Let's all collaborate to make a film that stops people from being murdered

Ok, so I have an idea. An idea about how a short film could be made collaboratively to address a real life problem.

The following is a true story.

One day, over a year ago, a family came over to my house to eat dinner. With them was a young African man, who had been adopted by the family so that he could live in the United States and attend college. We all sat around the table talking, and I found this kid to be interesting, so we began a conversation.

I asked him about his village, his life in rural Africa, and what it was like to live there day to day. Much of it was what you would expect, but during the conversation he said something that caught my attention. After that, the entire conversation revolved around an exploration of that single sentence.

The sentence was "but one day, an entire pack of the hyenas came into the town, and they killed a whole crowd of people at once, and that time, it was in the newspaper"

Once he said that, I had follow up questions. Lots of them. We talked for over an hour, and he explained to me that hyena attacks on people as they went about daily life in town were not uncommon. Apparently there were not too many newspapers either.

My first question "are you saying that sometimes a wild animal kills a person in the middle of one of your cities, and it doesn't make the newspaper?"

Answer "yes, this happens often, there are many hyenas"

My second question. "I would think that people getting eaten alive in town would quickly become a high priority item, do authorities do anything to stop this?"

Answer "the attitude is that this is just what life is like, and if someone dies, then that was going to happen anyway, we don't try anything to stop it, such is life"

I said "In the US, if a single child was killed by an animal in a city, it would be in every newspaper across the country, and every effort would be made to make sure it never happened again."

He said "people there don't think that way"

I don't have an exact transcript from memory, but that was the abridged gist of the conversation.

This talk left a lasting impression on me, and I thought about it for some time. My thinking was this. What if an initiative was developed, to supply these locations with self powering speaker towers, driven by battery installations recharged by wind and solar. Research could be conducted by universities or experts, to find a type of sound that repelled the Hyenas. A type of dog whistle, inaudible to humans, or perhaps the sound of natural predators, such as playback of lion roars,

I'd like to propose the idea of a collaborative filmmaking project, wherein a film is created for the purpose of spreading this idea to relevant parties, the researchers, funding groups, etc. A film that demonstrated the problem and it's reality, outlined possible solutions, and called for public action to provide the relatively small amount of assistance necessary to install these audio deterrent towers in remote cities and villages.

When the kid told me that children were being eaten alive in the streets of their home towns, and no one was even bothering to tell anyone about it, it bothered me. This seems like a small enough goal that simply illustrating the problem in a concise way, and then sending that video to the right groups of people might be able to initiate some small action, like sending a few PA speakers and solar panels out to places where they could save lives.

Being eaten alive by hyenas is a pretty bad way to go. Someone should do something about this. I find it difficult to understand how this is still happening in a time where people are making 200k a day posting joke videos on YouTube.

Might be a cool side project for some of us on the forum, to put together a script, film such an information video, and send it out to appropriate groups. If a half dozen of us collaborated on this, we could probably get it done.
 
This talk left a lasting impression on me, and I thought about it for some time. My thinking was this. What if an initiative was developed, to supply these locations with self powering speaker towers, driven by battery installations recharged by wind and solar. Research could be conducted by universities or experts, to find a type of sound that repelled the Hyenas. A type of dog whistle, inaudible to humans, or perhaps the sound of natural predators, such as playback of lion roars,
Also, electrified perimeter fence or dead animal carcass to keep the animals away. Perhaps even trained attack dogs might also be an option if the wild animals are smart enough to identify the scarecrow tactics. That said, it would be interesting to know if your suggestions would actually work.
I'd like to propose the idea of a collaborative filmmaking project, wherein a film is created for the purpose of spreading this idea to relevant parties, the researchers, funding groups, etc. A film that demonstrated the problem and it's reality, outlined possible solutions, and called for public action to provide the relatively small amount of assistance necessary to install these audio deterrent towers in remote cities and villages.
This would make for a cool documentary where the problem is first stated and then the rest of the film follows the research and implementation of the research. The film would serve to create awareness while suggesting the solution at the same time. I would think this would make for an incredibly interesting PHD project for someone in academia? Maybe Kickstarter would be a good way to fund it

Another option would be to film it as a drama, horror ala jaws, albeit based more on reality than ridiculous fiction
I find it difficult to understand how this is still happening in a time where people are making 200k a day posting joke videos on YouTube.
As someone who posts silly jokes on YouTube, this hurt. That's because I can hardly get 100 views per video :rofl:
Might be a cool side project for some of us on the forum, to put together a script, film such an information video, and send it out to appropriate groups. If a half dozen of us collaborated on this, we could probably get it done.
Sounds like a neat idea.
 
I didn't think anyone had ever read this post. It kind of disappeared right after I wrote it.

Also, electrified perimeter fence or dead animal carcass to keep the animals away. Perhaps even trained attack dogs might also be an option if the wild animals are smart enough to identify the scarecrow tactics. That said, it would be interesting to know if your suggestions would actually work.

This would make for a cool documentary where the problem is first stated and then the rest of the film follows the research and implementation of the research. The film would serve to create awareness while suggesting the solution at the same time. I would think this would make for an incredibly interesting PHD project for someone in academia? Maybe Kickstarter would be a good way to fund it

Another option would be to film it as a drama, horror ala jaws, albeit based more on reality than ridiculous fiction

As someone who posts silly jokes on YouTube, this hurt. That's because I can hardly get 100 views per video :rofl:

Sounds like a neat idea.

