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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+1
I really appreciate it.
Creative ideas (and suggestions :P ) just pop up, because we all want it to be the best possible.

BTW,
I made a complete preview edit of the Dutch scene. (Did nothing with the sound yet.)
Added subtitles to help you understand.
You all keep an eye in the inbox.
Sent it to Nick, already.
 
like the UFO look and scene.. I leave it all to the artist discretion..

something to consider though..

If you watch the entire footage from the plate there is a lot of build up, and I swing away from the elk to track some fictitious object in the sky, that might be useful for the build up, then again, it might be WAY more complicated to do.. so Im cool with whatevs..

https://vimeo.com/97267792
password itcomproj

EDIT: FYI: When I shot the plate I had both an iphone and gh2 on the rig, the above is from the phone, but the UFO was made using the GH2.. its all good..
 
Here's the online version of an article from a newspaper of my home town. For some reason they chose the worst photo (and horribly compressed it). Edit: and now I notice a typo in the caption as well! There's a number of typos actually (even in the stuff they've seemingly copied and pasted from my press release..). But we do have the lead headline on in the Entertainment section (at least online), so that's pretty neat.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/.../10306239/Nelson-talent-in-international-film
 
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I rather like the idea of incorporating more of wheaty's footage. We can't just slap the audience in the face with a UFO. There's gotta be at least a tad amount of build-up, and the plate wheaty shot will work great for that. Possibilities abound, with the power of ADR! :D

I don't have a huge preference for whether or not we use the iphone or camera footage. I used to be in the camp for iphone, for the sake of imitating amateur authenticity, but now I'm not so sure that the iphone footage does such a great job of catching the fleeing elk. If the gh2 footage looks better with the elk, I'd personally opt for that one.

As far as timing is concerned, I think the clip should be roughly this long.

https://vimeo.com/101590356
PW: indietalk

And I'll be upfront -- if we go with a clip of this length, I'd REALLY enjoy taking on the ADR for it. :D

Visually, I see something like this:

15mz5o8.jpg


Jooble, you've done a fantastic job with the UFO! But you don't need to produce a final video. All I need from you is the UFO. Put it in front of blank green, and I or somebody else can take care of stabilizing it with whatever plate we choose to use. :)

Feels like things are moving along. Good job, everybody!
 
Hey,

Thought id jump in and say what im doing as I don't want to disappoint by doing something that people don't expect. So atm im experimenting with length and how its going to work. Atm its pretty much Crackerfunks length already with the build up. So after the feedback changes that im happy with so far is slowing the UFO down, same movement but slower, Increase in size, changed the red to purple and the UFO kinda telports in but you don't really see it, looks good though. What im focusing on now is how it will end. I tried telporting out but looked a bit naf. So my approach now is to have the UFO move over the Filmer. The phone will glitch and drop to ground giving a skyward view (perhaps a bit of a cracked lens) with the UFO just in shot going over. then glitch turn off (so the Filmer grabs the phone off the floor)

Ill keep an eye on this while im doing it, just keep in mind I cant please everyone... its impossible and time is and issue. So i take comments under consideration and make a call :)
 
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Sounds really good! I like the idea of it flying over the filmmaker especially. Though I'd avoid the cracked lens. I've actually had conversations with friends (who aren't "filmy" people) who think the cracked lens thing is a bit cliche and silly.
 
Here's the online version of an article from a newspaper of my home town. For some reason they chose the worst photo (and horribly compressed it). Edit: and now I notice a typo in the caption as well! There's a number of typos actually (even in the stuff they've seemingly copied and pasted from my press release..). But we do have the lead headline on in the Entertainment section (at least online), so that's pretty neat.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/.../10306239/Nelson-talent-in-international-film

Nice!

LOL, indeed: journalists, editors op written copy seem to have an eye for bad shots.
I experienced that as well in the past.
Nowadays I just send 1 picture or 2 good ones to force them a bit inpicking the right one :P
 
In my opinion, we should just let Jooble do his thing. I've seen the extended version and it's looking really cool and an amazing way to open a no-budget short film! Because of time pressures, I'm concerned that if we keep slightly changing what we're looking for, we're never going to get something we all agree on. I think we'll all be happy with the quality of the video Tom produces.

And, yes, CF you can do the ADR ;) (in conversation with Alcove/APE, of course...)

Here's the online version of an article from a newspaper of my home town. For some reason they chose the worst photo (and horribly compressed it). Edit: and now I notice a typo in the caption as well! There's a number of typos actually (even in the stuff they've seemingly copied and pasted from my press release..). But we do have the lead headline on in the Entertainment section (at least online), so that's pretty neat.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/.../10306239/Nelson-talent-in-international-film

This is great stuff (albeit horrible copy editing).

We need to start posting some of this press stuff on the website. Ray, do you think you could send me the login details so that I can update stuff if/while you're busy?
 
Nice!

LOL, indeed: journalists, editors op written copy seem to have an eye for bad shots.
I experienced that as well in the past.
Nowadays I just send 1 picture or 2 good ones to force them a bit inpicking the right one :P
I tried to do that, but unfortunately there was only one or two decent ones with me actually in them :P But they took what was an "ok" photo and cropped it into a pretty awkward frame, and compressed it terribly! They even asked for the full res photos - though it doesn't look like they used them.

On top of that, they ignored my multiple requests that our photographer be credited (that was the only condition I gave them for using any photos) and one of the people listed as being in the photo isn't even there (and the person who is there isn't listed as such)!

/rant over.

---

How do people feel about using stills from the footage in promotion? We only have a handful of attractive looking BTS photos (due to it being quite a dark lit shoot with lots of bodies in small spaces, and using a new photographer), so I feel that shots from the footage may be of more use - but I understand if we'd rather not.
 
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I tried telporting out but looked a bit naf.

What the hell is "naf"?

The phone will glitch and drop to ground giving a skyward view (perhaps a bit of a cracked lens) with the UFO just in shot going over. then glitch turn off (so the Filmer grabs the phone off the floor)

How about just some dirt/grit/whatever on the lens to further distort the image? Maybe a leaf or something blows over it?
 
Looks great Tom. Thanks a lot for all your work on the project – I for one am pleased that the UK is getting some more representation!

So we now have that, Wellington scene and the Netherlands scene, which constitutes a good chunk of the project. David, your location is looking awesome, and CF can start preparing his shoot now that we have a locked down VFX video.

Not 100% sure what Wheat's planning, but we trust in Wheat.

I think it'd be worth David and Joseph taking a look (if they haven't already) at the NZ and Netherlands scenes (as they currently are) before their shoot, just so they can get an idea of the tone and style that's already been recorded. If C&C and Walter could PM them those links, I'd appreciate that.

But, yeah, we're getting there! And only on Page 35 of this thread!
 
We're ballpark so far in style, tone is pretty much on point. Digant (director) and I will sit down together and review before the weekend.

I'll tell you now we're doing some long take work, which should slot in fine based on what I've seen so far. :)

I need to review the other thread to see where we landed on aspect ratio.
 
Long take work fits with what we've done David :)

Frustratingly the weather here has been pretty terrible. So far my DoP has managed to get out on his own time to get a single establishing shot, but the shot of the cable car (and a couple of other exteriors) still need to be done. It looks as if we might get a lapse in the rain over the weekend, so fingers crossed..

Have we settled on Strands as a title then?
 
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