The Traveler [Archive] - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

taylormade

10-23-2011, 08:40 PM

Last time out I vowed to do a film with no special effects. Ha! This has more than the last one. If my music guy gets me the track I'll make the deadline. Edit completed, two effects left to finish, sound work completed. 5:48 running time. Tons of greenscreen, roto, 3D modeling, motion tracking and other effects. Great working with adult actors - the kids were great last time, but it helps when you use pros.

"The Traveler "
Never Ride With a Stranger

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/PosterRed-1.jpg

Some Frame Grabs. We went for a saturated Technicolor look: Hitchcock in the fifties.

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/Sign-2.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/WillandJudy.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/JudyLook.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/Car.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/HeathFace.jpg

Elton

10-23-2011, 10:50 PM

Looks promising!

Brickhouse

10-23-2011, 11:26 PM

Nice stills!!!

Matt Harris

10-24-2011, 08:39 AM

great poster man. i like the still with the zombie guy, was that real makeup or did you do that in post?

taylormade

10-24-2011, 08:43 AM

All in post. In the original shot he was a happy, heathy pink with no head wound. A ton of Mocha tracking and roto to get it to work though - I think it would have been less work to just make him up!

taylormade

10-24-2011, 09:28 PM

Some BTS shots at Spenser's Diner.

The actor's life. "How did I get roped into this!"

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/IMG_0548.jpg

The diner owner's son reading the script. "Hey Dude, this ain't half bad."

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/IMG_0540.jpg

"Any time, Kent."
"The #%*&! boom won't extend!"

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/IMG_0566.jpg

"I knew I should have read the script before I agreed to be in this thing!"

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l221/taylormadefilms/IMG_0542.jpg

thetvirus513

10-24-2011, 09:31 PM

Loving the quotes for the BTS! Looking forward to seeing this one, especially that zombie looking guy!

taylormade

10-26-2011, 11:05 AM

The score arrived last night and our composer Steve Neale did an outstanding job as always. We designed this film to look like a fifties horror flick, lots of over saturated color. Rear Window meets The Blob. Probably a little archaic for some of the youngs guns on DVXUser, but we had a blast creating the look. Just a few more tweaks on the green screen scenes and well be wrapped and ready to download. I have discovered that our night scenes look a lot different projected on a forty foot screen than they do on our compressed file for download. Basically two versions of the film are necessary - one graded for the internet and one for projection/Blu-ray.

I'm really looking forward to the films this time around - looks like some terrific stuff is coming up on the 28th. Good luck to all.

Matt Harris

10-26-2011, 03:07 PM

fifties horror sounds awesome, i love when filmmaker's tackle something like that!

ZazaCast

10-26-2011, 04:38 PM

This looks promising... I love the old 50's horror filcks!

taylormade

10-28-2011, 07:53 AM

Man, what a night. Bumped the film over to H.264 in anticipation of downloading The Traveler. Check the file. All my beautifully graded night shots look like they were photographed in a coal mine with a flashlight! What the...!

Spent the hours from 9:00PM until four this morning reworking, re-grading and finally got things straightened out - I think. I was so tired I had trouble staying awake long enough to view the film in its entirety, all 5 minutes 58 seconds of it.

Thanks to all co-workers, friends and family who worked on this project. I hope you all had as much fun as I did.

Good luck to everybody who made it in and to those still struggling to meet the deadline. I feel your pain.

Hawk Teflon

10-28-2011, 08:03 AM

Yep! I hate h.264 color correction "correction." I forgot about the gamma shift.

Glad you got that monkey off your back!

Mobie540

10-29-2011, 01:22 PM

Hawk Teflon

10-29-2011, 04:47 PM

A little unnerving, huh?

Imaginate

10-29-2011, 04:51 PM

Haha, I watched mine for the first time in it's entirety last night. Good luck!

Man, what a night. Bumped the film over to H.264 in anticipation of downloading The Traveler. Check the file. All my beautifully graded night shots look like they were photographed in a coal mine with a flashlight! What the...!

Spent the hours from 9:00PM until four this morning reworking, re-grading and finally got things straightened out - I think. I was so tired I had trouble staying awake long enough to view the film in its entirety, all 5 minutes 58 seconds of it.

Thanks to all co-workers, friends and family who worked on this project. I hope you all had as much fun as I did.

Good luck to everybody who made it in and to those still struggling to meet the deadline. I feel your pain.

I uploaded our film 15 mins before the deadline :)

JoeButch

10-30-2011, 07:37 PM

Enjoyed your film. What did you use for the train scene.

Matt Harris

10-30-2011, 08:34 PM

Freaking awesome, i loved this short. It was so alfred hitchcock/twilight zone and those are two of my favs of all time.
But you put your own spin on it, the old guy was great, i'd watch a whole show of him giving people what they deserve,
it was so fun. You went to town on the CGI as always, and even though some of it was not 100% convincing, it was still really inventive
and totally worked. The trains scene, the deaths, very cool.

