HOME TRAILERS 2023 SCHEDULE 2024 SCHEDULE SHORT FILMS REVIEWS PODCAST INTERVIEWS NEWS FEEDS ABOUT US

TRAILERS

Must Watch: A Fan Made 'Rendezvous with Rama' Movie Trailer

by Alex Billington
May 3, 2010
Source: Vimeo

Now this should give you chills. Vancouver Film School student Philip Mahoney and visual artist Aaron Ross teamed up to create this trailer (via Cinema Blend) for an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi novel Rendezvous with Rama. This is exciting to see because a Rendezvous with Rama movie has been in the works for a while, at one point with David Fincher and Morgan Freeman attached. Then we reported a few years ago that the project was dead, despite claims from producers otherwise. Now we have this amazing fan made trailer to hold us over, and give us a glimpse at what a Rendezvous with Rama movie might look like.

Watch Philip Mahoney's fan made trailer for Rendezvous with Rama:

If you couldn't pick this up from the trailer, Rendezvous with Rama is about a mysterious thirty-mile-long hollow cylindrical alien spaceship called Rama that one day drifts into our solar system. A 20-man crew is sent on a spaceship called Endeavor to investigate this "thing from outer space to find out what it is [and] what its intentions are." What is it? Who built it? And what is it doing in our corner of the galaxy? This is obviously just a trailer created out of computer visuals, but it's an absolutely mesmerizing look at how great a movie based on the book could be. I hope one day we see someone make a Rendezvous with Rama film, at least before something like this suddenly happens in the real life. What did you think of the trailer?

Find more posts: Cool Stuff, To Watch, Trailer

32 Comments

Loved to the book....I hope that some day someone will make it justice with an awesome film version.....Fincher would have been perfect, but....

Mart on May 3, 2010

Ehhh it was okay, would have liked to see much more camera movement in the shots. It seemed to be framed so the effects guys would have an easy job.

shadow on May 3, 2010

"What do you see sir?" "Everything". Nice way to end a trailer. And the part with the heavy breathing was also good. The rest is ok. Very good job.

Ricardo on May 3, 2010

Ends with that familiarity towards 2001 - "My God, its filled with stars!" Pretty cool trailer.

Nick Sears on May 3, 2010

Very impressive for a fan made. Sounds was excellent.

Atomic Popcorn on May 3, 2010

The Visuals are fine, lets hope that someone comes up with the finance to make this movie.

Cineprog on May 3, 2010

please give me more, this movie has to be made

shane on May 3, 2010

Looks great. Good to see the creative content coming from a school, and not hollywood.

Angry Chief on May 3, 2010

If I remember correctly, there were 3 or 4 books... I believe the first 2 were great, but then it went downhill from there. Been waiting for a movie adaptation of the first 2 books for quite a while.

Tester on May 3, 2010

where's the link? the video seems to have gone missing on Vimeo too...

Robb on May 3, 2010

iI literally went to Amazon and bought the book as this played...this is right up my alley and hopefully a GOOD feature of this happens sooner than later

Trademark on May 3, 2010

Intriguing trailer, now I'm interested in checking out the book. So is the project still dead and this is just an idea of what it could have been?

Emma on May 3, 2010

Can't someone send this to Spielberg or Cameron?

colin on May 3, 2010

I read RWR about 35 years ago, when Arthur C Clarke still held the prize for mixing technology with a real "sense of wonder". That was a term used to describe science fiction of quality back in the day. The genre has lost it to a great degree. (glimpses in Pandorum, District Nine, Avatar and Mars sequences in Watchmen in recent films). I don't know if a faithful adaptation would work for today's crowd. As I recall, there were no strange biological entities (monsters), space ships other than Rama itself and the recon ship, no ray guns, no chases, no destruction of any kind. They'd probably tart it up like they did Sunshine, which had SPOILER.................F. Kruger show up! WTF? Maybe they could put the next AVP in Rama. I wish they'd do the real movie though.

zubzwank on May 3, 2010

That cylinder looks like the one in Star Trek 4 the voyage home. #2 I completely agree.

jeffrey on May 3, 2010

really enjoyed this... im intrigued and now want to see the movie... but ill have to read the book instead...

Sam-Graeme on May 3, 2010

This film was not created by Phil Mahoney. It was made by Aaron Ross at NYU film school in 2001: http://vimeo.com/1989082 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2Yt1ATm4c http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388369/ This version is a student sound project from Vancouver film school using the visuals from the original.

vladikoff on May 4, 2010

This film was not created by Phil Mahoney. The original was made by Aaron Ross at NYU film school in 2001. You can find it here: http://vimeo.com/1989082 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2Yt1ATm4c http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388369/ The version posted here is a student sound project from Vancouver film school using the visuals from the original.

vladikoff on May 4, 2010

Hello Folks, This is Phil Mahoney, the sound designer in question. Thanks so much to this site for writing about my sound design final project, and for everyone who posted comments. Just want to clarify something though: This is not *my* film. The film was created by Aaron Ross when he attended the Tisch School Of The Arts in 2001. However, the sound design is all mine, and was the catalyst to this film getting so much attention. I attended the Sound Design For Visual Media program at Vancouver Film School last year, and this was my final project. I chose Aaron’s video because I thought there was a lot of opportunity for sound, and I was right. I got 91% on the project and consequently, my project was chosen out of many to be featured on the official VFS Youtube channel, Vimeo and iTunes, among others. Io9.com found it, wrote about it, and it went viral from there. As of this writing, nearly 20,000 people have viewed Rendezvous With Rama in the past 48 hours. It was an absolute blast to record, edit and mix all of the sound for the film, including the original score. I’m primarily a composer and I’ve been scoring for over twenty years. I am actively looking for sound design and composing work and if you like what you heard, please get in touch! Phil Mahoney Vancouver phil@philmahoney.com

