The Justice of Light and Darkness (2010)

The Justice of Light and Darkness is a 2010 Australian Action Fantasy short film co-written, directed and produced by El Gringo, Jimbo the Cheese and three other unidentified individuals through their production studio; Beard Production Studios.

The films title is frequently abbreviated to 'JOLAD' for the sake of simplicity.

Plot
The film begins with the 'camera' flying through the universe past various galaxies as The Overseer narrates the story so far; a tale of two epic opposing forces, one of light and one of darkness and their titanic and eternal struggle throughout time and space.

The Overseer explains that after countless millennia the struggle between these opposing forces became so intense that they began to rip the universe apart, endangering all other life. This ultimately forced the overseer's hand and he attempted to obliterate both factions in one move by sending a nearby star supernova.

Centuries later, The Overseer discovered that his actions had failed and that the leaders of both factions had survived. After searching far and wide he found them approaching a new planet that would become their new battlefield; Earth.

The Overseer explains he took on a physical form, that of a young man with a prominate beard, and roamed the world to "finish what he started". He discovers that both masters have taken on apprentices, and plan to revive their clans. As he can not allow this to happen, the Overseer sets out to manipulate the destruction of the clans, while ensuring the ballance betwen light and darkness remains.

At a secluded campsite, the Master of Light trains a promising young Apprentice, who quickly masters swordsmanship and martial arts skils. One morning, over a campfire, the Apprentice - who is studying the recent acts of evil of the Dark Master - expresses his desire to destroy their foe while he is still vunerable, preventing him from killing more innocent people. Although the Master points out that aggresion in any form would make them no better than their enemies, the Apprentice can no longer stand by, and sets out to find and destroy the Dark Master.

In a cave, far away and hidden from intruders the Master of Darkness and his apprentice watch the heated interaction between the Master of Light and his own apprentice through a magical orb. The Dark Master thus sends his apprentice in search of the Apprentice of Light in order to tip the balance in their favour.

The Apprentice of Light searches far and wide across the planet but instead of finding who he was looking for he is instead found by the Dark Apprentice. They engage in a fight to the death and the Apprentice of Light eventually overpowers and nearly kills the Dark Apprentice however is stopped, only as he swings his sword with the killing blow, by the Master of Darkness. The fight quickly becomes the Apprentice of Light verses the Master of Darkness who quickly dispatches his opponent by punching straight through the Apprentice of Light's chest and crushing his heart.

The Master of Darkness chided his apprentice for his failure to put up even a half decent fight. The Master of Darkness further rebukes his apprentice before sending him on his way to begin meditations.

Earlier, the Master of Light is warned by the Overseer that his apprentice was in "grave danger". A short time after the fight, the Master of Light finds the bloodied remains of his apprentice. However he has little time to mourn the loss as the Master of Darkness had been waiting for this moment and launches his attack. It is during this fight that a flashback scene plays out revealing that the Master of Darkness was once a disciple of the light and that he and the Master of the Light had been good friends before the former's corruption and fall to the darkness.

The fight between the two masters is interrupted by a bolt of lightning created by the Overseer which forces the two to fly apart before the overseer proclaims "You shall not fight today!"

The Master of Darkness quickly changes tac and begins to fight the Overseer but is eventually struck by a severe bolt of lighting down his left side and retreats.

The Overseer heals the Master of Light who lays his fallen apprentice to wrest after which he shouts his anger towards the Overseer who appears behind him. The two reaffirm the need to destroy the Master of Darkness and that the only way to achieve this is to work together.

The Overseer teleports the Master of Light to the courtyard of a massive abandoned complex where he confronts the Master of Darkness. They engage in sword combat where the Master of Light proves to be the most formidable. Seeing that he was about to loose the fight, the Master of Darkness quickly activates magic and quickly overpowers the Master of Light. Only a few moments before the Master of Darkness incinerates his opponent using dark energies the Overseer once again steps in.

The climactic battle between the Overseer, Master of Light and Master of Darkness ends with the (much diminished) dark master being stabbed through the heart by an apologetic Master of Light.

As the Master of Light mourns the loss of his old friend, the Overseer picks up the dark masters sword before teleporting away and giving it to the (now lonely) Dark Apprentice, thus restoring balance to the universe.

