Mike Lowrey

So I'm browsing TFN's fan film listings and I come across a link to 'featured projects' with one being something called, "I.M.P.S." (Imperial Military Personal Stories). It's made by the same folks who made the "Troops" parody of "C.O.P.S." This project was originally going to be called "Troops 2", but grew into something much larger and more sophisticated.

Currently, they have one chapter completed of what looks to be an eight chapter saga. It's a 208 MB DiVx .avi file. Meaning that you can Alt-Enter to get a full screen display of a 2.35 image. The chapter runs just over 21 minutes, and it has almost feature film quality CGI. It's quality is only limited by the less than DVD quality compression.

The background to the series is that it follows a group of Imperial troops on their security missions around the Empire, using the original "Troops" sense of humor amongst the troops. (Think Roughnecks in a way.) This first episode takes place for the most part on Coruscant with some lead in prologue of some very impressive CG of Star Destroyers and their internal bays with TIE Fighters and Imperial Walkers of all kinds. But beware there's an alien creature in it that doesn't belong in the Star Wars yniverse.

Here's a link to the main site:
http://impstherelentless.com/tek9.asp?pg=chapter1
or here's a direct link to the first chapter
http://www.barbich.net/sw/imps_chapt...ORT_928735.avi
(Right-click and choose "Save Target as")

Mike Lowrey

No comments yet?

Rammsteinfan

I saw it a few weeks ago and it was pretty good. Cant wait until Chapter 2 comes out. The teaser shows alot more than what was in Chapter 1.

Ranger

Ok, I saw it. It was all right. The graphics are good but all the other stuff just kind of bored me. I will give the second chapter a try when it comes out. My favorite fan film probably still is the Dark Redemption.

Mike Lowrey

After seeing some of these fan films, me wishes that that's what the real films should have been more like. That is, the dark, Imperial military look, but with of course good actors and story lines. The fascination with Tatooine in the SW saga kinda gets old.

I hope the live-action TV show goes into areas like this. With the birth of the Empire, there's a wealth of stories they could tell, similar to what was in Dark Redemption and Revelations.

Mike Lowrey

Wait a minute...you did say "Dark Redemption", right? I just realized that I hadn't watched it yet, but am now in the process...the SF/x suckass. The rotoscoping is the worst I've ever seen in a fan film.

Ranger

But for the DR, Leah McLeod (Mara Jade) is nice to look at.

calhoun07

Damn AVI won't play on my computer. Are they planning on putting this on DVD?

Ranger

The website FAQs says that they aren't putting this on DVD because they can't sell it due to licensing restrictions.

Download the official free DIVX codecs here.
http://www.divx.com/divx/play/download/
AFAIK, this bundle does not contain spyware, but the pro version does so don't install the pro version.

veloce

Does it get funny? Because TROOPS was funny, whereas this is nothing. Oh well.

Mike Lowrey

The dialogue is what's funny. A lot of the jokes are togue-in-cheek. Some are references to lines in the Saga and others are poking fun at other sci-fi franchises like Aliens vs Predator. But the point isn't to be funny really. I.M.P.S. is a much bigger project than TROOPS ever was. It's to tell the story of a squad of Imperial Troops as they "cop" the galaxy under Imperial rule.

BTW, y'all. I got an email from the site detailing on when the next chapter will be released. Apparently the production team had some personal things to take care of, as well as Comic-Con to deal with so it put back the schedule a little bit, but they say that Chapter 2: "Snow Patrol" should be out within 6-8 weeks which would put it sometime in September.

ShagMan

thanks Mike, I enjoyed it! I could have definitely done without but I enjoyed