Winter, a Fairy Tale

Wild Imagination Films said:
I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to watch Winter. I have just finished talking with my brother about this project. He had no previous knowledge of the story going in and his initial response was, I'm a little confused by all of this. He than very carefully explained what was missing, and after I explained everything to him, he said...If you had to tell me this, then the story is confusing. People only see what you show them and know only what they see on the screen.
Look to our next film to correct all of the shortcomings this film had.
-Will
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your brother gives great advice. you did have a lot of great things in your film, don't overlook that! you used a snow making machine, how cool is that? ( is this a hard thing to use? ) you stuck your actor out in a canoe in the middle of winter, not an easy thing to do, i am most sure. ( " you want to me to do what? why would my character do this?" ) the vision of what you had is giant and should not be forgotten, you thought big, real big, especially for a six minute entry. i bet with the footage you already have you can re-edit to make it much more clear ( show us more of the nymph !) .

anyways, congrats to you and your crew. also, congrats for seeing that people here are writing to help out and not hurt you. these fests are so awesome in how so many people chime in with stuff. in my opinion, silence here is deafening.
 
Will, this was an interesting film. The soft look reminded me of "Legend". I love the production design and outfits. The acting was decent although I think I preferred the father to the main character. He seemed more believable.


The fairy was cool looking.

Nice job.
 
This was a really ballsy move... lots of guts to try to pull off many scenes. Like some other entries I felt honored to watch your effort because of how much work you clearly put into this... DVXuser is like a club of cool people that we're lucky to be involved with... and there was a lot to like about your entry. I like the significance of the flowers... I guess that means that he joined her in death? Either way it works... a lot of this has a very very cool look to it.

OK... so now if you'll take this with a grain of salt... I wasn't sure what to make of some of the camera moves... just Saturday I shot a segment where the director wanted me to combine some "live feel" with the tripod... so I introduced motion into a shot on sticks, and as I was doing it I couldn't decide if I thought it was working or not... and I felt like you had some of that in here. There were a couple camera moves that I found to be more distracting than supportive of the story. I also noticed a couple minor bumps. Aside from that, that's about all I can say... this is a pretty solid entry.
 
Ted Arabian said:
Hey Will, I have revisited your film as I promised and found some of the initial confusion I had cleared up.

It's funny, the opening dialogue over the credits was lost on me as we entered the parlor scene. And everything that is in that opening dialogue is what this film is about. I am sorry that I forgot it too soon.

On reason for this may be the nature of these 6 minute shorts. There is just so little time to tell your story.

This is just a thought/suggestion... what would happen if, while the son was out exploring in the winter time IF SECTIONS OF THE OPENING DIALOGUE WERE REPEATED?

I know that I hate beating an audience over the head, but in this case it may work. If anything, the beginning and end would come together and the message may have been a little clearer. Just a thought.

Again, a wonderful film made by you and your crew. Wonderful attention to detail and some incredible images.

Best to you and congrats on this film!

-Ted
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Ted, thanks for watching again. (Glad everything else is over also) We actually struggled over the idea of going back to previous times while he was "out in the world." We felt the flashbacks might be poorly received. We have scripts with them, we just chose not to use them.

Other ideas we have since come up with would be to show the growth of the little boy into his current age and even show the mother wasting away and dying. There was a line originally in the heated portion of the father son conversation when Nick was to say "... you let schoolmasters raise the son...while your wife whithered away from neglect." In the heat of the scene, Tom jumped all over Nick and it was so real we just left it alone. Crew members listening to them rehearse said they cried at some points. It was a really powerful scene. I let them run it through from start to finish and just ran camera. We did a bunch of takes and I was able to jump back and forth from several in the edit.
Other ideas were to do a match cut from the boy closing his eyes and then Nick opening his, more scenes of Nick and the mother with the father somewhere in the background.



hoz said:
your brother gives great advice. you did have a lot of great things in your film, don't overlook that! you used a snow making machine, how cool is that? ( is this a hard thing to use? ) you stuck your actor out in a canoe in the middle of winter, not an easy thing to do, i am most sure. ( " you want to me to do what? why would my character do this?" ) the vision of what you had is giant and should not be forgotten, you thought big, real big, especially for a six minute entry. i bet with the footage you already have you can re-edit to make it much more clear ( show us more of the nymph !) .

anyways, congrats to you and your crew. also, congrats for seeing that people here are writing to help out and not hurt you. these fests are so awesome in how so many people chime in with stuff. in my opinion, silence here is deafening.
Click to expand...


