Fallen Star - Episode 3

[Start Wreck]

TrekBBS thread for Episode 1.
TrekBBS thread for Episode 2.

"Fallen Star is a home-made sci-fi TV show about a crew of British space adventurers."

If you're not aware of my "inspired by Star Trek but isn't really Star Trek" series yet, check out the following YouTube playlist to watch all episodes from the beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL521399E5427DE646

Or, if you can't be bothered, you can watch the latest recap (2 mins) and then skip to the third episode.

It's been about 18 months since the last one of these was finished. Truthfully, "episode 3" was supposed to be a quick and easy stop-gap that should have been finished last year, but scheduling problems (and life) got in the way.

In episode 3, "Alpha Shift", the Britannic crew and its new recruits must carry out their most difficult orders yet: do nothing and stay out of trouble. In the emptiness of deep space, their greatest foe is not the Smegulons... it's boredom.
Click below to watch it...

FALLEN STAR EPISODE 3 (37 mins)

As ever, this is a project done for fun, with no budget and even less talent. We have an end goal to finish on the sixth episode, which means, as of right now, we're half-way done. Don't worry, there will be more and they (probably) won't be as daft as this one. :P

Enjoy!

 

[Orion Pimp]

Loved it! Hilarious, daffy, and wonderful!

 

[Start Wreck]

Thanks.


Here's our latest blooper reel: http://youtu.be/gY87HeYcJvA

 

[Maurice]

Just an FYI, if you put [_yt] and [_/yt] (minus the _s) around a standard youtube link (youtube.com, not youtu.be) the video will appear in your post, like so...
^^^
EDITED: This no longer worked once the board software changed.

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[Start Wreck]

I figured there must be a way - thanks for the tip!

Here's another short feature, a visual effects showreel from the third episode. Despite the, er... sedate nature of the story, there was still a lot of post-production required.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXTR11xH34A[/yt]


We've got more substantial features to upload. There's a 70 minute three-part documentary going up soon. It covers the entire "making of" process going back to before the first episode, with cast interviews, etc. I'll probably post it in this thread. It's kind of interesting, I hope.

 

[Start Wreck]

We've got more substantial features to upload. There's a 70 minute three-part documentary going up soon. It covers the entire "making of" process going back to before the first episode, with cast interviews, etc. I'll probably post it in this thread. It's kind of interesting, I hope.

Part 1 of the documentary is now available to watch online. It's approximately 21 minutes in length. Part 2 will follow next week.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbFfsXQpsu8[/yt]

 

[Start Wreck]

The rest of the documentary is now available to watch. Click the following link for the YouTube playlist with all three parts and let me know what you think. We showed this at our premiere alongside the third episode and it seemed quite well-received.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzeR0rJCRVTprNG7m6f402C-p4K02mkj7


Parts 2 and 3 also embedded below:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmWiB_nUWE[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXBEQIMVews[/yt]

 

[Maurice]

Okay I finally got around to watching "Alpha Shift".

First, congrats on finishing another episode. It's nice that you're doing your own thing and it's not just another Star Trek clone. That gets you an extra point in my book just for creativity.

In general I liked this segment. The best bits were the chat with Dr. Hoo, the conversation between Susan and Elizabeth and the spot-on comment "But until then it's all about the flags."

Sadly, I predicted the punchline very early on.

I do have a few small gripes.

• The opening "yawning" scene was so long I almost switched off. Glad I didn't.
• The rumble inside that ship was a bit too much in some places and tended to make the dialog harder to parse than is necessary.
• The countdown interstitials hurt the pace of the episode because any momentum you'd built up just stopped whenever they'd happen. The sound over the countdowns was loud and irritating to me. I ended up muting the video every time one of these interstitials popped up.
• A fair amount of dialog looked out of sync. Was a lot of this looped?

Nits aside, keep it up!

Cheers!

 

[Start Wreck]

Thanks for taking the time to watch and comment - always appreciated! Working on it day in, day out, it stops being funny to me, so it's nice when fresh eyes watch it for the first time. I was a bit worried it would be too boring in several places.

Yep, 99% of the dialogue was replaced in post.

 

[Start Wreck]

Just checked my YouTube upload again and there's definitely an audio sync issue not apparent anywhere else. Maybe just a couple of frames but it's noticeable.

Until I can figure it out, I'll point people towards the Vimeo uploads:
https://vimeo.com/album/112566

 

[Start Wreck]

It's early days yet, but we've got a 'teaser' for the next one...

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7RFMxsVNL4[/yt]


Brought to you in association with INCEPTION HORNS!!

 

[Maurice]

Just checked my YouTube upload again and there's definitely an audio sync issue not apparent anywhere else. Maybe just a couple of frames but it's noticeable.

Until I can figure it out, I'll point people towards the Vimeo uploads:
https://vimeo.com/album/112566

That's funny. I've seen a few fan filmmakers complain about sound sync/quality issues on YouTube, but I've never had that problem with videos I've uploaded. Mind if I ask what audio output format you're using?

 

[Duane]

Enjoyed this very much. The acting is so much better than one would normally expect.

 

[Start Wreck]

That's funny. I've seen a few fan filmmakers complain about sound sync/quality issues on YouTube, but I've never had that problem with videos I've uploaded. Mind if I ask what audio output format you're using?

Sure, it's AC3, 48k stereo @ 192kbps, muxed to an MPEG2 video.

(It's actually the exact same transcoded file that we put on our DVDs.)

 

[Maurice]

Hmmm. I'm usually outputting as a Quicktime H264 .mov file using AAC for the audio.

 

[Start Wreck]

It's affected all three parts of my documentary as well (same format, recently uploaded), but not my previous episode (same format, uploaded last year). Something must have changed with YouTube recently. Could be any number of things, I guess.

 

[Start Wreck]

Just a quick heads up:
Due to unlicensed use of copyright-protected music, Youtube has recently restricted the availability of at least two of the episodes of Fallen Star (Ep2 seems to have escaped the searchlight for the moment) so you can't watch them there right now, unless the license holder changes their policy.
That's understandable, if slightly annoying.

The Vimeo playlist is still working fine, though: https://vimeo.com/album/112566
As is everything on the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/fallenstarshow


Oh, by the way, I recently made a trailer for "Episode IV"...

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