Vern Meets Jane (Short Thriller shot on DVX-100

[Eric James]

Hey Guys,
Here is my last project on the DVX-100A Camera. Now moved on to the FX-1. This was all shot on location with a pretty wacky car rig. Let me know what you think:

UPDATED LINK
DO NOT HOTLINK: Choose "save file as" as download to your computer before watching. This is to save my bandwidth.

http://host116.ipowerweb.com/~pengui...nmeetsjane.mov

The file is zipped to keep people from killing my bandwidth streaming.
The file is QT6 sorenson 3. It will open full screen once downloaded.

Thanks,
Eric James

http://www.expertmagic.com/

[Aldo Visaggio]

Well done in every aspect. Excellent filming, acting and writing. I enjoyed watching it very much. I think your wacky car rig worked fine. Great work indeed.
cheers, aldo

[Eric James]

Hey Aldo,
You appear to be the only one who's brave enough to watch. Hopefully some other members will check it out.
Thanks for the kind words,
Eric James

http://www.expertmagic.com/

[Barry Gribble]

The question may be not who's brave enough to watch it, but who's brave enough to download it.... many systems don't allow the downloading of zip files, and many users (me included) just choose not to as a blanket policy.

Since you don't seem to be taking a bandwidth hit as it is, maybe you can post the vid file directly and just ask people nicely to download it rather than stream it.

[Eric James]

Hey Barry,
I hadn't realized that the fact it was a zip file was the problem. I have re-uploaded the file as a .mov

Thanks,
Eric James

http://www.expertmagic.com/

[Stephen Sawchuk]

Hey Eric,

I watched it, and have quite the same feelings as Aldo, though the stand-out actor to me was Vern. When you see an actor like that, it makes you forget you're watching DV.

I watched this yesterday, and the shot that still stands out to me is when he's stepping out of his truck, and you have the low angle as he walks around. Truly a beautiful image; to me, anyway.

Some shots, I would have thought a consumer MiniDV camera recorded, while others, I never would have thought the DVX could handle. That just goes to show the beauty of the Panasonic, eh?

Congratulations on getting out and getting something done. I'm shooting a short this summer, myself, with a story of the same tone, though half the length. Any digital shorts like this are an inspiration, and a breath of fresh air after seeing countless other parody-esque shorts. I much prefer the feature-in-under-30-minutes type, such as yours.

Keep it up!

[Riley Stearns]

Hey, Eric. I really enjoyed the film. It's also nice to watch a movie on the computer that's higher quality and full screen too. I liked how you played with the colors alot, it definitely made for some nice looking shots. I had a few questions.

1) How many pages was the script?
2) Was there a set budget?
3) Any plans for festivals or competitions?

Thanks a lot. Once again, great job.

[Daniel Patton]

I watched it last night, just now getting around to posting about it.

Very nice work overall. I liked the concept/story, and camera work fit nicely. Although Jane was easier on the eyes than Vern (way), I fell Vern did a better job with his character than did Jane’s. Her audio was a bit too monotone, his was a better fit. He was a huge benefit to your project. Never the less they both did a good job. I'm not going to go into everything I liked or did not like about it (it's a time thing, sorry about that), but I will say that I have rented movies recently from Block Buster that outright sucked compared to your short. In other words, you did a good job!

I feel it was well worth the time to download, and so long as you do not have a weak stomach for portrayed violence, I recommend it.

[Eric James]

Hey Riley,
Thanks for the kind words.

1) I think it was 32 pages to start, we ended up cutting some down it editing.
2) No set budget, we only spent maybe $300 for the entire thing.
3) We have sent it off to a couple and so far had good luck. We just got into the Crested Butte film fest which is going on in august here in colorado. It was also selected for the Colorado Film School showing where it was seen by maybe 400 people....CRAZY feeling watching something you've made in front of that many people. All the sudden the mistakes seem to be so horrible you can't believe you didn't go back and fix them. Very good learning experience.

