Well I just stumbled across this site and saw some cool looking shorts. I thought I would put ours up to see what people think. This short was a blast to make, hope you enjoy it.

Mike

http://www.beneathreality.com/imaginefinalweb.mov

:welcome: to IndieTalk!

Thanks, I'm really enjoying the site so far. :cheers: I hope I put this in the right spot.

Haha! Great short, loved it! Excellent editing and superb choreography. Did you choreograph the fight sequence yourself? I've been a martial artist and swordsman for several years now and the scenes had a nice smooth, unforced feel to them. I've been wanting to choreograph a fight sequence myself for some time but haven't had the chance to do so yet.

What format did you shoot this on? It looks like it's been cropped to a 1.85:1 aspect ratio? Definitely liked the high production values!

Nice choice if music too :D

This short is really great! :cool:

Can never have too many http://www.stevenrichards.com/images/smiley_ninja.gif in movies.

Must have been a real bear choreographing all those stunts... especially having to match similar ones with the kids. Btw, my fave stunt was Hero kicking upwards, hitting the one kneeling guy in the chin and continuing the kick up to connect with the second guy.

I wasn't too keen on the Matrix-style bullet effect, but the matching one for the kids with the nerf-guns had me cracking up.

Hope you took the initiative to clear all those tunes first...

One of the most polished action films I've seen on the boards in a long time.

Can I be in the sequel? http://www.stevenrichards.com/images/smiley_creepy.gif

Man what a great short! I identify with that kid so much. I mean I was the boy with the short length of rope stuck to my belt pretending to be Indiana Jones not so long ago. http://www.geocities.com/nicklauslouis/indy.gif

The interspercal of the two stories was terrific! There were a few times I thought that it didn't flash back to the kids enough. But after pondering that a bit, I think that may have made the kid's story that much funnier.

Favorite Part: The girl at the end, and the "Gaaaaaa!" reaction to her. :yes:

The only thing I wonder about is why not get an original score? I don't know if you acquired rights to those songs, but considering that it would cost a pretty penny, I am going to assume you didn't. I don't think loosing the Hollywood music would have cost the film any, in fact, I think an original score would have made it all the better.

But other than the score thing...SUPERB JOB!

Poke

That rocked my balls off!

Nice job, macmangan! That was a very enjoyable short film.

What I think could have been better:
Cinematography was not very cosistent and I had the impression different parts of the film were filmed by different people with pretty different styles.
I, like Zensteve was not too keen on the Matrix-style effects.
I think using an original score would have made the movie better (or at least a score not previously used in other films).
I think you should have spent more time dealing with the kid than the hero - it was funnier, cooler, and all the fighting with the hero was too long/repetitive; plus I thought it was also filmed better.

Other than that it was well done. Nice job with continuity also.

I'm glad you guys generally liked it. We shot it on 2 gl1's. As for the matrix shot, I thought it worked only because of the kid payoff. We know it's been done a million of times but it gets a good laugh. As far as the different parts looking different, we wanted the fantasy hero stuff to be very different from the kids reality. The director's going to jump in here as well to go over a few things. Oh yeah here's the actual site address.

http://www.beneathreality.com/imagine/imagine.html

Thanks everyone for the great responses!

I am the Director of Imagine and macmangan is my post house! I wanted a chance to reply to some of your comments.

The stunt men did the choreography. We didn’t have the luxury of time to really develop the stunts, but the guys we had are people I work with at Universal Studios at the Water World Show. The coordinator kind of had a rough idea for the fight with all the guys, but the guys involved did the sword fight and hero-villain fight. The ninja is a teacher of sword fighting and is also an actor. He designed the whole sequence. Our main hero learned the moves, like a day before we shot and the day of the shoot. The same went for the gun kata and epic brawl. Those two rehearsed the night before and then did it on the day of the shoot. The kids were terrific. They are actors who want experience. We had planned more kid stuff, but our main kid broke his leg playing soccer. So it totally killed any additional footage. In fact his brother had to stand in for him for the shots when he walks to his bike and when he rode it off the driveway. The shots when he puts all his gear on, he does so on an igloo cooler. I definitely will take the original score to heart. I had originally wanted an n original score, but we were under such a time crunch to make the deadline of our first festival. So I had to put it aside. I was planning to go back to that, but the score we picked worked so well and it fit the context of the kid’s imagination, I was like, maybe we can run with this. But alas, I may have to go back to that original hunch.

