Unforseen Complications

Chapter 3 is up at last. I sincerely apologize for taking so long write it. I guarantee that Chapter 4 will be finished and posted by next Friday.

I must admit that I'm very underwhelmed by the response, or rather lack thereof, to my previous post. I figured that a place that machines custom lightsaber hilts would generate at least a little buzz. And I can't even blame Sweeney Todd for it anymore!

Several dilemmas have arisen for our proposed Star Wars/Doctor Who FanFilm, tentatively titled Doctor Who versus The Sith Lord. While we have a completed script, it still needs to be cleaned up a bit, mainly in making the Doctor's lines sound more, for lack of a better word, Doctor-ish. Fortunately, nerdjedi's got someone who can take care of that. We are also in need of some actors; I will be playing the role of the Sith (I already have some costume ideas), but we still need a Jedi Knight and a Doctor. nerdjedi has someone in mind for the roll of The Doctor, but that still leaves us down one Jedi.

A bigger problem is the lack of props; while we could order a pair of relatively inexpensive ($50-$75 each) lightsaber hilts from Random Sabers (see below for info), they have a waiting list for props that is about three months long. We are also in need of a TARDIS, and while I have found accurate plans for one on the web, nerdjedi doesn't believe we can build one and make it look good. However, seeing as the only full-scale replica that I've been able to locate costs upwards of $5,000, it doesn't look like he has much of a choice. But either way, we still need the wood, a lot of blue paint, and at least one person with serious woodshop skills.

However, our largest problem is the lack of a special effects technician (NOTE: SEE UPDATE BELOW). While nerdjedi is quite capable of creating the lightsaber blades (just look at his blog for proof), he does not want to, and I quote, "spend a year rotoscoping a million frames worth of lightsaber blades." I've tried to convince him that a) there won't be a million frames, and b) even if there were, it still wouldn't take a year. I've calculated that , based on an estimated run time of six minutes and shooting at 30 frames per second, there will be just over 10,000 frames total , approximately 2/3 of which will feature a lightsaber, so only about 6600 frames, which, figuring an average of 300 frames rotoscoped per day (I plan on helping) equates out to just over three weeks worth of video editing. So I really don't see what nerdjedi's complaining about (It took Ryan Wieber and Michael Scott about 4 months to rotoscope the original Ryan vs. Dorkman, and there's a lot more saber action in that one).

Okay, so maybe I'm taking this project seriously and no one else is. But this is the closest I've ever come to actually making a movie. So needless to say, I really want this to work.

UPDATE:

nerdjedi just informed me that he is not unwilling to undertake several weeks/months of rotoscoping, but is rather unable; we don't have Adobe After Effects, and even if we did download it, we don't have the program necessary for it to work (Adobe Premier). And we can't download it, it costs $200+. And nerdjedi has also informed me that my estimates for how long it would take to rotoscope were extremely inaccurate: the movie will be far longer than 6 minutes, and with our current resources, there is no way any single person can rotoscope 300 frames per day (It'll take approximately 50 hours per 300). We think we might just rewrite the script and replace the Jedi and Sith with a ninja and a pirate (or something like that)...

I would like to apologize to nerdjedi for the statements I made earlier in this post. I made wildly outrageous assumptions, both about his abilities and his attitude. For that, I am deeply sorry.