OK folks. Let me have it.

My comments on "Bent Rays":
I can't give much away just yet as the contest is actually still running with a few hours to go. I can say I was looking for a twist on an old theme with this one. Yes, it is in keeping with my darker side. I will be interested in seeing how many folks came up with a similar theme.

I will discuss details as people make comments and add to my comments section. I can say I once again borrowed some music to help set the mood from a friend in France. Please look for the name KDream at Unsignedbandweb.com. He's quite talented.

I have 2 favorite musicians for my scores, KDream and the fabulous Ronni Raygun who inspired Cat Fight at OK and Corral. Links to Cat Fight are found on my web site.

Enjoy.

Sean

Now that my entry link has been published, I will be putting it up on Google later today. I want to re-render the version I will put there. Same exact piece but the titles came out a bit pixelated in the wmv file and I want Google to have a pristine copy this time. I'll post the link here when it's up.

Sean McHenry

You are dark and twisted. I liked the little twist of her frying the globe. Nice score on the video stage setup. It was nicely lit and put together. I thought it was a little wordy the first watch as I had trouble following. Maybe it was just her delivery. The audio was nice and clean. Music was cool too. Great job.

Dark and twisted, I don't think so, well not compared to some others I've seen out there in Internet land. There was a twist and it did have a dark element. It was shot really well. When you cut to the girl holding the magnifying glass I thought for sure we were going to get a dust speck on a flower a la Horton Hears a Who. Nicely done Sean.

A different take on voodoo, hmm? What a demented little girl! (just kidding, of course!)

The first time through, I had trouble staying with the narration--found my mind wandering a bit. Could you (since you're putting it up in other places) maybe bring that music in sooner to get the mood going earlier? Make us feel more of the doom?

Your work is always solid, Sean, and this one is no exception. Nice job.

And I've been dying to ask people here: How are you guys putting up these videos to where there's little wait time and no saving to a drive? I'm still doing the "save target as" thing, which must frustrate the daylights out of the rest of you.

Ladies first;

Lorinda, just hit the "video" button on the Google home page. You have to go through some details but there is a button allowing you to upload your own videos. It used to be you had to download an uploader application from Google but you don't have to anymore. Just render it out to a really clean wmv file (they accept several formats but the wmvs seem to convert really clean). It used to take from 2 hours to 2 days to show up on Google but the last short, Cat Fight was up and running as soon as it uploaded.

The wmv or whatever you send is converted on the fly to Flash 8 whish is what Google uses. From there, you can embed the video in your own web page. See my Portfolio page for examples of how it looks. This is a great thing they offer.

The rest of you, yes... muhhh haa haa... I am a bit twisted. If you have ever seen that Master Card (or whatever it was) commercial with M. Night Shymalan in it, where he sees the odd creepy things in a dinner, yep, been that way most of my life. I think I got that way playing WAY too many hours of Quake.

I didn't want the music too powerful but if you turn up the volume a bit, it's actually running under the whole piece.

More music from KDream. See my site for more info on him as well. Great musicians I have to work with these days.

Yes, Horton Hears a Who has always fascinated me. There was a great scene in Animal House where the kids are getting stoned with Elliot Gould and talking about how our solar system could be one molecule in the thumbnail of a giant. Love that idea. Sort of ties into the whole Matrix theory as well. We are not in control and are not who we think we are.

I can't take too much credit for the news stage setup, it is a news stage setup. We do lots of live shots from my day job at the production studio here in Columbus, Ohio. I did do a lot of set dressing, adjusted some lighting and monitor placements, the prompter she is using is my laptop with prompter software, etc.

I keep failing to mention the gear I used in these. This was all standard 3-point studio lighting in a 22' tall grid except the outside stuff which was all uncle Sol. The camera, despite seeing the nice Thompson cameras in the shots, was my little Sony PDX-10 in 16:9. Bogen tripod, Azden 100LT wireless and that was about it.

Glad you like it.

Sean

Sort of reminds me of the end of 'Men in Black' when the camera moves 'outside' our universe to reveal it's just a marble in some aliens pouch...

Nice job. I liked how you shot it and the story.

I felt like the dialog could have been shortened to 'move' the piece along (it sort of rambled) and some of your camera shots/angles became a bit repetative.

But what do I know? I'm just a newbie in this arena.

Thanks for entertaining me!

