First of all, thanks Merv for taking the time to write down a detailed review on SoF. It's much appreciated!
Music .. Justin R. Durban composer extraordinaire managed to create just the atmosphere the two directors wanted, I know Davy in particular is a huge movie score man and he wanted a Hans Zimmer feel to the project .. well let me tell you that and more was done. I personally loved it.
Score .. 10/10
Well, I think I have to clear up a few things. The music released with SoF Part1 is NOT original music by Justin. It's in fact music that we used from various composers. We released the movie right after it was finished. We didn't think it would do any justice to Justin to give him a week or two to produce a custom score. That and because we really wanted to release it we decided not to go for a custom score. However, we're still working with Justin to have a custom score when the full movie comes out. But I'm glad you like it
Screenplay .. Knowing the movie is based on actual events .. ie .. the Battle for Fallujah which had already had a Hollywood movie planned in 2004 staring Harrison Ford "No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah" from what I can find is still stuck in production or sitting on some shelve gathering dust. Davy and Daniele have somehow cobbled together a very believable script but with minimal dialog, leaving most of the story to be told in a visual treat.
Score .. 9/10
Yes, the story is basic.. very basic. We are aware of that and we deliberately chose a basic war story instead of going for something complex that we knew was just not possible to tell with a limited game engine (BF2). I mean, if you compare to other machinima being produced, it's all fragmovies or funmovies... with no story at all. Let's face it, machinima who try to tell something serious are just too difficult to produce and mostly fail. There are always exceptions and we tried to be an exception. For some we succeeded, for some we didn't. It's up to you if you like a basic concept or not, it's not up to me to decide what you like, but after knowing our purpose maybe some frustrations can be taken away. The story in Part1 is inspired by 3 major (horrific) events during the war in Iraq. The blackwater security deaths (insurgents ambushed security agents and hung them on the Euphratis bridge), the liberation of private Jessica Lynch who was taken hostage by insurgents and the first battle of Fallujah, where US Marines struggled to survive in close combat situations with Iraqi insurgents and ultimately failed. Part2 is inspired by events from the second battle of Fallujah (Operation Phantom Fury).
Acting .. Acting here has to be split in to two sections those being "voice and players or gamers" .. the voice actors was what I had been most worried about coming in to my first viewing, I need not have worried at all, everyone who took part in this played their parts well .. so well that I would have believed you worked in the industry (it would not surprise me if these voices had been lifted of a movie). For the "gamers" part, again I take my hat off to all of you. I assume for the better part you all are in D & D's clan "LRRP", all of you looked as if you hit you're marks and did as directed by the awesome twosome. I know personally how hard it is to hit those marks sometimes.
Score .. 10/10
Yeah, the acting was probably one of the most difficult parts of this production. You got to understand, it's like directing up to 30 different gamers (not actors) and trying to get them to do this particular scene what you have in your head. In real life that's pretty easy because they can see where the camera is and can react to it, in machinima there is no reference at all, they just have to deal with the directions we gave them. I can assure you that it's a hellish task to get everyone in place and let them act at exactly the right time, the things we asked them to do. It may not come as a surprise the recordings took almost 3 years of the production. We also did a lot of re-recordings to camouflage the flaws we encountered in the game. In the end I'm very pleased with the result and I think it shows, there are very few uncontrolled movements in the final movie.
The voice-actors are well, ... not real (kinda). We didn't use any custom voiceacting in this machinima because well, it was just not good enough. We tried though, we had a team working on the voices for the first 10 mins, but it just failed in the end. And we didn't want un-professional voices (no offense) in a movie which tries to raise the standards. They just fell out of place, it was just too amateurish. If we had a budget and could afford a bunch of paid voice-actors, that would change a whole lot. Bud we didn't and had to tell a story with the voices that came out of games/movies/series/... same as in The Fallen One.
Visuals .. knowing what I know regarding making a machinima movie in Battlefield 2 makes this movie even more amazing to me. The camera actions and movements are smooth and seamless. Camera angles are even more impressive and well planned and executed.
Score .. 10/10
Lighting .. Lighting used in the movie creates an atmosphere EA Games could only have dreamed off. From the head and tail lights added to the hummvee and the sky lit up with fire and bombings in the distance. each time I view the movie I see something more amazing .. I can only guess at the time and patience it took for you two to apply these to SoF.
Score .. 9.5/10
Special Effects .. Both Daniele and Dainius Gintalas created believable additional Battlefield footage (Dainius) and special effects such as the rainfall to the movie .. those added effects added an extra layer to the piece giving it more wow factor than the news of Tiger Woods digressions.
Score .. 10/10
Visual Effects took most time of this production. Daniele spent bizillion hours in his compositing programs. And from the beginning, we knew exactly what we wanted to achieve in visual presentation. We tried to render the effects in function of the story. I don't know if most of you experience it that way, but that's the purpose of all the effects in this movie. Not to showcase what Daniele is capable of doing, the bigger the better, no, it's quite the opposite, we wanted to create the right ambience with all these effects. The rain, clouds, bloodspatter, 3D effects (by Dainius), etc... imo, they just add to the story. We could have gone much further with this and of course there's a lot that could have been done better, like the guns in the faces of the models during dialogues, the bags dissapearing, the flag in front of the mosque, all those things annoy us too, and we could have removed it in post-production. But we deliberately didn't, because then you loose the touch of machinima. And that's what this movie is about, right? Machinima and not 3D Animation. We chose to make a movie in BF2, we knew about the drawbacks, we tried to get rid of them most of the time but there are situations you just can't and just have to live with it. About the camera angles, they were all done in real time, no scripting, no battlerecorder, just the real thing, moving the mouse in real time capturing it with Fraps. It's old school, I know. But that's the way we make movies, that's our style. And you like or dislike it, it's all a matter of taste.
Sound Editing .. Credit goes alone to Daniele for the stratum of sounds applied to the soundtrack .. nothing at all jars .. every sound used was applied with a single aim .. to make our viewing a simple pleasure. The soundtrack of a movie is so often disregarded by movie watchers but is just as an important piece of the jigsaw as the script or screenplay.
Score 10/10
Yes, the soundmix was done very carefully, with a very high focus on detail, almost to perfection. Daniele is very good at it and has a lot of inspiration when it comes to soundfx. It's a joy to work with him.
One Sentence Review: Despite Battlefield 2 and it's draw backs, Sands of Fire manages to burn through even enough to appease a ticket price, what makes it better is it's FREE .. Davy & Dan easily managing the film's best reason for a second and third viewing.
One Word Review: Brilliance
Thanks for this excellent review. Shows much of your appreciation for this project. It's indeed free and it took a lot of our time, just to please you, the viewer. I hope everyone enjoys it and I hope you'll be looking forward to seeing Part2.
