DVXuser.com Feature movie??

I think Barry has me convinced! I am more than willing to go the Group B route after hearing him (or rather reading him) explain it like that, as long as I am guaranteed to be on the writing team :grin:. I wish I could be the actor that travels around, but that is not possible at this point in time.

Barry, would you want folks to pitch ideas for the entire film or just small segments? Would we even do the segment/location idea still? I say I like this idea and I say go for it. Further, to those who are dead set on Group A, I still support that and would be more than willing to come on board with you as well, it just seems to me that the consensus is in Group B.

Let's do this...
 
Barry_Green said:
I'm not saying this is THE way to go, but I can see a heck of a project coming from this and it'd be something to talk about for years to come. Not to dissuade Group A, you guys go right ahead and please succeed. But for those who want to play in a different sandbox, the Group B folks, what do you think of this type of idea?
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I think group B is where I would want to be.

Though I would strongly disagree on the one actor spanning the globe idea. Nothing against Kimko, because I have never seen him perform, but that kind of idea would need one BAD-ASSED actor to carry the whole thing. I mean, like Kurt Russell good :). That is the flaw I see in this approach. You are basically putting the weight of the enterprise on one actor. He/she would have to be brilliant. So you could not just throw anyone in there without writing the script and finding the best person for it.

Maybe I am just hooked on the multi-story idea, but honestly, it's the only way I see this working. Another thing is having one actor seems to push it back into Group A territory. I mean, you are back to having one script to get together very much like a conventional indie. Besides which, this kind of forces it into one kind of movie: Road Movie. Maybe that's okay, but not without someone who can tear it up acting-wise.

I dunno, again, I see the strength in this as an overall theme, like: Zombie attack, and letting various crews putting their spin on that. maybe unify it with one scene in a "TV STUDIO" or central location. Maybe they communicate at some point though short wave, or TV transmission, or maybe we get them all together for one week of grand finale shooting.

Anyway just 2 cents. But I am a little lit and spent the evening at a lecture on Quantum Mechanics, so my head might not be exactly right...
 
I don't see any need for two different groups -- A and B. It would be great to focus everyone on a single project, rather than splitting the talent. While I, personally, prefer the 'Group A' approach, I have no qualms at all about enthusiastically joining into the 'Group B' project if that's the way the majority wants to go. We can always try a 'Group A' project another time, somewhere down the road.

Mark, you make a great argument against the 'one actor' approach. Although my response to that would be, "Well, we just have to make sure we find the RIGHT actor." I think there's definitely Kurt Russell-level talent out there waiting to be used. My biggest argument would involve the cost of sending this one actor all over the globe. If we're truly looking for a microbudget project, then we need to avoid expensive airfares.

I'd said something before about a storyline where people from all over the globe are seeing the same PERSON in multiple places at the same time. But that could be accomplished with clever camerawork, without the need for a traveling actor. There are lots of creative ways to pull that off.

Back to the PitchFest idea for a moment -- why don't we just make the criteria to be that we're searching for a storyline that involves people from four different places on Earth, all facing and dealing with a common event that has a dramatic and life-changing impact on their lives? Let's see what the creative minds come up with. They may be way ahead of us. :)
 
Barry_Green said:
Okay, again, from the peanut gallery:

Perhaps there are two projects here? If there are people set and determined to make a conventional feature, that would be Group One. If there are people who want to do a collaborative fest-based independent production-unit-based picture, they could be Group Two.

Those two groups don't have anything to do with each other, really -- they're pretty much mutually exclusive. Seems like Group One wants to try do do a conventional independent film and all that that entails, but hire DVXUser crew. That's a fantastic and commendable goal. I'd love to support it, but I'm already currently producing two such features for DVXUsers and am considering launching a third, so my plate for that is rather full. I do strongly encourage folks to go after that goal though, that would be the ultimate thing that this site could do.

As for Group Two, I think that's where the party's at. Something that could only be done by a site like this. A film that stretches across the country and around the globe. One that's brought together by a common thread and a common group, the DVXUser group. That's one that I would be interested in jumping on board with. I keep thinking about this idea, and how it could be made, and maybe made affordably (because, frankly, if it's me and Jarred writing the checks, it's gonna HAVE to be done mega-affordably!) :thumbsup: What if we get one of our DVXUser actors, maybe Kimko, and send him on the road or around the globe, with individual units in each city crewing his story. That way all the segments could be totally integrated, it could appear as a completely "conventional" narrative feature (instead of an anthology) and with just one lead actor who would hint, hint, be willing to live on the road and drive town to town etc. for the glory of being the star of a much-talked-about hopefully-great little indie film, well... just maybe we could do it.

