Unreal Cinema Interview

So, it is my baby. How all this started: around this time last year I heard about virtual production and Unreal Engine and all the filmmaking stuff. I'm actually a film major right now; I'm in my senior year of college. And with COVID happening, I was looking for something that I could do filmmaking with that wasn't on the ground with people, that I could just do by myself. So I kinda got into this virtual production idea.

And I have always loved Knights of the Old Republic. It's been like my absolute favorite game of all time. So, I decided I want to try to just make a trailer for Knights of the Old Republic doing this virtual production stuff. A few months ago, I started working on that and it was very, very, like, low-key. I wasn't planning on posting it anywhere.

Then I made this Ebon Hawk video – The Flight of the Ebon Hawk – and I decided I was going to post this on one of my random YouTube channels that had no subscribers, just to post it, and it got like five views so I was...eh, whatever, I don't really care how this is gonna do.

And then I decided to rebrand the whole channel, call it "Unreal Cinema" and I posted the second video called "I'm adapting Star Wars: KOTOR into Unreal Engine" and again, that one got like five views until I thought, maybe I'll try to post it on Reddit or something. And overnight it blew up and got like 10,000 views and I freaked out a little bit. Like, WOAH, I was not expecting this kind of response. And then it just kept growing and growing and growing, and in a matter of like two weeks, I went from 100 subscribers to now like 27,000 subscribers – over 300,000 views on my channel. It is not what I expected.

So, I am the one person behind all of this right now. I do have an amazing team of 3D artists that have volunteered to help out in the last few weeks. Before then, I was just reaching out to artists individually that have made models before, and they graciously allowed me to incorporate those models into my series. So now I do have about eight different artists that have officially joined the team. They're all hoping to create new models going forward on the project. It's very, very exciting.

That's one of the craziest things, yeah! A week last Friday I posted it. I'd been getting all these comments from people like, how can I support this? I’m like, Lucasfilm is gonna say you can't give me any money.

And that's a big thing: I can't monetise any videos and I can't crowdfund any of the videos. But if I raise money for my channel as a whole and I'm doing multiple projects, then I can fund the channel. So if you wanna support any of the stuff I'm doing, the Patreon is the place to go to.

It's blown my mind. Another channel, EckhartsLadder, covered me the other day and really blew up for subscribers. In the last few days, I've gone from 10,000 subscribers to 26- or 27,000 now.

It was...very nerve-wracking. Because there was that Apeiron project a couple years ago that was trying to remake the game. And they got shut down. I was seeing all these comments coming in saying, "You're gonna get a cease and desist..." and so I was like, you know what? I don't want to do this project and have all these people trying to help my channel with Patreon and all that, and then have Lucasfilm come in and say, "Cease and desist, it's all over, you don't get anything out of this." So I was like, I'm gonna do the right thing. I'm gonna reach out by myself before I'm even noticed by them. I'm gonna reach and see if this is even possible.

And they got back to me and, it was just, it made me so happy to hear that yes, I can do this! There are some rules, but I can do this.

It's still a work in progress, any kind of official title. Part of Lucasfilm's rules is not to use any logos. So, I can’t use the Star Wars logo anywhere in there, and that could possibly apply to the Knights of the Old Republic logo. I don't know if I can call it "Knights of the Old Republic" or not so, for now, I'm just going with "KOTOR Adaptation" and we'll see how this progresses.

On this scale… Not quite to the extremity of a 10-episode series. I've worked on a couple of different, bigger short films and more collaborative long-term projects, but nothing quite the scale of this. Luckily, virtual production is much more manageable, and monetarily feasible, for me than if I was trying to go and shoot this in real life.

I will say, the project is going to be concluded one way or another. It may take longer than I expected, or shorter, but I'm very excited about taking on this project. It's going to be a lot of fun.

I think my final decision is I'm going to frame it, the entire show, in the idea of 10 episodes of like 30- to 60-minute episodes. But release them in 15-minute parts; that way I can get them sooner. Let's pretend each episode is 30 minutes, so it'll be 20 episodes of 15 minutes rather than 10 episodes of 30 minutes.

So my plan currently is, before the end of this summer, to release the first part of that.

Yes. I'd rather not make everybody wait a year or two years for the entire project to be done and, I feel like what I've seen is, most people are happy with the idea of getting an episode, waiting a little while, getting another episode, waiting a little while. So, I think that's my plan right now – to release the first episode part at the end of summer. And then, sometime in the beginning to middle of summer be releasing a trailer for the series as a whole.

Which is what this project started as: to just create a trailer for it.

And then everything started to blow up and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do a whole series. I feel comfortable taking that on, especially my Patreon blowing up. I have the funds to build it and actually put everything together, which is really exciting.

This is all very tentative but, in the next month or two, I plan on holding auditions for voice actors. Another piece of that Lucasfilm thing is...My original plan was to possibly use sound from the original game. That was when it was a very small project and wasn't going to really be going anywhere. Now, with it being a little bit more public and lots of people seeing it, I don't want to be infringing on those voice actors that did the original game, so I'm going to have to rerecord lines and bring on actors. I do have to say, it's been great! I've seen a lot of people reach out about wanting to voice act for it.

So, I am working on a script alongside my roommate, who is actually a screenwriter. I currently have the first episode finished. I have the major block out of the entire series done, and now we're just going through and getting dialogue and scenes and everything written out for the series.

I have seen so many adaptations through different mediums that have gone a little bit too far away from the source material. There are always things that have to be lost in an adaptation, but my goal is to keep it as faithful to the original as possible.

The biggest challenge with it is the fact that the game is a choose-your-own-adventure with multiple outcomes. And really what it's been, is trying to figure out what the canon story is. So, I've gone with the light side, good Revan being redeemed in the end.

But there's other things that are just character arcs. I mean, Carth can have a completely different character arc going from angry at everything to letting Saul Karath go at the end, or killing Saul Karath. So it's how the characters are going to develop over the course of the series that will vary from some people's playthroughs. It's definitely a challenge to try to make all of that flow and work in a 10-episode format.

I don't think I could cut a single one of them. I love all those characters. Now, some of them may not be as well developed, in that, some people may not like certain characters being a little bit left behind. But I think all of them are very integral to the storyline.

My plan right now is the idea from the game that you bring two companions for each planet that you go on. So my plan is to, in the story, have Revan and two different characters come off with him on each planet that they go to. That way each episode, which will be centered around a planet, gets the storyline of those characters and what they're going through and develops their characters that way.

So, this is actually something I've been going back and forth on a lot. Because I think there are some people out there that still haven't played the game, or know that big twist at the end. At the same time, most people have. So, where do you draw the line? Just foreshadow some stuff and some people know the end? I think I will keep it as that being a big twist in the story. That's just an integral part of it, that that is a twist and that's something you aren't expecting to happen.

So many! The first project I ever started working on was a virtual production project called "The Last Commando". That was about a commando clone going in and pretty much being a lone soldier trying to make a difference after the fall of the Empire. That was the first project that I started to work on.

There are so many iconic moments throughout Star Wars history that are in comics or books that I would love to adapt. Like, there's an iconic Vader line that always sits in my head. He's surrounded by rebels and they tell him, “we've got you surrounded.” And he responds with, "All I'm surrounded by is fear and dead men." It's just such an iconic line and I'd love to bring THAT Vader to life.

There's so many different stories that I'd love to tell, and then original stories as well. But all pretty much set staying within that Star Wars universe.

I guess the biggest thing is: Get excited for it. It's happening. It's not gonna just fade out and disappear. One way or another, I will be finishing this series, no matter what.

I'm very passionate about telling this story and getting it out there for everyone to see.