I don't know who made it, or were they got the stock footage, assuming it was stock footage. But is was impressive in terms of visual style (there wasn't a story). One option though would be to create your own muzzle flashes or bullet hits in front of a green screen or something though, maybe thats what they did?

does anyone know of a better quality copy anywhere on internet?

It is nicely done and visually interesting. Hopefully that's just a test bit and there is more to come.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Ahah! I have seen this before! It was done by these dudes: http://www.threeleggedlegs.com - they do some very cool stuff indeed, check it out!

Wow, impressive. It made it look like a big budget film.

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http://www.greattalents.com/profile/162/_/default.aspx

The sound was not so good and the angles could have been more aesthetic, but the staging of the action, the effects, and the costumes were amazing!! I wanted to see more. I wonder what their budget was.

My gut instinct is the budget was probably pretty low. The uniforms looked great because I think they were real. Hodge-podges of this and that with new patches sewn on. An industrial area that isn't used on weekends. You will note that the area they exit the drop-ship from looks remarkably like shipping container.

This is the brilliant use of existing stuff which gives it all a much more realistic feel than those that try to invent plastic futures.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Did you try to contact the person who put the video on the site for information?
Just a thought.

quote:

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Originally posted by pond-weed

hello all.

i was just browsing internet for amatuer war films, and stumbled accross this very visualy impressive fire-fight.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=299100201595368635

unfotunatly quality us bad, but it looks very 'after effect heavy' and they look like very realistic AE's.
some of the scenery is CGI, but the bullet hits look like they are done in post aswell.

-does anyone know the origins of this video?

-does anyone know where to buy/download such good after effects, ie the bullet hits, they look so good.

i usually rig up squibs but this video's bullet hits looks great, im thinking about layering these sorts of bullet hits to combine realism/detail with the look of massive bodily damage.

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Learn how to do something new everyday!

I thought the effects were technically bang on and the cinematography is well composed. However, I think the biggest problem with it was the sense of space. Could anyone keep track of where the players were, or even who the players were? I think it would have helped if there was some goal or objective, some sort of stakes. But right now, I feel like its watching random people run all over the place and die in ways to show off cgi glory.

Check out the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan. It is chaotic, blocking is complex, and many different points of view are shown. However, the film maintains a sense of space and relationship between the characters and more importantly the enemy. Picture editing plays a big part of this, but for editing to succeed you need comprehensive coverage of the action from different POVs.

www.youtube.com/macvogt

i agree, but if you look at the credits, only 2 people made it, and i think one of them was a camera man. it really seems like a 'spare time' thing. as amazing as saving private ryan is, the budget and amount of extras was on a completely different scale.
i emailed them asking how much of the bullet hits were AE/effects compared to on set effects and they said that all effects are completely 100% done in post.

they probably could have gotten a couple of friends over etc to get some faces + characters in.
but i think its purley to say, 'look what can be done with just AE'. the sort of little thing you would do before shooting a big film to test your limits on effects.

Saving Private Ryan was on a much larger budget, sure. How you create a sense of space in cinema, however, has nothing to do with budget. You create space by editing different perspectives along with proper wide shots of the same action in editing. Blocking helps too, but then again, not budget related. The amount of extras Saving Private Ryan featured running around only speaks to the complexity of the action sequence that they successfully edited to preserve a lucid sense of what is going on. I was thinking about it, and an even better example of really clear action war sequences are in the mini-series Band of Brothers. Every battle in that series, its like you know exactly where everybody is maneuvering. This is really important because a soldier is gonna have a very clear sense of where things are happening in relation to him, so a film from a soldier's pov should have the same sense.

You are right, it does seem like the type of thing you shoot just to show off what you can do with special effects. However, this is my point: it could have easily been a lot more in terms of an engaging action sequence.

www.youtube.com/macvogt

Normally I would agree with your comments but this is a chunk of action divorced from any story at all. As far as that goes it creates a very nice confusion of battle and a test bed for a certain look and special effects. I don't think they tried for more than that.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Yeah, I wonder who these guys are. Are they just special effects editors just playing around or did they have any intention to build an actual cohesive action piece? My point of view is, why not? They obviously spent a ton of time in post; although the effects are cheap, they still take a lot of time and work to make look good. So if you are willing to sink a ton of time into post, why not spend some time in pre-production? Story or no story, if these guys spent more time planning and blocking the action as a whole scene, this sequence would be a hell of a lot more elegant than a hodgepodge of death shots.

www.youtube.com/macvogt

I agree. I think it was done as a sample to show they can do special effects. A plot would have helped though, and wouldn't have been very hard to weave through. A simple McGuffin that they are all trying to get, and kill each other to prevent the other guys from getting would have added more interest other than just the bloodshed.

Still it's a nice show off piece. In a lot of ways it's more realistic than most sci fi battles.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA