View Full Version : Home Invasion - Bena
Hi everyone.
FYI.. it is on the individual download page.. look for it as Home Invasion-Bena ... its 14 down in the list at
http://64.38.14.46/scifest/index.php...ename&type=asc
Just a hint, it really helps to have a rocking sound system to watch this, a subwoofer really helps.
Also mac users might want to darken the picture just a tad, I think the gama got changed when it was encoded.
Ben
Ok it looks like our film is up now.
I think its a bit over compressed though... if it aint one thing its another.
Just an fyi, on my mac it looks like the gama is off, its about 1 stop brighter than it should be...
Oh and it looks like I wont be able to post a link to the most excellent Quicktime version until voting is done.
Blaine
02-17-2006, 10:55 PM
I hope you were going for some humor with the VO because I found it had a charming "cheesiness" to it. I like your effects. The feel I got from this was one of those doc-style fifties sci-fi movies but with up-to-date visuals. It was an interesting blend of past and present style of filmmaking. At first I was thinking the VO was a little pretentious until I realized ( I hope) what you were doing. I really like what you've done here. http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif
Thanks Blaine.. we were going for a twilight zone feel with the Voice over. The music also has a 1950 feel to it, if you ask me.
How would it have been without the voice over, better ? worse? or just different?
Humor is in the Eye of the Beholder.. or something like that. Of course My dad actually burst out laughing when he saw the wet leg shot.. which I did not intend to be funny, but I guess it is if you remove yourself from the proximity of the project.
There are a bunch of hidden effects.. as well as the obvious ones.
And I learned that you need to be very orgainized with your file structure, because I just put all the fx in one folder, and well it just kept growing until I started getting lost in it, must have wasited hours trying to find the files I wanted... Live an learn.
Blaine
02-17-2006, 11:35 PM
The VO did it for me. I like the feel it gave. Like I said it had that cheesy 50s vibe going for it.
darkfader
02-18-2006, 09:00 AM
I enjoyed it. What program did you guys use to make the spaceships was it Maya or 3D max. Very nice composition and very funny VO. But what really did for me in this one was the music.
Darkfader
I used Cinema 4D for the 3D.
Yes the music is most excellently scored, many thanks to Kevin!
arielman
02-18-2006, 07:17 PM
This had a very Twilight Zone feel to this , this is good!
I liked the camera work you did and the bit with him pissing his PJs .
I liked it because it was a simple story you told and did it nicely .
The VO was also good , gave it that Twilight Zone feel .
Ian
Edit...Just read your above post ..You were trying for the Twilight Zone feel ...well you succeeded.
Ian
hemophilia
02-19-2006, 12:42 PM
Darkfader--
Thanks! This is when I jump in and say 'hello' and say that I was the one that helped Ben with this little ditty-- I did the sound fx and over-dramatic music. Plus I look tired and confused.
I figured that with this sort of a movie... it's almost like a silent film type thing. No dialogue; sparse voice-over. So I thought it would be cool to make a score that takes the spotlight and drives things a lot more than would be appropriate in just about any other film. I thought of the score like: "If there were NO images whatsoever being used to tell this story, how would I make notes-alone tell it?". Which is probably an ego-maniacal way to approach the score, but I guess that's for you guys to decide if it works or not. ;)
-Kevin
Z B Brox
02-20-2006, 05:30 PM
This did have a really excellent score, it really carried you through the flick. Effects were nice, especially something as (theoretically) simpe as glowing light and floating. The v/o wasn't, like, compelling, but it conveyed that 50s twilight zone vibe people have mentioned well, and it was kinda amusing. Actually, and don't take this as a negative, something about this reminded me of a "Got Milk?" commercial. Something about the style of it, and the silent-movie feel... makes it feel like one of those slightly-humorous parables. It's a nice looking, relatively entertaining piece.
THX-1138
02-21-2006, 09:22 AM
Not much out of place on this one as most have said.
Things I noticed.
Title credits looked cheep as opposed to the rest of the film. I felt they could have been done better, more creatively and I guess a little more pro looking.
More work for you but a hole in the celing or roof would have been a nice touch. Next time ask your wife if you can tear a 3 ft hole in both the celing and the roof. That would up the production value of your short tremendiously.
Kidding on the last one. Well done!
Kip Kubin
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 04:03 PM
Hey!
Nice job. I can't say too much additional. Didn't the ray beam come from the wrong direction? It seemed like it was coming right at him towards the window and then he turns and its in front of him, when it should have been behind?
Overall, nice job.
