Akwat Kbrana

Sorry, double post.

Thanks for the snapshots, Ady. The comparison is most appreciated. :)

Think I'll stick with my AVCHD version for the time being, but once I get enough bandwidth allocation to justify the 40 gig download, I might give this one a whirl...particularly if it starts getting notably good reviews.

Geeze, someone forgot to take their prozac!

Near as I can tell, no one's trying to come across as offensive or ungrateful, WG. It's just that, for those of us who don't have a T-1 line connected to our houses, it's more than a little unreasonable to be expected to expend the time and resources necessary to download 40 gigs of data without the slightest clue as to the nature of the video we're downloading. No one's asking you to go into extreme detail on this project, only to give a little information by way of overview. But so far you've oddly refused to answer the simplest of questions relating to this project, and that's bit puzzling. No sample, no screengrabs, nothing. I've got better things to do with my bandwidth than download file this massive without a preview of some sort.

'Ignore' works a lot better than ranting does, Darth Lars. I've been Janskeet-free for awhile now, and my blood pressure is much better for it! :)

Actually, I'd recommend that everyone who finds his comments annoying and distasteful 'ignore' him; it seems the vast majority of posts these days are hostile responses to his verbal incontenence. Such hostility is, for the most part, quite deserved, but the sheer volume of enraged rejoinder only serves to bog the board down and derail topics; if we all just 'ignored' the troll, rational conversation could resume. And without the attention feeding his ego, he'd probably get bored and wander off to some other corner of the internet before too long...

For those who subscribe to the misconception that Star Trek is somehow more scientifically feasible than Star Wars, I direct you here: http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Myths/Myths_ST.html#Realism

C3PX said:

Akwat Kbrana said:

Can't be sure, but rcb may be referring to Steven Spielberg. Allegedly, he got teary-eyed over ROTS.

 

I know what rcb was refering to, it was a line from Lucas in the youtube parody I linked too. I am just not sure what film Lucas was refering to. Wow, that is pretty sad if the guy who directed Schindler's List teared up during Revenge of the freakin' Shit.

Yeah, pretty patheti-sad, huh? A quick google search for "Steven Spielberg Star Wars weeps" turns up more than a few supporting stories. Looks like it's true.

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/spielberg%20weeps%20at%20star%20wars%20screening

Janskeet said:

To all you poeple who have a problem with me, really, what is it that I am doing that is so offensive/annoying? I'm just asking questions. There's problably a good handfull of you that already ignored me so hopefully someone will reply with this quote so you can all see it, but I want to know what it is I am doing that is so annoying? If you guys are pissed off about the donations, I donated now, so the bickering can stop. But to keep the record straight, I never said I was going to donate, I was seeing if others would donate the same amount with me, nobody return my offering so I didn't donate. I appologize to those who misunderstood me.

What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in the room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Al Gore.

C3PX said:

rcb said:

 i loved it when he said that one of his producers cried when he saw the film. now that's a burn.

What movie was he originally talking about there? I can't imagine a single George Lucas film that would bring anyone to tears (lol, tears of joy anyway), let alone a Star Wars movie that could evoke this kind of a reaction from an exec. I am pretty sure GL is lying/exaggerating here, or that executive has some serious emotional issues.

Can't be sure, but rcb may be referring to Steven Spielberg. Allegedly, he got teary-eyed over ROTS.

Seconded.

Err...thirded, rather.

Sorry for being the voice of disbelief on this one, but I just dont think what you want to do is possible.

I share your dubiety. Seems like a technical achievement that one could only accomplish if they had all of the originally recorded seperate elements.

Oh, the humanity!!

Agreed. Some of the horde shots were CG, but usually real stuntmen were used.

Moreover, Jackson's "CG only when necessary" philosophy extended even to locations-shots, buildings, etc. As much as possible, he used models and location shooting rather than just using a quick-fix CGI "band-aid." He also used animatronics for as many creatures as he could (Treebeard, "giants" from the Hobbits' perspective in the Prancing Pony, etc.) In addition to adding a sense of weight and realism to the final film, this approach also gave the actors something to interact with, rather than just putting them in front of a greenscreen with a suspended golf-ball, and shouting, "Faster, more intense!"

If you want to compare two cgi creations with 2 entirely different results look at Jar Jar binks from the phantom menace vs gollum from the two towers and return of the king by peter jackson. 

In the later case Jackson's animators went for the humanity of the character as delivered by Andy Serkis and understood the nuance of a cgi character and to make him seemless with the live action actors. 

Instead in star wars jar jar was over the top slapstick and drew annoying attention to the fact that he was an out of place cgi character.

Excellent point. Seems to me that Jackson's approach to CG characters was to make them as lifelike and believable as humanly possible, while Lucas' approach was to make them look as unreal and absurd as possible. Gollum looks pretty incredibly realistic. Cave trolls, orc hordes, the balrog...though obviously fantasy creations, they look like they really could exist, in a more mythical world.

