I'm making a sci-fi serial with "The Movies"

[protobob]

The managment part of the game is pretty good, if a little too micro-management for me (but I have a low tolerance for such things). But I've been getting a lot of mileage out making movies with the game.

By splicing bits and parts of various scense together you can do some pretty cool stuff. The post production tool is a little buggy though, It likes to mix up the fades you put in, which cane be annoying but isn't a show stopper. You also need to get your edits down first, before you put in text or sound (or dialogue) because when you change your edit (ie. delete a scene) the elements you've placed get out of alignment.

Anyway I've ended up making three episodes of a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi serial, centered around a character named Dr Valmet who is sorta a mix between Dr Who and Austin Powers. It's not heady, mostly just action and a little storry. You can watch them at:

http://movies.lionhead.com/studio/protobob

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Ironmonger?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Your movies suck and make no sense.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, they don't really have to make sense. Anyway, since we're talking about our wacky serial movies.. I've thrown my hat in the right with my own serial series. There's three so far. They're rather silly and it's mostly me just playing around. They're sort of episodic and generally rely on flashbacks to battle - except the prologue, which is basically just a prequel type thing.

The second one isn't as good as the first, but sets up a few things in the second prologue like a character who dies in a later flashback and the "I've had worse" situation is in the second prologue which isn't filmed yet.

 

[Section8]

I thought I'd give it a go, so I picked up The Movies today, and my first effort is here. I'm not 100% happy with it (lots of dodgy cuts, etc), so it's not going on the official site just yet, plus I'd like to try adding a custom soundtrack, and probably make use of advancements beyond 1930s tech.

Anyway, enjoy the 3 minutes of "Dude WTF!?!" that is The Cellar.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

They wouldn't look so bad if the models weren't all wobbly. Thorne just seemed like he was tripping at some acid rave or gay parade.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'd like to try adding a custom soundtrack, and probably make use of advancements beyond 1930s tech.

That's pretty much why I sandbox. I start in the 1980s, and just let it roll until my studio runs out of the $10M I start it with.

They wouldn't look so bad if the models weren't all wobbly. Thorne just seemed like he was tripping at some acid rave or gay parade.

The mustache he has doesn't help matters. Also, I was in post production before I noticed, during a close up, that he's wearing a Chinese Officer Hat. Whoops.

If you think those are goofy, check out the "Happy" setting on the emotion slider for talking scenes. It's crazy happy, and makes the actors look like they're on some kind of serious happy medication.. It's "Scary Happy".

I'm not sure if the star rating or mood actually affects their performance or not, but most of the stars I use are the fresh hires. Thorne was one I'd just picked up and tossed in there. The other actors were more seasonned in the studio. Dr. Richards is the same actor as the one who played Roadrunner in the first episode. The black dude is in the first episode and the prologue, but he's playing the same guy in both.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I've got some I plan to submit, but I'm giving them a good workover in Post Prod first. With the proper editing in the right places, you can do wonders with PP. Well, so long as the game doesn't bug out on you. But I've only had one problem when I exported a movie once and the sound was like waaaaaaaaay off.

 

[HanoverF]

My first <a href="http://members.cox.net/hanoverf/Chicken Versus Robot!!!1.wmv">masterpiece</a> of cinema nuovo

 

[Section8]

I'm not sure if the star rating or mood actually affects their performance or not, but most of the stars I use are the fresh hires. Thorne was one I'd just picked up and tossed in there. The other actors were more seasonned in the studio. Dr. Richards is the same actor as the one who played Roadrunner in the first episode. The black dude is in the first episode and the prologue, but he's playing the same guy in both.

The early stages where you're greatly assisted in everything you do, assures you that actor moods play a role in their acting, stat wise, ie happy stars put in "better" performances, but I have no idea if there are any differences to any of the animation controllers. If there are, they'd only be slight (facial expressions and such).

And I agree on "Happy". Manic might have been a better term.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

My first <a href="http://members.cox.net/hanoverf/Chicken Versus Robot!!!1.wmv">masterpiece</a> of cinema nuovo

Very abstract.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The early stages where you're greatly assisted in everything you do, assures you that actor moods play a role in their acting, stat wise, ie happy stars put in "better" performances, but I have no idea if there are any differences to any of the animation controllers. If there are, they'd only be slight (facial expressions and such).

And I agree on "Happy". Manic might have been a better term.

A lot of the animations are fairly off for doing anything remotely serious. The "happy" and "sad" animations are often way, way over the top esspecially in certain scenes where they shouldn't be like the generic "Confrontation" scene. I'm sure the animators had fun making them like that, but it often gets in the way of actually using whole scenes because of how over the top many things are.

Hell, the "Monsters Enter" scene is fairly pointless for anything but zombie flicks because all the animations are pretty silly. The robots one, the vampire one, and the aliens one are just utterly goofy. Even if I were making an aliens movie, there's no way in hell I'd use that scene just because of the poses and animations for the aliens. I've never seen an alien movie even remotely that goofy. The zombies one works, but there's already a bunch of scenes devoted to zombies which do the same thing.

Also, the "Pistol Draw" scene is animated pretty goofy as well. It should be renamed, "Pistol Draw with Poor Arm Control" or something.

Time spend making scenes like that would have been best spent making useful scenes, like "Bursting through doors with guns firing" and such like that. There is no scene that I've seen where you have multiple soldiers coming through a door.

 

[Balor]

Well, I suppose that Lionhead and Bethesda share same flaw in that respect - they don't threat their creative fanbase seriously.
The idea of 'very large mod' in Bethesda's mind was '200 kbs'.
The idea of 'best fan movie' in Lionhead's mind also must be something goofy and made 'just for fun'.
Which is not always the case.
...
Well, I think that might be corrected with expancion packs, and I suspect that they may actually done that on purpose - so movie-making fans will run back for more.
On the other hand, we may see mods that add new anims and so on... but I doubt so.
In case of backprops - well, it's kinda easy .
But when it comes to animations...