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

Robert Ruffo said:
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)
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Well that's precisely what i am doing right now. trimmng all eth shots and keeping the story moving. the vimeo clips are pretty old now. Both the jalopy race and the 1942 flashbacks have been trimmed down a lot, and improved quite a bit. But I am hesitant to replace the clips that are online because that will cause me to lose all the hit count. :(

So in short, I am agreeing with you to a good extent and already hd figure out that much and have been working on it for 3 weeks now. Learning how much to trim out and experimenting with pace.

Once I am done with cutting the fat, the trimmed down movie is going to be shown to 3 key people, two of which have a pretty impressive collection of Academy Awards. Its going to be nerve wrecking but I am sure it will be very beneficial. the goal is to get their opinion as to whether the film is now ready or whether it needs more TLC and where to take it from here...

OK well, going to sleep now, tomorrow and sunday I intend to edit all day / part of the night.
 
puredrifting said:
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
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Dan, BTW I think you look mighty cute in your jeans :) wink, wink :)
Have you been working out? :love4:

EDIT: Dunno what happened to your thread but I think it's a good thing! When people don't care they don't care :)

It makes me want to TWITTER about it!

PS, Me, You & Dan are going to go on a date :)

EDIT #2: This is exciting :) This is how things start to roll..... Go FAITH!
 
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No dissrespect to Dan, but Faith, who is the cute brunette in your movie? Johny's girl? Tell him I'm jealous! :violin:

EDIT: Nice casting btw :)
 
ChipG said:
No dissrespect to Dan, but Faith, who is the cute brunette in your movie? Johny's girl? Tell him I'm jealous! :violin:
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Jeez, Chip, you're all over the place here...first you want the threesome with Faith and Dan, now you want the brunette too? Get a grip, man!

[suggested reply for Chip:

"I don't *want* the Grip...I want the *brunette*. And Dan. And Faith. And...actually...now that I think about it...that guy holding the bounce board's pretty cute too..."]

:happy:
 
ted spencer said:
jeez, chip, you're all over the place here...first you want the threesome with faith and dan, now you want the brunette too? Get a grip, man!

[suggested reply for chip:

"i don't *want* the grip...i want the *brunette*. And dan. And faith. And...actually...now that i think about it...that guy holding the bounce board's pretty cute too..."]

:happy:
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lol :)
 
Faith i've been reading this for awhile but never said anything but wanted to tell you this is very inspiring and hopefully i'll be putting together my own full length soon.

Thanks alot for keeping us updated on everything. Good luck editing and the clips you showed look awesome.
 
After a long day spent editing, it was nice to return to this thread and read your crazy posts and I got a good laugh out of them. I needed that...

Well, it's 11PM and I am starting to fall asleep at the computer so I'm gonna hit the sack. I am progressing nicely. The cutting room floor is filled with snipits of shots, bits and pieces... I just gave yet another hair cut to the japoly race...

Can u believe it? The jalopy race as posted on vimeo was 4:51 and now the scene is only 2:34 !!!! It was 3:09 when I last chopped it, so I gained another 30 seconds today. It's moving fast now. I like it. if I keep this up I might bring my movie length down by 30 minutes (or more?) without deleting any scenes.

:2vrolijk_08:


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MSpencer said:
Faith i've been reading this for awhile but never said anything but wanted to tell you this is very inspiring and hopefully i'll be putting together my own full length soon.

Thanks alot for keeping us updated on everything. Good luck editing and the clips you showed look awesome.
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Thank you :) I am glad some of you are getting re-inspired by my story / thread. Way cool....
 
hey guys, what's that new VIMEO blue botton I see in our reply options now? Does that means we can actually post a viemo video directly into the threads now?
 
Deuceofspades said:
So trusting my instincts and spontaneous creativity have basically been my approach during the entire filming.
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Stick with that - you clearly have *it* from looking at your work, and that kind of thing can't be duplicated! You clearly have the eye. I feel like I very much share your approach to filmmaking and have loved reading your posts. I cannot wait to start my feature in January, I only hope to generate as wonderful a thread as you have. Top marks!
 
