Forcery - the Definitive Edition - download now available!

Am using Ourmedia.org to host this on for the moment. We may get other hosting soon. One offer to mirror it has come up.

Folks, I'd like to ask something of you, but only if you really, truly enjoyed watching our little movie here. If you laughed and thought it wasn't a waste of your time and were genuinely entertained by it, I for one would REALLY appreciate it if you could spread the word on Forcery wherever you can. Point people to this blog and the links we have to it. There's a reason I'm asking this and I'm still collecting some thoughts on that. Right now, it means more to me than you can imagine if this film - which had a LOT of good people working on, and sacrificing for so that it could be made - could get a little (actually a LOT) more exposure. Some really good e-mails and comments have come in already, and I'm wanting to see this fly a little higher and keep on flying.

Consider this to be Version 1.1 of Forcery. In all respects the same as the initial release but we managed to fix a few things. The audio, for one: sounds MUCH better! A few of the special effects were recomposited/refined. The final scene was rebuilt completely from scratch (you'll definitely notice it when you see Frannie's lightsaber and the changed dialogue of the Mel's Drive-In waitress). Quite a few scenes were "tightened-up" to make it flow leaner and meaner. You probably won't notice these things if at all, but to me they came to stick out like a sore thumb. Right now, there's not much more that I know we could do, with what we had to make this with already. I'm more proud of it than ever :-)

As before, there are four versions of Forcery for you to download:

480 x 270 Extra Large - 508 Megabytes: the biggest/most robust version outside of the DVD.

448 x 252 Large - 355 Megabytes: the "regular large" version.

384 x 216 Medium - 192 Megabytes: medium-sized version.

256 x 144 Micro - 96 Megabytes: the "micro-sized" version. Still my favorite because it fits neatly onto a 128 MB USB flash drive (along with Quicktime installer) so I can take my entire motion picture around with me in my pocket. Or around my neck on its lanyard. Like the dead albatross from Rime of the Ancient Mariner...

By the way, if the download doesn't work for some reason at first, try again one or two more times: you will get through to it. Ourmedia's servers are a bit quirky sometimes but I've yet to see them totally fail to deliver the goods.

Anyway, enjoy the show! And please spread the word about Forcery! :-)

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Inmates in British prison watching Revenge of the Sith bootleg DVD

This story made me laugh for some reason. From contactmusic.com...

OUTRAGE AS STAR WARS ILLEGALLY SHOWN IN UK PRISON

A bootleg copy of the brand new STAR WARS movie, EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH, has been illegally screened in a British jail.

The pirate DVD was shown to prisoners at the Coldingley Jail in Surrey, despite the fact that the blockbuster has only been on release in cinemas for three weeks.

And police were amazed when an inmate reported the illegal screening, which is believed to have been organised by a prison officer.

One prisoner says, "Most people loved it. The last place you'd expect to watch pirate films is in jail.

"We don't have access to the DVD, so presumably a officer to put it on.

"It was a nice gesture - but pretty stupid really."

06/06/2005 14:02

This is sort of a step up from China, where they have prison inmates making bootleg DVDs :-P

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Okay, so it wasn't by LAST night, but Forcery Definitive Edition WILL be today :-)

Encoding to Quicktime is something I'm still striving to have some finesse at. Right now Media Cleaner is busy churning out four versions of Forcery - same sizes as the initial release - but with a few extra bells and whistles now that I learned how to do 'em. The movie should autoplay as soon as you open the file, and if you're downloading from the web it should start playing as soon as it's got enough info to run on while it's still coming in.

We'll have the website for it updated in the next few days too. Which'll include a VERY cool endorsement of the movie that I've been sitting on the past few days :-)

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Forcery version 1.1 available this evening

It's not a "special edition" like I referred to it as Saturday, more like how it SHOULD have been originally released had Fate smiled on us a little sooner. As it is, we did get lucky enough to have some things fall into place that let us improve on it a lot in places where it needed it. So no new material, but it is a better viewing experience. Melody and I happened to find ourselves each calling this one "Version 1.1" so that's what this, the definitive release, is going to be known as. When it's online later tonight just forget that the first release ever happened. Strike it from your mind. It never took place. You just imagined that you saw it already. "This isn't the movie you're looking for." Forget about it. Forget it, I say!! Maybe someday with a million dollars of funds I can give it a total work-over including new scenes and that'll be a real "special edition" but for now, let's just say that our first baby is walking around a bit.