Hoz,
My brother is a sound engineer in Dallas and he kinda knows what he's talking about. He was able to explain to me what he didn't understand so I was able to get it. We really shot sparingly on this. I am not about keeping people around any longer than I absolutely have to. I'm still uneasy with the idea of people being so willing to give of their time. It helps though to realize it wasn't about me, it was about the project. So there really isn't a lot of unused footage. It was 23-25 degrees the night we shot the fairy. What footage you have scene is all there is. Snow machine isn't hard to use, you just have to have to favor of whoever is controlling the weather.

mentatDUKE said:
Will, this was an interesting film. The soft look reminded me of "Legend". I love the production design and outfits. The acting was decent although I think I preferred the father to the main character. He seemed more believable.

The fairy was cool looking.

Nice job.
Click to expand...

Mentat,
Thanks. I take the comparison as a compliment. We went around and around on the father and son. Neither wanted more lines than the other. We knew you would kind of get to know Nick through the rest of the film, but Dad was gone at the end of the scene.


MattinSTL said:
This was a really ballsy move... lots of guts to try to pull off many scenes. Like some other entries I felt honored to watch your effort because of how much work you clearly put into this... DVXuser is like a club of cool people that we're lucky to be involved with... and there was a lot to like about your entry. I like the significance of the flowers... I guess that means that he joined her in death? Either way it works... a lot of this has a very very cool look to it.

OK... so now if you'll take this with a grain of salt... I wasn't sure what to make of some of the camera moves... just Saturday I shot a segment where the director wanted me to combine some "live feel" with the tripod... so I introduced motion into a shot on sticks, and as I was doing it I couldn't decide if I thought it was working or not... and I felt like you had some of that in here. There were a couple camera moves that I found to be more distracting than supportive of the story. I also noticed a couple minor bumps. Aside from that, that's about all I can say... this is a pretty solid entry.
Click to expand...


Grain of salt not required. I hope you are referring to the bumps when I was having a moment of difficulty keeping Nick in frame and then when I clumsily turned the camera to find Nick coming up the hill. There was also a slight jerkiness to the shot closing in on Dad's hands holding the diary. Are these the bumps? I tried to move the camera as little as I could because this was the first thing I was going to shoot on my Advanta-Jib lite. I didn't want it to look like Jibfest. We did try for a big film. I think we obviously fell a little short. There has been talk of another edit, a little longer, etc. But I have said and maintain, there will only be a really long version of Winter and it will be very much the film I have in my mind.

Death, crossed over to fairy land, you are free to go with what makes you the happiest.




We have realized over the last 24 hours where we fell short. When the film was reviewed by our test audiences, they were the people with whom the story had already been discussed. So for them, it was seeing the thoughts in their heads come to life. We don't know what will become of Winter. For now though, there a many films we are eager to try out.
 
Cool setting and mood. I thought the music fit well. I really liked the lighting and the color correction. I thought the shot selection was well done too.
I wasn’t as enthused by the story. I also thought the audio was just OK.
 
I really liked the look of this, but at times it seemed a little too soft. It was still visually different and stunning. I agree that the father's acting was pretty good. Overall a good story, nice lighting and camera work.
 
Stopping by this thread so late in the fest, most everything has been thoroughly discussed. Still, I just wanted to stop in and say that your film looked amazing, especially the snow scene. Very impressive production. Congratulations.
 
Yes, yes... the snow scenes WERE awesome. :)

I don't think I've gotten over how well the effect worked for those shots. Definitely pushed the dreamy aspect that Will was after.

Now... on to the next project.
 
Alright Will - hope you didn't think I wasn't going to make it around to this.
:)

I've only glanced in this thread because I"m trying to give you my honest feedback...but I know some of what I'm going to mention has already been said.