HOWDIE HOWDIE :)

Good news from filmland. I JUST finished tightening the first HALF of the film yeyyyy! One half down, one to go. Time saved so far?

SEVENTEEN MINUTES !!!!!!!!!

Scenes deleted: Two. They were shorter scenes, so the bulk of my saved time actually came from trimming all the scenes carefully. I am really getting the hang of this :) and proceeding faaaaast.

So currently I believe the length of the film is down from 2:38 to 2:21. if I am able to trim another 11 minutes from the second half of the film, that would put me right where I have always wish I could be at the perfect 2:10 drama length :) !!!!!!!!!

I can only hope and wish... But it does look promising...

I think I might call it a night and go watch a little bit of someone else's film and laugh at THEIR continuity problems while drinking a half glass of merlot.

Meanwhile, sales of my DVDs are still going strong. Everytime someone buys the DVD 100% of proceeds goes directly into my (currently Oh so empty) pocket. I'm loving this "no investors" path I took. It was not easy but now I am ripping the rewards. i'll need to sell a heck of a lot of DVDs to recoup the money I spent on this, but at least now I am seeing some money coming IN instead of having nothing but money going OUT (for 3 years). I might be able to pay my bills this month. I will be returning the shopping cart I stole from Ralphs market, along with the plastic bags, cause it looks like I will not have to end up a bag lady afterall. LOL

Sheeeesh - that was close!

below: This was going to be ME...

baglady.bmp
 
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2:10 is a MUCH better length than 2:38. From the sounds of how much you shaved off the first half, it sounds like you'll be able to hit your goal and maybe a little more.

Can't wait to see the result of all your hard work.
 
It's amazing how much a tight edit can rev up the energy of a film (to borrow a hot-rod term). And how much a loose one can stall it...
 
UPDATES FROM FILMLAND:

Had visit from Industry pro who watched the first half of the film with me tonight. All he kept saying was:

"TIGHT!! Very tight!"

Had a big smile on his face. He was excited. I got a big GREEN LIGHT from him to proceed with second half of film using the same approach. Honestly, I think he was both very surprised and pretty impressed. I don't think he believe it was doable, or that I could do it myself.
:2vrolijk_08:

I am HAPPY.

Current timeline length as of tonight midnight?

2:12 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Already??? And I am nowhere near done, still about 30% of film left to review / tighten...

Dang! I might end up being under 2:10???????????????????

Wow. Who knew.


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thisisapocalypse said:
Stick with that - you clearly have *it* from looking at your work, and that kind of thing can't be duplicated! You clearly have the eye. I feel like I very much share your approach to filmmaking and have loved reading your posts. I cannot wait to start my feature in January, I only hope to generate as wonderful a thread as you have. Top marks!
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Hey, I wanted to say THANK YOU for your support and encouragements...

:)
 
2:10

:happy:

There are no Holidays or vacations for the poor little indie filmmaker. Spent Thanks Giving editing - all day - and made more progress. At this rate I will be done with the re-edits by the end of this week. I then burn me a DVD and invite a few friends over and we watch it. See if the film feels good, make sure I have not lost the cool vibe and soul of it... See what version my friends prefer. I am likely to invite some people who saw the film a few weeks ago, since they will be able to compare.

As I stand today I am officially at a little under 2:10 !!!!

Honestly? I never thought this would be possible. A 2:10 length was like this impossible dream...

And now it is in the palm of my hand. What a great feeling!!!

I continue trimming so I will probably end up at about 2:08 but then I'll probably do a little collagen injection here and there, so I will probably gain the two pounds back, and that is A-OK. It will be wonderful to have a couple minutes to play with and do whatever I want with, and still end up at 2:10.

Meanwhile, distributors are starting to breathe down my neck. Not sure what that's all about, but I guess I'll find out soon enough when I am ready to start talking to them. See if we speak the same language.

OK, well, back to editing now...

HAPPY THANKS GIVING EVERYONE!!!


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