Main Actors:

 * "Zac" as The Master of Light
 * "Leo" as The Master of Darkness
 * El Gringo as The Apprentice of Light
 * Jimbo the Cheese as The Overseer
 * "Brad" as Dark Apprentice

Crew:

 * Choreography: "Zac" and "Leo"
 * Cinematography:  El Gringo, Jimbo, "Zac", "Leo" and "Brad"
 * Costume Designer: "Sue"
 * Directors: El Gringo, Jimbo, "Zac" and "Leo"
 * Producers : El Gringo, Jimbo, "Zac" and "Leo"
 * Writers: El Gringo, Jimbo, "Zac", "Leo" and "Brad"

Production
The script for The Justice of Light and Darkness originally emerged in early 2010 after a joint writing project between Jimbo, El Gringo, "Zac", "Leo" and "Brad". The five decided to go ahead with further script development and in the process founded 'Beard Production Studios' for the development and production of the short film.

In all, pre-production took three months, principal photography lasted two weeks and post-production took just over two months to complete, concluding in early November 2010. Principle photography took place at various locations in and around the Tasmanian city of Launceston.

In a rare and recent 2016 interview El Gringo described all three phases as "challenging"; "'We all had little to no idea what we were doing, really. Whilst we all enjoyed ourselves throughout the project, we found it incredibly challenging. By the end of it all we came to understand that our time management sucked and that we lacked a proper schedule but, hey, now we know what not to do in the future! I'd say that post-production was the most difficult stage, not just from a technical standpoint but also from a relationship standpoint; we had all been at it for a long time with long nights required to get even a rough cut of the film together. We all became frustrated with each other and with the editing suite we were trying to use. Plus, in there somewhere we lost our way in terms of keeping a constant and uniform editing standard which resulted in significant losses in film quality. We had fun though.'"Responsibiity for operating the camera was split between all five members of the main production crew. For scenes not involving him, El Gringo served as the main cameraman, with the marjority of camera angles and shots being his idea, although "Zac", "Leo", "Brad" and Jimbo the Cheese also served as cameramen when needed.

Troubles and Issues:
As detailed by El Gringo above, early into production it became clear to all involved that they had little idea what they were doing. A major problem was a the lack of a solid and definent script, with five different versions existing, none of which provided adequte reference for filiming, leading to a lot of improvisation.

According to both Jimbo and El Gringo, several hours of behind the scenes footage were recorded. In fact, two cameras were running during every filming scene, one for the actual film, and one for the behind the scenes work. In adition, several hours of the cast relaxing, discussing and enjoying themselves were also filmed. However in the frustration and desperation of assembling a draft cut (to adhere to a strict deadline) almost 95% of it was permently lost.

Issues with "Brad"
Tensions rose rapidly between the members, as while all five were supposed to be staring and producing in equal measure, various members naturally leaned more toward roles they prefered. "Brad" was extremely uncoperative from the start, all but refusing to work with the other four, despite insisting on playing a character:

Jimbo the Cheese elaborated:"'From the very begining - even in conception, we were writting a script that had three main characters, and we had to find a way to include five actors. It didn't matter which way we chopped and changed the script, there were only ever three main characters. Either the Apprentice Of Light, or the Overseer had to have a more minor role. We didn't even know what to do with Apprentice of Dark... 'Brad' was so uncoperative. He was actually only there for maybe, an hour, all up. During ANY kind of filming.'""Brad" did not participate in the project outside of acting for his brief scenes, and he did not paricipate in the two day long process that consisted of cutting and editing most of the footage. He is absent from all surviving behind the scenes footage.

After filming concluded, "Brad" proved reluctant to discuss the film, even with his companions. He proved very difficult to contact, and showed no interest in meetings with his fellow cast members. As a result of this, he is the only cast member not to own a unique, signed copy of the innitial DVD release: (One was created for him, but is in the possesion of Jimbo the Cheese)

Soundtrack
Original Soundtrack:

Remastered Soundtrack:

The Final Cut Remastering
Main Article: The Justice of Light and Darkness: The Final Cut

In mid 2012, El Gringo made a short announcement featuring the picture at right along with the statement, " So this is happening, hopefully a sequel is still possible as well!".

El Gringo later went on to elaborate that a collaboration with Jimbo had started, to not only remaster the original Justice of Light and Darkness but also to create a 'director's cut' of the original film.

In 2013 news surfaced that El Gringo would be taking on most of the remastering project with Jimbo the Cheese staying on in an advisory role. El Gringo later clarified that it was still a collaboration and that they had tried to get other members of the original crew involved however they were either unwilling or unreachable.

