Encarta IV: Dark Hope - Special Edition

[Picard Alpha]

We've decided to release a special edition of E4: Dark Hope.

Look forward to:
- A brand new all original sound track
- A new up-converted 720p version

I'll also be cleaning up the cut of the film a little, I will drastically shorten the Tate Menous scenes (possibly just becoming a quick flash back). I'll also be re-working some color key's and minor effects touch-ups.

Look for this in the months to come!

 

[Andymator]

Awesome! I can't wait!

One thing I am wondering is if the uprated video quality would work well? Wouldn't we just be able to see all the little chroma flaws and other things all the more clearly?

 

[Captain Randy Hall]

Sounds good to me!

 

[Andymator]

Any movement on this so far?

 

[Picard Alpha]

Any movement on this so far?

We've got some movement. About 5 of the final audio tracks have been sent over. The FCP project file for this has been crazy, it was made 3 versions ago, 2 computers ago...Regardless linking missing files has been a lot of fun! A few of the effects I used in the film date back to the original film (1999), and the codecs they used no longer work with the latest version of Snow Leopard, so converting old files with slip stream etc.

The good news is I actually rendered all of the set back-plates, and visual effects in 720p. Thankfully E:4 didn't use any stock footage from the previous films, since it was all new in the rift. So the only thing I'm up-converting is the blue screen footage that was shot on a SONY VX-2000 back in 2004. I'm using some pretty nifty plug-ins and am getting some fairly good results. It's been a fairly straight forward process since the original cut was mostly matted out. I threw a 1.33:1 filter over the entire project (I wanted it to look like 35mm back then), so a lot of the data was actually missing in the original version. The new 720p version will show all of that data that was missing.

You can see in a few of these shots the amount of detail in the true 720 renderings:

http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq162/ryanthewebber/DarkHopeWallPaper6.jpg
http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq162/ryanthewebber/EncartaWarp.jpg
http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq162/ryanthewebber/DarkHopeWallpaper1.jpg

I would love to take the time and actually re-render the sets. My 2010 set re-tool shows much more realistic detail than my 2003,04,05 renders. Example here:

http://i444.photobucket.com/albums/qq162/ryanthewebber/Encarta/3-1.jpg

But I think at this point in the game it doesn't make a lot of since to devote all that time back into a project that's already been out there for 3 years. You can only improve a product so much. I feel like I'd much rather debut the set with a new project anyway...