In The Machine

Computer went stupid - lost a night formatting and putting my programs back on. Full steam ahead again.
 
Glad it wasn't a total disaster. I take it your media drive/s weren't affected, and hopefully you have your latest edit/project file backed up.

I do a save in FCP about every 5 minutes. Seriously.
 
Yeah everything was saved on ext. drive, I do it religiously too and also back up that save file to another drive. Such a pain in the a$$ though to put all programs back on.
 
Oh yeah, I'm feeling the deadline coming fast. I really need another after deadline but I'll see how I go. This short was good for me as it's the first time I've really done something with the hvx and brevis. Can't wait for the next comp now though because I'm going to put a lot more time in and I'll shoot it so all lenses are at their best and with good lights, that said I still think my entry should be alright.

Good luck to everyone - make that deadline!
 
Standard Disclaimer: I have yet to see a bad film in this fest. Congratulations to every film maker, everyone did a great job. All my comments and criticisms are meant to be constructive and helpful and in no way am I trying to take anything away from what you accomplished.

Good: The older guy did a good acting job. I liked the way you jolted right into the film with some action. Really liked the quick dolly shot onto the guy's face. Enjoyed the accents.

Not as Good: Some technical stuff (audio dropouts, interlacing/ghosting, the tape on the guy's mouth wasn't all the way on in one shot, etc.) I thought the older actor was the best part of the film, but wearing blue jeans took away some of the believability/ officialness of the character. Things seemed a little too easy for the main character seeing as he was in handcuffs and others had guns.
 
Hey chris f, thanks for your comment, really appreciated.

Yeah the old guy, Jim Kelly is quiet a good actor, I'm sure I'll be using him in the future. And you're dead right about him wearing jeans, my bad though, I didn't tell him exactly what to wear.

In regards to interlacing, the film was shot 1080 24pa, I just haven't had much time to play with getting compression ok yet.

I'm color correcting as we speak and getting those light spikes to look pretty decent. I'll post a final version in a couple weeks in the user films section, I think it'll come up pretty good.
 
Hey mate. Well done on getting an entry in. Still some work to do on the audio and cc, youll get it right.

Was Jonathan meant to be comic relief? As an aussie - the way he spoke etc and his lines - "then all of a sudden whoosh a big fn bird..... " I laughed.
 
Good to see a fellow aussie. Nah Jonathan wasn't supposed to be comic relief but I'm going to get his voice over work and the line where he says 'you broke my nose' again (as well as another filler line there to make the scene work). The person who played him was out of town and got back after entries had to be submitted so I just had to put whatever I had in there. That flashback to the swamp will also become 1 steadicam shot now as I just got my glidecam 4000.

Only the old dude was an actor, all the other guys were friends of friends with only a couple days notice so they did pretty well.

How's Tokyo going? I'd love to go.
 
Good job on your film. I liked many aspects of it though I was confused by the "repeated" sequence.

I thought that the fight sequence had some great work in them but lacked sound fx. I wanted more "wham" in those hits! I also thought that the first guy to take a blow (with the head butt from the rear) needed an insert shot showing us a close-up of this. I missed it the first 2 times.

I like the sequences with the guy in the chair. Some nice shots there!

Liked what you did! Would like to have heard some lines better.

Good job!

Congrats!

-Ted
 
Right on Theo, all you're comments I'm working on. For the 'repeated' sequence as the hero is about to disappear into the night I'll do maybe a butterfly effect kind of effect where the background shakes and then reverse footage, pausing on some frames.

I did have an insert of the dude that gets headbutted, can't remember what happened to it, maybe shot was a bad take. Come to think of it I might actually get that insert for the final version as I have to get that actor back for v.o. work anyways. Where the hero gets hit with the butt of the gun and we cut to black is also pretty bad/confusing but it was the best take I had.

I have a few new inserts of the dude in the chair that I'll throw into the final version that look pretty nice too.
 
I loved the potential in this movie. The starting jump knee was a cool touch. I also liked the way the character got a hold of guns. At first I was wondering why he made a lame excape attempt and then I saw what he had really done during it. Very cool.

I can tell this is not finished and it will be nice to see it when it is. :-) I would sweetne and raise the volume of the audio, add sound FX, and deinterlace, drop some color grading and it will rock.
 
thanks dude, yeah that flying knee is pretty cool, it's 48f then 60f then back to 48f in the same shot. In the final version I'll slow down the preceeding shot to the 48f or so and maybe instead of going back to 48 maybe got straight to 24. If you look closely the actually jump with the wrong knee but you don't notice on the first viewing ;)

The three younger guys in the movie are all into mixed martial arts so I'm going to have to do a kick a$$ fight scene with them all. Out the back of my place is a garage with a cement roof, I'm thinking of shooting it at night with just highlights hitting the fighters then comp that with a skyscraper or something.

So glad you got how he pick pocketed the guns, the bad guys make reference to him pick pocketing so they should know better. Wasn't sure if it came across ok.
 
I didn't notice the pick pocket till I read about it. Rockin fight choreography! Loved the fight scenes!
 
Good fight sequences. I think those just need to be cut tighter to make them really fly. Obviously you are still working on this one, but so far so good.

Thanks for screening.
 
You have all the elements here and are well on your way. I'll echo John's comment above that I felt the opening fight scene could be cut tighter. I felt there were too many pauses in between punches/kicks/etc.

Let us know if/when you've done more work on this. I'd like to see how it evolves.
 
Thanks guys. When I put some killer sfx in for the fight scenes (ie. breaking celery) it'll help a lot too.

For those wondering, when bobby kicks 'something' toward the big guy (ox) which apparently hits him in the face - that's going to be a CG baton (the one that hit the floor earlier).
 
tmnt said:
Thanks guys. When I put some killer sfx in for the fight scenes (ie. breaking celery) it'll help a lot too.

For those wondering, when bobby kicks 'something' toward the big guy (ox) which apparently hits him in the face - that's going to be a CG baton (the one that hit the floor earlier).
Click to expand...

That's cool! Phew, now that I know it's a baton, that makes a lot more sense. I thought maybe he had kicked some greasy sand in his face, which was kind of funny. :)
 
tmnt said:
Nah Jonathan wasn't supposed to be comic relief
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong. From an Aussie perspective his speech etc is quite natural for a particular kind of character. Caught me a bit by surprise also as I havent heard anyone talk like that in a few years (since I came to Tokyo).
 
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