'Half-Life: Singularity Collapse' Short Movie - Must See!

[LennySBOMBA]

NEW - HALF LIFE video just came out!

There's a new king of amateur Half-Life short movies, and that comes courtesy of director & producer Leonard Menchiari and his team, who manages to stuff a hell of a lot of action and references into those eight minutes and thirty seconds.[br]The production values must have been pretty high, even for an amateur work, and it shows as the entire thing looks like it belongs in the Half-Life universe.[br]Check out the video below, and then pick your jaw up from off the floor.[br]

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EVeSA9xkufQ" frame allowfullscreen></iframe>​

Original post before merge:

Hey guys,
After more than an year in the making, I would love to share with you this video based on the Half-Life world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVeSA9xkufQ


A lot of work has been put into it to make it look the way it does. Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks,
Leonard

 

[KA_Films]

Awesome stuff Lenny! Would love to collab sometime!

 

[TheOneFreeMan]

Those are some very impressive visuals for a fan project. I'm curious as to what your budget was?

 

[Paulaner]

Impressive!

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Amazing stuff, loved the buggy part especially. Also the old Steam chat notification sound on the visor loading screen was a nice nostalgic touch!

 

[JUL3]

Very very nice, better acting than The Purchase Brothers' 'Escape From City 17', and better in all respects than that other one with Adrian Shepard. Props to you Leonard.

 

[Unfocused]

A Half-Life short that's not cheesy? Impossible!

It was pretty cool The plot, while still rather simple, made it stand out from the other productions, which may have had better CGI (it was a bit dodgy at times here), but had weaks scenes and gimmicky elements in them.

The one part I thought was weird was around 5:45, where the protagonist goes through the doorway as the second rebel is shot and then, even though there's a Combine soldier right on him, he stands in place looking for a way to escape, with the soldier apparently losing interest in shooting him?

The buggy scene had a Max Max vibe to it, reinforced by the change in video quality (?) making it look like a 30-year old movie

EDIT: Heh, if it wasn't for the "post before merging" part, Lenny would look like a bit of an arrogant asshole

 

[Edcrab]

Good stuff! Sometimes the viewpoint character seemed to be moving a mite slowly during the "running" scenes, but I guess realistically it'd be hard to do much else without making half the audience queasy. And yeah, while I'd agree the CG wasn't always convincing the actual camerawork and scene structure was just great.

 

[LennySBOMBA]

Those are some very impressive visuals for a fan project. I'm curious as to what your budget was?

Thanks man! The budget was roughly $1,000 more or less including food, gas, costumes, props and mostly miniatures. We all shared our own equipment

 

[MJ12]

God ****ing Dammit, when I saw "Half Life: Singularity.." for a moment I thought "New Half Life game?!"

 

[Wanted Bob]

Man, that was a great short. Loved the fact that Danny B composed the music for this, I'm a huge fan of his stuff.

 

[MFL]

In my own delusional fantasy, that was a preview for the next game. I'm going to stay in here.

 

[Krynn72]

I saw "Must see!" in the title, and was tempted to just skip past this like I usually do when I those words in a headline. Glad I didn't. Good work, probably the best halflife short Ive seen.

 

[blackout]

am I the only one there who thought 'meh'?

 

[Polaris]

"In your face" references!

 

[YouKnow]

Things I really liked:

• Shot from first-person
• Silent protagonist
• The Gman scene
• The costumes
• The memory flashbacks
• Most of the scout car scene

Things I was bothered by:

• The sound quality at the beginning. It seemed bad to me; probably because of the lack of ambiance combined with the echoing voice.
• The lip sync was off with Dr. Breen.
• The look-out-the-window scene just after that. Something was wrong with the perspective of the opposite building. It looked pretty weird.
• Some effects (especially the light on the smoke grenade) did not track the background properly and slid around.
• The acting when the protagonist gets saved for the second time by dreadlocks guy.

