After long long weeks of hard work and countless problems and delays, we are very proud to present to you the new teaser for Turning Tide!

But enough with the talking. Here it is:


I really hope you enjoy it!

Now it is your turn to turn the tide:
This is a fan film. You are the fans. So go ahead and watch, rate, comment on, and fav our work. And most importantly, spread the word.
We are doing this for you. It cannot work without you. So, the more interest you show, the better the views, the more questions you have, the happier we are.

Oh, and also support our great composer Justus, he has done great job again!

Have nice one!

Freeport

Hi Folks!

It's been a while since our last post, but don't worry - we're still here!

In fact we have been busy, busy, busy! The shooting of our second character teaser is almost complete. And even if we broke them a little bit, our actors were pretty happy with it:


Don't worry. It's all just make-up.
We are about to enter the editing stage. So, keep an eye out for updates of our YouTube Channel! It won't be long now!

We have also completed our armory. We now have alle the guns and blades we need to rock this movie pretty hard.
And because many of you have asked so nicely, here are all the blades, you will see in the movie:


From left to right:
1. Bandit's axe
2. Training tonfa
3. Geoffrey Berenger's machete
4. Kuras Suraken's gladius
5. Short bokken
6. Geoffrey Berenger's training Katana
7. The gift  sword
8. William Pires' first sword
9. Long bokken
10. Geoffrey Berenger's katana
11. William Pires' second sword
12. Bidenhander (usage yet undetermined)


If you have questions, or suggestions, you know where to find us!

Have fun!

Next time: How to make those yucky arm wounds!

FREEPORT

Hi, all!

We are jumping-with-joy-out-of-our-minds-dancing-in-the-moonlight-happy to tell you that - as of today - we managed to complete our cast (at least regarding the more important characters).

The role of our "good Chief Watcher" was filled last Saturday, today we finally found Carol Rykos' counterpart.

Now all we need is The Chief Goon and extras, extras, extras...

Shooting for our next character teaser is planned to commence this Saturday. Wish us luck!

The Raccoon

The second shirt design is up!

Go here to have a look!

If you want this, please send a message (for details just have a look at the previous post!)

Hello there!

Yes, I know - it's been a while. But don't worry, besides work and university, we managed to design some stuff. One is a shirt, that the character Berenger will wear in the film:



Hope you like it.

If you do, here's an offer: Send us a message, including a valid email address and we will send you a PDF with the design. There will be a small tag line ("Highlander Turning Tide   Spare Time Images") added and it is totally free. If you like it, make stickers, shirts or banners with it, we don't mind (as long as it won't be sold or altered in any way).

Of course, we will sell your email address to Satan and bug you with "Is your sword long enough?"-emails all day, when you're sending us a message. (JOKE! We will send you the PDF, and that's it!)

Keep it sharp!

Freeport

As you might have noticed, we didn't write you something last week.

That's mostly due to work-related time shortage. The most stretching thing on this project is that we do not have time to to this with a continuous schedule.

Damn you real life!

So, please have patience, we will return to you after work.


Freeport

I just want to take a minute and talk about music here.

I love good music, especially film soundtracks. No way, I'm jogging through a wood without having the "The Rock" score in my head. Sometimes I wish my whole life could be orchestrated by Nick Glennie-Smith (if you don't know him, look him up!).

There is more than one movie turned out to be a great flick, because of its music - and sadly there are even more that are ruined by bad scores.
So, the day we started thinking about making a Highlander fan film, one question popped up in my mind: What about the score? Big names there: Michael Kamen, Queen, Glennie-Smith (of course he did a Highlander movie! What did you think?). How could we match that? We were pretty sure that we didn't want to use the scores from the original movies. So we set out to look for a composer who could do what we had in mind.
After a long quest we found Justus. Go ahead and watch the first character teaser and the new action teaser again, but this time just pay attention to the music composed by him. Isn't that sweet? I think he did a wonderful job. His music is in no way related to the original scores, but it does the right thing. What do you think? The right music for Highlander? Or did you expect something different?


On side note: We have our first fan art! Isn't that the coolest thing in the world? Fan art for a fan film! And it is a music track! Shiny!

Please enjoy this powerful track. If possible, we will include it in the film somehow.

Enjoy your week!


Freeport

Hi, all. This is the director speaking – or, more precisely, the sorry remains of said director, who contracted the same flue as Freeport.


Let me answer the question he brought up last time: Why Highlander?

Good question. (“Why not” is a good answer, by the way, but things are seldom that easy.)

Before DVDs came along I was one of the world’s most inefficient television series watchers. There was one single exception and I only managed to watch that one more or less completely because German television just kept on repeating the show for years (back to front to back to front – I’m talking about MASH, by the way).

So, up until Freeport bought Highlander on DVD, all I ever watched was the first movie (many, many times) and the second movie (never finished it). I just never got around to giving the series a chance.
We started watching Highlander and, as it turned out, I liked it.

Then Freeport suggested the Highlander universe as a setting for our first fan project. Though I’m far from being able to recite lines from the show, I wasn’t disinclined to the idea. Why so?

Because it’s a great universe for telling stories without loosing oneself in SFX, without having to buy expensive CGI-Software and/or props (and believe us, swords are expensive enough), and last but not least because there’s still room.

I was just talking about it a few days ago and now here it is.

Enjoy our new reel!



Comments and critique are of course welcome!

PS: I hate YouTube for scaling down the quality so much. Colors are better in the original.

This was meant to be a great exposition that would point out all we love about movies and movie making.

Sadly I'm suffering from a really bad flue (the second in two months), so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm cutting short.

We came together in 2006, at this time only sporting a tiny camcorder and our heads filled with crazy ideas. Everyone wanted to do a movie - but nobody knew how. Really, no one of us had any experinence with this media in any way. So we set out to start by thinking what it was that we loved about movies.

Being fans of the old school action films of the 80s and early 90s we have a very hands-on approach to film making. We want to make films that captivates the audience, enables them to laugh, fear and perhaps even cry with the characters shown on the screen. In other words: watching movies (well, at least pop-culture movies) should be fun.

So we set out to create characters that would produce the right mixture of suspense and comic relief. We are not trying to do a character study, we are trying to entertain. You have to bear in mind that no one of us has ever stood before the camera acting, so we tried to write the characters the way we could play them.

One of the most important parts was of course the look of the movies we wanted to make. We have absolutely zero budget, so we constantly have to improvise. And there was one point we all agreed on: CGI would be our last resort. Some things can only be done CGI, may it be, because there is no other way (e.g. Quickenings), or for security reasons (e.g. gun fights), but if there is a possibility to do it for real, we will try to pull it off. This way, we can be creative (and you cannot imagine how difficult the tiniest things can get) and it always looks betters than CGI. I, personally, am so tired of these endless CGI marathons that drown every loveable character and every charm there might have been in the movie (yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. Lucas!). CGI is a tool for enhancing the story, not for dictating it.
Here is a small reel that shows you how things work here at STI. This footage is now over a year old and we're constantly getting better, so be gentle with us. ;)


There is a new reel in the tube, so stay tuned.



To summarize: We love movies. We love making movies. Having no budget may be a drag sometimes, but the best thing that can happen to you when you want to get creative.

We have fun doing this. I hope you have fun watching it. If that's the case, our mission is accomplished.

Next week, we will answer the question: why Highlander?



I am now going back to bed to practise my coughing. Have a nice day.

Freeport