walnut58
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# Posted: 9 Mar 2006 10:22
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For those of you unaware of this site, I believe it's worth a look:<br><br><br> <a href="http://www.borgwarmovie.org/" target="_blank">Borg War - The Movie</a><br><br><br><!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin--><br>Q: What is this movie about?<br>A: Borg War depicts the conflict between the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, and a strain of Borg infected with a mind-controlling, flesh-mutating virus. The incursion of these diseased Borg throws the Alpha quadrant's finely balanced power structures into chaos. As Picard marshals the free races to oppose the Borg, the Klingons and Romulans use the turmoil as an excuse for interracial war. Meanwhile, the Borg themselves struggle against the infection, which using them as a source for food.<br><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--><br><br><!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin--><br>Q: How did you make this movie?<br>A: This is a machinima project -- a movie created by manipulating the customization features of two game engines. <br><br>For Starfleet Command 3, I make changes to the setup files for the ships to make them act in ways that are unnatural to the game, but necessary to get a particular shot (e.g. a disabled Enterprise that will stay in one place, rather than move to attack.) I then "play" the game. The game engine records the activities, with a camera angle that's always centered on the "players" ship, but which can can zoom and rotate during playback, which I record as described below. For special shots, I use a special ship that is only a black dot, which can fly in between and around other ships. This effectively gives me additional camera angles. For a few of the more complex special effects, I set up multiple computers with multiple "players" and manipulate them simultaneously.<br><br>Elite Files 2 has a much more sophisticated customization engine which served not just to play the game, but to create the cinematics for the game. I use an editing program (provided free from the game developers) to layout the sets, place pre-created objects and characters, define locations for characters to walk, and so forth. I then execute the game in "development" mode and record the actions of the characters and objects, based upon a script. The scripting language is, for you techies out there, a multi-threaded C variant, which allow me to define the pre-formed animations that the characters will execute. These animations, combined with dialog (see below), are combined to build each raw scene. Essentially, every single action, from a character raising an eyebrow, to a massive explosion of everything in the room, is under my direct control.<br><br>The original source of the dialog is the sound files for the two games. To build the dialog for the movie, I've take snippets and sections of the dialog and recombine them into new dialog that conforms to my plotline, using an inexpensive sound editor named Audacity. The resulting sound clips are run through a program that makes the mouths of the characters move in sync to the words. However, in many cases the dialog is added to the movie during the editing phase and "lipsynced" to the movements of the character's mouths.<br><br>I create raw footage using a Dazzle 150 capture device. The output from the screen and sound card are "recorded" onto a separate machine. This output, while stored digital, has gone through a analog phase, which is why the images are not as crisp as in the computer game itself. However, rather than seeing this as disadvantage, I've noted that the analog phase makes the final animation look more realistic, by softening edges. The raw footage is then combined and mixed using the Pinnacle Studio 9 video editor. Some of this editing is quite elaborate, involving "greenscreen" overlays, multiple editing passes, and so forth. The result is an uncompressed video file that contains all the dialog and sound effects. That file is then run through another pass to add ambient sounds (like the dull thrum of a starship engine). The final file is then combined with other final files into a file that makes up a "part" of the film. It is at this final stage that I add the background music.<br><br>The resulting files are then run through the Divx converter, which reduces them to one tenth their uncompressed size, make them suitable for downloading across the web. The compression slightly degrades quality, but I don't think that anyone is likely to want to download files that are gigabyte or more in size.<br><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--><br><br>I think Geoffrey holds great promise in delivering on the final product, which should be completed sometime this summer. He's created a storyline that I think most fans here would find enjoyable. I invite you to have a look at his site and comment here after looking at what he has done with this project. I think it's a great effort at fandom film-making.<br><br><br>FWIW!
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