Documentary

“Finding Ford”: A Lifelong Fan’s Journey to His Hero

Finding Ford - A Documentary - Teaser Trailer

Finding Ford” is an upcoming documentary that promises to be a heartfelt tribute to the legendary actor Harrison Ford. The project is the brainchild of lifelong Ford fan, Patrick James O’Hare, who conceptualized the idea in 2016. The documentary aims to celebrate the work of Harrison Ford through the lens of O’Hare’s fandom, telling both their stories in parallel. Born in 1977, O’Hare’s admiration for Ford began at a young age when he first saw the original “Star Wars” and was captivated by the loveable rogue, Han Solo. A few years later, he discovered “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and found another favorite character in the daredevil archaeologist, Indiana Jones. The realization that both these iconic characters were portrayed by the same actor sparked a lifelong journey of following Ford’s career. The documentary, directed by Steve Pilling, features interviews with co-stars, filmmakers, fans, and more, all of whom have been…

Read More

War of the Stars Documentary

What does Star Wars mean to you? For many of us, it reminds us of our childhoods. It brings happiness, it brings nostalgia, it’s a story of hope, and a story of good triumphing over evil. For many people, it was and still is a way to escape for the real world. It’s a way to get lost in the fantasy, the drama, the lightsaber fights, and it’s an epic tale of hope and forgiveness. In the Polish fandom, it means all of that and more. Imagine if it meant all of that to you, but… it was illegal to have access to it. What if it was illegal to watch the movies, or to collect the merch? The Iron Curtain was the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from…

Read More

Do or Do Not. There Is No Try

One of the most iconic quotes from Star Wars is this one from Yoda himself: “Do or Do Not. There Is No Try”  Would you like to learn more about Yoda? This Yoda documentary by Jamie Benning (@jamieswb) is just what you need. The story of how Yoda was brought to life on the big screen is really interesting and a lot of fun. This is well worth the watch if you’re a fan at all.  Here’s a little about the project from Jamie: “During the production of my Jabba documentary short, Slimy Piece of Worm Ridden Filth, I was put in contact with Toby Philpott’s colleague and Jabba’s right hand man. Literally, his right hand man, puppeteer Dave Barclay. Dave helped us, along with Toby (Jabba’s left arm), Mike Edmonds (tail) and John Coppinger (animatronic engineer) to reconstruct just how it was inside that filthy Hutt. And of course…

Read More

Live Streaming from the International space station

Here is a great window to Space! If this project remains open, it will allow the world witness our reality from another perpective. A beautiful one. And from time to time some wild phenomena out there, like the North Lights and meteors in Summer. I wonder if that is possible from that height. But I guess that going around the equator that must be beyond our reach…Still magnificent.! I wish they installed surround angle moving cameras and a few more.  I hope this experiment succeeds and grows wider in budget and resources. The Ustream video from the station is available only when the complex is in contact with the ground through its high-speed communications antenna and NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. During “loss of signal” periods, you will see a blue screen. Since the station orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes, it sees a sunrise or a…

Read More

Documentary : Monster of the Milky Way

While they are difficult to see for the obvious reason that they give off no light, we now know that they exist because there are circumstances in which they can be located by their effect on other stars. Although it is difficult to to give a precise estimate of the number of black holes that exist because not enough is known about the number of stars that become black holes, astronmers estimate that there is about one black hole for every 10,000 stars, which means that the Milky Way contains at least 100 million black holes. At the very center of the galaxy lurks the darth-vader rock star, the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A aka Sgr A*. Looming beyond the horizon of Sgr A*, if we assume Einstein’s theory of relativity that predicts what happens when a star collapses is correct, is a singularity. But it is a singularity that…

Read More

Documentary: Titan – A Place Like Home?

The Greeks believed the titan Prometheus gave humanity the great gift of fire. Throughout history, a select group of humans (from Thales to Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Maxwell and Einstein, among many others), have given the rest of humanity an even greater gift: science and the scientific method. No other discipline is as self-critical as science, and no other discipline is able to deliver the goods so consistently. If you don’t already love it, you’ll fall in love with it after watching this documentary. When the Voyager One Deep Space Probe (famous for carrying the golden record assembled by Carl Sagan and his team) flew by Saturn in the early 1980’s, it took the first set of detailed pictures of the ringed planet and its moons, and one moon clearly stood out: Titan. It then became obvious we had to go back. Roughly half the diameter of Earth, with its chemistry, thick…

