Project Update: September 2023

Welcome back to our project, everyone! We’ve been working very diligently to try to put together our Legacy Trailer, which is an “additional” trailer that tells the story of our main villain, Emperor Vitiate. Vitiate has a story that is unique and unlike any other ever told for a Dark Sider in Star Wars. It is very much part of the Expanded Universe (EU), now called Legends in the post-Disney acquisition era of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars. And that’s something we have always wanted to be a large focus of our project — the integration of the EU (novels, comics, etc.) into our story arcs.

We realized that unless you have played either Knights of the Old Republic or Star Wars: The Old Republic video games, you’re really not going to know who Vitiate is and just how significant his story is to the world of Star Wars. So, to correct that we decided to do what is called a “Specialty Trailer”. Movies do not often do that. They piece together scenes from their semi-completed movies to release trailers that entice audiences to watch that movie — they do NOT commonly create what is basically more of a short film about characters in said movie.

Typically, Hollywood would release a minimum of 3 trailers — a teaser trailer which is usually ~ 1 minute in run time, with two distinct full length trailers that run from 2 minutes to 4 minutes at different stages of the production. Sometimes, you’ll get two teasers; one ahead of each main trailer. A specialty trailer usually runs anywhere from 6-8 minutes and focuses on a character study.

We thought one of the greatest Sith Lords to ever exist in this franchise deserved that special treatment. BUT… that’s not all we’re working on, either. Let’s dive into it!

SPECIALTY TRAILER: “LEGACY“, EMPEROR VITIATE’S STORY

We are treating our “Legacy” trailer almost like a mini-project, similar to what you would do for a short film. It’s a self-contained story that has a beginning, a middle, and not necessarily an “end” but rather a “here”. Our films will take that story forward.

We want the character study to shine, so the trailer is almost entirely a chronological order of events for Vitiate, played by Ross Morgan, more famously known as @XWing, content creator extraordinaire and die hard Star Wars fan. However, we open with dialogue between two of his Darths first in what would be present-day for our story, 36 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin); a few short months after the events of Exegol that saw the defeat of Emperor Palpatine’s efforts to re-enslave the galaxy to his rule.

Darth Maladi, played by the enigmatic yet mesmerizing Jonni Machado, who is also an EU character that we’re bringing into the story to serve the new Sith Empire… but also the introduction to a NEW character — one that we’ve created as part of this project — Darth Zanos, played by the talented Kyle Bargoot.

As we weave the story through the eyes of the Emperor, you find direct correlation with his words and the Sith Code. In our story, that creed is at the core of Vitiate’s life and it’s threaded through every major step of it. Written by the Dark Jedi and first “Sith Lord”, Sorzus Syn in 6900 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin), the Sith Code is the mantra that all Sith repeat to themselves in order to keep their connection to the Dark Side strong and ever present.

We finish strong, back in near present day, by watching an ambitious General Ellian Zahra, played by the versatile, vaudeville’s own Sharon Grünwald, aboard her Star Destroyer, the Punisher, keeping a watchful eye over the planet of Muunilinst — a charge mandated to her 24 hours before the Battle of Exegol by none other than Supreme Leader Kylo Ren before his army would be taken over by Allegiant General Enric Pryde that would see the First Order become the Final Order. Ellian Zahra herself is a comic book character that was featured in the Star Wars 2020 comic book series by Charles Soule.

It is a great way for our audience to see how Ellian Zahra came into possession of one of the most deadliest artifacts and a keeper of its secrets.

STAR WARS: THE CHOSEN ONE (EPISODE X) POST-PRODUCTION UPDATES

Because we currently only have one team, our Wizards Team, our progress on the scenes for TCO has stalled a bit to make room for the creation of the Legacy trailer. This was by design and we’re still on track to finish the movie as we had planned by December of 2024. Right now we’ve completed the pre-viz for all scenes up to scene #35, which means there are preliminary visuals (a storyboard-based animatic) for all those scenes. We have also finished the final animation and visual assembly for scenes #1 through 6, and #8. The scene we’re working on right now is scene #7 where we’ve finished the final animation and are starting on the sound design and film score for this scene.