In mid 2014 El Gringo gave an update about the status of the project in an emailed statement;

"'...so yes the project is still on. Along with the early stages of a sequel script we are also progressing with test shots and sampling graphical updates to the original movie. The first stage of this project did bring up some problems thought but we're trying to work around it.'"

El Gringo went on to state that nearly all of the original unedited footage had been lost some years before (Partly due to the Hard Drive Data End Disaster) and that only the original master copy could be used as source material;

"'It isn't ideal, that's for sure, but we can still create a higher quality version of the film and then add our own flavour to it. That's way we didn't call it the 'Directors Cut', because not all of the original directors are involved. So in terms of a 'remaster', it is a remaster but not in the truest sense of the word, it will be better but the quality loss we had during post production can't really be brought back in most cases.'"

Upon the announcement of the cancelation of the sequel project Jimbo reaffirmed that the remastering was still happening and that, although progress was slow, they were almost at a stage where they knew exactly what they wanted to achieve.

By late 2015 the remastering process had begun with El Gringo conducting the project through his own Production Studio 'Nova Productions'. In an early December email El Gringo stated that although the original film was shot in the 16:9 aspect ratio they had developed a technique to recreate the film in the more cinematic aspect ratio of 2.39:1 without cropping out sections of the image (in most cases). The image is also being massively upscaled to 4K and having selective sharpening treatments applied to it before being output at a final quality of 1080p High Definition. The original special effects (as well as some new ones) will be recreated in High Definition "where possible" as not all scenes can easily have new special effects applied to them.

By early 2016 rumours began to surface that Jimbo had been asked to again come onboard so that some very limited re-shoots could take place, though the source gave no timeframe for these to take place. Jimbo The Cheese has since confirmed that he is indeed returning for a brief re-shoot session, though he declined to go into detail as to what scenes would be revisited.

The sound design of the original film has been all but completely scrapped. El Gringo elaborated further;

"'Literally all I did was cut out all of the dialogue clips and then threw everything else away. The audio track of the original film is a complete mess, the quality of it [in retrospect] is just terrible. So I've sourced new versions of the original soundtrack, all the SFX are being completely redone or re-sourced and in some places there will be new music replacing sections of the original soundtrack.'"

The original film was completed with a stereo soundtrack and El Gringo has often stated that a goal of the project is to remaster the audio to a 5.1 Surround Sound standard.

By October 2017, some 9 months after the remastered film was set to be released, there had been no sign from El Gringo or Jimbo of this happening. Attempts to reach the pair for comment were unsuccessful until October 2018 - where Jimbo released several new pieces on information concerning the remaster - one confirming the project was ongoing and that a 2019 release was "hopeful": On Sunday 16th of December El Gringo released a statement saying that, on Sunday the 9th of December, his primary workstation, being used to edit all remaster material, had suffered a major failure. Upon inspection it was revealed that the computers logic board had suffered damage but that all data contained on the computer’s hard drive was "most likely" safe. He further confirmed that data back-ups do exist regardless, although these are somewhat dated, the latest being from mid November.
 * "'It's nonsense to think that this project could be moving with any kind of speed. This is a solo project, undertaken by El Gringo, using his personal time and resources. It is happening amidst several other projects and personal events for Mr. Gringo that are infinitely more important than this silly film. I for one, am extremely greatful El Gringo is even still taking the time for this. It will happen when it happens. I know El Gringo has made much progress, and we are hopeful that late 2019 will actually yield something, but there is no set release date..'""" The Great December Crash of 2018:

Although there was early speculation that this was a repeat of the earlier Hard Drive Data End Disaster, El Gringo was quick to clarify that this incident, while a set-back, was in no way as catastrophic as the destruction of the original footage.

El Gringo went on to state that he was assessing the best course of action at this time, but that the editing efforts would have to be placed on hold for at least the remainder of 2018. "I will not give up on it that easily," he is quoted as saying, "I’ve put too much effort into the whole thing thus far to give up now".

To the relief of those following the remastering project, El Gringo confirmed in mid January that his workstation had been successfully repaired and that all data was still in place (no back ups needed to be tapped). The remastering process resumed in early February.