-Robert
Norm Sanders
02-21-2006, 06:10 PM
Is this one only located in the .zip files? I can't find it anywhere, and have yet to download the .zip files. If it's located in the main scifest folder where we originally were pulling the .wmv files, can someone post a link to it here? I'd like to review it, but am missing it. Thanks!
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 06:16 PM
Norm, I got this one in one of the .zips.
Norm Sanders
02-21-2006, 06:29 PM
DRAT! Thanks, I'll have to watch for it tonight. Have just a few left before I can turn in my sheet.
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 06:30 PM
Gimme a sec, Norm. I'll tell you which zip.
Is The Yankee's The Waiver on your ballot? Its not on mine.
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 06:31 PM
Norm, its in the fifth zip file.
Norm Sanders
02-21-2006, 06:36 PM
For the sake of helping Bena's thread out, I'll just bump/post here instead of PM'ing you. :) Thanks for the heads up that it's in the 5th file ... saves me time. Also, The Yankee's section on the charts is on the 2nd version of the spreadsheet (they updated it). By that time, I'd already put a bunch of my scores in, so I just inserted a row where it needed to be, alphabetically, and then put the formula in the end cell to average out the scores in that row. Otherwise, I think in the sci-fi forum, where Jarred's got the .zip file links, that should be the updated xls file.
FYI.. it is on the individual download page.. look for it as Home Invasion-Bena ... its 14 down in the list at
http://64.38.14.46/scifest/index.php?sort=filename&type=asc
Hopefully a couple more people will check it out.
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 08:12 PM
I hope so too! I did enjoy your film and wish more people would comment on it for you.
its either an optical contusion or alien technoligy :)
Hey!
Nice job. I can't say too much additional. Didn't the ray beam come from the wrong direction? It seemed like it was coming right at him towards the window and then he turns and its in front of him, when it should have been behind?
Overall, nice job.
-Robert
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 08:14 PM
its either an optical contusion or alien technoligy :)
LOL, thanks for the clarification!!!! :thumbup:
Thanks Ought2bCommitted!
I wanted to make something fun and pretty.
I totally under estimated the amount of time I would be doing the fx at the same time trying to get a final cut so the Most Excellent Score could be timed out.
I built a skater dolly for this, and I think it worked out very well. Its hard to see in the wmv version, but there is a dolly in zoom out that gives that cool Hitchcock feel about 2:10 in the movie. It took about 3 tries to get it right, but it looks real nice.
I also think the next time I will put a still graphic for adjusting the brightness/gama at the head of the movie. On my mac its too bright, oh well live and learn.
As soon as Jarred allows, I will post a 60MB Quicktime h264 that looks a lot better.
Anyone care to guess how we did the levitation?
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 08:28 PM
How did you build the skater dolly? I thought you had a dolly shot, but wasn't sure.
How did you build the skater dolly? I thought you had a dolly shot, but wasn't sure.
There were a lot of dolly moves. They are subtle. There are a couple 360 camera dollys, like where he sits up in bed.
I built one of the 3 wheeled Skater mini look a likes that everyone is making in the DIY thread...this is what the real one looks like http://www.pstechnik.de/en/skater.php
The main issue I had was the wood floor was not smooth enough to do a nice dolly, so I had to use a 2x4 shelf to get it to roll right.
The Hitchcock shot was done on the skater dolly moving straight in while I used the zoom control to zoom out. It took a few tries but I found the correct dolly in speed with the zoom out speed to get that nice depth compression.
Did anyone Notice the 2nd ring?
Ought2bCommitted
02-21-2006, 08:42 PM
Yeah the Hitchcock shot was the one I couldn't figure out. I wasn't sure the size of the room, but I knew you had wood floors, so I wan't sure if you had a dolly or not.
Norm Sanders
02-23-2006, 10:39 AM
Bena, only saw one ring directly ontop of the roof. I was looking for another, thinking I'd see one, but didn't.
Finally was able to just watch this, after pulling it from the .zip file Robert pointed me towards. Impressive (VERY) camera work, and the score worked well for getting us to feel the way we should at certain parts of the film. Lighting was also good, though the shot when he was in bed was a tad too well lit for my tastes ... like he had headlights shining up from the foot of his bed.
However, where this fell for me (though it had a VERY Twilight Zone thing going on) was in the script ... having just VO the whole time. Beyond that, it was the editing. It really needs to be tightened up, in my opinion, as it holds shots WAY longer than it needs to.
