EIGHTEEN SECONDS by Jack, Zac and Mac

Mac if anything you raise the bar for everyone here... for some maybe that bar is a little too high. i personally feel that you make a fantastic contribution to this forum. keep pushiing our buttons. :thumbsup:
 
This film felt like a feature in terms of visuals and setups. It kept me engaged the whole way through. I felt for the characters and was genuinely moved by the ending.

The editing was superb, the music was perfect for the mood of the film and the cinematography was a joy to watch.

This is an excellent piece of work and I will watch it again and again. I'm also excited to see the extended version.

Well done.
 
KOVAROVA said:
Mac if anything you raise the bar for everyone here... for some maybe that bar is a little too high. i personally feel that you make a fantastic contribution to this forum. keep pushiing our buttons. :thumbsup:
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Amen.
 
Kholi said:
Exactly what I said. This is going to turn out to be another Similo thread.

If people want to know if he's going to do a full-blown narrative, with dialogue and such, why not just ask instead of telling him what he needs to do?
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Don't worry it is coming :)

that was already the plan for this fest
remember the other thread "Engagement" ?
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Engagement is a real time, 5 pages of dialogue, one scene short with two characters.
The location became unavailable and Mac and Zac were not willing to compromise their vision for the location.

18 Seconds was one of 2 or 3 ideas I pulled out of my arse in the 2 days before they came to America to try and think of something we could do with Amy in NY and me on the road with them for the next 5 days.

So this was written and conceived to fit the time and resources we had.

In one of my grad school classes this retired old theatre director / guru Jon Jory gave us an exercise. We had to stage the openning scene of Macbeth with the 3 witches "when shall we 3 meet again, by fire or wind" or something like that, you know it. Anyway we had to stage the scene with three actors in 5 minutes.

Almost everyone failed horribly. One guy succeeded and it was because he picked something that he could actually accomplish in the time he had with the resources he had.

This was the axiom I applied to Shed. As a baby filmmaker I wanted the logistics of the production to be a non issue. So I wanted to concentrate on 1 guy in 1 room and thereby be able to just focus on telling the story and not lugging stuff all over town or lots of light set ups (we hung lights on dimmers in the 4 corners and had one small wattage light that we would move around).

Here we concieved an idea that could be shot on the run in limited amounts of time in short bursts in multiple cities where we would happen to be.

This is not an excuse, but one of the reasons the short is somewhat successful is because we found an idea that was the right size for our resources.

Besides, no matter how simple you keep it it will always balloon into more than what you bargained for.
 
I know, Jack. I just get kinda confused when people tell others what to do, instead of asking questions to find out why.

S'all good, though. Glad you got to whip out your... uhh... HVX!
 
MojoTrancer said:
If they made a mistake, it was not making the Erik thing more clear. But other than someone walking by JDS and saying "Hi, Erik!" or him saying to her "my name is Erik, what's yours" there's not much of a way to do it. Not a lot of talking going on in this piece.

With no disrespect to the mods, I thought the Eric or Erica rule was pretty pointless from the get-go.
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I'm only addressing this, because it sounds as if you're saying the only way to state the character is via dialogue. Not true. It could be done with a letterhead in the office, a bill for payment due, a nameplate, etc. Since a part of the film was about mundane activities, yet how they're still connected, it would have totally worked to have seen a mess of papers on his desk & seen a name in there ... even if we had to frame through to see it long enough to recognize it.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=749115&postcount=54

And PLEASE, before anyone PM's me like I'm attacking a great film, blah, blah, blah, it's not that. ANY film I've seen so far that hasn't included the names in some fashion or another, I've brought this question up. Ironcically, I've only seen this in two films so far, and both of them are INCREDIBLY well made.

All that aside, I can see everyone's points (to a degree) on how they feel about this film. Sure, it rings of SIMILO, but it's his style, which also works very well for him. I personally love the simplicity of this film, which also has a very unique story/connection between the characters. The car hit at the end was flat out amazing, although I was expecting it the moment he parked himself in the middle of the crosswalk.

The music was great, camera work great, performances great, etc. I loved it.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
This is not an excuse, but one of the reasons the short is somewhat successful is because we found an idea that was the right size for our resources.
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This was my philosophy, too. I knew I didn't have a lot of time, so I wrote for my limitations.
for my first film ever, shot on someone else's camera, I didn't want to get in over my head, script-wise. I shot on lunch breaks and a Saturday.
 
