Lady X: Episode 14 released!

[Tao-ming Lin]

<<<-- Originally posted by John Heskett : Come on Lin,
You really think any of the producers would purposefully down grade another's episode? I have not seen any evidence of anything like that. To even suggest it is bad taste. When it is all said and done, I will vote for the producer I think will do the best job. That way the final episode will be the best representation of the series and that will reflect well on myself and my work even if I don't get to produce the final. -->>>

I'm not saying the producers are doing it, but some overzealous fans do have a penchant for mass voting, either for their favored project or against the rivals to their favored project. This has nothing to do with the producers, of course, as nobody can control who votes how many times for what project. Episode 5 went from 4.5 to 3.8 in one day recently. With over a thousand ratings, that's a lot of 1's within the space of a few hours. Somebody obviously went to the trouble of doing it.

But that's ok, since I always understood the ratings system to be flawed and therefore unrepresentative of the worth of any of the episodes. I don't let it bother me, and I suggest that you don't let it bother you either. It's just the way things are.

[John Locke]

Rob,

Can you explain how you did the "materializing text" effect?

[Aaron Koolen]

Just repeating the others really, but Rob I think this is the best shot episode to date. Nice look, and nice angles. You currently have my vote for the final.

Well done!
Aaron

[Keith Loh]

I should have kept my mouth shut :) Ep 13 went from 4.0 to 3.8 in the three hours since I last looked at it.

[Dylan Couper]

<<<-- Originally posted by Lin Tao-ming :
This has nothing to do with the producers, of course, as nobody can control who votes how many times for what project. Episode 5 went from 4.5 to 3.8 in one day recently. With over a thousand ratings, that's a lot of 1's within the space of a few hours. Somebody obviously went to the trouble of doing it.
-->>>

That is pretty strange. Our Episode 13 dropped quite a bit recently, but to bring an average down when you have over 1000 ratings is crazy. It's a bummer, but at least it doesn't affect the overall winner. FWIW, Episode 4/5 is still my favorite. Besides mine of course..! ;)

[John Heskett]

Ok Lin, sorry I misunderstood you. I have not been watching the numbers so I missed the little side game someone is playing.

It is a fact that should be understood, the Final Episode Winner will be determined not by the ratings, but by a vote of all the producers.

I for one will have to go back and watch ALL the episodes when it comes time for that vote. I was impressed by the cinematography of several episodes, but 14 really hit my fancy.

[Ronnie Grahn]

Damn! And just last sunday we filmed our torture scene! With tooth-pulling!

Besides that, great episode. Some nice shots and frame composition.

[John Locke]

John,

One correction...we haven't set in stone how the "Best Episode" will be chosen just yet. We're looking at some possibilities that will be fair to all involved and will avoid the pitfalls of public voting, etc.

I won't get into that on this thread, but we'll let you guys in on our thoughts in the near future.

[John Heskett]

That just goes to show you , it's always something . . . .never mind.

[Till Kraemer]

<<<-- Originally posted by Lin Tao-ming :
But that's ok, since I always understood the ratings system to be
flawed and therefore unrepresentative of the worth of any of the
episodes.-->>>

Why don't you alter the voting system so that voting requires
entering a valid E-Mail address where a verification link will be
send to.

I know that wouldn't be that user-friendly but on the other hand:
what's a poll worth if its results mean simply nothing?

Minimum security of a poll would be IP-logging and setting a
cookie which will keep the stupid users away from re-voting
(since there are many out there without the knowledge or will to
delete cookies each time and re-dial up their internet connection
to get a new IP).

[Rob Lohman]

First of all thank you very much for the kind words and responses
you gave! Much more then I was hoping for (man, was I nervous!).

A special thanks needs to go out the other two people who
complete my cast & crew. Thanks you guys!

Since there were a couple of questions etc. I'll use a couple of
replies to answer them.

First off my appologies to Ronnie for having a tooth pulling
scene. That must suck for you. If only I had known....

Perhaps not everyone noticed it, but the largeish agent (as
Keith puts it <g>) that gets knocked down, electrified, tortured,
shot AND goes to the dentist.... is ME. I wasn't sure if everbody
got that :) I wasn't sure how to act to being electrified Keith,
so I'll try to do a better job next time!

The Dental work didn't "hurt", Barry, but I was a bit tense. That
were full steel pliers in my mouth there. The other "actor" didn't
touch even one of my teeth though!

Oh, Dylan? The car (my car) is a Peugeot 206 CC (Coupe Convertible).
Hard top convertible small european car (quite fast). More info
on that can be found here (UK site
so everyone can read it)

One of the funny things is that no-one commented on things
I found pretty silly in the movie. That might have something todo
with the fact that I've seen it like 100+ times and this is the
first viewing for everybody ofcourse.

[Rob Lohman]

As I exptected certain questions arise regarding the story. As
some of you pointed out it was the weak point of the episode
(In my opinion). The story was by far the biggest "problem".

