Zblock
Well-known member
So, I've posted this project on these forums before. In fact I retired the posts and the film for that matter but then something happened. I got an opportunity to have a better special effects artist put in some time on the film and churn out a superior version.
I was so impressed with the newer version I thought the film deserved another run for publicity. Also, now that I'm not a newbie to the forum I can add a bit more relevant information about the process. So here we go... Bucovina Card Game - From Concept to Creation. A short film (arguably a music video but so much more) shot on an HVX200 with Redrock adapter and a 50mm lens.
About a year ago I was sitting in my room with my roommate talking about how sucky it was to be a wannabe actor in LA when he said "Hey I've got this song I want you to listen to and help me come up with a filmable concept for it." The song was Bucovina By Shantel. I had never heard it before but it sounded fun and within ten seconds I had this picture of these characters playing a game of poker in some dingy back room. We spent the rest of the night scripting out every movement of our film to the second of the song until we had a ROCK SOLID script. By reading it you could see exactly what was supposed to happen in the film.
I had had some decent roles in films and knew a handful of other actors and film people who I wanted to incorporate into the project so I put together an email with all of the actors pictures (some almost in character as you'll see) and sent it to them along with the script and a proposal to the camera owner and a potential director.
Everyone loved the script and the director even said he would fund the entire project based off of what he'd read. We had officially begun pre-production on our first film in Hollywood. Now for everyone who has been in these shoes knows.. there is an absolutely astronomical ammount of work that goes into making a film. I got my @$$ kicked every day for three weeks trying to put this together. We needed props, a location, blood, mustache, a shoot day, shot list, storyboard... blah blah blah Try and plan every aspect of making a film, even a short one and your head just might explode. Even something as simple as taking the labels off of a wine bottle and finding a dining room table you could abuse took hours of time. Thankfully I had my roommate helping me with about 30% of the planning but as time went on his enthusiasm went down hill and his productivity and help went down with it. Maybe I was just soo gung ho, he failed in comparison. He did rope one of his friends into making us some AMAZING storyboards though. Have a look below.
Two and a half weeks later, $500 down (I'm a broke @$$ wannabe actor mind you) our director says he's working on another film and can't direct ours but his advice was... "Zack you wrote it so well, you don't need a director you only need a traffic cop." I wasn't even upset he couldn't help because I knew I could do most of it myself but we lost our funding and a full grip truck went he pulled his name. Not to mention I'd been bragging to the other actors how I'd gotten a ligit director involved. I called up a guy who'd shot one of the features I'd worked on and he said he'd shoot it for $100 and bring his lighting kit. Thank God.
-3 days before Shoot-
Trying to get a location in LA is almost as tough... you know what I can't even talk about it without getting mad (see my recent posts on finding a jail cell. Screw Hollywood) Anyway I put an ad up on craigslist for a backroom we could set up a table in and smoke cigars. I said I'd give someone $75 for 8 hours. (Yeah I know.... first film remember) This lady called and said she had the perfect place and I should come see it. Needless to say the place was perfect but when I told her how much I was paying she laughed at me like she'd never read the post and said I'd have to at least double the ammount and talk to her husband. I did a lot of @$$ kissing and paid in full that night... kinda scary but we had our location. That night I asked my land lady if we could use her kitchen table for our shoot. She said yes but we'd better bring it back unscathed. (Watch the film and see if you can tell where the dings and dents came from... more @$$ kissing ensued)
-Night before the shoot-
I went to a cheap Halloween store on Hollywood Blvd and bought some blood packets and a fog machine.
-Shoot Day-
First off, it took us 2 our of 8 hours to set up for the first shot. I was a nervous wreck. AND our fog machine wouldn't kick out a puff. With our 650w lights on, the shed we were using heated up to over 90 degrees. Just as I was about to say action on the first shot we blew all the breakers. DEEP BREATH. Time to go talk to the Husband and explain. More @$$ kissing ensued.
I'll save the special production talk because really if you haven't been there you wouldn't understand fully anyway but also because It's kinda a special time that you have to earn to fully appreciate. Go make your own movie if you want more details here. But I will say our blood packets worked about as well as our fog machine did. DEEP BREATH WE ENDED THE DAY 2 HOURS EARLY WITH SPECTACULAR RESULTS
Now of course my computer had broken the week before so I couldn't just jump right in and start editing. My roommate said he'd take the footage to his brother in Ohio and they'd edit an amazing cut.... a year later I'm still waiting for this to happen. DEEP BREATH
I got a new computer a month later and edited my own version on premiere. It took almost a solid week to have what I thought was a showable version of the film BUT it rocked. We were going to win festivals with this piece and shortly after people would be hiring me to film their movies and whala... I'd be in the movie business instead of a wannabe actor. The only thing I couldn't edit it where the muzzle flashes and blood spurts but hey that was just icing on the cake. Lets send this puppy out to Sundance and a few others you know just in case Sundace was as biased as all the other indy filmmakers claimed it was.
