Star Wars: Spirits of the Force

The Making of Fool’s Errand – Documentary

Webb — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:23:42 +0000

The process of making our Star Wars fan film, Fool’s Errand, was a lot of fun but it took several years. Through this award-winning documentary, we go through our process in detail seeing how our sets were built, some of our effects were done, and some of the challenges and fun we had on set.

Fool’s Errand Gag Reel

Webb — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:21:02 +0000

Making a fan film is fun, no doubt. When things go wrong, or when the nuts come loose from our cast and crew, things can get even more fun-ner.

Deleted Scenes from Fool’s Errand

Webb — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:21:19 +0000

Director Joel Cranson gives some background to a few scenes that were cut from the film Fool’s Errand. One scene is taking a break with actor Kevin Herrmann and Joel Cranson, which occurs during Kyle and Kit’s journey to find Jonos’ compound in the Ondos forest. The next scene is from the Jonos’ Office scene which originally was much longer. The final scene is an alternate hallway scene between Kyle and Kit as they try to decide how to proceed with their investigations.

Deleted Scene: Alternate Ending

Webb — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:29:34 +0000

Sometimes in the editing room, we find scenes that look good on paper but not so great on film. We realized that after an entire trilogy of fan-filmdom fun, this scene just left us feeling flat. That is when we decided to leave this scene on the cutting room floor, and go back out to re-film Kits’ scene in the cemetery. The final dialog had much more punch, and the final scene ended up playing out in a way that brought our trilogy back full-circle.

So.. with that introduction, we give you the scene that was left on the cutting room floor. We apologize, this was filmed with the on-camera microphone.. and all dialog was replaced for the film, but not our deleted scenes. Enjoy (but listen carefully )

Deleted Scene: Kit Gets Revenge on Thug

Webb — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:24:26 +0000

This scene was deleted from the film Reflections of Evil.

This scene was slated to run just before Kit re-enters Celeese’s palace after he is free from the powers of the crystal. The inspiration for this scene was to pay homage to the video game Jedi Knight. In some of the advertising for the game, a Jedi is shown walking down a hallway with his lightsaber on, carving a glowing hole as he walked.

Ultimately, when we were editing we realized that Kit seemed too angry in this scene, and we didn’t want him to feel like he was crossing into the dark side to “get revenge.” That is why this scene was cut.

Deleted Scene: Jan and Kyle Personal Moment

Webb — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:19:00 +0000

This scene was deleted from Reflections of Evil.

During the process of editing, every film has scenes that ultimately do not support the storyline and need to get cut. We really liked this scene, as for the first time we really get to see how special the relationship between Kyle and Jan is. But ultimately, this scene slowed down the film and didn’t support the reason for them being back at Jonos’ compound, so it was cut. But now, you can enjoy it as a deleted scene! You’ll notice that there is no color correction and still has the scratch audio. Enjoy!

Website Relaunch

Webb — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 04:10:01 +0000

It has been well over a year since the release of “Reflections of Evil” the final installment of the Spirits of the Force trilogy. It has been almost 7 years since we released the original version of “Spirits of the Force” and our website’s old design had reflected the web design standards of the early 2000′s. Well, a lot can develop in 10 years on the Internet and it was time to play a bit of catch-up.

How Many Years ago was that?

Back in early 2004 we remember the struggles of trying to get storage and bandwidth to host “Spirits of the Force”. We asked friends who knew ISP’s and got as much bandwidth donated to us as we could get, we had to write special code to round-robin the video download to several of our donated sites, and we still went over our quotas. Well, a lot has changed since then. YouTube and other video hosting services are commonplace. Sharing video on the Internet is now as easy as sending an email.

Moving Forward

We decided to convert our website to WordPress. This allowed us to bring over all of our old news, preserve dates and our content, but still bring a new look and feel. We put so much of our time, blood, sweat and tears into this project that we wanted to make sure that it stayed available for everyone to enjoy for as long as possible.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has watched the series, said hello at conventions, contacted us through email, and supported all of our ongoing projects.

Joel Cranson Receives “Comicon Filmmaker of the Year”

Webb — Sun, 30 May 2010 23:23:00 +0000

At the 2010 Phoenix Comicon Film Festival, Joel Cranson was given the prestigious award of “Comicon Filmmaker of the Year.” Joel and the Spirits of the Force team have been involved with the local pop-culture event since 2005 when the original Spirits of the Force film was first released. Since then, every year Joel and his team have had films to show at the film festival including the rest of the Star Wars fan film series Fool’s Errand and Reflections of Evil, as well as the short film PROBED, Appetite for Justice, Following Suit, and in 2010 the premiere of the web series PROBED:signals.

New Sci-Fi Web Series

Webb — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:45:33 +0000

The creators of the Spirits of the Force trilogy, Joel Cranson, Webb Pickersgill and Kevin Herrmann continue their passion for independent sci-fi filmmaking, with an original web series PROBED:signals. The series is inspired by The X-Files and the pheonomenon known as “The Phoenix Lights” and follows Carter Fox, a young college student who is obsessed with aliens and his own personal encounter he had in his senior year of high school. Joined with his high school tutor, Chrissy Daniels, Carter meets up with some new friends who help him unravel the mystery behind a strange alien broadcast signal.

Fan Film Distribution… or not…

After the success of the Spirits of the Force Trilogy, director Joel Cranson wanted to create an original series. “We really enjoyed making the fan films, but with copyright restrictions it has been hard to get our work out to legitimate venues for people to see it. We’ve been limited to self-distribution on the Internet and to free-admission comicon film festivals and local events, ” said Cranson. He continued, “Although we are very grateful for all the opportunities that we’ve had to publicly show the films, we wanted our next project to be something that we didn’t have any restrictions with our distribution. Something original. Ultimately we want people to be able to see what we make.”

Inspired by The X-Files

Instead of creating fan fiction, Cranson decided to have one of his favorite shows, The X-Files, inspire his next series. The pilot episode, a 20-minute short film entitled “PROBED”, makes a deliberate connection to the fandom of The X-Files without stepping on any copyright toes. And, with the launch of the series PROBED:signals, the spirit of exploring the unknown continues through the established characters in the short film.

More Information:

Visit the website: http://www.probed.tv

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/PROBED

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/probedsignals

Webb Pickersgill Receives Arizona Filmmaker of the Year

Webb — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 23:49:24 +0000

Every year at the Phoenix Film Festival, a prestigious award is given to an Arizona filmmaker who has contributed a high quality body of work to the independent filmmaking community. At the 2009 Phoenix Film Festival Webb Pickersgill, cinematographer and editor of the Spirits of the Force trilogy, was honored to receive this award. Prior recipients of this award include Bivas Biswas (2008), Paul DeNigris (2007), and Bruce Dellis (2006).