• Dreads gets shot pointblank with a shotgun and his friend just says "Go go go." to the protagonist. He's practically reaction-less.
• His friend pauses a bit to point his pistol at the ceiling before deciding to shoot back at the Overwatch.
• His friend lowers his pistol to the ground behind him as he is running away.
• His friend seems to be paying more attention to the protagonist than to the Overwatch shooting at him. I mean seriously, he takes a look back and halfheartedly fires a single bullet, then he proceeds to direct his attention back to the protagonist before dieing. It's like he barely considers the combine a threat.

• The smoke effect shooting out of the super portal thingy shoots out quickly then instantly looses momentum for no apparent reason.
• The group of buildings at the end of the scout car scene looked like they were scaled down to a quarter of their size.

For me, this short had its ups and its downs, but all together it's not bad at all. Very good for a fan made video.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Good mood but slow/awkward pace.

 

[Asknoone]

am I the only one there who thought 'meh'?

You're not alone.

 

[Tony]

The main character must be concussed to hell and back after all that.

 

[Suicide Machine]

admittedly the buggy part was ****ing cool

 

[Cuthbert]

You're not alone.

At this point I really can't be moved by Half Life related short movies that replicate things we see in Half Life games with real life actors. "Oh look we made a headcrab zombie" "oh look this is the part where you run from the helicopter" "oh look that grenade looks like the one in game" .. (and Gordon standing there with the crowbar in the end.... ok ...we get its Half Life but, I was expecting Captain Obvious to land near him at that point). The story of Half Life is so rich (universe wise) that there can be lots of fresh approaches for fan created content. Like a real story. Like real dialogues. Like not using a single gun, rifle, action sequence. So yes, you are not alone thinking "meh".

In before, "do better yourself" I simply can't, I'm a banker way past the age of having new hobbies / life passions. And I'm not some jealous internet guy who likes bashing other people's hard work, congratulations for pulling it alltogether, must be a huge project for amateur filmmakers.

 

[blackout]

there's this misconception that when someone posts a negative comment about something, they do so under the misaprehension that they could do it better- this is in fact stupid and wrong, I do it under the impression that I couldn't do it at all

edit: /rant - thanks Kyzr

 

[Kyzr]

This is what happens when something goes from one form of media to another. It just doesn't work. Resident evil didn't work as a movie, doom didn't work as a movie, and half life doesn't work as a movie.

/rant

 

[MFL]

If they made a consistent Tales of Half-Life television series that was all just short stories like this one, I would watch it.

 

[blackout]

like this one

I was agreeing with you until this part

 

[MFL]

It was the general idea, not the specific case, that I was trying to articulate.

 

[elfguy]

There's an interview with the guy behind the movie too: http://tideart.com/?id=4e1fc243

 

[Lucid]

I guess it was kind of a fun watch.
Loads better than the previous two fan flicks that came out.

 

[Barnz]

it's so much better than shephard's fan film.

 

[kupocake]

This stuff is still impressive, but I don't quite get why people are saying it's better than any of the others. The CGI is pretty duff (the view out the window at the beginning here has awful perspective) and the 'plot' is no better or worse than what we've seen before (all that constantly getting knocked over and seeing computer booting shit happening. It's like playing Crysis 2!).

Interesting ideas abound, but I can't be the only one who had a little giggle at the remote control car-driving section. Oh, that's ingenious, but on that kind of budget, completely obvious

edit: Oooh, never noticed that HL2.net sensors the N word, even when I put an S in front of it :/

 

[blackout]

it's so much better than shephard's fan film.

no.
it isn't

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Well done.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

no.
it isn't

Yes it is. It was a piece of shit that made no sense.

 

[JUL3]

Yes it is. It was a piece of shit that made no sense.

This.

Ninja Combines? Bitch please.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Plus it was nothing more than some fanboy's self insert. At least that's what it looked like to me.



