"Dragonball Reawakening" Old Intro and Title Card: a fan film I'm making

[J-Dude]

[video]https://youtu.be/t-Ykp-HNMAM[/video]
[B]TL;DR[/B]
This is the original, voiceless intro and title card to the Dragonball fan film I've always wanted to create, but never could before. This video has clear, hilarious issues, and I'm ging to remake it, but I was a bit proud of the staging nontheless. Like yeah, the planet order per distance doesn't make spatial sense, and very little indicates you're about to see a Dragonball film till the end. If you're wondering about the broken up planetoid, that's meant to be the Moon, taking into continuity its destruction by Piccolo. The Earth looks a bit different, because it depicts pangea ultima, which is what the Earth will likely look like millions of years in the future, and looks strikingly like the map depicted in Dragonball itself.

But now I want to try again... I want to make what fans have always wanted.
[B]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/B]
Dragonball Evolution was such a disappointment. A true, total, unmitigated disappointment, complete with lack of talent, waste of talent, waste of potential... and well, everyone pretty much agrees it wasn't good.
I've been a fan since the original run on Toonami, and I'll admit: when the first trailers and teasers for DBE were released, I went into pure denial. I did everything to try and justify the baffling decisions made, simultaneously anticipating and DREADING the film's opening. Because we'd heard rumors of a DBZ movie by 20th Century Fox for a full SEVEN YEARS before seeing the result. And the idea that it would suck, that it would disgrace the source material as it did... it just couldn't be.

But it was. Seeing the movie, as thrilling as it was to see some of it on a big screen, there was no denying it. Dragonball wouldn't become the next cultural sensation, the type of thing even soccer moms couldn't ignore, earn the sort of ascension we've seen Marvel elevate certain barely-know properties to by the seat of their own talent.
That angered me, when it sunk in. Seven YEARS, for a kick in the balls.

But then an idea hit me: I'd do it myself.

I've been learning 3D animation, editing, Photoshop, writing and compositing since the middle of high school. I ALWAYS wanted to make my own stuff, however modest. I wanted to bring my fantasies to life.
So I started writing a script. I started looking for cameras, for tripods, for green screens and looked up do-it-yourself wire-stunts. I would make my own fan film.
But not just some context-less, silly drivel fit into ten minutes full of amateur effects. I wanted to have a STORY, and CHARACTERS. I wanted to shoot on location in interesting terrain, not just at the local park or in my fucking backyard.

But of course, life happened.
I only had a small circle of friends to do this with me, and while they were with me in wanting to help/act, eventually they went their separate ways, and I had to cancel production...
But since then... I've gotten better at what I do. I know how to get around technical barriers that foiled me before. Technology has gotten better, and with things like cheap camera drones, even aerial shots aren't beyond the abilities of independent film makers with no real budget.

I'm still in a rough spot financially... but I want to try again.
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What I want to do simply hasn't been done with Dragonball before. And as such, there are some cornerstones I need to uphold:

[B]Story:[/B] Most important is just what tale to tell.
Right out, this isn't an adaptation. Some people with big costume and makeup budgets might come CLOSE to making Dragonball characters look right in live action, but even that budgeted fan trailer couldn't escape the silly factor. The "Light of Hope" guys at least had easier wardrobes to work with.
This is an original story. Set in the far future, during a peace so enduring that there hasn't been a real planetary threat for centuries. In this time, the generations after the time of the Z Fighters have neglected their power, and most have even forgotten. The old tales reduced to family legends of ever-thinning bloodlines.
But what if one of them DID reclaim that power? An idealist, someone with good intentions but rotten methods. Someone who might try stamping out others in the bloodline that might try stopping him.
And what if he failed to kill one? One who forgot, but was shown who he really was. Left for dead, in the cinders of his home town, knowing his existence was the reason for all of it?
What if he sought not vengeance, but to restore the lives of those that were lost? And what if he'd heard of the seven gems, and the dragon that could grant any wish? What would he do, what challenges might he face, to retrace the steps, relearn the history of his ancestors, and summon strength he never knew he could possess?

[B]Effects:[/B] So many videos exist of bad, Adobe After Effects videos made by little kids following shitty tutorials on Kamehameha waves and ki auras. They shoot on a flat plane, sideways like a fighting game. They show flying with jerky green screen effects, and then when two warriors clash in midair, they green screen themselves in the air, while clearly standing on a flat surface. They only ever move where the other is. The color and lighting of the composites look terrible. There's no accurate scale or sense of depth or space, and even the BEST ki/kamehameha effects I've ever seen tutorialized looked flat and pasted onto the screen like a particle sprite in a video game. And any time there's super speed, it's just a sped-up video.

I don't plan on compromising here. In every shot that calls for effects, I'm going to take an HDRI lighting probe for image-based CG lighting. For depth, I'm going to have the camera move through the scene before the shot, so I can use Boujou and camera track the landscape. This will give me a sense of depth I need. In a midair fight sequence, I'd roughly animate spheres in 3ds Max doing the movements of the characters. Then, I'd use the rendering to track the green-screened characters onto the spheres, and use them as a movement and scale guide for better accuracy. And naturally, the green screen footage would be lit as closely to the scene lighting as possible for blending, not to mention angling the camera at the characters appropriately.

