RF EYE-D -- Aram Bauman and MsManhattan

Hi - Nice work, it's obvious you put a lot of time and attention into this.

I'll have to echo earlier comments by the guy with the bucket head that I don't dig the style, though. I was distracted from the story by all the heavily stylized effects. I kind of wish you would have kept all that to a minimum, and focused on more of the pure, live action shots. But we all have different opinions and preferences.

I kept noticing that your framing seemed a little off (or very unconventional) - you may want to pay more attention to that. For example, in the church scene, the close ups allowed their faces to fall up to halfway out of the frame.

Loved the location of the church and the look you achieved there.
 
Hey guys, I have been so behind on commenting on these things. I saw this at the NYC meeting, and the downloaded and watched it several more times.

I thought the filmmaking was good, as I expected it would be from seeing Aram's previous shooting. I really liked the use of guirilla techniques to get all of the shots of people at the malls, the scanner, etc. To me, that is the epitome of great low-budget filmmaking, to grab images as you can and them make them mean something else entirely within the context of the story.

Honestly, I liked the non-CG stuff better than the CG stufff. I think because it just felt simpler and more to the point story-wise.

My only issue is I did not fully understand the story. I wasn't sure how the bad guy was connected to the ARFID. I didn't know exactly what the hero's power was, and what activated it. And I was not exactly clear on whether the good guy getting his ass kicked in the beginning was the same as the guy the little girl (This time it really IS Aram's daughter!!!!!) finds in the forest.

Maybe I'm being dense on this one. I know Leslie told us a bunch of stuff about Horus and such, but that didn't really help me get it.

Looking forward to working with the lighting-ninja, Aram!!!!! And Leslie, be careful about offering to AD. Last time Shawn volunteered on one of my movies, he was stuffed into a closet for two hours. :)
 
Hey Mark,
We come into the fight near the end. Its the old "get into the scene late" idea. The good guy has just gotten his a$$ kicked and is about to meet his maker when he has 2 flash backs, the one where he is discovered by the little girl (she was supposed to mention something about the prophecy being true and all. Had to get cut.) and the flash back of his mother telling him his destiny and he can do it. This enables him to summon the last bit of strength to break free of Arphid. Both flash backs are colored to visually show they are not of the time of the fight or present. I could have done the dreamy look but I wanted to make it more color orientated. The super saturated colors in the first flash back were supposed to provoke uneasiness of the events that were soon to happen. I lost the faces doing this though since I didnt have time to tweak.

Arphid steals these powers from Horus's father after he kills him. You have to imagine some kind of super natural transfer of power and imagine how and why it was transfered. The powers were supposed to be for good but Arphid has used them to control everyone and make himself the absolute ruler. We wanted to show he could also hurt people through the implant if they got out of line.

Horus was born from super natural powers also. How? Who knows. You have to imagine it. But he was created to renew the balance of the power. Even though this story needs much more time to complete the right way I kind of like the idea that each person would have their own idea on how things happened that we didnt see.
I wonder if the same exact story line without CG would seem to read better. People were distracted by the VFX it seems and for the longer version we will take a close look at why that is. Maybe its because the movie is so short that people get taken out of the story too easy because they have no time to get invested in a charactor. Many things to think about.

The cutting off of the heads doesnt really bother me for some reason plus it just doesnt seem close enough when you have the full head in. That might just be because its a small frame we are working with on the LCD or monitor. To me its like I want to get up really close. I want to see that booger hanging off the nose hair. I want to see that pimple on the nose. :) The fight scene I wanted to have it very intimate. I wanted him to either lick or kiss his head too but that got lost plus it was a little hot in there and I dont think Arphid wanted to lick a sweaty head. The other shots I was working and experimenting with perspectives. Some worked and others didnt I guess but it was all fun anyways.

We just watched underworld: evolution and the behind the scenes. I want to do wire work for the next version and Kate Beckinsale has to be in it some where! She has a great look and accent. We need accents in the next version too. :)
 
Aram Bauman said:
We just watched underworld: evolution and the behind the scenes. I want to do wire work for the next version and Kate Beckensale has to be in it some where! She has a great look and accent. We need accents in the next version too. :)
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I will watch it again tonight. Maybe I am just dense.

