quote:

One comment Joe. Like it or not the NORMAL audience (NON IL2), get bored very fast when they see long shots and long clips of aircraft.

Maybe that is why we never get accepted, we are too romantic and too hung up with the view of aircraft actually flying.

Others get bored seeing that, they want fast cuts, action, real people and story. Its not just you, I am also realising that now as well

I agree with RAF Blackace's comment;

I think we as IL2 movie makers are locked in a certain fixed mind set from a gamers point of view. We can stare for long periods at a fascinating war bird flying……but the general public gets bored very quickly, especially with war topics…

When looking at You-Tube, which is a fair reflection of the international general public viewpoint, you will notice that the most successful IL2 movie must surely be "B-17 Flying Fortress IL2" by DR Plankton, a guy from Russia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GfpTEE-nJg

It was placed on You-tube more than a year ago and received over 70 000 views, with hits coming in every day. The comments are overwhelmingly positive, and so the ratings.

If you analyze this movie a bit, you can attempt a couple of conclusions:

1) The movie is a visual and sound experience; no story!

2) Very short clip times.

3) Heavy use of filters.

4) Plenty of "arty" and close-up shoots where they don’t mind for pixilation for instance. Extreme use of colors. Lots of shake and visual noise. "Arty" use of sound…

5) No focus on detail, for the most part of the movie the skins of the aircraft are unrecognizable.

6) Nothing of directional continuity.

But still, with breaking some rules that we regard as "sacred", this is the top IL2 movie of You-Tube .

So one can maybe say that we as IL2 moviemakers of this forum are a bit on the wrong track if we want to capture the attention of the public in general?

Aye well, Youtube is a fickle thing!

If you want to be a hit on youtube, film some fat angry kid playing IL2 and smashing the keyboard when he gets a 30mm up his tail

Making IL-2 movies is all about choosing your audience. If you want to make a youtube hit, then make an action movie. If you want to win a machinima award, stick some Sims in the cockpit.

Why do you make movies?

I know why I do and that's what makes me make movies the way I do. Maybe one day I'll try and be a youtube hit, or win an award, but for now that's not a priority.

Now, as for those sacred rules, lol. Bru, my friend, rules are made for the breaking! But my opinion is that a truly good moviemaker knows exactly what rules he is breaking and why.

PS, B17 isn't the most popular youtube IL2 movie, though I much prefer B17 to the '46 trailer . It's a well crafted movie. I only wish I could get it in high res

Thanks Joe for the quick reply;

The reason for me starting this discussion is this specific part of Blackace's the comment:

quote:

Maybe that is why we never get accepted, we are too romantic and too hung up with the view of aircraft actually flying.

As Blackace being one of the pioneers here and is respected by myself, I was wondering why he said that "we never get accepted" and this thread is an attempt to answer this question.

I agree one makes a movie for an specific audience, but you must not underestimate the sophistication of many of the millions of You Tube viewers over the globe, besides many crappy comments, you get some excellent feedback. (By the way it was through You Tube that I got involved with this forum and IL2 movie-making…)

To get to the question why we make movies: In my case it is for fun, but it is quite a reward if you know there are people who enjoy the movies you make and inspire you to continue. But the more people who enjoy your movies makes the reward even better. You and I know the effort in terms of man-hours that goes into a proper movie of 10 minutes duration; it is actually a bit absurd. So it must be fun!

The purpose of this thread is not to be a "I am right and you are wrong" contest, it is purely to be a discussion on IL moviemaking that we love so much! I think the spirit of this forum is very sound, people unconditionally share their methods and secrets and a lot of support are dished out, you don’t find this often in life…