In addition to a blooper reel, I'm also considering posting a "viewer's guide" to all the little in-jokes and sight gags that we stuck in this movie. Like, that's Chad's brother who's picture on one of the wanted posters in the sheriff's office. There's about five of them on the "Filks Found Guilty" newspaper clipping alone. All told, there might be a hundred such items spread throughout Forcery for both Star Wars and Stephen King fans (and everyone in between) to look for :-)

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AMC is showing Independence Day right now

Lisa said it was on earlier but it didn't register until now that she also said "it's on AMC!" Yup it's official now: Independence Day is an American Movie Classic. Funny thing: as much as I berate myself for the fact that I watched this seven times in the theaters when it first came out in '96, every time I wind up watching it again I understand anew what it was that kept me coming.

You see, this isn't a movie about evil aliens in fifteen-mile diameter spaceships blowing up the White House at all. Yeah the effects looked wicked cool, especially the scenes where the fighter jets are engaging the alien fighters beneath those monstrosities. Speaking of which, Independence Day probably ranks as the VERY LAST of the old-school special effects blockbusters given how ridiculously LITTLE computer-rendering was used in it, compared to something like Revenge of the Sith. That was neat eye candy but Independence Day was much like Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich's previous effort Stargate in that it focused on the characters more than the techno gimmickery involved. To me, Independence Day was and always will be about the way America should be: a land where there really is no division or meaningless factionalism. A country where every man (and woman) really is considered equal, and not a favored elite by virtue of birth or corporate backing. Independence Day is not a movie that either so-called "liberals" or "neo-cons" should enjoy: a Jew and a black man fly a spaceship together and save the world, and no one ever takes notice of that. The President of the United States is a REAL Air Force flyer who's not afraid to strap into an F-16 and take off after the bad guys alongside refugees from an RV flotilla. No one is stopping to figure out how to capitalize on this mess: they're just fighting to make sure that their children will have a world to wake up to tomorrow.

Man, Independence Day may be one of the most politically mocking movies of all time. No wonder it's always resonated with me somehow.

Anyway, glad to see that it's now being played on AMC alongside such other classics of the American screen as Every Which Way But Loose, Smokey and the Bandit Part 2, Death Race 2000 and National Lampoon's Animal House :-)

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Kyle Williams made my brain hurt this weekend

But in a good way!

Every time this kid has something profound to say - which is just about every time - I usually make a post about it with a link to whatever is his latest essay. I didn't forget about that this time at all. It's just that this week's Williams piece was very dense: we're talking on the scale of Tolkien or Rand here. It provoked a lot of things to think about and I wanted to make sure my brain was thoroughly wrapped around it before saying anything about it.

Suffice it to say, it's a BRILLIANT piece Williams has up at WorldNetDaily this weekend. Titled "Idolizing intolerance", this may be his most powerful piece yet. From his article...

It bothers me that many members of my denomination, Southern Baptist, claim that sending children to public school is a sin against God. It bothers me that the evangelical spokespeople in America were almost universally and emphatically pro-war during the Iraq campaign. It bothers me that abortion and homosexuality are the only issues that national evangelical activists care about. It bothers me that, according to surveys, evangelicals are more likely to be racist than unbelievers. These things bother me.

I don't have an opinion on homosexual marriage. I really don't care, but I believe it ridiculous for Christians to expect unbelievers to act Christian. I believe abortion is murder and should be outlawed, but I believe those who have abortions need love and a change of heart, not picket signs and hate. I don't believe in beating society over the head with morality, because outward signs of morality are worthless divorced from Christ. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that we must judge those inside the church, while God judges those outside...

