKV (which is a losless container to support HD codecs and multiple subs). It's an all-in-one solution to the subtitling problem we faced. Rather to have a hard-coded solution we are going for soft-coded subs and it makes it much easier to convert.

So this being said, I have a request for all of you. I'm currently working on the English translation and will have it ready in a couple of days (prolly this weekend). I want the subtitles to be available in as much languages as possible. Therefore, I'm still looking for people that are wanting to help out on these subs. I'm currently looking for Spanish/Portugese/Polish/Swedish/... people that can translate from English. There's only one requirement though. You need to have a bit of knowledge about military commands and tactics. So anyone wanting to help out, drop me a note and I'll get back to you!

We have already people translating (so don't apply for these):
- English
- German
- Dutch
- French

So if you feel up to it, mail me!

Ohhh, and if everything works out the way we planned... Sof Part One should come out beginning of next month. Can't wait to show it to you guys, we are very excited about it and we hope you're too!

Cya soon!

Ok guys, here's the latest update on SoF. And first of all, the project is NOT dead (and nor am I). I want to start by saying sorry to all the fans that have been left in the cold by the lack of updates the last couple of months. Yes WE know, we should have updated the project status a bit more or at least have given a sign of life. Unfortunately, personal reasons prevented us from updating. For me personally, many things have changed (yeah, again) and because of that I was forced to go in 'hibernation' mode. It was very hard for me to leave the project behind but eventually I had no choise. It resulted in Donkey working on SoF all by himself. Fortunately, Donkey isn't quite the type to quit on a project easily. So he kept working on the project in his own way and tempo without my help.

Many months had passed and then this one day, Donkey called me. I believe it was just before Christmas last year. He told me he was thinking about releasing the movie in a different format. I was a bit shocked because we always wanted to release the movie as a full feature film. He had the idea of splitting the movie up in two big parts. Part One which will cover the intro and first two acts (around 20 mins) and Part Two which will be the final act and endcredits (around 25mins). At first I didn't like the idea but when I took some time to think about it, it fully made sense. I guess it was better to have some sort of release than to have no release at all, especially after such a long production time and all the hard work we had put in this project, and not only us but all the guys/gals that had worked on the movie. Seeing it all go to waste would just break my heart. So I told Donkey to go ahead with his idea. So he started to focus on Part One only. We also decided to transfer all the shots into HD (720p) which resulted in creating a whole new intro!

So where do we stand now? Well, recently I have teamed up with Donkey again to try and fix Part one from start to finish. Many shots had to be redone (some shots dated back from 2005/2006). Donkey had to put a lot of work in these older shots to give em fresh and updated looks, even the compositing had to be 'modernized'. But it worked out fine and I'm very pleased with the results, the HD shots really look amazing compared to their older PAL versions. I had the fortune to watch it on a big screen and in full detail and I was blown away... it looked like a completely different movie.

Of course, the most important question remains: 'When will it be released?'. And guys, seriously, if all goes well, and Donkey promised to work very very hard (I'll do my best too), we hope to release Part One sometime around the release of Battlefield BC2. That's right, that leaves us just a couple of weeks. There's still a lot of work (tweaking, fixing, dialogs, voices, music) but I'm confident that we will be done with this first part in a couple of weeks....

And if that's not enough, we have finally launched a new website!
So be sure to check it out on http://www.sandsoffire.com/ and we have a facebook/twitter channel too, just going with the flow! :)

I hope you guys can live with the decision of breaking up the movie in two parts, I still believe this was the best choise to make as we finally will be able to show you the beginning of a movie we are working on for 5 years! But please keep in mind, we are no robots, we do the best we can in sometimes very hard circumstances but for some, that appears to be just not good enough. For those still standing behind us, thanks for your patience, it's really, really appreciated and we hope to make it up to you with the release of Part One.

See you soon!!!

Btw, remember that we still have our forum/site/blog/facebook and twitter channels. All links can be found on our main site @ http://www.sandsoffire.com/

Watch the blog for an important update!!

Hello everyone! And yeah yeah, we know, it's been a while. You guys must be wondering what the hell we have been doing since the Trailer announcement... well, I have some good and some bad news to tell you about this sudden silence. I'll start with the bad news first and get it over with.

