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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I'm not a writer, but I've reworked my scene according to some suggestions from the team (am pushing the collaborative nature of the project within my team).

It's a little longer, but I'm imaging a lot of it cut together quite quickly, a la Edgar Wright.
We're pushing the character toward being more excited than she is afraid (though some fear still exists).

I've added in a few things to make the scene more localised - the street outside the bedroom is a very "Wellington" street, so I wanted to use that as well as the train thing. The movement shows the architecture of the location a little more, which is also quite "Wellington." The wind is famous in Wellington, so we wanted to make that a feature. The cold is a pretty real problem for a Wellington student.

All the key events are the same, but it is a slightly different tone to what was there previously.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1cA66qv8T4WckstZGJpT0lLYmM/edit?usp=sharing
 
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NickClapper said:
Ray: If you're needing people to fill in the questions, feel free to send some to me and I'll try and get on it when I get back home on Thursday.
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Super.

I was hoping you could get the final screenplay draft out to all the unit directors first that way A) they can get going on their work and B) I could tailor questions specific to the screenplay's themes.

But I'll get working on screenwriter/producer questions today.
Have something for you by the time you wake up in the morning.

How is the final screenplay coming along?
ETA?
 
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Also, ATTENTION UNIT DIRECTORS:

So far I've received one and a third replies back from the questions to go on the blog.
Thank you, you two.

To the others, if you don't want this project to arrive DOA it needs the momentum these questions provide to an audience to remain engaged.
Let's keep it rolling forward!
 
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Dreadylocks said:
I'm in favor of more boobs, er ... strong female characters, yes.
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I've actually started to have the worry: Is there a likeable character in the film? And is that a problem?

The San Fran assholes are assholes.
The Dutch guy is an asshole.
The painter guy is pretentious loner, his wife is tough on him.
The New Zealand girl is a sap (better in C&C's draft).
Vern is a freakshow.
The Oregon cult is even more of a freakshow.

Should we try and introduce a more sympathetic character into one of these threads?

Might inclination would be to have a female character in the cult who calls them on the bullshit a bit, or maybe making the Dutch guy have a female director who isn't impressed by his schtick?
 
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I kind of like the pessimism about humanity in general - the way everyone reacts like kind of assholes is interesting to me, and possibly reflects humanity in general. But that probably takes away from the appeal to a mainstream audience.

The script kind of doesn't go either way at the moment, though. It doesn't really push the cynicism too hard - so instead of making a point about the way we handle alien encounters (not just of the extraterrestial kind) it does kind of just have characters that aren't that likeable.

To make them more likeable, maybe Vern could become more of a wacky, over the top mental guy, who's also kind of fun and lovable for that very reason? And as I've said a few times, I'm also a proponent of more female characters.
 
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cheeseandachallenge said:
I kind of like the pessimism about humanity in general - the way everyone reacts like kind of assholes is interesting to me, and possibly reflects humanity in general. But that probably takes away from the appeal to a mainstream audience.
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Perhaps we start off with seemingly normal and neutral characters, and as the situation becomes stranger and more dire, the characters begin to show their true colors. The aliens aren't the main antagonist, but rather serve as a fuse to light off the future human conflict.
 
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I was already thinking about making the MUA a 'counterweight' to Robin's cynicism.
He complains about 'no decent bar', she tells him to lighten up and enjoy the fresh air and beautiful nature.
Besides that I think the cameraman should comment something about finally getting some decent ratings for the show thanks to the ufo hype: Robin should be grateful, instead of complaining all the time.
I think he is a little bit frustrated: maybe the poor ratings or maybe he started his career hoping to find ET, but up till now it were all hoaxes? (this is not something I want to explain on screen, but I think this could be background/subtext.)

@ray:
sorry about the delay: I got pretty ill and the time I have energy I'm caught up in paperwork mostly.
I will send it all this week!
 
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ChimpPhobiaFilms said:
Perhaps we start off with seemingly normal and neutral characters, and as the situation becomes stranger and more dire, then the characters begin to show their true colors...
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Would be an interesting way to go, but probably quite a challenge in the pretty limited screen time each character has? A couple of the characters have a little more screen time and hence something resembling a character arc.
 
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There's a couple points that I'd put out there.

I think throwing in a female character to 'soften' up the script and create someone likable could easily backfire. Actions show someone to be likable, not gender and not even viewpoint (ie: voice of reason.)

But more importantly, and cheese touched on this, I'm not sure that a truly nice and likable character is going to be interesting enough. There are plenty of really nice people in real life, but in a film that's potentially pretty boring. Where's the conflict in that? I'm sure you could find some ... but enough? idk.

Don't get me wrong, it bothers my inner feminist when films don't pass the Bechdel Test, so if a role doesn't have to be a dude, I say why not make it a chick? But I also wouldn't lose sleep over it, it's a short film.
And at the same time, I was only half joking about the boobs thing. If you want to get a lot of views, we need to objectify a hot lady; shower scene, a Bo Derek shot from the beach, that sort of thing... again, just spitballing, but it's something to consider.

I really like the idea of playing up the wackyness (mad scientist angle?) of Vern. Can we put him in a wheelchair? I'm picturing a Christopher Lloyd type. Comic relief can be an easy inroad to a sympathetic character, no matter how on the fringe he would be to us in real life.

but enough of my ramblings, pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.
 
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Since they're all kinda assholes just go Guy Ritchie/'Snatch' and make 'em all a bunch of endearing dysfunction freaks.
Not much of stretch.

Just... YEAH! Already!


Dead Walter,
Take your sweet time, buddy!
Only CF is beating you.

IDK where anyone else is two weeks later.

ComputerSmash.gif
 
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In the off chance a script revision is buried upthread someplace, can anyone save me the time and point me at it?

Re: questionnaire, we'll come up with some answers for you. As not the director I don't think I should solely respond for my group.
 
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David.rhsc said:
Re: questionnaire, we'll come up with some answers for you. As not the director I don't think I should solely respond for my group.
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Excellent!

You won't be responsible for your group, only as the director of the San Fran scene.

The questionnaire is in three parts and will be presented on the blog in three posts, each of which will have a question as a header followed by the answers you, Johnathan, Joseph, Dan, and Dead Walter provide.

This both gives the reading audience a comprehensive feel of what each of you brings to the protect and allows each of you to drag the project in front of family and friends to say "See!"

A community project.
 
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