I don't have the heart to steal his thunder by quoting his closing thoughts here. Mash here and check it out for yourself.

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The things that make your phone ring at 11:30 p.m.

Last night was a little interesting. I was playing The Matrix Online with fellow mates of our faction (we're the Priory of Zion on the Method server) when the phone rang. A good friend - that I've mentioned here quite a few times already - called to see if I'd be willing to assist in something. I said "yes" immediately.

Now, the task itself is pretty neat, but what's really got me stoked is where this is going to be at.

Will be able to post more about it toward the end of this month. Suffice it to say, it's the kind of situation that might make some people crap in their britches when they learn where a guy like me is gonna wind up running around in. I just hope that my security clearance checks out :-)

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Forcery "special edition" coming soon

I may even have it ready to go by tomorrow evening, depending on some factors.

Awright, this past week was a little harsh on my baby, the first movie I've ever made (hopefully not the last though). It was harsh on ME: something happened that seriously, seriously got me feeling rather despondent. Ummmm... "betrayed" would be a good word to use. That's one thing I don't take very well. Betrayal, especially after you've spent a long time earning a trust, is... well, that's pretty low.

It all had to do with Forcery. The details of which I'll be disclosing more about in the days to come. Yeah I was brought pretty low (and there's nothing wrong with admitting that) but in the past day or so there's been some things that have more than lifted my spirits. And I've been doing some thinking on the matter too.

(This'll all make sense soon, trust me. I'm gonna come out both barrels blazin' but there's a proper time for that, and right now ain't it. Suffice it to say, some hard things need to be said openly, about some people, and I'll be unloading that soon enough.)

But I can say this: Forcery picked up a... I'd say it's a pretty darned good endorsement, from someone who seemed pretty impressed with the film and if HE was impressed... whoa momma!! Not too shabby for a first film out the gate :-) The other thing is, we've found some possible venues that would see it promoted bigtime. But we're gonna "fix" a few things first. I know, the audio ain't that great: already talked about what happened there. Lo and behold, that's going to be fixed, and we found a VERY neat solution to it! A few minor things, stuff you probably won't even notice. I'd say that this upcoming "re-release" should be the definitive version, and this one out now just the "preliminary". Which isn't the usual way to do things: next time, we'll know. And we'll do better.

So anyhoo, I'll be posting a honking big write-up about some things soon, and will be bringing you an improved version of the movie. Hope you'll find it entertaining and enlightening :-)

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Revenge of the Sith viewings to date: 4

Saw it with my friend Johnny last night, who I've always dragged into seeing a new Star Wars movie every time for the past eight years (since the Special Editions) but this time he dragged me! I don't know how well he liked The Phantom Menace and he kinda liked Attack of the Clones but he REALLY dug Revenge of the Sith! It sparked quite a lot of conversation late last night as we wound down the evening at the good ol' Krispy Kreme. That's four times now I've seen this movie (saw it again last weekend with a family from our church) and my goal is to catch it at least six more times before the end of summer. That way I'll beat my previous "most times I've seen a movie in first-run" which was 9 times for The Phantom Menace in 1999. Before that it was 7 times the summer of 1996 for Independence Day.

Yeah I still can't believe it either: watching Independence Day seven frickin' times in the theater! You can go ahead and ask, I don't care: "Chris what the *#&@ were you thinking? WERE you thinking?!"

The cool thing about that was at the time I was running an Independence Day website, and got a nice e-mail about it from Dean Devlin. That so ruled :-)

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So ummm... looks like Bush lied to the American people so he could have his lil' war in Iraq...

...and really, can that be disputed, in any sane and rational way, at all?

I'll admit to being a late-comer to this whole "Downing Street memo" thing that's starting to heat up the newswires. Hey I spent the better part of the last two months making a movie, you tend to overlook a lotta things when that happens :-) So this morning I sat down and tried to catch up on everything that I missed, and this seems to be catching on in a big way. And why shouldn't it?

Because based on everything I'm reading, it's (A) been verified as accurate by Tony Blair's own government over there in Great Britain and (B) proves that the entire case that Bush and his gang built up to justify our going into Iraq was falsified!!