Okay, so here's another left-field idea: instead of doing shorts and scripts, how about PitchFest or PremiseFest? The subject is: pitch an idea that can be shot super-cheap, with one main character who travels to various locations and could be produced by crews around the world. Any genre, any theme, main thing is to explore your creativity to come up with an idea suitable for production based on this general idea: one actor, multiple towns or even countries.

Once we get that pitch, and the site decides that yeah, we could afford to do this and want to do it etc., then we put together a writing team. By the time the script is done, hopefully my slate will have opened up and I can take a much more active role in shepherding the production.

I'm not saying this is THE way to go, but I can see a heck of a project coming from this and it'd be something to talk about for years to come. Not to dissuade Group A, you guys go right ahead and please succeed. But for those who want to play in a different sandbox, the Group B folks, what do you think of this type of idea?
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well i got word my name was mentioned....and i thought maybe i was in trouble...maybe banned....but i haven't been on lately....thank you B.G. for mentioning me in an awesome collaboration possiblity. but i think he was bringing up a point of using DVXUSER actors (who were many) that were good over the years...or maybe he wants to do a comedy with an actor who is a buffoon trying hard to act!!!! WELL THAT'D BE ME!!! but really i don't know what's going on, so i'll just say: maybe a common theme we as a people around the world all agree with is; peace, love and understanding(elvis costello) and the last word is the key;UNDERSTANDING ,how do we find this but thru communication, people around the world tell us your story? now there is many characters with many stories asked by one person who is representing us all (the writers)who will come up with the questions to be asked and....... the audience will be heard and there will be peace on earth and big orgies....and love will be all around us and bambi doesn't get crushed by godzilla's foot.........
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Back to the PitchFest idea for a moment -- why don't we just make the criteria to be that we're searching for a storyline that involves people from four different places on Earth, all facing and dealing with a common event that has a dramatic and life-changing impact on their lives? Let's see what the creative minds come up with. They may be way ahead of us. :)
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I agree.

I feel that this will guarantee success. Otherwise we're hinging the entire thing on one main actor and the budget will soar due to travel/lodging costs.

Cheers,

Mike
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
Why "one actor, multiple towns"? I know that was suggested at one point, but I didn't know it had been locked in.
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Nothing whatsoever has been locked in to anything. I was just trying to find a perhaps slightly-affordable way of making the film something other than a series of disconnected shorts, something other than an anthology.

I mean, maybe there's a way to make it a sort of "conventional" film but made in a highly unconventional way, you know, something like a Bourne Identity. One group does the headquarters segment, other groups handle the various towns, and our actor goes from town to town and ultimately confronts the headquarters guys. This is an idea that could be done by multiple crews in multiple locations, yet could be totally integrated because the headquarters stuff could be sprinkled throughout. It does sort of cross the line between group A and group B though (if not totally crossing the line back into group A territory).

I'm just trying to poke at the creative centers out there. Let's not settle for the first idea that crops up, let's push it until we come up with something totally new. Something that could only have been made in this multi-crew style. If it ends up being an anthology of similarly-timed stories, then that's what it ends up being -- but there's nothing particularly creative about that... as has been pointed out, that same basic concept was tried here back in 2004.

So, what else could we do? What about the idea of a common central character, but played by different actors? Like Denzel Washington's Fallen, a spirit that possesses human bodies (not that THAT hasn't been done before!) but in that respect, you could have the same central character and an overall controlling character arc, but with little to no cost of having to transport the same actor to multiple places. And you could even tie the segments together with some crafty greenscreen for the transition scenes where the "spirit" or "alien" or whatever transitions from one actor to another.

Or, you could have all the interaction you want between segments by using videoconferencing. Each segment could have its own lead character and subquest, and the videoconferencing segments would be a cheap and easy way to tie them all together into one big continuous movie instead of a series of disconnected anthology segments.

I'm just trying to reach higher than the low-hanging fruit. Plucking the low-hanging fruit might be fine and it might be what we go with, but I don't see any reason to commit to that until we at least explore all sorts of other ideas.

Okay, so, how about we try to package it all together, like this: we have a PitchFest for the overall general theme/idea. And the overall theme/idea is bound by some sort of production-related restrictions such as that it needs to be a film that can take place in multiple locations, without any real restriction as to what those locations are. Then, once we get some amazing compelling awesome overall premise pitched, we then hold a DVXFest to develop the segments. And the idea behind this DVXFest would be that you can choose one of four major segments (either Act I, Act IIa, Act IIb, or Act III) at 25 minutes each, or divide that up even further to 1st half of Act I, 2nd half of Act 1, etc... and there would be restrictions placed on those acts: for example, the master plan of the film would be like this:
1st half Act 1: overall theme: introduction
2nd half Act 1: overall theme: betrayal
1st half Act 2: overall theme: revenge

You know, we have the overall underlying theme evaluated in what a story of that premise would be, and then we open it up where anyone can develop a segment based on the overall idea and the particular segment's necessary theme points. Like Garanimals, all the Giraffe items would go together, and all the Act 1 2nd Half bits would go together, right? And, there would be some hooks to tie the pieces together, like Legos: the end of all 2nd Half Act 1 films would naturally tie to the beginning of all 1st Half Act 2 films.