Phil Mahoney on May 4, 2010

@Phil Mahoney Great work sir! 😛

AgentMcQueen on May 5, 2010

Thank you sir. 🙂

Phil Mahoney on May 5, 2010

Hi everyone, Aaron Ross here. Since I'm coming to the party late probably only three people will ever end up reading this, but as this film was my baby for two years I feel like I've earned the right to say a few words about it. I'm sincerely flattered by all the reception my short has received, even more so that Phil and many others over the years have been so inspired by it to give it their own sound and music. It's also hard for me to know that with all the different versions out there people will experience it for the first time with different sound than I intended. However, when people have asked me to use my film for their own experimentation I've always said have at it, because after all this was just my student project and other people should be able to use it for practice themselves. And also because my film doesn't really belong to me. It belongs to Sir Arthur. Well, technically it belongs to Morgan Freeman. Mr. Freeman, if you're out there reading this, thanks for not suing! With that said, I'd like to clear a few things up. I made a definitive choice not to use voice over narration in my version. I felt that much like the majority of 2001: A Space Odyssey, my short should be able to stand on its own without dialogue. It leaves more to the imagination and I believe this to be one of the reasons why people over the years have been so inspired to put their own sound and music to it. I intended my film to be a short in its own right and not just a trailer. It can be a trailer if you like it to be, but a title card at the end does not a trailer make. With the original sound design we took some artistic liberties over the science, but for all or the most part every sound you hear over a vacuum- engine noise, footsteps, breathing- could be a sound heard over a radio, from inside a ship or a space suit, and many of those sounds were intentionally muffled a bit to give that effect. I know I made some scientific goofs. For example, the flare at the end would fly in a straight line at the center axis of Rama and not in an arc. My bad. But yes, everyone is most definitely wearing magnetic boots. Also since people are wondering, that was Terrence Stamp's suit from Red Planet. We rented it from the Warner Bros costume department at a special student discount for $200 a week and they shipped it out to my apartment in a giant crate. I wore it around the house a few times, although it was ridiculously hot and uncomfortable. We hooked our own batteries up to it to run the fans inside the helmet, which you can plainly see strapped to the back, but you couldn't wear the helmet for more than a few minutes or you'd suffocate. I wore it to play a couple extras in the film too, and so did other members of the crew. Yes, there was only one suit. We all took turns wearing it and I multiplied us in post. For more you info you can see the making of video here: http://vimeo.com/2042295 Warm regards, Aaron Ross Blue Sky Studios, New York

Aaron Ross on May 6, 2010

GREAT STUFF, CONGRATS GUYS!

peter T'Sas on May 6, 2010

This is what I tend to call Not Too Frickin' Shabby! I consider myself a fan as well, and if I were able to produce work of this quality, I think I could be one the happiest people in the world. I'm seeing more and more "fan trailers" which, for my money, demonstrate far more heart and effort than what's coming off the assembly lines in Hollywood these days. OK, enough shmoozing. Any chance for a Ringworld trailer?

Setebos on May 7, 2010

YEs, Both of you ..sounds and video part ..This short is a MAsterwork... totally.. thank you so much to share your work guys.. Really

Sakyo on May 9, 2010

It was good looking, sounded great, and felt suspenseful, however... "We're at the front door"????? There's so much wrong with that line, that I hardly know what to say. LOLOLOLOL

Jstn on Jul 28, 2010

Doing this film right is on the same level as Lord of the Ring. Maybe Jackson can do it! THis is an all time classic of hard Sci-Fi and really needs to be done. Here's hoping.

philcommon on Oct 3, 2010

This movie looks amazing. It's truly sad it's not happening. I really want to find out what he meant by 'everything'. 🙁

Dharmawarrior32 on Jan 5, 2011

I always thought like philcommon... After the Lord of the Ring, I dreamed of Jackson adapting Rama to theater... Rama is the best story I ever red. I wish someone would finally bring it to theater... But the quality NEEDS to be as good as Aaron's short. 🙂 And I agree with him about the sound... No dialog makes it much better. You just discover the object, the entrance, and then... this damn microcosmos enclosed in space.... This shot is gorgeous. Thank you Aaron. I really thought it was a teaser for the Freeman movie 😉

Superkikim on Feb 23, 2011

@Darmawarrior32 Read the book 🙂 You will know 😀 But I have to say that.... "everything" sounds quite weird, when you know the story...

Superkikim on Feb 23, 2011

They made the same mistake in the voice over in terminology as they did in Star Trek. On ships, spaceships or otherwise doors are known as hatches.

Stuart Bulman on Feb 20, 2012

I read RWR when it first came out in the early 70's. I have re read it several times since then. It never looses its magic. A great story that deserves a great movie adaptation. This "trailer" shows just how amazing a good movie of this could be. I am a retired NASA scientist and astronomer and hope to see someone make this film before I die.

Charles Ivie on Mar 5, 2012

New comments are no longer allowed on this post.