"What is this?"

[Carnivol]

What is this?
This is a sub-forum dedicated to the on-going movie projects at REFanFilms.com (http://www.refanfilms.com). Feel free to ask questions or leave comments in here or simply make a new thread in this sub-forum.

Who are REFanFilms?
REFanFilms is short for Resident Evil Fan Films and is a group of movie makers (ranging from actors to technicians), mainly fronted by fronted by Jerome Chagnon (better known to most as imacwesker here on The Horror is Alive or simply as Wesker - the webmaster of Survivhor.)

For a full list of cast & crew members of REFanFilms, and their active projects, along with a brief introduction and mention of some of their past ventures, please see the Cast & Crew List (http://refanfilms.com/castandcrew.html).

What are REFanFilms currently working on?
REFanFilms currently has two active/publicly announced projects. The first is their 1.5 Movie Trailer project, which aims to create a live action movie trailer based on the unreleased prototype version of the game that evt. got scrapped, redesign, and turned into the early 1998 video game release Resident Evil 2. Lots of footage for the trailer has been shot, but it'll all ultimately be edited and cut down to a trailer length feature, which will be released this coming Halloween.

Their other movie project is called Patient Zero and will be a short film set in the Resident Evil universe, putting light on their interpretation of the creation of the very first zombie.

Sounds awesome! Can I help?
Yes! In fact, there are many ways for you to help!

1. Help spread the word! The more the merrier!
2. Donate! (http://refanfilms.com/donate.html) Making movie productions is hard work!
3. Like them on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/refanfilms) and follow them on Twitter (http://twitter.com/refanfilms)!
4. Become a recognized project affiliate and supporter (http://refanfilms.com/affiliates.html)!
5. Help translate their productions into language that aren't English, French, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Hungarian, or Italian! Those are the languages currently covered for their movie projects, but if you're an experienced and professional translator, one who who doesn't mind doing a few pieces of quick 'n' free charity labor, by all means consider getting in touch with them and give a hand when the time is drawing near.

[Dot50Cal]

Its great to see Jeromes project coming to fruition ;) Anxiously awaiting the trailer, as is Ice.

[imacwesker]

Thank you for your support, to all of you. I really appreciate it :)

Edit: XFactor won't be able to work on my project but that's OK, because I have found other talented people. Thank you all for your help, you have no idea what it means to me, to be helped and supported by the RE community :)

[Stars_g36]

Looks to be going good!

[imacwesker]

Thank you, Stars_g36 :)

[Rancid Cheese]

Do you have any signature or avatar images we could use on other forums and the like to spread the word cause this is looking great . . .

[imacwesker]

@ Rancid Cheese: You can either use the two small buttons at the top of the Affiliates page (http://refanfilms.com/affiliates.html) or the titles logos from the About page (http://refanfilms.com/about.html), for each project.
And/or my signature in this forum :P
Thank you :)

[imacwesker]

If you go to the Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/refanfilms)of refanfilms.com, you’ll see that I am giving you the choice between 2 subjects, for the last behind the scene video. So go choose the one you want to see :)

[imacwesker]

The Trailer is online :) You can either watch it on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZsJhns_EjU) or download it from www.refanfilms in 9 different languages (subtitled).

[Kruspe12]

I saw this on Youtube this morning, and was so happy to see how it turned out! You did an awesome job! :)

[imacwesker]

Thank you :)

[imacwesker]

A quick note to let you know that the release date of Patient Zero has been delayed from June 2011 to Fall 2011.

The reason is that there are more than 50 clips that need to be worked on, to add some visual effects. And this amount of work can't be done in a couple of months, if you throw in college, work and social life (what is that?).

Sorry about this bad news but as you can see below, it is all for the best :)

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/9649/wip03.jpg (http://img42.imageshack.us/i/wip03.jpg/)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us (http://imageshack.us)

[riderkid]

well as long as its good take all the time you want man...personally i would love to see your take on the resident evil series better than andersons

[imacwesker]

Well, I have 2 scripts done, one for a long feature of RE1 (very close to the videogame) and one for RE1.5/RE2 (more loosely adapted as we don't don't know much of RE1.5 storyline).

The "RE fan" part of me want to shoot both but the "realistic" part of me knows that Capcom will never sells me the rights to do it - or, let me rephrase this, I will never be rich enough to be able to afford the rights to the RE series.

