Hi everyone

It has been 1 week since I am a member of this forum and must say that I have learned a hell of a lot in this time. Thanks for you guys help with your good postings of the past on movie making and how to use the available tools. Especially I want to thank Wolf who I have met via a question on one of his you-tube movies. Wolf introduced me to this forum and the other IL-2 forums and sites and gave me lots of information since. Then also Joe90 is of much inspiration to me as newcomer with his support and commitment for future assistance.

To add bomb explosions visuals (and sound) of urban areas to my movie “Whirlwind”, I experimented in obtaining footage from the game “Company of Heroes” by Relic. This is a good ww2 military strategy game with the most spectacular graphics. To obtain proper footage of bombs exploding was quite a time consuming challenge but eventually I discovered a technique to do this and it seems to be working well.

I am willing to share this technique if someone is interested. I am also willing to share my existing clips if anybody wants to use it.

If you want to experience these visuals please upload the upgraded and final cut of “Whirlwind”.(At the same time I have corrected the main mistakes of the first attempt of this movie and rounded it up a bit)

Divx format
91 MB
8.49 min

Download at:

http://files.filefront.com/Whirlwind+upgradedivx/;9328452;/fileinfo.html

Interesting addition, Biltonbru.

As promised, I have listed some suggestions for you to consider. I'll share these in public, which I'm sure you don't mind in the hope that others may pick up some tips.

Overall, this is a really good movie for your first. You have a definite style to your cinematography and that is good!

The movie itself is a simple idea, not particularly novel, but it's a good starting point and we all can do with some reminding of Bomber Harris’s plan, good or bad. Go for a good story for your next, but that shouldn't be a problem since you told me what your idea for your next one is already.

You have used filters very well.

Get away from the 4:3 aspect ratio and go for widescreen. 16:9 is good.

Don't use the .divx format. It's a propriety format and DivX's attempt to get a hold of the business. I'm guessing you are using the DivX applications to encode? It's much better to use VirtualDub (free!) then either the DivX codec or the Xvid codec. I prefer DivX at the moment. Export your movie from Vegas encoded with Huffyuv (a lossless codec). Then open it in VirtualDub. Set an audio codec (mpeg3 at 196 kbps, for example). Then setup the DivX codec. There are plenty of threads in here about how to do that. Make sure you pick a good bit rate and use dual pass encoding.

edit - I bumped this old thread http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/65710358/m/5101026405

Don't overuse dissolve cuts. Dissolves should only really be used to indicate a passage of time, or for a dreamy effect or other specific editorial reasons. Use straight cuts. The other use of dissolves is to cover up bad editing, lol!

Directional Continuity!! Where to start with this? It's one of the most common mistakes and constant bad practice in this amateur community. You are not alone. I mess it up sometimes too because of bad planning. If you watch ANY good professional movie, you can bet that directional continuity is strictly adhered to and for very good reasons. If this continuity is broken, it will be on purpose for a very good reason. We all tend to break it because very few of us are aware of this basic rule of editing. Roight, I'm just having a wee rant in general and picking up GL2's torch who was the first expert in here to try and encourage us all to follow the rules. GL2 wrote a good simple guide. It's a lot more complex than he makes out, but his description is a great starting point:
http://www.meyeuniverse.com/movboard/viewtopic.php?t=706

Now, to some specifics:

