I think it would be cool to have a challenge done in the style of project greenlight (3).
http://projectgreenlight.liveplanet.com/pgl3/director/PGL3_Top10sceneassignment.pdf

The judges create 3 pages of script with holes, and the directors fill them in.

CHARACTER
What's your name?

CHARACTER
[7 WORD OR LESS RESPONSE]

CHARACTER
You remind me of [ANY CELEBRITY/HISTORICAL FIGURE]

Like that... What do you think?

Here is the outline of the rules they are using from the PGL3 website.
The scene is written to be as ambiguous as possible as to tone, character, gender, setting, circumstances, etc.
Contestants must select 2 of the 3 pages, combine them in the order of their choosing and shoot a single short film between 3 and 5 minutes in length. Additionally, you must add OR select dialog as prompted. Otherwise, the script must be played verbatim; however, pace - pauses, mumbles, gesticulations - are entirely up to you.
It is entirely up to you to decide how many characters are interacting in the scenes, how many locations are used, how many scenes you break the dialogue into, and whether or not the scenes are related or completely standalone. The only requirement is that at least one character must communicate all of the lines in the script. It’s up to you whether the lines are spoken, titled, in a foreign language, in slang. But ONLY the lines listed may be used and ALL lines must be used.
Items underlined and italicized are for you to select (for example: if the script has “he/she goes outside” it’s up to you to decide whether this will read “'he goes outside,” or “'she goes outside”). You must select and use one of the offered choices.

Interesting and yet complex at the same time. Seems like a decent starting point.

Sean

personally, I think the contest should continue with the minimal level of restriction it has right now. I just don't have ANY interest in working in someone else's line of dialouge into my work. I want to participate in the challenge, but I also want to make my movies the way i want to make them. If I had had to work in a line of dialouge into the last one i would have been doomed. The exchange you give in example would take maybe 20 seconds of screen time - over 10% of the three minute alotment. No thanks.

Something in between. I don't mind working in a line of dialogue from someone else, but not whole pages. Having a number of elements is fun (like the 48 Hour Film Festival), but just shooting someone else's script is not near as much fun.

Maybe think of it more as an exercise than a contest. If you are the DP, you don't get to choose the dialog the writer, producer and director have choosen you to shoot. It becomes your job to interpret the lighting designer and set designers ideas and choose angles and lenses to achieve the directors goals.

There could be other exercises to get us thinking on different levels of production but perhaps it wouldn't make the best contest after all.

I think there could be a static board with exercises posted and whoever wants to work through them could but simply as a learning thing. A similar idea could be to use a low angle shot in a short or to use sound effects or night time shooting, outdoors shooting, natural surroundings, that sort of thing.

Sean McHenry

True - I've seen some other boards in the past post exercises to focus on various areas of production. That would be a good idea in-between challenges.

But to me the big "challenge" in "DV Challenge" is actually coming up with a compelling idea.

True, so script writing might be a good one too. That's more contest like but specialized.

Frankly, I suppose, since I am a control freak, I like the way it is now because I can do it all. I come up with the ideas, I script it out, I Set design, I do props, I DP and light and shoot and edit, etc.

Maybe that's a good thing in itself. If more director-wanna-bees would do the whole process, they might appreciate all phases more and maybe even find out they like doing something better, like being a DP or lighting designer.

Sean

That reminds me of my favorite quote from Kubrick (or anyone) on learning about film:

QUESTION TO KUBRICK: If you were nineteen and starting out again, would you go to film school?

KUBRICK: The best education in film is to make one. I would advise any neophyte director to try to make a film by himself. A three-minute short will teach him a lot. I know that all the things I did at the beginning were, in microcosm, the things I'm doing now as a director and producer. There are a lot of noncreative aspects to filmmaking which have to be overcome, and you will experience them all when you make even the simplest film: business, organization, taxes, etc., etc. It is rare to be able to have an uncluttered, artistic environment when you make a film, and being able to accept this is essential.

The point to stress is that anyone seriously interested in making a film should find as much money as he can as quickly as he can and go out and do it. And this is no longer as difficult as it once was. When I began making movies as an independent in the early 1950s I received a fair amount of publicity because I was something of a freak in an industry dominated by a handful of huge studios. Everyone was amazed that it could be done at all. But anyone can make a movie who has a little knowledge of cameras and tape recorders, a lot of ambition and -- hopefully -- talent. It's gotten down to the pencil and paper level. We're really on the threshold of a revolutionary new era in film.

you can read more of this here:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html

True, so script writing might be a good one too. That's more contest like but specialized.

Frankly, I suppose, since I am a control freak, I like the way it is now because I can do it all. I come up with the ideas, I script it out, I Set design, I do props, I DP and light and shoot and edit, etc.

Maybe that's a good thing in itself. If more director-wanna-bees would do the whole process, they might appreciate all phases more and maybe even find out they like doing something better, like being a DP or lighting designer.

Sean
That was pretty much where I was coming from. I got into this with the idea of making my own movies, I doubt that I will ever work as some one else's DP, but I want to be able to do it for myself, the same as all the other roles, because when it comes down to it, since I can't pay anyone, I am the only on garunteed to show up on the set.

I totally agree with letting the challenge be as loose as it is today. Tiying us up in more details will in my opinion probably generate less interest and more people will end up on the wall of shame.

Ironically, while filming my entry to dvc2 I had my own idea for a guided contest, but I realize that it is pretty unworkable. I'll share it anyway.

