Clean Slate Productions presents "IN PIECES"

[DarkMatter]

How much did you have to pay for 1 on 1 time with the inmate?
There were a few films that took me back for the cool factor this was one of them! The realism was great, and the acting was top notch!

 

[Ben Sliker]

That impale vs. stab monologue will stay with me for a while. That blood puring through the pipe was quite the money shot.

that's awesome mentat, one of the things that I love about how this project came together is that it seems like people have different shots as their "favorite one", like the last one, or the shotgun, or the wine glass. My personal favorite is the one right after the pipe shot, when John is on his "high" from the kill, as I love Davis' performance there.

This film is definately one of the best, if not the best I've seen so far. I have no critiques, because I think the film was very artistic. The vision and the shots were so creative and I thought the flashbacks were right on time and didn't give too much. They let you see just what you needed to and imagine the rest.

If you ever need an actor, sign me up! Good job!

P.S. - Loved the shotgun shot.

Thanks for the review Lee! Again, it's really nice to see some of the things you worked really hard on pay off on screen, I'll post some more BTS photos/video soon to give you a little insight, but I gotta let you know, that shotgun was one crazy rig.

How much did you have to pay for 1 on 1 time with the inmate?
There were a few films that took me back for the cool factor this was one of them! The realism was great, and the acting was top notch!

Actually, Davis' visiting hours are pretty extensive, apparently he behaves himself really well in the joint. I can't believe they let us take a camera in there.

Davis pops in here every so often, so we appreciate all the great comments on his work, he will really appreciate them.

 

[Blaine]

We sat through a lot of disappointing entries last night (screening all the entries on the plasma) so it was a real pleasure to watch yours. You had the best performance of any actor in the qualifying entries. I loved the choice of black and white. The sound was excellent, too. This is hands down the Best of Show! Did I mention how creapy your actor was? :thumbsup:

 

[Jay Rodriguez]

Well well well... I didn't expect this one to stick out for me but it did. I hate movies like this to be honest with ya, too boring. But your film is the exception, well done my man, well done.

 

[Ben Sliker]

We sat through a lot of disappointing entries last night (screening all the entries on the plasma) so it was a real pleasure to watch yours. You had the best performance of any actor in the qualifying entries. I loved the choice of black and white. The sound was excellent, too. This is hands down the Best of Show! Did I mention how creapy your actor was? :thumbsup:

wow, that really means a lot to us, thank you Blaine.

Well well well... I didn't expect this one to stick out for me but it did. I hate movies like this to be honest with ya, too boring. But your film is the exception, well done my man, well done.

I am glad we could be the exception! I'll go ahead and guess that your enjoyment was directly related to Davis' performance. I think anything less in the acting department and the film would have suffered immensly.

Thanks again to everyone who has watched and commented so far!

 

[Slimothy]

Great job man. This is the front runner for me. Great acting, great writing, awesome cinematography, clever use of the whine glass etc.

It was nice to stumble upon this one.

Tim.

 

[deedive]

This was a all around solid piece. (no pun intended) great work. Very thought out. I liked the color inserts. This is just very strong!

 

[Ben Sliker]

Great job man. This is the front runner for me. Great acting, great writing, awesome cinematography, clever use of the whine glass etc.

It was nice to stumble upon this one.

Tim.

Thanks Tim ... but don't get me started on that wine glass. Funny story ... round bb's really like to ricochet off of round wine glasses ... needless to say it was a good thing I was wearing protective eyewear. And yes ... we did paint most of my garage black, only to wrap the first day and paint it white at about 1 am for the next day.

This was a all around solid piece. (no pun intended) great work. Very thought out. I liked the color inserts. This is just very strong!

Thanks deedive! test shots video coming up soon!