I know Hyenas have some genetic overlap with dogs, and dogs can be repelled with certain frequencies. As far as recordings of lion roars, or similar, it's something that would have to be tested. Might be difficult to set up such a test, universities rarely keep packs of wild hyenas around, lol. It just seems like something people should look into, given that from the story the kid told me, absolutely zero effort had ever been made to curb the problem. In America, wealthy people often waste unfathomable amounts of money on nothing, so a couple hundred grand to save the lives of innocent people seems worthwhile.

Vin Diesel for example was paid around 54 million dollars to voice "Grut" in the Marvel films. That's a character with one line. It's animated, so he didn't even have to show up on set. You would think that lifesaving measures across an entire country would rate at least 1% of the money spent on that, but according to this kid, no one had ever bothered to do anything. What grabbed me was that he mentioned that people were being killed and they weren't bothering to put it in the paper, like it wasn't important enough, or happened so often as to be old news. In my local paper, they print news stories about how they found an old lady who "likes postage stamps".

I'm not sure I'm up for making a live action horror movie where I have to live on the African plains stalking man eating hyenas, but I'd make a film alerting academics that the problem existed.

YouTube is weird about views. like everything everywhere, it's a vicious cycle system. If you start getting views, then you are more and more likely to get more views. I wouldn't take it personally, it's not that people don't like your videos, they just aren't seeing them, because not enough people are already watching them. Also the algorithm rewards certain sets of behaviors, and if your channel as a whole doesn't conform to those markers, then they tend to cycle you down.
 
The problem I've always had in collaborating is "who's in charge?"
And for the record, Vin Diesel spent a week in the ADR booth voicing Groot. He was given a 50 page translation document that told him if he said "I am Groot" this way, it means "how much for a lap dance", and if he said it differently, it means "the rabbit just shit on the floor". He also then had to come back and rerecord in numerous foreign languages. It wasn't a role he could just message in and leave on someone's iPad.
 
I had no idea they were so judicious with their budget! Now that this whole 50 page guide thing has been explained, I almost feel like they underpaid him. I hope he didn't have to take a 90 minute private jet flight all the way down to the studio for that kind of money. Undoubtedly Mr Diesel isn't subjugated to such barbaric contractual demands, especially considering the laborious nature of the primary task. Treating a celebrity like that is abuse, plain and simple.

Obviously Guardians of the Galaxy is a franchise that enjoys a mainly polylingual audience, with the majority of viewers being versed in the fictional language of the imaginary universe. With that in mind it becomes clear how important this aspect of the financial investment was.

I for one spent many an hour rewinding Grut's lines, mouthing the words along with him, and just absorbing the nuances of his innumerable tonal variations. Certainly from a cultural perspective, it's an artwork far more deserving of funding and study than the Eiffel Tower (1.5 million dollars).

Vin Diesel has without a doubt contributed far more to our world than Nicolai Tesla, who was paid 60,000 dollars for his patent of alternating current, a relatively minor zeitgeist footnote when compared to the introduction of Grut. I like to think that when Plato talked in the allegory of the cave about how our perceived world is comprised of mere shadows of the great foundational archetypes that identify reality, he was talking about Grut.

Undoubtedly, the reason that independent film creators cannot get paid 5 dollars for reading 10,000 pages and talking for 100 hours is simply due to the fact that they lack Vin's renowned verbal eloquence. What can I say, the system works, and finances are being distributed throughout the world in a balanced way that I simply lack the intelligence and sophistication to fathom. Perhaps some day, if I study hard enough, I can ascend to the ranks of the elite mathematicians employed within the studio system, and earn the right to stand amongst the most highly paid humans in history, via legitimate contributions to humanity, such as this decision to pay a man who used to have his picture taken in front of tuner cars 50 million dollars to pretend to be a tree.

And as for who's in charge of projects, I think the shirt in your picture clearly says that you're in charge.
 
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"are you saying that sometimes a wild animal kills a person in the middle of one of your cities, and it doesn't make the newspaper?"
Answer "yes, this happens often, there are many hyenas"

In the U.S. whitetail deer injure about 10,000 Americans and kill 200 Americans on average per year.....has anyone ever read about a deer killing a driver in a local newspaper?....Perhaps.

Where I live in southern Ohio and driving 60mph at night, seeing a 200+ pound deer in your headlights a few feet from the hood of your car can (and will) scare you more than any horror movie.....I've lost count of the deer accidents that I've had over the years. (I do drive a lot late at night)

The last deer that hit me, I never saw in the road......it jumped so high from the side of the road the first time I saw it was when it landed on the front bumper of my minivan (at night).....Fortunately I was not injured, but my van certainly was.
 
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I certainly see your point, though I am convinced that if whitetail deer in Ohio began making their way into the cities and eating children alive on main street, it would make the paper.

I've known several people killed by deer. I also know of many deer killed by people, if that's relevant. It's very dangerous for deer where I live. If you go to wall mart to buy some bottled water, there are always 100+ guys in there carrying hunting rifles and dressed in head to toe forest camo. I always wonder, when I see these guys wearing full camo in the ice cream isle, if they are aware that forest camo doesn't work in the supermarket. Well, I digress. Judging from this video that I made, which features an actual phone conversation about the topic, I can only imagine that many accidents come down to a simple misunderstanding of the deer crossing signs, and their function.

 
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