And the RE1.5 Trailer and Patient Zero experiences taught me to never, ever again, try to work on a movie I don't fully own the copyright. The ratio time involved/whatever-you-get-in-return is just not worth it.

So, I will stick with various kind of monsters for my next movies, but nothing RE related.

[Shadow Stalker]

So ... are you saying you have given up on the project?

[imacwesker]

Not at all. Just that spending 2 years on a 10 minutes movie that I can't sell is not a good business investment, that's all ;-)

[Shadow Stalker]

Oh okay then. :)

[Stars_g36]

Nice update there on July 4th :) I am excited to see this movie on halloween!

[imacwesker]

Hey guys,
I forgot to post here that Patient Zero's fundraising is coming to an end soon (in 3 days).
IndieGoGo (http://www.indiegogo.com/Patient-Zero) is a way to fund raise independent movies and I will use whatever amount of money I'll get to improve the DVD - it will be release for Christmas.

As you can see by clicking on this link, there are many perks to gain, depending of the amount of your contribution. The most basic perk is that you will have your name in the credits of a Resident Evil fan movie, released on Halloween! How cool is that?

Thank you for your support, any help is greatly appreciated :)

[imacwesker]

Happy Halloween!
Patient Zero, my Resident Evil fan film, is online! View it in 9 different languages in the official website ( http://bit.ly/bO8Jzv ) or the Youtube account ( http://bit.ly/sU02kP ).
If you like it, link to it or upload it in your own blog/website/Youtube account, etc :-)

[Darkmoon]

Pretty good. The acting was good, the story fine (and took no more liberties than your average video game movie, and even then, mostly with the time frame) and for such a low budget thing the special effects were good. Wesker's accent did slowly drive me into madness, but otherwise it worked well.

[imacwesker]

Thank you Darkmoon, I am glad you like it :)

Wesker's accent did slowly drive me into madnessThat's one of his many unknown evil powers :P

[Beanovsky Durst]

Congratulations Jerome! A great short. Gotta say I loved the slight details like Wesker using his RPD uniform underneath the Lab Coat... See, you can take freedom on interpretation of a videogame, without sacrificing identity. Someone should foward this to Paul Anderson to see how things are done. Also as I've said before, the music fits perfectly, very reminicent of RE1 plus some SH vibe.

You guys did a great job.

[Darkmoon]

That's one of his many unknown evil powers :P
Wesker has the power to drive me and only me insane with his voice? That...would explain a lot, actually.

[Scream]

Good job, I found it a lot better than the RE 1.5 trailer. It was rather short though - an extra 5/10 minutes would have added some much needed depth to bring the story out more.. music and visuals were spot on, but the voice acting felt kinda out of sync/unclear (reminded me of the first Shenmue game actually) though perhaps this was because I was watching the youtube version. What are the future plans for RE fan films?

[imacwesker]

@Beanovsky Durst Thank you for the kind words! Yes, I tried to put some details here and there, only understandable/enjoyable for the RE fans. And yes, Yasser's music and weird sounds is perfect for my project :)

@Darkmoon I hope you feel special, now ^^

@Scream To answer you, I will explain what I did. In 2009, I wanted to adapt RE1 as a feature film but didn't think I was ready for this kind of big project, so I thought that instead of jumping into the feature first, I will learn how to make movies gradually. I decided I will first make a super-short movie, then a short, then my feature film.

My super-short project is the RE1.5 Trailer and yes, it isn't very good. But I learn a lot doing it! :) Still, I spend 9 months on it. Then comes Patient Zero, slightly better, and I spend 2 years on it. There is no way I can make a feature film without getting paid (or it will take me 20 years to achieve it) so there won't be an adaptation of RE1. Too bad, I already had the script.

About PZ's length, I wrote its script in 2009, when Youtube gave me only 10 minutes for my upload. I didn't want my project to be sliced in multiple pieces like my Resident Evil video walktroughs and I wrote a 10 minutes long piece. Of course, after completing the script, Youtube allowed me to upload 15 minutes long videos, but that was too late ;)

So, no more RE films for me (except if I found investors crazy enough to buy the rights from Sony and pay for the whole project). I am currently working on the effects of several films but as a director, I will direct a horror short movie (longer than PZ) early next year and then a web series with evil forces (and no, that's not about Wesker :P )

[Scream]

I think its possible if you get more fan investment, difficult though.. I see a lot of ultra-low budget movies these days, but its possible they make those numbers up - perhaps next time it may be better to find some decent locations to shoot rather than using CG, might be able to get more on film that way.. anyways, good luck with the future projects!