Otherwise, TOP NOTCH effects as the levitation looked VERY real, the light coming down on him, the EXT view of the house where we had the full moon to the upper left, and the house & horizon were slightly rocking back & forth ... VERY VERY cool stuff.
Thanks Envision!
The lighting when he is in the bed looks great in the original footage, its just something about taking a mac file to a pc, and then running windows media on it that totally made it too bright. The whole movie is 1/2 to 1 stop too bright in the current WMV version. I can make it a little darker in quicktime pro with the A/V brightness control, not sure if you can do that in Window Media player on the PC. As I was saying, if I do this again, I will put a calibration still at the begining, that shows the user how to set their brightness.
There is a second ring if you open your mind at the very end you will see it. Of course its much easier to see in the full rez version, which I hope to post when the voting is done.
Or maybe you just aren't ready to belive... ???
As far as editing goes, I would say it could be tighter, but if it was, then the Score would not have been as good, since time was running out and we had to get an edit lock to get the score timed, but I think it works overall.
Care to guess how we pulled off the levitation?
EditPhish
02-23-2006, 09:52 PM
Bena,
Lots of comments for ya :)
First off, I really enjoyed your film a lot! The music was very good... and the cinematography was great.
I liked your lighting a lot... my only gripe would be at the beginning when he's sleeping and restless (night)... it just lacked a bit of interest. But from the moment he goes to the window the lighting got much more interesting and drew me more into the story.
LOVED the difference in lighting/color from night to morning.
The spaceship FX were a bit cheesie, and without a doubt, your film would have been improved with better FX... but I can overlook that, as I imagine you budget/time/ability constraints that I can definitely appreciate! ;) Totally dug your beaming-up, levitation FX... that looked excellent. Do tell how you did them...
Story was great... I've watched it several times and on one watch-through I muted it whenever the narrator started to speak (and guessed at when he stopped) to see how it would have played without that narration. While it was definitely needed at the end the way you pieced the story together, I wonder if you had restructured the ending a bit it might have been better without the narration... but that's really just a question... not a statement about not liking it the way it is. Personally, I'm just not a big fan of narrated films, and yours in particular struck me as one that could work exceptionally well without it.
Only other thing was the end... it felt just a tiny bit anti-climatic... though I can't give you an exact reason why... not sure... can't really put my finger on it.
Thanks so much for sharing an very entertaining short... I really did enjoy it!
Norm Sanders
02-23-2006, 10:21 PM
Bena, no clue on how you pulled off the levitation. Spoon feed it to me, would ya? Too tired to guess. :)
hemophilia
02-24-2006, 01:11 AM
And thanks for the kind words Opus! ;)
Here's my take on it (me being the abductee/composer for the movie)...
I like a lot of the camera movement. It's amazing the level of professinalism that a slight dolly move can provide. My fave' is when the abductee (me) hits his alarm clock...that shot just has this ever-so-slight dolly track-in... but it's those little touches that keep things compositionally captivating.
Some of the lighting is good... some of it is not so good. The tricky subject of monitoring very dark materials for consistent delivery over the web deserves many a thread to itself-- but what bugs me more is the lighting continuity, which at times, isn't as good as it could be. And of course the 3d-work isn't exactly Spielberg-ready. But Ben (bena) doesn't have much experience with 3d and he certainly did a better job than I could've in the 3d dept., particularly given the time frame.
And of course I think the music is fantastically flawless and the actor did a bang up job and is quite handsome.
As for the levitation, I gotta say it WAS tricky. We developed a positron magnetic inversion resonance gamma beam imaging screen with which to triangulate the H7O4 vector fourier spectrograph coversion to temporarily suspend the effect of gravity. It was really tough cause we did it all in Fortran, which is kinda archaic but we wanted to prove it could be done. Plus the beam killed the dog.
Which was sad.
-Kevin
EditPhish
02-24-2006, 01:15 AM
As for the levitation, I gotta say it WAS tricky. We developed a positron magnetic inversion resonance gamma beam imaging screen with which to triangulate the H7O4 vector fourier spectrograph coversion to temporarily suspend the effect of gravity. It was really tough cause we did it all in Fortran, which is kinda archaic but we wanted to prove it could be done. Plus the beam killed the dog.
Which was sad.
Thanks for the late-night giggle Kevin :D
The picture is clear and I liked the beginning of this. I was impressed by the 'invasion' when he was lifted up and his reaction to this.
One of the few where I noticed the credits were good.
Im surprised that people thought there were 13 better Musical Scores than us?!!
Any one have any thoughts on why our score did not measure up?