0:00 Strange chequered pattern, is that some kind of compression artifact?
0:00 The lack of sound was a bit odd, unless that is the effect you were going for? Engine sound effects or music would be good.
0:00 Great visuals of the B29s, great angles, and perfect camera shake.
0:16 Bomber Harris video is interlaced - there should be an option in your capturing software to smooth out the interlacing.
0:39 Needs some sound - SFX or music.
0:40 Pixelisation! You have zoomed into the picture using Vegas, but your raw video resolution must be too low. Capture raw footage video at a much higher res than your final movie so you can do these zooms and pans without getting pixelisation.
0:43 Don't jump from a fixed zoom to zooming out in one shot. Use the zoom throughout. This occurs in quite a few places and should be avoided. It can be used occasionally if you have a good reason to do so, but your instances look more accidental than planned.
1:10 Good to hear music, but I don't think the mood of the song was right. Unless you were wanting a 'jolly' mood?
1:19 Pixelisation again. Avoid this at all costs as it looks really bad. It occurs quite a few times.
1:50 Excellent camera shake effect.
2:34 much better music and simply stunning cinematography of all the contrails.
3:37 what are the bombs dropping on? Try to make more use of establishing shots, i.e. shots that establish for the viewer where you are and what’s going on.
4:01 Good creative use of the Dutch tilt.
4:13 Different screen ratio. Avoid the black bars at the sides by zooming in. This occurs in several other places too. Make sure your shots always fit the preview screen in Vegas.
4:13 Good idea to use the company of Heros explosions, but it could have been done better. The camera shake wasn't good. You could have been more creative with the angles. The cuts were too long. Maybe some longer duration shots, but most shots should be very short and frantic.
5:15 How did that B17 get hit? Yes, sure, I know it was flak, but it is better to show such events actually happening for continuity. Keep feeding your audience the important events.
5:54 The fighter sequence would have been much more powerful if you used better SFX. No worries though, adding SFX is a whole new ball game and a major jump in complexity. Even though the in game SFX are poor, at least they add something. You could try and boost them with some bass and making them louder. You could also use the hacked version to get better SFX, of course, but that depends on your persuasion on that hot subject.
The fighter sequence needs camera shake and again more shots to the minute. A guide is to aim for 14 shot per minute for action sequences.
6:26 you can't see the reticule, which looks weird.
6:38 This shot looks quite out of character. Did something change with the filters?
6:38 You are using the zoomed in view here and in quite a lot of the other action shots. Try to avoid that if possible as it adds falseness to the image. Try to use the standard FOV wherever possible, it gives the objects more of a feeling of scale. Of course, some times you do want to have a zoomed in shot and that's ok.
Do watch out if you use normal FOV or a wide angle FOV because if you get too close, the object looks distorted. This wasn't a problem for you, but be aware if you use more wide angle shots.
7:02 The reticule was showing. If you are going for a guncam look, that shouldn't be there. It was ok in other guncam shots. Consider doing the guncam shots in B&W.
I wasn't that keen on the music for the fighter attack.
There were too many easy kills by the fighters. At least some fighters should have been shot down.

Whew, well you did ask for comments

Hey Joe-90, thanks for spending all that time in the detailed analyzing and scrutinizing of my movie, it is really much appreciated !!!. I will definitely follow up the points step by step and hopefully make a better movie next time!

(One small comment from my side regarding the intro music: it is one of the most famous tracks of GLENN MILLER (In the Mood) from a US military Swing band 1942-1944. He with his band entertained the US troops at that time in England and this music was very popular with US aircrew and can be associated with them. In my movie it was meant to be a bit jolly with all the excitement of take-off!) (there is even a statue of Miller in Bedford UK!)

To get back to the purpose of this thread; bomb explosion visuals from COH.
One big limitation with this method is to find a good camera angle due to glowing territory markers that have to be avoided.
The other limitation is camera shake that is programmed in the game and can't be avoided. The shake is more severe closer to the explosions. You can limit shake by placing the cameras further and then zoom in afterwards but at the cost of resolution.

I viewed most of the top movies featured on Machinima, but only found ground visuals extracted from IL-2 that has severe realism shortcomings. The IL-2 urban area modeling in many instances with all respect looks like a tinker toy town and the ground explosions appears completely unrealistic especially from close distance. Also the vegetation of IL-2 lacks realism. (In my humble opinion, on the other hand, I think this shortcoming of IL-2 was very well managed with Faith, Hope and Charity)

As unbiased outsider and newcomer I am of the opinion that many of the IL-2 movies are perfect with super realism in the aerial shots but gets spoiled with the ground shots. Even if everything about the movie is perfect: sounds, cinematography, music, angles, colours, skins, etc. and there is one scene where an unrealistic distorted little black figure runs around, then the movie in my opinion is spoiled. In some of the movies there are landing craft landing on the beach with no soldiers inside or close-ups of vehicles moving around with no suspension and this spoils the movies a bit. Another big spoiler of movies is close-ups of the IL-2 AA guns, they fire without crew!!!

So this is why I started to explore with COH in a solution to have more realistic ground scenes and try to contribute.

Question Joe-90, are there good threads that you can recall where solutions were found for more realism in ground scenes in our movies?

Hi Biltong,

Music works for me, I think it epitomises the music of WWII, I grew up with that stuff around, no I'm not that old my dad was the worlds biggest Glenn Miller fan and I always make the connection with B17's as I used to ride my bike around the old Deenthorpe US 401BG base as a kid, I lived about 5 miles away. We had Vera Lynn but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who actually liked her singing.
I have to say I'm not sure the company of heroes bit works, the graphics are good but I'm not so sure it fits in with IL-2, you'd be better looking for something which renders large spaces in the same sim style fashion.
It also depends on what you want bit of ground action you want to portray, for example in my last movie I used a short forest scene and smoke plume from armed assault which did'nt need any mods just disable the crosshair and direction finder and drop your weapon, if the story required you could make a scene with a downed pilot running through a forest from first person perspective, throw in a few dog barking wavs and a couple of "achtungs" and you get the idea.
Here's a look at some scenery, I think it shows mostly the desert area but theres a European looking town/city in it also on the other island
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlIvZEAyAv0
Have a look at this one for an airstrike, he's used the editor to produce a realistic bomb ripple, remember you can place the cameras anywhere so it can be done with better angles avoiding views of the modern aircraft
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8JBJuT5ujg
keep an eye on WWII mods in development for AA
http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikon...;act=ST;f=69;t=57776
Check the lovely Britisher Tommy on page 7
You already know about Steel Fury T-34 sim right?
It's like being a location manager just a case of finding a game who's visuals and options fit the story you have in mind.

