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

Azmyth said:
Not to hijack the thread, but I made it work with Open Office.. the key was figuring out how to sort it.

Here's how it looks..
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Azmyth, you got it. remember to highlight a row in yellow once you filmed that scene and to move it to the top o visually get it out of the way and focus on the unfilmed scenes left to tackle.

On sheet #2, create a spreadsheet with all your actors data: Character name, actor name, email address and contact numbers.

On sheet #3 do the same with crew people, volunteers etc...

On sheet #4 do the same with locations addresses and owners name and contact info...

This way you have everything at your finger tips to plan, do your call sheet and prepare for each shoot.

REMEMBER TO MAKE TWO COPIES OF THE SCENE BREAKDOWN. One will remain sorted by scene in chronological order (this is your film's blue print and back up) and the other is the one you will sort, highlight, etc, the one that will keep changing all the time. MAKE BACK UPS every week or more often if you have made a lot of changes. In case the spreadsheet gets lost, corrupted etc... Sometimes I found that copy pasting scenes to move them up or down caused me to accidentally delete one (ooops) and so double checking the list of scenes against my other breakdown (the one that never gets touched) helped a lot and allowed me to catch my errors. but then, I had a lot of scenes, about 85 or so.

GOOD LUCK :)
 
Know that gal?

:happy:


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Weeeheeehooohaaaa, My teaser was just picked as VIDEO OF THE DAY on Vimeo and I got this cool message from channel creator:


"I just found the thread about this film on dvxuser. Amazingly inspiring and I thank you for your blog. As I began reading your blog entries, I felt your desire, motivation, and dedication. It is GREAT to see you pull off what most people would think impossible. Hope you don't mind my posting this trailer on my channel. It certainly deserves more viewing than some equipment testing or camera comparison videos. Not that I find anything wrong with those testing videos."

See the video:
http://vimeo.com/7642629

It really means a lot to see that kind of support, THANK YOU Bumki!! :)
 
You are truly the female version of Robert Rodriguez. When I read his diary book "Rebel Without A Crew" I was so inspired to just get off my ass and make a godamn film, whatever the results may be. I am once again inspired to hear about your journey and success in your adventure and I wish you the best out there!
 
Jonathan S. Chetrit said:
You are truly the female version of Robert Rodriguez. When I read his diary book "Rebel Without A Crew" I was so inspired to just get off my ass and make a godamn film, whatever the results may be. I am once again inspired to hear about your journey and success in your adventure and I wish you the best out there!
Click to expand...

Thank you Jonathan... Did you make your movie, then?
 
UPDATES: Got word from Patrick Cyccone and the four nice fellahs who came by my house to screen teh film last week all told him they want on board the project. So we now have a crew of five to mix the film professionally, lead by Patrick himself... Since he recently mixed a Tarentino film , I think I am in good hands :Drogar-Happy(DBG):...

Meanwhile in New York, Darren d'Agostino is doing a fantastic job at my title treatment. He is a very talented young man and I highly recommend him to anyone in need of CGI or 3D stuff.

A few days ago I had the pleasure to talk to fellow dvxuser Adam (CORADO) who was very sweet and gave me some tips on how to export OMF files out of Vegas so my post house can work with my files. As you know, vegas does not export OMF files so one again a third party plugin will be needed. But since raylight turned to be a blessing in the end (third party plug in I had to buy and install in order for Vegas to be abel to read my camera's mxf files) I hope this other plugin software will turn out to also work like a charm.

Many thanks to Adam for his kind help and thanks to him I now have a plan of attack.

Meanwhile it looks like my color correction may very well in deed be done in Germany, so we are experimenting with file format that would allow me to shoot scenes up via internet, rather than ship my film on a hard drive (which honestly, makes me very nervous).

On my end I had a provate screening of the film last Saturday for my main cast and the boys were speachless. I think they expected the film to be pretty good, but were not ready for what they saw. They were a little overwhelmed but also very excited and basically on cloud nine. WE hang out and talk about the film story until about 3Am in the morning... Next day I got anotehr round of emails from some of the other actors present that night, telling me how proud they are of the film and just how beautiful it had turned out. I am glad that my cast feels the same way others do, so far so good :)...

Let's keep plugging away, one day at a time and zip down the last stretch to the finish line, God willing.
 
Faith, I cannot help it. I am SO EXCITED for you and everyone involved. Great work and no doubt we'll see you finish strong!!!

BTW, you got me hooked on your blog. I am constantly going back and forth between your exciting blog and my not so exciting work.
 
UPDATE...

Two days away from final picture lock on the first half of my film. I am running out of things to tweak LOL... I'm gonna burn me a DVD in a moment and watch it on teh TV set. Funny how you see thing when watching on a TV set, that you don't see when watching in the computer (PC image lag will hide defects...).

Patrick came back yesterday and watched the first half and gave me his blessings. Looks like we got it. He divided the film into 8 reels (8 sections). It was hard to find reel edit points because I rarely have silence between scenes. And you need absolute silence to have a suitable dividing point for each reel. We had to put the divisions in the middle of scenes, sometimes. Not the best way to go, but it will do.

I am both excited but also stressed out about going to a pro stage to mix the film. I am worried things will get out of my control and that people may try to impose their ideas and tastes on me. I dread having to FIGHT to retain my artistic vision... But I will if I have to. Don't mess with a female's offspring ;) - everyone knows females are most DEADLY hehehehehe.

I can tell I have a HUGE learning curve and intend to absorb as much knowledge as I can while going through this process. the exporting of sound files is giving me cold sweats LOL - Oh boy oh boy.... Never done this before and clueless. Luckly, Andrew (Patrick's right hand) is going to help me. Turns out their studio owns the software needed to extract vegas files so I may not need to spend the $600 to buy it afterall. And that's GREAT news cause I still have to do DVD authoring etc... And may have to spend a little dough on that - cause so far I have no volunteer for that task (anyone????)


below: A semi candid shot of my deuce and I, two weeks ago.

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Yeeehaaaw! Wrapped in the VFX department.

I just finished your last CGI shots - uploading as we speak.

Frank


...and yeah, now that I´m done with it, I might get bored - so I`m open for a little DVD authoring. :D

(But only if you don´t find someone in your neighborhood)
 
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Frank, you do DV authoring too?????

I had no idea>>>> Dang. Now I'd really better start pricing the sidewalk prime realestate spot on Hollywood Blvd to erect your Shrine :P...

OK, let's pick brains about this via emails..

I LOOOVE YOU MAAAAAAAN !!
 
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