sick4paradise
New member
IEETFACES PRODUCTIONS had rather humble beginnings as a filmmaking group at Foothill Technology High School in Ventura, CA in Fall, 2005. Beginning as a relatively large group of friends contributing their ideas together to create the best possible films, they went through the year of class crafting images from their imagination. The following year, the torch was passed to, ironically many of the same people, who carried on the legacy of the first year students, and proceeded to dominate the filmmaking class in terms of quality and length.
I'm positive you have little to no interest in the history of IEETFACES. You don't know us on a personal level, so giving you our names and personalities would do little for you, and would simply be a waste of my time. What you may (or may not) be more interested in, is the work that we have created. All I feel you need to know is that I am the chief editor / special effects designer of the second year of IEETFACES, so any comments related to those elements are greatly appreciated.
I'll stop my babbling there, and get to the main point. We have hosted all of the second year films of IEETFACES on Youtube, but have received relatively few comments and almost no feedback (The first year's films were fairly unremarkable, except for one, which I've been unable to get my hands on). So, we have come here to seek reviews, and show off the evolution of our team. And with that, I'll stop the unnecessary introduction and get to the videos.
-------------------------
That's No Moon
Ahh yes, the film that began it all for us. For our first assignment in our filmmaking class, we were given a week to film. The assignment: Create a film that in some way depicted a meeting that took place in the quad on campus. We were given time during class to film in the quad, but because of the number of people in the class, it was pretty difficult to keep other people from getting in the shots, so we had to film after school for the most part.
The week and a half we had for editing was dedicated to creating the special effects (ie, Rotoscoping the lightsabers). As a result, there are a lot of problems with the movie which I will not even bother trying to make excuses for. The sound isn't that good, the shots have very little color correction, the story-line for those unfamiliar with the assignment is hard to follow...
This is, in my opinion anyways, the weakest of our films, but is essentially the first step we took as a team in developing our niche of humor, as well as my first dabbling in special effects work. Any feedback you may have is appreciated, and feel free to be brutally honest about what could be better.
--------------------------
The Good, The Bad, And The Devil
-Part 1-
-Part 2-
This was personally my favorite project to work on, because of the epic storyline that we created, that ended up being largely implied partially because of time restraints. The assignment this time was fairly open ended; we were shown various clips from western movies, including Once Upon a Time in the West, and were told to take western elements and make a movie based upon them. We actually ended up incorporating few elements of westerns in the final product as the project took shape, and only put in the long walking scene in the Part 1 to fulfill the requirement. The film was shot out at one of our team members houses who basically lived in the middle of nowhere, so we had a lot of open area to work with.
This project was more ambitious than the first, as it incorporated the work of not only IEETFACES PRODUCTIONS (our 4 person team), but our other group of friends in the filmmaking class (nicknamed IEETFACES VERSION 2 for this film). Because of that, our teacher required us to turn in 2 files for the project, hence the splitting of it into 2 parts, though they were filmed and edited as one project. It was also ambitious, as it required more special effects than the first film, and was twice as long. The majority of time for editing was spent on all the various effects. This was largely experimental on my part, and I developed the techniques for the effects as I went along, and many of them turned out very lackluster (I feel ashamed every time I view the energy wave at the end of the battle in Part 1...I didn't have the time to make it anything better...). Again, the effects took a lot of time away from the rest of the film for me, and I handed off most of the film to one of the other team members for initial editing while I worked on the effects.
The story here follows a group of 5 adventurers who go toe-to-toe with The Devil himself, and then embark on a quest to slay him. This also marks the first appearance of The Receptionist in the second year of filmmaking (You'll see him towards the end of Part 1, he's hard to miss), and he appears in several more projects. All in all, I enjoy this film very much, but can not ignore several glaring problems with it, but please tell me what you think of it, and how we could improve our style.
--------------------------
The Trooper
A favorite among our extended group of friends, The Trooper was our music video. The assignment was straight forward enough, create a music video. And so, we decided to do ours to the song The Trooper, by Iron Maiden. It was filmed in a park not far from the school in two days only.
This was the first time I payed a lot of attention to color correcting and the like, and I think this is one of our better films as a result. This one also features improved muzzle-flash effects (far superior to the photo-shopped trash of The Good, The Bad, And The Devil), as well as the expert soloing of Derek DeSantis. A fact that few people realize while watching the solo is that Derek is actually playing the real solo from the song, but it doesn't match up because he ended up playing it too fast, and slowing it down would look terrible, so I opted for a more chaotic looking approach to it, to make it look more dramatic and all around more badass.
