Hi Folks,

I'm posting this in case anyone is interested: A while back our team of amateur filmmakers competed in the German FanPro competition. Our Film, "Tor 3" (=Gate 3) won the top spot. Finally, we've gotten a website online, and a trailer of the movie. The site is also available in English (except news and guestbook, though you can just drop us a line in English, we'll understand it just fine.).

We have also completed a DVD including the full version of the movie (37 Minutes, the 20-minute-version available for download has pretty low quality and is unsubbed) and with subtitles in German, English, Spanish, Polish, French, Czech and Chinese. DVD Format is PAL, not NTSC, and we're working on how to get it to people... We couldn't afford to have it rated, and selling unrated movies by mail is forbidden in Germany. So... we're working on it. (Best solution ATM would be to find a few shops that could sell it for us.)

So, pay us a visit, drop us a line, we'd be delighted to hear from you!

Site: http://www.tor3film.de/film/synopsis_en.html

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CryLGg9Ocsk

See you!

-Alex Bardosch
Co-Director Tor 3

Why don't you upload it on your site?

We might upload a good version with subs on rapidshare or a similar site in the future, but we're pretty busy with other stuff ATM, plus, we want to sell a few DVDs first before giving it away... but it's certainly an option for the future. (In which case I'd post it here, of course.)

Not that we're greedy, or anything, (although some profit would be great) but the film itself cost around 1200 bucks, the DVD production even more (somewhere around 2000), so we're trying to at least get the DVD money back with the DVDs.

Okay.

Looks very interesting from the trailer. I like it better than this other fan flim I saw ... can't remeber the name, but it was also in German.

I'd pay $5-10 USD for it, judging by the trailer alone. Better than some films you go to the theater for.

If you do figure out a way to sell it (eBay, Payapl, etc...), make sure you post in here.

Dave

Thanks for this guys.
I loved the trailer. Watched the short german version too. Didn't understand a word of it of course, but found inspiration in it nevertheless. The matrix bit seemed particularly 'spot on'.

Thanks for all the comments! The German forums I posted to have been surprisingly quiet. It's good to get feedback at all, even more so if it's as good as this.

We're currently in talks with a guy from the #S-Run Shadowrun Community, if everything works out, we'll get a subtitled version hosted there... I'll keep you informed!

We'll soon get definitive intel on whether we can legally send discs to other countries, though a collective order would be best, I guess... The price of a DVD-set should be in the $15 USD range, but shipping a single disc would cost something between $5 and $10 (I'll have to weigh the DVD), plus packaging costs. As I said, a collective order would be best, but more on that when we have more info.

Oh, another question: The disc is in the PAL TV-format, not NTSC... now I guess this won't work on most of your TVs, am I right? Although it should work on a computer, but I'm not 100% positive. Anyone have some info on that?

Thanks guys!
-Alex Bardosch

Good news, everyone!

A subtitled version of the contest cut is now available here:
http://www.s-run.com/

The contest cut is inferior to the long version, as we had to brutally cut it down from 37 to 20 minutes, but you can get a good impression of the movie from it.

I will be sending the owner of the above page a DVD, so I will be able to tell you the final cost for a DVD soon. The PAL vs. NTSC problem still remains, however.

Bye!
-Alex Bardosch

And #S-Run couldn't be honored enough. Thanks a ton, Alex!

Wow.

I recieved my DVD and it played fine in my DVD player (Samsung Digital 1080i HD Upconversion) and on my TV (Sony 34" CRT HDTV w/ SFP) which utilize HDMI for a 100% digital signal. Zero problems running a PAL disc on this kind of setup.

The movie itself was FANTASTIC! Some of the elements left out of the Competition Cut just OOZE Shadowrun flava at its best. Any fan even remotely interested should order and see the full version of this film. It is an amazing accomplishment.

Mr. Bardosch, the first thought out of my head was Holy $#|+, this stuff is incredible!

Watching it the second time around, I was still impressed, but I couldn't help but see the flaws of the film. There were too few metahumans around (I counted only one troll and one one elf), the magic was only hinted at, and the firefight needed the work of either a true second unit director, else at least a steadicam.

That said, If I were the Chief Licencing Officer of Wizkids LLC, You and your group would be at the top of my Rolodex for the production and direction team for a potential Shadowrun movie, ahead of such luminaries as John Woo, Bryan Singer, and The Wachowski Brothers. Never have I seen so much acomplished with so little since Robert Rodriguez's original El Mariachi.

Thanks, Kalvan. Of course you're right, the movie has many, many flaws, and those become more obvious the more often you watch the movie.

We would be the last to try to deny those flaws, and we really appreciate all the feedback and opinions, so if I may give a few answers, please consider those as mere explanations to the points you mentioned.

Metahumans and Magic: We thought a long time how to include those elements. It's both a question of making it look good and making it seem plausible, and when we started out, we didn't want to risk including combatspells and the likes in the movie without knowing we could make them look as believable as we think they should be. We wanted it to blend into the sr-world depicted and be a believable part of this world, not stand out as sfx-elements. Looking back, I cannot say whether we should have decided otherwise, but I think doing a no-budget, the toughest decisions are always what to leave out.

(And, just to give you a reason to watch the movie again: There is one troll, one ork, and two elves in the movie.)

Firefights: Yep.

We had a steadicam, but of course we couldn't afford renting one of the real professional ones. Unfortunately, most of the steadicam shots ended up lacking dynamics and in addition, often had a sideways tilt that was very irritating. Especially in the staircase-shots, it was almost impossible to do the very fast turns and pans with a steadicam. Or maybe it would have been possible, if we would have had more time experimenting and training. (For the staircase-action-shot, we had 40 minutes, including setting up and choreography.)

And as Alex and me took turns in directing and shooting, it would have been no problem to establish a second unit, if only we would have had second camera.

But again, you're of course right about all those points, and you don't know how often I watch the movie and think "man, if we would have only done that back then it would look so much better now".

Thanks for the feedback! Keep it coming, we need it! And I sure hope Wizkids will soon decide to give us the opportunity for a more sophisticated production. We for our part have been dreaming of a full-fledged SR-movie for more than fifteen years now...



Best regards,
Enno

ps: we're of course always happy about any comments in our guestbook at http://www.tor3film.de/film/synopsis_en.html

I spotted a 2nd troll in the crowd at the concert, either that or a viking!

I really enjoyed it, as far as "amateur" films go I found it fantastic. I really hope to see some higher budget work from you in the future. Good luck!

Very nicely done. I would have liked a bit more lighting, but I understand the shadows need to be there for it to be shadowrun. There were whole minutes that were barely visible to me though.

Thankyou all. We really appreciate your support from the US.

@Jray: Yes, you're very right there about the bad lighting. Some of it comes out very nicely (we call that the "Bradstreet-Light") most of it comes out very bad, due both to our total lack of experience and total lack of resources (especially manpower, we just couldn't find anybody who had the know-how and the time).

I can only recommend adjusting the gamma-settings in the movie-player, or watching it on a tv-set or non-tft, but i know, in some scenes, it's still a real run in the shadows.

Good luck in the future, I am sure as you gain more experience you will improve, even if you don't have all the resources of a full production team at your disposal.