Captain Amazingly Incredi (9th Apr 2010 07:08)

DVD is available on Amazon, should you feel the need to support this poor cast and crew who haven't eaten in years (okay, I may have eaten way too much recently). http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Amazingly-Incredible-Vampires-Planet/dp/B003FSTVHW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1270796803&sr=8-4 Thanks to all the FXHomers (both team and public members) for your support. Couldn't have made this film (love it or hate it) without you!

Captain Amazingly Incredi (9th Apr 2010 07:04)

No worries, all entitled to our opinions... You're right about the keying... not in all shots but some were really tough as we had this shiny golden helmet, which was quite good at reflecting the green screen! Basically, we had no lighting guy (he pulled out a couple of days prior to shooting) so I stupidly did the "fix it in post" approach, hence the 3 year post production stint. Still, I'm happy with the end product. Although for the next one I'm taking a lot more time with story, instead of just stringing a bunch of one liners together. Got a lot of laughs in the theatre but it was definitely a love or hate thing. I heard people still in hysterics and quoting the lines afterwards... others were too scared to look at me because they thought it was so terrible (to tell you the truth I cringe a little at it myself now)... but that's pretty much like every movie ever made... can't please everyone. Audio is indeed slightly muffled, we ran all kinds of effects over it to get the old-school movie sound... probably doesn't come across in YouTube (can even hear subtle scratches and warbles etc if you listen carefully to the original) The trailer didn't have the effects run over the music so that probably didn't help... I think I put the music a little too loud on the trailer too... had a proper sound guy for the actual film! And it WAS just a bunch of mates having fun... no one got paid... though I wish I had... WAY too many hours spent in front of my Mac... the fun soon disappeared. lol. But yeah, if people like it, cool, if not... I won't lose too much sleep... I'm happy enough that this bloody project is over with! lol. By the way backgrounds are all hand-drawn 2D, not "simple" models. All drawn much higher rez than 1920x1080 (which caused all kinds of grief with the FXHome software!), so not quite sure what you're talking about when you say "obvious midmapped textures". Thanks for your input too

Sollthar (7th Apr 2010 09:51)

Hmm, this is a difficult one. It's obviously meant to be bad, so it does achieve it's goal. Allthough I just can't say that's a particularly good thing. :I With me definately not sharing that kind of humour, there's only technical aspects to look at and this trailer leaves certain things to be desired - considering this is apparently meant to be more then just a "a couple of friends have some fun in their spare time", for which it would be totally fine. First of all, the chroma key is rather obvious. There are edges and flickering visible even in youtube-o-vision. So the compositing job is dodgy. The grading and entire "meant to be bad" vibe makes this less of a problem, but it's still distracting - at least for me. The CG of the backgrounds is okay, allthough seems to vary in quality. While the opening shots are stylish and the whole entry certainly looks "cool", the CG itself could be easily improved (simple modelling and obvious midmapped textures, so not sufficient resolution even for that videosize). The audio mixing could do with a bit more refining between voices, ambience and music - so far, the levels seem to be incorrectly mixed. It seems to be recorded well, but at least on my boxes the output is kind of muddled. So as I said, this is a difficult one. In total, what I see here filmmakingwise is a bit lukewarm and underwhelming, packed in an environment of parody I can't really get into either. So I can't say that this would make me want to see more of it. Which is a shame really, as looks like there was a considerable amount of time, work and effort put into it. Could also be the way the entire thing is paced, which is also, kind of nothing. It's just a rather static dialogue scene followed by (funny) titles and some random images. Then title, then over. Sorry, if I sound too harsh or something. But it's the initial reaction I had to the trailer. It's not "bad" or anything, it's just not good enough to get away with being deliberately bad, if you know what I mean. But, I'm sure some more "fun loving" members of fxhome might get more of a kick out of it.