BONE HAND by Jack Daniel Stanley

Am relatively new to posting; been involved with the industry though. Enjoyed your short. Especially enjoyed that you didn't choose to explain the reason for his "superhero-ness." You simply told a story using stolen moments from his life.

Nicely done.
 
Thanks to my cast and crew all ...

but here's a shout out specifically to the guys (and lady) on the forum that made this little flick possible.

There were no less than 12 DVXusers who collaborated in some official capacity or donated goods or services to Bone Hand (that # has to be a record right?). There are many more that warrant thanks ... but here in the forum I'll just hank the people you know and let you know some of the ways they contributed to the film.

so ... thank you and congrats to ...


MSMANHATTAN

Produced two of the top five (RfEyeD and Bone Hand) Her enthusiasm and resourcefulness really brought the piece together and she was responsible for finding the a great kid after I was dumb enough to write a script centered around one.
ARAM BAUMAN
in addition to pulling a top 5 film out of his arse with killer VFX at the last minute, Aram saved our asses by figuring out how to light the roof scene without electrocuting everyone when we lost the light (all of it) on our first day of shooting and then it rained covering the roof in 2 inches of water. We just would have lost that day if he hadn't figured out a brilliant plan of shooting light out of the stairwell and bouncing onto a series of sun reflectors. Also he's largely responsible for the look of Bone Hand's apartment interior. It was one of those very collaborative Head Gaffer and DP collaborations where I described the look of the scene and a few specific effects and then he just went to town lighting it on his own an adding shape and dept. He did way better than I could have done on my own.
TIMUR CIVAN
Shot most of the movie and was there every single shoot for every second that I was. Timur shot the opening rain sequence for example. At the end of that shoot he looked like he had jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed. Timur was tireless and constantly found new ways to contribute and improve what we were doing and was absolutely fantastic to be around 110% of the time. He's talented, tireless, and a good egg. In my previous two films (all shot by me) the camera was much lighter and flew around a lot, but Timur was able to operate in a way that added weight and felt more cinematic.
HERMAN WITKAM
of course provided music that totally helped tell the story and totally rocked. Herman was great to work with. We did three drafts of the score, and I think each had 10 or more pages of notes for him, but he just turned them around and came back implementing everything awesomely. I'm a tough date in the score department and Herman never blinked and I never detected any frustration in our communication. He just took the notes and did the work and got everything back on time.
TEXTURE
did the Audio Sweetening and it made a huge difference. He really knew what he was doing and where I would have just turned the volume up and down on different tracks he skillfully notched out frequencies in the ambient beds / etc. that conflicted with the human voice and was just able to clean up a lot of the location sound. I think he is working with Dahopa on the DVD version of his flick, and he will probably be inundated after this but hit him up for your project - he loves story and filmmaking.
TC

did a great job with the title design and animation. I kept getting the note on other things that my titles were lacking and I had a lot on my plat with this one so I hit him up because I knew he would deliver, and he did. Also he allowed me to use a clip from his Zombie Fest entry THE LIVING'S END (the axe to the head when the little girl's watching TV) thanks man!!!
FLINT MI
Allowed us to shoot on his roof and was just a great gut to have around on set and toss ideas around in the editing room, he also shot some BTS.
ALEX DEPEW
Shot a ton of BTS and was also great to have around especially on the roof shoot.
REZFACTOR (the member formerly known as "N... (something) ... Shooter"
Allowed us to use an awesome and gory clip from his Zombie Fest entry INFECTION
(the guy getting shot in the head on the TV). Thank you sir.
COFFEE

Lent us his Letus35 to use along side mine. Thanks man!

and last but by no means least,
JOHN HUDSON
hooked us up with all of the Bone Hand sunglasses FOR FREE through his wife Flora's
Designer sunglass company Somatic
http://somaticoptics.com/
Thanks John. And thanks for all your input and support from wayback and up through this contest.