I think I explained that poorly, but if you read it six or seven times I think you'll get the idea.

I guess the larger question is: should we settle for (and even embrace and revel in) an anthology idea, or should we try to expend some brainpower to find a way to tie it all together so that it plays more like a conventional narrative, even though it's made unconventionally and will obviously feel very different than a conventional narrative.
 
well I know I am playing devil's advocate here, but honestly I don't see how an anthology is any lower hanging fruit than an alien or spirit inhabiting someone's body :) :evil:

The videoconferencing is close to what I suggested to tie them together.

But I guess I am also thinking about contingency plans. I mean, if this goes off and say for example I get on the NYC team. So it's still low budget. So I am still going to have to cash in my favors with people, work my connections to make it happen.

But what if I get my part done and it doesn't happen, for any of 1000 reasons, and what I wind up with is half of a first act of some bigger thing? That is pretty much useless to me and I feel like I just put in all this time and energy for nothing. But if I wound up with a fairly self-contained 25 minute short, then all my time and energy were not wasted. I can still take that and try it in fests, etc. I guess it's cynical, but it's just that sooooo much effort goes into these things, as we all know, even a 6 min short, that I feel compelled to protect my time and input in case something outside of my control makes the thing go ka-boom.

Anyway, like I said, just playing devil's advocate and putting in some more stuff to think about.
 
It's "low hanging fruit" because it's the first idea that was thought of, and that fruit's already been plucked and was plucked at least 4 years ago (on this site, at least -- who knows if the same idea hasn't been tried on other sites even earlier?) All I'm saying is: is there another (even better) idea out there? If so, what is it?

That is pretty much useless to me and I feel like I just put in all this time and energy for nothing
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Yep, that's the drawback, and it's a big one. The idea was to leverage off the energy DVXers are already spending on their fest entries, so potentially coming up with something useless is a big drawback. Might be a dealkiller.

So, yeah, we might end up with an anthology. It just seems like we should be able to do something different and, hopefully, bigger/better/more entertaining than a series of disconnected (or mildly connected) shorts. If we can't, we can't -- but why not keep lookin'?

C'mon peeps, hit us with some wildly inventive awesome 2008 idea for the first film produced entirely through internet collaboration...
 
One more thing to throw out. Is this idea kind of adding some artificial complication?

Producing it all over the country seems like it might be adding more hassle than it's worth, when it might be cheaper and easier just to transport all the DVXUsers who get involved to LA for a month. I dunno how big that fat monster couch is, but it seems the DVXUsers who want to be involved will put up with less glorious accomodations to work on it. Same thing if we decided to do it in NC, or wherever.

So if we leaned toward the conventional feature, maybe it's just developed over the web, but ultimately just spend the money getting everyone to the shoot(which would be cheap compared to other costs)

Again, just throwing another idea out. Maybe the idea of producing all over is just adding unnecessary complications when the story should dictate it all.
 
We could have there be one central prop that connects everything.

An example may be 2001: Space Odyssey. The monolith connects a few related stories but that still makes one central narrative.

Here's an awful example just as an idea: There is a pair of basketball shoes that make the person wearing them very good at basketball (just like in Like Mike). The film covers 4 different groups of people finding the basketball shoes at different times, and the film cuts between the 4 groups.

Now, that idea is terrible, but I think the prop aspect would work well.
 
At risk of sounding redundant I will mention this again as it kind of applies to what Barry is saying...

Just watched the "Andromeda Strain" mini-series a couple of nights ago. It is a conventional narrative in the sense that it has one overarching story, the characters all interact with each other etc.

However, I think it holds some good parallels for this project because it had multiple/ongoing storylines (which I think makes any film more interesting). For example, they have the scientists in an underground bunker trying to figure out what the virus is. They have the reporter trying to uncover the government conspiracy surrounding the virus. You have the military gurus both trying to solve the problem and also compounding the problem.

BUT...the interesting thing is, if you look at it from a production perspective, there is really only one or two scenes in the ENTIRE FILM where the three or four groups of people are actually on screen together. 99% of the "interaction" between the groups takes place via videoconference, telephone, web chats etc. But the cool thing is it doesn't feel disjointed...in fact, as a viewer if you didn't analyze it you would think it felt like any other film...characters interacting and experiencing something together.

