FEATURE: DEUCE OF SPADES - How I made a period full feature film all by myself on ZERO budget

Steve Benjamin said:
Hi Faith
International postage now working, placed my order. Looking forward to viewing it with great anticipation!
kind regards
steve
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Yes :) as of late yesterday the shopping cart finally took international postage. Was a uphill battle (wait... Let me put my surprised look on LOL)... But I won hehehehe... Glanced this morning and saw several orders from Germany, Canada and France too...

Starting to raise money to finish the film

ANYONE WHO CAN HELP PLEASE ORDER AN ADVANCED DVD COPY here:

http://www.bettatalk.com/advanced_dvd_sale.htm


Help me raise the funds I need to do DVD authoring, artwork printing and press my first 1000.

THANK YOU :)
 
Sanai said:
I really liked it... congratulations... Could you give detail info on your equipment? Camera, any lens, mic... How did you move camera in moving shoots...etc? thanks...
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HVX200 + Letus Extreme & (later) Letus Ultimate + Sen M416 shotgun on pro boom. Nikkon lenses 24mm, 35mm, 55mm, 100mm. I also have a 50mm, but NEVER USED IT except in 2 shots. It's just not my look althoug it is an excellent brand new, fast lens.

Want to sell it, it is BRAND NEW (I bought it brand new) anyone interested? It is 1.4

PM me if interested.

CAMERA MOVES:

1- tripod orchestrated pans and tilts
2- Dolly (indie dolly)
3- table top micro Dolly (knid of a pain to keep steady but can do some shots the bigger dolly cant)
4- Steady cams (maybe about a dozen steady cam shots donated by Luis Sinibaldi of dvx user forum THANK YOU LUIS!)
5- Others (shopping cart, moving cars, truck beds, golf carts, and whetever had wheels and was available hehehehehe)

Hope this helps.
 
thanks. Hope, it will help. I am now gathering thrust to start my movie... and your movie just gave me more courage:)
 
There is one more thing... You added an extra screen onto camera... What is brand and does it have any effect on the balance of the camera?
thanks..
 
Sanai said:
There is one more thing... You added an extra screen onto camera... What is brand and does it have any effect on the balance of the camera?
thanks..
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Not sure what you mean by "an extra screen"... Oh wait, do you mean monitor? Yes I always have a monitor attached to my camera's upper handle. yes it does affect the balance of camera but i am so used to it I can't film without it it seems. :). It's a Marshall, very very sturdy but also very very picky abotu batteries. Only 3 out of my 7 batteries will fire it up, a real pain in the you know what. It only wants Panasonic batteries. Hates my generic brands. Also Looooooves to die on you at the most crucial moment... Like when you are bouncing up and down in eth bed of a truck, chasing a hotrod on a dry lake... And panning with hotrod to catch the most gorgeous sunset shot YET... And the darn monitor goes SOLID BLUE SCREEN on you, right in the iddle of your pan.. And you lose the shot... Brother! But not its fault really, it is a Panasonic component's cable connector flaw which is MOST ANNOYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found that tying the cable to the rods under the connector helped some and sometimes, inserting a small wedge of wood to hold connector in place also helped some... But really... They should fix this! Anyone knows if the new models have the same flaw?
 
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Deuceofspades said:
It's a Marshall, very very sturdy but also very very picky abotu batteries. Only 3 out of my 7 batteries will fire it up, a real pain in the you know what. It only wants Panasonic batteries. Hates my generic brands.
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Interesting...mine does fine with generics (from two sources - digitalpowerpro.com and an ebay vendor whose name I forget). It does eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner - maybe 2 hours tops at room temperature (I'm sure you know batteries perform much worse as they get colder), but I've seen no difference between brands, including the original Panasonics.

But not its fault really, it is a Panasonic component's cable connector flaw which is MOST ANNOYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found that tying the cable to the rods under the connector helped some and sometimes, inserting a small wedge of wood to hold connector in place also helped some... But really... They should fix this! Anyone knows if the new models have the same flaw?
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The HVX200a still does, but the HPX170 has a different type - I forget exactly what, but it's not a D4 like the HVX's, which is seriously flaky as pretty much all owners know. I velcro its cable up over and around the camera handle on the way to the Marshall or other monitor so it doesn't move at the connector point. Seems pretty solid that way, but I always warn anyone using my or any other HVX about it, along with virtually all the other connectors, all of which are very fragile and major PITA$ to repair...
 
Sanai said:
thanks for complete explanation. It really looks to be a good idea to have a monitor on the camera...
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Yes. Even the Marshall, which is not exactly the best in class, is *way* better than the built-in LCD. It can be used for critical HD focus with proper care...