Hi biltong hows it going?
Well, I'm not sure about all of the reasons on the B17 movie, one of which is that it comes top on an IL-2 search on youtube so thats a help but Gutted's movie which is wall to wall shootin' has more hits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G60fP6EPZIo&feature=related
So it makes it harder to figure out what yer average il-2 tuber wants if that's your barometer.
My personal view is that it's hard to get an audience outside of your chosen sim anyway, all of the game/virtual movies call them what you will which have hits in the millions on youtube are things like World of warcraft and Oblivion which are big selling fantasy titles bought by millions to start with, it's a massive community, there's nobody outside of the game world looking up this stuff 'cause they dont know what it is.
None of the movies made with these have real actors or any other user voice acting input but the massive audience is guaranteed simply on the game following.
The flight sim thing is so niche compared to this and IL-2 even more so, although your movie may pull in some general WWII fans it's almost all IL-2 crowd, if you take the best selling flight sim fsx and a talented movie maker like this guy
http://www.youtube.com/user/Ramasurinen
there's always going to be more hits than any IL-2 stuff and you'll sure as hell never see as many il-2 subscribers, his movies dont have actors or any real world stuff but do have quirky, humour, or emotional content and are all fairly short and this can be appealing to the non sim audience but you can bet it's 99% simmers watching the stuff.
Sometimes I cant even figure out who the il-2 audience is, you know I've looked at the forums of M4T or simhq several times and seen long time known members and il-2 skinners saying hey! look at this awesome movie I just found! and they link to Maximum bob's stuff of 3 years ago or similar, then followed by several ooooh, great find comments. I mean maximums bob's stuff is classic but... really? some IL-2'ers have no idea of whats going on.
Like you I only make movies as a pastime/hobby, my own personal favourite flight sim movie of all time is "Dualality" anyone who can do something as realistic looking as that in a WWII sim with real in cockpit shots and pilots heads has cracked it, no voice acting required.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wolfbics,

Hi Wolf!

Doing fine thanks.

Thanks for your perspective, and I guess you and Joe are correct that You Tube is not always the best barometer....The ramasurinen link is quite an eye opener!

I will be away and off line now till Sunday and then see how this thread has progressed...

I thought the avatar might be 'De La Rey', but I see it's somebody else.

Hi..
Maybe this one..
IL-2 movie about swedish volunteers at salla front 1940 northern finland..made by F19 Orheim..

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i5EXH160Tzs

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Flyfinn,

quote:

As Blackace being one of the pioneers here

Eh, good god no. There were loads of these guys her before me, and to be honest I think my films sucked. Part of a learning curve.

The most fun I had was working with MrVH, he teached me lots. About how to think about the audience, how to compose music, how to do composite shots that really work, and how not to hate Canadians.

I would say (for myself) that MrVH is the guru here.

Hmm.

Just w atched the long goodnight and Adler Tag.

Not bad, for a newbie.

My Stuff

quote:

Originally posted by K_Freddie:
I thought the avatar might be 'De La Rey', but I see it's somebody else.

Pic of my great gran during the Boer war, but you had a good guess, De la Ray is one of my heroes!

" Requiem " is on youtube

imagine if they had recorded a 1600 kbs version

This thread got me thinking, why is it I like the movies that come from you fella's. Simple answer is, you lads take real life story's that have been forgotten, storys that really only reflect on one man and his family, you tell those storys to me very well indeed. I really like the tributes you make to these once forgotten men.

Dumbing down for youtube to me would be a backwards step for anyone to take, once you start "trying" to capture a bigger audiance you will prolly lose the fun aspect of making machinima. Once that is lost you may as well give up.

I personaly hate youtube though I do have an account there, my main reason for being there is to look out for producers of good machinima and bring their films to Gamerztheatre. Just this week I gained a contact with Ramasurinen and hopefully if he keeps his promise you will see his movies rerendered and streaming at Gamerztheatre HD.

I am seeing a great increase of the hits the flight sim movies are gaining at GzT, thats down to your support along with the other flight sim fans.

Finaly I would like to say that I would rather have one letter from one of those men saying how much he enjoyed my movie than 1 million hits on youtube. Joe .. I know you had that from Raymond, a true privalage to have that indeed.

Gas

Hi biltongbru,

Very interesting post, I can’t understand how I missed this one:

Quote:
I think we as IL2 movie makers are locked in a certain fixed mind set from a gamer’s point of view. We can stare for long periods at a fascinating war bird flying……but the general public gets bored very quickly, especially with war topics…

While I agree with a good proportion of your thinking, there is a selection of IL2 movies not simply based on a “you shoot at me and I will shoot back” scenario, and I will try and get a list together of these movies as soon as, although I suppose they will be on BBlokes database of movies by now

Speaking for me all my main movies to date have been fictional meaning that a naked story board was the starting point and according to my records V1, POW and POW2 have
been downloaded (not viewed) over 75,000 times on sites that I can monitor. As with you I only make IL2 movies as a hobby also, but I must admit that the level of interest generated to date by these fictional movies does wonders for the motivation to make another

The number of “shoot em up” movies has rocketed in number since this IL2 hobby started to be posted on YouTube, overall I don’t have a problem with that, but it is hard to find good YouTube IL2 movies that incorporate a high level of cinematography, editing, sound FX and relevant sound tracks. I was hoping that with the increase of this hobby on YouTube a greater number of talents would come through to make hi-res movies that suit this forum, it seems not to me but please tell me if I am way off course with this thought?