SW creatures, on the other hand, just look like cartoon characters. Jar-Jar's bug-out eyes swivel around like a cartoon frog. Everything about him - his appearance, his movements, his voice, his dialogue - would be more at home in a road runner cartoon than in an epic Space saga. Dex's four arms and airbag chin, the willowy and lighter-than-air kaminoans, that stupidly over-the-top lizard thing on Utapau, that Jedi council member with the giraffe neck (that couldn't possibly support the weight of his head), the Fraggle-Rock reminiscent podracers...everything about these characters seems designed to terminate suspension of disbelief and pull you out of the illusion. "Look! Look! We're CG!! How silly and crazy our anatomical dimensions are! Ha, ha! Look, now I'm defying gravity and doing a quadruple-backflip in midair, just like Bugs Bunny might do! Isn't this great?!"

CG can be done right, but it must be approached with the aim in mind that it look real. The PT went instead for whacky cartoonisms, so its brand of CGI utterly fails to effectively "sell" itself to the viewer.

Our servers can't repel post-counts of that magnitude!!

In the film, it is assumed (by the Nazis, anyway) that the army possessing the Ark will be able to control its power and thus use it as an infallible weapon. As the film unfolds, it is revealed that the Ark has a greater will than the Third Reich, and instead of the Nazis controlling the Ark, the Ark controls them.

It's actually kinda ironic, because a very similar thing happened in the Bible. Just prior to Israel's monarchic age, the Hebrew army was engaged in constant skirmishes against the Philistines, and on one occasion, in an attempt to tilt the scales in their favor, they took the Ark with them into battle, thinking it would ensure victory. In fact, nothing of the sort happened. Israel lost the battle, the Philistines took possession of the Ark, and Israel didn't get it back until years later. The entire affair ended up costing many, many lives.

(Just to pre-emptively clarify, I'm not trying to draw any parallels between the Jews and the Nazis...only between the mistaken assumptions that the Ark of the Covenant can be controlled by an army, and the tragedy that such misconception begets.)

So who was the first one?

I guess if he doesn't answer you, Monroville, we'll have our answer. ;-)

The crusades being those things in which Jews and Muslims were massacred.

Heh. Seems almost everyone makes the crusaders out to be these monsters who swept through the holy land murdering the natives left and right and just generally steamrolling over everything. Regardless of whether or not the first crusade was started on just grounds (a highly debatable subject, to be sure), I find it quite interesting that out of nine Crusades, the crusaders lost eight of them. Hardly the unstoppable barbarian hordes they're so often made out to be...

sketchrob said:

Can we all just ignore Janskeet now? I mean really this is a person who so-called "joked" about being Ady's boss, and has since made useless questions about obvious changes without ever checking to see first... *sigh*

Next thing you know he's gonna question Ady as to why he transitioned form one dvd menu to the other or something just as useless. I think we've all been pretty nice to the guy but really at this point i'm pretty sure its the  "ignore button" ftw.

I've always been very hesitant to use the ignore feature because I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. But in this case, I'm afraid you're right. Janskeet, consider yourself ignored.

Janskeet said:

vaderios said:

2: No a burned head have variety of colors, Especially yellows and pinkie reds.

But it looks unnatural how it just transitions right from pink to yellow.

3:Where is hotrod?

4:Where is hotrod?

Huh?

 

Congratulations; you're a troll.

canofhumdingers said:

When they made the 97 SE they recomposited a LOT of the sfx shots, including shots that were otherwise untouched (this is how they got rid of the see-through snowspeeders).

Umm...actually, the transparent snowspeeders (and transparent ships in space, too) are still transparent in the SE, despite the fact the ILM claimed they fixed it through recompositing. Outright lie on their part, apparently. I'm not sure if any shots were fixed, but it's quite obvious that a great deal of them weren't...

Vaderisnothayden said:

God knows how you can see a mediocre film like Raiders as being one of the greatest films ever made. Two good films (Crusade and Doom), one mediocre film (Raiders) and one bad film (Skull).

Wait...are you really saying that Doom is superior to Raiders?

I'd rate them like this:

-Crusade: 9.5/10

-Raiders: 9/10

-Doom: 3/10

-Skull: 2/10

Brilliant job, Adywan! The colours are vibrant, everything resounds with crystal clarity, and every updated element is a major improvement. Absolutely no negative reactions here; everything's awesome. As stoked for this release as I already was, you somehow managed to crank to excitement factor up another tenfold. Kudos, sir. You are truly a pinnacle in this fanbase.

And 005, many thanks for your comparison slideshow. It was quite helpful in pointing out some of the minor details that I otherwise would've missed. :)

Can't wait for 2010!

I watched Doom and thoroughly enjoyed it, though I do miss the heart-ripping scene.

As for Crusade, I loved the idea of replacing the opening (the lil' Indy sequence never really did it for me), but a lot of the other cuts he made were cuts I just couldn't live with, so I never watched it. One of these days, I'd love to make a hybrid edit that uses InfoDroid's opening but leaves the rest of the movie intact...lamentably, though I have all the necessary software, I just don't have the time to learn the ropes, so to speak, so my dream will probably never materialize...

Sweet! Downloading the trailer as we speak. Thanks, Ady.