DESIDERATUM - A Film By Ben Sliker

~jai~ said:
A sincere congratulations on making the finalist list! Your film should look AWESOME on the big screen and hopefully I'll get the chance to meet with you at the event! Can't wait!
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The logistics of me getting to LA are mind-boggling, but I'm working on it right now.

armisiano said:
One of my favorite films. Congrats on making it to the top 8. :)
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Really appreciate that!

Brandon Rice said:
Congrats Ben, I had a feeling! :)
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Thanks for being a fan of ours since Day 1 Brandon! (way back in '05 :) )

Davis Osborne said:
Big Congrats Ben!!!...Very Nice Work)))
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Thanks Davis, did you forget your other login?

lawriejaffa said:
A worthee nominee Ben - good luck in the competition mate!
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Cheers Lawrie, looking forward to the video review.
 
I wondered why the car didn't have a number plate (I think that's license plate in your speak).

Couldn't be privacy issues as you've listed where you and your cast and crew come from so if I wanted to track you down for any reason it wouldn't be that difficult.
 
leepback said:
I wondered why the car didn't have a number plate (I think that's license plate in your speak).
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Here in North Carolina, we only require the use of a rear license plate, but since most cars are made with brackets for both front and rear, (to comply with other state's laws) a lot of people decide to cover it up with a vanity plate, this one just happened to have a second ford logo. If you don't cover it up, you're stuck with either the plastic mount left over, or you can take that off and be left with two holes in your front bumper.

leepback said:
Couldn't be privacy issues as you've listed where you and your cast and crew come from so if I wanted to track you down for any reason it wouldn't be that difficult.
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I DON'T KNOW YOU. PRANK CALLER. PRANK CALLER.
 
Next installment:

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Okay ladies and gents, here it is:
In this picture I have a two bank Diva filling from the front, daylight balanced with a half ctb gel.
I back lit her face with a four bank Diva Tungsten balanced with a quarter cto, also with a britek 200 (?) again with a quarter orange. I like to use the softer source (Diva) as the main back light, but add a little more punch with a hard light from the same direction. I think it defines the edges a little more without being too harsh.

The bathroom behind her is lit with the two back lights just spilling into the room.

So, in my eyes, it's supposed to look like the bathroom light is on and that's the motivation for the back light.

The cool blue front fill is motivated by it being night time in the shot.
 
Ben Sliker said:
Here in North Carolina, we only require the use of a rear license plate,
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Thanks Ben - I thought that might be the case.

Weird rule especially since there's a place for it anyway.
Perhaps you guys are saving on resources but it does make the car look really strange to my eyes but obviously it looks quite normal to you and your fellow North Carolinians (or whatever you collectively call yourselves).

Very nice job on the film BTW.
 
yeah, let me know how it looks on the big screen. I'll be in Charlotte coverin' me some NASCAR. Turns out the flight/loss of work for a 12 hour stint in LA was going to cost me more than I can afford.

although, my esteemed (albeit vertically challenged) collaborator Joe Johnson will be there, along with the infinitely helpful Lana Bolin to represent DESIDERATUM.
 
On a technical level, this film was near perfect. The audio and video were all super clean and sharp. Really made the film go down easy. Great lighting, colors, angles. The acting is also very solid.

SPOILER ALERT (for the 2 people who haven't seen it yet)

I have a problem with the nonlinear and disguised method of telling this story. Since it's supposed to be a surprise what their quest is, we don't get to actually see a traditional quest: Character wants something, fights for it, gets it. All of this is in Desideratum, but since its nonlinear, it instead becomes more of a series of confounding images, only paid off in the last few moments. I wasn't really invested, since I had nothing to invest in. If I had known she wanted a child, I would have been involved, would have wanted to find out if she succeeded.

This storytelling technique also makes the dialogue a little stilted, because it has to be generic enough to not give away the twist.

I'm curious to your thought process here. Did you think a straightforward story about a couple trying to have a child would not be interesting enough?

Even with my issues, I still think the way the last moment was done was moving. It would have been even more moving if we had been following their quest, as opposed to trying to figure it out.
 
jasonthewho said:
On a technical level, this film was near perfect. The audio and video were all super clean and sharp. Really made the film go down easy. Great lighting, colors, angles. The acting is also very solid.

I'm curious to your thought process here. Did you think a straightforward story about a couple trying to have a child would not be interesting enough?
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Thanks for the detailed feedback! Unfortunately, you experienced some of my worst fears about how i structured the movie.

Do I think it would be less interesting in a linear fashion? In short ... yes. I also think that the series of events that happened would have made it a much longer movie, perhaps that dining room conversation could have been 6 minutes in itself to build enough drama.

I do think it pays off earlier than the last few moments, there are subtle hints throughout but the bombshell i think is the negative pregnancy test around 4:27.

So, in the end, it makes Ben a sad panda that you felt nothing until the last few moments. I was hoping to elicit emotions first without the meaning attached to it. Did that not work for you? Did the images not have any impact without specific meaning attached to them? Perhaps if I had just veiled the adoption part instead of all the aspects of child birth/adoption, that would have worked in a linear fashion and still had some mystery about how it was all going to end... hmm ... very interesting ...
 
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I agree with Jason. Been trying to figure out what it was that I had issues with on this one, without being too harsh as I normally am. :)
It's a very long story, something that takes place over months, if not a year or so, and trying to fit that into 6 minutes... didn't work for me, BECAUSE we don't know what's going on and have something to invest in until the very end. It was still interesting, but perhaps not as engaging as it could've been.

Like many people, I thought she had a drug problem, but she was a little too nice-looking for that

Still.. the piece was very moving. I liked the music, and the mood. I think technically it's well done too, but something about that dining room scene looks very 'lit' and unnatural to me. Perhaps the color grading is at fault?

Really loved your sound design choices. The silence when they first enter the doctor's office was great.

Camera movement was subtle, understated- perfect.

I felt the performance of the doctor could've been stronger and more commanding. She seemed nervous and lacking the authority doctors usually seem to have. It was 78% there, so I'm really just nitpicking. The other performances were great.

High marks from me.
 
Tim Joy said:
Still.. the piece was very moving. I liked the music, and the mood. I think technically it's well done too, but something about that dining room scene looks very 'lit' and unnatural to me. Perhaps the color grading is at fault?
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It's funny you say this, the dining room scene was lit almost entirely with natural light, only one fill light was used, otherwise it was all window light. In fact, the closeups were all natural light.
 
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