[greasypigstudios]

Hey guys,
I'm a longtime Freespace fan (both D:FS and FS2), and I recently finished a short film, Vultures in the Void, which you can view here:

or

It stars Tommy "Tiny" Lister (The Dark Knight, The Fifth Element), David Franklin (Farscape, Xena), Brooke Nevin (Chicago Fire), Bai Ling (The Crow, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), and Raphael Sbarge (aka Kaidan Alenko on Mass Effect).

Aesthetically it takes a lot from Freespace's look, though it's more about pirates than soldiers and aliens. One of the ships especially, Deadspeed (played by Bai Ling) takes aesthetic cues from the Shivan designs like the Basilisk and the Mara.

Lucky Mike's ship was partly inspired by the Hercules and the Loki (as well as the Vampire from Wing Commander Prophecy and the Swordfish II from Cowboy Bebop).

The Consortium freighter takes its designs from Macross, as well as Deadspeed's transforming capability.

I was so inspired by FS in fact that my top two choices to play The Chief (at the end) were Robert Loggia and Kurtwood Smith, and my casting director reached out to both of them. Unfortunately both were unavailable, but I lucked out in getting Raphael Sbarge who played Kaidan in Mass Effect and is currently in Once Upon a Time (he was also in Independence Day in the same room with Robert Loggia, go figure).

Anyway, I hope you guys like it. My modeling skills aren't particularly great (all the VFX took two years to do, even though shooting only took one day), but your guys' work is a constant inspiration.

Hope you like this mini tribute.

[zookeeper]

"Sorry

This video does not exist."

[greasypigstudios]

Fixed! Sorry about that, couldn't figure out the vimeo and youtube shortcodes (fyi it's just the video number, not the whole URL )

[Phantom Hoover]

OH MY GOD IT'S MICKY BRACA

[Alan Bolte]

If you told me this was a failed TV pilot from around 1995 I'd believe you.

[General Battuta]

If you told me this was a failed TV pilot from around 1995 I'd believe you.

Whoa now, let's be kind.

[Mars]

If you told me this was a failed TV pilot from around 1995 I'd believe you.

You mean like Firefly?

[Alan Bolte]

It seemed very professionally done, just weirdly dated and perhaps a bit underfunded for what it's trying to accomplish. Retro maybe? If it is, I'm getting old.

[greasypigstudios]

It seemed very professionally done, just weirdly dated and perhaps a bit underfunded for what it's trying to accomplish. Retro maybe? If it is, I'm getting old.

Hey Alan, it was certainly underfunded (it cost about 6,000 dollars most of which went towards the actors and set construction/costumes); as far as it being dated, it was certainly meant to have an 80's vibe, with weird characters from movies like Total Recall, The Running Man, The Warriors, Heavy Metal, and Escape From New York. The music is inspired by Vangelis (or Mass Effect, whose music was inspired by Vangelis). So it being "dated" was definitely intentional, whether or not it made the movie better or worse is subjective (and if you didn't like it I certainly can't hold that against you).

Thanks for watching though, again Freespace and its community was a huge inspiration in the making of this (if you didn't like the movie hope you don't take that as an insult )

[Luis Dias]

I think it was highly entertaining

[greasypigstudios]

Thanks a lot!

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I liked it too

[Alan Bolte]

It was certainly entertaining, it just wasn't quite what I expected.

[Dark_4ce]

Yeah, Not too bad.

[Colonol Dekker]

Will watch when I get out of work.
You're a FreeSpace fan.....

You can model...........



WHY SO LONG TO SHOW UP?


by the way.
Amazing to see the talent you got involved.

[greasypigstudios]

Haha, I dunno if I know how to model, per se... especially since it took me 2 years to design and build the 4 ships in this film (including several complete redos).

It was a very humbling experience and I don't know if I'd do it again in the future, I'd probably prefer to hire someone else to do it (and there are certainly plenty of artistic talent on here).

As far as the actors, that was certainly a big treat to work with these guys. Brooke I'd worked with before, and David came in to audition out of the blue. Bai and Tiny were the works of my casting director, who asked me "so who are you envisioning for these roles?" and I said "I dunno, someone like Tiny Lister and Bai Ling." and lo and behold, there they were.

The trick was the make sure we were able to get all their shots in as little time as possible. We shot everything in one day in a small greenscreen studio, with three cameras on each actor at all times so we didn't have to reset. You probably notice that the cockpit sets for the pirates are all the same with some minor tweaks (well, hopefully you wouldn't notice), with Sunset's cockpit being a different set as well. All the canopy stuff was CG.

Raphael Sbarge (the Chief, who voiced Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect) turned out to be a friend of a friend; we were one week away from releasing and still hadn't found that final voice, having been turned down (rightly so) by a bunch of other actors (including Freespace vets Robert Loggia, who was my first choice, and Kirkwood Smith). We recorded his lines over the phone in about 20 minutes.

Hope you like it (and still thanks even if you don't ), and if you have any other questions I'd be happy to answer them.