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watch A short comedy: The night of the falling star

A short comedy: The night of the falling star + BTS

Hi all!

This is my first post (after a long time lurking!...) and I wanted to finally share something with you guys: a little comedy about an astronaut: "The night of the falling star".

The film was shot last year in France and the Netherlands, on minimal budget... and lots of DIY.
The (few) dialogues are in French, with english subtitles.

Here is the link:
http://vimeo.com/33480220

[EDIT:

I have added to the Vimeo folder a couple of "behind the scene" videos:
- a slideshow of BTS pictures: http://vimeo.com/36225151
- a video showing some compositing/ green screen effects: http://vimeo.com/36226461

]

Thanks to you all !
j.m
 
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Holy cow! You've done a great job! I watched the whole 16 minutes. Heck, I'd even buy the DVD if you had one to show people how to make entertainment from nothing!

Good luck!
 
Thanks a lot for your nice word ZenSteve!

We have indeed some BTS (some of the green screen work essentially, and of the interior of the "space station") : I'll try to post them on Vimeo later today.

All the best
j.m
 
Thanks so much Guerilla Angel!
I'll send you a DVD if you want! :)

please do:

Lexie Cannes Productions
po box 644
wilsonville, oregon 97070 USA

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If I was programming a festival, this would be in it because its throughly entertaining! Makes great use of a visual medium at low cost. It shows that high tech gear and lengthly dialogue is not necessary.

Again, congrats!
 
Hey GuerillaAngel,

Again thanks for the feedback!
That's exactly what we tried to do: something light and entertaining, that doesn't take itself too seriously, while trying to push ourselves as much as we could with the visuals.

Thanks for the address too: I'll post your DVD today (from Holland though: it might take a bit to reach Oregon!)

All the best,
j.m

please do:

Lexie Cannes Productions
po box 644
wilsonville, oregon 97070 USA

----------

If I was programming a festival, this would be in it because its throughly entertaining! Makes great use of a visual medium at low cost. It shows that high tech gear and lengthly dialogue is not necessary.

Again, congrats!
 
My god, this was great! One of the few truly good short films I've sat through on this site!( And yours was 16 min). You've got immense talent, man. Everything about this was great. Now you need to get out there and show people what you've got!

have you sent it to any festivals in Europe or America?

Also, I would love to see some BTS footage and know some more details like what equipment you used and how much your budget was.

Again great film, dude!
 
Thanks so much for the warm words and the encouragement Ponty!
It's really motivating to get such a positive feedback!

About your question and the practical side of making the movie:

First, this is a first film (apart from a 4 minute experimental short done a year before) and we've had to climb quite a steep learning curve (albeit less steep thanks to invaluable advices of you guys, on this forum in particular), so there were undoubtedly many basic blunders made on the way, and some lucky mistakes too!...

The budget was a few thousand dollars (4000 approximately). That includes everything but the camera: mostly the material and "junk" used for the "space station" set (that fit snuggly in the living room of a friend's apartment we sub-rented for a few weeks): wood, (lots of) screws, foam-board, old electronic stuff, etc..., the spacesuit (made from a collection of heteroclite "bric a brac", from Cricket gloves, roofing equipment and oxygen supply parts (so that the actor did not suffocate!), to a modified Russian high-altitude pilot helmet bought in Estonia), and the travels cost to bring the actors and family to the film sets (the main character is played by a french singer and we had to bring him a couple of times to Holland where most of the film was shot). And that's pretty much it. The rest was food and drinks (including a couple of good bottles of red wine...).

The camera was a canon 5D, mostly fitted with a 24-70 2.8 zoom lens (although a pair of shots were made with a rented 14mm lens to increase the sense of depth in the otherwise quite claustrophobic volume of the space-station set...). The zoom was great to quickly adapt the framing without repositioning the tripod (which was essential as we were filming on a very tight spatial and time constraint).
Some powerful, yet cheap, Fluorescent bulbs and a"chinese" tungsten fresnel were used to light the set. (the tungsten was used to light the astronaut in the space sequence, to simulate a hard directed sun light and create strong shadows).
As for the camera work, I think I did all the mistakes imaginable when dealing with the frame rate and encoding: most of it had to be painstakingly corrected in "post"....

All sounds were done in post thanks to the talent and hard work of my friend and colleague Julien who did also essentially all the music too. This was planned from the outset as a time-saving component during the shoot (in fine, it was quite time consuming indeed, as every little sound had to be reproduced (or imagined) and matched later on, but we had so little time to shoot that having a "quiet" set would have proved too difficult and stressful to cope with).

The editing was done on a mac with final cut + after effects.

Last but not least, Friends and family were (heavily!) put to contribution as actors and little helpers all the way until the completion of the film. The "special thanks" section in the credits does not feel quite enough to properly thank them ...

