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]
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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?)
 
Last edited:
Sort by date Sort by votes
Flicker Pictures said:
Nick, what sort of tone are you thinking for this piece? Something in the vein of X-Files and Millennium? Dark, serious, suspense, intrigue, conspiracy...

Those are just two "aliens cometh" shows that come to mind. There are many others.
Click to expand...

I'm not really familiar with either of those shows (yes, yes, I've heard of them...) so I can't say for sure. But I want something that's tense, realistic but not overly grave. Think, perhaps, something like JJ Abrams' Super 8 or Gareth Edwards' Monsters.

Of course, this isn't going to be heavy sci-fi, for practical reasons. It's going to focus on the human responses to a *possible* alien invasion/arrival.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Iv played with the story setup that you might want to pick up, sorta gives an interesting starting point for what you want to do..

A Von Newman type hardened probe enters earths orbit. The news is bad. In some near date the earth will be ravaged by a life scouring super nova that has already happened and whose shock front is on the way. The probe has one mission; to scan as much art, literature, and information about the cultures that once existed on the soon to be scorched earth as it can before it has to duplicate it self and move on to the next affected world.

From there my story went in a direction not suitable for this project, but really, its wide open ...

How about..

The probe makes it clear that the ENTIRE electronic info-sphere of earth, internet, private networks, secret government archives, etc will be uploaded in 10 days. This inspires different people in different ways.

  • A mall group of middle aged friends travel to a remote location to record and upload a confession of a horrible crime they committed in their youth. Seeking redemption they form a suicide pact.
  • A morality based group (or a single hacker) tries to rid the internet of all pornography prior to "upload"
  • Upon learning that the uploaded info-sphere will be accessible to EVERYONE, absolutely no security, a government agency tries to manipulate the data to manage the PR storm that certainly will come on day 11.
  • A sci-fi geek club guesses that there might be designs in the probes memory to building an escape ship!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
NickClapper said:
I'm not really familiar with either of those shows....
Click to expand...

WHAT!?!?! :eek:

Ah, there's so much good stuff you could plagiarise from "The X-Files" for this story!



NickClapper said:
It's going to focus on the human responses to a *possible* alien invasion/arrival.
Click to expand...

So, in movie terms, we're talking about something similar to Signs? I know lots of people disliked Signs, but I personally thoroughly enjoyed it. There's a lot of worse films we could look to for inspiration.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Dreadylocks said:
I like this idea. But if we want to make it really viral marketing, we should come up with some fake non-profit society for whatever phenomenon it is. Complete with really crappy 90's-style website.
Click to expand...

Cool. Anyone else interested in the idea? :)

WalterB said:
Geocities!!!
Click to expand...

:lol::lol::lol:

mad_hatter said:
I know lots of people disliked Signs, but I personally thoroughly enjoyed it. There's a lot of worse films we could look to for inspiration.
Click to expand...

The monotone acting and inane ending bothered me, but I thought the film had a nice buildup and tone. I wouldn't mind doing something like that, but no copout throw water on them and they die endings dammit :grumpy:. But yeah, if we can find an interesting and clever twist on the traditional invasion story, I'm good with that.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
mad_hatter said:
WHAT!?!?! :eek:

Ah, there's so much good stuff you could plagiarise from "The X-Files" for this story!

................
Click to expand...

Like bright carlights suggesting an UFO.
Or a chopper with searchlight: they did that a few times: building up tension and it turned up very terrestial :P

Could be a prank: 2 friends discussing the possibility of alien life and a third freaks them out by shining carlights through the window...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
wheatgrinder said:
Iv played with the story setup that you might want to pick up, sorta gives an interesting starting point for what you want to do..

A Von Newman type hardened probe enters earths orbit. The news is bad. In some near date the earth will be ravaged by a life scouring super nova that has already happened and whose shock front is on the way. The probe has one mission; to scan as much art, literature, and information about the cultures that once existed on the soon to be scorched earth as it can before it has to duplicate it self and move on to the next affected world.

From there my story went in a direction not suitable for this project, but really, its wide open ...

How about..

The probe makes it clear that the ENTIRE electronic info-sphere of earth, internet, private networks, secret government archives, etc will be uploaded in 10 days. This inspires different people in different ways.

  • A mall group of middle aged friends travel to a remote location to record and upload a confession of a horrible crime they committed in their youth. Seeking redemption they form a suicide pact.
  • A morality based group (or a single hacker) tries to rid the internet of all pornography prior to "upload"
  • Upon learning that the uploaded info-sphere will be accessible to EVERYONE, absolutely no security, a government agency tries to manipulate the data to manage the PR storm that certainly will come on day 11.
  • A sci-fi geek club guesses that there might be designs in the probes memory to building an escape ship!
Click to expand...
I think this is an interesting idea. Maybe combine some of this with the more inevitable doom stuff and people coming to terms with their own mortality.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I had to search "Geocities" because it didn't ring a bell, but once I saw the website examples I knew exactly what it was. :yes: That would make for the perfect sort of landing page. Made me immediately think of

heavgate.jpg
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My inclination - and perhaps it reflects something of my sensibility as a writer/director - is to avoid being too specific about the sci-fi elements. Wheat, you've come up with a really interesting idea and maybe something that could be developed for a sequel - but I feel that what this project requires is a minimum amount of exposition, and then a maximum focus on the conflict and resolution. As I see it, it goes something like this:

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.