I'm not going to bother with any techy stuff - because I think you know what those issues might be anyhow, and tech stuff is easy to fix (at least it is for you because I know you've got the experience).

So I'd rather concentrate on the story elements here - which is what I think you're probably more interested in hearing about.

First off - keep in mind I knew the story before watching the film.
You had sent me a quick pitch of it back before shooting.
So I went into this knowing what the story was... and for that reason I enjoyed it.
But I can see where people might get a bit confused not knowing the entire story upfront. Granted - you had a lot of story to try to pack into 6 minutes... but I think if you'd been able to shoot everything you wanted, and cut a longer version of this, it could be a very solid nicely told fairy tale.

That said, as it is right now it feels a bit incomplete.
But more importantly, to me, if felt a bit like you may have concentrated on the wrong bits of information (in my opinion). For example, the thing that struck me the most was that the scene with his father took nearly half of the running time... the reason that surprised me was that when you pitched me the story the argument with his father was mentioned in literally one sentence out of a half page of text. I realize you had a lot of exposition to get across - but it felt like it bogged it down a bit, and didn't leave enough time for the more 'exciting' story aspects (ie the journey itself).

So, while I personally felt it spent too much time on that one aspect - other bits of information that I felt were crutial to the story didn't make it in (like the fact that the son was going on a trip to find a mythical rare flower). I can see how someone watching the film without any prior knowledge of the story would just wonder where he's going... and not understand the significance when he finds the flower. Right now it's still a nice image to see a single flower growing out of the cold snowy ground... but it doesn't ring with the significance it woudl have if as an audience we knew that THAT was what he was looking for, and that it was incredibly rare, etc.

I hope I'm making sense here.
Basically what I'm suggesting is to look at the original pitch you wrote up, and compare that to the final film - take a look at how long certain things play in relation to how much weight they were givin in the synopsis.

David Mamet has a great bit in one of his books where he talks about how the essential good storytelling is a well told joke. Give us what is essential for the story with just enough detail to make it believable and real, but not enough to drag it down - "A guy walks into a bar" as opposed to "A guy, mid thirties with short brown hair walked into a bar that was established in the mid 19th century. The building was one of brick and ..."

You get the point
:)


As far as production value.
No question - you did some impressive work here - with that shot of the snow being the best of it. Of course, being in Austin myself, I may appreciate that one more than most...it really was impressive.

I hope you find my comments helpful in some way.
They're only meant to be constructive - you've got a really nice story at the core of this.
And I'm looking forward to see where you go from here.
 
Yes Luis I had been wondering if you were going to comment. I'm very glad you did.
It was really strange, everyone I know here in Austin who saw the roughest of cuts really enjoyed the short and followed it without any trouble. Then, once it was posted, no one seemed to be able to follow it. I posted a bit back about talking with my brother who was pretty lost as well. Then it dawned on me. Everyone who really enjoyed it knew the story before they saw it.
In retrospect, I really should have just gone ahead and shot a longer version and entered it as a non-compete.
You know we shot the snow scene the same night you were shooting your stuff.
Currently there has been some discussion of writing a full length version of Winter and then shooting it next year. There are so many elements we had to cut short or cut all together, it was very painful. In the end, we were really hoping the conversation between the father and the son would help everyone understand what was going on and was going to happen. Guess we didn't hope hard enough.
Most of the unmentioned technical issues were addressed and corrected for the version on my website.
This was a huge undertaking involving lots of people and lots of hard work. I learned an immeasurable amount of information about how (and how not) to make a short film. Trust me when I tell you it will carry over onto my next project.
 
My bad, I really need to work on clarity. I've been speaking with a couple of people who really really want to see Winter as a longer and more developed piece. I'm all for it. So now we go to work on trying to fund a project of no small magnitude. The full length screenplay is being worked on right now and hopefully will be ready for interested investor types to look at in the near future.
 
Great film. Beautifuly shot with rich colors. The acting was well done. Very impressive art direction. Touching story. I really enjoyed it. Great job.
 
Nice art direction and really good job going with practical effects. Was a bit Days of Our Livish for me, but then again, I'm going to see Rambo soon so maybe in the wrong frame of mind. Everything cut together well and as mentioned above the colors really stood out. Job well done.
 
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