For super-speed fighting, it's simple, but keyframed speed-ramping can achieve the desired look without seeming weird. I don't know much for choreography, but shooting slow fighting should make up for this, and come off well without hiring professional stunt actors. I have some general martial arts experience from my days in Tae Kwon Doe...
Beams and blasts will be done with 3D programs. There's just no compromise for the sense of space and solidity. A little in-engine matting and effects magic should make the ki attacks look phenomenal. A mix of animated geometry and fluid dynamic effects should do it for the more showy stuff.

Mainly, I'm gonna make this stuff look right. There's no rush, so it'll be done when it's done.

[B]Location:[/B] Like I said, I want to shoot on-location. Some things, like flying sequences depicting a place for a few seconds, can be taken from stock footage and the like. But I want to be shooting in a real place, navigating REAL terrain. Interesting terrain, worthy of Dragonball.
I've spent forever scouting some awesome local locations that look alien or fantastical. Stuff to beat the pants off the stupid parking-lot/rooftop effects movies where the characters have awesome speed and mobility, but don't go anywhere beyond a few yards.
I plan to make full use of the larger locations, especially for the climactic fight. If a character gets hit into a nearby rock formation, then we're walking to that formation and continuing the sequence where it would actually be happening afterward. Within reason, of course.

[B]Sound:[/B] Even "Light of Hope" fumbled this one. You can't lift sound effects from the anime and just drop them into a live action scene and expect it to work. It just sounds dumb and fake.
Much as I hate to give "Transformers" any credit, Skywalker Sound knew how to be faithful without sounding stupid.
I don't know sound design, but for the more iconic noises (powerup auras, Kamehameha charge noise, etc.) I plan to HIRE a sound designer to make less "cartoony" sounds that still basically hold true. Everything else will be from realistic sound libraries.
Voice will be voice. I kinda plan a bunch of ADR, but might change that as things shape up. At any rate, none of this pansy-ass shit where they use a clip of Japanese Goku saying "Kamehameha!" over a guy too shy or whatever to man-up and shout.
Screaming is a staple of DBZ, and I know how to do it right.

Music will draw from a few places, but largely it will be using the actual Dragonball Evolution soundtrack.
What? Not EVERYTHING about that movie was bad. I liked and enjoyed SOME things, like I borrowed changing the stars of the Dragonballs from red to white for contrast. Brian Tyler (who went on to compose for a lot of Marvel stuff, including Age of Ultron) made an AWESOME score for a movie that didn't deserve that kind of effort. I'd be remiss to waste it, especially since some parts would compliment a REAL Dragonball fight scene so very well.
The posted video itself here uses the same opening music. Look it up, seriously. Out of context, the soundtrack is actually really good.
[B]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/B]
My intention is to make a 7-part sort of mini-series, in the end likely running roughly 45 minutes or so in total.

Ultimately... I just want to make something that gives fans what they want. Something that honors its source material, and gets to the core of what the series is about. Not just a big fight, not just an effects-fest, but a story that harkens back to that old journey, the air thick with magic, and adventure around every corner. A journey of self-discovery. A journey of friendships, old and new.

[TVC15]

I don't want to shoot down your hopes and dreams...
But there's no way Dragon Ball can work in live-action. At least not Z. The action is too over the top, the character design is outlandish, and the plot is goofy.
It's something that can only work amd look right in an anime.

[J-Dude]

[QUOTE=LTJGPliskin;48532167]I don't want to shoot down your hopes and dreams...
But there's no way Dragon Ball can work in live-action. At least not Z. The action is too over the top, the character design is outlandish, and the plot is goofy.
It's something that can only work amd look right in an anime.[/QUOTE]
Oh come on, have you seen Man of Steel?

Have you seen this?
[video=youtube;opji5DgE_nQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opji5DgE_nQ[/video]

Again, you'd need an actual movie budget to put together an ADAPTATION that was done faithfully, but didn't come off cringy.

...But I'm not doing an adaptation. I can do whatever I want with character and costume design, so that's not a barrier.

It's all about approach. Clearly the action can be done, even on a budget, as long as you're clever about it. I've given this a LOT of thought.

I think the "it can ONLY look right such and such" nonsense is an excuse not to try. Marvel sold millions of tickets about a gonzo space opera that involved a living tree and a talking space raccoon. You can't sell me on unfeasability anymore.

[MaverickIB]

I think a lot of fan adaptations and whatnot (including light of hope) fall short on the character design, especially by hiring guys who don't fit the bill at all. Guys like Goku and Vegeta (pretty sure Saiyans don't die of old age, and those dudes would never stop training) need to be fuggin yoked as shit like they are in the series. Taking a trip to a local gym and finding some juiced up motherfuckers for talent would instantly make it more awesome than all the fan stuff composed of skinny nerds flailing their noodle arms around.

Light of Hope was cool though. It could definitely be done if it were a more polished version of that.