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
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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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For marketing purposes I'm changing the name to Christmas Fire.
This way it has christmas in the name.

I struggled so much with this shotgun fight in the kitchen, i think a big part of it is that there isnt a single actor in the scene.
A lot of the footage is just friends going through the motions and I wasn't really getting anything out of them. It's pretty choppy.

Now is the time to watch if you want to give feedback. I still have the set for a couple days.

[Edit - Media redacted, version outdated]

if you have something brilliant to say I could possibly implement it lol.
 
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Good point re title.

With the caveat that I'm NOT a director or editor, my one suggestion is that there are spots where people are walking or running that I think could be more of a quick cut to where they end up. A few specific points: Mom running to answer the door right at the beginning (4 sec mark), coming out with the gun at 1:03, the girls walking in at 2:46 could maybe be cut and we just see them grab the photo from her.

I like it a lot. Your lead girl is very good, and the other 2 kids (especially the red head) are good also.
 
mlesemann said:
Good point re title.

With the caveat that I'm NOT a director or editor, my one suggestion is that there are spots where people are walking or running that I think could be more of a quick cut to where they end up. A few specific points: Mom running to answer the door right at the beginning (4 sec mark), coming out with the gun at 1:03, the girls walking in at 2:46 could maybe be cut and we just see them grab the photo from her.

I like it a lot. Your lead girl is very good, and the other 2 kids (especially the red head) are good also.
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The 103 spot... that whole ending is so choppy and messed up. But i think youre right the editing could be tighter in those places.
new idea is to show mom getting shot and make audience think she is dead. nice emotional roller coaster when she comes back out.

Ahh foster home scene is missing some voice over. When Lily is looking at that photo on her IPAD I want there to be a news reporter talking about how that is the woman responsible for ordering the murder of her parents. thats why i have that empty space of the girls walking.

Glad you liked it!! it was my first time choregraphing a hand-to-hand fight scene.
 
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Forgot to add... the red head drove 3 hours to be in that scene. she lives closer to you!
 
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Here is the updated version. I completely removed the 2nd clip of ammo and heavily implied the mom getting shot.
It's all a lot cleaner now.


Filming with hitmen on saturday and Lily on sunday so i have opportunity to do reshoot for either of them, then tearing down the set sunday.
 
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Tonight I send a copy of the film to the composer.. then i can focus on color grading and audio postproduction.
Going to ADR most of it since i didnt have a sound guy.

I totally screwed up the sound in the foster home and recorded blank tracks with my good mic. ugh.

Now I just keep thinking.. does it even matter? Nobody watches my films anyway. Sad.

But I digress, this is what i have right now... trying to polish the edit a bit before i sleep today.
Any feedback on the editing is welcome. If there is any point to this at all its to learn and get better.

 
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I think it's good. There are things here and there that could be improved, at this point in the production I think colorist work and sound would be the most likely to generate benefits.

If you have any budget left, I have a couple of really good sound guys that would likely be able to strengthen this a good bit.

I'm not saying that the color work is bad, it's quite good in certain scenes, just uneven in it's quality. A lot of that has to do with mixed lighting color, which can't be fixed. It's kind of a typical situation for indie film. If you have daylight mixing with artificial light inside a room for example, you get mixed color temperature, and then you're kind of in a bad spot.

Sound is the same story, very good at times, somewhat weak at other times, consistency is a big deal in film, and it bugs people to be really into something for a few minutes, and then be jarred out of the SOD by dips in the quality.

Overall your directing style is well above average for an indie short. Something to be proud of.

As far as no one watching your films. I used to have solutions that worked for this problem, but right now there are only two solutions, social media popularity, or money. I think you have the right attitude that this is practice building up to a future win. I haven't published a single film this year that I think anyone will watch, and I didn't intend to. But just like any other type of strength building, you only see gains when you push yourself to your limits. I understand the feeling you get when you try as hard as you can and then no one even shows up to watch.

Think of it this way. You go to the gym, and bench as much as you can, but later on that week, you don't look any different in the mirror, and no one notices that you worked out. If you reduce your effort to match what seems appropriate to the results, you can take a couple 25lb weights off, and it gets easier, and the same thing happens, the next week, you are still the same size. A person could make the error then, of thinking that this adjustment made sense. However, if you push as hard as you can whether people notice or not, you find that 6 months, or 48 trips to the gym later, people really do notice, and public response does change.

You have some natural talent and creativity, don't let the background noise of disinterested crowds drown out your focus. Take the opposite approach to many indie filmmakers, dont fuel yourself based on pride in your work, that supply is easily exhausted. Personally I hate everything I make with a burning passion. Every time I make something, I scowl at how awful it is, and then double my efforts to make it better. If I based motivation to make my next film better on viewership, or trophies, or comments, that stuff tapers out after a few months max. Looking at one of my films and thinking "I can do better than this" that never goes away. Sometimes, I have accidentally made something that people actually liked, and I was scowling away and beating myself up about it as usual, and when the positive feedback came, it was always an unbelievable surprise, rather than attention I was expecting.

I haven't seen a lot of your work, but this is the best thing I've ever seen from you. Keep stacking on those weights, and forget about the crowd, you'll get bigger, it's just a matter of time. Maybe you only benched 140 this time, but without doing this, you would never get to the point where you benched 160, and without that you would never bench 180 etc.
 
Yes i am going to ADR a lot of the sound (I didnt have a sound guy) and I haven't done any coloring at all for some of the scenes.
that is stuff that will all be taken care of before release.

Currently focused on the edit since i am sending a picture locked file tonight to my music guy.already invited guests over for the movie premiere on the 17th
 
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I like it a lot! The target shooting scene at the beginning works much better now, the transition from the guy being smothered in plastic to his twin brother in the kitchen is really good, and nice job with the shoot out at the end. Really good stuff.
 
mlesemann said:
I like it a lot! The target shooting scene at the beginning works much better now, the transition from the guy being smothered in plastic to his twin brother in the kitchen is really good, and nice job with the shoot out at the end. Really good stuff.
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thanks!! when the brother is being smothered I want to add "mm!! mmmm!!" suffucation noises for the transtion into the Mmmmmm delicious noises
 
mlesemann said:
I like it a lot! The target shooting scene at the beginning works much better now
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Totally agree, just the right amount of misses. Sorry didn't get much further. Just a time/busy thing, not your film.
 
Built the stupid fake wall with a hidden safe. i hate this shit lol.
I want to make a film not decorate kitchens and hammer nails fml.

Did my last day of filming with Ella, my lily action star.
Hosting a premiere at my place this friday. I am going to make top shelf gingerbread men and sugar cookies :)
 
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