 Hooker brought us a tricking movie that showed many impressive freestyle q3 trickjums in Live To Fly. Now almost 3 years later the sequel is finally available to download. Live II Fly is pure content driven and it promises to enjoy most of the trick players.
1. Please tell us a bit about yourself: name, age, country, occupation and your role in the movie.
oTis: Shayne "oTis" Tremblay, 19 from Canada. My roles in the movie in order: content, design, camming, sequencing, music.
Nihilanth: Rob Bryson, 20, living in the USA. As indicated by the movie's credits, I worked on the content, formatting, and general design.
Wussie: I'm Wussie, only my family adresses me with "Frans Karel", last name "Kasper", twenty years old from the tiny place I like to call Holland, and am currently spending the majority of my time studying at the University of Internation Game Architecture & Design. For Live II Fly, I was contacted to do the 'wet work' so to speak, capture the tricks and make sure they stick together as a final product.
2. How long has this movie been planned?
oTis: This movie has been in planning since late in December 2006. That's when Rob and I came up with the idea to make the sequel, and is also when I began demoing.
Nihilanth: Doesn't feel like such a long production time, eh?
3. What were the goals for this movie? Are you happy with the final result?
oTis: I think our main goal was to properly show our content how we felt our content should be viewed. Heavy emphasis fell on proper camming, which I learned for this project. Recams were only used where deemed necessary by either Rob or I on our own tricks. All team tricks were cammed because we didn't want to use picutre-in-picture and only using a first person pov would of limited understanding of the tricks. This is also why mini-replays were shown for some of the team tricks where a cam would of been far too difficult to pay attention to. Another emphasis that was put on showing tricks properly was the use of timescale manipulation. By timescale manipulation, I am describing the use of varrying values during the duration of one trick. For example a trick that starts off slow at a timescale of 0.5 but speeds up half way through all the way up to the original 1 value. Too many movies use this often to synch a track with an impact or landing. We avoided this to not deceive the viewer or deprive them from not getting an appropriate appreciation for rapid acceleration/deceleration during a trick. The only timescale values used during the movie were 0.3, 0.5 and 1.
Nihilanth: Shayne pretty much covered it all. we both view trick jumping in very much a purist sense. As a trick jumper, I found myself watching tricking movies [including my own] and looking for reasons as to why certain tricks looked better than others, why certain cameras worked better than others, and so on. The solution I ended up with laid between the content and the presentation. I believe my biggest goal for this movie was to make a very clean, understandable production using consistently-high quality tricks with unintrusive editing. For the most part, I'm very happy with the result!
4. This seems to be exactly the opposite from "too much fx", and it was well accepted by q3 trickers, but what can you say to the rest of the audience to download it?
oTis: I disagree with that statement. I don't think it was well accepted by q3 trickers at all. Personally, I think the community has become descensitized to the pure form of video style from the OPC Promo/Tribulation days. The only reason to download this movie would be to see pure, legit freestyle content at it's highest peak and shown the way it should be shown.
Nihilanth: Hmm. I can't really say anything except to take it for what it is and that I hope people enjoy it. I understood that the production style we went for would limit our audience to an extent.
5. Why is this movie all focused on demos?
oTis: This movie is focused on demos because that's where the real work is done. To me, the most exciting videos were those that focused on minimalistic editing, such as Tribulation and Tricking iT. Sure, fancy editing looks nice but very often takes away from a clear understanding of a complicated trick or run. I believe we avoided any distractions from our content.
Nihilanth: I think the answer to this lies in our views on trick jumping. We really eat up stuff like crisp timing and minor technicalities. To me, as time progressed, more and more trick jumping movies moved away from the content and more toward a cinematic experience—iT2 being a well-known example. Movies like this remind me more of music videos than their old roots, such as Tribulation and b3nt's OPC promos.
6. What i appreciated the most was having a freecam before the first cam in a few tricks, which made me realize everything that was going on.
oTis: Yes, these were the chapter finishers. Typically in tricking movies, there is a main finisher at the very end of the movie, often shown in cam than in first person replay. When we decided to split the movie up into a chapter based system, it was only logical to give each chapter it's own finisher. These were picked seperately by both of us, based on what we thought was more difficult or impressive.
Nihilanth: Shayne pretty much covered it. The concept of having a trick shown with a cam followed by a first-person, musicless, fixed timescale 1.0 came directly from the movie Tricking iT, as both Shayne and I felt it was really well-utilized (m1tsu's finishing trick).
7. What can you tell us about the formatting?
Nihilanth: What I aimed to achieve with the formatting was a production that would be very easy to watch and nice to look at. At first, I was planning on having the movie captured and released at 1,280x720 at 30FPS. Having watched a few test clips, and with a bit of insanity, I decided to go for an even higher resolution with my biggest excuse being future proofing. It was ultimately Wus' hardware that allowed us to capture successfully at a width of 1,920 pixels.
