FEATURE: Star Trek - Horizon

T

tommygdawg

Well-known member
Hey, everyone

I've just completed my three plus year adventure of creating a Star Trek fan film. I've always wanted to be a filmmaker, and being a huge Trek fan, I decided to do a fan film as my first feature (after many shorts and such). I wrote, directed, edited, and scored the film as well as created all of the visual effects and costumes. I realize many people will (and have) criticize this venture. "It's not feasible to make a fan film," "it's not smart," "it's just plain stupid," etc. But I will simply say this: Horizon has been a tremendous experience for me and I've learned so much on this project and I wouldn't trade it for anything. What I learned on this I will carry forward into every project that follows in my career.

All that said, I wanted to show it to you all.


The Coalition of Planets, a young alliance of worlds led by Earth, is at war with the Romulan Empire. Desperate for a chance to gain the upper hand in the war, the Coalition forms an alliance with T'mar, a Romulan deserter, in the hopes that she can provide valuable intelligence on her former masters.

Thank you!
- Tommy
 
Nice, I'll have to take a look tomorrow. Thanks for sharing. I seem to remember seeing this coming along a while ago, glad to see it continued.
 
Gee, watched the first 10mins so far. Thats tonights entertainment sorted.

Looks great, no amazing. watched one of your vlogs too about how you put some of the scenes together - and WOW the amount of time, effect and I bet sweat - is amazing.

Congrats to everyone involved.
 
It looks great! The audio mix is a bit rough though; The dialogue in some (most) scenes is being suffocated by the score. Could have used some tweaking just to bring it forward a bit more.
But I'm 55 minutes in and loving it. So great when fan films don't suck. Superb work!
 
Thank you everyone for all the nice things you've said. Honestly I expected everyone here to hate it :P Really nice to know that isn't the case! Regarding budget: I spent, by the end, between $25,000 and $35,000. I haven't tallied the exact numbers in a while. That money went to things like computer upgrades, software licenses, camera/lighting gear, costuming materials, etc.

The reason I was able to get away so cheap is because I did mostly everything on the film and didn't take a paycheck. I had a few people (besides cast) contribute some time to the film. One guy made the three Vulcan ship models, another made one of the Romulan ship models, etc. Of course I have to thank Michael Huang, the sound designer, who worked for free.

Speaking of sound, I do agree that it's hard to find the perfect mix. I actually thought the music was too quiet on some systems. I made a choice not to ask the sound designer/mixer to do too many revisions because he was working for free and it was at a place that I was happy with. I think overall he did a great job, especially considering the fact that he never received a cent.
 
tommy, i've only watched a little bit so far, but the visual effects are outstanding for such a low budget film. the fact that you did so much of the film by yourself is very impressive. i wish i could do even a tenth of what you did here. job well done! :thumbsup:
 
Tommy, congratulations. This is an outstanding achievement - three years you've dedicated to the project are not that much because of the scale of your effort since practically you've done it all by yourself. And I can certainly understand and appreciate and admire your dedication and passion - I'm trying to do conceptually something similar (though on a smaller scale and, I'm afraid with less knowledge of CGI) and know how difficult and time consuming it is.

I also read and watched you blogs - many thanks for sharing your techniques. My workflow process, though conceptually similar, has some differences. But I'm afraid I've been trying to reinvent many weels since I'm not a CGI pro and have been devising many things myself as I'm going so I'll sure pick many things you talked about as well as from the scene designs in your film. By the way, my feeling is that for many indie and/or low budget productions the use of computer imagery is the way to go since since it allows to minimize costs (and I'm talking not only about VFX but first of all about using virtual sets).

if you don"t mind several questions:
- What was your green screen size? Was it a three wall setup with cyc?
- it seems that most of the compositing was done in 3D max (or any other 3D modeling SW), and you used AE primarily to enrich your scenes with additional details and VFXs. If this is true, have you ever considered AE or Nuke or Fusion as your main composition tool?
- I noticed that you use a lot things like lens/optical flares, glow as well as some other shot design approaches, for example, relatively large number of mid shots, shallow DOF, etc. Were all these things your stylistic approach to the overall film's visual structure as your way to convey the story, or you used those as tools primarily to solve many usual problems arising from compositing (especially with limited resources)?

My my hat off to you,

Serge
 
Thanks so much, all. It's really great to know that you all are liking what you see!