So, all that to say that I think what Barry suggested as far as a true narrative rather than a disjointed anthology is possible...even between productions in various locations. The script just has to be written accordingly and then the productions would have to shoot their film accordingly (video conference monitors with green screen and motion trackers for footage to be added later, etc.).

Just trying to present a "positive" since I tend to just point out what "won't work". :D

:)
 
Another idea:

I think PitchFest should be video submissions. It'd be something like 1-2 minutes of a "pitch" similar to what they did on that show "On the Lot" on the first episode.

Somebody would just sit and speak for the camera, but this way we could get a feel for the energy and approach more than text. Plus, I imagine it would give us more practice speaking about ideas instead of typing them.
 
Here's another pitch idea I just thought of.

Similar to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, we could have a first-person based film where the audience isn't shown the protagonist for quite a while. This way they could go to different places and all that would be shot is the reactions and their point of view. The idea of a "first person film" sounds too limited at first, but The Diving Bell and the Butterfly did it beautifully.

Just a possibility.
 
pia12254 said:
At risk of sounding redundant I will mention this again as it kind of applies to what Barry is saying...

Just watched the "Andromeda Strain" mini-series a couple of nights ago. It is a conventional narrative in the sense that it has one overarching story, the characters all interact with each other etc.

However, I think it holds some good parallels for this project because it had multiple/ongoing storylines (which I think makes any film more interesting). For example, they have the scientists in an underground bunker trying to figure out what the virus is. They have the reporter trying to uncover the government conspiracy surrounding the virus. You have the military gurus both trying to solve the problem and also compounding the problem.

BUT...the interesting thing is, if you look at it from a production perspective, there is really only one or two scenes in the ENTIRE FILM where the three or four groups of people are actually on screen together. 99% of the "interaction" between the groups takes place via videoconference, telephone, web chats etc. But the cool thing is it doesn't feel disjointed...in fact, as a viewer if you didn't analyze it you would think it felt like any other film...characters interacting and experiencing something together.

So, all that to say that I think what Barry suggested as far as a true narrative rather than a disjointed anthology is possible...even between productions in various locations. The script just has to be written accordingly and then the productions would have to shoot their film accordingly (video conference monitors with green screen and motion trackers for footage to be added later, etc.).

Just trying to present a "positive" since I tend to just point out what "won't work". :D

:)
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I really like what you're saying here! I'm going to have to go rent 'Andromeda Strain' and check it out.

And I think Barry's right -- we should aim higher than the lowest common denominator. Push the envelope if we can. Try for something that's going to intrigue people.

I don't agree with the poster who suggested transporting everyone to one location and doing this as a more traditional film. I really like the idea of teams in different places doing their segments and pulling the whole thing together into a single story -- rather than an anthology. Using the 'Andromeda Strain' as an example, I can see how it could work well.

As I said before, the trick of seeing the same guy in all four places could be handled with creative camerawork. Maybe greenscreening, even. So the actor doesn't actually have to BE in all four places. So that could still be a viable element.

I really like the idea of people communicating via teleconferencing! Of course, Barry already knows my penchant for that particular scenario. People could also secretly text message each other, send pics via cell phones, etc. It's the 21st century! Let's feature the latest technology!

I'm excited about this! It's got SO much potential! And with all the talent here, I KNOW we can make it work.
 
Barry_Green said:
C'mon peeps, hit us with some wildly inventive awesome 2008 idea for the first film produced entirely through internet collaboration...
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Something not done before and like you point out Barry "entirely through internet collaboration"

To many people are thinking how films are made now.
 
Zim said:
Something not done before and like you point out Barry "entirely through internet collaboration"

To many people are thinking how films are made now.
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I agree that we need to think outside the box with regards to how the production is conducted. Here's an opportunity to do something unique that will grab the imagination of filmmakers and fans all over the world. Let's run with it!
 
Or we could just try to make the best film we can make, use what works and discard what doesn't.

I guess we're thinking along two different lines. I have no desire to push the technology envelope unless it produces results. I've worked over the internet for the past ten years with clients all over the world. It's neither new nor novel to me. It's good for certain things, bad for others. If a production can be made more efficient, better, etc through internet collaboration, multiple crews, etc. great. But if say the production got half way through and it just was not working, the participants would have to be willing to ditch it.

I'm all for trying different ways of working, but not for their own sake.

All I'm saying is, my goal would be to make the best movie possible. Use what works, but don't be afraid to toss what doesn't. That's the bottom line.

All the other stuff about grabbing imaginations, and whatnot, just doesn't really matter if the movie sucks. That should all be by-product, not primary goal.

We've seen too much of that in recent times, I think - lots of hype and excitement, and no decent end result.
 
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