Taolar

Well, Part 2 seemed to render fine last night.  Part 1 is still rendering with these brief flashes of weird color.  I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing differently with the two.  But I need to work today.

DJ, you're right, Xvid is the codec of choice.  I incorrectly use Divx as a generic term, kind of like some people use the words Coke and Bandaid.  Any Divx decoder will be able to view it, but I am definitely using Xvid as the encoder.

Dr M- yes, this will be high-bitrate, full rez.  The first half is 1 hour 45 mins, and I will use whatever bitrate will get me to the standard CD-R size (720mb), and the second half is 1 hour 15 mins, and I'll probably size that to a CD-R too, so it should have a higher bitrate, which is good because most of the action scenes take place in part 2.

-T

Premiere is the most frustrating "professional" program ever I've ever worked with.  I'm still trying to iron out render issues.

-T

This initial "pre-release" was meant to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Superman the Movie, and is Divx only.  Sometime next year, I will release a DVD, with polished FX, main titles, and an overhauled audio mix.

Unfortunately, the render failed last night.  Gotta love Premiere.

I'm starting a new render before I go to work.

-T

Ok, so it's official.  I completed a releasable version of Son of Jorel about 5 minutes ago, which is (at least in my time zone!) on the 30th anniversary of the American wide release of Superman: the Motion Picture.  I almost didn't make it.  Lots of snags over the past couple weeks, not to mention the last couple years. But it all worked out.  I didn't get everything done that I had planned over the years, but it is in a state that I'm happy with, and that hopefully people will find entertaining.

I still need to render it to Divx/Xvid format before posting a torrent for you all to snag.  I'm going to tell premiere to render to file while I go to bed.  And I'm sleeping with my fingers crossed...

Thanks for the support of everyone at OriginalTrilogy.com.  I hope it was worth the wait...

-Taolar/Marcus

Doctor M said:

Have you give thought to a 'making of' featurette?

I'd love to see some before and afters strung together so we can marvel at your genius.

Ha!  I'm far from a genius.  If anyone here deserves that title, it's Adywan.  SoJ has nowhere near the level of detail as Star Wars Revisited, nor did it take the same level of talent.

I can't even think about a making of or anything like that right now.  But thanks for the interest.  Lets see if you're still interested after actually watching SoJ! 

-T

I have no idea yet.  Do you have suggestions?

Spent way too much time last night (until 1:30a) and this morning trying to fix the last only remaining shot in part 1.  This was a shot that derailed my progress months ago, because I just couldn't figure out how to get it done without looking like total garbage, and I ended up losing enthusiasm for the project.  Its by far the most labor intensive shot I've done yet, and was absolutely necessary for the release.  It's a little frustrating to put this much effort into a shot, that if done right, won't be noticed as an FX shot at all. 

Last night I had a bright idea, and it seemed to work when previewing it, but whenever I actually rendered it to file, everything was screwed up.  I was pulling my hair out, easily wasting 3 hours on it, and it was all fixed this morning by one check box (preserve framerate in rendering). And now it looks great.  Not perfect, but good enough for the Divx release.  All audio mixing is done on part 1, and now that I have inserted that last shot, it's complete (except for the titles, which I'm putting off until the DVD release).

So, now I'm going to work on the audio mix of Part 2, and a few FX shots, and I should be done.  I expect/hope to finish today, as planned.

-T

26 left.

-T

I'm down to about 40 items.  I have all day and night tomorrow available to work on it...

-T

focuspuller said:

Don't feel the pressure of time, take as long as you feel you need to, or want to.

Thanks for the support!  I think the pressure of a deadline is the only thing that keeps me going.  I'd actually much rather be playing Rock Band, or enjoying an intoxicant   Setting the 15th as a deadline has put my butt in gear. I've got more done this weekend than in the past 9 months.

I didn't think I was going to work on this tonight, but I muscled through some FX work over the last couple hours.  It was a few shots, but amounted to only one item on my list.  Turned out pretty good though, especially for a rush job.  I don't think most people will even notice that they're FX shots.

I'm taking tomorrow off, and should be able to work on this for a few hours in the morning.

-T

I crossed off 9 items this morning.  But found a couple more FX shots that I forgot to add to the list.

Should have some time tomorrow to continue.

-T

I've worked on it for about 7 hours today.  I have a list of 64 issues that I'd like to fix before release.  The majority are audio related and most of those should be relatively easy to fix.  8 are FX related, 4 of which will be labor intensive.  

I'll see how many I can get done tomorrow.  :)

I worked on getting After Effects and Premiere working last night.  No luck whatsoever.  So I copied all my files to another drive and reformatted the hard drive and spent until midnight reinstalling windows, then my internet connection went down, before I could download audio and video drivers.  So that's what I'm doing this right now.

Man, I can't say enough bad things about Windows.  For the last 6 months or so I've had a dual boot Ubuntu/XP system, and I'm loving almost everything about Ubuntu.  One of the only reasons I kept XP was to run Premiere and After Effects, but when this project is over I'm switching over to open source video software, and hopefully will be rid of Windows once and forever.

I'll keep this page updated with my progress with SoJ.

-T

Wow, since I announced my deadline, I have had a rough couple of months.  My business has all but flatlined.  Other than having Aftereffects completely crap out on me two weeks ago (and still not working after re-install), I have spent ZERO time on this project.  All time has been spent keeping business afloat and family happy and fed.