 

[Joops]

Great production! Hints of color was a nice touch in the photography. My favorite shot was the smoking gun - very cool. Good casting lead to good acting. Awesome (mis)use of the wine glass. [ Snag --- Get better police lights]

 

[Justin Kuhn]

Believe me Joops, I wince whenever I think about that shot. The long version:

I'm still kicking myself over this, believe me. I forgot to bring the lighting gag I had planned on using to give the subject that lit by a cop car look, but Ben had a bunch of strobes and I had a couple in my trunk from a runway gig, so I figured why not. Then we got down to it and all those strobes were just not playing at all. The only thing I got out of 'em was the blinking on the left side of the door there, and that was from the biggest party light, gelled and hidden on the hood directly in front of Davis.

What I've really been kicking myself over is that I could have built a new gag right there; it's just a box, a bit of a stick, string, clotheshanger and gels. But at the time I was close to freaking out, I felt down to the wire and seriously stressed out. Not making your day on a film with an inflexible schedule is right up there in my DP's Top Three Nightmares. But we ended up wrapping an hour early, so...f&%k. Next time.

 

[Ben Sliker]

VIEW THE TEST FOOTAGE FROM IN PIECES

(or right click and save if you will, it's only 6.5 mb, so itll load fast.)

Here's all the stuff we shot a couple weekends before our shoot to see if what was in ours heads was possible.

Like I alluded to before, apparently Walmart wine glasses are made out of steel, and it was quite a chore getting one to explode! :grin:

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Nice!

 

[Ben Sliker]

13. IN PIECES


An interesting short film about a killer. You could have titled this film "The Art of Murder."

This film although slower, kept my interest through out.
The dialog was hard to hear at times but over all it was shot, lit, and edited very well. Once again, a good actor really pulled it together.

Good Job on this one.

Bervision's review from his massive review section. For starters, thanks for taking the time to write all of those out, I've managed to comment on about a 1/4 of the films, just hoping to get past half.

Titles and character names often take us just as long to come up with as the entire script for these short films, IN PIECES, just kind of stuck from the beginning. When explaining our upcoming short to people, we used "it's kind of a portrait of a serial killer" a lot, so I feel your title fits well too! Thanks again!

 

[Ben Sliker]

New Banner!

 

[Wild Imagination Films]

So far this is clearly the best film of the bunch. I'm halfway through working my way up instead of down and I haven't seen anything else even close. The subtle effects and lack of overt gore has really impressed me as well as the selection of shots and the edit. This shows intelligence and maturity often lacking in the short works showcased here. Keep up the great work guys.

 

[cinealma]

REVIEW:
I liked this one a lot. Kind of like "Interview with a Serial Killer". I love the black and white. Clean and classic. As always, is loses a bit in the shadows under compression, but it still worked out nice. Acting was top notch. Excellent job!

FILMMAKER-TO-FILMMAKER:
I'm not going to nit-pick too much here. Everything looked and sounded great. I actually could have done without the colored bits, but that's just me. VFX with him in the chair were cool.

And I would have like to seen some meat on that pipe! rogar-Evil(DBG):

Good job. Thanks for sharing! :beer:

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Hey great job here.

Maybe the best so far? (About a third of the way through.)

Way to keep it simple and engaging.

The lighting was really good, the actor was great, though I found him much more interesting in the moments he wasn't playing EVIL with a capital "E".

I also liked the way you kept the camera moving.

The pipe thing was truly disturbing ... the wine glass and mason jar kind of a let down by comparison. The middle thing maybe could be not as spectacular but the last one should've topped the 1st one I think.

Nice ending image. Try to let your smoke settle a bit more if you can. It can be a real pain working with these cheapo party fog machines I know.

But the ending image was great.

Nice job by Herman too, subtle, made it feel more like a documentary.

Thanks for making it!

:thumbup:

 

[Ben Sliker]

So far this is clearly the best film of the bunch. I'm halfway through working my way up instead of down and I haven't seen anything else even close. The subtle effects and lack of overt gore has really impressed me as well as the selection of shots and the edit. This shows intelligence and maturity often lacking in the short works showcased here. Keep up the great work guys.

Wow! Thanks and we will!