Here is the one thing I did not like, but I came up with the best solution ever:
I didn't like your color grading, or the overall color scheme of the interior of the diner and the people's clothes. It needed some sort of a "look", something to tie the colors together.
More importantly, the fact that you were doing a 50's throwback... i think you missed the most obvious thing - convert the movie to black and white!

I converted it to black and white in quicktime, then rewatched the film and it makes a HUGE difference. Your film totally feels old school and all the effects even look better because they are more subtle. My 2 cents. Lose the color.

Otherwise, great man!

taylormade

10-30-2011, 09:17 PM

Interesting idea, Matt. I've watched this on computer monitors, a 40 foot theater screen and on blu-ray on a 52 inch monitor. It looks different on everything. I was happiest on the blu-ray. Maybe black and white is the answer. The colors in the diner were kind of there and a repaint wasn't in the cards, needless to say. To me the color remined me of the original Blob, garish and very fifties. I'll do an alternate B&W version on the Blu-ray disk I make for the cast and crew and see what the reaction is.
Glad you liked our effort and thanks for the review..

Joe, the train scene started out as a photograph of a railroad crossing near my house taken at dusk. I reworked it in Photoshop to make it a night scene. The train and the car are three dimensional CG models inserted into the scene in AfterEffects after they were animated. The biggest challenge was getting the perpective to match the tracks in the photo. The fire and debris was added along with motion blur and some distortion of the car model during the crash. If you don't blink you can see the woman victim inside the car just before the crash. She was shot on greenscreen and insterted into the shot via AfterEffects.

Mobie540

10-31-2011, 04:05 PM

That was a fun one, everything worked for me, especially the style. I really enjoyed it.

thetvirus513

10-31-2011, 05:07 PM

REVIEW

Definitely a fun film, I enjoyed watching it.

What I liked - classing older film style (though as stated above working that color grade could bring it to a whole new level) I think the main guy did a really good job, very convincing and just a cool character overall. The story in itself was really good, a lot of the sound was very good and synced perfectly. Also, FX stuff is hard to make work and some of yours worked really well.

What I didn't like as much - On the flip side of the FX stuff some wasn't as believable, but there is some forgiveness in that due to timeframe and budget stuff. I didn't like the line of the cop when he asked if she was depressed, sad, glad, mad, bad, rad ;) it rhymed a TAD bit too much, and was too "happy" for me.

Oh also I really liked the titles in the beginning, really helped set the mood.

Overall fun to watch, I think if you looked into B&W or grading it a little more I think it would add a lot, but still a solid piece, good work!

oscillian

11-01-2011, 01:50 AM

Excellent! Solid acting and great pacing. It's nice to see a film that focuses on the story and is efficient. I don't mind the chroma key interiors of the car and the VFX. It adds to the unreal-ness of the movie. Great cinematography overall!

*SPOILERS*

The final shot of the victim in the backseat-epic! As mentioned above: give us more of that Devil in disguise!

Sunk99

11-01-2011, 05:54 PM

Loved the colors of the opening title & background. The way you swapped the "Presented by" to the Title using the tree was well done.
Agree with others - an Alfred Hitchcock feel. While they're talking is the waitress still listening? Nothing shows her busy elsewhere.
2:06 why the B$@#* runs the guy over and leaves him! Feed her to the monsters! 3:27 - YES!!! Munch time!!!
Darn - that is too nice a way to send her. Hmmm ... why a month later for the cop vs hours for the lady?
The last monster face didn't work well. The actually brains blowing out wasn't needed - just a fade to black and the SFX would have been more powerful.
Excellent acting. Enjoyed much. Best I've seen now out of 14 viewed so far. Well done - look forward to seeing more from you.

Hawk Teflon

11-01-2011, 06:05 PM

SPOILER REVIEW:

The good: I liked the shots in the diner. Would have liked to have seen a couple slider shots, but that's just me (and Zaza, I'm sure). Good job on the phone, as well. The green screen stuff worked as well. The special effects really worked well for this. At first I thought the acting was a little over the top, but the more I watched, the more it fit. It worked well together. I like the music too. It really pulled this piece together even more.

The not as good: The font. Yuck. :grin: (though it was pretty great putting the slates behind the moving objects :thumbsup:) I think the coloring was a little too over the top. I would think maybe desaturating it to about half for the era. The cops lines were a little weird to me, too.

Favorite part: Oddly enough, the lighting inside the SUV with the woman and the traveler. Looked good.

I really think you have a great piece here, sir.

ZazaCast

11-01-2011, 06:51 PM

Taylormade... you are the VFX king! This could have been an ad for Video Copilot tutorials.... I think they are all in there. :happy:

I loved this film, really good acting along with the top-notch technical stuff makes for a really fun film. Was I ever scared? No, but who cares, you
got the devil, the cheating wife, the zombie, the cop, the nosey waitress, gunshots, blood and train crashes...where was the kitchen sink?

