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

Thanks, Lawrie B.

Faith - FOTOKEM did your DCP ? 8K is really a sneeze in comparison to what a film transfer would've been. One more vote for digital projection!
 
Thanks, Lawrie B.

Faith - FOTOKEM did your DCP ? 8K is really a sneeze in comparison to what a film transfer would've been. One more vote for digital projection!

Yes, 35mm is about 45K for a film of that length :cry:... Hardly doable for the little guys like us.
at 8K or so, DCP is very appealing, especially since it has security features to lock footage.
OIt was a big investment on my part but I took teh film that far, so I'm not going to stop now and let 8K get in the way of taking DOS as far as it can possibly go.
 
LIVE UPDATE!

As I sit here inside the projection main room of Century theater in Las Vegas, gazing at all the super sophisticated machinery that fires up all 18 theaters available at this location, I cannot help but feel a sense of awe.
This is as high up as my film has been to date.
To walk into this gorgeous theater, see all the major studio releases playing there, and know that my film will be seen on Friday the 22nd, on the big screen, with full surround sound system, and high res image at same theater, fills me with pride.
This is the PRO level and I'm here. For those of you who followed this journey since the beginning you know what I mean when I say: This is mind boggling. What a great adventure it has been!
I handed the manager a DCP drive (weighing about 2 tons LOL), which is basically a large Unix drive containing a professional format of my film. Same format all the big studios use. The film footage was then ingested into the main frame computer of the theater...

Took a little over two hours... We then inserted the KDM (key) to unlock the footage...
In about 5 minutes we are going to fire up the film to make sure everything looks as stunning as it should !
2_smile.gif

I did test screen the DCP master at Fotokem last week and I was SOOOO excited when I saw the quality of the image and heard the quality of the sound that I was litterally jumping up and down (wish I was kidding) and clapping. Good thing I had the theater all to myself that night LOL...
I hope the DCP looks just as good here at Century theater today.
This is how a motion picture is intended to be seen. Bigger than life.
I am excited and grateful once again to God for having taken me this far. And to all the friends and fans who helped along the way. Special thanks to Robert Anson for assisting me during this Las Vegas trip, to Bob and Kenny for all the hard work they put into lining everything up with the theater and to Tom Ingram for presenting the Premiere during his VIVA LAS VEGAS rockabilly fest.
I cannot wait!
Below, my laptop from which I am typing this and in the background, the digital projector that will be screening the film Friday.
 
Yes, 35mm is about 45K for a film of that length :cry:... Hardly doable for the little guys like us.
at 8K or so, DCP is very appealing, especially since it has security features to lock footage.
OIt was a big investment on my part but I took teh film that far, so I'm not going to stop now and let 8K get in the way of taking DOS as far as it can possibly go.

Yeah, eight grand for us is nothing to sneeze at either, haha. The thing is, now, you can probably exhibit anywhere you want. Theaters will take you seriously when you can say, up front, that you have a DCP of your feature film and are ready to roll.

It's a price worth paying at your stage in the game, and I will probably follow suit using DVFilm for my DCP.

Have you had any interest in distribution from an external source at all, Faith?
 
Yeah, eight grand for us is nothing to sneeze at either, haha. The thing is, now, you can probably exhibit anywhere you want. Theaters will take you seriously when you can say, up front, that you have a DCP of your feature film and are ready to roll.

It's a price worth paying at your stage in the game, and I will probably follow suit using DVFilm for my DCP.

Have you had any interest in distribution from an external source at all, Faith?


You kow, it's crazy, but I have not had a chance to shop the film to anyone. I have been too busy trying to keep up with what's happening with it in my own niche market. Sure would be nice to take it to the general public next... And I hope that the track record I am establishing will help.

Can you believe I STILL don't have an "Official" film trailer????
 
TO FAITH - PLEASE NOTE:

LOL...I just finished writing this thing, and geez...it's far from "brief" as I told you (in a PM today) I would try to make it, rather than the 'in-depth' thing some folks (like Kholi) had requested of me. I guess I'm just a long-winded guy. In spite of it's length though, I really *did* try to be concise. So...my apologies in advance to you if it looks like I went back on my word about that. I did my best, but I just kept thinking of more stuff to say : )

Maybe you could think of it as several posts in one... : )

Anyhoo, here it is...


