I'm looking for some feedback on our first ad. This was about a 35 hour film project, that spanned 8 major versions.
Upvote
0
Save Point ad no 1
- Thread starter Nate North
- Start date
Yeah, it wasn't exactly brief. Celtic waited 8 days for my reply, I thought I should give a complete answer. Failed at that. Had to stop because it was turning into a novel.
When fully funded, Save Point will be a self sustaining interactive fiction platform for visual storytellers.
Thanks. I don't know what that means, but it's a start.
So let's say I'm a writer/director, and I'm writing a murder mystery where the final scene will be a car chase followed by a shoot out.
What would Save Point do to make it possible for me to shoot this scene on a small budget?
[Note: I'm just trying to drill down to the core of the issue here]
Yeah and? A 120 page screenplay can be distilled into a one sentence logline. The problem here is you have not been able to explain this in one sentence. You tried and Mara thought she could use your service for a car stunt, when, I believe this is all animation and you failed to even mention that in your summary. Loglines are hard and I am sure this is too. But it's the pitch. It's the business card. It's the "What are you working on?" at the cocktail party. People will walk away or walk away confused if you chew their ear off about the water plant and not the glass of water. Figure that out and you will be on your way. Hope this helps!
As Indietalk mentioned, this is an animation project. However, you might be surprised how much it could help someone attempting that.
A. If you accept animation as a potential substitute for live action filming, you can crash helicopters into oil tankers all day at 1c on the dollar. I do understand why many don't feel that's an option, for international collaboration on the cheap, it's the only option
B. Let's say you were a member of Save Point and had been working on the project, and then you wanted to do this film with the car chase. One of the things we work on constantly is a huge shared library of production assets. The 4 that would be effective in reducing your costs for the car chase and shootout scenes would be 1. Foley - you would have access to thousands of professionally recorded foley samples, and would have gotten to know several pro sound engineers along the way. It's actually a big deal in terms of how scenes like that play out on screen. Listen to the bad foley of a 1970s gunfight, and you'll see how much improvement is possible. 2. By working on the project, you would have likely already visually executed several car chases, and gunfights, etc. giving you experience beyond any storyboarding process. 3. You would have met a number of compositing specialists, like me for example. People who can directly help you set up solutions such as greenscreening the windshield of your car, and creating a workable photoreal road outside of it. There's significant overlap in the way we would solve for a car chase in animation, with how you would IRL. Save Point also will be a lot of peoples first contact with the use of AI solutions to problems like this. I won't go into that here, but you'd be surprised how much an automated rotoscoper can shave off the cost of a filmed car chase. 4. Access to a large library of alpha channel visual overlays. In our system much of the "cartooning" is done in post, so in example we could provide you with the resources you need to cover a car in bullet holes, and could teach you how to make that look real.
C. It's a place to meet people that can help you. Creating something together often creates friendships. If you had been working with my team for some time, talking with us daily, I'd likely have just loaned you my Red Epic, gimbal, and crane. That would have improved your scene a great deal, and saved a lot of money. I did this for someone last year.
Off topic, I have to say that your project sounds cool! I personally like murder mysteries.
ok, to be fair, we've always had a tagline, and it does mention animation. It's front and center on the webpage
Save Point is an infinite interactive story, animated at broadcast quality
and secondly, the question I was answering when I began talking about the water refinery wasn't "what is Save Point". The question was "why do you keep acting like this thing is so complicated. It's just a glass of water. You are making it sound like this glass of water has a lot of moving parts" Then I explained how that making a glass of clean water can be a lot more complicated than the glass itself is. You recall the comments about how I seemed "overwhelmed" by something "simple"? That wasn't an elevator pitch, that was a reaction to a question, which I also felt had an assertion hidden in it's shadows.
I do understand your comments about the "elevator pitch" side of this thing. It's something I need to work on until it's perfected. Right now I am a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. I'm just not overwhelmed by the CYOA part, which was what was being inferred.
Anyway, I appreciate your efforts to help me get my front end messaging on track. It's helpful.
Last edited:
Again, this means nothing. How does this represent the collective of artists you just described? Or the resources from being a part of the team? Broadcast quality sounds like, ok, well, you are not using VHS camcorders, cool. Why even mention quality? Let's assume the quality is good and use the extra words for what this actually is! I don't order food and see "Our food is restaurant quality" I expect it. Ditch it. And tell us what this is!!!!!! lol sorry not trying to be pain but that tagline means absolutely nothing.
I felt that giving a quick example of how the AI workflow one could learn at Save Point could directly cut someone's cost on an IRL car chase might be helpful. I'll show you one of the many AI platforms we are using on the project.
If you scroll down on this page, you will come to two relevant sections. One is called "Extract objects from a video" the second is called "Remove bad parts of your video" These two AI tools could greatly reduce the cost of creating a professional looking car chase or shootout.
If a lady walks into your shot pushing a stroller, while the "gunfight" is taking place, you can just remove her, instead of shooting the whole scene again. If you want to repaint your hero car so it's more visible at night, or simply holds focus better, that's a lot easier to do if it's rotoscoped. Since rotoscoping one car chase by hand costs more than the budget of some indie films, AI can be a powerful tool in reducing your costs.
