Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

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Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Uniform Two Six »

Meeper wrote:Not to perpetuate the off topic here, but AB needs some crowd funding love right now...
Unlike the previous one, I can't see someone stepping up and saving the day by dropping the thick end of 20 grand to meet the projected goal this time.
Good point. In fact, let's give it its own heading on the board:

Hey, everybody. Let's all help AB out by chipping in a few bucks on Indiegogo here.
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Scott Gardener »

We fell short again, though I do understand that Freeborn once again has official investors looking at it. Still, let's keep our ears raised for other opportunities to help out.
Taking a Gestalt approach, since it's the "in" thing...
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Uniform Two Six »

Any hints of who the "official investors" might be?
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

Uniform Two Six wrote:Any hints of who the "official investors" might be?
Uninterested is who the investors have transpired to be. I haven't looked at the crowd funding page for a while, but I think it garnered about $3500.

See if I can get this straight. The investors wanted essentially a special case trailer showing off both a werewolf transformation and heavy damage effects on a victim. AB thinks he can do it for $20G. Meanwhile Freeborn has a reasonable number of fans waiting to see this project come to fruition without any such massive spoilers.

I'm assuming that youtube will be supporting the series/movie financially on a per view basis? Question: Assuming the present fan base pounced on it, what kind of return would a pilot episode have? And what impact would having a "slow burning fuse" of a transformation scene have on both the pilot and following episodes? Is a big crowd pleaser transformation scene of the ilk the investors are calling for really going to be critical to its success? Or is it just setting us up for pre-release hype and post project release depression?

Personally? I'd be willing to waive the crowd pleaser and go for the slow burning fuse in the first episode. If youtube (or any other sources) can make up some or all the rest of the money for showboating trailers, I vote we don't waste it on show boating, put it into the show. I'm willing to wait and have that crowd pleasing experience delivered by way of the real thing in episode 2 and beyond.

I'm guessing this wouldn't viable. I just don't see the value in firing the big guns prematurely in a stand alone short, and spoil it for the rest of us who want to see it first in its rightful place. There has to be another way around it.

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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Uniform Two Six »

Well, if they were looking at releasing it as a feature-length film, then the transformation scene would be a reasonable proof-of-concept thing, since it's probably the most expensive shot in the film, and sort of sells it. I mean, the shift isn't the only element of the movie, but a cr@ppy or weakly done shift sort of ruins the rest of the film to a significant degree. Why fund the whole thing if you're not sure AB can get the shift scene right? From that perspective, I could sort of see their point, but if it's a serial, then I agree with you in that you wouldn't want to reveal it until later in the show. Nonetheless, the basic justification still holds in that you want to see what the shift is going to look like before you fully fund it -- in fact, probably more so if it is a serial.

On the flip side, the shift is relatively less important in the serial than the film, since it's not going to be repeated endlessly throughout. You're going to still want to see the full transformation at least once -- it's a dramatic element, and anchors whatever emotional gut-reaction you want the viewer to feel about the werewolves, but it's not as central to the ongoing story; Once you see it, you get the picture that they're really werewolves, and the transformation is painful, exhilarating, terrifying, beautiful, revolting, or whatever fill-in-the-blank emotional response you want.

What I don't get is that they're so gun-shy about funding a werewolf serial (or film, or YouTube special, or whatever) since Being Human and Hemlock Grove have both been fairly respectable money-makers (Hemlock Grove just debuted its second season on Netflix today).

I mean, I hate to even think this, but I almost have this sinking feeling that they're looking at Red Victoria and assuming that Freeborn will be that with a fursuit, or some other permutation of that, and they're going "I just don't get it".
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

Yeah that's the double edged sword of asking for the full transformation monty. It's the most expensive and technically challenging bit to reproduce well and if done well would be a slam dunk. By the same token, it's the most expensive and technically challenging things to do and we've got to find the resources entirely from the sweat of our own brow, which is arguably proof of concept in itself, it's just that more of a ball ache to do. But then you've spent all your money and the investors can just say "You're good kid, but we're going to take this money and put it into a new walmart store. You all go and have a nice life", and other investors see you gave it your best shot and had a failure so they don't want to risk it either.