Thanks,
Eric James

Originally Posted by Riley Stearns

Hey, Eric. I really enjoyed the film. It's also nice to watch a movie on the computer that's higher quality and full screen too. I liked how you played with the colors alot, it definitely made for some nice looking shots. I had a few questions.

1) How many pages was the script?
2) Was there a set budget?
3) Any plans for festivals or competitions?

Thanks a lot. Once again, great job.

[Cody Dulock]

i really enjoyed everything about the short, except the person acting as jane... the person acting as vern did great and carried the story good. but jane just didnt seem realistic to me, sounded like she was reading from a teleprompter. either way, it was entertaining and time was put into it. can't wait to see some more stuff from you!

[Barry Gribble]

Eric,

Great job... I liked it a lot. I liked the shots of the conversation at the table very much... great job on that. All of the shooting was good actually (though the interior car shots were definitely a little blown out). The acting was good, though as others said, he was better than she was by a fair bit. Neat story, and nice execution. I think you will do well with festivals and such.

A couple contructive comments I'd add: (SPOILERS for others)

1. I thought the introduction of Vern and Jane separately ran a little long. It was called "Vern Meets Jane", and that is the interesting part, and that doesn't happed until almost halfway through. I thought that the Vern part could be cut most... There was a lot of mood development that I thought gave us more than we needed to. It seems you need to establish him as the killer he is and can move on.

2. The low rumble under the truck interior shots was tough to listen to. If that is added on purpose, I would tone it down. If it is just what you were stuck with for audio, I would slap on a high-pass filter and crank the freq. down to 100 Hz or so and tune it to cut that part down and leave the voices.

3. I thought the conversation in the restaurant ran a tiny bit long. You had to be really interested in their philosophy to stay with it throughout, and I wasn't so much.

4. Vern's death ran a little bit long for me.

5. There were a couple shots that looked like they could use some color-correction... I don't remember all... I know the end of Vern's first victim the look got very red... on purpose?

6. Along the same lines, I didn't know why Jane's intro was in black and white. It didn't make too much narrative sense to me, unless Vern's was also... but I think that'd be too much. There were also some shots (like the finale) where the color saturation was much lower than the rest of the film. You can't really bring that up, but you could bring the rest down a touch.

Anyway... that's all in the details. Again, great job and good luck with it.

[Eric James]

Hey Barry,
Very good comments.
1) I can understand this point, but to me the most exciting part is the build up to them meeting. The movie was all about the "bomb under the table" idea. We know something bad is going to happen, just not what that thing is. We wanted to have time (even in a short) to develop the characters so you cared when they died.

2) The car audio in the second scene was a nightmare to deal with. It sounds GREAT now compared to how it did sound. Lesson learned on that one. Old Truck = freaking loud (no sound deadening material at all).

3) I agree. We did end up cutting at big chunk out of it already but we didn't want to cut it so much it lost it's meaning. Now that's it's all together, I agree that it could be shorter.

4) When I watch he whole thing I always think the extra time in death seems like just a gore factor. It was in the script a bit different (see5/6) and we kept it because with out it the movie didn't seem over...seemed like we were left hanging. Some people love it, others hate it.

5/6) Every shot in the entire film was color corrected. If it looked a certain way we wanted it that way.

For example:
In Jane's scene it is in black and white as that is her world view. She sees things in Black and White...Good and Bad. Who knows if anyone gets that to not but in the end I think it looks pretty damn cool. (lol)

In Vern's scene we wanted the scene to slowly "light on fire". With the tension, with the color, with the audio so by the time the heat is turned off your feeling as horrible about the situation as she is. I really like certain parts, but it was hard to get the look I was going for because crappy NTSC reds.

In the final scene we used a "bleaching" filter as we wanted to take some of the life out of the color, but not go to black and white. A sign that things are NOT nice and colorful and happy.
At the very end you'll notice it jump to darker. In the original edit this was done because we showed that vern passed out for quite some time, wakes up, then goes into his final death. The CC stayed the same, could be changed tho.


Hopefully that all makes sense.

Thanks to everyone for your comments,
Eric James

http://www.expertmagic.com/