New York City DVXUSER Crew Presents: Katrina

am off to a superbowl party. will be back in a few hours. :) enjoy all the films everyone!
 
Kholi said:
And you know that's what I like to hear. A year in outline form, 2 months for thirteen minutes? Sounds like you actually GAVE A DAMN about what you were going to be putting on screen.

I applaud j00.
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Well let me clarify, I wasn't working on it for a year straight. Basically, the story goes like this:

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a feature with my writing partner. It got shelved because it needed a lot of work, etc. But there was one central scene where a woman seduces a man into a hotel room and then a guy bursts in. So I took that central scene and started writing a short around it.

The original scene had the cowboy guy getting killed and then the short would play out much like "Woman in the Window" where the two characters have to decide if they can trust each other not to rat the other out. But that is a longer story, I thought, so I asked: "What would happen if they don't kill the guy?" That's what lead to this short.

But it was making it's way in outline form throughout the year, working on it off and on, while shooting other things, and then toward the end of the year, I hunkered down and did about two solid months of full time writing on it to get it where it is now.
 
ok so iam on my treo and as no surprise i hate football. yea mark has been tempting me with this noir short since august. ive been wanting to light and shoot this for a while........
 
Mark Harris said:
I agree this is not a drama in the way I think a lot of them are, sort of like "Lifetime" dramas. But it's one reason we are non-comp. This is the movie I wanted to make next anyway, so we just used the contest as the deadline for making it.
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Ah with that in mind - EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I hope I don't kill your servers... I emailed an HD link of Katrina to like 15 or so film friends of mine. :)

I'm like, "see!! this is why we need a 35 adapter"
 
This flick was really fun to watch! Your lead actor is incredibly good, reminds me a lot of a young Samuel L Jackson. The look of the movie is superb. The story hooks you and doesn't let go, really witty too. On a tech note, the dialogue at the beginning in the bar was really distracting how the room tone kept disappearing between lines causing this jarring effect. Oh, and after that much Vodka I expected him to be on the ground.
 
Chandler meets blues/jazz. Modern noir with a hillbilly twist.

The best opening titles of any film in the competition bar none.

Cinematography was accomplished, for the most part. Some of it strayed into cartoon territory, but overall matched the script like a glove.

Score sounded/felt a little porno, with the bass and the horns. Again, I would have liked to see a new take on the familiar tropes instead of xeroxing them

The script was obviously a specific Raymond Chandler/ Walter Mosley vibe, but was pretty shallow and lacked the wit. Although you don’t have to redefine a genre, I didn’t see anything other than a treading over territory covered many times before. It was a enjoyable ride, though. In other words, the cinematography and the assured direction make this one entertaining, but the flick doesn’t elevate itself above the material or genre, IMHO.

Yeah, i'm analyzing you guys, but with the amount of talent on your team
, i expect you to bring back the champions trophy, homies [size=-2](it's like when we used to expect the Chicago Bulls to win) [/size]

Still, I’d put this in the top ten for pure pulp coolness alone. Wawchickawahickawowowow.



:beer:
 
This was a fun one to watch. Great cinematography. Great acting. Definitely in my top five. For some reason I especially liked the opening newscast. It sounded very authentic.
 
shawneous said:
This flick was really fun to watch! Your lead actor is incredibly good, reminds me a lot of a young Samuel L Jackson. The look of the movie is superb. The story hooks you and doesn't let go, really witty too. On a tech note, the dialogue at the beginning in the bar was really distracting how the room tone kept disappearing between lines causing this jarring effect.
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Yeah, I need to ADR that scene, really. There was a nasty refrig on the same breaker as the lights - I think the only breaker.

Oh, and after that much Vodka I expected him to be on the ground.
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not if you're a man. :)
 
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D_and_G said:
Chandler meets blues/jazz. Modern noir with a hillbilly twist.

The best opening titles of any film in the competition bar none.

Cinematography was accomplished, for the most part. Some of it strayed into cartoon territory, but overall matched the script like a glove.

Score sounded/felt a little porno, with the bass and the horns. Again, I would have liked to see a new take on the familiar tropes instead of xeroxing them

The script was obviously a specific Raymond Chandler/ Walter Mosley vibe, but was pretty shallow and lacked the wit. Although you don’t have to redefine a genre, I didn’t see anything other than a treading over territory covered many times before. It was a enjoyable ride, though. In other words, the cinematography and the assured direction make this one entertaining, but the flick doesn’t elevate itself above the material or genre, IMHO.

Yeah, i'm analyzing you guys, but with the amount of talent on your team
, i expect you to bring back the champions trophy, homies [size=-2](it's like when we used to expect the Chicago Bulls to win) [/size]

Still, I’d put this in the top ten for pure pulp coolness alone. Wawchickawahickawowowow.



:beer:
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Thanks, you are 100% right about the depth. Which is one thing I hope to correct with a feature version, both going over the stuff written here and expanding on it to feature length. But it was a fun exercise to start digging into this genre.

What you brought up kind of separates the standard noir fare from the amazing noir fare. I think my writing here is about as good as like 90% of the noirs cranked out of the studio system, but not nearly at the level of the greats that stand above the rest.

Mainly, enjoyable ride was the most I could hope to get out of this iteration of the project, as it's the first one of it's kind I've ever written.

Another thing I want to do too is keep developing my own twists on the language so that I am not as dependent on existing tropes of a previous time.

Anyway, all things considered, I am considering this experiment a success and encouragement to keep with it.
 
MojoTrancer said:
This was a fun one to watch. Great cinematography. Great acting. Definitely in my top five. For some reason I especially liked the opening newscast. It sounded very authentic.
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that's all conrad_johnson, DVXUser member. I wrote it, but he cast it and 100% produced it in Minn. It was a last minute addition, because what I really will want there is an actual scene showing Casey robbing the bank. but for the purposes of this cut, I really dig the newscast.
 
Mark, thank you for your review of my film, To Kill a Rock Star. I'm glad you enjoyed it (at least someone did!). but hey, it was my first film ever, so I didn't expect many good reviews.

your film is very ambitious, and you all really nailed it. it's clear that you are serious about style, and every aspect of your filmmaking reflected this.

the range of talent and experience on these dramafest films is so great that it's difficult to compare them fairly; it's like apples and oranges. that being said, I can't think of anything that stood out in your film that could have been improved on. nothing destracted from the story - the acting was great, it was shot very well, the lighting was gorgeous, and the edit was smooth.

I loved it. :)

and yeah, our cowboys should get together and do some damage . . .
 
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