Regarding the seemingly uncommon aspect ratio, it was something I took from cinematography having been dissatisfied with the seemingly restrictive FOV even at 16:9. 2.4:1 (Live II Fly's final aspect ratio) is almost the same as Panavision, or 35mm anamorphic. Many of the movies you may watch are in this aspect. With our content, I felt it was extremely important for the viewers to have a good understanding of what is going on in the picture, and a larger field of vision greatly helps this. Yes, nothing stops one from selecting an arbitrarily high FOV regardless of the aspect ratio, but then you end up with fisheye skewing over the image. Some don't mind this, but I don't find it particularly pleasing to watch. So on with the mathematics again, this time with the help of 2arctan[(L2/L1)tan(dFOV/2)], where L2 and L1 are the width values of the new and original aspect ratios, respectively, when put with respect to a constant, and dFOV is the original field of vision in degrees, being 90 in this case. Plug everything in {2arctan[( 2.4/1.3¯)tan(90/2)]} and you get ~121.9, which is the FOV we used for Live II Fly.
The end result yields a very consistent expansion. Flip between these images for a better understanding.
For the motion blur, we used Q3MME's integrated feature using an mme_blurframes value of 32 and an mme_bluroverlap value of 16. Because only fixed timescale values were used, we captured each trick at the value it was to be displayed at, so as to keep the blur looking proper (versus decreasing speed through a postprocessing program).
Finally, we have Wussie to thank for almost all of the color treatment and vignetting. Vignetting is something I really wanted to go into this movie (after observing Gran Turismo 4 and being a fan of Top Gear), and I feel Wus did a brilliant job, though it took him quite some time to get it right!
8. What was the best trick for you?
oTis: My favorite trick that I landed was oTis_q3wcp16_water-slant [Chapter 1 Finisher], but oTis_ospdm12_elevator [Chapter 1 Opener] is real close behind that. My
favorite trick from Rob would have to be rob_opc2_quadrouple-ob-2x-invert [Chapter 5 Third Last Trick] just because attempting that concept is pure stupidity. My favorite
team trick is easily oTis_Nihilanth_charon3dm12_copyright/rob-otis_charon3dm12_grand-canyon-jumped(2) [Chapter 2 Opener] because new concepts own.
Nihilanth: Within what I landed, the last one on 17++ (rob_17++_ramp-1x-2x-2x-invert.dm_68) holds the most value to me as it provided my primary motivation to begin serious work on Live II Fly. Before landing it, my interest and involvement in trick jumping was dwindling.
9. You mention timescale: since a timescaled demo is something that we can do after a few tries, why not avoid the rj script?
Nihilanth: This is a difficult question to answer. I suppose when you take a look at things in the most literal and logical sense, the RJ script shouldn't qualify as pure freestyle, should it. But like alot of areas such as sports and the arts, grey areas are bound to arise. I'm certainly no one to proclaim the RJ script as being legitimate, but I feel it's so widely used by trick jumpers and fraggers that it doesn't strike me as wrong to use it.
I think I'm also going to have to disagree with your assertion on timescaled demos, as the degree of timescaling can render some tricks entirely unfeasible within legitimate bounds, let alone possible within a few tries.
10. And the most difficult?
oTis: My most difficult trick was easily oTis_ospdm12_elevator [Chapter 1 Opener] because it's probably the only trick I couldn't reland and the one I would pick last if I had to reland them all.
Nihilanth: It's difficult to say. I suppose you never quite know when you get lucky and land something far earlier than what experience would tell you. That said, I'd have to say the 17++ 2x-invert again. It was a concept I thought of in January of 2005; one I spent about 10 hours over the course of a few months trying to land, eventually giving up. I came back to it last December for the hell of it and felt like I had the motivation to land it, which I did. I'd say about 20 hours total were put toward that one.
11. I remember that the demos and the music was chosen before asking for an editor.. if the final work didn't demand so much editing, why didn't the trickers made the
movie?
oTis: Not all the demos were completed, but if we had found an editor earlier some of the tricks in the movie (infact, more than a whole chapter) wouldn't be there. My audio track was chosen before we hooked up with wus, and later we came up with the idea for having an in-game audio only soundtrack, which happens to be my favorite. I think Rob can better describe why we couldn't edit it ourselves.
Nihilanth: I think it's to everyone's benefit that I didn't edit the movie! One may as well have cranked up the visual settings and start a Seismovision playlist had that been the case! We contacted Wussie originally simply as a 'video assembler' because he had the tools to create what we envisioned. He ended up being more than that, but we still heavily regulated exactly what went on with the production. This was a rather arduous process for everyone involved, particularly Wus, as his creative side had to be silenced often. I certainly don't doubt Wus' ability to put together a fine production on his own, though! I can't thank him enough for his help.