Great job... I can only imagine how much work went into this one.

Hawk Teflon

11-01-2011, 07:05 PM

...where was the kitchen sink?

Go to 4:40 in the short...

Chris_Keaton

11-01-2011, 07:48 PM

LOL, I loved the cheesy opening with matching font. I would've expected the lady to be a little more shaken up before the dude showed up. Gotta polish those special effects. I think the final suicide was overkill, I'd have stopped with the final line from the devil. And about lines, I don't think you got the required line exactly right. :) It was a fun short, congrats!

dvpixl

11-03-2011, 12:53 AM

yeah, this was totally Hitchcock/twilight zone stuff. enjoyed watching it!

Michael Anthony Horrigan

11-03-2011, 07:31 AM

This was a lot of fun. Some of the dialogue seemed a bit odd, especially after certain events.
Still, it all seemed to work for this movie. Holy SFX! :shocked:

Nice work. I really liked the scene with the train That was a lot of fun.

This had a great look and feel to it.
Loved the ending as well. Although I think I would have preferred that he took him for a ride. :)

Fun stuff!

Charli

11-03-2011, 08:28 AM

I wasn't crazy about the bloody font. I loved the opening shot of the diner's neon sign. I loved the diner. Super cool location. Actress behind counter could have had more sass to her. Traveler actor one of the best most natural delivery of lines of fest. I did feel the distress from the actress in SUV, so that's good.

Nitpick on the detective's notes you had a blank memo paper insert shot. Would have been nice if he had something written there before you cut to the insert shot.

The FX could have been better. But what I liked is that you had a story and told it from start to finish. Give you props for that. Was it original? Not really, but it was interesting.

taylormade

11-03-2011, 10:42 AM

Nitpick on the detective's notes you had a blank memo paper insert shot. Would have been nice if he had something written there before you cut to the insert shot.

That was actually his first question so the pad was blank, but if it bothered you it obviously didn't work.
Thanks for the review. I agree, Will Shaw, who played the Traveler really did a great job.
As to the effects, I'm still working on the greenscreen stuff - just not enough time to totally work out the correct balance before the deadline. What other effects didn't work for you?

Charli

11-03-2011, 12:50 PM

Taylor - then have him write some notes if you're going to insert it, otherwise, just cut out the insert, you don't really need it.

Darkline

11-06-2011, 04:43 PM

this was in my top tier. I didnt like the second twist of the traveller going after the investigator, but up till then I thought this was a really entertaining little short and very ambitious too. Defo look forward to seeing more of your work.

lawriejaffa

11-07-2011, 01:54 PM

Hey there! This was a nice rounded story, it was amusing and darkly delightful. I think it could have done with greater tension though (that abstract feeling is a killer to build in a film) but i think if you had done that it would have combined well with the black humour of the traveller.

Some have mentioned the graphics/footage etc could be improved - yep true true, and hell it always can, whatever the film heck...

I don't think your film suffers too much for this particular thing - but its worth mentioning and that is that (particualrly US filmmakers) feel the supernatural need to repeat every gol' darn twist just to slam it into our heads as if we didn't get it the first time. Its the beaaaauuuutiful language of mainstream American television (they test it on Miley Cyrus/Laci Green fans) and if they get it - its good to go. But films of your type don't need to repeat the twist, its more inclined to incite a groan from an intelligent audience.

Its a device thats sometimes necessary, (and like i said i think it actually works as its amusing and macabre in your film) but its sooo overused, i thought it worth bringing up!

Good luck and well done!

Cryogenic Filmworks

11-11-2011, 09:36 PM

I enjoyed this one and voted as one of my top 3. Better luck next time.

Charli

11-12-2011, 05:02 AM

Congrats, you were my top three as you know, keep working at it!

taylormade

11-12-2011, 06:16 AM

Thanks everyone. This is the second time we entered a fest, so we were all very honored just to make the top six. We appreciate your votes.

dre83

11-14-2011, 02:39 PM

I liked the story. And the framing was also nice.

The sound was good, but here and there some small details like some cuts where noticible (you can hear a difference in "ambiance sound" between one shot and onother (opposite).
I think it has to to also with boom and lav. (1 person boomed, another one laved).

Also the acting.... for the guy it's ok, he can be like that... The woman I find it less... She isn't scared to me. And remeber: don't tell it show it. It's better to show she's scared (by freaking out, yelling, whaaaaaa whaaaaa heeeelp, whaaaaa oh my god whaaaa), rather then to tell it (I'm scared).

taylormade

11-17-2011, 02:20 PM

She isn't scared to me. And remeber: don't tell it show it. It's better to show she's scared (by freaking out, yelling, whaaaaaa whaaaaa heeeelp, whaaaaa oh my god whaaaa), rather then to tell it (I'm scared).

I agree - but it's the required line. Can't win them all.