The resulting episode is almost completely different from the first
two "drafts" of the story. In the end I just had a hard time
making an interesting story. I think I tried to make it too
interesting and thus wasted a lot of time and creative energy.

Due to less and less time available, locations, props and
people not being available in the last week before shooting
ment I had too let go of some of my story elements. That is
the primary reason the flashback scenes were added. The idea
is that the character (me) passes out and sort of re-lives the
last couple of minutes before waking up again to meet his
death so to speak.

I agree with the people who said that the ending where Lady
X just vanishes is a bit easy and perhaps lame. The original
idea was that two people would show up (see other description
below) which would battle it out to the death and Lady X just
took the "tooth" and left. That would have been more interesting,
but due to the things mentioned above didn't make it in the end.

Now about the story line as it exist. As you'll all know we open
in the future, jump back a little in time when Lady X gives the
assignement and then go on from there. The flashback is a jump
back in time as well, ofcourse.

I'm not sure if anybody noticed or not, but the guy standing
with the uzi "garding" Lady X and the Agent is infact the same
person later being tortured, shot and gets the tooth pulled (me).

The idea is that this character is a double agent. He works for
the organisation we all work for and another mysterious
organisation. Our organisation found out this double-agent has
something on him that they need. So they send out Lady X.
The irony is that they are going after one of their own. At first
they don't know the thing they need is inside the tooth. That's
why they torture this person. When the agent gets the phone
call he hears about the tooth and doesn't need the double-agent
anymore and POP.

Now what we weren't able to do was have the following. I
wanted to have an agent from the other organisation show up
at the instant the tooth is pulled and snatch the tooth. The only
"problem" was how Lady X was going to get it then (see my remark
earlier above regarding the end fight between two agents and
Lady X taking of with the tooth). My time was just up to write
all this, get the people, shoot it etc.

Why no dialogue adds to this as well. Basically no time. I'm
someone who doesn't like to have people speak in my native
tongue. So I wanted to do some english lines (which were
written partially), but in the end we decided to drop it in favor
of time.

So yeah, it was the weakest link. I'll promise I'll do that better
next time! <g> It does look most of you enjoyed the movie
regardless though. That's quite a big relieve for me!

[Rob Lohman]

Thanks again for the nice compliments on the visual style etc.
Quite a lot of work went into that. I've received most praise
and remarks on that. Only two people commented on my editing
(positive) and I think that's a good sign as well, since somehow
most comments on editing talk about that it could have been
better. Correct me if you think my editing sucks! <g>

Anyways, first a little introduction. It was shot with a PAL Canon
XL1s with the standard 16x zoom lens using the builtin ND
filter and sometimes a screw on ND filter as well. NO additional
lighting equipment, bounce boards etc. where used AT ALL.
Only other thing was a tripod and my laptop to verify some
exposure settings and mostly framing (gotta hate the viewfinder
for that). I did shoot with a black-level setup of 0 IRE to get as
much information in the picture as possible and under exposed
*slightly* for the same reason (so I could crank up the highlights
a bit laterone if I wanted to)

All editing was done with Vegas 4.0d and I'm pretty sure my
episode shows only a tiny fraction of what can be done with the
product. Really nice!

Basically all outdoor footage had three filters applied to it
(in the following order as well!):

1. Color Curves - Increase contrast

Mostly the standard curve was way to hard and clipped too much
of the highs. I removed the inner points and usually moved the
upper right point further to the right. Basically it always was some
sort of an S curve to increase the contrast of the image.

2. Black & White - 20% -> 60%

The XL1s makes images with very rich color. I wanted the feel
of this movie to be quite raw with very muted colors. I wanted
them to be there, but not on the foreground. This filter allowed
me to suck out a large portion of those rich colors but still
maintain enough. Desaturation.

3. Color Curves - Yellow tint

The last filter shifted the image towards yellow/green/sepia
kind of look which I really like. The filter was a bit too much in
default so I toned it down a bit.

The indoor footage mostly used a similar increase contrast
and black & white filter. Usually it stopped there. One indoor
shot has 2 extra secondary color correctors to add a bit of
white/blue color to add to the roughness.

I hope this answered those questions for all of you.

Peter, I'm honored you got the feeling of matrix/reservoir dogs.
Those movies are a huge inspiration to me. In the original draft
we opened the short with a little scene from the matrix (in matrix
1 when they drive back from the oracle and park outside the
building where the other two characters are waiting) but we
couldn't secure and oldsmobile and dolly in time (bummer)

John, the revealing effect was done pretty easy in Vegas.
Originally this was a moving shot but I had a real hard time
tracking it and just had to drop it for time reasons. So I basically
rendered out a small movie that had freeze frame in it. Halfway
through the text would appear (instantly) through a text media
event overlayed.

That movie was reimported into Vegas and split into two. The
first piece with no text and the other piece with text. I added
a color correciton filter to the second piece to give it the tinted
look from the glasses. I then simply added a soft linear wipe
from bottom to top. And thats it!

