Last year the preview for "Sands of Fire " was released. And with every monthly update the excitement continues to grow, as more details of the movie are released. Last Holiday Season we brought you up to date on "Sands of Fire" project, probably the most anticipated Battlefield 2 film ever. Last year we managed to pull the Digital Warriors team, Daniele Ciccone/ aka Little_Donkey and Davy Staelens/ aka StRuPiE, off their project long enough to grant us a in-depth interview about themselves and their upcoming film. The project is still in progress and is now scheduled for a 2008 release. So for those of you that did not see it, or would like to see it again, here it is.

StRuPiE: We both live in Belgium and in the same region. Actually, we live not far from each other. Before I became an ICT professional I went to art school and studied film. I never passed the first year though. Now, I'm responsible for network administration. I spend a lot of time in my car driving from one customer to another. I get my inspiration for movies mostly when I'm driving, developing the story or visualizing shots in my head.

Little_Donkey: My passion is 3D animation. I'm working as a Graphics and Motion designer for a company that is making commercials, cartoons, etc. I spent 2 years at the college of visual arts. Afterwards, I went to the same art school as StRuPiE and studied animation. I didn't pass the first year either. Although we were at the same school we never met each other. I also make some extra money by giving Saturday courses in 3D animation. I'm very grateful to my teacher there that taught me a lot of technical stuff.

StRuPiE: A few years after school, I became a member of clan LRRP on release of BF1942. Little_Donkey joined a few months later. After the first year of pcw's and wars I had the idea of making an intro movie for the clan's website. I started editing shots which I made in BF1942 and recorded with Fraps, the first beta version . But I wasn't satisfied and I needed some animated shots from the clan's logo. I already knew by then that Little_Donkey had been doing some artwork for the site. To my surprise he made some very nice visuals which I used to complete the intro movie. This was our first movie collaboration, almost 4 years ago.

GT. Could you both comment on what brought you together as a team, and what influenced you to become filmmakers?

Little_Donkey: Because I loved 3D so much and really liked the intro movie of BF1942, I wanted to make my own CG movie. But there was no time on my hands so the project was not feasible. With the release of Band of Brothers I had gotten a lot of ideas which I wanted to recreate in BF1942. Because a CG movie was not possible I wanted to do something different. I did some tests within the game and put some actors in front of me. This was my first shot at making movies in a game. Because the interest in BF1942 slowly faded away I had to give up all my plans.

StRuPiE: BF1942 was a very nice game which I loved to play but with the release of BFV I lost my touch with the series and I decided to keep a low profile for a couple of months. And then this one day Little_Donkey contacted me.

Little_Donkey: Yeah, StRuPiE had no clue I was making a movie :p. LRRP was playing BFV for quite some time and I remember a clanmate asked me if I was interested in doing one. I thought about it and realized this could be the perfect opportunity. Something I had planned all along. I came up with a basic story and did some rough tests. I liked the results so much I started planning a series of recordings. After a few weeks of shooting I made a rough cut of merely 7 minutes, without effect shots or soundfx, only music. I wasn't completely satisfied and showed it to StRuPiE.

StRuPiE: And my first impressions were, ...well to say the least... outstanding. I was really amazed by the potential of this movie. The story however had a lot of flaws. So I decided to help Little_Donkey out. I visited Little_Donkey on a regular basis and we would do a lot of editing together. This is where we worked as a team for the first time and it almost felt like a real movie production. We worked long nights. For not having any experience in that field it was a very nice learning process.

Little_donkey: We did work long hours on that movie, but it doesn't even come close to what we are doing right now. I think the movies that have influenced me the most are cartoons, especially the Asiatic ones. I have a lot of books and cassettes. As a kid I spent much time reading them and I started doing drawings myself. I guess that's the reason why I got into filmmaking.

StRuPiE: I've always had a weak spot for the music in dramatic movies. As a kid I watched these movies over and over again. When I got older, I would start to collect the music I was so excited about. I'm still a huge score fanatic. Later on I got interested in the movie making aspects too and that's how I became interested in filmmaking itself.

GT. "Sands of Fire" is such a great title, could you tell us about the process you went through as a team in developing the story line?

Little_Donkey: Searching for a good title was really tough, I'm still fond of "The flying donkeys". But I guess StRuPiE didn't like it . Actually, I don't remember how we got that name.

StRuPiE: Well, I came up with the title "Sands of Fire" after looking for the appropriate fonts on internet. It's actually the name of a font . I was going through a lot of titles and suddenly there it was. It sounded good and the title matched the story of the movie. Little_Donkey liked it and so the title was choosen. My only concern was that at that time there was a project called "Grain of Sand" and I felt that perhaps people would be confused. But that movie was never finished.