Nice work guys! Speaking of original scores, there are a few members here who can probably help you out. Welcome to the forum MovieDirector.

We'll give them a look-see. I know you can get festival clearances to use this music, but it still costs some dough. Hopefully we can get an original score fore this project.

the guys we had are people I work with at Universal Studios at the Water World Show.

I loved that show. Must have seen it over a dozen times, when I had my yearlong pass to Universal. Beat the heck out of the previous Miami Vice one. (Not that the MV stunts were bad... WaterWorld was just a cooler concept)

:cool:

Just to let you guys know, I'm launching the Public Music Project in May (probably on May 1). It will have at least fifteen free royalty free songs for you to choose from. Electronica, rock, techno, and some other types of music. I'll post the news in this forum when it launches.

MovieDirector, loved the short. I watched it three times (I don't usualluy watch a short more than once, for whatever it's worth).

Definitely check out board composers, there's a lot of good ones here who can do outstanding work and are willing to work for free or cheap to get the exposure.

Poke

I've been looking for a music section or composer swection on the site but can't quite locate it. What would it be under, I tried post production but no go.

Thanks

MIke

Most usually post in Casting Calls & Production Services (http://www.indietalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46) if offering music creation.

Others end up in Misc (http://www.indietalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=53)

I loved the shot. I was completely rivited and the film had my complete attention. thought the action was wonderful, the funnies were hilarious and all of it extremely well done. One critic, and someone else mentioned it earlier, but at times the fight sequences needed to go back to the kids more often, but you already mentioned that was hard to do cause of the kinds broken leg. but VERY nice work.

Just wanted to add...

...very nice touch at the end, when it's only the kid-Hero finishing up the conflict with the water-guns. It would have been very easy to match that with adult-Hero by adding a blaze of glorious gunfire. Good call on straying from the expected, and simply implying it.

It's all too rare to see a short that can be appreciated at two different levels, that each age-category can appreciate.

The elder looking backwards, and the younger anticipating what may come. This opens appeal in just so many ways.

Awesome short. (Though a higher resolution would be neat too) :cool:

disciple - gald you liked the short,as far as the not enough kid stuff goes. I think we've learned the need for a more flexible schedule just in case something happens that you don't plan on.

Zensteve - thanks for you nice comments again, very appreciated. I will work on uploading a higher res movie, just got my web space up to 2 gigs so lots fo room to play with.

Great idea with a really good and original premise. The only negative thing I have to say is regarding the different look between the two stories. The kids portion had some really good afternoon lighting with great angles and some excellent camera work. Whereas the adult portion seemed to have all been shot at midday with not as much emphasis on camera movement and interesting angles. The kid portion looked more like a great film to me, where the adult portion made me feel as if I were watching an episode of Walker Texas Ranger or something. I think some more use of the wide angle lens would have helped a bit.

But it was very enjoyable, I look forward to seeing any future productions of yours.

I want one of those nerf cannons the next time my kids get out of line! :grumpy:

Cool vid! What kind of camera shot this vid?

PS :clap:

Thanks guys

king goldfish - we shot it on a cannon GL1, we can't wait to get the XL2.

Loyfilms - we were trying to go for 2 different looks from reallity to the fantasy. The fantasy has more golds and the real brings out the beautifull colors. We actually used the wide angle lens most of the time on fantasy stuff, mainly becasue we couldn't get the camera far enough back in the tight areas. As far as the mid day stuff that was a tough one. Our goal was to shoot the early stuff in the movie around early morning times, then the middle around noon and the end as the day is starting to end. It ended up being shoot when people had time. We did the whole shoot in 3 days so it turned into just get it done. Hopefully we will learn from our many mistakes on this one.

Thanks for the crits again.

Mike