Guys and gals, the title says it all. This is where we post what goes right and what goes not so well with the making of our entries.

Let the fun begin! :)

OK, I have locked down an idea, but its way out of my comfort zone as I will need to design a lot of animations, maps and various other things I wouldn't normally deal with. I'll also need a number of obscure props....

So does anyone know where it might be possible to find a royalty free (and preferably free) image like the one below?

Basically it needs to be a clichéd image like you would expect to find in an old ad or movie in the 1950's.

Actually, the expression on her face is kind of like how I feel about this project right now!

Looks like you have an interesting plan, Simon.

I have been out hiking and filming a bit today. But can't say my "host of the show" cooperated. Didn't see any living creatures except for one single bird which was too far away.
Better luck tomorrow, and if not, I'm over to plan B...

Tronde,

At leat you are out there and have a subject.

I am still up in the air. Wildlife has migrated south, so just the usual winter residents somewhat terrified and in hiding as it is hunting season for most game for the next few weeks.

Have a non wildlife idea, but I can't do it alone. Running short on creativity for some reason the last 6 months!! Well, maybe I just never had any??? LOl.

To date, I have found no surer method of securing a metric crapton of work than to enter a UWOL/DVC Contest.

Seriously, we should hold these things every month.

On the plus side, I think it will be easy to do a secondary edit on one of the projects and develop a TV show from the material.

Does anyone have a Stargate I can borrow?

Back to square one for me, and plan B has still not told me what it is.
Maybe I could share a Stargate with Dylan. :)

Does anyone have a Stargate I can borrow?

Gosh, dog it, no! But I do have an Omega 13, if I can jsut find a box big enough to ship it to you...

I have this Stargate. Located in Himalayas. Can you use it ?

Actually.... that's perfect!
What's shipping from the Himalayas to Vancouver BC?

Shipping is only $ 27,500, but its the Tibetan monks that go with it to operate that really cost......And we can't even get them into this country because of Homeland security.... maybe would be easier to get to Canada...

Actually, the more I see it, the more I like it for our video... where did you find the graphic?

Why don't you simply pass the Stargate through the backup Stargate? That's got to save you the shipping as well as some transit time.

Andrew

Actually, the more I see it, the more I like it for our video... where did you find the graphic?

I made it in Vue 8. You are welcome to use it if you want. I can do a bit more cleanup work on it if you want it and maybe render at a higher level. Different lighting if you want. Let me know. I can mess with it a bit.

Andrew... genius!

Chris, looks like you're going to get a credit in our film!

Ok, I managed to shoot about 1 hours footage in a swamp today, specifically looking for a very elusive creature. I got maybe 30 seconds of useable footage. Thats the first time I have actually managed to shoot something for this competition. Other than that everything is going wrong.

Stupidly I grabbed a couple of CF cards and put them in the nanoflash and presumed it was recording. Not so; the cards were almost full and I only got the first few shots. Luckily I had a tape as backup, but now I have to start messing around with capturing (but I don't have the right Firewire cable for my new Mac, the cable should arrive in the beginning of December)!

I also managed to get one of my props partially functioning today, if I can get it fully functioning then I might have a chance to have a 'story', but its not looking good in terms of timing.

Last competition the story came together very easily, and I was most concerned about the editing. This time around I have been testing FCPX and I have been very happy with the results so far; if only the story would fall into place!

Where is the sharktank kept?

Sounds like an interesting project you have, Simon. Good luck!

I was filming a bit downtown yesterday for my plan B. Still need some more shots, but plenty time until deadline, yet.

Impressive what some people might do when they see a tripod+cam+mic.
"Look kids, mom/dad is on tv..." Yep, even some adults found the need to get crazy. Their kids were more embarassed, haha.
Luckily there is a start/stop button on the camera.

Well... we are actively trying to get Dylan back from wherever he ended up in the Time-Space continuum after our wildly successful shoot this weekend. Well... I THINK it was this weekend... things get blurry when dealing with <rest of post deleted by Timelords>

well, well, well...
then we've got "Berit" and she is making it very difficult for me, filming my charity project.

Hurricane winds, lightning and thunder,
snow, sleet, hail and rain,
But I will remain - I'll be back again.

Well... we are actively trying to get Dylan back from wherever he ended up in the Time-Space continuum after our wildly successful shoot this weekend. Well... I THINK it was this weekend... things get blurry when dealing with <rest of post deleted by Timelords>

I meant to tell you guys to not actually use that Stargate..... its got a lot of issues, and the damn temporal warp capacitor, misfires once in a while. Last guy we sent through the gate ended up with two ears on his lower cheeks, if you know what I mean...

Chris,

Will you stoop to nothing to win the DV Challenge? Giving Dylan a faulty Stargate? I plan to play fair.

Hey Dick:

You need anything ? :)

I'm out.

Bad ankle problem has me hardly able to even "hobble" around the house.

Good luck to everyone else.

I have just finished 4 days of shooting for this project today, through some very remote and tough conditions. I just came home now badly sunburned, and rattled to hell. The documentary relied upon an old, and very temperamental prop to drive the story forward; luckily it worked out well in the end. I managed to convince a friend to help me out with this documentary; but it was a pretty grueling expedition that we undertook to get it done in time.

Hopefully the footage will reflect the journey properly. 95% of the footage is in the bag now; I just need to log it all and edit it. Tomorrow I have to shoot 2 quick scenes to tie the story together and then its done, though I am still waiting for some graphics and animations (and a narrator) to finalize it all. It will be tight but I feel its come together well.

5 minutes is the limit, right?

One of our crew died coming back from the Himalayan Stargate... poor bastard never came back. Well... some of him did but... the horror...