Wife and kid leaving town this weekend means I will work on this project Friday night and all Saturday, and hope to have a version that I'm not embarrassed by done by December 15th.  I hate missing deadlines.

Thanks for the interest.  Wish I had the spare time to work on this.  This economy blows.  I hope everyone else is doing well.

-M

Thanks for the interest.  I'm sure I'll release a DVD version at some point, even if I decide I'm not going to "fully" complete the edit.  I have deleted scenes that I'd like to release, and maybe a commentary track.  But I like the route that Adywan took: Divx release, consider all the critiques, then DVD release with fixes.

-T

WheresBlackhawk said:

Soooooooo...

It's mid October...

Any news?

I haven't found much time to work on this, unfortunately.  Between keeping my small business afloat, and spending time with my 5 year old, there's been almost no progress on SoJ in the last few months.  And by the looks of it, I'm not going to have much more time available in the forseeable future.  

But I've sat on this thing long enough.  I am going to announce now that I'm going to release this edit on December 15th, the 30 year anniversary of "Superman: the Movie," in whatever state it's in by then.  At the very least I should have the essential FX scenes done and an adequate stereo mix.  It probably won't be the exact movie that I wanted to release, but by that point I would have already spent 2 1/2 years working on it, and I can't justify to myself, my wife, and you fine folks delaying release any more.

This will be a DIVX/Xvid, NTSC, stereo, no frills v0.9 release.  If it's received well enough, in the future I might hire a few people to complete my want list and release a v1.0 in NTSC and PAL DVD format, 5.1 audio, with extras.  And I've been working with HD files whenever available, so if WB ever releases the original Superman 2 in HiDef, I should be able to do an HD release. But the only guarantee at this point is that December 15th will see SoJ v0.9 released.

lorang said:

It would be cool to have some more teasers of work completed just to keep us at bay!

Sorry, you'll have to wait two more months...

Doctor M said:

OMG, I completely forgot about this edit.

OMG, me too!  LOL  J/K

-T

Not much to report.  Looking at my project files, it seems I haven't modified them in about 3 1/2 months.  Ack! 

I've been working on other short film projects.  Just completed the 48 hour film contest in San Diego, which was fun.

But I need to get back to work on this if I'm going to meet my November deadline.  I have to finish at least 3 more scenes, each composed of several fx shots, before I'd even consider releasing it.  And there are a lot of "wants" that would be cool to finish, but are not absolutely necessary.  At the rate I'm going, I may need to drop some of them if I want to get this out in the next 20 years...

C3PX said:

I have wanted for years to be an athiest, but have seen too much science cannot explain.

For instance?

Mielr said:

Which is why Rush Limbaugh gets paid 400 million dollars a year now.

 

Sorry, but that's 400 million for 8 years.  Still a lot of money, but only half what they're giving Howard Stern.

I would bet most of the people here are not strongly right-wing nor left-wing.  I would think most just choose not to enter into political debate, knowing that most of those who associate themselves strongly with either the left or the right already have their mind completely made up, regardless of the facts.  Debate, for most of them, is only an opportunity to spout their side's talking points, and often an excuse to shamelessly insult the other side.

The truth is neither side is 100% right.  If you don't believe that then you're really only listening to one side of the media, your parents, or your religion.  Those who truly listen to both side realize they both have some good points.

vbangle said:

Republican or Democrat....it doesn't really matter....BOTH parties are corrupt and morally bankrupt.

 

 

Agreed!  Why should I have to go along with higher taxes and bigger government if I'm against stupid wars?  And why should I have to go along with phone tapping if I'm for gun rights???  Why should we have to deal with corporate welfare regardless of which viable party I choose?  Lets vote them all out of office.

At comicon over the weekend at the WB booth they had a full size Owl ship.  It was friggen cool.  They had the side hatch open, and everything looked functional and worn in.  It was so detailed, I'm pretty sure it wasn't just a replica.  They probably used it as a set in the movie.

ben_danger said:

maybe if we band together and make a REBORN tribute it will inspire ID and TJ to restart the project?

would anyone be interested in dividing the movie up and each person does a section each, no matter how bad/good it turns out?

we can base it purely on the order of scenes they planned, in easily digestable low resolution that our mortal computers can just about handle!

 

we can call it STAR WARS REBORN: a new hope......

If you want to perform CPR on this project, have a go at separating the dialog tracks from the prequels.  If you can find a method with professional results, this project will have a pulse.

Try changing the horizontal scale of the "2d crawl animated" comp in the "3d crawl" comp, and let me know if that does it for you.

-T

This is a sad day.  This was the edit I was looking forward to.  This was one of those cool big ideas that only come along once in a long while.  And the trailers were the best ever made for a fan edit. 

I hope the lack of enthusiastic responses didn't play too much into your decisions to stop.  I hope everyone realizes that there are a lot of lurkers on this board that don't speak up even when they see something exceptionally cool.  I enjoyed the clip that was posted, and should have spoke up about it.  It feels so much more like a real star wars film with that soundtrack.

I think I speak for all of us when I say that if after you take a break for a month or a year you decide you want to give it another go, you'll have our support.

-T

I should have included anamorphic as an option.  0.5 coming soon...