Dear Forgotten Realm Fans,

Here are some production stills from our first outdoor shoot. Enjoy!

You can now follow us on Twitter @liquidquichepro .

On January 16, 2006, Star Wars:Forgotten Realm began shooting its first scenes. This fan film, written and directed by Darren Crawford and produced by Margaret Miller, is nearing completion after 10 years of principal photography, audio and music creation and unbelievably complex special effects – all on no budget.

It’s been a journey (longer than anyone expected), but to see this creation on the screen is just humbling, awe-inspiring and great fun! The dedicated cast and crew are recognized for their talent, commitment, enthusiasm and perseverance. Thank you very much!

Enjoy the trailer!!

There will be one more trailer after this and then the world premiere of Star Wars:Forgotten Realm!

Liquid Quiche Productions

SW FR 2016 Trailer from Darren Crawford on Vimeo.

Well, 9 years ago today we shot our first frame of Star Wars:Forgotten Realm.  This year's Star Wars Fan Film contest has a limit of 5 minutes per submission.  Our submission was uploaded on Thursday Jan. 15.

Star Wars:Forgotten Realm will be released spring 2015.  It has been a long road and we are looking forward to everyone seeing the full feature.

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.

The voting is over

The voting for the 2010 Official Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge Audience Choice Award is now over. A big thanks goes out to everyone who supported us with their vote. Check back on August 13th to find out how the trailer matched up to the competition. Keep your fingers crossed.

Its Official !

The Star Wars : Forgotten Realm trailer is an official finalist of the 2010 Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge. Please vote for our trailer at the following link:

Movie Trailer

Star Wars:Forgotten Realm trailer

I'm proud to present our long awaited trailer for Star Wars:Forgotten Realm. Follow the link below.

TRAILER

I hope everyone enjoys this preview of the movie. The trailer has been submitted to Atom films and approved for the Star Wars Fan Film challenge. Semi-finalists will be announced on July 22 and the public will be allowed to vote for their favorite fan film. Please be sure to vote for our trailer.

The credits at the end of the trailer reflect those who are seen in the trailer. Thanks to all of those who have been involved in some shape or form in the making of this fan film.

The Emperor

It's been a while since there was an update to the blog so I thought I would post a couple tantalizing pictures from the movie. We had a reshoot on Dec. 20, 2009. The original Imperial Palace scene (Scene 39a) had a poor bluescreen which made it extremely hard to pull a key from so we reshot the scene. A professional Emperor's mask was purchased and Chris Olsen reprised his role of the Emperor. I think the new footage turned out fantastic and, best of all, I can pull a much better key.



Where's the trailer you may ask? We are putting the final touches on it, ie saber contact flashes. The ADR session tomorrow will complete the voices for the scenes used in the trailer. Once completed it will be uploaded to the blog and submitted into the Atom Films' Star Wars Fan Films contest.

X-wings, TIE Fighters, Explosions, Oh My

Now that we are fully in post production mode, I though I'd release a 10 second tidbit. The shot is from the Imperial surprise attack scene that occurs near the beginning of the movie. There is no sound yet.

We've had two ADR sessions so far. Vader's voice has been recorded in its entirety. Yari'el and Jarad voice overs for the Sarco cockpit scenes have been recorded. Our first foley session was Thursday. What a blast. Dave, Max, and I are walking around the studio trying to sync the steps of Yari'el, Jarad, and the clone commander walking down a hallway. At the same time Dave is trying to mimic the armor sounds, Max is attempting to get the leather sound from the clones body suit as he moves in the scene, and I try to get the blaster sound as the clone trooper comes to attention.

We welcome Brian Kovacs to our production crew. He will be the sound designer of the film and is starting off with creating the ambient sounds of the Sarco cockpit and exterior (engines, fly-by, etc.).

Final Production Shoot and Opening Crawl

Hard to believe but on Sunday April 27th the final production shoot was completed at Fermilab. In the morning we shot a scene in the Atrium of Wilson Hall. The Atrium is the backdrop for a meeting with the Prime Minister of Berrata Prime and our two heroes. The scene was completed by 12:30 and then we moved to the second floor to film another scene. A scene that involved turning a conference room into a bar prior to filming. (refer to above picture by Max Monningh) Several people, cast and crew alike, pooled their space-age odds and ends and added them to the set. Batavia artist Joe Gagnepain dressed the set with his sculptures, Curtis the robot, etc.

Thanks to all of the stormtroopers, aliens, bounty hunters, humans, artists, cast, and crew who took part in this last shoot. Without you this fan film would not have had a chance. The only filming left is the few pick-up and redo shots. There will be miniature model filming during post production. Also, lots of rendering!

The opening crawl with the lead-in to the first scene has been completed. Here is the opening crawl and the opening shot. There aren't any sound effects or music after the Star Wars theme. (Star Wars Main Theme is a trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd, composed by John Williams) The nebula took 8 days to render with 3 processors. Compositing all elements together took 2 days. Enjoy.

Lights, Sabers, Sound

Here is a clip of completed shots of the Mallick-Vader duel. The sabers are rotoscoped and now we are adding sound effects to completed shots. The sound is in stereo but when fully finished it will be in 5.1 channel surround sound. The video has gone through a color correction. The aspect ratio of the movie is 2.35, same as the Star Wars trilogies.

This clip was presented at a Producer's talk at FVTV where we presented the state of our production.

An Army of One

Mark Van Slyke has the only clone trooper costume in the entire Chicagoland area so we have to clone the clone for our shots that involve the clone army. Thanks Mark for agreeing to do this. This is scene 41 shot 3. Yari'el and Jared are escorted to the office of Jedi Knight Web Mallick.

There are 3 layers to this After Effects composition. The first layer is the one where the clone commander is escorting the rebels. The second layer is the guard at the door. The third layer is the painstaking rotoscoped layer of the commander walking in front of the guard. This is a first pass of the cloning technique and there are some noticeable areas to tweak before making it a final approved shot.

There is no sound for this shot.

First attempt at bluescreen keying

Here is our first attempt at keying out the bluescreen behind the actors.

First completed CGI shot

We have finished our first fully rendered and composited effects shot. The shot is of the Sarco, which carries Yari'el and Jared, being chased into the clouds of an uncharted planet. The blaster bolts were added with After Effects. The explosion comes from Detonationfilms.com. The foreground clouds were animated in After Effects. The Sarco and TIE fighters were rendered in Lightwave 9.2 and output to an EXR image sequence. There are 2 layers to each render, key and fill which are composited together in After Effects.

Screamernet, which is a network rendering program in Lightwave, was set up on our quad core machine. It treats each processor independently when rendering frames. Next, we will extend Screamernet to other computers on our intranet.