1. The Script
I wrote 3 versions of the script. The excerpt above (which contains a lol fail mistake :P) is from the final version which I actually used. The first version of the film was slightly hard to follow but followed the same scenes and played out in a similar way to the final one. However the dialog was longer and harder to understand, when I read through it I saw I needed to correct a lot, and thus began version 2.
Version 2 of the script featured a few scenes which where removed from the final draft. I had a scene in which the separatist ship maneuvered over the republic one and dropped several boarding pods onto it. Which was then followed by a battle on board the republic ship. However, this scene was removed from the final for 2 reasons...
1. Lack of time to film the complex scene and lack of bricks to build the sets for it.
2. It being plain useless and having no explanation to how it ended later on, it was basically a useless time lengthener.
Another scene i removed was of the droids and that pilot dude going onto a landing transport after the first opening scene and landing on Manda. A later scene depicted them obtaining the file from the library and marching off to return to their transport. These two scenes where cut due to uselessness and once again a lack of bricks. I was also unsure how to build the library set.
Version 3 was the final, where I fine tuned the dialog, deleted some useless scenes (as explained above) and slipped in some extra movement and animation. This pretty much sums up the script. Next came the filming.
2. The Filming
The filming is the main part of any stop motion, and its also the most time consuming for me. I started on a late friday afternoon for this film. With the set already built and the figures/characters gathered together. I began filming and continued to work non-stop. The filming continued over the course of a few days and I finally finished all of it.
I personally wasn't to pleased with any sets in this film except the set for onboard the separatist battleship. It was the only one I feel I really used a variety of pieces for, it was also the easiest to film on. The space port set was the largest and the majority of what I built wasn't visible, which is a shame because I built a nice little refueling station on the opposite end but it never appeared on film. The space port was also hardest to film on due to the ships and crates lying about, which I had to try not to knock during film.
In fact, at one point I did knock the crates, but I dont think anybody has noticed it yet :P lets hope it stays that way for a while.
Most of the talking scenes where a huge drab and where kinda boring to animate due to just large amounts of still photo taking and small arm movements, but the scenes with talking are critical to the plot, so it was a necessary effort.
The battle scenes where more enjoyable to do and at first i thought they where kind of crappy when I put the photos into video clips. But after assembling them to view the battle as a whole I liked it a bit more. And, last but not least, we have the scene in which the captain launches the enemy fighter/shuttle into the enemy battleship. I hate this scene a lot, it was rushed and I can asee the light flicker, If I had time to redo it and had not dismantled the set, I would have redone it. But alas that was not possible and so the scenes now had to be in the film.
However, other peoples opinions on the scene where different and people said all the scenes where good and no problems where noticeable, so I guess thats good :)
3. The Special Effects
The longest, most annoying and painful process in the entire film I did, was definitely the special effects. Not only was it horribly time consuming, it also got very, very boring after a while. Most of the battle scene was laden with effects and these took me a lot of time to complete. There was one shot (the one with all the droids firing rapidly) that had over 600 emitters on it, that took me 2 and a half hours to edit. When I finally finished the SFX, I was relieved and felt like I had just run some kind of huge marathon and won. That is literally how good I felt after doing all of those damn lasers and sparks.
4. The CGI
The CGI was very time consuming and took a lot of time, but still no where near as long as those damned SFX. But I finished the CGI scenes on a better note and just cut straight into the next bit of the film process. CGI was, after all, the last thing I had to do before the final stage. I want to give a special shout out to halowars91 for kindly taking the time and effort to construct the victory class CGI model I used, it would be much appreciated if you checked out some of his cool videos (hes pretty talented) and subscribed. He could use the support and i think hes horribly underrated for someone of his skill level, hes a lot better than me.
Heres his YT channel link: http://www.youtube.com/user/halowars91
5. The Editing
I felt pretty damn happy when I finally got to the editing, with all my footage edited and ready, I jumped right into it, and did it in a few hours. The first thing I did was all the voices, which went in perfectly with the footage and the characters. My voice was slightly echoey and annoying due to me recording in a large room with a high ceiling (believe me, I will never, ever, record in a large room again). Reviloford, Gamemaster905, Falamfalafilms and Supremedalekdunn all did fantastic jobs on their lines and I really liked them. So thanks to them :D
Anywayz, so when I finished adding in the voices, I started with all the sound effects, the sound effects where fairly simple on most of the scenes, just a few beeps and ambient sounds and they where done. But when I got to the battle scene I almost face palmed myself. I worked for 2 whole hours on the sounds for the battle scene, and by the end of that time i couldn't stand the sound of lasers anymore. I was quick to render it and drop it into the final project.
The space scenes didn't have sound because there technically isn't any sound in space. But I now think i should have added sound due to it being star wars and the fact I put in a sound for the explosions. We will see if I use sound or not in my next film though :) only time can tell.
Once it was all together, sound and all, I dropped in my logo and a few titles, didn't take to long, although Final Cut Pro can be a bit of a bitch when it comes to titles. But none the less I did them quickly. So with that out of the way, only one thing remained, the musical scoring of the film.
I started out by finding a track for the opening scene, and after scanning through my library, I found the perfect piece, the music and instruments matched up perfectly. The opening shots are probably my personal favourite in the films. I already knew i was using a piece from the halo reach soundtrack for the first battle shots, and that I did, it went fairly well with it and I guess it works. I actually did the ending music next, although the piece didn't go as well as the others I thought it went well enough for the scene and synced up in places. The music I despise in this film is the track I used that has the choir in it. I was bored, tired and just wanted to be done with the film, so I slammed int he track to finish it off, it doesn't go perfectly, but that type of music fits anything. So thats what I did.
I was finally done, I watched the film over, I personally did not like it that much and thought I could have done way better. My rating for it was a 2/5. Anyway, I rendered it and it was done. I just relaxed for the rest of the day after that.
And thats how the film was made lol, thanks for reading if you got this far :P I hope to write more "making of" articles on my site in the future and remember to check back here every so often for new articles.
In case your wondering, the programs I used where....
Final Cut Pro- Editing
FXHomes Visionlab Studio and Adobe After Effects CS4- Special effects
iStopmotion 2 Express- Putting my photos together and animating them
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