BRICEMAN, EVISION, and ISAAC BRODY didn't work on this film, but help keep me sane on a moment to moment basis (yes, believe it or not this is me relatively sane). Thanks guys.

And of course thanks to JARRED for giving these films a home, allolwing inspiration and knowledge to flourish like a mutant virus in zombie film, and for giving me a hard time (you bastid) :)

if I forgot anyone please forgive me ... it's late and I'm very tired ... please PM me and scream at me and I will update the post :thumbsup:
 
Wow, great to see the collaborative spirit was in full effect for this production. There are SO MANY pieces that have to get put together in order to make a film (of any length); one person can't do it alone.

Congrats to all!
 
Nice Job Jack! Really liked the VFX. Little girl did a great job, I know how hard it is to find good child actors. Keep up the good work!
 
thanks for the comments and continued views guys ...

the film has been updated slightly and linked below and from the first post in the thread, also available in as .wmv now.

(a few cuts deleted mostly as Isaac Brody's feedback and my own dissatisfaction, and some shots of the hallway have a little more head room as per John Hudson's feedback)

5 min 50 sec ... right-click QuickTime or Windows Media to download and view

thanks again everyone :)

EDIT: If anyone wants to see the contest cut for comparison then PM me.
 
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Looks good Jack. Only one little snafu. At about 3:50 minutes your 2:35 mask moves up for a split moment. Other than that the pacing and changes work really well.
 
Isaac_Brody said:
Looks good Jack. Only one little snafu. At about 3:50 minutes your 2:35 mask moves up for a split moment. Other than that the pacing and changes work really well.
D'oh :grin:

I'll fix that ... back to the drawing board.

I thought there was a missed acting beat in the Mom's performance (that's why I had the odd cuttaway there). When we were improvising she also started two sentences with "not that" which sounds wierd. But looking at it again I actually like her transition and I was able to edit the first "not that" during the cuttaway of the glove. But the initial intent was that I always thought it would be cool to do that short scene in one take.

On the to do list for the DVD remain the following:
  1. shot of bonehand walking towards camera after he throws the death is too short ... for some reason Joe, my VFX pro, lost frames going from my FCP to his after effects back to my FCP
  2. same thing in the end fight, shot of Bonehand knocking the tall thugs hand down is way too quick ... samething happened - we lost frames somehow and couldn't fix before contest.
  3. Joe is gonna add some new VFX shots! when Bone Hand "lays hands" on Easter to bring her back to life.
  4. gonna take another look at Easter's performance via the editing around the death scene.
  5. make sure all the CC in the opening sequence matches more.
  6. may see if I can get some more contrast in the hallway fight scene
  7. may revisit the CC in the death scene
amazing what small changes can do
on the openening I ...
  1. dropped a closeup of the delievery boy under the line "where's the money chink" (stays with the low angle with just the thugs legs in the frame now)
  2. dropped one jump cut when BoneHand pulls his glove off
  3. dropped the abrupt zooms on two closeups of the thugh on his lines "you and your chink boss gotta pay insurance just like every other gook ont the block." (I thought at one point that the abrupt zooms on "chink" and "gook" would make them clearer and then the punchline/button on the scene would play better -- live and learn right?) :)
 
There were lots of things I liked about this production (story, CGI, color use, composition of some shots, mood, acting, humor) but wasn't there moments were the 180 rule was broke?

I'm sure I see one too many shots of the back of the head of Bone Hand man.

Was I wrong?

EJ
 
Hey EJ,

thanks for taking another look and offering more feedback :)

... not sure what you mean exactly, though ... as its perfectly fine to show the back of the head - in other words that doesn't have much to do with crossing the line. In fact the rule goes that to cross the line without breaking "the rules" you must show the camera move across the line -- which often involves the camera moving behind one persons head from one shoulder to the other. As you remember the idea is that ist fine to cross the line on a move because it doesn't disorient the audience as they saw the move. What does disorient them is when the camera is on one side of the actors and then just cuts to the reverse and suddenly the profile of actor "A" has switched to the right side of the frame when it was formerly on the lefy and vice versa for actor "B". Now this is not to say that you can't cut to a reverse, you just can't cross the line.