Well, uh,,,,, I didn't know you were going to really use it....

Our shoot----

Well I guess I should tell about our woes here too. Our on location shoot on Plantonia was very nice. We did not need to outfit our team with breathing aperatus, or anything. No one had any issues bringing back any bugs either. So it was a pretty successful trip.

After filming parts of my entry almost two weeks ago, we have been hit with 2 strong storms and tons of rain. Roughly 25-100mm rain each day since last tuesday, combined with gale force winds, has prevented me to go out to shoot the remaining footage I need. Oh well, still many days until deadline. Next storm is scheduled to hit us tonight. Wohoo, can't wait.

Ive been shooting this for so long I had to go back in time for reshoots.

Let's see... shooting went well, but editing has been interrupted by geopolitical turbulence, the storming of an embassy and the downing of a US drone. But it should be done in time.... Maybe.

I'm out.

Bad ankle problem has me hardly able to even "hobble" around the house.

Good luck to everyone else.

Bruce: Sorry to hear, was looking forward to another of your films.....

I have to throw in the towel, to put it that way
Storms and the flu has put me out completely
My work is half done, which may be completed later - who knows
The idea was to make a childrens TV show,
and the main characters was a cat and an otter, I say no more :)
Wish you all good luck

Back to square 1 for me.
Filmed parts of my entry 2 weeks ago. Then storm, rain, more storm, heavy work load, and now even snow has prevented filming of the remaining shots.
Hopefully I can come up with a new idea real quick. If not, I'm out.

I think I'm out too.
I have struggled like not time before with the theme, even had to read Wikipedia and watch Youtube, what is considered a tv show these days, because I don't have a tv.

During that struggle I came up with an idea for a very cool (subjectively of course) visual poem, that unfortunately doesn't have anything to do with the theme at all... :( It's more like Dante's Inferno, really).

So now I'm very excited about my idea and will film during the week. I'll try to find something to donate to the charity fund.

Since when did the submission have to be on theme.... ??? :)

I think I'm out too.
I have struggled like not time before with the theme, even had to read Wikipedia and watch Youtube, what is considered a tv show these days, because I don't have a tv.




I also don't have a TV (I gave it up 4 years ago; though I still watch dvd's). But I thought this theme was pretty open to interpretation: I just thought about what kind of show I'd like to see on TV and then set out to make that show.

I just locked the final cut today. I might try to do a better sound edit if I find the time, and maybe do some color correction if there is a chance (but then again its a documentary - no need for color correction, right...)

(but then again its a documentary - no need for color correction, right...)

I guess you could do even without footage in this case, just document the facts on a notepad :P

I have to throw in the towel, to put it that way
Storms and the flu has put me out completely
My work is half done, which may be completed later - who knows
The idea was to make a childrens TV show,
and the main characters was a cat and an otter, I say no more :)
Wish you all good luck

Take what you have an cut it into a trailer for the show. No where does it say it has to be a full show. ;)

I guess you could do even without footage in this case, just document the facts on a notepad :P

Yeah, but I'd write it on a white notepad, and then people would say it should have been a yellow notepad. So I'd still have to color correct it.....

Anyhow, I tried all of yesterday to upload the first cut to vimeo, but it took the whole day to do it because we are having very bad rolling power cuts here (the servers keep going down). Eventually I managed to upload it last night, but it took 8 hours and only finished at 2 in the morning.

I still might try to do a color graded cut with a better sound edit, but it looks unlikely I'll be able to upload that in time for the deadline; but at least I have the first cut as insurance....

All in the can and post production completed. Will upload tomorrow. Look forward to seeing everyone's entries!

Hey you guys, don't bow out, get your film finished..... look what Dylan did !!

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/dvc-uwol-charity-challenge/503405-surprise-bonus-week-more.html

After reading other poster's tales, I feel I should share. I nearly threw in the towel myself. I even traveled to the Bahamas to shoot this "show" (and another show...). Then got back to do post and was so bored of it. So then I went to throw in the towel and out of nowhere the girlfriend intercepted me, tackled me to the floor WAIT that's a different story. All in all I only used aprx 30sec of that footage and started from scratch. I cannot wait to have it finished for all to see, and is easily one of my favorite projects I have ever done.

Thank you for giving us one more week, now I will try the best I can to submit my video.
Really, this was a Christmas gift I like very much :)
Now I just have to get hold of the cat and get it to interact with its character.

The extra week is a good thing. I see a tiny little hope I will manage to submit something after all.
In worst case, I'll just cut together a teaser or something like that.

So far I'm thinking this will be a kind of short/light version of a project I have been more or less planning for a couple years.

The extra few days are needed over here -- if only to successfully upload the file. The internet in this place is throttled, and access to Vimeo is possible only in the most roundabout way to get by the censors. But it's on its way....

Pretty much in the can. Can use the next week to clean up some things, if I want...

Locked and loaded. My entry's in. If I hold on to it for the next few days and fiddle with it I'm just as likely to find myself in the middle of another geopolitical storm that will sweep it away to the nether regions of the priority list. This is shaping up to be the Christmas that wasn't... Work, work, work!

Great to hear your entry is up, Marc! although I haven't taken a sneak peak at it yet because that would be wrong before the official judging process began. Definitely, 100% haven't looked even a teensy weensy bit.

Whew, that's a relief. Because I didn't look on your page at all -- at all! -- for your Lovecraftian episode. At all. I suppose I could have blocked views to my video, but with the scruples cherished by the people here I knew that to be a pointless endeavour. Besides, too complicated to log on and find the damned buttons to do so.

The cat is uncooperative, but a few days left until the deadline expires...