Community Project

NickClapper

NickClapper

My greatest regret, during my time on IndieTalk, has been my failure to get a community project off the ground. We came pretty close with the organ lottery project, but it never quite worked out. The past few days has seen a new member trying to get another community project off the ground, but is, I suspect, going to fall into a number of inevitable traps.

I am currently studying for the final exams of my academic career (*sob*) so am just sitting in libraries all day, every day. I'd like something to break it up a little bit (in addition to the couple of projects I am, slowly, working on). So I've come up with a new way to do a community project.

If you would like to participate in this project as a director (or in a shooting capacity), I need the following information out of you:

What actors are at your disposal? [i.e. two men and a woman]
What locations are at your disposal? [i.e. a house, a bar, an abandoned quarry]
Can you record decent quality sound? [i.e. yes]
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Please be conservative with your responses. In order for this project to be realistic and work, I need to be sure that people can (and will) shoot their scenes in the allocated manner.

Once I have a bunch of participants, I will go away and write a short script that incorporates these various shooting units into a single coherent story. I will ensure that no member has more than a maximum of two days shooting (though generally will try and keep it to what can be done in a single day). If you cannot record decent quality sound, I will give you no dialogue to shoot. Everything will be kept as simple as possible (within the constraints of a very tricky project!) so that we have the maximum chance of success.

Additionally, if you are not willing to direct (or arrange the production of) a shooting unit, there are loads of other roles that are required:

Composer
Editor - individual units should edit their scenes but a central editor will put it all together and try and ensure that the editing matches throughout.
Post-sound
VFX - will not be VFX heavy, but we can incorporate some if there's someone who can supply the talent.
Marketing - with so many cooks, would be great to have someone responsible for pushing the film.
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In order to make this attempt as successful as possible, I will only accept forum regulars into the scheme. New members (and I'm talking people who've only been around a few weeks) are welcome to input and help out, but it is of paramount importance that I know people will stick around and see their unit through to completion.

The deadline for signing up is 18th April 2014, giving people two weeks, after which we will allocate two months (and a bit) to complete production of your scenes, meaning a shooting deadline of 30th June 2014. As I have said, should be no more than a day of filming over the course of two months, so if you can't commit to that then please don't!

I really hope this works, and I think it can. Let me know if you have any thoughts and get signing up!

Current units:
David.rhsc (San Francisco, USA)
cheeseandachallenge (Wellington, New Zealand)
Cracker Funk (Richmond, USA)
wheatgrinder
Flicker Pictures (Boston, USA)
mad_hatter (Birmingham, England)
Dreadylocks (Omaha, USA)
Lucky Hardwood (New Orleans, USA)
ChimpPhobiaFilms (Ohio, USA)

Fence-sitting-maybe-merchants:
WalterB
Dreadylocks
sfoster
mad_hatter
ChimpPhobiaFilms
ItDonnedOnMe
jax_rox
Flicker Pictures

Music team
JoshL
mike mcguill

Sound team
mike mcguill

Sound maybes
AudioPostExpert
Alcove Audio

Marketing maybes
RayW

And remember to fill in this form if you want to have a shooting unit in the film!

(Of course, if you're local to an existing unit, why not team up?)
 
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Haha. All things considered, I think it went well. I like the performances my fine actor friends delivered. There are a couple issues I'm worried about. #1 is audio. The only locations I could find that would work best for an artist's studio were asking me to pay them. And yeah, I'm kinda broke right now. The best location I could get my hands on was a shed. The crickets were out in full-force tonight, and are noticeable in the audio. APE, Alcove, here's some raw, unedited audio. My apologies -- I realize that this is just flat-out sub-par audio, and you guys must be tired of being asked to work miracles. If y'all want me to, I'm more than happy to get some ADR. Anyway, here's the audio:

(dialog rewrites discussed farther below)

https://vimeo.com/105949392
Password: indietalk

As far as video is concerned, it's mostly good. There's some noise in the footage, and it boggles my mind as to why. We shot with 1,500 watts of lights. How is that not enough light for a DSLR?! For the life of me, I don't know how that ended up being the case. Honestly, I blame the bulbs. I hate them (cheap halogens from B&H). I might have an issue with blocking. Can't really say until I start cutting it together. We had to use some creative blocking, and that might force me to use some creative editing. Should be fine, though. Here's a still from the footage:

it_collab.jpg


This isn't raw footage. I applied a quick, 5-minute grade.

