To you all

You are welcome for the interest Pixel. I applaude your trying to make something happen, and props to those on-board with you. I don't know much, but if you need something I can do, I'll be in. Enjoy your vacation.

-Thanks-
 
Pixel,

What is the scenario that allows the friends to be affected yet still not know the man that has died?

Here are some throw away (sounding board) ideas not intended for consideration, just myself trying to answer that scenario:

Impact – “When a debate on life causes a fatal car accident, a group of friends must learn to accept what they have now changed forever.”

Sounds like some kind of Crash as shown through an ABC After School Special. lol

“Influenced by a breaking news story, the idle chatter of a hospital waiting room becomes a cauldron of selfish debate until all involved discover they share organs of a single donor.”- Once removed twice forgotten.


Sounds like an episode of any hospital show.

-Thanks-
 
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Hello chums!

I saw this thread during my meticulous historical archiving of the forums and thought that it was very similar to an idea that I had over in another thread.

I was wondering whether anyone would be willing to give this another shot, but with several crucial differences:

-The film would incorporate the fact that we're all in different places and cannot interact face to face (I'm thinking perhaps some sort of online drama/comedy).
-Different roles would be assigned, early on, to different people so that everyone does the minimum amount of work. The more equal the distriubution of time and effort the easier this would be to keep running.
-The film would incorporate the globe trotting element that can be accessed by the fact we have members all across the world. This will mean we can do things that we couldn't otherwise budget for.

Some immediate ideas that could be plausibly done: an online community (kinda like IndieTalk) receives a cryptic message that means that they have to disarm a series of bombs across the world...

That's just a basic idea, but that sort of thing would mean that we could (plausibly) put together a film that wouldn't require the characters to interact (in the different time zones) other than via email and on the phone...etc.

I am willing to shoulder the majority of the administrative burden, mainly because I'm not a good enough filmmaker and I quite like the idea of producing. So if there are people who would be genuinely up for shooting a few minutes of footage in their hometown or helping write the script or helping with visual effects or just acting or editing or whatever (any job you can think of) then let me know what you think.

I realise that these things never seem to come to fruition, but I would love to be able to buck that trend. When I put together the Secret Santa Christmas comp I was hoping that we'd get five or six entries, so I was impressed and overwhelmed by the positive response (not to mention the general quality). And it's that experiment that makes me think that a long term project like this might be feasible...

Thoughts?
 
You really need to choose a format. 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. 25fps, 30fps. Not everyone has the same camera with the same capabilities, so there will be plenty of exporting and transcoding, which will degrade quality. Then there's the challenge of transmitting huge files over the Internet. And this could actually be accomplished with Usenet (if everyone has a subscription) to break the files up in several bits (using WinRAR) and then add PAR files. But the only problem with Usenet is it is public, and anyone can access it.

The other possibility that was raised was FTP, but someone would need to host a secure FTP.

Good luck. I've been lurking here for several years, and not once have I seen this pulled off.
 
If you're producing a Zip file, you can password protect them which could stave off most of the piracy concerns. That could then be RAR'd or TAR'd to get segmented files that can be recombined into the full file later.
 
John@Bophe said:
Nick--

If you want to dig a little deeper in the past for projects like this - try these links

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=5227
EDIT by moderator: Link removed - not in public forum
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links. I can't see the second one (I think it must be in the mod forum) but it's good to look through the first one (although the idea is quite different).

VPTurner said:
You really need to choose a format. 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p. 25fps, 30fps. Not everyone has the same camera with the same capabilities, so there will be plenty of exporting and transcoding, which will degrade quality. Then there's the challenge of transmitting huge files over the Internet. And this could actually be accomplished with Usenet (if everyone has a subscription) to break the files up in several bits (using WinRAR) and then add PAR files. But the only problem with Usenet is it is public, and anyone can access it.

The other possibility that was raised was FTP, but someone would need to host a secure FTP.

Good luck. I've been lurking here for several years, and not once have I seen this pulled off.
Click to expand...

I agree on the formatting issue and that would be one of the first things to agree on. I think that most of the people who are likely to be interested in this idea use the T2i or a similar DSLR variant. I guess that would have to be the quality jumping off point.

As for the hosting issue I'm not sure about Usenet, I've never used(net) it myself, but ideally we'd want to keep it out of public sight.

If, as you and Knightly believe, there is the possibility of hosting it via FTP then we could look in to that. I have quite a lot of spare hosting for my website (not sure how much this would require, probably a lot) and that might be a means of getting things transported around the globe.

I really do thing this is doable. Really.
 
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well, interesting topic.. umm, can't we work zone-wise? I mean, there will be a series like episode-1, ep-2, ep-3......members from Chicago will make one; members from london will make another 1...goes on..

[scheduling will be a big problem, i know]

OR, pick a concept or idea...give e deadline..let the members do the scripting, shooting and editing..

I prefer the first one though..
 
mahdy said:
well, interesting topic.. umm, can't we work zone-wise? I mean, there will be a series like episode-1, ep-2, ep-3......members from Chicago will make one; members from london will make another 1...goes on..

[scheduling will be a big problem, i know]

OR, pick a concept or idea...give e deadline..let the members do the scripting, shooting and editing..

I prefer the first one though..
Click to expand...

I think there are several inherent problems with that approach.

Firstly, the real selling point of this project would be to form one coherent movie out of all the footage that's submitted. We could easily do something like New York, I Love You or Paris, Je t'aime but that sort of episodic approach is very different and is actually the same sort of thing that we're already doing in Secret Santa and the new Weekly Challenges.

