Thanks Chris,

Here's a banner that I made for mine...

Chris, good point. It was actually a real day off, but I guess I did make it look like I was working from home. It would have made a better story if I had firmly established whether it was a guy with a day off or a guy working from home. Thanks!

BTW, I've never had a work from home job. Don't think I'd be good at it, what with the beer callin' me.

Bob

LOL! Now that's funny! I should have done my entry on that and had all the dog experts on my back (because I do everything wrong). Oh, wait...the theme was anticipation.

Experts....gotta love 'em. :)

Lorinda, I thought you nailed the theme. In fact, you showed multiple versions of anticipation in this one.

I also thought that the image quality was stellar. Working with animals can be an extreme challenge, I'm surprised you pulled it off so well. I'm sure I would have bailed about half way through.

In comparison, my version of anticipation is very subtle, and not very obvious at first glance.

You did a great job!

Cheers,

Mike

Actually Daniel, you're wrong on this. All he does is take the cap off his beer and begin to lean forward to toss it in the garbage. If you watch at the 1:22 mark of the movie pay attention to the location of the garbage can and where his wife tosses the empty bottle.

Watch it again and you will see that there is no problem with this scene. He opens the bottle, leans forward to toss the cap, cut to his wife, cut back to him, and he's standing exactly where he should be. He was never "clearly heading out the door."

It looks like you weren't paying attention. ;)


Cheers,

Mike

PS - As for the blue look of my film, that was intentional. Maybe a little too much so, but I like it.

Heh heh…you’re just too nice, Mike. :)

My son got home for spring break tonight so he watched your movie. Guess I was listening more closely this time and finally heard the last line! (lol) It made lots more sense to me. He still had to explain the sequencing (or would you call it juxtaposition?) so I could have the “ohhh, I get it” moment. Takes some of us a while!

While it’s hard for me to say I liked it—you already know I’m not a suspense/horror fan—I always think your work is really well done. It's my opinion that you do a good job of working the color to match the mood. I remember your DVC entry where you contrasted the cold darkness with the gorgeous coloring in the little girl’s bedroom. Made it all the more creepy. This one definitely had “cold” written all over it…in more ways than one. What an awful thing for even a hired gun to anticipate.

Thanks again for putting this challenge together. Nice job!!

It makes sense, sure, but I daresay that it could easily be seen the other way (as...obviously...it did to me). You never showed where the garbage can was, and all the viewer sees is that little sliver of wall on the far right of the screen as he moves in that direction. You also clipped the motion, so I see him moving to his left...a hallway...and his line was fairly final, "I'm just going to have a beer and watch the game" okay, bye.

That's the feeling I got anyway...

And his positioning. He throws the cap away then moves all the back to his first position by the fridge? Why not stand at the garbage can? Anyway, enough of me being nitpicky.

I don't think it was so much I wasn't paying attention, as I'm paying perhaps too much attention. I'll give that.

I'm using Mike's first summary as a guide cuz I'm the king of LAZY when it comes to writing things out...

I think I'm going to mostly defend the authors here against some of the criticisms. I have no axe to grind...I have no submission to defend myself...

Bob, I think you pulled it off well. Not being in an area where Goose beer is sold, I did briefly wonder about the significance of the title as the first scene opened up. You built the suspense (and anticipation) well and the wife's "WHAT" was expressively acted.

Someone criticized your "blue" tint but I think I understood some of the import. The makers of "Traffic" did somewhat the same thing with yellow in some of the scenes in Mexico for a bit of a surrealistic implication. You had a definite "blue mood" to carry off.

I took the slightly synthetic sound of the phone voice as a probable attempt to hide identity of the voice. you do have a sense of the dramatic.

Mike, the acting was pretty convincing to me. My wife cracked up over your facial expression at having to "pickup presents". I don't think your "fast forward" for time compression was excessive. It is an effect that I think is overused so much in documentaries these days I hate to see it done, but in your story is was appropriate. Your ending took me by surprise.

You tackled a real potential tear jerker here. I've been retired from the military for about 28 years now and still feel a strong bond of kinship with those who serve. In response to those who say it dragged, I think 4 minutes may have been too long a time for most of what all would have tried. So I accept it as shown and savor the mood and other things as portrayed. After all...I don't have a plane to catch.