Dialog rewrites: The big one (which I mentioned some time back) was that I wanted to make the dude more like-able. Tried to make him more supportive, less naggy. A couple other changes we added tonight -- first, we decided to remove mention of keeping open a studio, simply because the location doesn't really pass as a professional studio. Could pass as a tiny-budget amateur studio, but we felt it best to just remove that reference, and trust that the audience knows the importance of selling a painting, and that these two characters mutually understand said importance. Spoke to my painter, and she said that a painter would never say how much time they have left, and instead would mention the things they still want to do. Otherwise, I think we kept pretty close to the script?
 
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Looks great!

The sound, to my ear, seems workable – but, obviously, I'm not an expert and that's not my job. The crickets, in themselves, are fine, so long as they're consistent (in fact, APE has often talked about the advantage of having a consistent background noise (though maybe he wants it on a different track)). I guess we'll have to keep our fingers crossed.

Painting looks great and thinks are definitely moving in the right direction. Just Wheat left to finish shooting – any dates yet on that?

EDIT: Also, can you all please update the IMDB page with your full cast and crew, so that I can start putting together promotional materials with the full info? Cheers: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3921170/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
 
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Cracker Funk said:
I realize that this is just flat-out sub-par audio, and you guys must be tired of being asked to work miracles. If y'all want me to, I'm more than happy to get some ADR.
Click to expand...

If possible, I would really appreciate ADR.

NickClapper said:
The crickets, in themselves, are fine, so long as they're consistent (in fact, APE has often talked about the advantage of having a consistent background noise (though maybe he wants it on a different track)).
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, you may have misunderstood and/or I may have explained poorly. I didn't mean a consistent background sound but specifically a consistent background noise. What I failed to explain is that "noise" has a specific meaning in audio and now isn't the time to explain it properly, except to say: The sound of crickets is unfortunately not consistent noise, each cricket has a rhythm and a band of frequencies and it's often impossible to get rid of it without also destroying the dialogue. It might be possible to "work miracles" and get it down to manageable levels but it's touch and go and I can't say for sure until I get my hands dirty with it. So, by far the safest thing to do at this stage is to get ADR coverage.

G
 
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Two web prototype/concepts submitted to you all for feedback. I know we have some actual web designers/developers here so please be honest and I also welcome anyone who might want to go in and tweak the back end.

http://samanthatwoelevens.wix.com/globalmoviexp
http://samanthatwoelevens.wix.com/globalmovie2

So the first design was something I was mucking around with, trying to fit into the '50s propagand poster' theme. I'm not crazy about it. It's also less 'finished' than the second, the buttons I was planning on replacing with those kind of KAPOW-style cartoon action-sound bubbles.

The second one I had a little more inspiration with. It's my personal preference, but I thought I'd still put up the other so we can put it to a vote.

Also, whatever the design, I think we should have the about page consist of a list of each unit, location, team leader (IT member's) name, short paragraph describing the unit and if possible a cast/crew group photo or team leader photo. Sound good?

Should the press page be block quotes with links or just links? Thoughts?
 
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I actually really like the first one, the cheesy "50s propaganda poster" theme is really cool. I do like both, though, so I wouldn't mind which way we went. I think the website should highlight the silliness of the viral video (even though the film itself is less silly), and I think both options do that well.

And yeah, I think short bios would be good and reasonably manageable with minimal effort from each contributor.
I would say quotes with links for the press page.

Edit: asked one of my crew members for their thoughts. She prefers the second one too. She also said she wasn't sure about the "threads" logo (personally I think it's quite fun, but maybe the actual film is treats itself too seriously for that?) and though the moose were a bit too big.
 
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I think that I prefer the second version – feels a bit more polished, I think.

