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First of all, has anyone here made one? What is the general opinion of them? I originally intended to make one, I'd tinkered around on the computer and could make pretty good sabres using a digital camera with the videoclip feature, and myself and a few friends were up for it. However, getting the time and money together to but a decent camcorder, video capture card and necessary software packages was impossible in the end.
It seems to be the sport of the rich Star Wars fans, who can afford to spend months with their effects teams editing footage obtained against a bluescreen in a film studio. Some projects, like Duality, are superb and I'm as jealous as Hell of Dave Macomber for being able to put together such a good film, as well as doing butterfly kicks. Some, though, are just a showcase for people who think they deserve to be in Ep2 or 3.

I loved The Dark Redemption, and some of the others have beeb good too.

Talents far beyond me I'm afraid.

I used to think they were a brilliant idea, starting with Troops. Now, however, the competition has escalated to the point where people are spending many thousands on them.I checked out the questions you have to answer on TFN if you submit one, and the "how much was spent?" question had a $1,000,000+ option. People just wanting to dabble by filming in a forest or field would get laughed away by the richer filmmakers.If it's not bluescreened now, it's not worth seeing, apparently.

Does seem that it has gone beyong being Fan Films if you're looking at that sort of budget....

Exactaly, soon we'll have Spielberg making his own fan film.

I loved Troops. My second favorite is the PA wars films. Those crack be up. I also liked Dark Redemption and A Question of Faith.

I met the guys that made Question. They made that film for around $200. All they paid for was tape and beer. Their swordplay is outstanding. The reason is that they work at a Midevil restraunt that they have jousts and sword fights twice a day six days a week! They want to make a sequal and I hope to be a part of it. I'll keep ya up to date if that happens.

Do that James. it would be nice to hear about something like that.

I will.

I also wanted to add that they said that the effects were made with Photoshop! Not with After FX like one would think. IMHO that would make editing it 10 times longer than it should be.

Also if you havent seen the out-takes you should. They are great!

Yeah, it's strange how the programs less suited to film editing can come up with some of the best looking graphics. I always used Corel Photopaint 7 for the sabre test footage I did, and it looked fine.
I would like to watch A Question of Faith, but staying online long enough to download most of the films proves to be a problem. I managed Duality and three parts of The Dark Redemption, but it's a bit of a chore.

Yes I know. Use Download Accelerator or Get Right. They let you restart downloads if you get disconnected, or if you dont have the time you can resume it later when you do.