Before I say anything, I'll let you all know that I havn't seen the movie yet because I'm on dailup and it's still loading after half an hour, so I'm not going to say that I've got any basis for arguing it's quality. But I do have a couple responces to what's been said already.
PhredBean said:
It wasn't so much of the acting that bothered me, just mostly the sound.
From looking at their website, these people (whatever their age) seem to atleast be on their way to being profesionals. However, I know from my attempts in highschool that recording and editing sound well is increadibly diffucult without the right equiptment, and unless you're rich or in a film/video school, you won't get that equiptment. Therefore, when I watch anything made by non-profesional level film/video makers, I usually have to bite my tongue on the subject of sound. I fully expect to give these guys the benifit of the doubt and not critisise them too heavily on their sound work, particularly because my own movies have historically had crap for sound for the same reasons. That being said, if they really did use sounds from a video game, that's not all that great an idea: it's usually better to find sound from profesional movies, or even better find someone with a real gun and record your own sound work. I do this often, and while finding an mp5 is pretty unexpected, even a looped gunshot of a 9mm beretta will -always- sound better than a cheesey video game clip because it's instantly recogniseable as a -real- sound, rather than a re-recorded audio clip.
clercqer said:
Sure the actors don't move like soldiers should move.
I have a rule when watching student/amature work: only give them shit for doing things badly that you -know- they could have done better. This usually means only give them crap if they do a crap job on something that wouldn't have cost any serious money or training or help to acomplish. While I havn't seen the movie yet, I will coment that this sort of complaint is something that I very often have with amature work. For example, a couple friends of mine made a post nuclear movie about a squad of soldiers a few summers ago. To prepare for their roll, they read up on marching formations, weapon handling, and various other military proceedures and tactics. Their research showed in their acting: when the characters are attacked, they don't just scramble maddly for cover and shoot in all directions, they all drop in one smooth motion and move with the profesional smoothness associated with trained soldiers. It's not perfect of course, but it looks good enough not to break the illusion and lose believeablity. As with any acting roll, to portray a soldier takes a lot more than just putting on the clothes and picking up a gun, you have to actually know what solders act like, talk like, move like, think like, etc. I'll have to see the movie to actually give a valid critisism of this particular example, but it doesn't take a whole lot of preparation to do this: you find someone who is or was in the military and have them give you a brief explanation of what to do. Hell, I did civil war reannacting for a while, and that taught me more than enough in the first day to accurately portray a soldier of that time.
EDIT: Now that I've seen it, I take back half what I said. This is clearly a college level production: Aside from the fact that it clearly says such on the credits, it'd be tough to get this sort of animation done on equiptment bought or rented on a highschool budget. When I read special effects and gun battles, I expected the more traditional squibs and pyrotechnics: what we see here, atleast in my experiance, really falls more into the catagory of animation. However terminology isn't really important.
What they set out to do here was clearly an excersize in computer generated visual effects. To that end, I think they did a very good job. Great costumes and props, great set, and really nice work with the animation: considering that it's a college production, it seems to be done really quite well.
I hold to my opinions about the acting, however: a little more research would have made for more visually convincing movement and acting. Also, the camera work is unbearably shakey, for me atleast: even if they were going for that look on purpose, any school with an animation studio probably has a steady-cam set up as well, which will give you the same look without making it hard to watch. Also, the whole shakey camera thing worked well in Saving Private Ryan and other big name war movies only because it was not over used. A cheap tripod goes for 20$ and a couple of scate boards tied to the bottom will give you a half-assed dolly which will be far more effective and usefull than simply running sideways with a camera.
I'm a bit more understanding about the sound effects, though: while I and other gun enthusiasts can tell that they don't sound right, most people wouldn't know the difference, and I was expecting low quality .wav sound. The sound effects sounded like real guns, and that's really all that matters. Sure, some of it is a little over the top: the guy's head exploding from the sniper's shot is a bit much for example. However I don't really think that matching the particular sounds to the particular guns is that important when you're making a piece that should by all rights be watched with the sound turned off anyway: if it's about visual effects, watch with your eyes, not your ears.
All in all, I think they did a great job. The stuff they did well was done very well, and the stuff they did poorly were all things that they can learn to do better.