The Threads logo doesn't reflect the tone of the film BUT is probably a good way for us to approach the marketing of the film's production. We'll make a trailer for the film that shows the real vibe, but I think we want to make our promotional and marketing stuff as approachable as possible. I don't think the logo would be right for the poster, but I think it works for the website. I also like the elk!
 
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APE, I'll gladly get ADR. As I get closer to recording it (some time in the next couple weeks), and as I figure out the logistics of it (I don't have a recording studio), I'll be sure to ask you and Alcove for your advice.

Dready, those look really nice! From a purely aesthetic view, I think either one of them works, but the first one has me wondering what this movie has to do with Japanese imperialism. ;)

Heads-up, y'all. I'm diving head-first into editing this week. Still mucho material that I need.
 
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Second design is best, but the title looks like old batman 'sound effects': too cheesy.
The globe logo for the GMXp looks great, though!

I'm in post for a corporate film now, but I should make some time to log in to Twitter and use thatas avatar :)
 
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Ok, so, consensus seems to lean toward the second one, with some doubts about the logo? I would say I agree with that. For now I'll remove the 'threads!' and focus on getting the site up and running with content. So, to start, imma copy and paste the old blog posts from the previous site into new posts on there. And I think I agree with your crewperson, cheese, the moose could be smaller in relation to the words.

I also like the elk!
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:) yeah I thought that would be a fun inside joke.

If every unit could get me the stuff for the about section as soon as possible, that would be killer.
  • Unit Location
  • Team Leader (IT member) name & role on set
  • Crew list w/positions
  • Cast list
  • Short paragraph about your team. Filmmaking background? Some words of enthusiasm about the project? Press release-style quotations? Up to you, but get me sumpthin. :)

send via PM here or email satyricafilms at yahoo.com

Related: does someone have just a list of all the units so I can start formatting the page?

I'd also like to broach the subject of a domain. I'm normally against simply 'going premium' with sites like this, but it may be the easiest to get ourselves a domain. Basically, through wix, we can do a year of domain registration and hosting for $111. They throw in a couple perks like credits for fb, google, and bing ads. It could probably get us a few dozen likes from strangers if we target them well..?
I can definitely chip in something, but can't swing the whole shebang. I'm thinking, if a domain and lack of ads on the site is a priority, many wallets can make light spending? Do we have a domain in mind, even? Or shall we just keep this whole thing on the cheap and keep the freebie setup?

oh, ps: I'm not on my home computer but I will send along a higher res png to you guys for the facebook and twitter :)
 
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Not sure what my feelings are on paying $111. Seems a little steep, but I goes that, if we broke it up between 10 of us, that'd only be $10 a piece. I guess I'll wait and see what other people think – I'm more than happy to contribute some $ (or, I should say, £) but only if we're all agreed on that route.

I'll take another quick moment to implore you to Like the FB page so that we seem more popular!

And if you have BTS shots or graded stills then I'd like to start drip-posting them onto the Facebook page (once we have more than 3 followers, ideally).

Also, I think it would be a cool promotion to do a poster design competition at some point in the next month. We'd set up a thread on IT and then people could design posters and we'd put them all in a gallery on the blog/Twitter/Facebook and then the winner would be our official poster. I think it'd be A) a good promotion, B) cool way of bringing in the community, and C) probably a cheap way to get some great poster designs! But ideally I'd like to give away some prizes, so if you have any thoughts there, let me know.
 
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Let me check with godaddy. I don't know for sure, but I feel like my web-hosting subscription allows me to have several sub-domains all under the same subscription. I don't know if I'm using the proper technical jargon, so I'll just illustrate what I'm talking about by explaining that my antihero-movie.com domain is hosted under my crackerfunk.com subscription. I feel it's pretty likely that we can just purchase a domain and then attach it, as a sub-domain, to a .com that already has hosting. Dunno, I'll inquire and report soon.
 
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Oh yeah that's definitely an option. I can do that easily with my own web hosting. However we will lose the wix html5 design and back end. Unless we just want to do a redirect or mirror to the site(not as professional imho). Which will still have ads but at least we'll be able to have the domain for promotional purposes. :)
 
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