Jordan Brade

I actually have a theory on what Lucas was trying to get at: A good portion of Star Wars comes from the "Dune" series of novels by Frank Herbert. I remember in "Children of Dune" the the twins Ghanima and Leto had powers that were most obviously stronger when they were together. Luke doesn't have his first true "force moment" until he is on his way to the Death Star to rescue Leia. I almost think that their force powers didn't truly awaken until they came in contact with each other. This would also explain Yoda's "Seperate they must be," line more than "We can't let Vader or the Emperor find them," kind of thing. Yoda knows that "there is another," because he was there when she was born. But you're still pretty right about the whole thing. Lucas needs to pay attention more when he writes. After all, it probably would have been easier to just say that their powers are stronger when they're together.

I've already soldered the wires to the 4-pin xlr connector, but now I need to know how to connect the wires to the battery, as in the configuration for it. I'm assuming it goes something like the first two batteries to positive, the other two to negative? Is there a website that might be able to help? Any help here would be greatly appreciated!

I'm having the same problem! What I want to do is just make a whole bunch of shorts and put them together as one big anthology movie. Unfortunately, ideas aren't coming as easy as I thought they would.

I owned the second edition of this book and loved it! It just so happens that I lost it though :( Oh well, gives me an excuse to by this one :)

Thanks for the help guys! This really helped me out alot.

I just figured out how to work the shutter angle thing! It's pretty cool, but I'm slightly confused about something: What angle does the shutter start at? Also, do those numbers on the thing mean that's what's being added on to the shutter angle, or that's what the angle becomes (sorry if that's not too good of an explanation)? I read somewhere on the board about capturing motion in a way as to not create motion-blur (an almost strobing effect) by setting the shutter at a 45 degree angle. How would I go about doing that? Any help would be appreciated! Sorry if these are really dumb questions!

I must say, this looks really good. I loved the way everything looked and the depth it had. Truly amazing stuff. What program did you use to edit it? When you did the telecine, what did you transfer it to (Tape, hard drive, etc...)?

I pretty much agree with everyone here. There was way too much "stuff." I would've preferred Lucas focused more on the characters. I mean Lucas said that Grievous was supposed to be a bad ass the likes of Vader, but he was lame! C'mon Lucas, characters need to do more than look cool. The main problem with movies with tons of CGI work is the fact that they decide to focus more on the CGI stuff. I mean, did we really need so many dolly shots of Minas Tirith in LoTR? I'm probably going to get murdered for saying that.

Before I truly begin my venture into film, I need to know if there are any places in Phoenix, Arizona that process 16mm film. I'm having a lot of trouble finding places that do this, so if anyone here knows of a place, please tell me.

That's the one! I'm planning on "goofing around" with my newly acquired camera in a couple of weeks, just so then I can apply what I read in books and on this board, and also to learn a few tricks. But as far as a making a movie with it goes; I still need to finish the script I'm writing. Hopefully I'll be ready to go by next summer or, ideally, sooner. Goodluck with trying to win your photography teacher over, by the way. I remember when I told a few of my friends I wanted to start working with film; half of them thought, "Wow! We'll be real filmmakers!" while the other half thought I was nuts and said "Why not use a video camera? It's cheaper and looks the same!"

I'm also a 17 year old Junior in highschool who's been seduced by film. Here are a few books that have helped me along the path: 1. Cinematography (I can't remember the name of the author. He's a Polish Cinematographer) 2. The Filmmaker's handbook by Steven Ascher and Edward Pincus (Pretty technical and comprehensive) 3. How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000 and Not Go to Jail by Bret Stern (After reading those really technical books, it's kind of nice to hear some one talk about using film in a simplified way) Also, reading stuff on this board and asking questions is a good way too :) When I started thinking about doing film and creating budgets for possible ideas, I started calling places about equipment and supplies and whatnot. When of the places I called was Fujifilm (Film stock is cheaper than Kodak, and I like the way it looks based off of the movies and shows that I've seen that have used Fuji stock) and asked them about ordering film from them and how much it would cost to go through the whole process. The person on the other line was very helpful. I even asked about the student discount, and if it applied to me even though I'm in highschool, and they said that they would be willing to give me the student discount.

I just received my Eclair NPR in the mail a few days ago. This will be my first experience with 16mm, but the second I saw the NPR, I knew I was in love. :P I never realized how heavy a 20lb. camera would actually be until I tried lifting this thing on my shoulder and walked around with it for a bit. I'm going to need to go to a gym... Just find a heavy duty tripod. The standard camcorder tripod will be crushed by this thing!