If you must do a transformation, I'm wondering what technical feats would be proof of concept without having to throttle into it like a maniac. What can AB show on a smaller scale that simply needs to be scaled up? Partial transformations can be done in a slow burning fuse version, you can say "we got the CG working here, and the practicl effects working here, and we have gore here. All these will work when you throw more resources at it, there's no real chance of failure going bigger, it just costs more and needs more time, and more rubber skins, and add a few more processors and gigs of RAM to the render farm. Then we get to go full body transformation, render CGI with gorgeous filtering, and hire a few more people to punch the hair in the suits.

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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Uniform Two Six »

And actually, that brings up a couple of other issues. The people you're dealing with are probably more acquainted with the "money" side of the operation, and if you start getting technical with them (particularly with physical creature effects, and in-camera cheats) they're going to come right back with -- hey, it'd be cheaper to just do it all CGI, and that's what SciFi does, so why not just do that and bypass all the expense in the first place?

The issue with Hollywood (I'm probably kicking a dead horse here) is that they're focused on maximizing the profit of each and every dollar sunk into the movie. And that's why Transformers 16 is in theaters now. They just don't want to do niche movies anymore -- despite the fact that the market is so saturated with maximum-butts-in-the-seats garbage already. And they can't figure out why they're consistently losing market share to Netflix every quarter...
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Volkodlak »

Uniform Two Six wrote:And actually, that brings up a couple of other issues. The people you're dealing with are probably more acquainted with the "money" side of the operation, and if you start getting technical with them (particularly with physical creature effects, and in-camera cheats) they're going to come right back with -- hey, it'd be cheaper to just do it all CGI, and that's what SciFi does, so why not just do that and bypass all the expense in the first place?
Uniform making cgi transformation and/or werewolf isnt hard, but making it look real as it can be is another thing and for this you need very talented team of CGI designers and a lot off money.
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

Yeah what Lovec said. Things may be different now, but not too many years ago CGI *was* one of the major budget trade offs. It might be cheaper now though, it's just the studios are blowing the budgets on more ambitious CGI work. Make a bigger hammer (AKA: New render farm)? Let's see how big of a nail we can drive with it this time! (AKA: Advanced physics modeled destructible environments on top of of just digital actor doubles) Probably all Freeborn needs to do is anatomically plausible morphs that don't look goofy like Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV show (You can't get the unnaturally flat time line animated morph past me, no matter how smooth and accurate the point to point transitions are. Come on guys, go learn your anatomy and build the transformation from the skeleton out, we'll love you for it).

Things are getting nicer in CG land. I watched The Wolverine, there's a scene where Logan gets burned in a nuclear explosion, and you get to see his hair grow back out, it wasn't a smugdy morph, it was hair strands growing out. This is what I mean and what I'd like to see more of.

Now I'm curious who these fabled investors were. Of course layman terms apply, I'd bother making a layman terms pitch as I write these posts if I were on AB's team and wanted to sell the project to investors, like "this scene can be longer, but the CGI is time consuming and this is what we got in the week you gave us. We can do more and be faster when we got the cash" but I'm not on the team, so I'll just ramble on as usual :P.

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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Volkodlak »

it was probably said somewere on this forum but i need too ask does anyone knows will werewolfs hybrid form be cgi or practical or combination of both ?
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

I don't think anybody knows yet, except those closest to the project. If I had to put money on it, I'd say both will be used.

Probably animatronic puppets for some scenes, at least as a productive way to give old damaged costumes a good send off. When an old costume has reached the end of its useful life for everything else, you can stuff it with animatronics made out of crap you want to get rid of, the remains of food you didn't finish eating last night, blood bags etc, and have a realistic werewolf death, shoot it with live ammo, or set it on fire, or run over it with a truck and so on.

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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Volkodlak »

Meeper wrote:I don't think anybody knows yet, except those closest to the project. If I had to put money on it, I'd say both will be used.