Up next, scenes 9 & 10 which take place in Muunilinst. We’re so excited to be able to depict this city for everyone as we’ve only briefly seen it in “The Clone Wars” Cartoon Network series by Tartakovsky of 2003. Those episodes in that series feature Captain Alpha-77 Fordo, who was a fan favorite for that show. Of course by our timeline, him and the Muunilinst 10 are long gone, but their legacy will remain, and we will find a way to incorporate that history. We’re designing our own version of the IGBC Headquarters at the center of Harnaidan, the capital city of Muunilinst. We had to go back to the drawing board on these to tweak our ideas around the styling for the city and thus our Environmental Artists will be recreating the Blender assets for this new styling.

That’s one thing that for us has been a saving grace. We first create all of our environments, ships, locations as “sets” within the 3D Renderer Software, Blender. We create all of these locations as basic blocks. Once we agree on a camera angle, we can then push into the details, export it as a high-resolution image, and then our artists give it the final styling in Photoshop. This allows us to have 3D movable space within any of our locations. It facilitates the camera angles we need and also when we need to recreate anything (like we just detailed above), it gives us a very short turnaround time. And since a lot of our locations will be re-used in later scenes or even in our TV series or the subsequent movies, these assets give us a head start.

We have also started to host monthly “Team Socials” for our cast and crew to participate in where we have our partners at The Go Game team come in and host amazing events that help us stay connected to our cast and crew. This is essential in building a strong community that will inevitably be spending several years to come with us as part of all of these projects. We also plan some “Team Socials” that we self-host that focus on great virtual games like “Cards Against Humanity,” “Town of Salem,” and more. We do that to allow us time to build up the funds to host future events with our partners.

If any of you would like to join in the fun, you can email us at production@tlp-gaming.com and if we have any extra seats, we’ll hand them out on a first-come, first-serve basis.

STAR WARS: THE IN BETWEEN (TV SERIES) DEVELOPMENT UPDATES

We’re so happy to announce that we’re officially “In Development” for our TV Series Season 1. YAY!

We have staffed our writing room with our Staff Writers / Writing Assistants and have started to review all the submissions by our cast and crew to see what possibly may suit our general story for seasons 1 and 2, which take place in between Episode X and Episode XI. A new concept that we faithfully preach to every member that comes on board is the idea that ANYONE in the team can submit story ideas into a list we call “IDEA CATCHER”. Our actors get closer to these characters more than anyone else. They have to embody these characters and think about what they’re thinking about, what they’re feeling, how they would respond, etc. So, for us it was important to allow them input into what their characters might be going through in the 10-year-content-gap that we’ve introduced between each movie. We have found some REAL GEMS in there that we are 100% incorporating into our episodes list. So, we encourage our cast & crew to continue to submit these ideas! Not every one of them makes it, but not everyone gets cast or gets chosen to be part of this project either and they did that! We have a lot of trust in our team and they in us.

We’ve started to work on the pilot episode by creating a scaffolding outline, then filling out that outline. And now we write the first draft. And once we do that, we review, we edit, we delete, we add, we polish, and then do it all over again. This is the process of screenwriting in this team and our Executive Producer and Director, who is the showrunner for Hot Shots, has a ton of experience in this process having done so many of these within the video game development industry. And to be quite honest, we believe video games these days are the best storytelling out there, period. “The Last of Us”, which Maria was slightly involved with, proves that.

PROJECT STATUS BY THE NUMBERS

GENERAL PROGRAM UPDATES (Production Team)
– Edit Script Version 6.0 GOLDENROD with finalized scenes for TCO.
– Hosted a Team Social event, setting up next month’s which will be Town of Salem.
– Hiring for Hot Shots Team, posted here in JOBS and on Casting Call Club, and soon on IMDBPro as well.
– Released the “Resistance” video on our YouTube channel as part of the “Five Tales to Tell” Series.
– Completed the script for our next YouTube video on The Cosmic Force for the “Five Tales to Tell” series.
– Currently having our commissioned artist working on pulling together that video.
– Will be working on the script for the New Republic in the next few weeks with our writing room.
– We need a Social Media Assistant and Graphic Designer (with Typography experience) for the overall team.