Jim

But that's why we do this, to get peoples opinions. That and prizes, but mostly it's for the feedback - yeah, the feedback.

You are probably correct. I had a lot of dialog and it could get tedious. I shot the same dialog all the way through at least 3 times - Natalie is a trooper - and cut the best parts together. SOP on smaller shoots. I could have done with a nice overhead shot but the ladder wasn't handy.

All in all, and it might look like it, the whole piece took one hour in the studio total and about 20 minutes at home with the young lady at the end.

The longest part was me sitting in the sun for about an hour and a half pre-burning all those spots on the $14 globe. Still haven't tossed it out.

Overall, I see small dialog flaws that were all mine as the writer that I would fix if re-shooting it. I would also try to make it about 30 seconds lighter at the front. I was looking for it to be a cross of the Original War of the Worlds with the reporter and a monologue and a Twilight Zone thing.

Thanks for the input,

Sean

Didn't see THAT one coming, Sean! Very slick. Very pro. Nice studio setup. These entries are really good!

Woohoo, looks like Canada was spared!

Nice studio setup Sean. We've had several "news reporting" entries and I think this one looks really good because of the set decoration. Did you use a multiple-camera setup in the studio scene?

Also, nice job on the video compression. It looked really good for a 3-minute piece compressed down to less than 5MB.

Cheers,

Eric

I didn't want the music too powerful but if you turn up the volume a bit, it's actually running under the whole piece.
Oops! Please forgive me. I watched this with the audio pretty low so as not to disturb anyone else in the house. I'm such an idiot!

It is kind of low but I have heard lots of videos in my life where the music is overpowering. I am very cautious of using music to set the mood but not get in the way.

Sean

The ending reminds me of something out of the twilight zone. Now, was it supposed to be obvious she was looking at the teleprompter or was it just the angle? That's the only thing that kind of bugged me. Other than that cool twist and good story.

Yes. Yes. Now that's a film I like, great Twilight Zone vibe you've got going!

Hardly what I'd call dark, but it's got a great twist that made me smile. I'm not so sure I like the anchor's delivery, though; beside not seeming terribly bothered by what has happened, it just seems to come out far too slowly. I think this ending would have worked better if the dialogue weren't quite as...I don't know, "wordy", I guess. There was a big reveal at the end, yes, but up until that point it didn't feel like a build up of tension to me, just a long speech.

Still a great, great entry, with incredible quality in a tiny file on top of everything.

OK. Yep, it was perhaps wordy but you all know me by now, that's me. I like my soapbox.

I look at Natalies delivery as, well, like a news person. In Wells War of the Worlds, the reporter was pretty cool and collected for a guy dodging beams from an alien spacecraft. (The original version) She kept her cool, that's her job, no matter what the situation.

On the prompter issue, I actually shot through my camera a little too close to the studio camera. It's supposed to be obvious she is looking at yet another camera, not into mine. We are an omnipotent presence, not a member of the viewing audience. That would have been a long monologue looking at only one camera shot, even with a slow zoom.

I suppose it may have been a bit wordy. Like I said, I would rework some of that and perhaps kill 30 seconds or so. At the time, I thought I had a lot to say about it through the reporter. Not about greenhouse gasses or global warming but about how, where and that nobodys knows what's happening.

Sean

Sean,

This one reminded me of an old "Twilight Zone"episode. I used to climb on my parents bed, glued to the T.V. to watch horrible, horrible things. Like the pretty girl who thought she was ugly.

I noticed Portland and Seattle were spared, while my beloved Georgia was burned to cinders. I'm sure there is a message in there somewhere. You rather drink coffee than eat peanuts.

I'd like to have more of a sense of panic from the reporter. I mean the world is coming to an end and all that, just FYI! But nicely produced.

Dick

Nice work Sean. You put it together really well. Good choice on the music.

Your reporter was really good. I thought she carried the dialog really well, and I don't think that it was too long, however, a little more and it might have been. So I think you made the cut just right.

It might have been nice to see her flame out (just kidding!)

I thought about blowing up the place but went without it. The signal fade was enough to transitions I think. Ever really try to record snow? With modern Televisions, it's dang near impossible. Most go blue screen when there is no signal present.

If I had more energy, I was going to run the news broadcast through several televisions in different houses and settings like they had been left on and the house abandoned. Then go to the live picture and then to the girl at the end. (Her name is Hannah). I still like that idea.