Probably animatronic puppets for some scenes, at least as a productive way to give old damaged costumes a good send off. When an old costume has reached the end of its useful life for everything else, you can stuff it with animatronics made out of crap you want to get rid of, the remains of food you didn't finish eating last night, blood bags etc, and have a realistic werewolf death, shoot it with live ammo, or set it on fire, or run over it with a truck and so on.

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thanks meeper, but as far i know animatronics have problem with moving like a real creature so if they want too make it realistic they need too put guy in that suit with sensors too get realistic movement
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

Well for good animatronics, I suspect Freeborn will just make special partial puppets, such as heads american werewolf/underworld style.

For a werewolf death I described though, all you need is a skeleton, some vague sense of having a mass and a musculature acting on the frame, which could be simulated well enough with rubber buffers in the joints, and add some realistic dead weight. It'll react as a ragdoll to gravity or to weapons or whatever, the rubber buffers in the joints, damped by the dead weight, will stop it flopping about too unrealistically, and the face probably won't need to do much other than look angry, dead, or hurting.

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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

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My point is that they're going to be constantly looking for the "cheap" fix, and right now CGI is fairly cheap (especially if it is done quickly and cr@pulently). I'm sure that some CGI will be necessary in Freeborn, but I'm still firmly in the camp that effects should be done physically or in camera whenever possible. Some of my favorite special effects -- and ones that have stood the test of time, by the way -- were not done CGI. My perfect example would be Aliens. Now, granted, Aliens didn't have a "transformation scene" per se, so it's a little apples-to-oranges. Nonetheless, James Cameron was doing an interview and he showed how the special effects for Alien were done, and they're surprisingly simple. Moreover, they were cheap, and they looked good. That sucker was done waaaay back in 1986, and it still looks awesome. Now, some elements of a transformation sequence will defy that approach, so fixating on the shift scene is not helpful, but done correctly, the rest of the movie (or series, or whatever) could probably be done more conventionally (and cheaply). The problem is the same one facing Cameron way back thirty years ago with Aliens: He knew he could pull it off, but the studio execs insisted that he was going to go horrendously over-budget if he tried even a fraction of what he was proposing in his storyboards.
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Volkodlak »

uniform practical effects are good but at least some cgi would be needed because of ABs werewolf design and if you use cheap tactics it comes out as cheap effects, but for transformation i liked how underworld did it:

transformations were achieved through computer generated imagery — and were a particularly complex process for the visual effects artists. The first step was to shoot both the actor and the suited Werewolf performer against a green screen plate, in separate shots. Framestore and CFC had at their disposition digital scans of Kevin Grevioux’s head and of the Werewolf heads — and from those they created a “morph that gave the sense, actually, of this Werewolf face growing out of the human face”. Although it was digital work, Len Wiseman gave directions to the visual effects artists, and told them to make their work as much like a practical effect as possible. “I wanted it to be shaky and look painful, I didn’t want it to be smooth,” the director said. “I actually told the [VFX] guys to try and make the transformation look as much like an animatronic effect as possible. it actually looked like there were guys in there with bladders and everything.“
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

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Uniform Two Six wrote:My point is that they're going to be constantly looking for the "cheap" fix, and right now CGI is fairly cheap (especially if it is done quickly and cr@pulently). I'm sure that some CGI will be necessary in Freeborn, but I'm still firmly in the camp that effects should be done physically or in camera whenever possible. Some of my favorite special effects -- and ones that have stood the test of time, by the way -- were not done CGI. My perfect example would be Aliens. Now, granted, Aliens didn't have a "transformation scene" per se, so it's a little apples-to-oranges. Nonetheless, James Cameron was doing an interview and he showed how the special effects for Alien were done, and they're surprisingly simple. Moreover, they were cheap, and they looked good. That sucker was done waaaay back in 1986, and it still looks awesome. Now, some elements of a transformation sequence will defy that approach, so fixating on the shift scene is not helpful, but done correctly, the rest of the movie (or series, or whatever) could probably be done more conventionally (and cheaply). The problem is the same one facing Cameron way back thirty years ago with Aliens: He knew he could pull it off, but the studio execs insisted that he was going to go horrendously over-budget if he tried even a fraction of what he was proposing in his storyboards.
Oh no, I'm agreeing with you. With investors being used to massive production budgets and 3 month production cycles for block-buster titles, they probably aren't used to what Freeborn is going to be. And I'm on board with practical effects too. I was merely pondering other ways around the budgeting problem initially, exactly because dealing with investors under these circumstances IS going to be a difficult sell for Freeborn, I saw this coming way back when AB signed up at my previous forum haunt back in 2004.

