Community Project

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]

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.

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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Personally I would like to cut my own work, as I typically have in mind how the final edit will look when I plan a scene. But there are more experienced and better editors than myself on this board, so maybe, if people want, they can rough cut their own stuff as a *suggestion* or to get the editor on the same page, then the editor makes the final decision to match it all.

I use a GH3 with vintage lenses. As for style, I think my style is more strongly pronounced in my editing. I like to use inventive shots if I can. But its hard to say what style or techniques I'd like to use without seeing the scene I'm directing (which I assume is the same as others?). You fit style to the story, not the other way around.
 
After some deliberating, I've decided I need to sit this one out and watch from the sidelines. My regrets. I have two projects that are currently in need of completion and should get those wrapped and out the door before taking on another, albeit a fun one. Just can't wholly commit at the moment. The community project sounds like a good time and I'm sure it will be for those who are on board. Sorry, Nick!

Actually, truth is... I'm frightened of aliens. Terrified of them really. Was probed once. Won't go into it. Still trying to purge the experience from memory. Can't seem to drink enough. Damn... :abduct:
 
Ok, so I hate to say this, but I'm going to need to rescind my commitment :( Recent events have conspired to make the shooting window a time of upheaval in my personal life. Nothing bad, but I'm really not sure how I will find the time for any filming :(
 
ACT ONE - Possible evidence for aliens spreads virally across the world.
ACT TWO - People explore and investigate this evidence in different ways.
ACT THREE - Conclusion about the evidence draws everyone together.

Act One: Mmmm, this is tricky. Portraying something which spreads globally is not easy in film. This is usually done by having the film set in, or at least some footage from the major metropolitan cities; LA, NY, London, Paris, Mumbai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, etc. It's not going to be easy to make this convincing with no budget.

Act Two: We're talking about a lot of people around the world, why the particular people and locations in this film? Why not scientists investigating with labs, reporters for the major newspapers/news channels, etc?

Act Three: Again, drawing everyone together is difficult to portray if we're talking about a million+ people spread across the globe.

The danger with the above is that we end up with something that feels like a typically overambitious/unconvincing, no budget short. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it's going to be very difficult to create good/convincing/logical reasons why the film is limited to only our characters/locations when the plot itself is global.

One potential solution *might* be something along the lines of say some UFO footage which starts to go viral but is quickly proven to be fake. However, a small group of filmmakers scattered across the world, members of an online film making forum, examine the footage with their filmmaking software and determine the proof the footage is fake is itself incorrect/fake and that the original footage is real or could be real .... We now have a reason for our particular characters/locations and we even have a logical reason for why there is variation in the shots/scenes, as each different filmmaker documents their contribution to the investigation.

BTW, I personally would suggest just one Picture Editor and/or one overall Director. Editing is largely about creating a flow, pace and tension, not just within each individual scene but also between all the scenes. This is obviously not possible if everyone is editing their own scene/s, not to mention it makes inter-cutting very difficult, which is pretty much essential if we're not to end up with just a collection of individual stories.

G
 
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Act One: Mmmm, this is tricky. Portraying something which spreads globally is not easy in film. This is usually done by having the film set in, or at least some footage from the major metropolitan cities; LA, NY, London, Paris, Mumbai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, etc. It's not going to be easy to make this convincing with no budget.

News voice-over and perhaps some stockfootage with skylines?
http://www.pond5.com/stock-footage/11898857/aerial-view-sunset-central-park-new-york.html :P
(I know French and Russian speaking people. If I ask around Arabic, Greek and Italian and perhaps German and Chinese should be possible as well. And Dutch, obviously. English is also no problem, but I sense the others have more access to native English speakers than I do.)

Nick can possibily shoot a London skyline?
I can ask a family member whether he can shoot Paris next time he passes the city. (Although the outcome would be unclear ;) )

Act Two: We're talking about a lot of people around the world, why the particular people and locations in this film? Why not scientists investigating with labs, reporters for the major newspapers/news channels, etc?

We'll see ;)

Act Three: Again, drawing everyone together is difficult to portray if we're talking about a million+ people spread across the globe.

The danger with the above is that we end up with something that feels like a typically overambitious/unconvincing, no budget short. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it's going to be very difficult to create good/convincing/logical reasons why the film is limited to only our characters/locations when the plot itself is global.
................

Everything that is global affects people on a local level. :P

BTW, good point about one editor.
This means I need a clapper to make sure the editor knows which shot is what?
And how will he know which Dutch take is any good? I guess I need to do some paperwork then.
 
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News voice-over and perhaps some stockfootage with skylines?

Clichéd but doable, possibly even convincing, if done well. That's the difficulty, doing it well, representing all the main geographical regions to imply "global".

Everything that is global affects people on a local level. :P

True, but that's not the problem. The problem is exactly the reverse, and it's is not true to say that; something which affects a few people in a few localities also affects people globally. This brings us back to how do you make it appear that our few characters/localities represent millions and why these particular characters/localities?

G
 
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APE's comments, as much as I want to challenge (in a good constructive way) his basic premises, suggest to me that its a good idea to set realistic expectations on this project.

What are some indie films that we can reasonably hope to approximate in terms of quality and scope?

PI
A Second Earth
Safety Not Guaranteed
???
 
Animation's really easy, it's the modelling, camera angling, and the lighting that's a bitch... also the lip syncing... oh god the lip syncing..... there's a reason the characters have no moving mouths in my Minecraft show
 
No offense, I hope this is not an automation project.

Mussoman, have you tried simple amplitude mouth automation in AE? Its better than no mouth movement at all. (the louder the sound the bigger the mouth)

I used a more advanced phoneme mouth automation method that used Papagayo and after effects software (free) to create the dialogue. Its a bit complicated to get started, but once you've got it working you dont have to set up again.. just record, align and save..
 
APE's comments, as much as I want to challenge (in a good constructive way) his basic premises, suggest to me that its a good idea to set realistic expectations on this project.

What are some indie films that we can reasonably hope to approximate in terms of quality and scope?

PI
A Second Earth
Safety Not Guaranteed
???

This is a good point. This film will only be as good as the best material we Indietalkers can produce. If you want to make a really high quality short film, this is simply not the way to do it! But if you want to make an interesting, unique project that has a scope impossible without international collaboration and represents what we can achieve as a community, then this is it!

I think all of the people who have committed to the project thus far have a pretty much unified idea of what we want to achieve. I've taken onboard all the comments and ideas in this thread and will try and harvest the best of them.

If you've yet to commit, please let me know in the next 12 or so hours (I'm about to go to bed) before the deadline!
 
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