Sean

I think it was a great payoff to the idea. The newsroom was a handy thing to have available - all the stuff in there looks great, although I agree that her eyeline also irked me (I also found it a bit wordy). The look of the outside stuff seems a bit wanting by comparison. Maybe a stronger hand with colour correction would make it match better. All in all, a nice short.


-j

Dick, and everyone else who might remember it,
There was a great episode I'll always remember where a lady was in a large city and there was something wrong with the earths orbit or something and the planet was getting burned up slowely. Everyone was going nuts, getting cranky (I understand that) and getting dangerous. People were flipping out.

In the end, after the morality part of the story finishes, we see her waking up one morning and the situation is completly opposite. She was having a fever induced dream hence the world burning up but in reality, something happend and the earth was drifting away from the sun and the planet was freezing over. That's where they ended that one.

I remember the one about the girl. Liked the lighting as I recall.

Remember this show:
http://www.scifilm.org/tv/outerlimits/outerlimits1-17.html

This Outer Limits episode still gives me the creeps.

Sean

I thought about blowing up the place but went without it. The signal fade was enough to transitions I think.
It made the transition for me, though it was subtle. Fantastic job Sean, nice wrap up, very unpredictable.

Justin

Bent Rays is now on google and looks pretty good. The wmv file is still better but the Falsh 8 version Google has plays nice.

You can get to it from my page at DeepBlueEdit.com (As soon as I add the link) or direct from google.

Sean

I liked it, the set was amazing! I found the it a tad too long or wordy, but very good nonetheless. The only thing that distracted me was the reporter, she was almost always looking off to the side while reading the teleprompter. I found it distracting.

Loved the twist at the end.

Well done!

Hello Mike,
Thanks for stopping by. Covered the prompter issue earlier. See this link

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=532379&postcount=15

I actually got to close and it looked like she should have been reading to my camera but the intent, like in the rest of the video was that my camera, the one you are watching through is an omnipotent viewer with infinite viewing angles available. We are not really watching the show through the studio cameras, we are viewing from in the studio space.

I just got too close to one of the studio cameras and it looks like she should be reading directly to the audience through my lens. I wanted to keep a distance and not have her speaking directly to us but I got to close to the line.

Sean

That makes sense, thanks.

Mike

Yeah, it makes sense but I should have done that part better. Always learning.

Sean

No harm in making us think outside the box. Hollywood often tries to spell things out for us, it's nice to have to pay attention again. ;)

Well done.

Should you be interested, that very sentiment is a huge part of David Mamets small but very packed book titled "On Directing Film". Not that I am a 100% follower of his ideas but he has some great points. He very much believes, as do I that letting your mind see things is quit often a richer experience than just letting your eyes see something.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140127224/002-6996004-2543221?v=glance&n=283155

I am quite often let down when I see the moster that has supposedly been terrorizing a town only to find it's made out of carpeting or seaweed or something. My mind had a mush scarier vision than that.

In Mothman Prophecies or White Noise, you never clearly see the evil abd guys. That makes it so much better for me. I get to see the scariest visions in my own head that way. Much darker and more terrifying. Even in Hitchcock's Psycho, we really don't get a look at Norman as his mother until the very end.

We are all afraid of the unknown. That's what makes the dar so scary. We are deprived of our vision and can't see the fine details that might allow us to make it less scary.

Anyway, I love that idea.

Sean

I think it could go both ways, Sean. I'm also a fan of not seeing the monster/murderer/other scary thing clearly, but there's another side to things that I can't help but consider.

As you point out, with the Psycho example, filmmakers have been using the technique of withholding the scary stuff for over forty years now; it's standard issue. Old hat. Hackneyed. Done to death. No one shows the monster, that's the accepted way to tell these stories. The "right" way, as far as most people are concerned. How effective can it be after so much exposure? I watch a scary movie, and somebody's about to get it, I know I won't see it. I'm anticipating the cut, the jump to another shot or scene, and when it arrives, right on schedule, it's boring. I expect it. It's the way things are done in the films I've grown up with. To actually see something, though? That's new, fresh, and exciting if only for the fact that it's different. And I think it can be an improvement.