There's a little hindsight here in regards to the exact technical challenges faced such as in the Alien film. We need to be careful not to pull an Underworld and end up over selling what's actually there in any effect, CGI or practical. In Alien (as with video game monsters for example), the monster doesn't have to mimic a human or animal convincingly, which is inordinately tricky to do in either CGI or practical effects. Alien worked because it wasn't trying to be these familiar things. Instead it had anatomy that nobody had ever seen before, and that is a large chunk of why they got away with all the weird shapes and creature concepts like acid blood. All the artists had to do is just make it look beautiful and awesome in its own right, and the audience will buy that, hook line and sinker.

Werewolves specifically though have suffered horribly because of this assumption. The film production crew say "Well it's a monster" and trot out their special case why their crap works so well. But unlike the alien monster (or Transformers, hi Michael Bay *waves*) which has no precedent or anything even approaching a real life equal in most people's mind, we can sit here and contemplate whether werewolves have tails, or appropriate patterns of fur density and coverage, what percentage of human and wolf attributes etc. In production, budget limits end up being the driving force behind a lot of artistic decisions and even story itself, Michael Bay probably took a leaf out of Riddley Scott's book, made smart decisions about their titular monsters and made a killing s a result. whereas Riddley Scott grew from more humble beginnings and made it big, and John Landis made smart decisions in the workshop and ended up with a slow burning fuse as classic genre piece decades later.

All I'm proposing is since we've had this long maturation time of about a decade now, and have all this cinematic wealth to draw from, we are potentially in a unique and enviable position to cherry pick exactly the right things, and that includes the exact use of practical and digital effects. Underworld used both, but were running to a schedule and budget, and in my opinion they suffered. They ended up doing more silly things as time went on. We don't have to do that, we still have time while investors are dilly-dallying to polish the concept, it's why I'm still racking my brain about how to do real bone transformation in real life terms, and get that accurately modeled in a visual effect, instead of a simple morph blend, or goofy bubbling skin effect with practical effects.

I realize I'm rambling on a bit, but I'll drop an example. Bone transformation! I suggested that a realistic bone transform could be done by a real werewolf, by way of partially eroding particles of bone mass in selective areas, making it into a kind of liquid clay (aka "clay slip") like substance, which can be basically pumped around the body to form new bone mass elsewhere (this has the advantage for the werewolf that it doesn't compromise muscle anchorage to bones or overall skeletal integrity). So, for a transformation example: As the soft tissues of the tail stretches and grows out, liquidized bone mass can be slewed off from the pelvis and essentially injection molded into the bone cavities in the soft tissues of the tail as it's growing out, flooding it under mild pressure. This would give the tail a slightly ballooned look till the fluid is drained, which will compact the particulate bone mass into approximate tail vertebrae shape, and the soft tissues of the tail will be layed back into normal position on the newly formed tail bones. The same can be done potentially with the growth of a snout. That right there is simple to simulate and is ripe for implementing in a practical movie effect, and with a little artistic flair and proper anatomical knowledge, it will be cheap and effective, and kick the stuffing out of most CGI attempts at a transformation because it's literally real.

On the other hand, we saw what An Ameican Werewolf in London had to do with hair growth, a small square of rubbery plastic with hair punched in it. It did the job, but had to be crutched around. CGI can pick up the slack by adding and blending more hair, and different growth rates to make it feel more organic, and the rendering quality can be focused on that instead of having to share it for all of the transformation goodness, which should make the CGI work a cheaper component.

Ok I'm going to shut up now :lol: .