Little_Donkey: The project started in June 2005 and there was only one rule for the story, we didn't want to make another "Black Hawk Down". So I started writing a story when I was on vacation in Italy. Actually, I had a small notebook and I took it with me when I went to the beach. There I was lying in the sun on a beach, developing a story for this movie. The war in Iraq was my source of inspiration. I would draw a storyboard and some effects shots. In "The Fallen One" there was one basic story, the only thing that was written down and storyboarded was the beginning of the movie. After that we did several scenes on the fly. Afterwards, we tried to connect all these little pieces and I would come up with a rough cut which I would then show to StRuPiE.

StRuPiE: Storywise, many scenes did not connect. So I would tell donkey which shots he had to make to overcome that problem. And as he finished shooting I would go to his place and we glued all the missing pieces back together.

Little_Donkey: With "Sands of Fire" we try to tell a story with a variety of characters that is inspired by actual facts. Although the story is fictionial, we have scripted a lot of scenes like they would have occurred in real events. This movie will not be about the USMC go kick some Iraqi butt. There will be many casualties on both sides.

StRuPiE: Yes, this movie is much more dramatic. We have split up the story in 3 parts. That makes it easier to work. During the whole process and still at this moment, we are redoing some parts of the story. Because many things just can't be done in BF2 we have to come up with alternate solutions. For the most difficult parts, Little_Donkey will draw a storyboard and send it over. Once we both are satisfied with the changes we will plan recording sessions and have a look at what is possible. Especially in part 3, which is very difficult, because so many things are happening at the same time.

GT. I don't know of a single real Battlefield filmmaker who doesn't acknowledge "The Fallen One" as being an inspiration and a benchmark. Could you comment on how its success affected your vision and development of "Sands of Fire"?

Little_Donkey: We faced one big problem with "Sands of Fire". How could we make it any better than "The Fallen one"? This movie was such an unexpected success. Although you really can't compare the 2 movies, doing better will be a difficult task. A movie that started out as this tiny clan movie became an immense hit.

StRuPiE: Exactly. It will be very difficult to be as equally successful. We have learned many things from the process of creating "The Fallen One". One thing I learned is to have patience during the process. Normally, I'm the kind of guy that wants to get things done quickly. Little_Donkey is quite the opposite :p and sometimes that's frustrating not only for me, but also for him because everything has to be done very precisely. And because this movie is so complex, the production has been stretched quite a number of times.

Little_Donkey: Hey, I'm not slow, well... maybe a little . The first things we had done, was creating a list of what we could do better with this movie and how far we should go. And it started with the overall ambience and look of the movie, which was also very important in "The Fallen One". Color correction and the light rays added a lot to it. So what could we do to make it even more visually attracting? "What if we make a night scene and add some rain?" So I did a short test with those effects. StRuPiE was completely blown away with the results. So we made a big list of all the things we could do with effects. Many of those things have already been added to the movie and as the movie progresses we are still inventing new effects shots.

GT. Could you describe the division of work between both of you as a Team for this project?

StRuPiE: Little_Donkey is the project leader. I'm the co-director. I'm responsible for the music and we both work on the story. Basically, Little_Donkey has a major influence on the end result of the movie, I'm there to correct him and I will provide him with new ideas. We both do editing and recordings. I also spend a lot of time in research.

Little_Donkey: I put a lot of effort in the visual department. Creating effects shots is very time consuming so when I'm busy doing that StRuPiE will be doing other tasks like searching the right music and experimenting with soundfx. Ultimately, when everything for a particular scene is done I'll start adding the soundfx and music creating a rough cut. Except for the effects shots, everything will be redone in post-production.

StRuPiE: I think we are a good team because we share the same interests and like the same ideas. We both are perfectionists and we are constantly correcting each other. If one of us makes a scene, the other one will make it even better. Also exceptional is how we can read each other's minds. It has happened a lot of times that we come up with exactly the same idea. For me it's a blessing being able to work with someone as talented as Little_Donkey. He's truly an amazing artist. He can create effects shots very close to how I've imagined them and even beyond. I think the collaboration between us is quite unique and I really hope we can work together on even more movies.

GT. Many of your fans have followed the progress of "Sands of Fire" on your website, (www.digital-warriors.be ) and your postings there have generated intense interest in your film. What kind of feedback have you had there, and has it influenced your project?

StRuPiE: We get a lot of positive feedback from our fans, so in a way that motivates us to keep on going. Because we raised the levels so high the expectations of this movie will be significant. So we really don't want to let our fans down after all this waiting.