Consider an example. You have a relative in the hospital, ready to die, and you've come to say your last farewell. The nature of their illness dictates a bloody, disgusting, messy, excruciatingly painful death, a truly horrific thing to watch. What's the more traumatic experience? To say goodbye, leave the room, wander around the waiting area for a while, and later on listen to a doctor explain "I'm sorry, he's passed on"? Or to have the room door get jammed shut while you're inside, leaving you to experience the relative screaming bloody murder, bleeding out of every hole in his body, vomiting uncontrollably, convulsing, tearing his own skin off in agony while you're trapped there, forced to watch the entire thing?

I say that sometimes, you should show everything. I think in certain cases, merely implying the horrific act/event is letting the audience off the hook; by visualizing the scene yourself, you are only as horrified as your imagination allows you to be. But to be stuck in your seat, faced with a forty foot image, an unblinking eye aimed right at the horror, made to confront the very thing you're so scared of? That strikes me as much more disturbing. You can't just picture something else, you can't just focus on the suggestive imagery until the scene is over, you can't get away. It's there, and you have to deal with it.

I present this more as a point to ponder, however, since as I said I do enjoy some good implication. On the one hand, I think Psycho would have been scarier if we'd seen Janet Leigh's death. To be made to witness the murder of a helpless woman? Her screams of pain, the knife sinking in to her flesh over and over, blood everywhere? That's a sight I'm not terribly interested in seeing, and burning a thing like that into my retinas is a sure way to disturb me. But on the other hand, I can respect the way Hitchcock handled himself; that's not the way he liked to tell his stories, and displaying such violence would not have improved his film as a whole. It may have been scarier in my view--at least that particular scene--but not "better".

I underrstand that perspective as well - if you can pull it off. Back in my early Sci-Fi / Horror days I got tired of seeing Godzilla as being something that's supposed to be scary. Any guy walking around in a rubber suit just makes me want to walk out of the room. Frankly, even though it's a great remake, Carpenters "The Thing" is like that too. It's predictable foam latex appliances, animatics, robotics, gallons of that slimy stuff and fake blood. I've seen all that in countless movies, including the Matrix.

The old cheesy Sinbad epics with the stop motion animated skeletons and stuff, can't watch those anymore either. Let's talk dinosaurs made from either rubber, guys in suits or god forbid, the actual lizzards in makeup, ala Journey to the Center of the Earth, etc. It's just that if you can't do it right, I would much rather concentrate on the story or making it so what I imagine is so much more powerful.

Take a look at some of the current popular horror favorites like the really well done "House of 1000 Corpses" or "Devils Rejects". Yeah, there is some makeup work in there but examine what is it that makes it so much better than anything comparable budget wise? A lot of it for me is that you never see a lot of the made up characters completly and never for a prolonged shot.

Probably the best of all the dark and creepy television shows ever made by a long long shot, Millinneum did very fast cuts of horrific stuff. Not on the screen long enough to get a good look at anything but incredibly effective. Much bettert than all the silly rip-offs that came after it.

Anyway, yeah sure, I like to see a good monster but these days, I'm hard to please when it comes to monsters. I just picked up "Silent Hill" Those things are right out of a nightmare so they are very effective for me. The movie is so-so but the makeup, costuming and effects are really good. Reminds me a bit of "The Cell".

Sean

Point taken; if you try to show something creepy, and fail, it doesn't work. A major risk, to be sure.

Silent Hill tops the chart of my favorite videogames of all time. The movie isn't so bad, either, considering how badly they could have adapted it. The game was directly influenced by the likes of Adrian Lyne's film "Jacob's Ladder", Stephen King's short story "The Mist", and Dean Koontz's novel "Phantoms", so check those out if you like this kind of thing (and haven't done so already). And let's not forget "Session 9", as well, one of my favorite examples of holding back on your audience. The technique may be "standard issue", but man, can it be fun.

I own Jacobs Ladder, Stay and The Jacket. Interesting ideas there. These 3 films have the same basic idea driving them. Stay is very well done too, if you haven't seen that one yet, it's worth finding.

My wife is a Koontz fan. She liked that one and has since turned into one of those people that watches all those medical and police shows on real life unsolved crimes. Sometimes I worry she's just gathering ideas...

I just a few minutes ago watched the most current release of the old version of Wicker Man by Anchor Bay. In the making of section of it, the writer mentioned exactly this very thing. He left some things ambigous specifically to let the audience have some fun with it. This movie was put out in 1973 and had some very interesting background. If you look it up, and especially if you get to see the behind the scenes stuff on it, it's fascinating to see what happened to this film over the years.

Sean