An adventuring party grows overconfident, and tempts fate. Whether they survive or fail hangs in the balance, as Fate rolls the dice…
(The dice are d20s.)
Dungeons & Dark Side is a saberfilm with a twist. What happens when the DM gets fed up with the players and pulls an antagonist from an entirely different game? The answer is a lightsaber duel that is terribly one-sided. But, stacked as the odds may be, nothing is ever certain.
The Making of Dungeons & Dark Side
Pre-Production
When the theme of Chaos was announced for SaberComp 2025 on May the 4th, I knew that it’d be a great way to combine a few of my passions. I had worked with AJ Magliulo in the past, creating numerous entries for the Lightsaber Choreography Competition (which eventually became SaberComp in the interim), and he would eventually be the head of set construction for Breakdown at 238 Hypatia. Going back to a lightsaber duel felt like going back to our roots.
AJ immediately took on the role of Fighter, and Stephanie Bugenis quickly stood up to play and perform Lord Evilname (eventually renamed to Darth Ringer). As they began drilling with the lightsaber and coming up with choreography, I set to getting the location and the rest of the cast in order.
D&DS was originally scripted for a dungeon aesthetic. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of castles in the American northeast. (There are some, but none that are open to public filming.) My cousins Dorese and Phil volunteered the use of their barn hayloft, and the script was quickly rewritten.
Rogue was cast quickly. Matthew Lambert had accumulated a lot of costume pieces along those lines and we settled on an asymmetric wardrobe to heighten the fantasy aesthetic (at the same time we decided on just one pauldron for Fighter).
Mage was a lot more difficult. Multiple people showed interest then couldn’t make it. Eventually, Brad Nagle committed to the in-universe shoot and Amelia Favata to the table shoot. Characters were color-coded; Fighter with blue, Rogue with green, and most importantly Mage with red to tie the character together when played by two different people.
Production
Two consecutive weekends were booked for production, both in September 2025, with the expectation that we’d need about a day and a half for each. First up was the barn shoot in central New York, right on Oneida Lake. Eric Fakharzadeh came up from New Jersey to help out, someone I knew online but hadn’t met in-person, which is one of the real joys of doing this. We drove up the night before, stayed overnight, and were ready to go by 10AM.
This shoot went really well; choreography didn’t trip anyone up for long, only one minor injury was sustained (Steph took a saber hilt to the face but not hard), and production moved briskly. The changing light threatened to end production early, but we kept adjusting the light panels, and as the day came to a close around 6PM, we finished everything we needed. (We actually forgot one single shot which was inserted via greenscreen within the next week, see if you can spot it!) Worn out, we enjoyed dinner from our hosts and opted to just return home rather than stay for another night.
I edited together the footage and prepared for the second shoot, this one at my house. I set up the gaming table (just as we do for the actual RPG sessions we have), using a Lego set to simulate hay bales on the wood-floor battle map. Eric didn’t come up for this weekend, and Brad was replaced by Amelia Favata for Mage. This shoot was likewise scheduled for two days, and likewise only took one. Only a couple of lines gave anyone any trouble, and we sailed through with no problems (and, perhaps surprisingly, also no injuries).
Post-Production
After production wrapped, I worked on the edit myself, including almost all of the visual effects, from the obvious (the lightsabers) to the more subtle (fire and embers, blood, and the split-screen nat 20s; no, we didn’t do that live—though I tried—it was done one die at a time and combined afterward). Eric worked on the Force Lightning shot, which due to the timing and how it was shot was trickier than it’d seem. Brad Granath came on to compose the score and do the final audio mix.
Release, and SaberComp
Dungeons & Dark Side released February 6, 2026 along with all of the other entries from SaberComp 2025. As part of the SaberComp Council, I exempted myself from discussions of judging and ranking and all that; but I did find that we had made the top ten. Though there were roughly two dozen entries, only the top ten are viewed by the judges on the awards livestream and selected from for awards. I invited AJ over and had a GoPro running to catch his reaction to us making the top ten.
What I didn’t expect to catch was our combined reaction to also winning Best Production Design! That work in dressing up the gaming table really paid off, and I have to give credit to Phil for his work in preparing the barn for us as well. Congratulations to everyone on an amazing, award-winning entry!
More About SaberComp
SaberComp is the internet’s premiere saberfilm competition. Starting as the Lightsaber Choreography Competition in 2002, it rebranded to SaberComp in 2019 out of respect for the full filmcraft that goes into every entry. It is a volunteer-run competition with entrants from all over the world.
Visit sabercomp.com to learn more.