short movie done in 3 days..

[Zac Stein]

A friend of mine approached me about shoot and editing a short movie he wanted to enter into a local festival.

After i agreed he then revealed we had 3 days to complete it entirely to be handed in on time for the entry date.

Well after 1.5 days of 6am starts, borrowing equipment from everywhere and ended using a total of 4 cameras. A sony pd-150e which we had for one morning then the owners quickly needed it back, so then we managed to find a panasonic mx-3, which then broke soon after so finally we found a mx-7 to use.
All the while we used a broken tripod, with a busted head which had no friction.

Well then while editing premiere decided to die a big death and took our project files with it, so a switch to vegas video was made, with a bit of afx work thrown in.

After editing we realised the story made hardly any sense, but we got it in, i am just happy i didn't direct or write it, because all that effort proved to be a little fruitless.

contains spoilers if u don't want to know don't read****Anyways, the case is meant to be full of drugs, and the girl finds it and takes it, it is a bit of a side joke that made no sense.****

So here it is for all your viewing pleasure,

www.motionaftereffect.com/reception/reception.zip

it is 46mb, divx 5.02 format. it goes for 7.5 minutes. It became quite soft when compressed down.

the actual site is not done yet to read about it.
Just fyi all music is original done by a friend of mine, because we were not allowed to use comercial music.

If you have any questions fire away, i would love feedback.

kermie

EDIT: THIS MOVIE WAS ENCODED IN DIVX 5.02 go to www.divx.com and download the codec, it is free and a fantastic way to encode things, it is what they do dvd rip's in a lot if you are wondering.

www.divx.com
for the mac incllined

http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/

[Rob Lohman]

I'm downloading it and viewing it later tonight... Should have
some feedback for you tomorrow! What *did* you do on the
project (grin)? Camera work I presume?

[Zac Stein]

Yeah, camera work and edited, but as always i did a lot more stuff that i wasn't credited for.

but what can you do? :)

[Zac Stein]

36 views and no feedback, come on guys! :)

[Rob Lohman]

kermie.... as promised i'd view it later and get back to you today.
Overall I really like it a lot. Except that case thing should have
completely gone (that came out of nowhere indeed). The thing
with the phone was more than funny enough on its own in my
opinion. One other thing I didn't like was the opening music
(with those phone ringtones)... Other than that it was a nice
piece! Good work!

p.s. the music was very good too! really nice. Good work by
your friend.

[Zac Stein]

thanx Rob,

It is true, the case bit was hopeless, the director jake, was really a poor person to work with i can't put it another way. He was truely if the head wasn't attached it would be lost. He would simply stare at his script and say "it has to be like this, it is in the script" but i had no time to argue so i pushed ahead and did it.

Yeah Travis did a fantastic job with the music, it sounded very professional, and Ben did a great job playing Dan our hero.

The ring tone beginning was annoying, i simply had the credits rolling in the matte whilst the story was going on, but noooo "it was in the script". (heh heh)

Thanx for viewing

kermie

[John Locke]

kermie,

I had good intentions...downloaded it, unzipped it, but couldn't watch it.

I'm using a Mac, OSX, and tried watching it with QuickTime and Windows Media.

:(

[Aaron Koolen]

Me too kermie. I downloaded it but both media playuer and winamp play me the sound bit don't show me any picture...:(

[Don Berube]

wow! impressive, I must say,,, I chose to watch it on an XP laptop (P4/ 1.6gHz), as my G4 desktop was busy at the time rendering something out. Had to go to www.divx.com to download the codec, didn't have to reboot after installing the codec. Looks great in the default clip size, does a decent job at holding up at full screen playback. I think I would rather watch it in QuickTime 6, definitely.

Did you shoot, capture, edit video and sound, mix sound and master output in 3 days? or more?

Like the lack of camera movement and the way you allow things to develop within the frame. Funny how you had a broken tripod head, would you have used more camera moves had it worked or was that intentional?

Noticed a couple of adjoining shots here and there where the lines could have been more angled, but it wasn't too glaring.

Very resourceful production quality with a professional feel, considering what you were up against. Too many video transition FX, I'd cut down on those and try to figure out how you can convey what you were trying to convey without relying on the video transition FX. What I mean is that it did surprisingly have a somewhat "cinematic" feeling to it, but that was hindered by the "Video Toaster" looking transitions.

Was overall impressed with the acting, it didn't give me that typical "student actor" feeling. The performances overall held my attention. Were the actors directed what to do or did they just wing it? Perhaps you could have explored the interaction with the bearded guy in the middle, as well as the thief at the end.