In the opening fight scene for example, the Thug is always on the LEFT side of the frame and the Delivery Boy is always on the RIGHT side of the frame. But, particularly after the Thug is hit with the death cloud, there are lots of reverse shots which basically work like over the shoulder shots only they are full body. Since the camera is roughly at a 45 degree angle to "the line" you get the Thug's back as the Delivery Boy waves his hand in front of the Thug's eyes and the Delivery Boy's back as he picks up the stick etc. ... but the line is not crossed ... remember 180 degrees is half a circle so you can all the way behind someone with out crossing the center line between the two characters ... I'm sure you know all this ... but I go over it as your question doesn't make 100% sense to me.

We DO cross the line (i.e. the 180 rule) really only once (as far as I know), and that's at the end of the hallway fight after he sees the bullet holes in the door and then it cuts to the wide shot of the hallway to show him walking into the door (3 min 31 sec).

This was done so that when he left the hallway he would exit the left side of the frame and then enter the right side of frame in the apartement.

We have alaready established that angle of the wide shot where he walks through the door twice in that scene and it is on the correct side of the access in those two points.

When Bonehand stuffs the death into the bad guy and the the bad guy hits the floor however, the camera move crosses to the other side of the axis line ... again this is OK because we see it happen ... only bad when we don't see it happen because it's like the audience was picked up and placed on the other side of the scene.

No we DO cut back to the hallway and when he exits and we are suddenly on the OTHER side of Bone Hand. This was mosty done because that's the coverage we had and just how it went together best without another angle to go to, but I'm not sure I would do it different even if we did have that other angle ...

The 360 move around Bone Hand works well with the death stuffing because it starts on him then goes to the Thug and then is in place for the THug to fall and for Bone Hand to turn and see the door and the camera movement adds something to that moment.

Then, as I mentioned, we need him to exit left in order to enter right (as per another pesky film rule). I could have just had him walk out of frame from the closeup and into the next scene. But this, to me, was more disorienting as it would have him exit right, then enter right. I think it was less dissorienting to cut to the wide angle since we had already established it and that made it feel more like cutting to a reverse in an action scene.

now ...

The Mom Scene is framed ove the shoulder with Bone Hand's back to the camera. Once we started shooting on that day, I liked the idea more and more of doing that scene all in one take. We got everything we needed from it. We basically were seeing the Mom through Bone Hand's eyes at that point and his jaw just dipped into frame and was just profile enough to see his blurred lips moving with his dialogue. But again -- he was alwasy on the left side of the frame and she was always on the right ... so no 180 rule was broken even though we saw a lot of the back of his head in that scene.

Now the end of the mom scene ... is an interesting bit of discussion on this topic ... you could argue that the 180 line is crossed here, but I wouldn't count it as such ... here's why :
As Bone Hand walks down the hall, he drags the 180 line with him. So where it used to go from the door of the apartment to the wall across the hall (roughly) it now begins to stretch down the hall as he walks ... he begins on the left side of the frame but comes more and more center squishing the legal area to just the right side of the frame. Problem is, Mom still has a line after he walks off -- she's still back at the door. The only way to cut to her is to cross the new line that has been established by his cross down the hallway. There's just not another way to do it unless you covered him walking away from her with his back to the camera rather than walking into it. So why don'y I count this as crossing the line? IMHO, it's kind of more cutting between two locations at this point. He's moved into a new location where her dialogue is basically delivered O.S. and we do a cuttaway to the other locale for the delivery of that line.

So there is one time the line is for sure crossed at the end of the hallway fight scene and then one time it is arguably crossed at the end of the Mom scene. The fight end was done to not break another rule (and also you can cross the line to be intentionally jarring for dramatic purposes - as in his world just flip flopped on learning that she might be harmed) and then for the mom scene it was pretty much the only way.