--------------------

First off, a couple of things:

-Please regard all my comments here as through the lens of "considering the circumstances" of the film - its budget (or the lack thereof), Faith's first-time-filmmaker status, the first-film status of many key actors, the prosumer gear involved, etc. Details on all of this are in the thread itself. It's nothing unusual - many films of similarly humble origin (Blair Witch, etc.) also got assessed critically through that lens. One such film in particular is the answer to my little guessing game earlier in this thread. More on that later...

-I would otherwise have divided this into simple "Pro" and "Con" sections, but IMO those terms will not cover it. Instead, I'll start with:

What's Astoundingly Great:

Many things... : )

-The acting: Faith cast almost all key roles with unknown, first-time actors. Many of their imdb pages have only one credit - this film. Yet IMHO she consistently got remarkably convincing, wonderfully connected performances from them. There are comments by a number of the actors in the special features of the DVD that appear to explain it - Faith's deep commitment to the story and the performances, and (evidently) her willingness to do many, many takes to get it. If this were the only thing to praise, it would still represent a minor miracle. But it's not. Far from it...

-The cinematography: consistently, shot after shot, scene after scene, I found myself thinking "oh my god that's a beautiful shot/angle/composition/move"...whatever. IMHO Faith has a genuine artist's eye for this. Rare enough in any film at any budget...but in this one? Wow...

-The period-correct sets/cars/props/costumes etc.: simply outstanding. Kissing-close to "Back To The Future" level here. Plenty of clips and stills are right here in the thread, so no need to go into too much detail. But it's amazing anyway - just the sheer legwork required to accomplish this, again, would be reason enough to praise Faith's accomplishments to the skies. But it goes far and away beyond that...

-The editing: likewise. IMHO Faith could be hired tomorrow to cut a major studio release and no one would question the results. On the contrary - if she did it as sensitively as she cut DOS she might be looking at an Oscar nom. Seriously...

-The sound: I don't know how much help Faith got with this. I suspect relatively little. But in any case, all the dialog is crystal-clear, all the edits clean as a whistle, etc. Very, very rare at this experience/budget level...

What's Very, Very Good:

The Story/Script:

-As I will insist to my dying breath, in a film, the story is the ball game (and the script is how that ball game 'plays'). While DOS is not a particularly groundbreaking story, most highly acclaimed modern films aren't either. "Titanic" (Romeo And Juliet), "Star Wars" (Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, almost literally chapter and verse), "Avatar" (Pocahontas) are just a few examples. But it's all in the telling, and again, Faith got it right. DOS is basically of the "forbidden love story" genre, (as "Titanic" was), but done very very well IMO, and in a convincing period-correct style (I'm just old enough to remember a little about that first-hand). Other than one isolated (but unfortunately very consequential) issue with it - more on that later - it's excellent IMO.

-The opening titles: really beautifully done, professional looking, evocative...and unexpectedly so. Another of the things (like sound) you come to expect very little of in micro-indie features. Not so here...

What's Very Good If Not Altogether Great:

-The music. Often highly effective, but not outstanding IMO, which of course is hardly a knock on it. Much of what I do professionally involves music, so I'm probably pretty tough on this...um...score : )

What's Not Quite So Good:

-Many if not most of the shots where Faith *wasn't* behind the camera. Which of course means all the shots where Faith is *on* camera (she plays the role of the investigator of the "Deuce Of Spades" car's history, as revealed through an old letter she finds in it). It's not that these shots are actually 'bad' (for the most part), but more that they pale in comparison to the outstanding ones elsewhere - amidst all that otherwise glorious eye-candy, the lesser shots loomed larger. So, ironically, our golden-eyed filmmaker is *in* almost all of the not-as-well-shot scenes. Too bad, but pretty forgivable, right? It'd be no problem if she had a twin... : )

-Some of the acting. Pretty much forgivable again IMO, with the possible exception of "old Johnny" (more on that next). It's a big, unpaid cast, and something had to give. Thankfully none of it involved the major cast members (old Johnny's role is actually pretty small).

The Biggest Problem:

-I believe it was legendary film editor Walter Murch who said (only half-jokingly) "the two most important parts of a film are the beginning and the ending, and the beginning's not that important"...

A wise man indeed...

