"Without Provocation" - a Norm Sanders (Envision) film

[Brandon Rice]

The BTS rocks Norm, cool look too!

 

[Norm Sanders]

Thanks & Responses ...

Thanks & Responses ...

Nice, good work!

No, YOU'RE the one who did the nice work, Patrick! After the fest is done, I'll post the regular CC'd version as well, which should show off your camera & lighting work even more.

Looks great, Norm! Can't wait to check this one out! :thumbsup:

Thanks, Ken! You, in combination with Shawn's gear got some of the best & 'hottest' sound I've ever had to work with. Great work my friend!

Yeah! We made it in time!

Yeah, you ain't kidding! Whew!! Thanks for texting me yesterday to update when it was finally up. While we were on travel to Cabo for my wife's company trip, I could only hope & pray everything worked out for Steve Armenakis (Steve_Arm) and Herman Witkam to get it finished & uploaded.

Note- black visqueen will not stick to cement siding with gaff tape in a wind storm. That is one of a select few things that gaff tape is not good for.

True dat! What Patrick is referring to is the fact that this entire film is supposed to take place in real time at night. Since we were shooting throughout the daylight, I had to purchase 2,000 square feet of 6mill black plastic wrap & litterally wrap Rebecca's house to cover all the windows they have (they have a lot of windows to see the incredible view they have from their home). The stuff actually held in place amazingly well with Gaffer tape until we got extreme winds & rain up there. After a while the tape just gave out, and then the house was too wet to get any new tape to stick. I can share what we had to do to think quick on our feet later. :grin:

Cool, you pulled one together. I always enjoy your films. Good Luck!

Thanks, Aram. Looking forward to your thoughts on this one!

Never heard of this short before. What happened with berlin?

g.

Hi abelex. Look on the first page at the Q&A section ... you'll see a link to BERLIN which explains it all there.

Whhaaaattttt? Awesome Norm! Way to come through in the clutch! Can't wait to see it.

Thanks, John! We thought this may come in as a bit of a surprise, lol.

Glad to see your in Norm .
Ian

Thanks, Ian. Looking forward to seeing yours as well with Raptor365!

Good job, Norm. Looking forward to seeing it.

Co.

Thanks, and a local guy to us as well! Whoot!

wew hew! COngrats on the entry Norm. You pulled through like a slick willy in a peep hole. Looking forward to seeing your film

cheers!
/j

Lol, thanks Justin!

good stuff Norm. Congrats on getting one in.

Thanks, Jim! I thought you'd be happy to see this, especially after the cancellation of BERLIN. Hope we don't disappoint, though it's a COMPLETELY different film than BERLIN was/is going to be.

man i was just blind sided....... good show Norm

Ahh, good! That was the intent. Thanks, Michael.

Wow Norm!! You got one in! Never fails! haha!

I'm an addict, what else can I say? I need help, lol. Thanks, Brandon.

Oh boy.

Yippee.

Goody.

Another tedious film from Norm. Something involving the fascinating life of your hamster no doubt.

Oh. WAITJUSTASECONDHERE! I see that Rebecca's in this one!

Weeelllll OK then! Why didn't you say so?

You've got my vote.

Unless you take your shirt off again. In which case you don't.

Unless .... (WHOA! Not going there ....)

Seriously - cheers, bud. Aren't ya glad?:beer:

Yes, yes, Brian, I'm glad. There, are you happy now?!

wow, it's almost like i didn't see this coming. lol.

Congrats on getting an entry in Norm!

Thanks, Ben. You knew I probably couldn't stay out!

Yay! I was bummed when Berlin was postponed, so this was a great surprise. I like the stylization you chose for your final CC (thanks for showing the process, BTW). Looking forward to this.

Thanks, Amy! Hopefully the stylized process sells just as well when it's in full motion as well.

The BTS rocks Norm, cool look too!

Thanks again, Brandon. More BTS to come, including clips, fully edited video, etc. as the days go on and I'm able to get them up. Just got back from vacation late last night, so I'm going to take a break now to spend time with the kids now that I've gotten this thread up & semi caught up!!

 

[Charli]

I told someone not too long ago that you'd do this, just like this, yep, I was right.

 

[PDX_DVX]

run silent, run deep.

 

[Tom Marshall]

Norm, Norm, he's our man! If he can't do it, no one can! :beer:

Glad to see you're putting something together for the fest buddy! I haven't been able to keep up with spyfest at all due to my much hated job, but I'm sorry to see that Berlin never materialized - can't say that I blame you for cutting that one loose at this time. I'm a perfectionist too and I can see why you would want nothing but the best in the end.

 

[Norm Sanders]

I told someone not too long ago that you'd do this, just like this, yep, I was right.

Hee-hee, thanks Charli! I'll take that as a compliment, I think? :beer:

Norm, Norm, he's our man! If he can't do it, no one can! :beer:

Glad to see you're putting something together for the fest buddy! I haven't been able to keep up with spyfest at all due to my much hated job, but I'm sorry to see that Berlin never materialized - can't say that I blame you for cutting that one loose at this time. I'm a perfectionist too and I can see why you would want nothing but the best in the end.

I've always appreciated your support, Tim, thanks! There was concern for a bit that this one may not have made the deadline, but thankfully it all came together, thanks in a LARGE part to the continued efforts of Herman and Steve. Thanks guys!