Panasonic, Nebtek and others make much superior ones, but at considerably higher prices.
 
Marshall is very sturdy you can throw it against the wall (repeatedly) and it still works. Wish I could say the same about both my knees... :embarasse

Today I got my feedback forms back and had to sort, digest and analyse a huge stack of them. Was a bit overwhelming. I sorted them by gender, and then by age braket and created a spreadsheet to enter the numbers. This painted a good mental picture of what my demographics are when it comes to car people.

It was not a lot of fun at first reading through all the comments and critiques, but after a few, I started disconnecting and looking just at numbers and stats, which were incredibly POSITIVE. The little comments of the participants were not helpful, no two people pointed out the same thing and some plain contradicted each other. Which is a good thing. Others made no sense at all. One common comment though was that the race scene was too dark. It is not too dark, but the outdoors setting and lower than standard digital projector used did not do the footage justice at all. A well known problem with Drive in theaters... People were having a hard time seeing some of the scenes and that affected their ability to rate the film properly. Too bad but what can one do?

I was happy that I had added an extra question under: "Would you buy this film on DVD? " Under that I added "Do you usually buy DVDs?"

Glad I did add that second question because I found that almost all peole who said they would not buy the film also said they do not buy DVDs to begin with. The DVD buyers were overwhelmingly wanting to buy my DVD so I am VERY HAPPY.


Here are some of the preliminary stats I gathered today:

Overall average rating of film 4.5 stars over 5 :)

95% of DVD potential buyers said they want to buy it :)

99% said it was very period correct (even the over 65 males)

73% want to haul their fannies to a local theater to see it AGAIN on the big screen :)

89% want to watch it again

99.5% would recommend it to a friend!!!!!!!!!!!!!

82% want to see a sequel


DANG. Overall pretty darn GOOD!

The biggest surprise for me was the male age range 20 to 30. I had assumed they would not get the film, it would be too deep and too much drama for them or they would think it was a chick flick because of the love story and not like the film. So I had pretty much already written them off in my mind. Imagine my surprise when i found that THEY WERE MY BIGGEST FANS!!! their feedbacks were overwhelming: 5 stars raking, wanted to see it "many times" would go to the theater to see it and "bring all their friends"... They were my best hit. Only topped by teenage girls under 20 !!! Those actually watched BOTH showing back to back and just can't get enough of Johnny and the love story.

So I discovered I have a market I never thought existed: Teenage girls. They were by far the most expressive on their forms. Very cute comments. Hard core fans. can you blame them? Johnny is a heart throb.

Although emotionally draining, and extremely time consumming, the process of dissecting all the feedback forms very carefully was a great help and resulting numbers and statistics do not lie: Overwhelmingly, the film was extremely well received by the Audience.
 
Congrats Faith! I'm pleased as punch that your film appeals to such a diverse demographic. That should put you in good for your next one as that's what movie execs want to hear.

Keep on rolling!
Duke
 
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Duke M. said:
Congrat Faith! I'm pleased as punch that your film appeals to such a diverse demographic. That should put you in good for your next one as that's what movie execs want to hear.

Keep on rolling!
Duke
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Thank you Duke :)


Have both crane shots in the Sandy scene. :) the coolest shot is the last one we did, the weird, unplanned one... Way cool!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR GREAT HELP AND SUPPORT!!!

Email me next week to remind me to send you a sample of the shot. I have a UK dvd deadline to make right now and running into PC crashing problems :( GRRRR
 
THIS WAY COOL FEEDBACK CAME IN TODAY, VIA EMAIL:


"Saw the preview at Daytona. Congratulations! Outstanding film. I lived much of that era and you nailed it !!!After it ended I just had to sit a while. It was **that** good.

Frank
Melbourne, FL"


Boy that sure made my day!
 
Thanks Faith. I look forward to seeing it. If it looks as good as it did in the monitor it's spectacular. Plus, it's always nice to work with good people.

Best regards,
Duke
 
Wow! My website was down for 4 days due to excess traffic. Right when AFM was going on..

RATS!

But I moved it to a new provider so now it is back to normal.
Meanwhile traffic on my blog has doubled since August and very high right now.

It's good to know people are interested in my story / film.
 
Awesome. That's inspirational. I'm looking to take on a big project with little to no budget myself.
 
Zblock said:
Awesome. That's inspirational. I'm looking to take on a big project with little to no budget myself.
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Well then you definitely need to read my blog LOL...

I recently was approached by a hotrodder who asked me: "What was the hardest part of making this film?"

I thought about it for about 3 seconds and the only honest answer I could give him was:

"EVERYTHING"

There was NOTHING easy about it.
 
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