That lens that I ordered off of ebay finally got to me. It took a while, but I'm quite happy with what I got. I looked through the lense to see if the "fungus problem" was really a problem. I believe when I posted a topic awhile ago about cleaning the "fungus" off of the lens when I got it, a few of you mentioned that it might be dirt. After looking through the back element, I thought what I saw looked more like dirt than fungus. If it is just dirt, then it won't be too much of a problem. I'm pretty happy with this Zeiss Lens. It looks a little "used" (paint scratches and all) but I got it for a good price so it'll be worth putting the money into it to get it fixed up. :)

Actually the ones with girlfriends can be just as sad as the porn watchers! The ones that watch porn have no prospect of getting laid. The ones with girlfriends have gotten laid but don't get laid often enough to quench their sexual appetite. In a way, having a girlfriend would be like a starving child from Ethiopia being aloud to hold a hamburger, but not aloud to eat it. :P I'm 17, and one of my friends told me how a several people at my school would love to pay me to make pornography of them and their girlfriends. I told him it wasn't worth it. I would lose what little respect I have, and what respect I could possibly gain. It's one thing watching porn. It's entirely different making it.

Do you have stills from the scene or a short clip you can show us?

Well EXCUSE me for not putting an umlaut over the "U." :P I was just kind of lazy actually. Next time I'll remember :rolleyes:

Thank you for the advice. I don't really want to miss out on college, it's just that sometimes I have this feeling that I want to just be done with school and everything and just move on. I may go to college yet, as everyone of my friends and family are telling me the same things you've said and convince me it would be in my best interest. However, every while or so I tend to end up in the "I don't want to go to college" mood. Who knows, it might pass and I might end up at college and really love it.

Dude, I know how you feel about school. I'm only in Highschool right now, approaching my senior year, and right now I don't feel like going to college. I know this sounds egotistical, but I feel I could be doing something more worthwhile than just sitting in a classroom learning about film-I could actually be experiencing it! I really want to see the project you're working on. Seriously, it can't be too bad to think "This film is going to be better than LOTR!"-It's a goal to shoot for and you might accomplish it. After all, it's not like the successful filmmakers of the past and present thought of their pet project as being horrible compared to their favorite movies.

Now that I think about it, sounds too easy, eh? :P Not to mention any winnings he'd get would be somewhere between $500-$1000. I guess it would take a lot of contests and festivals to make a decent amount of money! However, he could also submit his shorts to some of the short film websites like atomfilms.com - They pay royalties. It probably wouldn't be very much, though. Or, if he comes up with an idea for a feature, he can use his shorts to raise money from investors and just rent equipment. I'm definitely thinking in the realm of movie-romanticism! Hey, anything's worth a shot, right? Why not go the route of just submitting to festivals and winning money "just like that"?

Holy Crap! F0.7? How can you get a lens with that kind of speed? Would you have to modify it? If so, how would one go about doing that?

Wow! Your shots look great! I really want to PA on your film, it looks really exciting. Unfortunately, I live in Arizona and any money I make goes toward my own film ventures. Tell me when this comes out on DVD. This looks really interesting.

I thought there were still a ton of direct-to-video movies shot on film? In fact, I thought MOST of them were. I know that "Kill Joy 2" and "Ghosts of Edendale" were shot on HD. "Gone with the Wind" was just a bit worse than "Star Wars" before restoration, but then again "Gone with the Wind" is over sixty years old and was stored in horrid conditions.

I'm just begining to learn filmmaking, but I might be able to help. I've used digital camcorders for awhile now, and if all you want to do is learn about framing, composition, and editing, then a $500 miniDV camera will do just as well as any other camera - Afterall, all that knowledge of F-Stops and T-Stops won't help much if you don't know anything about framing! After you make a few shorts for practice, you should think about entering them into short film festivals. You can then win some money and save up for higher end equipment, whether digital or film.

Actually, Uber means "over" in German :) Yep, I'm currently learning German in school. I thought I was the only person who used that word on the internet. I only use the word for when something is sooo cool that I can't find any other word in the English language to explain it. It's soo cool, I have to switch to a foreign language in order to get the point across. I've seen Sin City twice. It was uber cool, needless to say. I haven't read the comics before, but I'm definitely going to check them out now.

I have not recieved the lens yet. It was shipped out just recently, so I based my question on the seller's description. He says that there is a little bit of fungus at the edge of one of the internal elements. I won't know for sure how much or how little if it actually is fungus until I recieve it in the mail. I live in Phoenix, Arizona so even if the fungus can't be taken off, there's a lot of sunlight and very little humidity (if any!) which would mean the fungus wouldn't have much hope of living. I already called one place near me called Tempe Camera, and unfortunately they said "You can't clean fungus." However, I think what they really meant was "We won't clean fungus." If you guys can point me in the right direction to a place that will, any help will be greatly appreciated!