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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Volkodlak »

Meeper wrote:Werewolves specifically though have suffered horribly because of this assumption. The film production crew say "Well it's a monster" and trot out their special case why their crap works so well.
here lies another problem too viewers that will go too see Freeborn will probably expect horror,gore and death its fairly new that werewolfs can be good, friendly and not overly aggresive.But like it or not film production crew is right werewolf is a monster.
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

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lovec1990 wrote:But like it or not film production crew is right werewolf is a monster.
Uh, well... My understanding is that Tasha is going to remain a character in the new(er) Freeborn concept, and I think she pretty well epitomizes the very essence of why a werewolf is a monster. With luck, the "Death-By-Transformation" scene will be retained at some point as well.
Meeper wrote:Alien worked because it wasn't trying to be these familiar things. Instead it had anatomy that nobody had ever seen before, and that is a large chunk of why they got away with all the weird shapes and creature concepts
Well, actually it didn't exactly. Most of the aliens were actors wearing body-suits with white and gray spray-paint. The only part of their costumes that were truly alien were the headpieces. Cameron (being the genius that he is) realized that he could get away with it by using lighting to trick the viewer into seeing what he wanted them to see. I get the distinct impression that AB understands this basic concept on a fundamental level. Remember the 2005 trailer? Yeah, the "transformation" scene in that was cheesy, but nonetheless it worked -- and on no budget to boot. Imagine what he could do if he got some real funding.
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Volkodlak »

Uniform Two Six wrote:
Uh, well... My understanding is that Tasha is going to remain a character in the new(er) Freeborn concept, and I think she pretty well epitomizes the very essence of why a werewolf is a monster. With luck, the "Death-By-Transformation" scene will be retained at some point as well.
ok, im saying that werewolf is a monster no matter if hes good or evil
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

Uniform Two Six wrote:
lovec1990 wrote:But like it or not film production crew is right werewolf is a monster.
Uh, well... My understanding is that Tasha is going to remain a character in the new(er) Freeborn concept, and I think she pretty well epitomizes the very essence of why a werewolf is a monster. With luck, the "Death-By-Transformation" scene will be retained at some point as well.
Meeper wrote:Alien worked because it wasn't trying to be these familiar things. Instead it had anatomy that nobody had ever seen before, and that is a large chunk of why they got away with all the weird shapes and creature concepts
Well, actually it didn't exactly. Most of the aliens were actors wearing body-suits with white and gray spray-paint. The only part of their costumes that were truly alien were the headpieces. Cameron (being the genius that he is) realized that he could get away with it by using lighting to trick the viewer into seeing what he wanted them to see. I get the distinct impression that AB understands this basic concept on a fundamental level. Remember the 2005 trailer? Yeah, the "transformation" scene in that was cheesy, but nonetheless it worked -- and on no budget to boot. Imagine what he could do if he got some real funding.
Sure I know that, Riddley did these clever things to hide the fact it's a guy in a suit, but an overwhelming advantage is that the alien creature has no aesthetic competition, except itself. All the body work that you did get glimpses of, bares no resemblance to anything people knew at the time, and it didn't have to. With a werewolf, we know what a person looks like, we know what a wolf looks like, approximately. It's more difficult to pass off fake fur and lifeless rubber muscles as a believable living mammalian creature, born of two familiar life forms, than to pass off a collection of spray painted ridges and pipes and spiky bits, and that trademark honking great noggin, as a creature we've never seen before in any capacity. An alien from another planet. But at least equal to that, to hiding the human actor, is the alien can evade human perception, hide in plain sight, vanish into shadows and pipework against the walls. Is that a pipe? Or death incarnate? That works for me as much as the cinematic desire to disguise the human form completely from the audience.

Riddley chose a setting where the alien aesthetic could be most effective, on a space ship, which has an excuse to be full of pipes :D .