Y'know, King David cooked up a lie that sent Bathsheba's husband to the front lines where David knew he'd get killed. That was the death of one man that Nathan the prophet came and condemned David for. Now, think about the sixteen-hundred or so Americans that have perished since this mess started two years ago, for the sake of a lie: what might God have to say about that?

No doubt that some Bush-bot is going to be tempted to add a snide comment to this post, as they usually are whenever they find me writing about this. Something to the effect that I'm "un-American", that I should be "standing behind our president" or something REALLY asinine like "would you have preferred John F'ing Kerry?" Yes folks, these "good Christian Americans" think it's an act of virtue to use the "F-expletive" in constant reference to Bush's Democrat opponent in the 2004 election. That says more about a lack of civility than an abundance of stupidity but I digress... The point is, either myself or someone else, and probably a whole bunch of someone elses, is going to be slammed because we bring this - an impeachable offense and way moreso than a semen-stained dress could ever evoke - to the attention of others and based on that ALONE we'll get painted as "spineless evil Democratic liberal bastards".

Well, I ain't a Democrat. Or a Republican. I'm not even really an American, not in the greater scheme of things: I'm just trying to do what God would have me to do. And the God I've come to know demands that I seek out and adhere to the truth.

To NOT say something about this lie, in my own way, however it is that I'm empowered to say it, after knowing about it, would make me complicit with the execution of that lie. And I do not desire to stand before God and confess to Him that I did nothing to refute this lie that has not only cost the lives of countless innocents, but is a mortal sin in its own right.

Now, do any supporters of Bush still believe they possess something "constructive" to add to the conversation?

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I just realized what's wrong with America

It's that too many people in this country have no way to create an identity to call their own, so that by the time they're old enough to want their own identity they've no idea what the hell to do. So, they grasp hold of whatever "identity" presents itself to them. It could be a sports team, or a political party. They latch onto it and lose any desire to ever have to think about why it is that they latched onto it in the first place because to do so destroys their identity. And for the rest of their lives, as is the case with a political party, they will defend that party and the "identity" it gives them to the death.

THAT is why so many people in this country do not think for themselves, instead letting a party - and whatever individuals that party has elevated out of its own interests - do the thinking for them.

I gotta wonder now: where does that leave the rest of us, the ones who DO think for ourselves, the ones with our own identities?

I'll admit there's more of "them" than there are of "us"... but sheer numbers never equalled moral or philosophical superiority, did it?

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Back in the saddle again

The past few days were a little... trying, you might say. Hence my abrupt departing message.

Things are better now. I'd even dare say "better than better" :-)

More later. Need to finish putting some thoughts together before making the next move.

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So, why DIDN'T the people who wanted war in Iraq want to go over there and be heroes themselves?

A follow-up to my previous post. Found this recent essay by Chuck Baldwin that lays it down in a way that I'm pretty sure the pro-war cowards (and really, what else CAN you call them?) will never stand up and answer to...

To those who are engaged in war, the consequences can be nightmarish! Arms and legs cut off. Eyes put out. Flesh burned. Intestines ripped out. Backs broken. Skulls crushed. Lives lost. Families torn apart. Homes destroyed. Children left without parents. Parents never able to see their children again. Wives without husbands. Husbands without wives. Souls snuffed into eternity. Emotional scars that never heal. These are the realities of war. And this is what the neo-cons who profit from war never have to see up close and personal.

Instead, pro-war neo-cons sit in their comfortable, air-conditioned offices and send other husbands, other wives, other parents, other children, other people to incur the "scourge" of war. But the neo- cons who trumpet war, who promote war, and who finance war never actually experience war.

Y'know, if General Robert E. Lee were still around, he would have condemned Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the whole lot of modern-day warmongers as being not Christian, or gentlemen, or even real men at all. Lee was horrified by war, and rightly so, "lest we should become too fond of it." But you gotta say one thing about Lee: he wasn't afraid to place himself in the same amount of danger as the men he commanded, for a cause that he did sincerely believe in.

