puredrifting
Major Contributor
Wow Faith, that really sucks. Thanks for filling us in on the pitfalls of deadling with Ebay, uh, I mean PayPal (same thing).
Dan
Dan
FEATURE: DEUCE OF SPADES - How I made a period full feature film all by myself on ZERO budget
- Thread starter Deuceofspades
- Start date
I'll reorder through your shopping cart.
Ted,
I sold a car on eBay, pay pal said they will send the money 20 days after the customer gets the car, that's 20 days I'm open to liability, if they get in a wreck or an uninsured driver hits them they can tell pay pal to cancel funds, they can also tare it up, blow up the engine and tell pay pal it's defective and get a refund. It's a nightmare, before I would ship the cars after payment cleared via pay pal with no problems. Now I just limit paypal to a small $500 deposit. It was a great tool for me and my customers at one time. Not so much anymore.
Ted,
I sold a car on eBay, pay pal said they will send the money 20 days after the customer gets the car, that's 20 days I'm open to liability, if they get in a wreck or an uninsured driver hits them they can tell pay pal to cancel funds, they can also tare it up, blow up the engine and tell pay pal it's defective and get a refund. It's a nightmare, before I would ship the cars after payment cleared via pay pal with no problems. Now I just limit paypal to a small $500 deposit. It was a great tool for me and my customers at one time. Not so much anymore.
Azmyth
Veteran
Yeah paypal is fairly useless now. I sold some stuff on ebay for about 1000.00 all total and was planning on using the money to go towards my film. Had no issues getting paid, but paypal put holds on the funds until I provided a tracking number and it was confirmed delivered, or 20 days passed. They told me, that if the person left me positive ebay feedbacl theyd release it immediately. I had to call 3 times, and only one person even left me feedback at all, after I asked them several times to do so and did the same for them. It took me about 3 weeks to get my funds, far after the buyer had gotten their items.
Matt Sconce
Veteran
Seriously...Faith, you have no idea what your optimism has done for me today. Thanks.:beer:
Deuceofspades
Veteran
We should retitle this thread: "DEUCE OF SPADES - how Paypal could not stop me from making a full feature film all by myself on ZERO budget - and without Paypal"
LOLOLOL
I decided to stay WAY LATE at the office for the 6th day in a row and get ALL my refunds done.
That means tomorrow is going to be a brighter day in this little indie filmmaker's life.
LOLOLOL
I decided to stay WAY LATE at the office for the 6th day in a row and get ALL my refunds done.
That means tomorrow is going to be a brighter day in this little indie filmmaker's life.
Deuceofspades
Veteran
HAHAHAHA - That was a real funny post
Woke up with a migraine (well, duh!) but feeling like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders, knowing my paypal ordeal is over. Now I have to deal with a very high number of orders for the next few days, as people are turning around and reordering their DVDs via the new shopping cart. I suspect it will slow down quite a bit after that. But hopefully not too much!!! I really need the funds BADLY right now.
So looks like tonight I will go back to my editing the film. Cutting the fat out of my scenes. My goal? To cut out about 20 to 30 minutes out of the film without deleting scenes. the funny part is: I think I can do it
. I already saved 10 minutes out of the first quarter of the film I re-edited. I am being very aggressive with the trimmer LOL... In most cases the scenes, trimmed, feel better and flow better than before and it helped the acting performence as well. Seems to flow better, less downtime between lines, slightly faster pace.So far so good...
Meanwhile the film travels to England. Well.. Parts of the film. Sent some clips, including never seen before entire scenes, to a HUGE 50's culture and hotrod festival that takes place in Camber, UK this week-end. People from all over Europe will attend it and the film is getting a lot of publicity there. See below (highlighted section):
El Director
Veteran
I had heard that when paypal now sits on your money, there's a glitch where if you refund a certain amount, paypal releases all the funds. You should look into it.
Postmaster
Dark Side of the Camera
Congratulations Faith, I been to the "Rhythm Riot" in Camber on Sands
several times in the last years - the perfect set, setting an audience for your film.
:beer: Frank
jasonthewho
Veteran
Reordered!
Shame about PayPal. I've just started to use it more, and now I'm frightened...
Shame about PayPal. I've just started to use it more, and now I'm frightened...
Deuceofspades
Veteran
thanks Frank
I went and checked out your new project and must say i was VERY impressed with the casting choices. Some of these people look like TWINS to the real people! Hopefully their acting is as good as their resemblance and you have it made
!!!
Deuceofspades
Veteran
be afraid... be very afraid... LOL
Well, I guess it depends what you are selling. I am sure they are perfectly fine if you just sell small items that you ship right away with some kind of tracking so you can prove you shipped. I used them for 10 years with no problem... Until they did that to me and that was no small booboo on their part. i don't think I'll find it in my heart to ever forgive them and trust them again with my funds.
I am STILL cleaning up the logistic's mess, but am about 50% done so hopefully in about a week or so I can put this whole thing behind me.
Love my new cart !!
Tomorrow I start editing again. Will be at it all week-end
Oh yeah!
