SW FR Trailer 2 AE from Darren Crawford on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas from the Star Wars:Forgotten Realm Post-Production Team. Enjoy the trailer for Act II of Star Wars:Forgotten Realm. The music, of course, is from John Williams. The Liquid Quiche Productions logo music was composed by Wally Kissel. The CG models and sets were created by Fractalsponge, James Bassett, Dugnaw127, and Treybor. Many thanks to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory for allowing us to film on site. We are very appreciative of FVTV for allowing us to utilize their equipment and facility.  This movie would not have been possible without FVTV.  Cave background plates were taken by Cindy Arnold.

Well, it has been a year since the last post.  Ouch.  I'll have to improve on that.  Act II is still in post production.  There is an enormous amount visual effects in this act.  They range from a land battle between AT-ATs and a live action clone army to a Sith holocron revealing Darth Plagueis.  The Imperial briefing was filmed against a bluescreen and now the briefing room visual effects are complete.  The briefing room model  was created by Jan Jacob and is  a redress of the Jedi Temple briefing room.

Imperial briefing room screen shot.

The holocron effects are complete.  Josh O'Connell's perfomance was filmed against a bluescreen and then composited onto a background plate from the NuMI tunnel.

Holocron switching on due to Jedi blood that was available.

Josh O'Connell as Darth Plagueis in holographic form.

 Heck, we even have anamorphic lens flares for some of the lightsaber clashes.  The lens flares are created in Lightwave 3D V9.6 and then composited on top of the rotoscoped lightsabers Adobe After Effects CS4.

Jim Kirkhoff as Jarad Dunkin and Ted O'Sullivan as Darth Vader.

There's still a lot to do but I thought I would share some of these images and give an update to the blog.

It is unfortunate that the Star Wars Fan Film Challenge is no longer around.  It was a great venue for fans to showcase their vision and fascination of the Star Wars universe. 

Star Wars:Forgotten Realm Act I is online

Star Wars Forgotten Realm Act I from Darren Crawford on Vimeo.

Act I is 22 minutes in length. I hope you enjoy it and great thanks to everyone who has been involved with the production of this movie. Now, we hit Act II with full Force. (Pun intended)

Movie Poster

We now have a poster for Star Wars:Forgotten Realm. Our thanks goes out to Candace Bregola for creating this wonderful poster.

Act I (the first 30 minutes) will be released in May 2011.

Miniatures

On October 30th we filmed miniatures at FVTV studio. Chris Olsen painted a clone gunship for us and Dave Ifversen animated the model in front of the camera. In one scene, the clone gunship will land and Jedi General Mallick (Max Monningh) will step off of the gunship. We are using the program Mocha to matchmove footage of Mallick on the gunship as it lands. The clone figures at the bottom of the above photo are for creating the far shots of the clone army at attention.

Frame grab from Scene 001

Here is a frame grab from a completed shot in Scene 001. Abby Eggleston is an Imperial Captain on board an Interdictor class cruiser. CG ISD bridge was created by Sean Kennedy.

I talked to some of the Clone Wars animators at Celebration V. They gave me some pointers on how to reduce my render times for the CG. Their suggestions have reduced our render times by about 30%.

The 2010 Star Wars Fan Movie Awards are over

Although we didn't win it was a very entertaining night. Seth Green, Jay Laga'aia, Dave Filoni, and Steve Sansweet were present to hand out awards. You should check out the winners on Atom.com.

Dave Filoni introducing George Lucas (pre-recorded video) for the George Lucas Selects Award.