Little_Donkey: With the site or Blog we wanted to let people know that we are still working on "Sands of Fire". At first, many people had forgotten about it and maybe thought the project was halted. No wonder if you consider our estimated release date of April/May 2006. Of course, after the release of the teaser people got anxious to see it. So the production is taking longer than expected and we had to let people know we were still working on it. We came up with the idea of a website in June 2006 and founded "Digital Warriors", the name of our production company. Actually, we're not a company but we use it to promote our current and perhaps future projects.

GT. The sheer level of compositing in "Sands of Fire" is incredible and goes far beyond anything seen before. How difficult does such a deep render path make it, for maintaining effects continuity thru the film? Did you use any mods or custom maps??

StRuPiE: No, we did not use any mods. As I said, Little_Donkey is an amazing artist. He can create a shot with so many layers I loose count :). We did use a few custom made maps that are especially created for this movie. The first one is created by Donkey himself and the second one is created by Junglist (former project leader of Desert Conflict).

Little_Donkey: The most important thing about successfully creating effects shots is planning. First you'll need to find the right mood, then do some test scenes, adjust if necessary, redo the same scene and if you're satisfied with the result, composite the whole scene.

Whilst the effects in "The Fallen One" consisted of adding several effects on top of the movie, with "Sands of Fire" it's much more complicated and time consuming. Every shot is composited and built on several layers, ranging from a few layers to 30 or more depending on the type of shot.

And because we have real-time day to night transitions we had to do several color ambiences. An example, with the rain scenes, it's not a simple rain layer on the front. It's a shot built by front rain layer, background layer, water splashes, smoke, volumetric light effects, etc...

I've also added extra 3D objects into the scenes which help exposing the story. We want to show something that has never been done before. And I think we have done that on quite a few scenes. I think we can be proud on what we've accomplished so far taking into account that we have limited capabilities and no budget to work with.

GT. The sound design of "The Fallen One" was quite unique and one of it's strongest points. How far will you go this time and are there any plans for voice acting and original music?

StRuPiE: As with the visuals we will take the sound one step further. Sound effects will be the most important thing in this movie, to me at least. You can create stunning visual effects but if your sound doesn't match the imagery well what's the point? Already in early stages of production, I've started looking for sound effects from different sources. I'll mainly get my inspiration from movies and series but as with "The Fallen One", many of the sounds will come from games or movies.

Little_Donkey: Yes, it will be much the same as with "The Fallen One". But on one thing "Sands of Fire" will be different, its quality and surround mix. This movie will be featuring 5.1 surround sound and we will put a lot of effort into this as we hope to create another wonderful soundtrack.

StRuPiE: We have already tested some voice actors but we're not convinced yet. It's not easy to find the right voice for a particular character. Voice acting will be the last thing on our agenda.

The music will be another important part of this movie and something I'm really eager to work on. I have spent many hours going through my collection searching for the right cues. Currently we have created a temporary music track to go along with the movie. This is random music from movies that fits the imagery. We are also looking at the possibility of hiring an independant composer to create an original score. But so far our attempts have been fruitless.

GT. EA has patched Battlefield2 many times since you began "Sands of Fire". How have you dealt with this?

Little_Donkey: Patching has seriously slowed us down. It's very frustrating, not only with each patch all our previous recordings have gone to waste but also several things in the game itself are broken. We have been facing a lot of obstacles during this project but patching is the worst of them all. As a result, we had to re-shoot many scenes, going back to older patches and recording everything we could with one patch, and do new scenes with the later patches. A lot of time has gone into this procedure.

StRuPiE: Yes, patching and movies don't mix! But I guess it's the same for every game so we do the best we can.

GT. What software are you using for Editing? Effects? Sound? and as the project has progressed, have you changed or added any new software?

Little_Donkey: For editing we use Vegas. For the effects I use several progs, Lightwave3D for 3D objects, rain, smoke and explosions. Combustion for the main compositing and sometimes After Effects for text. For the sound, we use vegas to create our temporary track but all sound will finally be done in Nuendo for surround mixing. We only changed the audio software, first we used vegas but later moved on to Nuendo which can produce higher level audio.

StRuPiE: We also use Fraps for recordings in BF2. I use BattleLauncher for organizing all my battlerecorder files, it's an excellent program.

11. With such a massive effort in "Sands of Fire" between both of you, what do you do to relax when you find the time?

StRuPiE: Most of my free time is spent on the movie. I think during its 18 months of production there hasn't been a day I didn't do something for the movie. But if I do find some time to relax, I'll spend it with my girlfriend or I'll watch a DVD or go the movies. I'm also a fan of the local soccer team, currently first position in the league so I'll go watching many of their games.

Little_Donkey: I'll go swimming to relax or watch some good movies or animation. And other things? Hmmm, I play some games, GTR2 on the PS2 or LOCKON on the PC and Oblivion.

