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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Seventeen weeks remaining!

Wow. The time does fly.

http://globalmoviexp.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-to-promote-something-before-you.html



Oh, and...

2014%252005%252021%2520GMX%2520Fourth%2520Week%2527s%2520View%2520Stats.png


So... the site's getting about c. 20 organic views a week with no posts or anything.
I just put this latest GMXP post up on FB. Will be interesting to see what happens.

For the few FB friends I have here at IT it would be nice for the project if you "liked" the post - even just on general principle. :yes:

LIKE-FB-copy1.png
 
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Also, I emailed and PMed the unit directors interview questions around Memorial Day weekend.

I respect that life gets busy, but would you please take some time to scribble out one or two sentence answers and send them back as you received them?

Thank you. :)
 
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rayw said:
Also, I emailed and PMed the unit directors interview questions around Memorial Day weekend.

I respect that life gets busy, but would you please take some time to scribble out one or two sentence answers and send them back as you received them?

Thank you. :)
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It's end the day here now.
Tomorrow I'll send some. Maybe some pictures would be nice as well?
 
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cheeseandachallenge said:
Do we have anything sorted in terms of contracts yet?
I'd like to get my team to sign something soonish.

If not, it turns out someone on my team is friends with another filmmaker who happens to be a lawyer. Which is useful. But in order to draw up contracts, we need some basic information - e.g. what happens to any (unlikely) profit from the project?
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Any word on this?
Would like to discuss it with my team in our meeting in a few days.
 
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rayw said:
Also, I emailed and PMed the unit directors interview questions around Memorial Day weekend.

I respect that life gets busy, but would you please take some time to scribble out one or two sentence answers and send them back as you received them?

Thank you. :)
Click to expand...

Don't recall getting that. Might've gone to my junkmail? Anyway, can you re-send?
 
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rayw said:
Yessir!

Just resent to:
jxxxx@gmail.com, jxxxxl@yahoo.com, whxxxxr@yahoo.com

And just rePMed to:
David & Walter

And not at all to be naggy, whereas ten days ago I was all casual about it, for this project to maintain any interest momentum before you guys get busy I kinda need these back ASAP.
Like... in a day or two.
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Apologies Ray. Had intended to get onto it last week, but I'm in a similar situation to Nick (end of Uni semester) and this last week has been rather hectic. I'll be able to get onto it tonight.

Is there anything else you'd like a hand with? I still have exams, but should have some more free time
 
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cheeseandachallenge said:
Is there anything else you'd like a hand with? I still have exams, but should have some more free time
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Hmm... shake a screenplay out of Nick?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...NYl50NQgEVen_Ky-vY-BFxoA7g/edit#gid=730529645

Previously stated shooting schedules indicate you, CF & WB have burned through two of your weeks of available shoot time.

Does the calendar need to be made more current or does that still reflect the state of affairs?
Or do the unit directors have a final screenplay the rest of us are not privy to that you guys are casting and location securing for?
 
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Ray, I don't know how to explain it, but I'm not getting your email. You've got my correct email address, and I checked my junkmail, but there's nothing there.

:huh:

As far as me shooting, I need the UFO footage to do that.
 
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CF,

Is what it is. :)

Just PMed the questions to you here! :yes:

"As far as me shooting, I need the UFO footage to do that."
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Wow. Indeed you do.
You're also going to need an artist to have the time to paint a picture - unless you can bang one out yourself.
Gotta be big enough to plainly show up on screen, as well = big canvas = $$ + time.
 
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rayw said:
Hmm... shake a screenplay out of Nick?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...NYl50NQgEVen_Ky-vY-BFxoA7g/edit#gid=730529645

Previously stated shooting schedules indicate you, CF & WB have burned through two of your weeks of available shoot time.

Does the calendar need to be made more current or does that still reflect the state of affairs?
Or do the unit directors have a final screenplay the rest of us are not privy to that you guys are casting and location securing for?
Click to expand...
Hah.

Yeah, I'm aware of the schedule, so am getting a bit antsy about script as well. As for my own schedule, yeah I think it needs a minor adjustment. I'm shooting on the 28th, with pickups on July 1. So I'll still be done within the time frame, just slightly different to how you have it listed.

I'm going to start workshopping my own scene a bit tonight, and over the weekend with my actress, then with the crew over the coming weeks. But it would be reallly nice to have a locked in script to know exactly what we're working with.
 
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Just to throw another spanner in the works - had a meeting with my team today. I'm happy with our progress, but someone noted the lack of female characters (and that outside our own scene the female characters seem quite negative) in the script in general..

Just throwing it out there as a general criticism.
 
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I'm happy for any of the male characters to be switched to female characters, just as I'm happy for any of the physical characteristics to evolve in the casting process.

I wouldn't say that there's a MEN=POSITIVE and WOMEN=NEGATIVE vibe to it though. I would argue that the New Zealand girl (can't remember her name...) is the most likeable character, and that in the Virginia scene, the wife seems more sensible than her wishy-washy artist husband.

Just my thoughts. I'm at a film festival, so stealing the free wifi for a little bit but may not be able to read all replies for a couple of days.

@CF: I actually wrote the art bit in your scene because I remembered that you had artist friends helping on Antihero, and obviously Richmond is an artist hub. Hope it's not too hard to get something done, but, obviously, they need the UFO video in order to know what to paint!

Maybe we could auction off the disposable props to raise money for festival submissions?
 
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Did you make a Facebook page for the project? If so, I missed it. My bad. But please don't make me sift through 24 pages of thread to find it. =P

Could you please link to it again? Thank you very much!

=)
 
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NickClapper said:
I'm happy for any of the male characters to be switched to female characters, just as I'm happy for any of the physical characteristics to evolve in the casting process.

I wouldn't say that there's a MEN=POSITIVE and WOMEN=NEGATIVE vibe to it though. I would argue that the New Zealand girl (can't remember her name...) is the most likeable character, and that in the Virginia scene, the wife seems more sensible than her wishy-washy artist husband.

Just my thoughts. I'm at a film festival, so stealing the free wifi for a little bit but may not be able to read all replies for a couple of days.
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Yeah, I don't think it's particularly bad, it was just there was a fair bit of gender imbalance. And yes, I think the NZ girl is probably the most likable, but she's also the most *developed* as it were and a little bit pathetic? In that regard, we're looking at changing her character a little (going to have a session with my actress in a few days) so that she's more excited by the prospect of alien life than afraid of it - we'd keep her nervousness and an element of fear, but introduce some more of general excitement through performance and set design. I think it makes the scene a bit more interesting in general - thoughts?

But yeh, as I was saying, I don't think the project is sexist, but perhaps there could be more female influence - just something to keep in mind.
 
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