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DP: Who supervised the choreography?
MT: Dave was the choreographer. He holds black belts in several martial arts, and choreographed the entire fight all by himself.

DP: Does Dave or yourself have any formal training? Are you two traditional artists who got into computers to further your art?
MT: Dave and I both have been artists for most of our lives. Dave's focus now is the martial arts, but he has strong technical and design skills. Though I design typefaces by trade, I'm a landscape and portrait painter. So I guess we both qualify as traditional artists who got into computers.

DP: How about post production?

The Crew of two used Commotion to create selection outlines for the saber glows, and After Effects for compositing. The Primatte plug-in in AE was also used for most of the keying. Click on image for larger view

MT: Post-production lasted for about four months, from late September to early February. Most of this time was spent keying and compositing the live action (AE, Primatte), creating the lightsaber glows (Commotion, AE), and rendering our CG background plates (EI, Photoshop). Sound effects were dropped in as the final edit was made, and were sampled off the Star Wars Trilogy and Phantom Menace laser discs using Pro Tools FREE. We used Pro Tools for looping as well. About a month before release we returned to the studio -- Alamo Studios in Santa Barbara -- for a three-hour pickup shoot.

DP: What kind of miniDV cameras were used and why? Any special lighting/flash or filters?
MT: We used two cameras, a Canon XL1, and a Canon GL1, which we chose because of their capability to shoot in non-interlaced Frame Movie mode. We tried to keep our lighting simple, but in the end the combination of the bright blue screen and the black costumes caused problems, and our footage ended up mostly too dark. You live and learn!

DP: How did was the elevator sequence constructed? (or the part where one of the Darths is going down the elevator type device?)

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MT: That's entirely CG, rendered from Electric Image in multiple passes, and comped in After Effects. The mini-Darth is a simple model, only slightly animated. We have a few shots like that. Shortly after the elevator shot, we cut to a high angle over the main platform/arena. That's our mini-Darth you see walking out to the middle of the arena. Later, in the wide angle as the seekers enter the arena, we used TWO mini-Darths! In the opening camera-mapped crane shot of the temple exterior the mini-Darth model can be seen walking towards the temple entrance.

DP: Is the film being showcased anywhere else besides your website?
MT: For now, it's being hosted exclusively by TheForce.net, a highly-trafficked unofficial Star Wars web site. We plan to offer it to Atom Films and a few other Internet movie sites once TheForce.net has had its turn, if they'll have us.

Apple Computer's Final Cut Pro was used to put the 6 minute movie together. Video was captured using Canon XL1 and Canon GL1 camcorders. Canon DV cameras were chose for their capability to shoot in non-interlaced Frame Movie mode. Click image for larger view.

DP: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to tackle a similar endeavor?
MT: Be bold. Try the impossible. And don't give up. We ended up having to make a lot of compromises, some for the worse, some for the better, but because we aimed high and persevered, we still ended up with something we're proud of. We accomplished more than we thought we would.

To view Duality in its 45MB entirety, visit http://www.crewoftwo.com