Community Project

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]

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.

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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Hey, y'all!

I'm sorry I fell off the face of the Earth. I'm back. I know I announced, in advance, that I would have a particularly busy few weeks on my hand. But I didn't realize just how trying it would be on me.

The driving! Oh my God, I've done so much driving over the past month. I never want to take a road-trip again. Okay, that's not true, but I know that the next time I travel to New York, it'll be by Chinatown bus.

Anyway, yeah, let's finish this! I have everyone's footage. There's another scene I need from Wheaty. And from our SFC crew, I actually only have the edited version; I need raw footage. There's also some stuff I need to get, all audio.

We've come so far! In all the years that I've been on IT, I've seen many discussions of projects such as this. This is the only time anything has actually been done about it.

I don't believe we should feel frustrated that it is taking so long. I believe one of the difficulties of organizing something like this is the reality that life presents to us. When volunteering, how do you coordinate the schedules of many different people who have different commitments, across many different professions?

The answer is patience and persistence. Let's keep at it! The other project that I've been working on (the one that took me away for the last month) does not have an immediate deadline, so this community project just bumped itself up to the top of my queue. I guess it's time for me to put up or shut up. Expect a rough cut from me (with some placeholder footage), soon.
 
Odd, I was just coming here to say similar things about delays, look for the info to get our stuff uploaded, and make a list of what tasks we still owe. Heh. All that aside I guess, so yeah, let's finish this thing:

Yeah I'll figure it out this afternoon and PM you the login details :)

Need this info, or info on whatever other host we may/may not be using. :)
 
Odd, I was just coming here to say similar things about delays, look for the info to get our stuff uploaded, and make a list of what tasks we still owe. Heh. All that aside I guess, so yeah, let's finish this thing:



Need this info, or info on whatever other host we may/may not be using. :)

Oops, I thought I had gotten errebody. Hang tight, I'll make one for you when I get home in a few hours.
 
Glad to see everyone is back around. You make this thread much chirpier.

Good to hear that you're on course to film Wheat. Real world job comes first, of course, but I'm glad to hear that you have plans, albeit noncommittal ones. We're all here to light a fire under your butt if you should need it.

CF: Great to hear from you. Would be awesome to see a cut of the footage so far, which I think will be a good guide to what, if anything, we need to add to the beginning. I assume that the other project is the Detours BTS (?) which is awesome and community related, so I'm more than happy that's been taking you away lately. That said, whenever you have time now, I'm glad to kick on with the edit.
 
Just setup my team with the upload info, IMDB page info, and Dready's website write-up request.

I still have plates to shoot for UFO love - doing those this week on my way back up north and while in SF. Are we married to a time of day for those or can I just shoot them when it's pretty? :D
 
Would be awesome to see a cut of the footage so far, which I think will be a good guide to what, if anything, we need to add to the beginning.

Agreed. Besides being a great way to basically take inventory, it could also just serve to get us all motivated to finish. I'm on it.

And yes, Detours is what kept me away for the last few weeks. mlesseman is good people, make no mistake about it. :)
 
Just setup my team with the upload info, IMDB page info, and Dready's website write-up request.

I still have plates to shoot for UFO love - doing those this week on my way back up north and while in SF. Are we married to a time of day for those or can I just shoot them when it's pretty? :D

I'd still love a shot of the Golden Gate in a morning traffic jam to make the radio/media intro make 'a bridge' to your opening scene.

(Like said before: I'm crazy busy, but still want to shoot and collect shots and voices for the opening sequence.
BUT: I need some help. Esp for the English voices (UK, NZ, USA maybe even Australia)

@ C&C:
Is there a change you can make the shot I asked about before:
would be a great start, I think.
 
Glad to see everyone is back around. You make this thread much chirpier.

Good to hear that you're on course to film Wheat. Real world job comes first, of course, but I'm glad to hear that you have plans, albeit noncommittal ones. We're all here to light a fire under your butt if you should need it.

CF: Great to hear from you. Would be awesome to see a cut of the footage so far, which I think will be a good guide to what, if anything, we need to add to the beginning.........

I still need to continue collecting the stuff I think would create a nice opening sequence.
 
Walter, what was the stuff you wanted me to shoot/record? Skimmed back through the thread, but couldn't find it. I am currently in pre-production for my own project, which needs to be finished before December - so that's quite busy. Alongside that I have exams and work. Once that's done, I'll be a bit more free (I will be working free time, but that's easy enough to work around).

If it is something relatively minor (sorry, my memory evades me) that I can pull of by myself and one or two others I could maybe do it sooner.
 
It's great to see some momentum here from you guys again, and I look forward to seeing it pan out to completion.

Hey Nick - It's probably not much good to you at this late stage of the project, but if you need any UK help with anything then please do feel free to get in touch. I'm all a bit Louis Armstrong at the mo. :D
 
@ C&C:

the first part of this:

Ah, here it is:

Code:
INT NEW ZEALAND
Laura sits on the couch doing stuff on her phone while the ambient 
light of the TV flickers

                MALE VOICE FROM TV
                What remarkable video do have to share with us today, Lindsay?

                LINSAY FROM TV
                I found this one this morning.
                It's a UFO video.

                MALE
                UFO?

Laura looks up with sudden interest

                LINDSAY
                Yeah, and it look quite convincing.
                Look how it appears...
                And now it's gone.
               
                MALE
                Wow!

                LINDSAY
                The amount of views in going through the roof.

Laura stares with an astonished look on her face

                 MALE
                 Let's watch that again, while you keep quiet for a while

ALIEN VIDEO

BLACK & SILENCE

TITLE

EXT TOKYO SKYLINE & STREETS
                          JAPANESE RADIO/TV
                          Recent footage of a possible alien
                          spacecraft has gone viral
                          overnight.

EXT MOSKOW SKYLINE
                         (in Russian)
                         A more plausible option is that this is a new experimental 
                         aircraft of the Americans

EXT ROTTERDAM SKYLINE
                         (In Dutch)
                         Twitter exploded. Millions of people are discussing it.
                         "Twitter ontplofte gewoon. 
                         Miljoenen mensen hebben het erover."

EXT PARIS SKYLINE
                         (In French)
                          This footage is either a really
                           well-executed hoax, or the real
                           deal...

EXT LONDON SKYLINE
                         (in Brittish BBC English)
                         It's pretty ridiculous people believe it's anything 
                         else than a marketing gimmick.
                         Within a week we'll know who behind this 
                         and that will probably be ridiculous as well...
 
EXT RIO DE JANEIRO SKYLINE
                        (in Spanish. Or Portugese if we can get it together 
                         with Rio de Janeiro Skyline)
                        Finally we can say we're not alone in the universe

EXT NEW YORK DAWN
                      PHONECALL ON RADIO
                      I believe in extra-terrestrials,
                      and this is the evidence that I’ve
                      spent fifty years waiting for!

EXT GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE (SF, CA)
Morning traffic jam

                      RADIO
                      Next: a Visual FX Specialist from Hollywood will 
                      explain how he would make such a video but first 
                      we'll listen to the new hitsingle from... (fade out)

EXT SAN FRANCISCO BEACH
(Someone can shut a radio off in the first shot?)

Is it managable?

BTW,

if anyone can help with the english voices: you live in the different areas with native speakers :P
 
My feeling is that we should wait until we have a rough cut of things so far and then discuss whether we really need anything more for the opening.

My worry is that we might end up creating more unnecessary work for one another, which will delay the process. So if the film looks good as it currently is, I'd move to keep it that way.
 
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