The two opposing forces in the video represent the armies clashing during the Crimean War, which the song portrays. Little else to say about this one, I think it was one of our better projects, but let me hear what you have to say about it.
--------------------------
Casino Royale
This seems to be the favorite video out of those who were involved in the projects, and the rest of our friends. The assignment for this one was to recreate a scene from a movie. Having developed our style of humor even further, we decided to go a step further and parody the entire film of Casino Royale. However, many of the jokes won't make sense unless you've seen the original.
This film was shot entirely at our friend Rachel's house. Scheduling everyone to meet together was difficult, and we had rather intimidating time restraints as a result. People screwed up their shots. A lot. After the first day I found myself completely frustrated. This was going to be the worst project we'd made. There was no doubt in my mind, but I went about editing it in an almost hopeless daze. It wasn't until we evolved our ideas a bit further and finished day 2 that I started seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Color correcting was difficult due to the dim lighting, but I tried my best to make it look alright, but many of the shots are still far too bright.
Some of the often overlooked factoids about this movie have gone unappreciated by most viewers. For example: The scar over Le Sinister's (parody of LeChiffe) eye switches sides over the course of the movie...The obvious improvisation of lines...The fact that Bond is quite obviously cheating... The ending is also very confusing for most people, but it is a throw-back to the IEETFACES film from the first year which was based on a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament (this film was also the origin of The Receptionist, who also makes a cameo in this movie as the bartender). I very much like this movie, but my opinion isn't what matters here. Tell me what you think, if you will.
--------------------------
Good Cop, Black Cop
This was it, our final project. And we sure did go out with a bang. The final project for the class was to create our own film, without any other restrictions. We spent a lot of time tossing around ideas before we finally came up with the idea: a parody of over the top cop films, such as Rush Hour and Die Hard. However, half the time for the project had already escaped by the time we came up with the idea. As a result, everything was in some way rushed. And what was worse, no one else in the group was doing anything to help plan. This film ended up being 90% my work. I wrote the script hours before filming, I organized everyone, I manned the camera, I edited, I did the special effects. The stress was almost unbearable.
The filming took place all around town. My script was less than perfect so the storyline ended up being a little too true to the script if that makes sense (I had assumed there would be gratuitous ad libbing). I can't bear to watch this movie now, as every time I do, I see so many things wrong with it, but it has been a major milestone, for me at least. This movie features the return of the improved muzzle flashes from The Trooper, as well as a few other little tricks I learned. Also, the character of Dr. Science has become a staple of our films, and frequently makes an appearance in our new film ideas. This film features a number of throwbacks to early films, including the appearance of the bloodthirsty Receptionist at the end. This brings me to my next point: The ending was completely improvised when we realized that we had no more time to film what was to be actual ending, because of scheduling conflicts (The originally planned ending was to be a climactic chase scene at incredibly low speeds). The ending is a personal disappointment of mine, as it serves only to bring the movie to an end without truly resolving the plot.
The story centers around Officer White and Officer Huxtible, who are tasked with the job of chasing down and defeating the notorious Underworld Mafia. The film clocks in at a whopping 29 minutes, so you may need to make sure you have nothing else planned if you're going to engage in watching it, which I recommend you do, and would very much appreciate. I apologize in advance though, because several of the scenes are, to be blunt, fairly boring, and serve only to advance the plot. We've realized this and in our current project are doing all we can to eliminate such scenes.
One fun fact about this film that I like to share: During the filming of the climactic warehouse confrontation, the police showed up, because someone thought the place was being robbed. On an impulse, we left the camera running as they searched the warehouse. This secret footage makes an appearance during the ending credits, complete with subtitles (Due to Youtube's fantastic quality, these subtitles are basically unreadable. If anyone is interested, I will post the text of the event). All in all, it was quite a project, and it was quite the adventure in filmmaking. I'd appreciate it if anyone actually decided to sit through this one, and even more so for feedback or comments.
--------------------------
The year in filmmaking was great, and now that it's gone, IEETFACES still lives as an independent filmmaking group. Without deadlines, we are now focusing more on the quality of our work, and our working hard on a new adventure film, that will, with a little luck and hard work, be completed by New Year's, although it's currently slow going because of the cast's scheduling conflicts.
