DVC9 - "Hindsight" - Jon Jones

[Jonathan Jones]

DVC9 – “Hindsight” – Jon Jones


So I was visiting in Boise this summer, and I got a chance to meet Lorinda (DVC Diva and DVC#4 winner) in person. And I made a promise that after an almost 2 year hiatus to focus on life and business, I was going to return to the DVC and compete in #9

(Proof of my meeting of DVC royalty is at the bottom of this post.)

You're awesome Lorinda.

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Our crew was really excited about jumping back into the fray…..until Dylan released the theme. We finally came up with some form of idea after a few rounds of beer and wine.

So my movie is Hindsight. While we struggled coming up with the story, we really focused on good technique (as much as guerilla style filming in parking lots and city parks will allow) and tried to run an organized operation from beginning to end.

As a result, I am proud to say that this time around, the movie actually turned out pretty much the way we planned it, and although we trimmed a couple seconds to stay under the time limit (3:15 max…..ours is 3 min, 14 sec, 28 frames.) we didn’t have to sacrifice any of the scripted story and our crew is proud of this submission.

I really hope you enjoy watching it.

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As an added note: I tried really hard to put the video on our site with enough options to satisfy a number of the access requests that others have asked for in previous DVCs. So I just submitted one link that takes you to my site, from which you can then just choose whatever viewing or downloading option works best for you.

You can also enjoy a blooper reel and a short production notes video linked on the site. I kind of wanted to round out the project and it was pretty fun to do.

(The downloadable files download as .hqx files that must be unzipped or unstuffed before watching – apparently a recent change to my server protocols that I cannot avoid…sorry)

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Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention the gear:

Shot with a Canon XL2 with stock 20x lens and sitting on a Bogen/Manfrotto 3246 (don’t know what kind of head…I’m saving up for a better one.)

Microphones: AT897 (on a Home Depot boom) for dialogue, and a Rode Podcaster for voiceover.

Lit with Cool Lux Mini Cools and Lowel Ego lights. (plus one Energizer LED Utility Headlamp to angle onto the restaurant wall)

Some additional footage shot with a Pocket Dolly kit on Home Depot PVC track ( but those shots had to be cut for time.)

Cut with FCP on a G4 Powerbook.

The fake website mockup was done in Pages and the restaurant signs were made in Photoshop.

Music from SmartSound

Ambient sound and sound efx from Digital Juice ( as well as a couple seconds of Digital Juice Videotraxx stock footage.)

That’s’ about it.

Hope ya like it.

-Jon

[Bruce Foreman]

Well, Jon.

A very neatly done story with good pacing and progression. You had an excellent variety of shots, the camera work and angles looked quite good to me. And the ending "twist" was very well done.

I knew something was coming up, "Richard's" disregard for others' plight was shown as quite obvious but with only 3 minutes to use you had to do that.

It looked very well planned and came off very smoothly, your acting was just right and your supporting cast did very well too.

Everything about this one was very well done.

I just came back to these comments after watching your bonus features. Enjoyed the bloopers (always funny watching someone else "flub up"), but also the production notes. After seeing those it felt a little like knowing a little more about you, and that is always a good thing among the friends we meet here.

Thanks for making these available.

[Stacy Dudley]

I agree with Bruce. The pacing was great and all the shots we very well done.

Thanks for the bloopers!

Stacy

[Lorinda Norton]

Hey! I like your goatee! Catty women... :)

Great movie, Jon. I not only liked the concept, you all did a good job of acting.

I think what impresses me, too, is the polished look you give your stuff with the titling, graphics--all that. Wish I could do even a fraction of what you do in that area.

I'm glad you all had fun with this; it showed, and we got the benefit of all the hard work. I'll try to write more later--right now it feels weird sitting at Bradley's Mac--like something just doesn't feel quite right. ;)

Thanks for the pic; it was soooo much fun meeting you, having breakfast and talking about everyone on DV Info (I'm kidding!)--everything under the sun. Thanks, too, for making good on your promise to do this DVC. I love your movies (although, I'm still mad about that one with the dog in DVC2...) :)

[Jesse Steele]

i hate to sound like a broken record but i agree with bruce and lorinda as well!

Great pacing it flowed well and it didnt seem like three minutes at all!

great job
Jesse

[Randall Allen]

Great job. Nothing I can say that has not already been said and seconded so I'll shut up now.

Randy

[Marco Wagner]

Wonderfully smart and savvy. I highly enjoyed it.

[Kris Holodak]

Oh, loved when the friend in the Rav4 picked up her phone. Laughed out loud and knew exactly what was going on. Enjoyed the little ad at the beginning. It wasn't strictly necessary, but since you had the time it made a good opening.

The music was very good at setting the pacing and mood. You didn't mention it in your credits. Where'd you find it?

My only technical comment is that I wish the restaurant audio was a good as her audio had been throughout. It would have been hard to get his as good as hers, but the difference between them is noticeable.

Smile,
Kris

PS: went back and read the thread. I'll give your music source a try; that was nice sounding stuff. Also, funny how it didn't feel long at all even though you maxed out the time.

[Jonathan Jones]

Thanks so much for all of your very kind and supportive comments. I'm really glad y'all dug the movie, and were entertained by the extra features on the site. I have been passing on the comments to my cohorts in the SlipShodCrew and they are thrilled that their efforts are so well recieved.

Your words are very very very much appreciated.

-Jon

[Jonathan Jones]

Originally Posted by Kris Holodak

My only technical comment is that I wish the restaurant audio was a good as her audio had been throughout. It would have been hard to get his as good as hers, but the difference between them is noticeable.

