Jane Wick JR

I am now in preproduction on my action movie that is shockingly reminiscent of 2004's The Punisher.
Loved the editing in that movie. John travolta not so much.

I am all by myself planning and executing this lol. Filming starts december 12th.
Movie effects that i haven't done before:

Shooting someones head off with a shotgun.
Shooting a row of 10 aluminum cans with two pistols.
Shooting walls full of bullet holes and debris
Hand to hand fight with pencil stabbing (I hear john wick killed three guys with a pencil.. a fucking pencil!!)
Shooting a car full of bullet holes and blowing the windows out
Fake 3D bullet casings when the guns fire
Buy better prop guns that use co2 cartridges - there aren't any with fake casing ejection i can buy are there?
Get some kind of double barrel shotgun prop
Build a blood cannon for shotgun blasts
-------

My initial thoughts are...
For bullet holes my 2 choices are either create them entirely in post and apply tracking
or to create them IRL and then to cover them in post production until such time as i want them to appear

for shutgun head blast maybe I have to put a blue bag over someones head and then key out their head for a headless corpse ?
 
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Yes that was the palettes of images 3 and 4, which are a few posts back that we had a discussion about earlier.

Here is a png copy of that image


And here is what I did with it today. i saw so much brown in the palette that i just leaned into it.

Might take me a second to get back to you. I hadn't done any colorist work in a while, and when I launched lut creator to work on your png, it updated to V2, and they had changed the registration code for the new version, and then couldn't find my 4 year old key, and anyway it turned into a can of worms, but anyway, I need to fix it anyway, so I'll get back to this soon, just waiting for a support email to be returned.

I can already tell you a couple of issues. Digital sensors tend to pick up too much yellow, so you can desaturate the yellow hues to counterbalance, and that will help. In the CC you just posted, it looks pretty good, but your grass is super green, and has a lot of detail destroyed. I like vivid saturation as well, but what I found was that beyond the balance point, high saturation starts reducing detail, in addition to looking unnatural.

These scenes have some issues outside of color work though. Are you using bounce cards? They are cheap, and can add significant dimension to flat looking scenes.
 
Oh no lol, i thought i was asking for some kind of drag and drop LUT not all that hassle.
Don't worry about it; I think im headed in the right direction with the green brown color scheme.

I literally have no crew at all, i had to do everything even sew the costume, record audio and video by myself at once, etc
so no there aren't any bounce boards sadly.

i couldn't even cast actors for some of the roles and had to use my friends
 
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I'll help you out a bit if you like. Do you have a green screen? Send me a script and I'll take a look and see if there is a way I can pitch in a bit on your production values. Maybe an opening credits sequence? I do this stuff 7 days a week, I could write it off as keeping my skills sharp. Trust me, I know what it's like trying to make a film with no help. Plus, I'm right now developing some incredible new capabilities, and I'm looking to try them out.
 
I'll help you out a bit if you like. Do you have a green screen? Send me a script and I'll take a look and see if there is a way I can pitch in a bit on your production values. Maybe an opening credits sequence? I do this stuff 7 days a week, I could write it off as keeping my skills sharp. Trust me, I know what it's like trying to make a film with no help. Plus, I'm right now developing some incredible new capabilities, and I'm looking to try them out.
I appreciate that offer. Maybe one day I'll make something people like or respect and I'll be able to cast all of my roles with actors lol.
I actually have a pretty cool opening sequence right now with some assets that i purchased combined with a crayon drawing im happy with.

There is one scene I was thinking about reaching out for help with, idk if this falls into your wheel house or not.
But there is a gunfight next to a christmas tree and it would be awesome if someone could CGI a christmas ornament onto the tree and then have it explode from a bullet during the gunfight.
 
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I appreciate that offer. Maybe one day I'll make something people like or respect and I'll be able to cast all of my roles with actors lol.
I actually have a pretty cool opening sequence right now with some assets that i purchased combined with a crayon drawing im happy with.

There is one scene I was thinking about reaching out for help with, idk if this falls into your wheel house or not.
But there is a gunfight next to a christmas tree and it would be awesome if someone could CGI a christmas ornament onto the tree and then have it explode from a bullet.
I think I can make that happen.
 
I think I can make that happen.

I appreciate your offer and our conversation actually gave me an idea - MAYBE .. just maybe i can do this on my own.

I ordered some glass oranments and I'm going to put them in front of a green plank of wood and then shoot them with a real gun or pellet gun or something. See if I can key out the green screen and just have an exploding oranment.

The tricky part is that the bullet will hit the green screen behind the ornament... might create havoc with my key.
cant shoot sideways or the physics would be all wrong
 
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I appreciate your offer and our conversation actually gave me an idea - MAYBE .. just maybe i can do this on my own.

I ordered some glass oranments and I'm going to put them in front of a green plank of wood and then shoot them with a real gun or pellet gun or something. See if I can key out the green screen and just have an exploding oranment.

