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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]
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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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wheatgrinder said:
Not happy with what I did shoot, and I wasn't able to shoot it all, ran out of daylight.

Here is a low quality render (sorry about that I was playing with export settings)

https://vimeo.com/111325028
password indietalk
Click to expand...

You're way too hard on yourself. That stuff looked great. You live in a seriously beautiful part of the world, so all the vistas are great and the stuff on the forest floor with the black goo is exactly as I envisaged it.

And I was thinking of your Secret Santa video to CF (I think) from a couple of years ago when I was writing Vern, so the characterisation is great!
 
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thanks.. some does look good.. but there is one shot that the lens just did not work well.... anyway.. i went out again today.. got the rest of the shots, and redid some... doing a quick edit now..

Yes, I am vern and vern is me
 
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That looks amazing Wheat. You're a hella talented filmmaker and, as I previously mentioned, that's some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever laid eyes on!

Once that footage is hot-footing it's way to CF, we should have everything we need in order to take a stab at a first cut of the film!
 
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Thanks, that makes me happy!

If its not obvious I didn't record any audio. With the limited people (just me), short daylight and noob acting skill I figured it would just complicate things beyond my ability to execute in a timely manner.

The scene was simple enough to tell visually. UPLOAD in progress.
 
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yes, that's exactly what I meant ^^^ (at least that's what I'm telling everyone from now on)

FWIW, I did have help with one shot. When the truck, ahem, minivan, pulls up. My 9 year old daughter was running the camera!
 
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psst.. wanna know my secret to finding locations..

go places
open your eyes
it only has to LOOK like a real location

you have to like to explore, or at least get around some. I had driven by this turn off many times. I knew the area in a general sense.

You have to see every place you go as a potential film location.

When looking for a specific location, such as "remote woods", don't limit your self to only looking for "remote woods" the Vern discovery shots were all about 20 paces from where I parked the car.
 
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Looks great, guys!


Wheat, pay your daughter an equivalent to union wages. She earns it, baby!

happymeal.jpg
 
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I know CF said he could have a rough for us last week, but I'm not sure what happened there. Anyhow, if he's reading this, let's try and put something together soon, now that we have all the footage!
 
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I'm alive! Sorry for keeping y'all waiting. I haven't logged on for a while, so Dready made the wise move of contacting me via FB to let me know everything is ready for download. Anyway, I've got all the footage, and now that y'all are waiting on me, I've finally begun editing.

I obviously missed that previous deadline I set for myself. I think where I erred is that I had planned on editing the whole thing in one sitting. That was silly. I should take it piece by piece, day by day. Each day, a little more (considering this little bit today took me three hours).

Anyway, since the Richmond leg is the only one nobody has seen, I figured I'd start with that, and from here I'll go in chronological order. Needless to say, this rough cut is raw in-cam audio, and un-graded video.

https://vimeo.com/112457855
PW: indietalk

I'm off to go watch Katniss kick some butt! I'll check back in later tonight.
 
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Well, that was interesting, kinda fun actually. I've never re-cut something that was already cut. Oddly enough, it was not a time-saver. But I do think the end result is better for it.

For this scene, I first logged all the footage, got familiar with it, just as if I were starting from scratch. But then from there, I only modified what was already in place. Quite often, I felt like the original edit was perfect. So, in that respect, I think we can consider the edit of this scene a 2nd draft, cuz I definitely had a solid foundation to work from.

https://vimeo.com/113583012
PW: indietalk

Anybody, feel free to give me a nudge on FB or via email. I'm a sucker for peer-pressure. That being said, since this particular edit was enjoyable, I'm looking forward to the next one.
 
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