Please, if you have the time, look upon the legacy of IEETFACES, and give us feedback on our work. Tell us what we did wrong, what could be better, what you like, what you dislike. This sort of information is invaluable to us, and will help our future projects be even better. Thank you very much for your time and input; IEETFACES productions thanks you.
I'm positive you have little to no interest in the history of IEETFACES. You don't know us on a personal level, so giving you our names and personalities would do little for you, and would simply be a waste of my time. What you may (or may not) be more interested in, is the work that we have created. All I feel you need to know is that I am the chief editor / special effects designer of the second year of IEETFACES, so any comments related to those elements are greatly appreciated.
I'll stop my babbling there, and get to the main point. We have hosted all of the second year films of IEETFACES on Youtube, but have received relatively few comments and almost no feedback (The first year's films were fairly unremarkable, except for one, which I've been unable to get my hands on). So, we have come here to seek reviews, and show off the evolution of our team. And with that, I'll stop the unnecessary introduction and get to the videos.
-------------------------
That's No Moon
Ahh yes, the film that began it all for us. For our first assignment in our filmmaking class, we were given a week to film. The assignment: Create a film that in some way depicted a meeting that took place in the quad on campus. We were given time during class to film in the quad, but because of the number of people in the class, it was pretty difficult to keep other people from getting in the shots, so we had to film after school for the most part.
The week and a half we had for editing was dedicated to creating the special effects (ie, Rotoscoping the lightsabers). As a result, there are a lot of problems with the movie which I will not even bother trying to make excuses for. The sound isn't that good, the shots have very little color correction, the story-line for those unfamiliar with the assignment is hard to follow...
This is, in my opinion anyways, the weakest of our films, but is essentially the first step we took as a team in developing our niche of humor, as well as my first dabbling in special effects work. Any feedback you may have is appreciated, and feel free to be brutally honest about what could be better.
--------------------------
The Good, The Bad, And The Devil
-Part 1-
-Part 2-
This was personally my favorite project to work on, because of the epic storyline that we created, that ended up being largely implied partially because of time restraints. The assignment this time was fairly open ended; we were shown various clips from western movies, including Once Upon a Time in the West, and were told to take western elements and make a movie based upon them. We actually ended up incorporating few elements of westerns in the final product as the project took shape, and only put in the long walking scene in the Part 1 to fulfill the requirement. The film was shot out at one of our team members houses who basically lived in the middle of nowhere, so we had a lot of open area to work with.
This project was more ambitious than the first, as it incorporated the work of not only IEETFACES PRODUCTIONS (our 4 person team), but our other group of friends in the filmmaking class (nicknamed IEETFACES VERSION 2 for this film). Because of that, our teacher required us to turn in 2 files for the project, hence the splitting of it into 2 parts, though they were filmed and edited as one project. It was also ambitious, as it required more special effects than the first film, and was twice as long. The majority of time for editing was spent on all the various effects. This was largely experimental on my part, and I developed the techniques for the effects as I went along, and many of them turned out very lackluster (I feel ashamed every time I view the energy wave at the end of the battle in Part 1...I didn't have the time to make it anything better...). Again, the effects took a lot of time away from the rest of the film for me, and I handed off most of the film to one of the other team members for initial editing while I worked on the effects.
The story here follows a group of 5 adventurers who go toe-to-toe with The Devil himself, and then embark on a quest to slay him. This also marks the first appearance of The Receptionist in the second year of filmmaking (You'll see him towards the end of Part 1, he's hard to miss), and he appears in several more projects. All in all, I enjoy this film very much, but can not ignore several glaring problems with it, but please tell me what you think of it, and how we could improve our style.
--------------------------
The Trooper
A favorite among our extended group of friends, The Trooper was our music video. The assignment was straight forward enough, create a music video. And so, we decided to do ours to the song The Trooper, by Iron Maiden. It was filmed in a park not far from the school in two days only.
This was the first time I payed a lot of attention to color correcting and the like, and I think this is one of our better films as a result. This one also features improved muzzle-flash effects (far superior to the photo-shopped trash of The Good, The Bad, And The Devil), as well as the expert soloing of Derek DeSantis. A fact that few people realize while watching the solo is that Derek is actually playing the real solo from the song, but it doesn't match up because he ended up playing it too fast, and slowing it down would look terrible, so I opted for a more chaotic looking approach to it, to make it look more dramatic and all around more badass.
The two opposing forces in the video represent the armies clashing during the Crimean War, which the song portrays. Little else to say about this one, I think it was one of our better projects, but let me hear what you have to say about it.