"Oh I'm so cool I'm gonna play Adrian Shepard and be this badass katana wielding mpther f*Cker. Hey fat asian guy you can die off. I'm gonna be the hero who walks off holding hands with the girl at the end because this is my movie and I should be doing all the cool stuff."


Sorry, I've been on my period lately.

 

[blackout]

Hey don't get me wrong, I also thought beyond black mesa was crap, but this was even worse.

escape from city 17 was good

 

[Zephos]

At this point I really can't be moved by Half Life related short movies that replicate things we see in Half Life games with real life actors. "Oh look we made a headcrab zombie" "oh look this is the part where you run from the helicopter" "oh look that grenade looks like the one in game" .. (and Gordon standing there with the crowbar in the end.... ok ...we get its Half Life but, I was expecting Captain Obvious to land near him at that point). The story of Half Life is so rich (universe wise) that there can be lots of fresh approaches for fan created content. Like a real story. Like real dialogues. Like not using a single gun, rifle, action sequence. So yes, you are not alone thinking "meh"..

Thank you.

Seriously, why does no one take liberties with the universe? You've got a great springboard, jump off of it. Why do I have see a combine, rebel soldier or some other reference in every ****ing frame of the short. I know it's in the Half-Life universe, you've verified that in the title of the video. I absolutely cringed at the appearance of G-man and Freeman, which had absolutely no place in the video whatsoever apart from "Oh look, guess who it is." Why not centre on some characters that aren't rebels, where they actually talk like real people instead of talking in an end is nigh manner and barking action words to each other. And on that point, why does it have to be action nearly every second? It's like you're always trying to out do every other fan homage by sticking a strider here and an explosion there which just screams "Look what we can do!". It's almost as bad as Michael Bay. There's absolutely no plot to be had.

As it stands, you're merely recreating the game in a live action scenario without an ounce of originality. I'd hesitate to call it a film. It's a tech demo, and a dodgy one at that.

 

[kupocake]

Thank you.

Seriously, why does no one take liberties with the universe?

Because nobody is making these short films for the love of it, as you kind of answer for yourself in your last sentence. They're making them to gain some easy recognition by using the momentum that an existing fanbase gets them. Reusing ready-made assets is both a way of cutting corners, and of showing that they're capable of working with and improving on CGI assets. This one was clearly about showcasing First Person camera-work (and it's pretty good at it. Though I kind of felt I had a Krang's eye view of procedures sometimes).

And even if they were doing it 'for the love of it', making a science fiction short that has some massive spin on an existing franchise would be difficult to pull off. All the short would say is 'we're in this fiction, here's this new stuff, but this short is over anyway'.

 

[MetalWrath]

Amazing!

Escape from City 17th, Beyond Black Mesa and now this one...

Maybe Valve should consider joining these geniuses to make an entire fan film! he he

 

[Zephos]

Because nobody is making these short films for the love of it, as you kind of answer for yourself in your last sentence. They're making them to gain some easy recognition by using the momentum that an existing fanbase gets them. Reusing ready-made assets is both a way of cutting corners, and of showing that they're capable of working with and improving on CGI assets. This one was clearly about showcasing First Person camera-work (and it's pretty good at it. Though I kind of felt I had a Krang's eye view of procedures sometimes).

And even if they were doing it 'for the love of it', making a science fiction short that has some massive spin on an existing franchise would be difficult to pull off. All the short would say is 'we're in this fiction, here's this new stuff, but this short is over anyway'.

I can understand that I suppose. I think I'm just asking for less action and more plot, rather than new assets or what not. Something character driven, y'know? Though again, you've answered exactly why they take the action route in the first place. Still, I wish/am sure they could come up with some original scenario using the existing assets they have. I'd love something more in the vein of Children of Men/Saving Private Ryan. Desaturated, gritty, bloody. There's just no tension or suspense or sense of danger in any of the action displayed (but again, it's partly a display of CGI, as you noted). Anyway, I'm still seething with hatred from being subjected to the soulless Transformers 3, so I should probably stay away from critiquing anything film related for awhile.