Read More

Documentary: Alien Planet

I know it has been a while since I last posted a documentary. But Xmas and new-years have taken all my time. Now we are back with a new documentary. This time we are focusing on life on other planets, and as a product of speculative science it is pretty impressive. Using computer graphics it shows how a mission to explore an Alien Planet would be conducted by Earth employing a sublight spacecraft delivering sophisticated probes to the surface. The program explains step-by-step the mission as the probes encounter strange life forms, with frequent asides by scientists who explain how such life forms might evolve and live. Using computer animation, the program is very good. If it has a flaw it is in the asides, which frequently go back to something discussed five minutes and a couple of segments ago. I have watched this Discovery Channel program countless times. It…

Read More

Documentary: When Aliens Attack

To be honest, I’m not sure I will call this a documentary, but it fits nice in our weekend column on speculative space documentaries, and I have always liked this show.  So today I present you When Aliens Attack.  This was a television show that aired on the National Geographic Channel a few years back. I use to only see alien ET UFO type shows on the History Channel. Now, we have more documentaries based on truth and experiences that allow us to share in logic and inspiration for our imaginations. I enjoyed seeing the “What If” factor that the writers came up with and researched what was available to us on this planet as far as possible defense. We have military assimilations as what we call war games and this allows us to begin working models in scenarios with the various levels of our intelligence communities around the world….

Read More

Documentary: Passport To Pluto

I was so hangover after our company xmas party last week, that I didn’t get a round to post a new space documentary. I really wanted to post a story on the ” New Horizons” mission NASA is doing.  The space agency launched the $700 million New Horizons robotic spacecraft from Pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in January 2006 on a flyby mission to study Pluto and its moons. Reaching Pluto required New Horizons to achieve a speed of more than 36,000 mph in an earth and solar escape trajectory, which is the greatest launch speed ever recorded for a man-made object to date. In April 2006, New Horizons flew past Mars, then by Jupiter in February 2007 and Saturn in June 2008. By March 2011, New Horizons passed Uranus and is expected to arrive at Pluto around July 2015. Being the god of the underworld might not be…

Read More

Mission Juno – Great documentary on Jupiter and NASA’s Juno probe arriving at the gas giant in 2016

Following up on last weeks blog post about Mars, I wanted  to stay in our solar system. Many interesting missions are already happening right now, and many more are on its way, helping us better to understand our nabor planets and our place in the universe. NASA’s spacecraft Juno is en route to Jupiter, and below is a video about why we’re headed there, and what we hope to discover about Jupiter while Juno is in orbit around our largest planet. The documentary is combined of hundreds of 1 minute videos, so the video changes style a bit and is a little long-winded. The video Features interviews with scientists and engineers working on the probe with interesting computer-generated imagery of the mission. It also Explains the science of the solar system, why this mission matters, the instruments on board and the scientists and engineers behind this mission. The Juno spacecraft…

Read More

Documentaries: Mars, All aboard for the red planet

Today I will post a recap of all the documentaries found on youtube regarding Colonization of Mars. There is a lot of speculation, reports and planning for Mars Colonies in the near future, this seems to come out of nowhere in the last few years. Not only by NASA who have always been luke warm ,but several groups and consortiums. Russia, China and now India are planning various missions to the red planet.  The Dutch are planning a Big Bros House, and there was an article encouraging older people to apply for first, for possible one way trips in case they cannot come back. Colonizing Mars [HD] Robert Zubrin, author and aerospace engineer, has the blueprints to build a colony on Mars. He and NASA Ames researcher Margarita Marinova explain how and why humans will one day turn the Red Planet green, establishing the next frontier of technological innovation and seeding the universe with…

Read More

“Your Saga Begins” Launch Documentary

With the official launch of Star Wars: The old republic this morning, BioWare have released a new documentary titled ‘Your Saga Begins’. Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ has launched! This is an incredibly exciting time for everyone at BioWare and LucasArts, and to celebrate this event we invite you all to watch this launch documentary, “Your Saga Begins.” Watch as members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic development team discuss the many facets of building the game, from bringing life to the epic stories for each class, to hand-crafting the numerous iconic worlds that you can explore!

