Knightquest

Not a bad try. This one had so much potential. It could have been cleaned up so much with just a little bit more concentration on the art of film making itself. The story was good, the characters (despite some melodrama) were believable, and the script wasn't too bad. It found a nice niche in which to settle.

This film seemed to lack in the technical area. The sound was horrible (obvious overdubs). The video is very low quality. Normally, I am bored with film makers who inundate us with special effects and CG simply because it is available to them. This did quite well in that area, even though there were a a lot of cg animated scene. The flight scenes were animated very well, but the models used were of very poor quality or the rendering was low quality (maybe to save time for rendered scenes?). The night scenes and color keyed (green screen) scenes were choppy. This killed the film for me. It did so many things well and then all of this cheapened it. I am not sure if this was due to lack of time or budget or care.

The fight scenes were choreographed well, given the actors' lack of martial arts training. The sabre fights were believable to some extent. The thing that ruined the fight scenes is the double-sabre bo-staff. This worked in Episode One ONLY because Ray Park, who played Darth Maul, is a world class Wushu master. He could wield a weapon like this believably on camera because of his years experience. Those who have never been trained in this art cannot portray this accurately and it looks very poor. The overzealous try to insert these sabres in their films and it just looks bad, like a bad fight scene in a trashy spaghetti western. Please stop using these, they look cool until the actor starts swinging it around like a baton.

Overall, this could have been a gem but, in what appears to be haste, it dropped the ball. I have yet to find a fan film the can bring a decent balance of good acting, good story, and good CG (well rendered and not too much of it). The only one that has come close is still Reign of the Fallen by David McLeavy.

This is another one that I tried hard to like, but in the end, I was yawning. Do try again though. Use these comments for betterment and do not take them personally, we all want to see a good film! :)