Again I learned an amazing lot and really got a much better
feel for my movie and structure in general while cutting. This
was my first time using Vegas which performed great!

If anyone has any more questions I'd be more then happy to
answer them!

[Aaron Koolen]

Hi Rob. I have a question. How did you visualise your shots? Did you go out with camera before hand and shoot tests, storyboard or do you just have an amazing previsualisation section in your brain? ;)

In our episode I've got a couple of nice shots that I like but I've also found, looking at the rushes, that some of them compositionally look really naff. I do find at times it's hard to stand in a location, absorb it and wait for some light to go on in my head about some really cool shot.

I assume the more practice I get the better, and I have this feeling that I need to be more methodical when thinking about shots, rather than haphazard. The shots I didn't like were ones I had to make up on the spot because the location wasn't how I'd thought it was, or the set was different. When those moments arose I didn't stop, take a breath and think about what I wanted to put across to the viewer, I was stressed and just made some stuff up.....and it didn't work.

So, any hints and tips much appreciated as we still have 2 days shooting to go!

Cheers
Aaron

[Rob Lohman]

Well I'm afraid I might have that "amazing previsualisation
section"... hehehe.. I didn't storyboard or previsualize anything
on paper. Ofcourse I had visited the locations and that was
more or less it. I thought about where I wanted the camera
to go generally and decided the specifics on the set.

Keep in mind that I don't have a whole lot of cuts or different
locations in my movie. The only time the camera actually moves
is with the bike scene and we only have a couple of pans.

The opening scene and the later pieces were I get smacked
down had to be invented on the spot because my location was
torn down a week before my shoot (nice). The opening shot
of the car was thought up by me on location and was actually
a last minute "rushed" shot <g>

All the torture shots were kind of improvised as well regarding
camera angels (except for the looking from far into the room).

The shots with the sheets were thought out before but the
spot to shoot that one was randomly chosen besides the building.

Guess this isn't all very "professional" eh....

But returning to your do you have tips. The main tip I can think
of is to stay relaxed and go with wherever your going. We never
really rushed it (a couple of shots we did due to people being
around). Take your time.

I also didn't like a lot of stuff in the dailies. I did the following:

1. the main thing we missed were reaction shots and closeups
(reaction shots tend to be closeups often). We shot more of
those on the second day of shooting (we only had two days
to shoot) but still not enough

2. a lot more can be fixed through editing then you think. I
thought I wouldn't be able to cut the last scene where the item
is delivered. With the footage we had, that turned out pretty good in the end

My main tip for editing would be to edit on motion. This keeps
the camera and/or images flowing.

Wait a couple of days after shooting before starting to edit. I
reviewed ALL of my material first, made a spreadsheet that had
a line FOR EACH AND EVERY SHOT. I noted down facts (like if it
was a wide shot, close up, extreme closeup and whether it was
unuseable due to people being in the shot etc.). Then I noted
what I "felt" about that shot

This greatly helps in editing because you don't have to review
every shot 100 times. If you edit best on those notes and you
doubt of a certain shot you can always look at the other shots
again (I did a couple of times).

Don't start editing on the scene you think you can't edit or is
very difficult but don't leave it out till last either. I didn't know
how to edit the last scene, so I began with the opening scene.
When I finally got around to editing the last scene I was much
better and faster at shot selection, feeling the flow and being
able to make something out of less.

Remember. 1 + 1 = 4! Editing combines the different pieces to
make something greater then the sum!

To indicate you can use more then you think. I have removed
a flashlight going of from a photo camera when the camera
pans down to the torture scene (outside the building). I have
removed a waiting period when we step into the car and drive
off (there is small hiccup noticeable if you know where to look,
somehow Vegas removed the very fast fade that was there).
I have removed a fly zapping by on frame (which you could see
in two frames) when the car drives up in the end.

Editing has greatly helped me visualise my store (a bit too late,
since editing is done after the fact). It will help me greatly on
my next shoot!

I learned that we DV shooters can't plan everything because
we just can't control it all (like locations getting torn down,
actors not showing up, cars not available etc.). The power is
that we can improvise and come up with new things on the
spot.

Take your time if you are going to change something and do
a new setup. If you take the time to really look through your
viewfinder and act it out once I doubt you say lateron in the
dailies that it doesn't look ok.

As you said yourself, you were probably too stressed and
rushed. I learned through my work not to do this. It can be
hard, but really try to calm yourself down. Don't look too hard
for the cool shot. I lost a couple of really cool shots I thought.
But seeing the responses and looking at some shots myself
I saw I really gained some as well without actually knowing
it too much at that time. Most people really like the opening
shot. I just shot that in 5 minutes as an extra I just thought
up. Turns out to be quite cool and very nice as an opener.
Who would have thought! Let your movie/shots amaze you!

I only had missing shots and a couple of shots that were a bit
too dark or distant (hard to see in the viewfinder).

Good luck on your shoot! can't wait to see it!