Ryan vs. Dorkman 2

MalcolmOng said:
Just watched it. Great job all around! The choreography and effects were movie grade. Now if only you guys could flip and stuff...Heh maybe we'll see that in RVD3
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I figure we've got about four years to train. Next time I'm hoping we can do some wire stuff. :happy:

triplej96 said:
It was great vfx are amazing...What all did you use for vfx just After Effects?
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There were three shots with 3D elements in them, and I believe our 3D artists used Maya and rendered with mental ray. AfterEffects for the bulk of the work, with the occasional 3D track in boujou.

Curtis_Rhoads said:
That's some darn fine work there Michael. Smack Ryan on the back for me, and say good job as well!
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Thanks man, glad you liked it.

Edgen said:
hey guys! Congrats on the release of DVD2.. 90,000 views on uTube is definitely something to be proud of. Keep up the success and good luck on the bts and OST sales. What a Great way to make your money back. :)
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Thanks. I don't think we'll make much money off it, but every little bit helps.
 
Kudos, Dorkman. I was a fan of the first when it came out and I just happened upon the second one while browsing through YouTube. I didn't realize you were a DVXuser. :D Keep up the good work.
 
over 200,000 hits on youtube already. That's pretty incredible. Great job guys.
 
great job on this! i really liked it. when justin (snodart) and i were first getting into digital filmmaking RvD blew us away, and this is definitely a worthy successor. loved the sparks on the lightsaber hits and the lightsaber-melting-metal effects. editing was nice and tight. i have a few quick questions:

how did your macbook do editing the 720p footage? justin and i are considering upgrading from the dvx to the hvx, but we have no experience with HD and always figured our computers couldn't handle it. we have powermac g5s and a top of the line macbook pro. were there any hiccups, or is it no different than editing SD footage? can you still do transitions, etc real time in FCP without rendering? is it different if you're shooting 1080p?

how will you handle scaling down the footage for the DVD? how do you go about downrezzing from 720p to 480p?

i know i could probably find the answers to these questions if i searched around a bit, but i figured since you just made the switch to HD and use the hvx and FCP, it would be great to get your perspective.

again, excellent job with this. what a huge endeavor with the score, which was outstanding. congrats!
 
It sounds like you've got everything you'll need to edit HD right out of the box. Our computer had no problem handling the 720p footage without pre-rendering. We never tried any dissolves, but we did throw color correction on pretty much every shot and those were still real-time effects. I never had to think about the fact that we were working in HD.

As far as 1080i, which we used for a few shots where we wanted a little more leeway in framing, there were a few hiccups. We had to pre-render the footage, but I assume that's only because the footage didn't match the sequence settings. Also, and somewhat more annoying, FCP's "advanced pulldown removal" doesn't work with 1080i/24pA. I guess there's too many lines of resolution or something, but whatever the reason, it didn't work. We had to do the pulldown removal in AfterEffects. (If anyone can explain where I went wrong, I'd love to hear it.)

Because we had such a heavy effects workload, we had to determine what the best intermediate compression would be, so that there was little to no generational loss between renders. Unfortunately, we discovered that even the so-called "lossless" codecs introduced noise and artifacts. Ultimately the decision was made to render everything with compression set to "None". That meant our 7 minute scene was 27GB on disk (and eventually 54GB, since we had both the raw and the rendered footage archived).

Final Cut was NOT able to handle all that uncompressed footage without rendering first. However, by the time we got to that stage, the cut was already locked, so it wasn't really necessary to be able to work in real time, we were just replacing the old footage in the timeline with the new.

One pain in the ass I want to mention that we just couldn't figure out: when rendering out of AfterEffects, and then importing into Final Cut, FCP would, for some reason, ignore the last frame of the video. Without fail. It just decided that frame didn't count for some reason. Again, if anyone can shed some light on that, it'd be stellar.
 
hmmm. now the switch to hvx is even more tempting. what about the issue of downrezzing to dvd? have you done that yet or figured out how you'll be doing it?

are there ways to submit films to fests in HD? how did you give your footage to the theater in LA to project in HD - on a hard drive? as far as i know, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray burners aren't available yet, so i'm just wondering how that's done.
 
Tim Young said:
hmmm. now the switch to hvx is even more tempting. what about the issue of downrezzing to dvd? have you done that yet or figured out how you'll be doing it?
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Final Cut will do just fine, if you drop your HD footage into an SD timeline and render it out. It'll take care of scaling and everything for you. But FCP, unfortunately, can't introduce the 3:2 pulldown upon rendering. It'll do it in real-time when outputting to a monitor, or to tape, but for some reason it's not an option when you render a digital file. A lot of DVD programs can do "progressive" DVDs anyway, with the DVD player itself introducing the pulldown as necessary, so it may not be an issue. But if you HAVE to burn a pure NTSC signal (iDVD, for example, can't deal with 24p source), render it out through AfterEffects.

