A Special Treat - From the "Dream Team" . . .

HDkilledFILM. said:
Really, really liked this. I thought that the pacing was good and the lead actor did a fantastic job. Having said that I will say that I liked LMTF more over all and I think it was because of the shooting, I'm a sucker for the old style too. Also the corpse in this one bothered me a bit, well not all of it just the eyes. Depending on the environment that the corpse would be subjected to (heat, moisture, etc..) the skins leathery texture with the eyes remaining is very, very unlikely. (I worked at a morgue for two years) Yes I know that the body looks great on film but with most decomps after the fluids have seeped out of the body the eyes, which are mostly fluid, would have rotted out long before the skin reached this state. Having said all of that I will say that if this film and LMTF were in the running for the fest they should have taken 1 and 2 over all. Great job guys, I can't wait to see a feature!:thumbsup:
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Dude. You should have never told me you worked in morgue for two years. 100% chance of getting stupid questions from me in the future via PM.

Re the eyes ... maybe it looks like ther was more there than there was? My tech advisor said that if insects didn't get the eyes they would be dry and have a surface like wax paper with no pigmentation. But it was a tele-colaboration and he never saw what we actually did Part of the corpse was purchased and then retooled by us. The corpse head was intended to be a mask and had hole for the eyes. Eye made eyes for it out of beef jerky wrapped in thin latex.

Not accurate?

Oh well if we missed the boat a bit on that. Few will know. I'm sure you see technical flaws like that all the time with your past experience.

Also for the few shots that you see of that, two are lock down, it would be piece of cake to composite dry holes in there. I am definitely planning on retexturing the corpses skin for the non heavily filtered closeups.
 
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100% could be accurate however the likelyhood of that amount of material being left IMO would be slim... When we used to get people even a week old in they would have already begun to bloat, turn green, swell and excrete fluid. I know sick, but I love horror movies and the chance to work third shift as a security guard at the morgue was awsome for me (It really helped my effects). I made friends with the now past coroner and he let me watch autopsys etc... Email me if you interested to know more I just don't want to get into that strange grey area here... Having said that it seems that your character was not the preserving type, more the in denial type which would warrent a faster decay and a less orderly breakdown. It's strange but when a corpse begins to go it's much faster than one would think and having a body sit in a heated room allows the natural bacteria a place to not only live but florish. Any who if you ever want to talk bodies let me know and if you ever want and are around the philly area I could arrange a visit for you to my old morgue.-rock-Adam
 
This is great work Jack. Really solid and gripping. What's nice about this film is there's the right amount of looseness. It doesn't feel overdirected or stagey. I thought LMTF felt over directed whereas this one had air to breathe and the performances are better. Nice work.
 
mentatDUKE said:
Great job on this guys! Really enjoyable.

David, you mentioned "the sound of the gun". I take it you guys used blanks. How did you manage that situation? (Demolitions guy or just plain being careful?)
I'm very interested in blanks rather than post effects since i like an authentic recoil, muzzle flash, casing ejection, etc. Please do tell.
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The muzzle flash is, however, post. Even when you work with real guns / blanks, it's likely that you will get muzzle flair every third time or so if a guy is unloading a clip or something. If he's firing one shot and you do a couple of takes at the right shutter speed you might catch one.

But even then they do not look as cool as they do in movies. So yeah we had smoke and a shell eject but basically no flair in camera.

But you can get really good results doing the whole thing in post - you just almost never see it done well. What helps sell this one is of course the practical elements like the smoke and the shell, but then the fake flair has the depth of field graded to match the shot, so it is more in focus by the gun and less in focus closer to camera, and also it was laid on the uncorrected shot in another sequence then that sequence was imported as a clip into the main FCP timeline and then the color grading was layed on top of the flair and the shot as if it had been photographed that way.

Isaac_Brody said:
This is great work Jack. Really solid and gripping. What's nice about this film is there's the right amount of looseness. It doesn't feel overdirected or stagey. I thought LMTF felt over directed whereas this one had air to breathe and the performances are better. Nice work.
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Thanks Isaac. I definitely wanted a formal controlled style for LMTF, almost all locked down, like an old serial in one way, and this one was more about culling through what I had to work with to find the story.