Well, the lack of updates is mainly due to my sickness. I have been struggling with a heart condition (actually it started a long time ago). My health drastically worsened beginning of this year. I have gone through a very difficult period with many examinations and visits to doctors and cardiologists. They still haven't diagnosed my condition but I started a treatment with medicines and thankfully my heart stabalized quite a bit, not 100% though and I probably won't be the same ever again, but it makes living easier. I'm telling you this because I feel you all have the right to know this. You guys have been following us for so long and that's the least I can do, telling you the truth and being honest. But of course, care or don't care, that's your choice. Anyway, my contribution to the movie has never been so low and I'm afraid it has had a huge impact on the production timeframe. I'm feeling sorry and hope you guys will understand its not in my control. I'm feeling better though and I already promised Donkey that I will (slowly) pick up my work when I'm ready for it and I hope this will be very soon! But I'm sure it is.

So yes, the movie has had some delay because of this but I can garantuee that Donkey has not stopped working on it. In fact, and now I'm moving to the good news portion of this update :) ... Donkey has already finished his work on the soundfx. So that's another huge task that has been completed in post. That being said, he started to work on the tweaking part last month. Tweaks on the editing, adjusting imagery, finetuning the sounds, for just naming some are all part of this job. Not to underestimate though because this will put the movie in it's final cut. Another thing he's working on right now is the dialogues and voices. Donkey has been in touch with some people that will support us on voiceacting and he's doing tests with them as we speak. Definitely looking forward to that.

Another thing I'm really, really excited about is that SoF will officially be released in HD. In contradiction to earlier reports (we always said the movie would be in standard PAL) we decided to go with modern techniques and formats. We will be upscaling and rerendering the movie in HD format (720p resolution) to get the best possible image quality that this movie deserves. I have seen test results of the intro and it looks amazing and very promising to what the rest of the movie will be like. This will probably take some extra work but after 4 years, who cares... right? :) But as a result you will be able to play this movie in Full Screen on your PC and Home Theater setups. Here's an example of what the Intro will look like in HD (notice the removal of the widescreen bars).


And to conclude this update, we are very pleased to announce that our latest trailer has won 3 awards on the recent Game Movie Awards'08 hosted by planet-videos. The trailer won awards in Best Cut/effects, Sound and Trailer categories. Actually, this came as a big surprise to us because I stumbled upon this news by accident. But nevertheless, I guess it's very cool that we were able to win (with a Trailer) from other machinima.

That's it for this update, next time I try to update a bit sooner, really promised ;).

Sands of Fire Trailer HD from Davy Staelens on Vimeo.

Around Christmas time, as the tradition goes, the DW crew prepares for something special. And this year is no exception. Exactly 3 years after the first teaser and 2 years after the Christmas special (Preview), we are very pleased to announce the last and official SoF Trailer.

The previous presentations were both action packed and visually enhanced to portray the best visual style of this movie but this time however, we have focussed on the story. It's no secret that SoF is inspired by true events from current and past military operations in Iraq and with this trailer we are trying to give more details of what this movie is all about.

The trailer will hopefully convince the disbelievers and people who were going to give up on us. And for the fans that sticked with us, we hope this trailer will show that the waiting hasn't been for nothing. Remember, it's only a small presentation of what to expect in the final movie.

Some of the shots used in this trailer will look familiar. And yes, some of these shots were released in previous trailers or during the post-production of the movie but not in it's final shape. This trailer does show the final composit of these shots as they were edited for the best viewing experience.

The trailer is released in HD format but I have to note that it's not true HiDef. We believe this is the best presentation for watching on both standard PC and HD screens. So please do watch it in high quality and not on low quality streaming sites because it will definitely ruin the quality of this movie.

We hope you enjoy this small trailer and oh, Happy Holidays from the DW crew... cya next year :)

PS If you want to discuss this new trailer, please visit (and register) on our forum. I created a thread that you can view here.

File Mirrors: (file size 75MB)
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Totalgaming.hu
Moviefactory.fr
Battlefield-x.de
Battlefieldcommunity.nl
RS.com mirror 1
RC.com mirror 2

Streaming Mirrors:
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Vimeo HD new link added by me
Vimeo HD original link added by Rach
Youtube HD link added by Tuner
Youtube HD link added by Gravehunter

Trailer Wallpapers:
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1280x1024
1440x900
1600x1400
1680x1050

I want to make a statement because both Donkey and I are very dissapointed at this moment. Apperantly, some of you are trying to spread false rumors. I don't know where this is coming from and have no idea who is doing it but it's not what we expected from our fans. So to make things clear once and for all, Sands of Fire is still in production, the movie will come out next year and it surely is NOT canceled. So please, stop spamming our blog with comments that the movie is canceled or that you have been waiting all this time for nothing. We are pretty much alive and kicking.