12. Wussie: Did you want to make more editing than it is right now?
Wussie: During the first few weeks of my involvement in the project, I had trouble accepting the fact that there'd be virtually no editing in this production. Some tests were made, renders were passed around and eventually, confidences were shattered. For me and the others, the mix of this content and 'entertainment driven' editing just seemed extremely hard (if not impossible) to achieve. On top of that, oTis and Nihilanth actually preferred to have no editing at all, so I decided to drop the case alltogether, pull the Shaolin 'brand' from the production, and sequenced the scenes as per request. Looking back on this, I feel the right decision has been made. The movie targets a different audience then I usually intend to target, and tries to reach that audience trough different means, even though I don't enjoy watching the final product, and do not really look back on the production period as a learning curve or source of future inspiration, this decision eventually allowed the production to reach it's intended goals and audience.
13. How is the tricking community nowadays?
Nihilanth: This is quite a controversial topic. My opinion on this lies around this basic idea: as the community grew, the general attitude shifted from being explorative to being competitive; instead of "Look what I found on x map", one runs across "I can do y on x map better than you, noob". Trick jumping is also very easy to deceive with. Within freestyle, you have people who use complicated macros and/or sub-1.0 timescale [and God knows what else] to create their tricks. Is there anything wrong with this? I don't think so. But then, you have some people who use these methods and pass their content off as being done legitimately, without the assistance of those tools. As someone who is inevitably compared to these folks, it's a bit disheartening and surely is no boost to my motivation. This is just my take on the world of freestyle. Defrag, or time-based map running, is something I stopped doing long ago because I felt there was already a great deal of hostility in the atmosphere. Today, I feel Defrag mostly spawns bitter competition with no appreciation for the art itself. Case in point: the last two Defrag World Cups. How is the trick jumping community today? Nothing like the one I found five or so years ago...
14. What is the future of tricking in 1year? And 5 years?
Nihilanth: It's difficult to say, but I'd say that as time progresses, the community will shrink further and further, but it will never disappear completely. Perhaps as things grow smaller, only those with a true appreciation will stick around, improving the overall atmosphere. Who knows?
15. And moviemaking, how do you feel it will develop?
Nihilanth: I suppose I only hope to see more consideration taken in movies' formatting and compression, but I think Wussie is the guy to answer this question!
Wussie: From the recent observations and developments, mostly around Quake III for me at least, I can tell a couple of things. The feeling that handing your content over to an editor will result in a movie that might not particulary showcase your content to it's full extent, or to what you'd expect, seems to be rising through the community. In the near future, I'm seeing this result in more videos similar to Live II Fly. Let me try to elaborate on that a bit: I believe that a lot of trickers and fraggers will take justice back into their own hands and developping the movies all by themselves (or assisted by personal friends / fellow fraggers/trickers). Where as the current day editors will focus more on creating a unique and different style, rather then making a video that showcases content in an entertaining way, because eventually, they'll realize that the top knotch content is destined to be in the low-key videos.
My prediction for the coming two years in Quake 3 movies, expect to see a lot more Cattuthaj Jhana's and Castor Fibers from the known entertainment driven editors, and more Live II Fly's and straight forward, no nonsense fragging flicks by the known content gurus.
16. How much time did you spent practicing?
oTis: I don't think any of the tricks were landed within 30 minutes, perhaps even an hour was the minimum for any of the tricks if you include conceptualization. I know the most time I spent on a trick for this movie was roughly 15 hours for oTis_charon3dm12_effyou [Chapter 5 Second Trick] with most of this time coming before Live II Fly was thought of. However, the final reland of this trick only took 30 minutes. My Chapter 4 tricks [oTis_thephhortress_run/oTis_ospdm6_blind] took roughly 15 hours from concept to land.
Nihilanth: In freestyle, we don't so much practice as we do attempt things. Of course, with greater skill one can expect to land most things in a shorter amount of time, but I don't think there is much 'practice', at least in the traditional sense. As Shayne said, most of the tricks too a few hours to land, some more than others. I think it's important not to discount our experience before attempting L2F's tricks, however, as it proves invaluable.
17. How far can you go to make a 3rd one?
oTis: I personally would like to make a third Live To Fly, but before that happens we are already in the works for a different Live To Fly installation. Live To Fly: Elation will consist of editing by Hooker (from Live To Fly) and content by both Rob and I. Elation will be a short six trick movie with Rob and I splitting the load. The concept revolves around taking the best single freestyle tricks ever and putting them into a mini-movie for the ultimate 'finisher' sequence. There's no current ETA on this project, nor do I feel like giving out any details about which tricks will be used. But, I will say that none of the tricks are our own.
Nihilanth: Shayne pretty much covered this one. We've fiddled around a bit with some of the new concepts in L2F, such as this one, but I think we'll have to see how things feel after LTF:E to seriously consider doing a third full production. Nothing is final at this point.
18. Any last words or tips you want to shout out there?
Nihilanth: "The unexamined life is not worth living." --Socrates
Wussie: <3
Thank you for the time, hope to see the 3rd chapter soon.
Premonition (lame trailer)
Proclamation (lame thread)
Tania's tips for a top movie
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Posted: 8.15.07 @ 6:32 PM
Last modified: 8.18.07 @ 4:04 PM |
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