REVIEW:
I liked this one a lot. Kind of like "Interview with a Serial Killer". I love the black and white. Clean and classic. As always, is loses a bit in the shadows under compression, but it still worked out nice. Acting was top notch. Excellent job!

FILMMAKER-TO-FILMMAKER:
I'm not going to nit-pick too much here. Everything looked and sounded great. I actually could have done without the colored bits, but that's just me. VFX with him in the chair were cool.

And I would have like to seen some meat on that pipe! rogar-Evil(DBG):

Good job. Thanks for sharing! :beer:

Actually, the original shot was to have that pipe explode out of the back of the chair and then start to leak. Needless to say it didn't work out as well as planned so we went with the ECU instead, i think it may even may more of an impact this way.

The pipe thing was truly disturbing ... the wine glass and mason jar kind of a let down by comparison. The middle thing maybe could be not as spectacular but the last one should've topped the 1st one I think.

Nice ending image. Try to let your smoke settle a bit more if you can. It can be a real pain working with these cheapo party fog machines I know.

But the ending image was great.

Nice job by Herman too, subtle, made it feel more like a documentary.

Thanks for making it!

:thumbup:

Thanks Jack, see this is why this threads rock. We thought we pretty much had every angle covered and there goes jack, blowing my mind away. I guess we never thought about the sequence of the insert shots, but I can see how they would have more impact if they were reversed. Which is really great because it gave me like 3-4 totally awesome/gross ideas immediately after your comment. Thanks for the constructive commentary!

And as for the fog machine, I hear ya too, there's actually a couple takes where the smoke is pretty horrendous. Like there's aliens outside waiting to abduct him like so:

VS. the final shot

we contemplated renting a pro haze machine ... but who wouldn't want to own a cheap party city fog machine?

 

[Ben Sliker]

FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR OF IN PIECES

All of these grabs are raw, no CC!

This one was the hardest to cut for us. it's a nice slo-mo shot of the hammer coming down on the victim in a very surrealist fashion. Unfortunately, it didn't match up with the rest of the footage we shot as when Davis was taking his swings, it was more natural to come in from the side instead of straight from the top.

This was a creation of out DP on the spot, I like to call it the "Mrs. Robinson" shot, but it's a skater dolly reveal through Davis' legs. In the end, we thought it drew to much attention to the victim (the rest of the shots with him in it are either ECU or he is way out of focus) so it got cut.

This was another from the brain of Justin. One of those "we'll shoot it if we have time" kind of gigs. It was a diagonal dolly from the window where the cops would be approaching all the way to the doorknob where they would beat on the door. It drew a little too much away from Davis and you could see my blue basketball shorts in the middle of it.

This is a shot of the garage floor after davis had been blowing chocolate syrup through a tube attached to the head. Eww ... sticky. But Justin was meandering around and caught a couple shots like this one with the strobe light flashing just in case they were needed or could be used creatively.

Some cool smoke from the many insert shots we had for the intro credit sequence.

Another potential insert shot for the ending. I don't think we could get the shutter speed and strobe flashing to line up enough for something like this to be usable. But cool nonetheless...

 

[Justin Kuhn]

All of these are actually on my reel, except for the pistol--what I really wanted out of that was a silloutte of the gun being loaded, but the strobe wasn't strong enough to work that way so we switched around the other way. I jump cut the clickety-clack bits of that to try and fit it in with some other shots, but it didn't really match so I ditched it. I still might flash it in between the police car rig shot and the feet against the garage door--B&W most likely.

EDIT: Tried it. Looked kinda cool but not enough.

The diagonal dolly on the window really didn't turn out how I wanted it, which was better defined beams of light through the smoke and just the shadows of the cops rushing past the windows. Taking it to B&W fixed the shorts, and I sped it up so you didn't have time to make out Ben and the Bradster through the blinds, but this is definitely something I'd like to shoot again, with more extras and a dolly grip and some more time with the lighting. I had a bunch of great shots in mind for the cops rushing the house, really action-y shots, and, well, I may have been distracted a little bit from the main thrust of the story. Test footage for ActionFest I guess, whenever that happens.