Oh yes, lets not forget music rights. I'd been emailing Shantel's (the artist) record company and sent them the script. They said they liked it and we could go ahead and film. They'd sell us the Master rights for the song and we could get licensing rights through Universal Publishing Group. I got a quote from Universal for $700 just for festival rights for 3 months... F#ck YOU!!!! Okay well whatever it this was easy everybody would be doing it. So after I edited the rough draft I send a copy to Essay Recordings and asked for a price for the Master rights so I could legally send my film to festivals. They said No we won't sell you the Master rights because we don't like the content. F#ck YOU!!!! you liked it when I sent the script.... I begged and pleaded and tried my (to this point) perfect record of @$$ kissing but to no avail. Essay wouldn't let me use the song. DEEP BREATH. I hired a guy off craigslist to compose the music for $100 and got a usable tune although it didn't quite fit the edits and I was sooooo burnt out from editing I called it good.
5 festivals... 1 acceptance. And it wasn't Sundance. DEEP BREATH
I sent hundreds of emails and read countless pages online to find a distributor for short films and finally I got some attention from OUAT Media in Toronto. I sent them the film with a press packet and had a Distribution Deal on my first film. I was already counting the dollars in my dreams. At the age of 20 I'd been around the world on my own. At 21 I wrote my first book. At 22 I dated the girl of my dreams. At 23 I make my first album. At 24 I'd made my first film and gotten a distribution deal. Whooo hoooo.
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-A month ago-
No word from OUAT Media other than the guy handling my film isn't working there anymore and his replacement was supposed to get ahold of me... or return a phone call or email which never happened. How are people so rude and un-professional? I gave up trying to talk to them.
I still had 45 gigs of Bucovina Footage on my harddrive because I still wasn't happy with the final cut. I kept saying "Someday I'll get those muzzle flashes done." So enough was enough and I put an ad on Craigslist for someone to do it. I got a really great guy who did it for an IMDB credit happily. With the new footage I cut another slightly better version of the film and added in some of our storyboards for the credits. I'd still like to submit to a few more film festivals and actually get to go to one with my film before I lay it to rest but we'll see. I'm on to bigger and better things but I'll always love this first film. I hope you like it.
Processing Right Now, I'll put a link up to the film as soon as it's done.
I was so impressed with the newer version I thought the film deserved another run for publicity. Also, now that I'm not a newbie to the forum I can add a bit more relevant information about the process. So here we go... Bucovina Card Game - From Concept to Creation. A short film (arguably a music video but so much more) shot on an HVX200 with Redrock adapter and a 50mm lens.
About a year ago I was sitting in my room with my roommate talking about how sucky it was to be a wannabe actor in LA when he said "Hey I've got this song I want you to listen to and help me come up with a filmable concept for it." The song was Bucovina By Shantel. I had never heard it before but it sounded fun and within ten seconds I had this picture of these characters playing a game of poker in some dingy back room. We spent the rest of the night scripting out every movement of our film to the second of the song until we had a ROCK SOLID script. By reading it you could see exactly what was supposed to happen in the film.
I had had some decent roles in films and knew a handful of other actors and film people who I wanted to incorporate into the project so I put together an email with all of the actors pictures (some almost in character as you'll see) and sent it to them along with the script and a proposal to the camera owner and a potential director.
Everyone loved the script and the director even said he would fund the entire project based off of what he'd read. We had officially begun pre-production on our first film in Hollywood. Now for everyone who has been in these shoes knows.. there is an absolutely astronomical ammount of work that goes into making a film. I got my @$$ kicked every day for three weeks trying to put this together. We needed props, a location, blood, mustache, a shoot day, shot list, storyboard... blah blah blah Try and plan every aspect of making a film, even a short one and your head just might explode. Even something as simple as taking the labels off of a wine bottle and finding a dining room table you could abuse took hours of time. Thankfully I had my roommate helping me with about 30% of the planning but as time went on his enthusiasm went down hill and his productivity and help went down with it. Maybe I was just soo gung ho, he failed in comparison. He did rope one of his friends into making us some AMAZING storyboards though. Have a look below.
Two and a half weeks later, $500 down (I'm a broke @$$ wannabe actor mind you) our director says he's working on another film and can't direct ours but his advice was... "Zack you wrote it so well, you don't need a director you only need a traffic cop." I wasn't even upset he couldn't help because I knew I could do most of it myself but we lost our funding and a full grip truck went he pulled his name. Not to mention I'd been bragging to the other actors how I'd gotten a ligit director involved. I called up a guy who'd shot one of the features I'd worked on and he said he'd shoot it for $100 and bring his lighting kit. Thank God.