--------------------------
Casino Royale
This seems to be the favorite video out of those who were involved in the projects, and the rest of our friends. The assignment for this one was to recreate a scene from a movie. Having developed our style of humor even further, we decided to go a step further and parody the entire film of Casino Royale. However, many of the jokes won't make sense unless you've seen the original.
This film was shot entirely at our friend Rachel's house. Scheduling everyone to meet together was difficult, and we had rather intimidating time restraints as a result. People screwed up their shots. A lot. After the first day I found myself completely frustrated. This was going to be the worst project we'd made. There was no doubt in my mind, but I went about editing it in an almost hopeless daze. It wasn't until we evolved our ideas a bit further and finished day 2 that I started seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Color correcting was difficult due to the dim lighting, but I tried my best to make it look alright, but many of the shots are still far too bright.
Some of the often overlooked factoids about this movie have gone unappreciated by most viewers. For example: The scar over Le Sinister's (parody of LeChiffe) eye switches sides over the course of the movie...The obvious improvisation of lines...The fact that Bond is quite obviously cheating... The ending is also very confusing for most people, but it is a throw-back to the IEETFACES film from the first year which was based on a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament (this film was also the origin of The Receptionist, who also makes a cameo in this movie as the bartender). I very much like this movie, but my opinion isn't what matters here. Tell me what you think, if you will.
--------------------------
Good Cop, Black Cop
This was it, our final project. And we sure did go out with a bang. The final project for the class was to create our own film, without any other restrictions. We spent a lot of time tossing around ideas before we finally came up with the idea: a parody of over the top cop films, such as Rush Hour and Die Hard. However, half the time for the project had already escaped by the time we came up with the idea. As a result, everything was in some way rushed. And what was worse, no one else in the group was doing anything to help plan. This film ended up being 90% my work. I wrote the script hours before filming, I organized everyone, I manned the camera, I edited, I did the special effects. The stress was almost unbearable.
The filming took place all around town. My script was less than perfect so the storyline ended up being a little too true to the script if that makes sense (I had assumed there would be gratuitous ad libbing). I can't bear to watch this movie now, as every time I do, I see so many things wrong with it, but it has been a major milestone, for me at least. This movie features the return of the improved muzzle flashes from The Trooper, as well as a few other little tricks I learned. Also, the character of Dr. Science has become a staple of our films, and frequently makes an appearance in our new film ideas. This film features a number of throwbacks to early films, including the appearance of the bloodthirsty Receptionist at the end. This brings me to my next point: The ending was completely improvised when we realized that we had no more time to film what was to be actual ending, because of scheduling conflicts (The originally planned ending was to be a climactic chase scene at incredibly low speeds). The ending is a personal disappointment of mine, as it serves only to bring the movie to an end without truly resolving the plot.
The story centers around Officer White and Officer Huxtible, who are tasked with the job of chasing down and defeating the notorious Underworld Mafia. The film clocks in at a whopping 29 minutes, so you may need to make sure you have nothing else planned if you're going to engage in watching it, which I recommend you do, and would very much appreciate. I apologize in advance though, because several of the scenes are, to be blunt, fairly boring, and serve only to advance the plot. We've realized this and in our current project are doing all we can to eliminate such scenes.
One fun fact about this film that I like to share: During the filming of the climactic warehouse confrontation, the police showed up, because someone thought the place was being robbed. On an impulse, we left the camera running as they searched the warehouse. This secret footage makes an appearance during the ending credits, complete with subtitles (Due to Youtube's fantastic quality, these subtitles are basically unreadable. If anyone is interested, I will post the text of the event). All in all, it was quite a project, and it was quite the adventure in filmmaking. I'd appreciate it if anyone actually decided to sit through this one, and even more so for feedback or comments.
--------------------------
The year in filmmaking was great, and now that it's gone, IEETFACES still lives as an independent filmmaking group. Without deadlines, we are now focusing more on the quality of our work, and our working hard on a new adventure film, that will, with a little luck and hard work, be completed by New Year's, although it's currently slow going because of the cast's scheduling conflicts.
Please, if you have the time, look upon the legacy of IEETFACES, and give us feedback on our work. Tell us what we did wrong, what could be better, what you like, what you dislike. This sort of information is invaluable to us, and will help our future projects be even better. Thank you very much for your time and input; IEETFACES productions thanks you.