Read More

GDC 2010 Wrap up

With GDC last week, even though Star Wars: The Old Republic had no specific presence, there were a number of interviews and details popping up all over the web. In particular from the off-site event that LucasArts held where the press got some hands-on time with a Trooper. Over on the official forums Sean Dahlberg made a post listing a lot of them (some of which I already reported on before): While there were no panels this year specifically related to The Old Republic during Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2010, there are a few panels that consisted of BioWare developers. There was also an off-site event specifically for The Old Republic that various press and fan sites were invited to. None of this information will show up till early next week so keep your eyes peeled for that. We will be updating the list in this post as more articles…

Read More

Returning to Taris

Once home to a sprawling planet-wide city, Taris was razed long ago by the Sith Lord Darth Malak while seeking to eliminate the Jedi Knight Bastila Shan. Now, a post-apocalyptic Taris is being realized in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. After 300 years, Republic and Jedi leaders are moving forward with the efforts at colonization. Watch insights from James Ohlen, Drew Karpyshyn, Scott Carpenter, and Mark How about the new environments – and adventures – awaiting players in Biowares latest Developer Dispatch: Returning to Taris:

Read More

Developer Dispatch 5: Designing the Dark Side

Inspired by notorious characters such as Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, the Sith Inquisitor and Sith Warrior take different approaches to their rise to power. The Sith Warrior achieves victory through pure aggression and might while the Sith Inquisitor excels by cunning ambition and Force manipulation. From storyline, to art style, to combat tactics, each design decision was made to support the dark side themes of power, domination, and destruction. Watch Developer Dispatch: Designing the Dark Side, and learn how Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ developers created this dominating force.

Read More

December 3rd Information Extravaganza

And as I predicted there’s a lot more articles from the press event that BioWare held in November. But instead of quoting each one of them here I’ll just refer to Sean’s post: As some of you already know, we had two press events last month; one in Europe and one in the United States. Today, articles from various websites (and magazines) are being released based on information collected at these two events. We will keep a list of the articles and update this post as new ones arise. G4 Quote: Star Wars: The Old Republic Hands-On Preview BioWare has just released Dragon Age: Origins… Mass Effect 2 is on the horizon… but there’s a third game in development at the RPG mega-studio and it is none other than Star Wars: The Old Republic, the company’s foray into the MMORPG genre. X-Play’s Matt Keil recently got to check out the…

Read More

SW:TOR in Total PC Gaming UK Magazine

I went to buy my Christmas cards today and as I walked past the magazine rack in the store I noticed that one magazine had “Exclusive Star Wars the Old Republic” in big, bold letters on the cover, on top of an image of a Jedi that I hadn’t seen before. Picking up the magazine (which turned out to be “Total PC Gaming”) found that it had a five-page preview (not counting the title page). And since it includes the last two classes it’s definitely new. So I bought the magazine. The magazine comes with a DVD containing screenshots and videos of the game (some 45minutes worth), but it’s nothing you haven’t already seen. All the screenshots can be found on the official website as well (a number of them fairly old in fact). The videos consist of the cinematic trailer from E3, the gameplay walkthrough from CamesCom and the…

Read More

Star Wars the Old Republic: Video Documentary #3 – The Voice of the Old Republic

As revealed during E3, Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will be a fully voiced massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. Watch our third Video Documentary where we explore how voice-over conversations deliver a deeper level of immersion and connection to the story and characters. Every playable character and every non-playable character in the game will be brought to life by voice actors – resulting in several thousand speaking roles and hundreds of thousands of recorded lines of dialogue!

Read More

Interview with Bioware’s Richard Vogel

Check out this Star Wars: The Old Republic interview from Bioware’s Co-GM Richard Vogel. Please excuse the bad audio. Transcript: I am Richard Vogel and I am the co-GM at Bioware-Austin. Basically this story, umm, takes place 300 years after the original KotOR, which is what it’s based on. Uh, Knights of the Old Republic. And, uh, 2700 years before the movies. So gives us a lot of leeway to a lot of stuff we couldn’t do if we were near the movies. So, there are a lot of Jedi, for instance, in our game. But as far as classes go, we announced the Bounty Hunter, and we announced the Trooper, and we announced the Smuggler. We have been developing for about three years. We’re, uh, not ready, still not ready to release yet. We have a ways to go. Well, basically what we did is, we did, uh, we…

Read More

Star Wars: The Old Republic Video – Diverse Worlds

Majestic forests, toxic swamplands, desert landscapes, and hazardous war zones the worlds that make up the Star Wars™ universe are unique and enriched with compelling storylines. Watch Developer Dispatch: Diverse Worlds and go behind the scenes to find out how the developers are bringing the worlds of Tython, Korriban, Hutta, and Ord Mantell to life a few of the many playable worlds in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

Read More