Actually even there, the Alien story is based around a parasitic alien genome that borrows genetic elements from a host. The host in this case is human, so that's the reason (or excuse) for anything vaguely resembling a human in the alien form. An example of the limitations of special effects, shaping and driving the story. Not that it's a bad thing, it makes for a cracking horror film :D .
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

There was a quote, I can't remember it exactly, but it went something like this..."If you do something different enough, and interesting enough, you'll make money". The quote was actually longer and more eloquent, but it makes the point well enough between Alien and werewolf genres. With an alien you can make it be anything. With a werewolf there's less artistic freedom, and some people are trying to make money by trying to be so different, that it's turning a werewolf into a joke in a lot of cases.
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

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Well, I guess the point I was trying to make is that a lot of the tricks Cameron pulled off (very successfully) were feasible because of the dark and spooky atmosphere of the film -- which also made it much easier to achieve immeasurable suspense by only showing hints and pieces of the monster, and letting the viewer subconsciously fill in the details. Even in a series in which the werewolves are generally supposed to be the good guys (or at least the 'regular guys' or whatever), the werewolf -- that is, the transformed, brutish, killing machine -- should still be at least somewhat spooky and intimidating, and in that all of the elements that made Aliens work, should work as well. I mean, seriously, EVERY really good suspenseful movie uses the dark spooky house with dark spooky hallways, or a dark spooky moonlit forest, where you can't really see anything particularly well. Now, admittedly, part of why that works is that it makes it easier to hide how cheap and cheesy the monster costume or prosthetic or whatever is -- but a perhaps larger part is that it plays on the human primal fear of the dark and the unseen (or poorly seen).

I still hold that simply manipulating the viewer's perspective (a la: Aliens) can have a far more profound effect than the Michael Bay approach of just throwing more money at it and making sure there's lots of explosions. So long as there is a good, gripping, suspenseful plot, intriguing characters and good writing, that's all you really need to make a Freeborn type of story work. Yes, at some point you need an immersive and magnificent shift scene, but really if AB has done his job right, that's the crescendo, the icing on the cake that locks it all up, rather than the hook.

EDIT: Perfect example of this concept working really well in-a-darkened-forest just came to me: The Village. Never mind what you thought about M. Night Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious's twist ending(s). The "monster" in the movie was incredibly scary simply because you never got a good look at the frickin' thing -- and it kept leaping out of nowhere.
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

Yup, agreed, I had no intention to detract from your points, indeed mine is complimentary I think.

AB has a few other tricks up his sleeve though in regards to freaking us out. He's already showcased scary-terrifying in stark room light, but obscured by curtains in Tasha's Decision. A running scared silhouette at the window, spatter of blood on the curtains, and then the lights go out. There's more to play for than the masochistic thrill of groping around in the dark hoping you don't die.

Speaking of which, there's other aspects which I enjoy, since werewolves are generally creatures of the dark. Namely the weird ethereal atmosphere, which I had vague hopes that at some point Freeborn might visit along the way. Werewolves obviously sheltered under the horror roof because they kill and eat people. Now try not to get upset when I say this, but some portrayals of werewolves have similarities to aspects which are more frequently enjoyed by the vampires, the sense of mysticism they can portray. If you've ever seen wolves at dusk or onset of night time, you'll know that chill, like a brush with a ghost, they give you that feeling that they're just on a whole other level. I don't know if that would be a winning formula for Freeborn, but I've been longing for something like that more and more, to get as far away from the likes of Underworld, and the hokey likes of The Howling series as possible. Put some classiness into it y'know? I don't mean like the aristocratic vampire type of classy, I mean the pure force of nature style. There's more to a werewolf than sweaty transformations and slash you're dead. Probably one of the obvious examples is Company OF Wolves. Not that I'm suggesting we go that direction, just that it had a more ethereal sense to it which may fit in somewhere (I have my doubts, and no intention to press for it, Freeborn is its own animal, and I respect that).

Anyway, all that aside, I'm still concerned about what needs to be done to pull the trigger. My gut is rarely wrong, as I said I saw this coming 10 years ago, on the strength of the fact AB signed up on my old forum, that's not generally the behavior of typically successful people, I was like "What the hell is he doing here?". He's done enough to convince me he's not a vapourware merchant, but that still doesn't negate the fact that he hasn't got the formula down. I completely respect the ambitions, and I'm certainly not calling AB to book about any notion of shortcomings, but I knew all along that pulling this off was going to be a real struggle him the moment I saw him, and debating the finer points of cinematic technique, while valuable to the budgeting side of things, isn't providing an actual solution to the production problem. We need a plan to fund it, we need a plan B to the investor A plan, at least a stop gap if not a way to pyramid up from ground zero. It may be more pain and suffering, but what's new about this project other than the labour of love.