The tricky part is that the bullet will hit the green screen behind the ornament... might create havoc with my key.
cant shoot sideways or the physics would be all wrong
I think you could clean that up in post since the explosion would likely scatter the pieces out of the way of the impact, and you could just hand roto that easy. your real problem would be how large that greenscreen would need to be to catch the exploding ornament fragments. depends on the shot it's in and how that's framed. You could probably pull it off.
 
It seems impossible to cast adult women in my area... college age fine , but 35+ there is nothing
I couldnt cast the mom role.. had to use a friend..

This week I offered $50/hr for foster mom role and still no takers..
I am literally considering going around to grocery stores asking cashiers if theyre off work on wednesday ..

this is sad... even $50/hr i cant even get someone to be in my movie? maybe that is a sign i shouldn't even be making them :(
 
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I'm not sure where in Maryland you are, but have you tried posting in Backstage and similar publications?

I realize I'm probably suggesting the obvious, but I've learned not to assume.
 
I'm not sure where in Maryland you are, but have you tried posting in Backstage and similar publications?

I realize I'm probably suggesting the obvious, but I've learned not to assume.
Well I did get a single applicant finally tonight!! hopefully she won't back out after she sleeps on it.

My own niece canceled on me tonight so I have to find another kid tomorrow for wednesday. :shocked:
Fortunately i did have a bunch of kids apply on backstage so i can go through those old messages
 
I would find a place where you can shoot, and set up a camera and start shooting different size cans with anything and everything. A 22, pellet gun, air soft gun, 9mm, it doesn't matter. If your actor is holding a Sharp 50-70, that's what the audience is going to THINK he's shooting. The different projectiles will give you different results, and an empty can of Bud Light will tumble differently than those weird energy drink cans that my kid drink. And a firecracker of any kind is going to blow up the can... bullets don't do that. And an M-80 (even a faux M-80) will attract attention that you don't want.
 
I would find a place where you can shoot, and set up a camera and start shooting different size cans with anything and everything. A 22, pellet gun, air soft gun, 9mm, it doesn't matter. If your actor is holding a Sharp 50-70, that's what the audience is going to THINK he's shooting. The different projectiles will give you different results, and an empty can of Bud Light will tumble differently than those weird energy drink cans that my kid drink. And a firecracker of any kind is going to blow up the can... bullets don't do that. And an M-80 (even a faux M-80) will attract attention that you don't want.
You can see what the finished result of the opening shooting scene looks like here
 
This is looking really good!

My only suggestion is, in the can shooting, it would be way more impressive if she only took as many shots as there are cans. This can still be done with editing. Currently it just looks like a kid randomly blasting and eventually getting all the cans. Which is not impressive. If she is the next kid "Wick" that should be bullet for can, or close.
 
This is looking really good!

My only suggestion is, in the can shooting, it would be way more impressive if she only took as many shots as there are cans. This can still be done with editing. Currently it just looks like a kid randomly blasting and eventually getting all the cans. Which is not impressive. If she is the next kid "Wick" that should be bullet for can, or close.
Hmm quite a dilemma. By showing her miss some of the shots I was trying to make it more believable.

The reality... it took my dad and I aiming 1 gun each and both reloading to hit all those cans.
To hit them all 2 guns at a time and not even reloading.. is a hell of a lot better than I can do.

The mom sure seems impressed. But if its not coming across to the average viewer how excellent her aim is then maybe i overdid it and can try dialing back some of the misses.
 
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Filmed all my foster home scenes today !! 2 pages of script in 4.5 hours
Oh man I really thought one of my kids wasnt gonna show.. i messaged the parent at 9:30 am confirming our 1PM shoot time and I never heard back from them. it turns out they were driving 3 hours!!!! to get to the location.

OMG thank got i kept it professional, the only message I sent was that I wish they told me sooner they werent gonna show up so that i'd have time to find a replacement. lol. then they showed up. imagine i was immature and blasted them and then they show up to shoot afterward omg.

Another funny thing is the foster mom was texting me last night what to wear, should she dress old or ragged? by nudist? hilarious. when she said by nudiust she meant to type "my number" and then gave her number afterward but the phone corrected number to nudist in the worst possible context.

in summation... turned out pretty well today i think. No super slick shots from a cinematographer perspective but i got what I needed for the story.
and its kinda a depressing lull in the story anyway so i'm fine with this part being basic and not too fancy.
 
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#1 I seriously underestimated how well done the foster home sequence was. it stands tall with the best scenes in my film.
Spent 10 hours editing all 160 takes ... 8pm-6am.

OMG the foster mom killed it!! shes freakin awesome. so did the bully girl. she is so easy to hate in the movie.

#2 Jesus what a long week. I did 6 hours of filming today and I'm done with all the scenes involving mulitple ppl!!
All thats left are scenes with Lily alone. and it releases in 13 days.
 
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