We did try to use sticks or dolly in this one to aid in the unreliableness of our narrator. Meaning parts that we were suggesting as imagined were handheld and all over the place. Parts we were suggesting as real and potential sources of order were smooth or locked down. Of course we were lying and the opposite was true. So the handheld all over the place shots are real and the still or controlled shots are false. So at the end we go from his Martin Sheen Apocalypse now breakdown scene with all the handheld stuff - which is during his only lucid period, back to lockdown at the end when she appears to come back to life / he "unawakes" ... so now that he is back into madness the camera calms down. Madness = calm camera. Sanity = crazy camera.


HDkilledFILM. said:
I love that line in LMTF about her Apricot womb, that #%$^ is classic.
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Heheh thanks for mentioning it. Obv. if you write a line like that ostentatious you hope someone will.
 
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Thanks for the info Jack. I take it you brightened up part of his face and hand, allowing us to belive the muzzle flash illuminated him?

Cool stuff. Can't wait to try it.
 
yeah absolutely. there is a mask over his face that brightens with the flare.
So that
+ practical
+ fake SDOF
+ laying it in and doing correctional CC to match
+ doing the final grading over the flattened layer are all in the mix.

I forgot to mention that normally I would never do blank firearms without a safety weapons guy on set. My feeling has always been for an indie shoot its just not worth the risk of using something live without dedicated safety professionals, plus the added high profile of the bang etc.

But when it was explained to us that this gun had a led filled barrel (another reason for limited flash, it flashes to the side) and could not even fire wadding we agreed to take a look at a demo of it and it was completely safe. Just very very loud :)
 
This may have already been addressed, but, I found his voice work slightly, er, amusing? Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, just slightly... interesting.

Anyway, I really did like this film. IMHO, it's your absolute best yet: from the acting, to the dialog, to the plot. I thought it was a little needlessly convoluted in a couple of places, but overall, it stayed fairly even thoughout. The ending wasn't a one-trick-pony like (imo) some of your other films have been, and was instead a logical, intelligent way to wrap it up. I'd say for a piece so grounded in realism, the thought of him having lived with his dead wife for so long was a bit hard to swallow (yes, I understand the reasoning), especially considering he still (assumedly) lived an otherwise "normal life." Murder is far from something simple to get away with.

But these are minutia; not vital points. The film is itself is quite excellent, and I really did enjoy it quite a bit. I actually watched it a second time, which is fairly rare for me: you filled it with enough interesting and memorable scenes to warrant at least a second viewing.

Good work.
 
StefanHaynes said:
This may have already been addressed, but, I found his voice work slightly, er, amusing? Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, just slightly... interesting.
...
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heh heh

Took me a second to realize you were talking about his voice over work and dubbing foreign films and not the way he spoke in this film.

We should all be so lucky. VO work is very hard to get into and pays well for a short time commitment. Those are some pretty big titles too ... going by the measure that I don't follow Japanime much and I actually recognize them.

It's not surprising - he was doing impressions on set all the time, but I didn't know his credits were so long and varied though.
 
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Sorry I have been out of the loop. Darn medical tests suck big time...and not my blood...just my strength dag nab it. I am back though....wooo hooo

J.R. Hudson said:
Totally emerged in this film and performances from Shaun, Michelle and Julie that are just made. All of the elements of Film come together in this one; story, cinematography, acting, score, sound design, edit ....

Loved it. Very stoked on this Jack.
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JR....

I have had the good fortune of watching Shaun since he first got to town and dang...he has grown incredibly as an actor. He was so strong in this all the way through. Now I get why Jack wanted the shrink so low key and bland.

And the blood dripping from his mouth gets me now as much as when he did it on set!

Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Not much time in pre-prod. We spent all our pre-prod time on LMTF. The idea with this one was to do run and gun and have that serve the style.
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I love the run and gun and think it does look like a cool tv show!

TheComo said:
Props to Mcgregor to the Tremendous cinematographer. The edit was great. The story was nice too. How on earth did you do the shot of the girl doing her hair in front of the mirror, with the lead in the background?

10/10!
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Mac can do no wrong with that camera...almost scary on it's own!!

ugafan said:
very cool! jack, you do realize that now you must do "the cask of amontillado" because that would rock. :)

also, how much would it cost for one of us to rent the dream team for a movie?
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Uga...you need actors too, right? tee hee....i'm a ho, ya know i'm a ho...how do ya know cause i told ya so....(beasty boys)

Barry_Green said:
Especially that eyeball shot, Jack's compositing wizardry is just awesome.
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Barry

That eye ball thing....omg that was so well done. It really freaked me and made my eyes itch for the actor. I was so glad to find out it was put back in during post.