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
I second that. Come on, if a GQ male model posted pictures of himself shooting in tight clothing, somebody would eventually comment on his appearance. We do not live a sexless, humorless world, we are not brain pods connected with wires to our equipement, and thank God for that.
The only reason an attractive woman gets more attention is that this forum has lots of straight males on it, for whatever reasons, reasons which DO NOT include women being unwelcome or not respected. Women in the business are less gear foccussed, more content focussed, in general (and with many exceptions, but still) so there are more men here as lots of dvx content is gear related., as opposed to being mostly script/directing oriented.
End of story.
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
I can imagine women making comments like that. You Americans can be so Puritanical sometimes, to us in Latin cultures, it's quite ludicrous. Sexuality is healthy and normal as long as there is respect and certain boundaries are not crossed. Sometimes women make lewd remarks about me on set if I wear tight shirts, and I love it. It's flattering, and I knwo they don;t expect anything, they just want to have a laugh. It has nothing to do with my ability as a DP or director, it has only to do with the fact that we cannot turn off our humanity as we work, no matter how much the PC police thinks we should.
On set I am a director and ALSO a man, and they are whatever they are doing and ALSO women. You don't need to check your humanity at the door to have fun and get the job done.
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
Comments on Vimeo clips:
In many ways: AMAZING!!!!!!! Angles, always motivated moves, acting (mostly) BUT
In my humble opinion, the edits are about 40% too slow. Try a faster cut, and look at it again in a few weeks, or show it to people unfamiliar with the project and see what they think. Take out all "blank areas" where the dialogue and emotion do not progress. Also, some shots call attention to themselves a wee bit too much. Eye Candy is great, but I do feel that sometimes we need plane Jane shooting to focus on the acting and story. Best is a combo of the two, with rythmic flow.
I say this in the context of being inspired by your hard work and dedicationa and belief in your dreams, along with you obvious talent. PM me if you need advice/help on anything (albeit I live in Montreal, Quebec)
In many ways: AMAZING!!!!!!! Angles, always motivated moves, acting (mostly) BUT
In my humble opinion, the edits are about 40% too slow. Try a faster cut, and look at it again in a few weeks, or show it to people unfamiliar with the project and see what they think. Take out all "blank areas" where the dialogue and emotion do not progress. Also, some shots call attention to themselves a wee bit too much. Eye Candy is great, but I do feel that sometimes we need plane Jane shooting to focus on the acting and story. Best is a combo of the two, with rythmic flow.
I say this in the context of being inspired by your hard work and dedicationa and belief in your dreams, along with you obvious talent. PM me if you need advice/help on anything (albeit I live in Montreal, Quebec)
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Wow, how long ago was th "hot" discussion, I thought that was all many, many pages behind us? Why did it get regurgitated?
Just did a shoot today with a female director and producer as their DP. Glad that "hotness" didn't come up, we were just shooting a project and working together, not evaluating each other as potential sexual partners, but I am obviously in the minority so this will be the last time I comment about it.
This thread should be about DOS and Faith, not debate about something peripheral.
Dan
Just did a shoot today with a female director and producer as their DP. Glad that "hotness" didn't come up, we were just shooting a project and working together, not evaluating each other as potential sexual partners, but I am obviously in the minority so this will be the last time I comment about it.
This thread should be about DOS and Faith, not debate about something peripheral.
Dan
Deuceofspades
Veteran
Deuceofspades
Veteran
Well... I'm weird when it comes to storyboarding. Or shot lists for that matter...
Basically ...
I've got it all in my head...
So when I work, I arrive on the set with a precise mental idea of what the shots are going to be and how they will edit together and I just go for it. I know this is an unusual way to do things and I am pretty sure it is NOT the right way to do this, but this is the way I do it. because I am entirely self contained, I can pull it off but I would not recommend this at all to anyone else.
I know it used to drive my grip crazy cause he wanted to snoop around and figure out what I was up to, but never could LOL. He never knew what was coming up next. When I work I like being in my own zone and don't like being disturbed, interrupted. If I need my crew to prepare for the next shot ahead of time I'll instruct them on what to do and sometimes explain to them what the next shot is, but otherwise, I keep it all inside my head.
Ironically, this has not caused me to forget to film a shot.
On occasion I have made a shot list and highlighted each shot, like a good little girl LOL. I think that out of 150 shoots I did that , like... 6 times?
But storyboarding? No way, Jose.
I usually came up with my camera move, blocking, approach concepts while driving, I let my mind float and let the vision come to me. Once I SEE it in my head I'm good to go. But I got to SEE it first. Also, a lot of shots are improvised on thr set at the time of the shoot. there are shots you stumble upon by "accident" that end up being your best shots. So I always keep my eyes open and my mind open for any new ideas that might sprout from being at the location and now looking at the real setting through the eye of the camera.
A good exemple of that was the bookstore shoot with dvx user Robert Eldon. I waltzed in the bookstore, saw the potential for a dolly shot I had not at all planned for and improvised on the spot to make it happen "borrowing" a local supermarket shopping cart to execute the shot. And the crazy thing is IT CAME OUT SMOOTH AS A BABY'S BUTT, and looks marvelous.
So trusting my instincts and spontaneous creativity have basically been my approach during the entire filming.