-3 days before Shoot-
Trying to get a location in LA is almost as tough... you know what I can't even talk about it without getting mad (see my recent posts on finding a jail cell. Screw Hollywood) Anyway I put an ad up on craigslist for a backroom we could set up a table in and smoke cigars. I said I'd give someone $75 for 8 hours. (Yeah I know.... first film remember) This lady called and said she had the perfect place and I should come see it. Needless to say the place was perfect but when I told her how much I was paying she laughed at me like she'd never read the post and said I'd have to at least double the ammount and talk to her husband. I did a lot of @$$ kissing and paid in full that night... kinda scary but we had our location. That night I asked my land lady if we could use her kitchen table for our shoot. She said yes but we'd better bring it back unscathed. (Watch the film and see if you can tell where the dings and dents came from... more @$$ kissing ensued)
-Night before the shoot-
I went to a cheap Halloween store on Hollywood Blvd and bought some blood packets and a fog machine.
-Shoot Day-
First off, it took us 2 our of 8 hours to set up for the first shot. I was a nervous wreck. AND our fog machine wouldn't kick out a puff. With our 650w lights on, the shed we were using heated up to over 90 degrees. Just as I was about to say action on the first shot we blew all the breakers. DEEP BREATH. Time to go talk to the Husband and explain. More @$$ kissing ensued.
I'll save the special production talk because really if you haven't been there you wouldn't understand fully anyway but also because It's kinda a special time that you have to earn to fully appreciate. Go make your own movie if you want more details here. But I will say our blood packets worked about as well as our fog machine did. DEEP BREATH WE ENDED THE DAY 2 HOURS EARLY WITH SPECTACULAR RESULTS
Now of course my computer had broken the week before so I couldn't just jump right in and start editing. My roommate said he'd take the footage to his brother in Ohio and they'd edit an amazing cut.... a year later I'm still waiting for this to happen. DEEP BREATH
I got a new computer a month later and edited my own version on premiere. It took almost a solid week to have what I thought was a showable version of the film BUT it rocked. We were going to win festivals with this piece and shortly after people would be hiring me to film their movies and whala... I'd be in the movie business instead of a wannabe actor. The only thing I couldn't edit it where the muzzle flashes and blood spurts but hey that was just icing on the cake. Lets send this puppy out to Sundance and a few others you know just in case Sundace was as biased as all the other indy filmmakers claimed it was.
Oh yes, lets not forget music rights. I'd been emailing Shantel's (the artist) record company and sent them the script. They said they liked it and we could go ahead and film. They'd sell us the Master rights for the song and we could get licensing rights through Universal Publishing Group. I got a quote from Universal for $700 just for festival rights for 3 months... F#ck YOU!!!! Okay well whatever it this was easy everybody would be doing it. So after I edited the rough draft I send a copy to Essay Recordings and asked for a price for the Master rights so I could legally send my film to festivals. They said No we won't sell you the Master rights because we don't like the content. F#ck YOU!!!! you liked it when I sent the script.... I begged and pleaded and tried my (to this point) perfect record of @$$ kissing but to no avail. Essay wouldn't let me use the song. DEEP BREATH. I hired a guy off craigslist to compose the music for $100 and got a usable tune although it didn't quite fit the edits and I was sooooo burnt out from editing I called it good.
5 festivals... 1 acceptance. And it wasn't Sundance. DEEP BREATH
I sent hundreds of emails and read countless pages online to find a distributor for short films and finally I got some attention from OUAT Media in Toronto. I sent them the film with a press packet and had a Distribution Deal on my first film. I was already counting the dollars in my dreams. At the age of 20 I'd been around the world on my own. At 21 I wrote my first book. At 22 I dated the girl of my dreams. At 23 I make my first album. At 24 I'd made my first film and gotten a distribution deal. Whooo hoooo.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-A month ago-
No word from OUAT Media other than the guy handling my film isn't working there anymore and his replacement was supposed to get ahold of me... or return a phone call or email which never happened. How are people so rude and un-professional? I gave up trying to talk to them.
I still had 45 gigs of Bucovina Footage on my harddrive because I still wasn't happy with the final cut. I kept saying "Someday I'll get those muzzle flashes done." So enough was enough and I put an ad on Craigslist for someone to do it. I got a really great guy who did it for an IMDB credit happily. With the new footage I cut another slightly better version of the film and added in some of our storyboards for the credits. I'd still like to submit to a few more film festivals and actually get to go to one with my film before I lay it to rest but we'll see. I'm on to bigger and better things but I'll always love this first film. I hope you like it.
Processing Right Now, I'll put a link up to the film as soon as it's done.