Again as far as I know, nothing else even comes close to crossing the line other than those to shots.

lemme know if you have further questions or points of discussion on this

thanks for the feedback,

Jack
 
Hey Jack,

Thank you for putting this puppy up on your site!

In answer to your Q.

2:30 in, we see a profile shot of BH. Why do we see a profile shot and not a full face one? I'm curious.

3:27 the fight scene looks like it breaks the 180 rule there for a moment - as you highlighted.

3:43 again, side of head shot with BH - why?

5:01 the quick shots seem to break the 180 rule (although I'd imagine you can get away with it with fast-cuts).

Also, LOVED the little homage to the ZombieFest thru the TV late night movies!

EJ
 
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Ah ... Ok .. you are asking two questions/making two crits
1)what about the 180 rule?
(discussed last post)
2) why so much profile etc, vs. honest to goodness cloesups of the hero?
Short answer = about 50% by design and about 50% by "woops".

EJ Pennypacker said:
Hey Jack,

Thank you for putting this puppy up on your site!
sure ... and as of earlier this afternoon the WMV version should now be corrected for best gamma on PC's (lighter as per my best guess at anyrate) while the .mov is still best for macs of course.

In answer to your Q.

2:30 in, we see a profile shot of BH. Why do we see a profile shot and not a full face one? I'm curious.
This would be a woops of coverage.
Would like to say it was part of a grand plan but all I can say is "woops" and
... never again will I do multicamera - or at least not with fixed focal length 35 mm adaptors. It was SOOOOOO hard to get good shots without one camer getting in the other camera's way etc.
... here we ran into the problem of the wall and the couch and not being able to get further around actually closer to the 180 line to look right onto him. The day was already ambitous and it didn't all that well and the little girl wound up going home in tears and we were all at the end of our tether ... it wouldn't have been such a big deal to cheat over with her out of the shot and have him do two takes with the camera positiioned somewhere on the couch -- but the lighting took sooo long to set up and I should have listened to my producer and quit early that day to come bacj fresh and finish with ample time, because after pushing through we were all at the end of our thether and no one thought to get that quick shot of him

... like I said "woops" :grin:

3:27 the fight scene looks like it breaks the 180 rule there for a moment - as you highlighted.

3:43 again, side of head shot with BH - why?
*sigh* same set up same day. Should have seen where the camera was initially placed after hours of set up ... did my best to push it closer to the 180 line :( :)

5:01 the quick shots seem to break the 180 rule (although I'd imagine you can get away with it with fast-cuts).
D'oh. Damnit :laugh:

this would be a "woops" of "you know I never though about that" ... always seemed ok to cut to a reverse over her shoulder there ... the funny thing is ... I actually flopped the low angle of her feat in post because it crossed the line from the side shot, lol, and never thought about the hand. I guess I could unflop the feat, then flop the the profile and medium shot and then it would all be on the right side! We got fouled up here I think because we were stealing the location (under the guise of being a genealogical research group, lol) and the grounds keeper was standing at the gate waiting on us so he could close the cemetary for the day (closed an hour earlier on the day we shot than on all other days for some reason!)


Also, LOVED the little homage to the ZombieFest thru the TV late night movies!

EJ

yeah it wound up being a tribute ... thanks to rezfactor and TC for the clips ...

but I always wanted her to be watching something highly innaproriate, since something I was going for in their relationship was that he protected her like a father, but treated her like a regular friend - which is of course innaproriate for their ages ... but she could watch whatever she wanted or eat whatever she wanted as long as she wasn't in bodily harm or emotional duress ... also, she sort walks all over him and does whatever the heck she wants :)

thanks for the indepth look, the interest, for helping me make it better for the DVD cut, and for checking out my website :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
 
I was secretly hoping for it but couldn't plan for it due to our time schedule and resources.