Star Wars: The Chosen One (Episode X)

PROJECT PHASE: Post-Production

BUDGET: $116,654 / $300,000 USD

COMPLETED & CURRENT TASKS:

• Legacy Trailer (Coming in November 2023!)
  – Storyboards, 100% complete
  – Recordings, 100% complete
  – Pacing Animatics 100% complete
  – Sound Design in progress, 80% complete
  – Film score in progress, 95% complete
  – Character art in progress, 35% complete
  – Environment art in progress, 85% complete
  – Final Animation in progress, 20% complete
• Motion Graphics Animators
  – Pacing Animatics completed for scenes 1-35
  – Final Animations completed for scenes 1-8.
  – Working on “Legacy” final animations.
• Character Artists
  – Create scene 11 character assets.
  – Create Character Art shots for the “Dark Side” character posters.
  – Create a Character Library for each main cast character with wardrobe/props options.
  – Creating the character assets for “Legacy”.
• Environmental Artists
  – Redesign the Blender environmental sets for Muunilinst, scenes 9 & 10.
  – Create Environmental Art shots for the “Dark Side” character posters.
  – Creating the finalizes assets for “Legacy”.
• Musical Composers / Film Scorers
  – Dark Side Soundtrack, Version 1, 100% complete.
  – Jedi Theme Soundtrack, Samples 100% complete, presented to cast for feedback.
  – Film Score Sequence 11, 12, and 14, 85% complete.
  – Create the musical film score for the “Legacy” trailer.
• Sound Designers / Audio Engineers
  – Take Reviews for Block 4 Lives
  – Polish Sounds for scene 7.
  – Working on “Legacy” sound design and audio engineering.
• Visual Editors
  – Working with our commissioned artist on the Cosmic Force video.
  – Working with sound and music assembly for “Legacy”.
  – Working on compiling scene 7 for assembly to final cut.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: On target, caught up to budget from a slight overage in production. Now in post-production we’re meeting our target monthly budgets. We have deviated our resources temporarily to create our “Legacy” trailer but we accounted for that in our timeline and budget. We’re still on target for December 2024.

CURRENT NEEDS: None. Wizards Team is complete.

Star Wars: The In Between (TV Series)

PROJECT PHASE: In Development

BUDGET: $1,250 / $150,000 USD

COMPLETED & CURRENT TASKS:

• Writing Team
  – Scaffolding Outline, S1E1 (Pilot), 100% complete.
  – Fleshed Out Outline, S1E1 (Pilot), 100% complete.
  – First Draft WHITE VERSION 1.0, S1E1 (Pilot), 5% complete.
• Storyboard / Storybeat Artists
  – None yet.
• Comic Artists
  – None yet.
• 2D Character Artists
  – None yet.
• 3D Character Modelers
  – None yet.
• 3D Character Riggers
  – None yet.
• Environmental Artists
  – None yet.
• Musical Composers / Film Scorers
  – None yet.
• Sound Designers / Audio Engineers
  – None yet.
• Visual Editors
  – None yet.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: We have room for musical composers/film scorers & sound designers/audio engineers for this team but probably not secure them before we’re in pre-production. We currently have 1 Staff Writer and 1 Writing Assistant in addition to our Showrunner and we may be looking for another real soon, part of this phase.

CURRENT NEEDS: 2D/3D Animators/Artists & Comic Book Artists for out Hot Shots Team, which is the team that will be doing the TV Series for us with our main team, the Wizards Team continuing on to work on Episode 11, providing support and assistance to Hot Shots as needed. Apply here if you want to join us!

We hope you found this post informative and if you have any questions at all, feel free to use the CONTACT US form to ask.

~ Maria
Writer/Director/EP