I'm putting together a little BTS to post on vimeo in the next day or two that should give some more insights on how this film was put together: I'll let you now when it's done.

And, as you suggested, I will try to send it to some festivals (actually I've tried a couple in Europe already, without success, but I'll keep trying anyway!)



My god, this was great! One of the few truly good short films I've sat through on this site!( And yours was 16 min). You've got immense talent, man. Everything about this was great. Now you need to get out there and show people what you've got!

have you sent it to any festivals in Europe or America?

Also, I would love to see some BTS footage and know some more details like what equipment you used and how much your budget was.

Again great film, dude!
 
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Great film, malco! I love the way you took a pretty ambitious idea and nailed it first time with very little budget!

Don't know what else to say really, it was all brilliant and genuinely funny. There were a few shots where you could kind of pick holes in the compositing if you were being really harsh but it all sort of added to the charm anyway - none of it felt out of place, it made a coherent whole.

The sound and music was fantastic too. Excellent stuff!
 
Many thanks for your words Dandevans, it's truly appreciated!

(I have visited your "Prime Cuts" page by the way and loved it (great work on the props! :): I'm eager to see the romantic butcher in action!)

Great film, malco! I love the way you took a pretty ambitious idea and nailed it first time with very little budget!

Don't know what else to say really, it was all brilliant and genuinely funny. There were a few shots where you could kind of pick holes in the compositing if you were being really harsh but it all sort of added to the charm anyway - none of it felt out of place, it made a coherent whole.

The sound and music was fantastic too. Excellent stuff!
 
Hey GuerillaAngel,

Again thanks for the feedback!
That's exactly what we tried to do: something light and entertaining, that doesn't take itself too seriously, while trying to push ourselves as much as we could with the visuals.

Thanks for the address too: I'll post your DVD today (from Holland though: it might take a bit to reach Oregon!)

All the best,
j.m

Thanks! I look forward to receiving it.

I would keep trying the festival circuit and see if you can get some recognition for this. I'd suggest some of competition type festivals such as SkyFest (there's a recent thread about it here) where the length of the film will not matter.

Good luck!
 
(I have visited your "Prime Cuts" page by the way and loved it (great work on the props! :): I'm eager to see the romantic butcher in action!)

Aw, thanks! Should be done by the end of this year fingers crossed :) - Night of The Falling Star was really inspiring actually as its one of the few shorts I've seen that is of a similar length and narrative complexity to Prime Cuts and also dealt with more technically challenging stuff than I will have to (though Prime Cuts is definitely not without its technical challenges!).

The fact that you got such a great result on your first attempt gives me a glimmer of hope that I might be able to do the same :) Would be very interested to hear more about the production and pre-production - I'm sure myself and others could learn a lot from it!

And yeah, keep plugging the festivals - it deserves some cinema time!

You may know about it already, but I've heard good things (and a few bad things re: video compression quality) about https://www.withoutabox.com/ - its a free online submission service that allows you to submit to loads of festivals at once. A friend got some fairly good results using it (and don't tell him, but his film wasn't as good as yours ;) )
 
Thanks again for the very kind words Dandevans: That "night of the falling star" could inspire you on the way to making your film is a fantastic reward. Thanks for this! :)

I'd be most happy to share some of the things I've learnt in making this short film from the pre-production to the submission (withoutabox is a great tool indeed: I need to go back to it for a second round of submissions!). I'll try to post something but in the meantime please feel free to get in touch with me if you have a more specific query, I'll do my best to answer it!

Aw, thanks! Should be done by the end of this year fingers crossed :) - Night of The Falling Star was really inspiring actually as its one of the few shorts I've seen that is of a similar length and narrative complexity to Prime Cuts and also dealt with more technically challenging stuff than I will have to (though Prime Cuts is definitely not without its technical challenges!).

The fact that you got such a great result on your first attempt gives me a glimmer of hope that I might be able to do the same :) Would be very interested to hear more about the production and pre-production - I'm sure myself and others could learn a lot from it!

And yeah, keep plugging the festivals - it deserves some cinema time!

You may know about it already, but I've heard good things (and a few bad things re: video compression quality) about https://www.withoutabox.com/ - its a free online submission service that allows you to submit to loads of festivals at once. A friend got some fairly good results using it (and don't tell him, but his film wasn't as good as yours ;) )
 
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Really great work malco, thoroughly enjoyed it! Love all the props and production design, and the music was great, really gave it that extra edge! You and your team should be very proud!
 
Thanks so much Afaloth! I'll make sure to pass your message to the team! :)

Really great work malco, thoroughly enjoyed it! Love all the props and production design, and the music was great, really gave it that extra edge! You and your team should be very proud!
 
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