Hey man,
The trailer is great. I'm most impressed with the work you did with the actors. They seem to properly "click" together and deliver a genuine performance without being too over the top. This is something a lot of people fail to deliver when working on indie projects, but you seemed to have properly pulled it off. So great work from you and your actors.
I'm extremely amazed at the fact that you made a feature for such a small budget and one that looks as fun and interesting as this one.
My only problem with what I saw is some of the visual effects; while I don't expect them to be top-Hollywood grade, I could easily spot some Videocopilot stock footage in there. This probably isn't an issue with most viewers, but these specific effects have plagued web videos in many badly-used compositions. I think that when deciding to use stock footage of any kind, especially something as popular as Action Essentials 2, you really need to work on hiding it well so that it doesn't pop out for people who play around with it. In this case, a lot of people know Andrew Kramer's work.
I'm just nitpicking on something this small because the rest of the package is impressive.
Good luck with your film.
Hey Daniel, this is actually a very very solid point. What's interesting is this:
I actually didn't do any of the VFX, it's one of my good friends' work and it's also his first time doing anything like this. He did everything himself and was learnin' as he went, which is pretty amazing... but what's even MORE amazing is that I've been doing this stuff for years and I actually have no idea which effects were video co-pilot.
Could you tell me which ones? LOL I'm dead serious, too.
I'm saying this as it's one of the things that I've learned over time. No matter what we as filmmakers or creators recognize as something very obvious, the very vast majority of the audience really won't have any idea, and it won't take away from anything for those people.
In many movies I see camera gear or camera cases doubling for "special" cases or just space filling objects, and it's CLEARLY a camera case (I've even seen the shipping labels on some), but nobody else around me would notice such a thing. I'm pretty harsh on myself, but have grown to accept that some things you just have to let go and keep movin' forward, otherwise they'll hold ya back/slow ya down. And we're already slow as it is! xD Haha
So, yeah, more money would mean creating a lot of elements from scratch. The fire stuff, I really wanted to go out and shoot 5K fire plates but after he did his initial tests I decided that, for this project, it wasn't necessary. But, definitely, when there's more cash/budget we're going to hire an actual team for him to lead and create something even better.
Thanks for checking it out, man! Appreciate the kind words.