Were you aware that this was possible before? Save Point is constantly researching. It's a central task. We share information freely amongst members, with the goal of helping them achieve their own goals both inside and outside the project.
If you scroll down on this page, you will come to two relevant sections. One is called "Extract objects from a video" the second is called "Remove bad parts of your video" These two AI tools could greatly reduce the cost of creating a professional looking car chase or shootout.
If a lady walks into your shot pushing a stroller, while the "gunfight" is taking place, you can just remove her, instead of shooting the whole scene again. If you want to repaint your hero car so it's more visible at night, or simply holds focus better, that's a lot easier to do if it's rotoscoped. Since rotoscoping one car chase by hand costs more than the budget of some indie films, AI can be a powerful tool in reducing your costs.
Were you aware that this was possible before? Save Point is constantly researching. It's a central task. We share information freely amongst members, with the goal of helping them achieve their own goals both inside and outside the project.
Okay but how does your tagline of "an infinite interactive story" let me know you can help me with the AI in a baby stroller scene of my film? This all sounds like one film, and a team. Basically.... how films are made... crew, team. At first glance Save Point is an animated film, period. Nothing new. That's what you need to get across. HOW this actually works!
Why don't you name yourself an animation studio instead of a film to avoid all this? Maybe a studio collective?
Save Point Animation Collective
Okay I more than half get that. Save Point is the name, it's an Animation house, and a Collective of individuals. That's half the battle and less to carry with a proper mission statement.
Save Point Animation Collective
Okay I more than half get that. Save Point is the name, it's an Animation house, and a Collective of individuals. That's half the battle and less to carry with a proper mission statement.
Exactly.
I'm thinking something like:
"Using Artificial Intelligence to make world-class animation accessible to indie filmmakers worldwide."
Ok, obviously, it doesn't, and it's not intended to. I stand by that tagline, and I think you're wrong about it being meaningless.
Everyone has a unique viewpoint. I'll explain mine. The tagline needs to convey as much crucial information as possible in as few words as possible. That's my core design standpoint for it. I can't branch out and illuminate literally hundreds of subtopics within it. That's simply not possible. People should not expect to fully grasp this entire thing without spending some time on it. How is that different than an iphone?
It's a phone, that allows you to make calls. yes. But it's also a game platform, PDA, and you can use it to photograph your dog. Here is a history of the Iphone's taglines. None of them mention how it helps you photograph your dog. I'm not sure how my work on this tagline is any less informative that what's being produced by a multi billion dollar company. Are you sure that "forward thinking" is a better tagline than what I created? Whoever wrote that probably has 3 million in the bank, and could get hired anywhere. it's two words that say nothing about the product.
The evolution of Apple's iPhone slogans from 2007 to 2014
"Amazing", "fastest" and "biggest" are some of the words that Apple has been using over the years in slogans presenting its new iPhone models. Here's a brief history of the iPhone slogan.
www.phonearena.com
I feel pretty strongly about the phrase "at broadcast quality" or it's previous version "At television quality" Here's why. There are about a million little animation projects out there. You've likely never seen any of them. You know why? Because they aren't created at broadcast quality. Is that a small deal? Maybe something that could be buried somewhere on the web page like the many layers of AI integration? No. Because that one line is the difference between a worthwhile project and a junk project. It's the difference between a team that spends hours on a scene and one that spends weeks. It's the difference between using this as a resume item that could land you a job on a successful show, and wasting more of your time making half baked YouTube videos.
That one line is the second most important thing you need to know about this project. My format is, "What it is, and why it matters" Lastly, it's there because the default, the expectation, is that we would make something much less than broadcast quality. The fact that we need to do something different here needs to be one of the very first things people hear. I seem to remember someone saying earlier in this post that it sounded like we were just going to cobble together whatever we could and present that. Absolutely not. What an embarrassment that would be for everyone. A betrayal of anyone who trusted me to further their carreer in some meaningful way. I've walked among indie filmmakers for many years, and am still shocked by the sheer percentage that believe making a blatantly amateurish production will propel them towards the industry. It won't. I want to put that out front and center, and I consider it a defining aspect of the project. That one sapphire is as valuable as an entire truckload of gravel, if you follow my meaning. Maybe none of us has the capability of producing a sapphire, and that's why everyone is churning out rocks. But if enough of us coordinated properly, with a focused plan, and a little help from emerging technologies, I think it is possible.
I bought my iPhone, I didn't buy into your idea... yet!
And yes people should FULLY grasp your idea immediately.
That may have sounded harsh. I want to show you one of my "Rocks"
I worked hard on this video. It's fairly well done. Honestly it's better quality on some levels than many things I've seen on television. It's got 350 views in 2 years, on a network that pays one dollar for every 1000 views. I've successfully created 33c in progress from 2 weeks of work. That's not good enough. I need to be better, and to get people to work with me as a team, I need to be able to tell them in good faith that we can achieve something more than that.
I worked hard on this video. It's fairly well done. Honestly it's better quality on some levels than many things I've seen on television. It's got 350 views in 2 years, on a network that pays one dollar for every 1000 views. I've successfully created 33c in progress from 2 weeks of work. That's not good enough. I need to be better, and to get people to work with me as a team, I need to be able to tell them in good faith that we can achieve something more than that.