Is there something that can be done without Investors or crowd funding bluntly footing the bill? I'm still curious about what's the deal with Youtube? How is AB and everybody going to get paid? How am I (if at all) going to give AB&Co my money to see Freeborn? I don't know what I'm dealing with here, and without knowing that, we're just spinning our conversational wheels.

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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Chris »

Meeper wrote:Now try not to get upset when I say this, but some portrayals of werewolves have similarities to aspects which are more frequently enjoyed by the vampires
This statement makes me think of Sabrewulf from Killer Instinct (the original arcade version from 1995, not the new 2013 version that annoyingly takes the same name). Sabrewulf had a number of qualities often associated with vampires... he's a Count, after contracting lycanthropy became a recluse in a remote mountain tower while trying to control his new nature, and has bats accompany him), and his stage design had this kind of gothic style typically given to vampires. His stage music is also not something you typically associate with werewolves, the pipe organ in particular again being more reminiscent of vampires. But it all works really well to create a gothic horror theme for him, and I'm actually kind of sad there aren't more werewolves like that (that don't also coattail on vampires and/or other horror creatures hogging the spotlight).
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Re: Freeborn Crowdfunding Campaign Online

Post by Meeper »

Chris wrote:
Meeper wrote:Now try not to get upset when I say this, but some portrayals of werewolves have similarities to aspects which are more frequently enjoyed by the vampires
This statement makes me think of Sabrewulf from Killer Instinct (the original arcade version from 1995, not the new 2013 version that annoyingly takes the same name). Sabrewulf had a number of qualities often associated with vampires... he's a Count, after contracting lycanthropy became a recluse in a remote mountain tower while trying to control his new nature, and has bats accompany him), and his stage design had this kind of gothic style typically given to vampires. His stage music is also not something you typically associate with werewolves, the pipe organ in particular again being more reminiscent of vampires. But it all works really well to create a gothic horror theme for him, and I'm actually kind of sad there aren't more werewolves like that (that don't also coattail on vampires and/or other horror creatures hogging the spotlight).
You're sort of on the right track. My distinction is that vampires and werewolves both have inherent ethereal qualities, and the fact they have them is what they have in common, not necessarily the exact qualities themselves, because the nature of these creatures and their qualities are worlds apart. Vampire ethereal quality is in and of itself not appropriate for a werewolf, and vice verse. It's like comparing a prince and a knight, they're both powerful and majestic, and to an extent may well have common ground proficiencies (A prince may still be called on to use a sword, and a knight may still need to make good judgement calls), but they do different jobs, and shouldn't try do each others work.

My gripe is that while vampires in films have their inherent ethereal qualities accentuated and emphasized, werewolves have their own unique ethereal wolfish qualities depreciated to a vague lunar connection and preference for blood and guts basically (some werewolves are more like a Freddy Kruger or Michael Myers with fur and the requisite stereotypes bolted on just to sell it). I'd like for a change, at least for once, having a spine tingling ghostly close encounter with a werewolf that let's people see more of the wolf's inherent jaw dropping quality shine, than most horror and drama productions afford werewolves credit for.

There have been glimpses in modern films though. I know that I knock Underworld a lot, but credit where it' due, they did some interesting things. One scene from Rise of the Lycans that comes tantalizingly close is where Lucian rushes to save his wife Sonya. They're surrounded by these brutal savage werewolves, then Lucian transforms and roars at the werewolf riff-raff surrounding them, and then the scene changes. The werewolf pack stops in its tracks, and it becomes this almost surreal moment of realization for Sonya, there's something else at work here, this is not the foe the vampires have battled for so long. That is one of my favourite scenes from the film.

In short, werewolves shouldn't be awesome just because they can eat you. Werewolves should be awesome because they're werewolves.

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While the empty can may rattle the most, of equal or potentially greater import is what the reputably quiet cans are really full of.
All names are but souvenirs, in the end. Make good of your stay, so that they hold happy memories ~ Some guy.
Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools speak because they have to say something.
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