Obviously, Act Three is deliberately ambiguous in this breakdown. I have a couple of ideas that I'm going to play with when I start writing, but nothing fixed in my head yet. It's a simple story, and the sci-fi elements will be kept off-screen for the most part (which I think is important to actually getting this community project made). Then, if this short works, I think a possible sequel that explored the extraterrestrial intent, and the implications thereof, would be great.

Also, just a reminder: only a few days left to sign up, so please fill out the form that can be found in the OP!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
did I miss the form? Is there an official process?

That said, I get you Nick.

From those acts it feels to me that the story is about discovering if the aliens are real or are a hoax. Which is cool.

If you dont mind my riffing, Id like to just free associate some thoughts, these are not ideas you should use, just stimulation..

make it in real time. 20 min short covering the 20 minutes from discovery to our characters actually "getting together"

News hits the web, artifacts of possible "alien" origin suddenly show up all over the world. People immediately go check out the artifacts in there area.. We focus on the people and what they do on the way... lots of different options here for personal and intense stories..

  • pregnant woman on the way to the delivery room
  • homeless drunk \ crazy hermit who actually watched one appear, turns out he is the ONLY person in the world to have done so
  • A dead beat dad in one region
  • a fatherless daughter in another


All our characters reach the "artifacts" at the same time and something amazing happens, unexplained but undeniable.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. "
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
NickClapper said:
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:



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:



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?)
Click to expand...

bumping the OP here
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
NickClapper said:
My inclination - and perhaps it reflects something of my sensibility as a writer/director - is to avoid being too specific about the sci-fi elements. Wheat, you've come up with a really interesting idea and maybe something that could be developed for a sequel - but I feel that what this project requires is a minimum amount of exposition, and then a maximum focus on the conflict and resolution. As I see it, it goes something like this:

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.

Obviously, Act Three is deliberately ambiguous in this breakdown. I have a couple of ideas that I'm going to play with when I start writing, but nothing fixed in my head yet. It's a simple story, and the sci-fi elements will be kept off-screen for the most part (which I think is important to actually getting this community project made). Then, if this short works, I think a possible sequel that explored the extraterrestrial intent, and the implications thereof, would be great.

Also, just a reminder: only a few days left to sign up, so please fill out the form that can be found in the OP!
Click to expand...

I agree.
The story should focus on the human element and not elaborate on some alien technology or artifacts.
The possible evidence could be backed up with indirect clues: i.e. a communication blackout that spreads from the sighting and makes it impossible to get more news. While in the meantime reservists are being mobilised (?)
(Why?
Maybe the UFO was an early recon that was supposed to scout unnoticed and now tries to prevent humanity to find out it's there by making things worse and give away more clues. ETs are only human sometimes and can do stupid things as well ;) Maybe they were seen one time before as well by MH370: the plane that recently crashed in the Indian Ocean.

Just some thoughts...)

I'm looking forward to the script!
Within 2 days you'll have my final yes/no.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
NickClapper said:
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.
Click to expand...

I like this. This could be an intriguing story, but still shoot-able on a project like this. I think there's too many cooks in the kitchen right now. At some point, we have to just let Nick put pen to paper. :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
WalterB said:
I'm looking forward to the script!
Within 2 days you'll have my final yes/no.
Click to expand...

I really hope you do join us, as I think it would make the project much better if we had some other languages involved, showing it as a truly global project.

I'm not expecting many more people to join in at this point, but if there are people from Asia, Africa or South America, then that'd be great.

Cracker Funk said:
I like this. This could be an intriguing story, but still shoot-able on a project like this. I think there's too many cooks in the kitchen right now. At some point, we have to just let Nick put pen to paper. :)
Click to expand...

I'm ready to start drafting as soon as I know who/where our teams are!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
wheatgrinder said:
so give me a topic, gimme something to chew on.. how about organization the technology? Lets discuss that?

Should we settle on Adobe CC, story, prelude etc, cloud storage?
Click to expand...

Yes, that would be sensible.

Obviously, in an ideal world we would have a really consistent 'look' but that's going to be a real challenge. It makes sense that we should think about ways to even out the aesthetic. What cameras are you all using? And what techniques are you keen on?

And thoughts about post- central editor? All VFX in one place? Or give people a little more freedom to cut their own unit's work?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think we could spend some time tuning so that our various setups get a semi-consistent look, or at least a minimum quality standard.

You could require 1920x1080 footage but plan to release in 1080x720, this would allow the editor to re frame shots or apply stabilization etc if needed.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top