some movie that might have some vague reference to half-life

...Now that I've got your attention:

"Beyond Black Mesa is a short Independent fan film Inspired by the Half-Life Video Game series. This is an action packed short film centering around Adrian Shephard and a band of resistance fighters struggling to get out a warning about the impending invasion.

- Independent short film - 2 years in the making - Endless hours of post
- 1 Canon HV20
- 7 Friends
- $1,200 budget for the full short film.

This film is not HL,HL2 or Opposing Forces. It's a short fan film that takes place in the Half-Life world. Also, as a completely independent film, we wanted to have a creative voice in the movie and make it a movie that we would enjoy shooting. We took artistic freedoms and liberties, unfortunately most of those decisions were determined by our limited resources." (Description stolen taken from the video.

So, what do you guys think about this? I found it pretty cool, especially at how they managed to capture the Half-Life 2 feeling yet making something unique out of it.

inb4 LIAR THIS IS NOT HALF-LIFE: THE MOVIE WHY DID YOU PUT THIS IN THE TITLE.

Seems like they kinda blew their load on a good beginning and didn't think too hard about the rest of the film.

The atmospheric shots of Shepard walking through the abandoned factory at the beginning were the best parts and were very Half-Life, then they decided to go big-time action film and ruined it with shoddy zombies and bad choreography. I really wish independent film makers would realize that if you don't have the money to do something believably or right, don't include it and make up for it in another area you can afford. I really didn't even mind the super composity post production look, but it's so inconsistent the film's pacing gets really divided into "greenscreen or not." And tell me why does every film need to have a Minority Report style touch screen hologram segment?

Pretty good actually. Good shooting, good effects, all for a small independant film like this. However, I had not a clue just what the hell was going on. Half-Life is about blasting aliens... Or at least Half-Life 1 is. I have not a clue about Half Life 2 and beyond.

They couldn't afford the headcrab hats that Valve sells? that's a bit silly. I found the overuse of game sound effects to be quite annoying as well, especially the gun firing sound effects.

There wasn't much story wise in the short film, but this is also consistent with the games anyway... hell there might even be more story in this than the games had. It was an average-at-best small time action flick.

BTW, Clonehunter, HL2 is mostly the same except replace the "aliens" part with "posthuman super soldiers". HL2 also doesn't suffer from the travelling-down-the-same-gray-corridor syndrome that HL1 does, though it is very much fixed linear paths still (but nowhere near the point that Call of Duty goes to).

Why does everyone spell shepherd wrong :(
^^ last name is shepherd

Clonehunter said:

Pretty good actually. Good shooting, good effects, all for a small independant film like this. However, I had not a clue just what the hell was going on. Half-Life is about blasting aliens... Or at least Half-Life 1 is. I have not a clue about Half Life 2 and beyond.

If you seriously have not played Half life 2, you need to go buy it...like, now.
half life 2 is about space nazies (combine) trying to dominate earth etc.

You, Gordon, wake up on a train while G-man is talking you through a bunch of stuff of what happened within the past few years while you were asleep.

It gets deeper.


How come zombies didnt have head crabs on this video?

ArmouredBlood said:

Why does everyone spell shepherd wrong :(
^^ last name is shepherd

http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Adrian_Shephard

Looks like we were both wrong.

Shephard looks more like a college student than a hardened soldier. It was cool to watch I do enjoy other people's attempts at stuff like this but the resistence's lack of 'holy shit world apocalypse' look with styled hair and what not is sort of off putting.

Also involving shephard with a woman at the end is not something I could see Valve deciding to do should they ever bring Shephard back.

Not too bad at all, for a $1200 budget.

Gazred said:

Also involving shephard with a woman at the end is not something I could see Valve deciding to do should they ever bring Shephard back.

Really? ;)

Oh after that many years in confinement I could totally see Shephard boning the first female corpse he comes across but i'm thinking his flirting ability and general communications skills will have gone down the drain since then. :) Mind you, Gordon was hardly the romantic type either...

I liked the scene when the girl hammered the zombie. Other than that, meh...it looks nice but wasn't that exciting, most of the action was gimmicky