Kholi said:
Sheesh, man. Good Job, you guys. I couldn't tell this was HVX, because it just didn't look like typical soft and smudgy HVX footage. I really love the look.
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Kholi, are you meaning DVX instead of HVX? I've never heard of HVX footage being referred to as 'soft and smudgy' ... unless of course you're referring to the use of 35mm adapters, which can have a mixed bag of results, depending on whose hands they're in. For these guys, they make the 35's work very well.
 
Envision said:
I'm only addressing this, because it sounds as if you're saying the only way to state the character is via dialogue. Not true. It could be done with a letterhead in the office, a bill for payment due, a nameplate, etc. Since a part of the film was about mundane activities, yet how they're still connected, it would have totally worked to have seen a mess of papers on his desk & seen a name in there ... even if we had to frame through to see it long enough to recognize it.
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Well said. I wasn't suggesting that my two examples were the only way.

EDIT: ooops I guess that is what I hinted at. But that was wrong. There are always other solutions. END EDIT :)

Your solution is very creative. I guess the point i was try to make was the rule just didn't seem necessary. It didn't make for a better fest.
 
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Envision said:
Kholi, are you meaning DVX instead of HVX? I've never heard of HVX footage being referred to as 'soft and smudgy' ... unless of course you're referring to the use of 35mm adapters, which can have a mixed bag of results, depending on whose hands they're in. For these guys, they make the 35's work very well.
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No, I mean HVX. I might just be blind, but the HVX ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. It's totally fine, I'm just saying that it didn't have the standardized HVX look.

It looks totally separate from the other HVX work, similar to how the ILLEGAL guys created a completely different look on their short.
 
Kholi said:
It looks totally separate from the other HVX work, similar to how the ILLEGAL guys created a completely different look on their short.
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These guys did the same thing with the DVX too. I'm quite confident they can take any camera, and make the stuff look like what nearly no one else can make the same camera do.
 
Great job everyone! I liked the simplicity of it. Didn't try to jam a half hour worth of story in.

I apologize if I missed, somewhere in the thread, if someone explained the ending. I might be wrong, but I think everyone commenting how they don't find it believable that the characters fall in love in the end didn't get the story.

My take on the ending, hell, the whole thing, is that they are obviously connected to each other, and when they finally see each other, they just know. Everything. Who the other is. That they each were the missing piece. So of course she drops dead when he dies.

Again, maybe I missed someone saying this, or it was so obvious it didn't need saying.
 
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Shibuya Oboya said:
...My take on the ending, hell, the whole thing, is that they are obviously connected to each other, and when they finally see each other, they just know. Everything. Who the other is. That they each were the missing piece. So of course she drops dead when he dies...
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No this is exactly right.
There are cuts that show them doing mor mirror activities but I think they had to be excised for this version due to length.

Hopefully the fact that they were already connected and realize they have found the missing piece at the end will be more clear in the extended cut.

Mac may put a voice over on it at some point to.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
No this is exactly right.
There are cuts that show them doing mor mirror activities but I think they had to be excised for this version due to length.

Hopefully the fact that they were already connected and realize they have found the missing piece at the end will be more clear in the extended cut.

Mac may put a voice over on it at some point to.
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No!! voice-over would ruin it for me. more shots/extended cut would be great, but I think everything was said well in the 6 minute limit.

well done, possibly my favorite. but I'm not done watching yet, so I guess it's a little early to say that.
 
hey Mac/ Jack _ did the handheld method spring from limited resources (no permits) or a stylistic choice or both?
 
Nice work...visuals as were excellent and the sound design top notch. Audio really is a big part of the experience.

A couple of tech questions. Did you dial in the colour temp for her running shots, or cc? I haven't seen the HVX look so good with this type of cold look before. And what lenses did you use? I'm guessing you're with some high quality glass. Thanks.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Mac may put a voice over on it at some point to.
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i think the danger of adding a voice over to this film would be that it could sound
pretentious. i thought the story was quite clear, straightforward and well executed.
 
I don't think a VO is needed at all. I also don't think an extended cut is needed ... it seemed to be perfect as is.
 
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