I know it's easy to post anonymously but please, don't abuse it. We have made this blog accessible to everyone because we stand for net neutrality. We don't want to enforce rules that users have to register before posting. And we want to keep it that way. But of course, if some of you keep on posting complete nonsense and fake stories we will be forced to delete those posts and ultimately, we will be switching over to a more secure system. So, don't ruin it for the fans that still care about this movie. I guess some people just don't have enough patience to sit this through. I can only say I feel sorry for those people because they really have no clue what they are waiting for.

So that being said, it's time for another update. Donkey is almost done with the sound editing. Yes, that's right. In contradiction to all the false rumors, we have in fact made a serious progression. He still estimates a few weeks of work to finish up the rough sound mix but after that we're all done with the sound. And then it's a big leap forward to the final production fase. We will start working on the voices and dialogues, definitely to be the most difficult part of the movie and we still have to decide how to take it on, with or without voiceactors. But we are (slowly) getting there. Oh and maybe you will find the release date on this envelope ;). Check it out!

Finally! Here's the new update. "WAR BEYOND IMAGINATION"
I'm very pleased to announce the first 'official' SoF poster. This poster is the creation of our very talented art designer MasterX. I hope you guys like it as much as we do. We have put a lot of details in this poster and we tried to make it as professional as possible. In a few weeks we will have a second poster up. But for the time being, enjoy this one. You can freely download it. I provided the highest quality (2480*3508, 4,5MB).

You guys are probably wondering what's up with us not posting for so long... well, there's been going on a lot of things in both Donkeys life and mine. For starters, Donkey went on holidays for almost the whole month of august (and it was a deserved one). And for me, I'm in the middle of a move. I'll be finally moving out of my appartment at the end of next month. As you can imagine it takes a lot of preparation, taking care of administration, buying and ordering new stuff (furniture, electric appliances, etc...). So that being said, we've been quite busy the last few weeks and months.

Do we have much time left for SoF? Don't worry! Allthough we're quite busy with a lot of personal stuff, the movie is still in production. In fact, donkey has finished 2/3th of his soundmix (parts 1 and 2 are done). That leaves him with the mixing of only the last part of the movie and I'm very excited about that. I've seen a rough cut with the latest sound mix and I was quite surprised with the progression he had made. We're definitely going to finish the (rough) sound mix before the end of this year. So that will leave us with the tweaking and adding music at the beginning of next year. For a status update, see below.

I know what you guys will think now... "What? SoF won't come out this year? Holy crap!". And the answer is...yes, it won't. But please do understand that we have many things in our lifes that have higher priorities than this movie. We still do the best we can in the given time frame, but sometimes you just have to do put things aside and do more important stuff. Just remember this is a fan movie, nothing more nothing less.

Anyway, the 5th of september was my birthday and I turned 30 (oh boy, do I feel old now). I threw a small party for family and friends and when it was time for presents, Donkey had the coolest surprise I could ever imagine! And now that I'm moving to a new house, that (huge!) poster will be framed and will pe placed above my desk. So I can enjoy every minute of it when I'm working on the movie as long as it still lasts. Cya next time! btw left is me, right is donkey :)

Hi guys, we're back with a new featurette. In this third featurette (of a 5 vid series), Little_donkey will be showing how to composit a shot from Battlefield. You can see the transition from the original footage to a completed, fully rendered, shot. Without explaining too much I think it shows the true hard work that goes into this process. Of course, the compositing work has been completed for some time and on this moment we are focussing on the sound mixing of the movie, which is one of the last steps of the production. But there is still some minor compositing work left. Anyway, here's the vid!



Concerning the status of the project, it's a bit slow for us at the moment. Don't worry though, this is temporary because both Donkey and I have had some time off of the project, due to vacation and holiday trips (also the reason why the featurette was overdue). Donkey went to Italy for one week (and will be returning for another 2 weeks next week) while I was in Londen for 5 days. So we both had some time to relax and enjoy a few weeks of food/booze and probably girls in Donkey's case :).

But not everyone has been so lazy as ourselves. MasterX (the guy that won the SoF wallpaper contest) has worked long shifts to finish a customized style for the SoF forum, in a way that it looks like this Blog. So we would like to announce a new and (visually) improved forum made by the very talented MasterX. Thanks bro for your hard work. We strongly encourage you all to register and have a chat with us at http://forum.sandsoffire.com ... See you next time for featurette number4 !!

Heads up folks... today we are releasing the second behind the scenes featurette. This time Little_donkey shows a bit more of his workspace in Nuendo, so be sure to check that out! There's some unseen footage included ;)