Did you say that the girl kept the bag? Hmmmm, that didn't come through to me, guess I will have to watch it again hehe

Good crew work, gave me a sense that you had a sincere and collaborative crew, it shows in the final output.

Good choice in music which added to the story. Decent sound ambience in some spots, again I realize that you only had 3 days to totally complete this?

Don't feel like you have to apologize like you seem to do in your first post for how this got made, and don't feel like you have to explain the story before you present it to someone. You will never get past the wall if you keep doing that. Put it out there with a very brief 2-3 sentence "quickie" synopsis and observe if people get it. If they do, bravo! that is what it is all about. If they don't, look for the patterns in why and learn how not to shortchange the storyline next time you create something.

The bottom line is that I certainly understood it, your "over-explaining" the story prior to me watching it may or may not have had an influence on it. Yes, it did, because I kept looking for a bag... but again, I did get it.

Good overall editing, especially the decision to include the prolonged destruction at the end, however is that supposed to be the same phone that the main character had in the story? I got the impression that it was "supposed" to be, but that you opted to destroy a different phone at the end, perhaps because you didn't want to destroy the real one? That is what came across to me, which did take away some of the mood for me.

However, nice overall energy throughout, again considering what you were up against.

What was the total budget to complete this piece, including everything (including food and expenses too) ?

What did you receive for a grant to produce this?

What are your plans for your next project?

- don

[Zac Stein]

Don.

-Did you shoot, capture, edit video and sound, mix sound and master output in 3 days? or more?-

well it was more like 2 days and 16 hours....then i fell asleep.

-Like the lack of camera movement and the way you allow things to develop within the frame. Funny how you had a broken tripod head, would you have used more camera moves had it worked or was that intentional-

It was intentional, as a static camera allows takes to be done, 1 after the other, after the other very quickly and don't have to stop rolling. But the one panning shot, where the theif comes out (spoiler sorry) wasn't very smooth, i would have liked that to be a bit smoother.

--Very resourceful production quality with a professional feel, considering what you were up against. Too many video transition FX, I'd cut down on those and try to figure out how you can convey what you were trying to convey without relying on the video transition FX. What I mean is that it did surprisingly have a somewhat "cinematic" feeling to it, but that was hindered by the "Video Toaster" looking transitions.--

The problem was more of the audience we were playing too would just not have got that he was asleep, i hated that 'ham' feeling, but the director completly messed up the dream sequence it barely made sense. By the way that 'bum/homeless' man with the beard was the directors father, great bloke, looks like john lennon hey!

The actors were drama students who were friends of mine, i have worked with them many many times, Ben who played the main character was actually not so great in his other movies, but i sat down with him and just said to him, have fun with it be quick and very very attentive to quick responses, and he really shined. I think he also enjoyed working with us, before every scene as we had no time for reharsal! i did a read through with him, and said to him say this line how you would say it naturally, so a few words here and there differered from the script, but letting people be natural works very well, after all a script is a tool not a bible.

-Good crew work, gave me a sense that you had a sincere and collaborative crew, it shows in the final output.-

actually no, the crew consisted of 3 people, the director, a producer watching out for problems and doing the clapper/continuaty, and I, doing basicly everything else, sometimes we had the director holding the boom when we could set it down properly.

There was no crew collabrative effort, to be truthful and i am really not trying to be spiteful, i am an easy going person, but the director really had his head up his ***, he didn't know what was going on and was just thoughtless. A good example was asking him to show up early at my house to sit with me while i edited to make sure i wasn't robbing his vision (which ended up being all mine) and him going out getting really drunk and showing up at 5pm saying he had a late one and needed to sleep.

The movie was left in my hands, and the producer my partner in 'motion after effect' which you see in the titles really pushed it through, he was always buying me a drink when i needed one.


-Good overall editing, especially the decision to include the prolonged destruction at the end, however is that supposed to be the same phone that the main character had in the story? I got the impression that it was "supposed" to be, but that you opted to destroy a different phone at the end, perhaps because you didn't want to destroy the real one? That is what came across to me, which did take away some of the mood for me.-

It was my phone in the movie nobody was smashing it! it was 'meant' to be the same phone, but we found a broken phone and shot that on the last day while editing, it was in my bathroom with the lights off, 1 desklamp with a photo bulb and black sheets on the wall.

--What was the total budget to complete this piece, including everything (including food and expenses too) ?--

$146 AUD so $80 USD , that was for tapes and hiring 2 police uniforms. Food was a $2 bag of apples and some bags of lollies, then we went home and ate at 3am each day and were up by 6.30am to keep shooting.
Maybe $10AUD was spent of petrol for the car, i didn't factor that.