So how about it, warmongers who wanted this mess in Iraq (and are now clamoring for Iran): if YOU believe in this fight so much, why don't YOU sign yourselves up, or YOUR sons and daughters, and go fight it yourselves?

You'll be "heroes", doncha know?

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Memorial Day musings...

I'm going to pose a question that I've been thinking about the past several months:

Does being a soldier who merely steps foot on foreign soil qualify that soldier as a "hero" who's defending his country?

Because I don't think so.

And yet so many are being sent to other lands to come back as "heroes" while those doing the sending, are all too reluctant to go and be "heroes" themselves.

Why should I feel compelled to honor anyone on Memorial Day? We don't even really have what so many fought and died for anymore. How DARE we go through the motions of suggesting that we would hold their sacrifices to be "sacred" on this one day when we can't even do it during the other 364?

Y'know, you don't have to be a soldier, or a sailor, or a marine to be deemed worthy of being a "warrior" in this country. Safeguarding our liberties is a job for all of us, and those without the guns have a helluva lot more responsibility than those with the guns will ever have.

Instead we've shirked our duty. And we pat ourselves on the back for thinking we're "good Americans" when we congratulate those coming back home without a limb, or an eye, or a life.

You can't really remember those who died for freedom when real freedom is already dead.

EDIT 10:27 PM 05/30/2005: just found a really good essay by Doug Newman titled "Memorial Day 2005: Are We Even Worthy that puts things a lot better than how I tried to describe 'em here.

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Time to say "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" to Star Wars Galaxies

Wish it could be reported that everything is going beautifully in these halcyon (final?) days of being a Star Wars supergeek, but alas! Some things are not the ideal they should be in that saga far, far away...

I've been playing Star Wars Galaxies, the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) runs for LucasArts, ever since last January. I've been quite proud of the online persona of "Slanner Kwintz" that I invested countless hours in establishing as a smuggler/bounty hunter figure, and in proudly outfitting my SoroSuub yacht, the Mare of Steel, into a brutal business vehicle with refined elegance (I think I may have been the first player to figure out how to install a jail cell onboard a spacecraft in this game). I had a house on a hilltop on Tatooine that had a gorgeous view of the twin suns setting from the front porch, and I wound up meeting a lot of neat players.

But now it's time to hang it all up. Because this just ain't a fun game at all anymore.

It's not even really "Star Wars". It's more like "Star Wars Costume Party". SOE did a "Combat Upgrade" a few weeks ago intended to improve the (admittedly flawed but still fun) system of combat. Instead they botched things in such a way as to make the game darn nearly unplayable in anywhere near a sane fashion. Like, if you are wounded or killed (and respawn at a cloning center... why they don't call the cloning chambers "bacta tanks" and thus be more StarWars-ish I've no idea) you darn well better get used to being walking wounded 'cuz medical characters have NO hope to level up outside of combat. The crafting professions have been screwed up and my favorite profession, smuggler, is as far away from ITS much-needed revamp as its ever been.

The established characters from the saga are so ill-used it's laughable: Darth Vader, when he IS used, has become a corporate mouthpiece for the Galactic Empire instead of a dreaded Sith Lord. Yeah you read that right in SOE's hands Darth Vader has become a JOKE! There are scores of problems with the game, including some bugs that have still been in-game for months, if not ever since inception. SOE's manner of dealing with these failings has always been the same: introduce more Star Wars eyecandy, like better mountable pets and multi-passenger vehicles, and planets like the Wookiee homeworld to run around in. WITHOUT either addressing the present problems or working on the problems that crop up with EVERY "improvement" they roll out. SOE is trying to slap bandaids on a chestwound. And they're still wondering why the patient is still crippled. Fercryingoutloud they allow Tatooine banthas to run around on Naboo... where da heck is the famous Lucas-ian attention to consistency in THAT?!?