Tim Young said:
are there ways to submit films to fests in HD? how did you give your footage to the theater in LA to project in HD - on a hard drive? as far as i know, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray burners aren't available yet, so i'm just wondering how that's done.
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DVD Studio Pro, the latest update, has introduced the ability to burn HD DVD projects with a standard DVD burner, compatible with many HD DVD players. I know a few people who downloaded the DivX version of RvD2 and did that, and it worked in their XBOX 360s.

But I don't know if most festivals will accept anything other than a standard DVD (some even continue to demand a VHS backup!). We were able to show our project in HD because we rented the theatre and hooked up our laptop to the projector. But even if you don't show it in HD, the quality is definitely noticable (heck, it's noticable in a YouTube window, and that's 1/4 the resolution of the source!).

All in all, I'm personally a major advocate for the Panasonic HVX. If anyone at Panasonic wants me to pimp it officially, you know where to find me. :laugh:
 
Hey Dorkman,

nice to see you here. I've just been showing RvD2 to my dad and he was very impressed.

I personally like RvD2 a lot, for me it is like the fight in Episode 3 should have been. You perfectly show how destructive a Lightsaber can be, not just for cutting of limbs but for totally destroying your enviroment.

I read somewhere, that all the sparks were digital or added in post (besides that water thing, I saw that wire), is that right? If that is true, than that was a hell of a job compositing that because I havent noticed at all watching and still don't that it is post work.

RvD2 is just like RvD just impressing and is again inspiering me very much. I've been around the TF.N Fanfilms since 2000 I think and one of my first fanfilms was Broken Allegiance, BUT the movies like RvD or Art of the Saber just made me realize that I can do that too! I think therefor it is also Ryans and your fault, that I'm now where I am. A filmstudent in Munich, Germany. Sounds a bit stupid, but I was work like yours that made become what I am now.

AND I am participating in a pretty big Star Wars Movie for 2 years now (and YES, there are others than Tydirium) called "Operation Incom".
 
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

Blood Angel said:
I read somewhere, that all the sparks were digital or added in post (besides that water thing, I saw that wire), is that right? If that is true, than that was a hell of a job compositing that because I havent noticed at all watching and still don't that it is post work.
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Well, it's right and it's wrong. All of the sparks were added in post, but none of them were digital. We shot real spark elements with Bob Forward of Detonation Films.

That includes the saber in the water. I'm not sure what wire you think you see -- you may be seeing a crack in the concrete floor -- but those sparks and steam, though real elements, are also composited.
 
Okay, so I wanted to talk about some of the less-noticable effects in RvD2. Some of these effects kind of need to be seen in motion, so we'll save that for the DVD, but I can mention a few here.

The first shot is the only one without a before-and-after comparison, as it's not really necessary. One major difference between the two films, of course, was that we shot and mastered RvD2 in 720p High Definition. This, plus the added color resolution of DVCPRO (4:2:2 as opposed to miniDV's 4:1:1) meant there was a lot more detail to deal with and pay attention to than there had been in the original RvD:

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Look closely at my glasses to see what I mean. In the original RvD, there was one shot, with three frames, where you could see the stunt blade through the glasses and I added a "refraction" over that blade. In RvD2, it happened a LOT more often. This is only one frame of a surprisingly large handful where it was necessary.

Okay, next shot:

The long dolly shot where some people think we should see reflections, they may not be entirely wrong. In the original shot you could actually see the shadows of the sabers very clearly in the reflective metal background. We didn't worry about prop shadows for most of the film, but in this case they were quite prominent, and so we removed them. We considered replacing them with reflections, but determined that it would be too distracting and call too much attention to itself, so we decided against it.

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In this next shot, aside from the obvious effects of adding damage to the wall, there's an effect that's less apparent (hopefully not at all). When I kicked him to push him back up against the wall, my arm swung forward to balance me. It was the arm holding the lightsaber, and though I initially just added the saber blade, we decided that it was too clear at that moment that with a flick of my wrist I could end the fight, with my arm in that position. So we opted to remove it entirely during the middle portion of the shot.

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Every shot where you see the wall has digital damage tracked to it. But this shot had a particular challenge. We shot without giving as much though as we should have to what was in the background of each shot. So not only do you see the wall in the shot, but you ALSO see a piece of machinery that we had moved against it to get it out of the way during the shoot. Instead of just tracking the damage to the wall, Ryan had to completely remove the machinery as well.

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For the shot where he cuts through my saber, he actually built an emitter with a damaged end that could spin freely, with a digital glow added, and sparks and smoke composited in. But one thing that may not be immediately apparent is, he only built the emitter, not an entire saber. Instead, we placed a plain silver tube under his foot, and lined up the emitter with that. We thought initially that it might not matter, but given the angle and the resolution of the shot, we decided it did, and composited the actual body of the saber into the shot, under his foot and behind the spinning emitter.