 

[JOE BLO]

Norm,

I like the screen grabs with your stylized CC. I can't wait to see your film.

Just so you know, you spelled "Silence" wrong on your poster.

Thought you might like to know.

 

[Norm Sanders]

Thanks, Joe! Actually that spelling error was brought to my attention really quickly after opening the thread by Ken (chazmo), so I fixed it immediately. I think if you hit 'refresh' on your system, it should fix itself ... not to mention reduce the size of the poster dramatically ... it was just too obnoxiously large, lol.

 

[deedive]

pushin boundries is great. This film looks really cool. Waiting to see the movies are driving me crazy.

 

[chris f]

glad to see you made it in norm, looking forward to it

 

[Jazz Dog]

Looks cool Norm. Looking forward to checking out your film and all the other ones. I am always looking for cools ways to use the line art filter so I can't wait to see what you have come up with there. My film below is on hold for now but I am real happy with it. Just waiting for my actor to get back on board....

 

[Norm Sanders]

Thanks Dale, Chris, and Greg! Greg, sorry to hear that your film won't be making it in, but looking forward to seeing yours once you're able to get back on track with your actor! :thumbsup:

Here's a funny clip I just discovered of what I believe was Shawn Nelson trying to do the "I squish you!" trick with the camera ... it was LATE at night, so you'll hear that our DP had possibly dozed off as well, lol.

CLIP

 

[Norm Sanders]

Updated the 'clip' onto the front page of BTS material, and just realized it might be interesting to reflect the following: Our script was 12 pages long, and there was nothing I had to cut out to make the movie fit within 6 minutes.

EVERY single person that read the script questioned how the heck we were going to get it to fit in 6 minutes ... shoot, I know the rules; 1 page typically equals a minute of film. But I'm pretty detailed in the actions that I write, and I also knew this was going to be a pretty fast paced film, and very kinetic (if that's the correct word) in feel.

So when the final edit was done, the actual film came in at JUST under 5 minutes. We inserted 15 seconds in front for titles, and a nice 45 second scroll on the back end for Herman to do some cool score work over the credits.

Anyway, just never thought I'd say it ... 12 pages can equal 5 minutes of film. Once the films are officially up & available, I'll post the script for viewing as well.

 

[MojoTrancer]

Very groovy grabs, Norm. I like the camera angles a lot. I'm excited to see this one.

 

[-zach-]

Norm -

I love the style of this one. The grabs definitely evoke the same feeling as Scanner Darkly, but are new and fresh in their own way. It's an inspiration to hear that you're "pushing the boundaries". Taking chances is what it's all about. To make a very long speech short, I'm really looking forward to this one. I'll leave a full review as soon as I see it!

I find myself looking at the stills over and over again. The effect really enhances the shots and even the expressions on the face. I felt the need to edit this post that's how good the CC looks.

 

[mentatDUKE]

Wow. This looks really interesting. Thanks for taking us through your thought process. It's cool to see how your style has evolved over the course of several projects. Can't wait to see this. Good luck.

 

[Norm Sanders]

Thanks Mojo, the credit for the angles mostly all goes to Patrick LaValley. I think I'd suggest perhaps one or two things, or state if I wanted something different, but he would otherwise open my eyes to all kind of possibilities with things he was doing. I'd just sit back and say "cool, let's do it".

Zack, that's incredibly motivating to hear someone compare the look of this to SCANNER DARKLY, but then say it has it's own new & fresh look. Much appreciated. I CAN say that once you see the images moving it'll have more grit than what you see, since the CC/FX is grabbing onto different grains it may pick up, etc. I'd be REALLY curious to try this again some day using a HD camera to see how much the look would differ and/or improve.

Glad that the still keep pulling you back. Hearing this from you & others makes me feel more & more that I made the right last minute choice to go this direction. We'll soon find out how that pays off once viewing & voting begins. Hopefully the story, performances, editing & everything else holds up just as well.

mentatDUKE, thanks & you're welcome! I thought it'd be of interest to jot down some thoughts, and I enjoyed doing it. I even thought about doing a full on Producer/Director's Journal, but that'd give away how much or little time we had to do this in, and I don't want on anything to skew perception of the film in advance, as mentioned in the Q&A section.

I wouldn't exactly say my style has evolved over the course of several projects, more than it's hopefully simply improved. At my heart, I'm probably still more bent towards structured emotional/dramatic stuff ... but this film was about seeing how versatile I could be in a variety of ways from producing, directing, editing, writing, etc. Just basically trying to step outside of the comfort zone all the way around. It's nice to know I can do this, but I can't really say I'm itching to do something like it right away again, lol.

In a nutshell, I want to be versatile, but with quality & commercial viability. If I enter the next festival, I don't care what genre it is ... I'm doing a comedy ... something that'll make my kids laugh, as well as adults hopefully.

 

[Matt Harris]

wow where did this come from? i thought you were a goner when you dropped BERLIN.

the process you did influenced by SCANNER DARKLY (one of my fav films of 06) is great because youre thinking outside the box. smart move. cant wait.

 

[Keystoned]

Cool to hear that you are flying without a net on this one!

Interested to see the photoshop effect. I had tried an experiment like that before.

Looking forward to it :beer:

 

[Texture]

Congrats to the entire Envision crew for getting a film into the fest and giving us all a good surprise to boot!