We actually tried to STAY OUT of the rain for budget and logistical reasons, lol.

We just didn't have the resources to have an "A" schedule and "B" schedule based on the weather ... you know ... forecast says rain so we plan on it but have a second location as a backup with all the cast for that scene etc.

Also didn't have proper resources to care for the actors - towels, a place to stay warm ... all of that.

Forecast called for 70% chance of rain that Saturday and 30% on Sunday. The opening scene was originally scheduled for Saturday and we moved it to Sunday to try to stay dry, flip flopping it with the hallway fight scene scheduled on Sunday.

Of course it was a light drizzle on Saturday and poured buckets on Sunday.

So not planned for but wished for. I said to people working on the film that ideally ALL of the exterior scenes (except the blown out death metaphor scene) would be raining and at night, and I pretty much got my wish.

On the day of that shoot when discussing the shots, the fight coreographer (the tall thug) said "Why don't we reschedule this" and I said "Well we're here and prepared to go through with it despite the weather ... its just gonna look so much better in the rain like this, so lets go ahead and see if we can get through it"
 
Nice Jack... and trust me... I feel ya on shooting in the rain! For my last short, I shot a scene outside and it was sprinkling and I was frustrated! I can only imagine what it must have been like!
 
Bone Hand - A Review

Bone Hand - A Review

This post was originally in a sub-thread. Promised some folks I would re-post here at the Bone Hand thread, so here it is in an edited form:

Bone Hand - A Review

Wow.

I mean... really. Wow.

I missed out on this short during Herofest... I only recently purchased my two little DVX100b's and I found DVXUSER after the fact.

After seeing this little super hero/horror hero flick, all I can say is I am blown away.

I have seen a lot of stuff (shorts, clips, etc) over the last few weeks filmed on the DVX. Some cool, some funny, some iffy, some ground breaking, some awesome, and some pretty crappy.

But this short is without a doubt- unbelievably cool.

Bestist dang stuff I have seen since the "Broken" DVD- like that short (also filmed on the DVX100) it deserves the same follow through from the producers of "Bone Hand".

This short feature has incredible lighting (often lacking from a DV film) and great subtlety in selling the effects and costumes. When it comes to achieving "the film look" with DV, PROPER lighting and attention to contrast in camera and color correction in post is everything. And these guys know it!

This is true DV filmmaking at it's best: A great story, by someone who understands the horror/thriller genre as a whole. Ala hitchcock style, the director knows what to show and what not to show for max creepy effect.

And where the hellllll did these guys find that kid actress? She turned in one of the best child performances I have seen since Dakota Fanning in "War of the Worlds" or even Drew B in "ET" and "Firestarter"

... the bit at the end where she finally relaizes the mortality involved and gently pushes the corpse hand to the side. MAN. Awseome! ...total props on the direction of that scene. Really sells the drama of the whole short.

Great start, effects, script, acting, concept, and ending.

Hell- even the bit player villains were pretty good.

Good pacing, good editing, good night scene shots and lighting... sigh.

I know I'm being effusive, but I am no newbie to the entertainment biz... I don't dole this stuff out lightly... and I say this: "Bone Hand" rocks.

I felt more entertained here in 5 mins and 20 secs than I did in two plus hours of "X-Men Three: The Dismal Ending of a Franchise" a few weeks ago (sorry- I didn't mean to insult the Bone Hand team with the comparison).

Great short- check it out now if you havn't seen it. Best of luck to the creators, cast and crew of Bonehand.

A boney thumbs up here. :Drogar-Evil(DBG):
 
Brandon Rice said:
Nice Jack... and trust me... I feel ya on shooting in the rain! For my last short, I shot a scene outside and it was sprinkling and I was frustrated! I can only imagine what it must have been like!

Everyone but me was unhappy in the rain. i actually kinda liked it. it only sucked when we got back in the car, and me, jack, Actors and crew started shivering.
 
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