I call it Global Zombie Holocoust

The challange works in a similar way as to now, except we have a genre instead of a theme, our genre would be, obviously, Zombies. At the beginning of the contest we would establish some ground rules, on such things as what caused the zombie uprising, how and if it can be stopped, weather to use fast or slow zombies or both, ect. A plot outline/timeline would have to be developed , and each team would have to commit to a certain amount of footage. One or two teams would handle the framing plot, and all the other teams could do individual survival narratives. When it's all done, it could theoretically be cut to gether into a mosiac style disaster movie.

A beautiful impossible idea.

P.S. When do we find out how badly I lost?

P.S. When do we find out how badly I lost?

I guess as soon as Dylan recovers from the bender he got while filming his... :)

When it's all done, it could theoretically be cut to gether into a mosiac style disaster movie.

A beautiful impossible idea.

What you are talking about is that we should make one movie together? Cool idea if it is. :)

What you are talking about is that we should make one movie together? Cool idea if it is. :)
That was the idea, cool or not though, it would be really difficult to do.

That was the idea, cool or not though, it would be really difficult to do.

Yeah, and especially in a week. This sound more like a "fun" project to do that will take some time. I figure that it could be done with greenscreens and stuff. The problem would be to maintain key characters throughout the movie... hmm... a challenge like this sounds interesting...

MENTAL NOTE: SELF Fredrik, stop jumping into impossible tasks!

Well... it would be sure fun to try something.. as a test...

The game we used to call "Telephone". I whisper a sentance to you, you tell the same sentance to the guy next to you and so on. Last guy in the line tells his sentance aloud and we all laugh at how far off the mark it has drifted.

Still, an interesting idea. There are examples of nearly similar collaboration like this in the real world now. I can't name them at this moment but there have been several recent films where differing directors did basically shorts based on similar characters or situations and they formed a patchwork that when edited together correctly equal one film.

It would have to be carefully constructed so nobody thinks they are making "Shaun of the Dead" while the rest are making "Dawn of the Dead". Wouldn't edit together too well.

Sean

I thought about this too, and I think it is the idea's fatal flaw.

Wouldn't edit together too well.


Our local group talked about this several times (group film) and the editing it together is always the hitch. Even if you are making the same film, the infinite possibilities of styles/takes/casting/directing = fun to make, not fun to edit or watch.

Perhaps one team does script, one does casting, one does shooting, one does sound, one does editing might be a better approach.

So what we end up with in the end is a production company with each department potentially run by comittee. A rather idealistic (read as Socialistic - not a bad thing if run right) company. Each according to his abilities, each according to his needs to quote a famous Russian.

I am not against it as an experiment and for fun but it might not produce anything the outside world would want to see. Still, except for the number of people involved, we just re-created Hollywood.

Sean

I think in this case the various jobs could still be self contained, there would need to be a master script, and the various "teams" would not, for the most part anyway, interact so editing style of the various segments wouldn't seem so disjointed. I'm thinking of something like Independence day or Deep Impact. A big story in the background with many smaller stories contained within it. The teams would have to shoot and edit with the idea that their segemts would be integrated into the whole.
The master scrip would be little more than an outline of the disasters progression- for instance if day four has a global quake and your team is doing a scene on that day, they would ned to work the quake in somehow or other, and it's aftermath would have to be felt in some minimal way in the scenes which come after.
I have a ton of ideas on the logistics of this thing, but once again, though, I'm not certain it could work.

I could see setting a general theme and then setting each group up with a guideline on styles. We used to have style guidlines at the previous Post house I worked at. Type fonts, color schemes, music beds, etc.

If the theme was aliens from space attacking, we could split it up something like I do rural midwest towns under attack and how we defended our small town from the aliens. You take a big city like NY and show the same idea but with a bent on the big city and the way they do it there. Somebody else takes a look from a colder climate like Canada and others from various other areas. We can then intercut the sequences to show how we are all fending off the attackers in our own way.

That sort of thing might work but we would have to stay pretty close to the guidelines.

Sean

Wow, Sean it's like you read my mind or something. That is pretty much my whole vision for the project. My Global Zombie Holocoust would probably be supernatural in origin and the Framing Story would deal with that and the groups associated with diffusing the situation or failing to do so. the rest of the segemnts would be just as you descripbed, basically "what we did during the Global Zombie holocaust" narratives.

If you were willing to experiment rather than try to create something great from the start, you could do each in a different style. That is, change the perspective a bit. Make the city version through the eyes and camera of a seasoned television crew. Polished shots, except when being chased by Zombies naturally. The rural take could be that of a Jr. high student with a basic handy cam. Think Blair witch. Do one as a simulated cell phone camera (maybe a bit too gritty to watch for long). One could be from the eyes of a film school student who was backpacking across Canada shooting nature footage of Grizzly bears. Film student would have grain, etc and be processed to look like film.

And so on. Each should have a distinct, easily discrenable style.

Sean

I agree, and I believe that it ultimately add to the work. i don't know if each segement should have a "in story" cam associated with it or not, although that might work for one or two segements- the news crew for instance would be a good group to follow when they are on camera and off camera. Other segments could be shot according to the mood of the narrative dyanamic/situation/location/cast of characters. On second thought, the dedicated cam idea might work... I dunno, I like to use the cam as an additional character, almost anyway, when I shoot and that might or might not work out better if the cam was actually in the story. Hmmm.

Ok, two things:

One, the DV Challenge will stay as loosely formatted as possible, simply because I've worked on lots of short film challenges with tons of restrictions, and I hate them. :)

Secondly, when I first came up with the DV Challenge, I had previously considered doing a Lady X style DV competition based on a zombie/horror theme. I have the entire framework laid out for it, but I'm not going to post it in public unless I am actually running it. If any of you are really interested in it, email me for the details and I'll consider doing it.

There you go Michael.

Thanks Dylan. I think we decided we would all like the competition loose too. But the Zombie thing sounds like it might be an interesting experiment.

Sean