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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Give them the pressrelease, so they don't have to spend time to react. (I could be too much effort for some people ;) )
Write one basic pressrelease for yourself.
Rewrite it with the reciever (and reader) in mind:
for the uni: it has to say what you study there. Title could be: "[name uni] (film?)student participates in international film project."
for where you crew up it could be something like: "[name place] born filmmaker participates in international film project" (add a little backstory: when did you leave town and why. What connection do you still have with your place of birth?)

If it's a blog about filmmaking: tell more about filmmaking.
If it's a magazine about dogs: tell more about the dogs in the project ;) (there are no dogs, but you get the picture, right?)
 
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Yeah, definitely send out the press release as your first attack front.

Let me know if you (or anyone) want some help with writing one. They can be daunting but they are actually quite simple and easy to put together.
 
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Given that we're starting to send out press releases, I think we should also try and settle on a title for the film. I wrote it without a title so that it could be changed a lot and that we were fixed into anything, but now that we've started shooting, we should settle on something.

Feel free to chip in with your own ideas. Here are some to get the ball rolling:

Strands (inspired by Threads)
Unidentified
The Unknown
Viral
Our Home
Visitors

My preference is for a simple, easily translatable, title but I'm happy with anything. Throw out some ideas!
 
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Jooble said:
Got some cool ideas for the shot, going to test something out on this film where you effectually f**k the code in the images to get actual glitches. So ill prob do this for a few frames of the footage like the UFO is causing it, hopefully it works or ill have to make something up with an effect. But this way sounds way better :)

http://www.frontrowsociety.com/frs/how-to-easily-create-glitch-art/
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This sounds awesome.

Also, would be great to hear some ideas for names from the others involved (or not involved!) in the project. I think Threads would work and keep it loose whilst having both a sci-fi and reinforcing the community aspect. But I want to hear others because I'm notoriously elliptical with my titling...
 
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One of my followers on Twitter sent me a picture of an article in the local newspaper of my hometown, Maassluis:
BsP2m9XIAAAs7tO.jpg

(It's a bit dark: I'll make a better one later.)

Threads sounds good.
Strands as well, btw, but it's meaning is less clear for me :P
 
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Yesterday I shot a few new shots to fix a location continuity problem.
So, the Dutch scene is in the can now.

Plus we shot some extra stuff for fun: We now have the footage of the first part of Robin's TV show.
I thought it would be fun bonus material.

How is everybody else doing?
How is Ray doing?
 
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Press Releases all sent out a few days ago. Haven't completely wrapped, due to still needing a couple of exterior establishing shots, and it having rained here for the last week (and due to rain for another 2 or so).

Haven't heard much from the American Units in a wee while?
 
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Hallo guys – you're all doing great (especially Cheese and Walter!). Sorry I've been quite silent, I'm currently on holiday in Italy and will be back in the UK next weekend.

I'll check in with Jooble about the status of the UFO video and then hopefully when that's ready, CF and Wheat can push on with their shooting dates. David's shoot is, I think, all scheduled and ready to roll. Let me know if you're having any problems (email me to nick[at]theclapperbored.com if you have any problems that need urgent addressing).
 
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Looking good, Jobble.

I'm back home in a couple days, then we're shooting first week of August. Between my schedule, the director changing day jobs, and our lead's schedule that's really our only window.

I think that puts us a little behind the power curve, but I hope not.
 
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David.rhsc said:
Looking good, Jobble.

I'm back home in a couple days, then we're shooting first week of August. Between my schedule, the director changing day jobs, and our lead's schedule that's really our only window.

I think that puts us a little behind the power curve, but I hope not.
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That's absolutely fine.

Obviously, Joseph's shoot is dependent on the video being ready but I presume he'll be shooting in roughly the same timeframe.

Wheat's the only person I haven't heard from in ages – any idea when he's planning to shoot?
 
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