Hi wolf
Thanks for your reply. It seems that there is a flood of new good quality animated game material coming that can be used for filmmaking!
The AA development of sands 42 looks spectacular, is that a strategy game or a shooter?
Air strike also looks very promising, that bomb ripple run is maybe what I am looking for, just need ww2 style urban area.

About 2 months ago I made an experimental COD movie for fun, with no real story, just a combination of clips to explore the film making possibilities; You can check it out if you like.(only raw material, no FX, low res, sorry)

http://files.filefront.com/COH+THE+MOVIE+PAINT+IT+BLKwm...16649;/fileinfo.html

At the end of the movie there is a German 88 firing, imagine using that kind of graphics in your IL movie. I still got to get it firing upwards!

Biltong,
AA is a realistic company level land sim -tactical shooter to you and me, it's the commercial version of vbs2
http://virtualbattlespace.vbs2.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
a (very expensive) training sim used by several of the worlds armies.
I think if you used the cameras right you could get shots of bomb drops and possibly avoid any obvious modern buildings although the european towns in AA have an austere eastern european look anyway there's some stuff that could pass for 1940's again depends on what scenes you want, look at this beastie
http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikon...T;f=69;t=69417;st=75
One reason I think AA has potential is that unlike straight WWII shooters which already might have nice looking graphics and vehicles is that it has an editor so you can actually get the things to move where you want, set time of day etc which is better for matching up sequences with what you may have in IL-2, of course to get a full WWII mod in this might be a long way off. One of the most realistic AA movies here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnQDvlqlsjg
If you could picture this with WWII mods?

Joe-90 and Wolf

Joe-90; I did the modification on the bomb explosion sequence exactly as you advised and it looks 100% better! When I am back in 3 weeks time I will put the clip on You tube just for quick view to see the effect.

Wolf: That one AA movie is so realistic it is actually disturbing seing all those guys dying with the realistic and bloody wounds!! COD4 is also extremely realistic.

quote:

One small comment from my side regarding the intro music: it is one of the most famous tracks of GLENN MILLER (In the Mood) from a US military Swing band 1942-1944. He with his band entertained the US troops at that time in England and this music was very popular with US aircrew and can be associated with them. In my movie it was meant to be a bit jolly with all the excitement of take-off!

The music is a great choice to represent a jolly mood of USAAF pilots. Is this the mood you wanted to create for the take-off? If so, then you succeeded. Music is the primary tool for setting the mood. It's just not the mood I would have picked for these men taking off for another life threatening sortie. I would see that music for perhaps an after sortie party, a before sortie introductions, maybe even mid flight when the tension had eased off a little, but at take off I imagine the feeling would be a lot more of trepidation. I could be wrong, but no matter. The director decides what mood he wants the audience to feel, and should choose music to suit.

quote:

As unbiased outsider and newcomer I am of the opinion that many of the IL-2 movies are perfect with super realism in the aerial shots but gets spoiled with the ground shots.

Roll on BoB:SoW!! Much better buildings, vegetation and vehicles are coming.

quote:

So this is why I started to explore with COH in a solution to have more realistic ground scenes and try to contribute.

Worth a try, it's been done before by others. The downside to it all is that you can't have the IL2 aircraft action in the same shot.

quote:

Question Joe-90, are there good threads that you can recall where solutions were found for more realism in ground scenes in our movies?

Try Bellum2, Hurricane Millennium, A Shot in a Million, Ambush, for a few examples. The tricks usually involve avoiding close ups, using strong light to hide the oddness, lots of shake and generally othe r smoke and mirrors tricks!

quote:

keep an eye on WWII mods in development for AA
http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikon...;act=ST;f=69;t=57776

Look interesting. I wonder if the human figures with WW2 uniforms will be usable? Wolf, you'll have to pop in here occasionally and give us a heads up on developments. BoB:SoW may give us better buildings and vehicles, but I doubt the humans will be great, though they will be a lot better than the current stick figures!