GT. With the development of multi-core CPU's and ever more powerful GPU's, the growth and complexity of future game engines seems limitless. As filmmakers on the cutting edge, would you care to comment on what the future may hold for Machinima?

StRuPiE: That's a very interesting question. With the release of Windows Vista and DirectX10 many game developers will have more options to develop higher quality graphics. This can already been seen on tech demo's of the new Crysis engine. The game environment is extremely complex and dense. Almost anything in that world is destructible. This opens up the doors for machinima makers to script more realistic scenes. Most games lack realism with the exception of Flight Sims. I think the graphical difference between animated movies and machinima will get seriously closer.

Little_Donkey: For me the future of gaming is console, nothing is better than just relaxing on the sofa playing a game. As for the PC, I'm sure very impressive games will be released in the future. And for the filmmakers, I can only give you some advice. Pay much attention to the story and really focus on it, try to tell something cool. Nice graphics will only make your movie enjoyable if your story can live up to it.

GT. Considering the amount of time and work involved with a project like this, do you plan on doing others like it? If so, what do you have planned?

Little_Donkey: Other projects like this one? Hell no! I have plans to stop making machinima after "Sands of Fire" and going back to 3D animation and telling some funny stories. But who knows what the future will bring, maybe we will come back with something shorter, funnier. All our movies have been about epic tales, dramatic stories and I want to do something different. I want to make people laugh. Will it be a Battlefield movie? Maybe, probably not.

StRuPiE: Ohhh nooo! Not again . The first 2 years after the release of this movie I will be focusing on other things, not media related though. But if we ever start another machinima project it won't be Battlefield as Little_Donkey said, too much troubles. I have always wanted to be involved in the process of making a feature length movie. If I was ever given the opportunity I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I also would love to see machinima getting introduced to the big screen. And it would even be better if we could have a part in that .

GT. How long is the movie expected to be and how large will the download file be?

Little_Donkey: Hmmm good question. First we figured it would be 20 minutes without credits. But as the production slowly moved on we came to the conclusion that we already had edited 30 minutes without the final chapter being finished and without the credits. So the way it's shaping up now, my guess would be about 45 minutes total including credits. Yes, that's a lot and this has been a discussion between StRuPiE and I. But after hearing some feedback from the community we decided not to release different episodes and to keep it as one.

StRuPiE: The final file size will be difficult to determine at this stage . We have yet to experiment with exporting and finding the right codecs, so right now we do not have an exact figure. Although the movie won't be in HD the file size will pass the Giga barrier for sure!

GT. And lastly, the question everybody is asking, when do you expect it to be released?

StRuPiE: People will hate to hear this, but we still have to say "When its done!".

Little_Donkey: Indeed, we postponed it so many times that if we set a release date we will probably be lying, again. All I can say is, it will be worth the wait! Our Blog will be updated a few times a month so be sure to check it out if you want to know about all the latest stuff.

Final words:

We would like to thank the Battlefield community for having so much patience during the development of this project, without your support this would never have been possible. Also we like to add a special thanks to the members of our clan LRRP who keep on helping us with the recordings all this time. We know it's very demanding and difficult to be involved in such a project without seeing any result. But it's coming guys, just have a little more patience . And lastly, we would like to thank the guys over at GamerzTheatre for having this interview and we're grateful for their support on the site. To all our fans, we have a small Christmas present, a preview of "Sands of Fire" that we hope you'll all enjoy. The wait is almost over . Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy Holidays!

GT:GamerzTheatre would like to thank Davy Staelens/ aka StRuPiE and Daniele Ciccone/ aka Little_Donkey for taking the time off to do this Interview. After hearing about the current state of the project, we can hardly wait for "Sands of Fire". Stay tuned to GamerzTheatre for all the latest information on "Sands of Fire" and rest assured GT will be hosting it in all it's glory on the day of its release.

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MANIAC~VVV~  - Publisher   |2006-12-25 02:17:25 Well there you have it, the best Christmas present ever! A jaw dropping Trailer and a in-depth Interview with the most talented Machinima producers working today. I would like to thank Daniele Ciccone/ aka Little_Donkey and Davy Staelens/ aka StRuPiE for taking the time to give GamerzTheatre such a wonderful Interview and for sharing with us this amazing glimpse of their upcoming release "Sands of Fire" The Bar is going to be raised again with this film, to hights never before seen... I cant wait to see this film

mrdougan   |2006-12-27 17:37:41 OMG my socks have been officially been blown off. I feel awed and humble to think over a years worth of compilation, is finally coming to fruition. As the maniac above said "I can't wait to see this film"

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