Hey Kris,
Thanks so much for your insightful comments regarding the audio. It was a bit of a sticking point for me as well.

The difference between the sound of the dialogue was intentional but not all of it came out exactly as intended. There are 4 different types of dialogue audio in the film and each was intended to sound different in context of their content:

- The radio commercial broadcast voice, which was pitched and compressed to sound 'FM Broadcastish',

- the voice on the answering machine was eq'd to be extra 'tinny', though not as noticeable on some speakers 'cuz the first 'rough cut' processing was way too 'tinny and hurt my ears, so I backed off a little bit, but was still trying to make it sound like it was coming from an anwering machine (cuz it really wasn't - other than the dialogue exchanges, pretty much every bit of ambience and sound effects were developed, needle dropped or foley'd in post production.)

- The female character reading her email directions and the 'gotcha' card was recorded with a very simple approach with a warm presence, almost as if the character is hearing the 'voice' in his head as he reads the text that she wrote, so we didn't want it to sound like a live dialogue exchange.

- Finally, the live dialoge exchange, especially the very short simple two line exchange in the restaurant. As you noted, this is where we fell down a little bit, and is probably my biggest frustration in the movie (and for only a few words, sheesh...but I'm really a stickler for good audio and it bugs me to no end that I wasn't able to get this right. We used a short shotgun on a boom, but as it would turn out, the only two folks in our crew with any live mic and booming experience just happened to be the same two that were in front of the lens for that scene....and we didn't listen to the audio until after we had wrapped up the shoot. It turns out that our boom positioning was poorly executed, resulting the waiter line being somewhat muddled, and my response a little bit muffled. I spent some time working on it in post, but being pressed for time at the end of the production process, I had to just let it ride. bummer.

I partly chalk it up to having worried so much about creating a viable restaurant scene in my garage and focused too much on the look and not enough on correctly capturing the dialogue. I may have also left the restaurant ambience sound effects a little too loud at that scene.

-Jon

[Jonathan Jones]

Originally Posted by Kris Holodak

Enjoyed the little ad at the beginning. It wasn't strictly necessary, but since you had the time it made a good opening.

Ha, me again. Thanks for that. I wasn't sure how it was going to go over with the false radio commercial behind the opening title sequence. But I'm glad it seemed to work. It was mostly an experiment.

I had cut together a real sounding 30 second radio commercial for our fake web site to potentially put into the opening sequence, but even after cutting down to about 12 seconds, it was still too long for just the DVC title...and movie title thing, but even then we didn't have a name for the movie. (I won't say what our working title was, but our wives wouldn't let us use it.) It was only in the final hours that we happened upon calling it "Hindsight", and when I looked it up in a dictionary/thesaurus to make sure I liked it, I noticed how it was printed there (with the little dot in the middle) and it gave me the idea of putting the eyeballs and the actual definition into the opening sequence...which then worked perfectly for the final version of my radio ad.

I love it when a plan comes together.

My final concern about that was worrying that viewers might think they were getting shafted by being forced to listen to a radio ad before watching the movie...(my neighbor didn't get it.), but I really hoped its reasoning for being there would make sense, and help convey that the site is specifically a 'values-based' matchmaking site and consequently build up to the moral lesson for our main character.

Anyway, sorry for rambling, its late....but I guess I just wanted to say thanks for noticing and liking that opening title thingy.

-Jon

[Lorinda Norton]

That's right! I forgot to mention the opening; I laughed at RU4me--thought it was clever and wondered why some dating service hasn't used it before now.

[Jonathan Jones]

Originally Posted by Lorinda Norton

That's right! I forgot to mention the opening; I laughed at RU4me--thought it was clever and wondered why some dating service hasn't used it before now.

We literally wasted tons of time coming up with dozens of combinations and double-checking them on the net to see if they were taken before finally striking gold with RU4Me.net. My wife came up with that one. The .com version isn't used, but appears to be owned by a squatter, so we lucked out with the .net version.

And if some enterprising individual decides to create a real site using that name...that's cool. At least I have the date stamp on my YouTube upload to prove that the movie was up first.

-Jon

[Bruce Broussard]

This is my favorite one. I thought you pulled off the story extremely well. It was a bit predictable after the first phone was picked up to dial, but it really did not distract from the production at all. The music added a tremendous amount to the "feel" of the film. Great job.

[Jonathan Jones]

Originally Posted by Bruce Broussard

This is my favorite one. I thought you pulled off the story extremely well. It was a bit predictable after the first phone was picked up to dial, but it really did not distract from the production at all. The music added a tremendous amount to the "feel" of the film. Great job.

Thanks Bruce. Your comments are very much appreciated. I was initially a little concerned about using the cell phone sequences in the way that I did - making the rest of the movie too predicable, as you said. Our original storyboard and the rough cut included just the cellphone shots being placed during the closing credits as part of the end sequence that we used there.

But then it seemed that their placement there suddenly felt inconsequential and perhaps out of place...potentially to confusing.

The truth is that in the past I have produced shorts that had little flip/flops and twists, etc. that by and large, folks just simply didn't get. Or I had striven to be too complicated well beyond what the technique and time would allow for. So in this time around, we decided it best to pretty much just lay it out there. If the viewer was paying attention, than the flow is a little predicatable, but then it still makes sense. If the viewer isn't paying attention, than it just comes across as 'hey now their on the phone...' and then the pacing of the movie takes it right into the next sequence and they don't get to dwell on it.

To tell the truth, I am learning a whole lot about style and pacing in these competitions. It is great to be given such a challenge, and to get insightful pointers along the way.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Cheers.

-Jon