2020 - 10th Anniversary and more Hardware Issues:
By the middle of 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the release schedule had slipped yet again. El Gringo later commented;

"'There have definitely been ups and downs this year. I guess the only positive thing that can come from this is that we can now style the final cut remaster as a tenth anniversary special release, seeing that we made the original damn thing all the way back in 2010. I really need to finish this project by the end of this year, in fact I have given myself an ultimatum - finish it by the end of the year or destroy everything and walk away.'"

In June of 2020 El Gringo encountered yet more computer issues, this time partly of his own making, after attempting a simple RAM and SSD upgrade. The issues were fixed by October. When asked about over all progress on the project El Gringo stated that they had now entered the final phase of the endeavour;"'Yeah so I am now in the process of adding new special effects over the remastered background plates, then exporting and reassembly can begin. The first couple of minutes of JOLAD have already been reconstructed.'"

He also stated that new creative individuals have been brought in to work on the project to create some "really awesome" additions to the remaster effort. When asked for further details El Gringo declined, "you'll have to wait and see the final product" was all he added.

Possible Sequel
The possibly of a sequel to the film was always a very real possibility, owing to the fact that the words 'To Be Continued' appear after the credits have rolled however Beard Production Studios did not announce any information concerning a sequel after the initial release of JOLAD in 2010.

In 2012 when Beard Production Studios was disbanded both Jimbo and El Gringo stated that a sequel was "still possible" and that they had in fact always envisioned The Justice of Light and Darkness as the first of a trilogy.

In early 2014, Jimbo and El Gringo revealed that they were again considering a new collaboration to produce a JOLAD sequel and that they were in the early stages of developing a script. This renewed effort was apart of the newly announced project to remaster the original Justice of Light and Darkness film in time for the fifth anniversary of the original release. Little detail was revealed about a possible sequel storyline however in an interview Jimbo stated;"'The Overseer is definitely there, he's the balancing force in the universe. He isn't a main character but in many ways he is the most important character because it is his responsibility to take care of and protect all life in the universe. So yes you can expect to see him again.'"However, by mid 2015 it appeared that these plans had fallen through. The duo eventually announced that any possible sequel had been "indefinitely shelved". Jimbo The Cheese went on to elaborate in a recent interview;"'...In the end it became kinda difficult to see where we would take it. We had some great ideas but just couldn't make them work together and then you have the issue that some of the original members of the cast [who's characters are still alive] not wanting to reprise their roles and then you have other commitments and so it all just became too difficult. The Final Cut is still happening though, El Gringo is still hard at work on that so stay tuned.'" It was confirmed at a later date that any sequel plans had been canceled, and in fact, the topic of a JOLAD sequel was now humorously considered a taboo - Any utterance of the concept by anyone met with a single, and definitive "NO"

Reception
The Justice of Light and Darkness never received a release in any cinema in any part of the world and so has never been formally reviewed.

The film was screened to a group of IT students as part of an anthrology of student films. The Justice of Light and Darkness was voted as the best of all films shown.

Release
The original version of The Justice of Light and Darkness had a very limited region 4 DVD release in November/December 2010. The DVD contained little in the way of extra features with the exception of a gag reel.

Both Jimbo and El Gringo have stated that, because of the High Definition standard of the new Final Cut remaster that the film will receive a limited region B Blu Ray and digital download release "hopefully by the end of 2020".

The five cast members each received a unique DVD copy of the project, with the disk signed by the other cast members. However, because of the difficulty that was had contacting "Brad" after filming concluded, Jimbo the Cheese is currently in possesion of his copy.

Trivia

 * The opening sequence of the film where the camera flies through space is actually reused footage from the 1998 film 'Contact' with the only difference being that the footage is played backwards.
 * All the fight choreography between the Master of Light and the Master of Darkness was preformed live and with full contact by "Leo" and "Zac" The scene where "Zac" rapidly punches the "Leo" across the area before hititng him with enough force to send him against the wall was considered by all involved the top choreography of the project, and Jimbo and El Gringo swore they heard a crunching noise when "Leo" preformed the final part of his stunt.
 * Along with much of the dialouge, many scenes were completely improvised. This includes the scene where the Overseer speaks to The Master of Light near the Apprentice's grave and the entierty of the training montage that begins the movie.
 * Many of the effects seen in the movie are simply creative variations of the standard "Lightning bolt" effect! The crew struggled with implementing complex effects, and perfected the lightning bolt effect early on, due to the Overseer's repeated use of it. With a little creativity, the editors modified the basics of the effect for most of the other special effects.