archived-videos Sci fi drama 'THIRD BASE' set on Mars

R

ricforster

slider1.jpg


Introducing 'THIRD BASE' - a 60s promo for a new webseries that I wrote and directed. It follows a group of teens marooned on Mars. Think Battlestar Galactica meets Lord of the Flies.

Shot on the F3 with a handful of Canon EF primes - plus an 11-16 and 70-210 zoom. DOP was Chris McHardy.

It's competing in the Movie Extra WebFest for a $100,000 production budget to shoot 7 episodes. We've made it to the finals, but need your votes to stand a chance of winning!

Click here to view the trailer on Vimeo

Be great to hear your feedback!

Some screengrabs below:

slider2.jpg


slider3.jpg


slider4.jpg


slider5.jpg
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
"Live" shots look really nice. The CGI shot, not so much. However, as good as it looks, I

probably wouldn't watch it, based on this trailer. What it looks like, to me, is Miri(Star Trek TOS

episode) crossed with Lord of the Flies. But we don't get a hint of a rhyme or reason for it all.

Why are teenagers there in the first place. Is it for a "bold new beginning for mankind" or

whatever. I'm sure there is a story but I don't see it here.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys - really helpful - I'm thinking I need to take another pass at the trailer to expand on the premise.

The story is that the kids are there because their parents work on the Mars research base. The whole thing is also an experiment prior to full on colonization, to see how humans cope living on Mars. Only something goes wrong... and only the kids are left alive. They will get into the mystery of what happened on Third Base, discovering that it was sabotage. Who did it? Why did they do it? Was it one of them? Is the culprit still out there? Trust dissolves between the teens, there's power struggles and they are eventually forced to work together for a common goal.

Miri and Lord of the Flies are definite influences on the project.

CG is mainly stock shots courtesy Nasa - I'm in the process of putting together a VFX team for the project. I did the lift off/explosion/space walk sequences myself in After Effects. By no means a VFX guru - it was the best I could do in 4 days!

Any other suggestions hugely appreciated! Thanks
 
Generally it looks pretty good, professional quality. The sound though, that's another matter unfortunately. Here's a quick critique:

Dialogue: Sync is not accurate enough in places, repeated essing problems, distortion in places, lack of perspective. Overall 3/10.

Music: Appropriate and works reasonably well, although it needs mastering for more punch. 6/10.

Sound Design and mixing: Most acoustic spaces are unconvincing, poor balance, EQ, dynamics and use of contrast, very unimaginative sound design, generally amateur mix. 3/10.

For a low budget it's probably worth a creditable 8/10 visually but with the sound at an overall 4/10, it substantially weakens an otherwise very good attempt. My guess is that all the effort and expertise went into the visuals but the sound was an afterthought done by one of the film makers whose real expertise lay in a different area of film making. A reasonable effort with the sound for an amateur but such a shame when the visuals appear to be of professional standards.

G
 
Thanks for the audio critique - very useful. I'll see if I can get a couple of audio mixers I know to take a look at it.

It's probably worth mentioning that the entire post on this was completed in four days to meet a competition submission deadline. I did pretty much everything, so yep... the generally amateur mix is my bad! Had to ADR almost every line as the shooting location was at the back of a bowling alley. Not ideal.

With a bit of funding we'd be able to crew up properly - and maybe put some sets together...
 
So what happens now, do you put the trailer on a crowd-funding site to finance the production of the episodes? Is this why you need to develop the trailer?

BTW, unfortunately, some of the ADR will need fixing. This is possible, if you have someone who knows what they are doing and have the right tools but rather defeats the whole point of ADR in the first place. This thread might be worth a read for future reference:

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=40319

G
 
That looks awesome! Dammit, I didn't catch this thread in time to be able to vote. In my opinion, forget a webseries. I'd love to see you find a way to turn this into a feature; I think it's a great idea for a movie.

KILL PIGGY!!!

:)
 
Yeah I'm still figuring out a few different options. Web series is what I originally had in mind.

Crowdfunding is totally new to me - the last web series I did ('LOL') was self funded, but received offers for distribution. So if Third Base had a micro budget, we'd probably make the money back in a couple of years.

That said, LOL was 20 x 3-4 min episodes, so that was pretty much feature length. Makes me think... yeah... why not produce it as a feature, for VOD/DVD.

Maybe even release some webisodes out of it for the net? Has that been done before with a feature?
 
Still think this looks awesome. I hope you get it made.

I don't really watch web series, but a feature I would totally dig. And throw a few bucks at if you're crowdfunding. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top