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We got the very last shot only moments before we had to leave and catch our flight at the airport. This meant that we got the shot in the afternoon, whereas the rest of the film had been shot in the middle of the night. There were some windows and skylights with sunlight streaming through them, and it was impossible, using only the available lighting, to expose both myself and the very reflective metal objects behind me correctly.

We opted to shoot exposed for me, of course, and then from the same camera position shot the machinery from several different exposures, trying to bring back the detail and remove the inconsistently blown-out highlights. I took an exposure I thought looked right, and tracked and composited it over the machinery.

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The shot is still probably brighter than it should be, but there's only so much you can do.
 
Hey doorkmanscott,

Im looking at buying your behind the scenes dvd but want to know whats on it.... On the website it states Shot-by-shot visual effects breakdowns of the film detailing the processes and unique challenges presented by certain shots.

How indepth is it, is it like a tutorial or more a breif explination? Will there be a tutorial on how the molten metal effects where done?

Do we get to see how you made your smoke and spark elements?

cheers watched the RVD2 short and loved it.... My fav part was the fight scene agains the metal wall..... sparks, molten metal and powder marks.... Love it....

cheers

Michael Freudenberg
 
Good question. The explanations are going to be fairly in-depth and go through the more complex shots, but they won't be what you'd call tutorials in the sense that they're not going to walk you through achieving the effect in any particular software solution.

So, for example, a breakdown might say something like "We took fractal noise, pumped up the contrast, and used that as a displacement map", and show you the effect of each particular change.

What the breakdown will NOT do is say "With your solid layer selected, go to the Effects menu, go down to Noise and Grain, and click 'Fractal Noise'. When the Effects Controls pop up, adjust the 'Contrast' slider" etc.

Basically, they will walk you through the process, not the procedure.
 
Could you tell me this dorkmanscott.

The molten metal effects when the sabers cut into that wall how where tehy created? do you have a tutorial on it or do you know of where I can get one...

Reason is in the next year or so I will begin putting tother my first feature length Tele movie which will be a sci fi peice. I have been looking for this tye of effect for blast hits.

Where they a 3D elemnt that was comped or a 2D element?

How much for you guys to put a special one off tutorial for me on how you made this elegant effect.

Mike
 
Hey Michael. I wanted to let you know that I only recently came across the first RvD short, and I was blown away with your choreography. Very impressive movements. I have yet to watch the sequel, but I'm sure it's even better than the original. I have to admit though that I wasn't really excited about seeing another RvD. In all honesty, I was pretty disgusted with the idea at first. I guess with so many lightsaber movies (not to mention Star Wars fanfilms, which I'm not crazy about to begin with) on the internet, it's easy to get sick of them. That, and it just killed me to see so much money going into a project like that.

However, you guys did something that you're proud of, and if delivering a sequel is what the fans want, that's what they want. In that area I salute you both and wish you the best of luck on your future projects. I'm really looking forward to seeing some more original material from both of you.
 
DammitJanet said:
That, and it just killed me to see so much money going into a project like that.
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I understand the feeling, but unfortunately it's a catch-22.

In principle I would have loved to spend the money we spent on RvD2 on something else, a narrative short or something. But the only reason we had that money was because we had promised RvD2 and people who wanted to see it donated the budget. They didn't want "a film from the makers of RvD", they wanted RvD2. So that's what we delivered.

DammitJanet said:
I'm really looking forward to seeing some more original material from both of you.
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Just as a note, there is very little in RvD2 that is not, in fact, original material. All the footage, effects, choreography, foley, and music are original material. Only the concept of lightsabers and some of their sound effects are borrowed.

I know what you really mean to say, I just think we deserve some credit for originality. It's not like we re-cut existing footage and just stuck our names on it.

On that same note, we're working on a lot of non-lightsaber stuff right now. It's just a matter of which one comes to fruition first.
 
Just watched this.

Thought the camera work was pretty dang good, and I'd like to see the 720p version.

I liked most of the FX -- some of it was very clever -- and the use of the lightsaber in ways you always wished they would have done in the movies. It looked like you thought out the implications of the weapon and the use of the Force pretty thoroughly. Good use of a few subtle gags. (There were a couple of spots where the sabers cast shadows.)

It seemed like good portions of the fight looked obviously choreographed, though, and a little backstory would have been nice. This second time around, you could have done a little more characterization.
 
In case some of you dont know, the RVD website has been updated with lots of new content!

http://www.ryanvsdorkman.com

Remastered Version of RVD1
High Quality Downloads of both films in different formats (included an ISO file)

Lots of goodies, give it a look.

- Kyle
 
Man I saw the original RvD YEARS ago when I was doing research on doing a lightsaber fight. That choreography is NOT easy and needless to say I've learned a lot about filmmkaing since 4 years ago :)
 
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