DPStewart, thank you! Nice to see you like my reviews and the films I do :P

silyn said:
Tommy, congratulations. This is an outstanding achievement - three years you've dedicated to the project are not that much because of the scale of your effort since practically you've done it all by yourself. And I can certainly understand and appreciate and admire your dedication and passion - I'm trying to do conceptually something similar (though on a smaller scale and, I'm afraid with less knowledge of CGI) and know how difficult and time consuming it is.

I also read and watched you blogs - many thanks for sharing your techniques. My workflow process, though conceptually similar, has some differences. But I'm afraid I've been trying to reinvent many weels since I'm not a CGI pro and have been devising many things myself as I'm going so I'll sure pick many things you talked about as well as from the scene designs in your film. By the way, my feeling is that for many indie and/or low budget productions the use of computer imagery is the way to go since since it allows to minimize costs (and I'm talking not only about VFX but first of all about using virtual sets).

if you don"t mind several questions:
- What was your green screen size? Was it a three wall setup with cyc?
- it seems that most of the compositing was done in 3D max (or any other 3D modeling SW), and you used AE primarily to enrich your scenes with additional details and VFXs. If this is true, have you ever considered AE or Nuke or Fusion as your main composition tool?
- I noticed that you use a lot things like lens/optical flares, glow as well as some other shot design approaches, for example, relatively large number of mid shots, shallow DOF, etc. Were all these things your stylistic approach to the overall film's visual structure as your way to convey the story, or you used those as tools primarily to solve many usual problems arising from compositing (especially with limited resources)?

My my hat off to you,

Serge
Click to expand...

First off, thank you so much! Your questions:

The green screen, it's your average one wall and floor deal. Believe me, I wish I had something as nice as a three wall setup, but it was nothing that fancy :P I had it setup in my basement. It's probably 7 or 8 feet wide and comes out onto the floor. If you missed the vlog, check out this one where I talk about the setup I used for the greenscreen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MjOmGMRaKQ

The visual effects are a marriage of the 2D and 3D applications. I do all of my compositing inside of After Effects and use 3DS Max for the creation and rendering of the 3D elements and virtual cameras. IE, I'll render a shot of my virtual bridge set, bring it into After Effects, and then composite in the footage of my actors with AE. I briefly went over a lot of the techniques in this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ3i7RQ2788

The optical effects, lens choices, it was a bit of both a stylistic choice and a way to help cover up the green screen. When doing this massive amount of effects work, especially at my low budget level, I think it's very important to help blend the edges in every way possible, both literally and figuratively. For example, I actually do like lens flares, I just think they look cool. But, they can also help cover up some issues with compositing. The overall haze/glow is a look that I might not use in the future (at least not so strongly) but it's another thing I felt really helped the compositing. That said, I liked the glow look. Regarding the use of usually longer lenses, that's another thing that really helps sell a composite. It's almost always going to be easier to make a medium shot look real than it is a wide shot. All that said, it really is a mixed bag of stylistic choices and practical choices on these ideas.
 
tommygdawg said:
....
The green screen, it's your average one wall and floor deal. Believe me, I wish I had something as nice as a three wall setup, but it was nothing that fancy :P I had it setup in my basement. It's probably 7 or 8 feet wide and comes out onto the floor. If you missed the vlog, check out this one where I talk about the setup I used for the greenscreen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MjOmGMRaKQ
....
Click to expand...

Thank you for your answers and the link (I missed that vblog). Very insightful. As far as the green screen is concerned, I feel your pain. With my latest sci-fi short (plan to release it in a month) I decided to rent a studio (20x20x20 - 3 walls with cyc - enough for the the scenes I designed but it had low ceiling, I think 9-10,' so some shots were still difficult to pull off).

I also watched yesterday your one-hour tutorial - very interesting. My workflow is different - all compositing done in AE (using E3D plug-in) which I think now was not the best approach. Probably Nuke would be more efficient/better because of the shared 3D space and node based compositing. If there is an interest, I'll be glad to show what I do. What's also interesting is that my stylistic and visual design choices are are different, and I've realized that results in my choice of techniques and focus in VFX.

Are you planning to continue using extensively CGI in your productions?
 
tommygdawg said:
Speaking of sound, I do agree that it's hard to find the perfect mix. I actually thought the music was too quiet on some systems. I made a choice not to ask the sound designer/mixer to do too many revisions because he was working for free and it was at a place that I was happy with. I think overall he did a great job, especially considering the fact that he never received a cent.
Click to expand...

It doesn't have anything to do with volume - It's more how the music and the dialogue occupy the same frequencies.
Check out http://vashivisuals.com/5-eq-audio-for-video-tips-for-filmmakers/
I feel like tip #3 and and the tip #4 part on Vocal Presence might make it sound even better :-)
 
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