[imacwesker]

I thought that fans would help, a little, but except from a few friends, classmates and coworkers, there has been only 2 fans who did support financially Patient Zero during the whole last year. So hoping that the fans will support a fan project is, sadly, not a viable solution.
I agree that a feature film will not be made of CGI, but in the same time the CGI involved would be a lot more demanding than PZ's (what's a RE1 adaptation without Hunters and a Tyrant? ;-) )

[imacwesker]

Patient Zero has been seen more than 10,000 times since its release, which makes us all very happy. The fact that the fans seems to enjoy it helps, of course :P
I will update the website this week-end with the shipping cost of the DVD (http://www.refanfilms.com/donate.html) and the complete list of special features available, so whoever wants to help us will be able to pre-order a copy :)
My goal is to send a first batch of DVD one week before Christmas, December 17th

[imacwesker]

I have been interviewed by the Brazilian fans of Resident Evil Database (http://residentevildatabase.com). If you want to know more about Patient Zero's creation, go to the English version of the text, here (http://residentevildatabase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1244&Itemid=251).
There will be also some rambling about Capcom, RE1.5 and Anderson :P But hey, they came with their own questions, I didn't select them :D

[Darkmoon]

Good read. It's interesting to see how that little mind of yours works.

[imacwesker]

Thanks, Darkmoon. By the way, here is a link to S.T.A.R.S. (http://bit.ly/w3YLwJ), the fan movie I am talking about in the interview. It was made by Nabil Ayari in 2007 and I have made the visual effects in 2008. Enjoy (with English Youtube subtitles) :)

[imacwesker]

The first batch of DVD and T-Shirts will be send Wednesday 21! Don't have yours yet? You can order each or both at http://www.refanfilms.com/donate.html :)
DVD's special features:
-First public screening
- Deleted scenes
- Comparison before/after FX
- Blooper
- Slideshow
- Behind the scenes videos
- Teasers and Trailer
- Commentary with the Director, Producer and Cinematographer

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/393365_286122454756943_112227828813074_690966_1851 962844_n.jpg

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/393365_286122458090276_112227828813074_690967_1320 97449_n.jpg

Thank you for your help and support! :)

[imacwesker]

Special deal to celebrate 2012: shipping is free from 12/30 until 01/01! Order your DVD/T-shirt right now ;-)
Happy new year, everyone :)

[Eoweniel]

Very good initiative! Storywise, I pretty much agree with what Darkmoon said, so I won't repeat that.

What I felt was good was the quality, general ambience and music, this was in fact excellent for low-budget somewhat amateur movies (no offense, not saying you're an amateur per se, but this seems to be your first "movie", so!).
What I would have complaints about is the acting itself, haha. Some of it was good, but there were moments where it was just blatantly clear that it was acting. Although, yet again, these aren't professional actors and just fans so it's very understandable. Excellent job, regardless!

Oh, I know you said that you'd not do any more RE-inspired movies but IF you get enough support from the fanbase, and IF you'd happen to need an actress for either Jill or Claire (I got a body more resembling Jill's and hair/face more resembling Claire's -_-), I'd love to help out in any way that I can. ;) I've taken some acting lessons and am very familiar with singing (not that that's needed but it's similar to acting in some ways), so I could maybe be of some use. Oh, and no pay needed whatsoever. It'd just be amazingly fun to participate, haha.

[imacwesker]

Thanks for the kind words :)
There is no monetary support from the fan base whatsoever, so I won't direct any other RE movie. "No money, no movie". I can't pay by myself for food, location permits and transportation.
Where are you located? If you are in the Bay area, I will shoot several projects in 2012/2013 - horror related. I am looking for actresses who can play though, athletic roles - forgot the "damsel in distress" from the average horror flicks, I want Sigourney Weaver from Alien or Linda Hamilton from Terminator ;) Interested? Then send me an email at contact [at] refanfilms.com and we can talk more in details.

[imacwesker]

I have added two survey in the Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/refanfilms): "what do you like and what do you dislike, in Patient Zero?". This will help me make better movies, so thanks for your help! :)