That said- if we do have members who live close to each other (Chicago, London...etc.) it would be extremely useful to have them collaborate on segments. Certainly if one thread of the film is going to be shot where there are two members active it would make sense for them to work together.

I also think doing anything in episodes (I assume you mean as a webseries?) has a lot of difficulties. The amount of series that get two or three episodes in and then give up without really acheiving closure is enormous. It would mean a lot more sustained work with only the expectation of having a finished project. I don't think all that many people would be proud to be part of a half completed web series. But we could definitely put together a short film.

As for your second approach, well that is, in effect, what the weekly challenges are going to be. This thing would be a different idea because it would ultimately be edited into one storyline, rather than lots of shorts. I think putting deadlines and rushing people into providing footage would not be the point of this. If it takes a year to produce something of good enough quality then that's fine. It would just be amazing to have something at the end of that that was properly produced, directed, written, edited, acted, scored...etc, by Indietalk as a community.

These are just my thoughts and feel free to tell me if you think I'm looking at this the wrong way.
 
I understand what you mean. I agree with you at the end.

if we do have members who live close to each other (Chicago, London...etc.) it would be extremely useful to have them collaborate on segments. Certainly if one thread of the film is going to be shot where there are two members active it would make sense for them to work together.
Click to expand...

We could easily do something like New York, I Love You or Paris, Je t'aime but that sort of episodic approach is very different
Click to expand...

or Babel.. it could be happened easily..need an appropriate (& strong) script i believe..
 
mahdy said:
or Babel.. it could be happened easily..need an appropriate (& strong) script i believe..
Click to expand...

I think Babel is actually a really good example (although obviously on a much smaller scale).

But the way the script was written in order to link all the different plot elements without it ever having to take place in one specific location was near genius and could easily be a template for something that we do.
 
Well, I guess I'm out then. All I have access to right now is my Canon XL1s. I can upconvert, but it will never be as good as HD footage. It records 480i and I output 480p (deinterlaced and converted to progressive scan) from Premiere Pro 2 for DVD authoring. I can crop to 16:9, but I'd lose some vertical resolution.

I am stuck with YouTube and standard definition DVD quality for the foreseeable future. No budget for a new camera.
 
VPTurner said:
Well, I guess I'm out then. All I have access to right now is my Canon XL1s. I can upconvert, but it will never be as good as HD footage. It records 480i and I output 480p (deinterlaced and converted to progressive scan) from Premiere Pro 2 for DVD authoring. I can crop to 16:9, but I'd lose some vertical resolution.

I am stuck with YouTube and standard definition DVD quality for the foreseeable future. No budget for a new camera.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... that would be a shame.

But I think if we were going to do this properly then that would probably be the lowest quality that we could go for. Perhaps not, there are a lot of people on here who understand the technical aspects better than I do.

That said if we had some evil madman who posted videos on the web in order to terrorise this small community of internet forum goers, you could do something like that. There are ways of getting round these little problems so that everyone can get involved.

And, shoot me in the nuts if I'm wrong, I thought that you were predominantly a writer? Would you not be interested in helping out on that side of the project?

Again I apologise if I am pigeon holing.
 
NickClapper said:
Hmmm... that would be a shame.

But I think if we were going to do this properly then that would probably be the lowest quality that we could go for. Perhaps not, there are a lot of people on here who understand the technical aspects better than I do.

That said if we had some evil madman who posted videos on the web in order to terrorise this small community of internet forum goers, you could do something like that. There are ways of getting round these little problems so that everyone can get involved.

And, shoot me in the nuts if I'm wrong, I thought that you were predominantly a writer? Would you not be interested in helping out on that side of the project?

Again I apologise if I am pigeon holing.
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It really just depends on your target audience and distribution medium. Feature films were shot with this camera, albeit using really expensive lenses.

I am focusing on screenwriting primarily right now, but I've been studying film and TV in one form or another for the last 20 years or so. I have tons of theory, but limited practice.

And no problem helping out on the writing. Anything that gets me working on something that doesn't involve the Nintendo.

These are screen grabs from footage I shot with this camera. This is its maximum resolution:

Day4-Teaser1.jpg


Day4-Teaser2.jpg


Sharon1.jpg


Paul1.jpg
 
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I actually didn't really check which camera you were talking about, just took your word for the footage quality not being great. Looks like a pretty sick camera to me :D

Maybe we should set a lower quality bar. The primary means of distribution would have to be via the Internet in one form or another, but it would be nice to get it screened somewhere if it's any good. I think I would defer to the more technically wise people on what the minimum specifications should be....

Oh and there goes Murdock being his usual irreverent self... :rolleyes:
 
Don't you think we are much more concern about footage quality!!?? I mean, why don't we leave this aspect for technical-guru!! we should start think about the story..




@VPTurner...hell ya...the girl is someone I'm looking for ;)
 
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mahdy said:
Don't you think we are much more concern about footage quality!!?? I mean, why don't we leave this aspect for technical-guru!! we should start think about the story..

@VPTurner...hell ya...the girl is someone I'm looking for ;)
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She's a professional model who showed up for a photo shoot we were doing for a calendar, and I was shooting behind the scenes stuff. But I do have her number on the release form. :D

Three things to be very concerned about are video quality, audio quality and story quality. Story comes first, of course. The script is a universal format, though, and doesn't have to transcode. Video and audio formats are not. Someone could be shooting 8-bit mono while someone else is shooting 16-bit stereo. Someone shooting 1080p while someone else shoots 480i. So it's best to have guidelines.
 
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