Wow! The last dog I had was a tri color Sheltie. Looked a lot like Riley. You had some really well behaved talent working for you there. You showed more pure anticipation and in your case the 4 minutes gave us more time to "savor" what you did. How did you get all 5 of them to get up on the couch the way they did?

Jay Barlow is rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors. This is only the second film I've seen him in (Last Christmas for DVC7 is the only other one I've seen. He is rapidly showing himself to be a very versatile actor.

Again in response to a criticism of it taking too long to get somewhere...I think it very effectively built suspense, each "days" scene portrayed a different degree of frustration and the "bathroom" scene...Well, with almost universal recognition of that facility as the "library" or "reading room", I think it was a great "sight gag". But the scene where Jay got up from the computer at the end took me totally by surprise and cause me to really crack up.

While some may be shocked at the implied degree of "undress" it needs to be recognized that is is common to use the "blocky pixellated" look in cases where some cover existed anyway. "Tighty whities" pulled up high or "skimpy" swim briefs would give the same bare on the sides look.

Congratulations to everyone! I would be hard put to pick one as the best, I found things to appreciate and enjoy about all of them. I was entertained.


Bruce

P.S. One thing I think I've learned from the few of these I've done is that the 3 minute time limit seems to work. It seems to allow adequate expression of a concept without going into too much detail.

4 minutes may be an "awkward" degree of extension in that it may tend to lead one into not being as "concise" as the shorter time and we may "stretch" things a bit without having the leeway to develop more complex visual ideas.

5-7 minutes may be more where some of us would like to go, but download times and server bandwidth likely would prohibit going there with the number of folks these challenges can draw.

Thanks Bruce. I think if I had done a nice, clear close up of the Goose Island label the first time we see the bottle, it would have been better. Good point.
And I'll pass your complement to my wife. She didn't even know what the movie was about, I just told her to walk in, stop there and say "WHAT".
Three takes and it was done.

Bob

Daniel,

You made some pretty bold statements about that scene, and you do get to see the garbage can quite clearly about a minute later. He also just leans towards it, hardly... "he's clearly heading out the door", as you put it. You also described it as "all the way back to his first position by the fridge."

He twists off the cap and "barely" leans forward to toss it in the garbage can, looking down as he does so. (Cut to the wife)

Cut Back: He is now standing exactly where he was as he tossed the bottle cap out, without the bottle cap in his hand I might add. We also get to see the garbage can quite clearly soon after when his wife tosses the empty bottle in.

I got this on my first viewing.

Criticism is fine as long as it is justified.

Daniel, I've seen that you can be quite hard on a lot of work in this forum. So much so that you have come back to apologize.

You even berated someone on their spelling and grammar, only to misspell grammar twice in the same sentence, along with the word definitely. Someone else called you on that.

I welcome your criticisms, you hardly had a knock against mine. I'm just defending what I thought was an overly harsh complaint of a scene that you clearly missed the ball on. Try not to be so harsh to the point that you even attempt to find things that are not even there.

This was just for fun after all.

Cheers,

Mike

Thanks Lorinda, I'll have to send the comedy I shot your way. Maybe you can email me and let me know what you think of it.

It looks like we just need Mike and Dennis to chime in with their thoughts.

We'll put it to a vote soon after that....

Thanks again for participating!

Mike

I certainly didn't intend to offend anyone. Please extend my apologies to your wife. I'll put a disclaimer on it next time.

Dennis:

No offense taken. Just made this comment from the stand point that we as film makers need to consider what the ultimate audience may be. And, you may have done so, thinking that the film would have a limited film maker only viewing. It was I who added the element of the "innocent by stander" :) She was similarly put off by the final scene in "The Mark". I do believe that scene was intended similarly to evoke shock, and it did in her.

Perfect! ;)

Shock, and closure... it was necessary I think. I really wanted to stress what he was anticipating after the phone call, without giving it away.

Maybe we should add ratings or something though? Scenes of violence, language, partial nudity, salivating dogs, etc... ;)


Mike

Yeah, I found myself dressed like that a lot as time went on, and realized I had to get back to an out of home office. On the otherside, I never left work either, and that was nasty too.