The problem with Star Wars Galaxies is that it no longer feels like real Star Wars. There's no sense of the spirit of the saga that was the allure most of us had in playing it to begin with. We wanted to be part of Star Wars, not players in a game that merely borrows from the look of Star Wars. And some players have started a massive online petition movement to make SOE enact some real changes to the game, but I've come to realize that anything SOE does would be too little, too late. This game is going down fast: at least 16,000 subscribers have publicly announced cancellations according to most accounts, and that indicates that many, many more players have called it quits already. This past week SOE brought Star Wars Galaxies: The Total Experience to stores: a compilation of the original core game plus the Jump To Lightspeed space expansion, and the new Rage of the Wookiees add-on, all for thirty bucks. Most players paid that much just for the space expansion. If you want just the Wookiee expansion you can download that directly for just about the same price. You tell me: be a new player and buy EVERYTHING for thirty bucks in one shot or a longtime veteran and have to pay the same price for ONE portion of the same game. How would YOU feel?

Man, it sucks to have to say this, but Star Wars Galaxies had a LOT of potential, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't have a good time playing it when I did. When it was still fun. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy at this point and up until recently I was a VERY faithful player: heck, my wife and I even attended the Star Wars Galaxies breakfast at Celebration III last month in Indianapolis. SOE took the Star Wars franchise and tried to run it like its own, when it's NOT like EverQuest at all: it's Star Wars. And this game needed people who knew and loved and understood what Star Wars was really all about from day one. They missed the mark and at this rate they'll always miss the mark, no matter how many hundreds of players they allow to pick up a lightsaber and call themselves "Jedi".

So I'm quitting Star Wars Galaxies. But I'm not giving up hope on there being a MMORPG someday that deserves being given the Star Wars moniker. This game doesn't just need an overhaul: it needs a total rebuild from the ground up. Players need to be given something more substantial than running around grinding for experience points and killing "Meatlump Buffoons" hoping to loot rug adhesive (yeah you read that right rug adhesive). They want to be part of the story, and there DOES need to be a sense that there's a grand, epic and sweeping story that's in the background that we're participating with, not merely onlookers of. The space ability needs to be built-in from the game's very beginning. Inconsistencies with the saga should be dealt with. None of this is happening. But it could happen, in the proper hands of people who actually care about it being legitimate Star Wars.

Until that day comes (and if and when it does, believe you me I'll be first in line at the local Best Buy, cash in hand, ready to plunk down and start playing) it's time to write off this attempt at a Star Wars MMORPG as a sinking ship. But if you want some real enjoyable action in a franchise-related online RPG, check out The Matrix Online. I've been playing that since day one of the retail version and its developers have proven that they are extremely committed to not only delivering an enjoyable experience for the gamers, but making it as substantial a part of enjoying this particular story as the movies were. I mean, The Matrix Online was ballsy enough to ASSASSINATE Morpheus a few days ago, and now every player is running around helter-skelter trying to find out whodunit. You can't kick it up another notch much more than THAT, right? :-)

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Some thanks that's overdue regarding Forcery...

I've thanked a lot of people already for helping make this film possible but there's one group of people that for some reason I really neglected to mention, because this movie practically grew up in the forum and if it wasn't for plenty of advice and suggestions on stuff like de-interlacing and rotoscoping, well there wouldn't have been a Forcery worth downloading, if at all.

So here's both a tip of the hat, and an invitation if you haven't already checked them out, to the good people on TheForce.net Fan Films discussion board. The best film school bar none that you could hope to attend without paying $20,000 in tuition. There wasn't much that I learned during the production of Forcery that didn't first come from these guys. So if you want to see some REAL creative juices percolating or take part in something that'll imbue you with considerable film education, you can't do much better than the TFN Fan Films board.

Appreciate the help, fellas :-)

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If you want to watch Forcery then please punch here -->

Yesterday Durbnpoisn at TFN FanFilms added Forcery to their Fan Films Hosting Pool: a collection of mirrors for various films. Forcery hasn't been hosted there yet, but I wanted to make an acknowledgement of that courtesy by them. See that sweet-lookin' "banner ad" on the right? If you click that you'll be taken to a page at TFN that has links to all four of the Quicktime versions without having to suffer from my commentary :-)

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