-What did you receive for a grant to produce this?-
Sort of, the camera's and booms were provided to us by our university as well as various friends.

--What are your plans for your next project?--
Well i am buying my own camera/boom as we speak, were have 3 movies ready written and cast.

1 of them has been cast with professional actors from television and theatre here in my city. It was based on a true story, i don't want to give too much away, but is a short maybe 5 minute piece set in a supermarket, again being all true, it revolves around ironic circumstances with a crazy women/car/shy boy/beautiful check out chick and a sleazy boss. Everyone who has read the script has been very excited about it, luckily a very old friend of my fathers owns a supermarket too, so we have a secured location.

The 2nd one is for a competition called 'funky monkey' here in australia, it is called 'kung fu cops' it will most likely be shot either on digital or super 8mm, or maybe transferred from a digital master to 8mm then back again. It is about 2 disco police officers in the 1970's on the hunt for Jeremy Holmes (yes John Holmes/Ron Jeremy) are the inspiration. We want it to have that really cheesy 1970's bad porn movie feel, with the obvious cap guns, huge facial hairs, bad wigs and loud shirts. Should be a lot of fun to produce.

The last one is a story called "Warhol Never Mentioned Me" it is all about fame and how people percieve their 15 minutes should be given to them when they want. It is based around 3 young boys who can't work out why they are not famous and have not been given the opertunity to be famous, but they actually do nothing but speak about it.

Anyways, feel free to continue to to ask questions, this is kinda what i live for.

Bit of trivia for you: the hood with the gun who runs down the lane way, that is the director.

The voice of the phone dealer, is the producer and my company partner, who also played one of the police officers ( the thinner taller one).

The guy who played the other police officer was Travis who did the music for the movie, his band is ruby styles.

The thank you and acknowlegement for the funds recieved was required to show the movie at the festival, we received no money, but they did lend us the broken tripod and the cameras that had to be taken back and then the other that broke.

The girl who slams the phone in the Phone booth was Camilla who helped with sound sometimes.

Again the credits were written by the director, and it was seriously people who showed up and said hello got a mention for something they never did in an attempt to be suck up to them, Think these people were norweagen exhcnage students, i think the director had dirty intentions. (heh heh)

Last bit of trivia : the city featured in the montage in my beloved home, Melbourne isn't she a beaut.

Anyways thanx for the interest,

Kermie

[Zac Stein]

Mr Chris hurd,

What you think?

kermie

[Don Berube]

::Last bit of trivia : the city featured in the montage in my beloved
::home, Melbourne isn't she a beaut.

Yes, I can see that now. I was in Australia a few years ago while working as part of a tv crew on a production for a pilot on a show based on W.H.O.I., we flew into Brisbane, lovely city, very nice people, nice city streets and hip feeling,,, from Brisbane we flew via helicopter out to the coast and met up with the JOIDES Resolution, the worlds largest scientific deep ocean drilling ship. It was a joint research project between a dozen or so different countries, analyzing samples of rocks and sediment obtained from the depths of the ocean. It was my first time being out so far on ocean water, had to develop my "sea legs" rather quickly, especially when we encountered a bad storm as the ship made its' way to port in Sydney. What an experience it was, the waves were so huge that the ship moved up and down such that we fluctuated between feeling like we weighed 400lbs to feeling as light as a feather, up and down, back and forth,,, I guess you could say that we became a bit sick hehe

Sydney is beautiful, especially as you approach it from the sea. We stayed at the Milennium, right next to "King's Cross",,, ever been to King's Cross? ;-)

As I recall, your about 12 hours different than we are here, correct? I guess I should be in bed right now!

- don

[Zac Stein]

I think 10 hours, i can't remember heh he

Sydney is nice, but has an alien feeling to me, as well as many australians, it feels very generic and internationalised. Ohh and Kings Cross, yeah i have been there, kinda strange place reminded me of New Orleans mixed in with San Francisco. It was fun to see, wouldn't want to live there.

Melbourne has a small tourist trade, mostly national, so it has a far more lived in feel, it is also know as the arty city.

By the way, Melbourne tied with Vancouver as the worlds most livable, as well as best city in the world a few weeks ago on a world wide survey. I guess i am just lucky.


kermie

[Zac Stein]

Heya all,

Just wanted to thank everybody for their viewing and positive feedback, hopefully soon i will have more to show everybody.

thanx again,

kermie

Wow, that was a cool movie!!! Music is good too. I would love to read more about the making of it.