Isaac_Brody said:
This is great work Jack. Really solid and gripping. What's nice about this film is there's the right amount of looseness. It doesn't feel overdirected or stagey. I thought LMTF felt over directed whereas this one had air to breathe and the performances are better. Nice work.
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Isaac....lol

I have no clue if I should be excited or upset since I worked on both projects. I am curious if it only seemed over directed because it was supposed to have a whole different feel to begin with. I was lucky enough to read both scripts and they read very different too. LMTF was dark & odd...and this one was freaky & plausible. I do love Shaun's work in this project. It is some of his best and he carries it off perfectly.
 
Second comments...

I really enjoyed this piece. The eye shot was EXTREMELY well done. Haunting actually. I also loved the dolly work in the office, very smooth. Nice transition shot from that point as well.

There is a line running down vertically on the left hand side of the screen during the bathroom mirror scene. Is there some compositing going on or just an odd look to the wall?

I really liked the overall look and feel to this one, great pacing adds to the mood. My compliments to all involved!

Mike
 
Not much I can add to all the kudos here. I'll just say that I loved it and you boys rock the face as always. I'm always chasing your lead, reaching for the standards you set and trying to get as good as you fellows are. :)
 
Hey just fantastic work here guys. This was honestly some of the best (if not the best) filmwork i have seen from this site ever. I would agree that I liked this one more than LMTF as LMTF felt a little ridgid in comparision. The charachters and storyline are just more real and beleivable in this film to the extent that you can develop and emotional connection to them. Although I would say that both films fall under the realm of a somewhat altered reality as far as the relatable basing. Its easy to relate ..or at least to understand the protagonist in this one in the actual past, but not as easy as he is in his later portrayed state of dimentia. Mac, props to you as always, your work is always inspiring and a good study. I like to review films like this (and any good film i watch) and study lighting and framing, editing ect. Speaking of editing, props to you Jack on the write, edit and direction. The film was gripping and an overall succesful solid short. Barry, David, John ..what do I need to say ..love for you guys as always. this was a really unexpected treat and Thanks for sharing it with all of us. Theres no doubt in my mind that you guys are on your way to your goals.
 
Thanks for the coments Mojo, and the comments/critique Neil :thumbsup:

Kyser said:
Second comments...

I really enjoyed this piece. The eye shot was EXTREMELY well done. Haunting actually. I also loved the dolly work in the office, very smooth. Nice transition shot from that point as well.
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We made up some rules about when the camera was handheld and when it was either lockdown or smooth. The Shrink's office is a kind of hybrid place - supposedly safe and real when we see it the first time, but there's a lot of mental activity there and piecing things together, so while I did not want the camera to be as wild and crazy as the flashbacks of the burial, or snapping out if it on the highway for example - for the reasons of safety and reality that I just mentioned - I did want there to be some movement in the camera to kind of mirror his active and searching mental state and subconcious - the camera keeps moving from one side to the other and then literally moves into his thoughts with the transition - or such was the thinking in putting it together in the three stages of production.

Kyser said:
There is a line running down vertically on the left hand side of the screen during the bathroom mirror scene. Is there some compositing going on or just an odd look to the wall?

I really liked the overall look and feel to this one, great pacing adds to the mood. My compliments to all involved!

Mike
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Thanks for commenting again :beer: ... can you give me the time counter reading where the line is? There is a bevel in the vanity mirror scene where she is coming her hair, and there is a a line where the mirror meets the wall in the the night time pill flushing scene but I want to make sure I am seeing what you are seeing ... if you have a second to look for it that is. Thanks again.
 
I showed this one to my wife last night....
when the 'eyeball shot' came up she screamed "OH MY GOD! Did they really do that??"
:)

You've definitely got some moments in this one that can elicit a genuine reaction.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Thanks for commenting again :beer: ... can you give me the time counter reading where the line is? There is a bevel in the vanity mirror scene where she is coming her hair, and there is a a line where the mirror meets the wall in the the night time pill flushing scene but I want to make sure I am seeing what you are seeing ... if you have a second to look for it that is. Thanks again.
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I'll have to check the time. It was the shot of her brushing her hair, telling him that she didn't like him taking pills because it makes him seem distant.

It's a straight vertical line on the left hand side. Probably just the edge of the mirror. :thumbup:

Nice reflection shot in the TV btw...

Cheers,

Mike
 
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