Yeah, Kate Beckinsdale does have a great look, if by look you mean "ass in leather jumpsuit." Honestly, I have no idea what happens in Underworld, but I will pay $10 to watch her in tha suit for two hours any day of the week.

:)

M
 
LOL Its her face thats just... amazing. She has that look that can melt steel and be soft at the same time. I havnt seen her in any other movies but these kind so it might just be the style Im digging. I have seen Laurel Canyon but dont remember who she was. She may just be a great looking vampire.
 
Aram + MsManhattan -

You are a solid team and this is a solid effort. As was mentioned before, the SFX are a notable cut above the rest, especially the background design with the collapsing building. Really nice style.
I think you should be more selective in your casting - it feels as though you're giving good direction to mediocre actors. Either that or the other way around. You also shouldn't restrict yourself to copying great genre films so much. I like films that kick off in familiar territory but then wander into their own style over time - a soft introduction followed by a tough finish.
And that badguy really looks like agent smith only younger.
Thanks for the film, see you next fest.
-Ben
 
Thank you Penfever. So far our films have been with minimal dialog so I see it as a stepping stone to including more. For the time allowed I think they did a decent job and we were definitly very laid back with accepting the performances. The church scene we shot in 3 hours including setting up and breaking down everything but I thought she did a great job. I admit there are parts in that scene I hate but I didnt want to do 8 takes for each cut since we had a very limited time to shoot in there. All the green screen stuff was shot in 6 hours including lunch and hanging out bullsh!tting. So i figure the shooting time was 3 hours.
With time limit of 3 weeks its hard to come up with pure original looks since there is no time to experiment and I went with what ever I got to first. I did want the blues and orange and green and orange colors though. I made sure that came through. This next go around with this movie I want to design everything from scratch and create something unique if thats possible. We had mad fun on this and the "solid team" :) is waiting to do it all again!!
Thanks for watching and taking the time to post.
 
Aram Bauman said:
The church scene we shot in 3 hours including setting up and breaking down everything but I thought she did a great job. I admit there are parts in that scene I hate but I didnt want to do 8 takes for each cut since we had a very limited time to shoot in there.
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Minor correction: We actually did that church scene -- which is really the mother/son flashback scene (we just happened to shoot in a church because the location felt right for their hide-a-way) -- in under three hours, including set-up. Then we took our two cast members, who got up early on a beautiful Saturday and did the shoot for free, to lunch... The mother, Irma Estel Laguerre, is a Julliard-trained actress and opera singer who has done a lot of stage work and has been an extra in The Sopranos and Law and Order: Criminal Intent, among other shows. We didn't give her a lot of time to prepare as we were tweaking the dialogue in that scene until two days before the shoot... She is affiliated with that church, a National Landmark, and got them to give us the location for free, but as Aram noted, we couldn't wear out our welcome...

Other than Irma, all of our actors were either amateur or non-actors (Arphid, played by Ken Kecevar, has had some previous acting experience) who just wanted to support our film. Well, Olivia (Aram's daughter -- the Rebel Girl) probably just wanted to support her Daddy. :) So, all-in-all, while we definitely could have benefitted from having more experienced cast members, we were fairly pleased with what we were able to get from friends and family. And, at the end of the day, we had a great time doing this. Thanks to everyone, again, for your comments and for taking the time to watch and think about the film. We really appreciate all the feedback.
 
The super powers of this dynamic production duo seem to be growing by leaps and bounds. Every new picture shows expontential improvement.

They may not have come in first, but this is a team watch!

Great job!!!
 
Hey Texture, thanks for the props. The next one Im going to bring it back home to the Brooklyn roots. No real effects needed in the next one at all.
 
RFeyeD played at the Galapogos theatre this weekend. They saw it on IFC channel and asked us to send it to them. Funny how things just keep going.
 
Cool Aram. They want to show my Film CONSTANCE at galapagos in June too. they've shown several of my things over there. They usually get a pretty decent crowd too.
 
Cool, I have never been inside yet. Leslie really wanted to make it to it but we got caught up with the people we were shooting for and they invited us for home made old school Italian dinner, an offer we couldn't refuse. Seriously though, the family is really nice and the lady were are documenting is 95 years old and still smart as a whip. Her accomplishments and her drive still today is very inspiring. You would never know she was anywhere near 95.
 
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