I'm sure he did, too! Did you like his cowardly scream?
I've got to say, it's been a great surprise to discover so much feedback on this thread already! Thank-you to everyone who has posted and shared their thoughts and opinions; it really has been lovely to hear from each of you. If I fail to address your post individually, please forgive me. Be assured, I've read every word in this thread and I really do value every comment.
Flyboy63 and [DEI]Bart, I'll send PMs to each of you to explain how it was done.
Tyferra, I am really keen to do an action film as either my second or third project, so keep an eye out. I'm a big fan of action films (especially in a war-time setting), so I'm always conceiving of shots and sequences and I already have lots of ideas swirling around in my head.
†FW†Ravenwolf, regarding your questions:
All the editing was done with Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5. I've played around with Windows Media Maker a couple of times but there was no way I was willing to do anything with WMM. I tell people unfamiliar with APP 1.5 that "Notepad is to Microsoft Word as WMM is to Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5." I'd like to buy a copy of Sony Vegas, mind you, just to learn how it compares.
The bf2demo files were all recorded by creating a local server and then using the 'demo.recorddemo demo_name' console command, so I'm guessing, by default, the quality setting for a local server is 10. I used the BFRecorder to play back the bf2demo files and then Fraps to record all the footage I needed. The Fraps settings were 30fps, full-size (800x600). All the raw footage was directly imported into Premiere Pro; eventually exported as a raw AVI file (over 8GB in size) and then encoded using a great little program called AutoGK, where it was simply a matter of selecting the Xvid codec and specifying a file size. I was happy enough with the results to upload the file but there's a lot more I'd like to learn about encoding for future projects.
(EUS)Gen.BadSnipaDay, thanks! I like you, too.
tF-afrojap, I'm really glad you enjoyed it, too. I'm sure a project involving a great community like this one would provide a nice logistical challenge, so it's definitely something to consider.
Xaven, I'll copy in what I wrote in the TotalBF2 thread re: camera movement:
"As for the smoothness of the camera shots ... well, that was a bit of an ordeal. I used a joystick for some, a mouse for others, and sometimes a combination of the two. The other thing I did was create profiles depending upon the type of movement involved. Some profiles allowed me to use the keyboard for certain movements but also allowed analog control via joystick for different directions; it all depended on the nature of the shot and, to be honest, it was still very frustrating. For a couple of the shots, I spent more than four hours trying to get fluid camera movement for just a few seconds of footage. Not too many people are willing to go to those lengths but for me, it's a must. Jerky camera movement can be very distracting. Of course, therein lies the other reason for using Fraps instead of Battlelauncher. I didn't want to create dozens of useless cam files every time I screwed up the camera movement."
Obviously it would have been better if Dice had provided us with advanced tools for moving the camera around. I'm sure it's wishful thinking on my part but perhaps one day they'll include something like that in a patch.
Fingers crossed ...
Last edited by John-Paul (2006-02-10 08:09:07)