Having said that, when you get a “shoot em up” to the level of Come With Me or Dualality who needs a story, they are fantastic Music Video’s of pure entertainment, but not movies in the traditional sense of the word.

Great thread biltongbru, some excellent points put forward and some excellent thoughts posted back.

Monty-Dan

I agree with Monty. I've seen some of the newer releases, and I have to admit that new filmmakers today are quite a bit better than new filmmakers a few years ago. There's a lot of really solid cinematography and editing out there now. The newer filmmakers have had the benefit of learning from the best filmmakers in this community, and they've applied those lessons.

But at the end of the day, most of these new films are just shoot-em-ups as Monty has said. They're about planes taking off, flying to the furball and shooting each other. Yeah, that's sort of the nature of the beast with a combat flight sim, but I have to admit I'm getting increasingly more bored by that storyline. I do realise that when you're first starting out, you need to walk before you can run. You need to hone your cinematography and editing skills. But I hope that filmmakers aim for more than that after they get a couple of films under their belt. Story is what ultimately makes a film entertaining. That is really a huge area of filmmaking that doesn't get a lot of attention around here in terms of tutorials and helpful discussions, but it's a key ingredient to an entertaining film. You don't necessarily need voice actors, either, although I'm sure if any filmmaker asked for voice actor volunteers they'd be able to find some.

I guess what I'm trying to say is great job, guys, but don't stop with just cinematography and editing. Those are just tools to tell a larger story. I hope filmmakers will round out their skill set by pushing themselves to the next level, tackling story creation.

I actually think the current IL-2 is part of the problem for story driven type movies. When I look at movies made with much better graphics engines most of the visuals can be used to paint your picture as in real world movies, ie you can spend time showing landscapes, weather, vehicles and other events away from the main character/plane.In fact some games look so good you go out of your way to get some of these visuals into your story.
The choices you have in IL-2 is to put this stuff in anyway and get gasps of how bad it looks or become reduced to showing aircraft only, usually already in flight which gives rise to the same old, same old, thing. I mean it's difficult even to have taxi-ing aircraft in an IL-2 movie as you have to see other ground objects in there, or a rolling landscape that looks like toytown with a couple of windmills thrown in. There's glimpses of possibilities with the Slovakia map which you can actually get away with showing some visuals other than aircraft so I think the story driven movie attempts will improve with BOB/sow comes out. As it is the whole thing is a compromise in trying to tell a story with about two usable objects, plane A and B.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfbics:

The choices you have in IL-2 is to put this stuff in anyway and get gasps of how bad it looks or become reduced to showing aircraft only, usually already in flight which gives rise to the same old, same old, thing.

...

As it is the whole thing is a compromise in trying to tell a story with about two usable objects, plane A and B.

I know some will disagree with me, but I don't have a problem with filmmakers including interesting objects and even pilot faces in their films. Some feel including anything that's not photorealistic sort of breaks the fourth wall and is a reminder the video isn't live action, but it doesn't bother me. I can watch cartoons with my kids--which are obviously not live action--and enjoy them for what they are. I would rather see a film where the filmmaker does the best he can to tell a great story with whatever the game offers than a film whose story is hamstrung because it is limitied to the few semi-photorealistic objects this game offers (ie planes).

IL-2 films have barely scratched the surface of story potential. People need to think outside the box more. Monty is a great example here of pushing the envelope. Check out his film Pictures of War 2 to see what I'm talking about. There are lots of directions films can go with this sim.

I admit it is hard to tell much of a story without dialogue or at least some sort of subtitles, but if that's what it takes then that's the direction filmmakers should go. Get together with a group of filmmakers and work together to make something. That's how FH&C got started. Nevermind the fact that people were suckered in with lies about a quick turnaround, money and fabulous prizes. Hey, whatever it takes, brother.