So the *only* real problem for me with "Deuce Of Spades" is...the all-important ending. I'll avoid spoiling it, it but IMO, the basic problem is that the story, beautifully told up until then, suddenly goes all over-the-top melodrama-weepy at *the very, very end*. I like a good romance film as well as any guy I know, but this one fell flat right at the crucial moment in a way that I think does disproportionate damage for the reasons Murch alluded to. The key ending story/scenes involving "old" Johnny and Betty in the present day are seriously overplayed emotionally (and by the same token, one could also argue, underwritten). I think the solution is actually quite simple - I have an alternate ending in mind (that I can't describe in detail without spoiling the one that's there) that would echo a very charming earlier montage in the film (where Johnny offers Betty rides to school). If I were a major studio bigwig looking to sign Faith/DOS to a theatrical run (which I would definitely want to if I were), I might stipulate that as part of the deal. But of course...I'm not : )

As it is though, I suspect that this issue could be a big reason why the film got lower ratings on the (weighted) imdb scale (4.5 out of 10) than it might have otherwise. It's also notable that the film was generally quite a bit lower rated there by men than by women.

I've noticed, time and again, that highly rated films (like on the tomatometer) that I'm actively hating as they go along, have me asking myself how that could be...and the answer almost always turns out to be that they *end well*. Conversely I've seen films that go along splendidly up until a disappointing ending, and those all too often get low ratings. Murch was right...

I'd bet pretty good money that a more effective, and particularly less melodramatic ending would have had a very disproportionately large upward effect on "Deuce Of Spades'" imdb review averages. But it's just my $.02 here...

About That Other Movie:

The film I referenced as a comparison in my little guessing game a couple pages back was in fact Robert Rodriguez's first; "El Mariachi" (correctly guessed by our "Mr Tibbs" here, but he guessed like five titles at once so he didn't win the golden enchilada). RR's book "Rebel Without A Crew", about the making of "Mariachi", and this forum thread have many similarities. I recently re-watched the film just for the purpose of making this comparison.

The parallels are striking: the (then) unknown filmmaker (who did almost everything), the first feature, near-zero budget, minimal gear, ambitious locations and specialized elements (action in RR's case, period in Fath's), an unknown but exceptionally effective cast (although there was one known supporting actor in "Mariachi")... But most importantly, an *outstanding* result - far, far beyond what anyone would expect...under the circumstances. And it launched RR's now-immensely successful career - as I believe it should for Faith. As I watched "Mariachi" I was struck over and over by its unexpectedly high overall quality - just like with DOS (and in some areas, like short composition and perhaps even editing, I think Faith actually has RR's number).

Again though, the ending defined the difference for me - uplifting and clever for "Mariachi" and...well...see above where "Deuce" is concerned.

Closing Comments:

Hoo boy...so much for my attempts at "brevity"... : )

I would characterize "Deuce Of Spades" overall as a "flawed masterpiece" (a term I'd also apply to certain legendary films like "Blade Runner"). Which is pretty darn high praise in my book. But, in contrast to the deeper and more numerous "Blade Runner" 'issues', with just a (relatively) small fix to a few minutes worth of the ending of DOS, I'm pretty sure the word "flawed" could simply be nixed...

Otherwise I simply can't overstate what a magnificent thing Faith has accomplished. If she wants it, I think any major studio that refuses significant financial backing for future films of hers would be outright foolish. I really believe that hers could be our 'RR story' for the new century. If I had the megabucks to back her myself, I'd do it.

In a heartbeat : )
 
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Just saw Ted's post. Thanks for chiming in. As soon as I can muster the fee, I'll be purchasing DoS.

Anyone know how long the shipping times are now that Faith's on the road?
 
Really good 'Brief',Ted!!:tongue: I see a lot of your points. Wasn't 'West Side Story' based on 'Romeo & Juliet'!!?:Drogar-Thinking(DBG
On the golden enchilada that you're depriving me of," Damn you,damn you all to hell!!":kali::violent5:
 
Just read Tedd's review and must point out that my accurate ratings on Imdb are actually:

Arithmetic mean = 8.2. Median = 9

43.2% voters rated it 10/10

and that is precisely why Imdb is displaying false ratings on my home page. The "weighed" ratings of Imdb are a complete scam designed to kill indie films that are not selling on the amazon network. Amazon owns Imdb, didn't you guys know this?

If I ever have made ONE big mistake making this film it was that I listed my film on Imdb.

See how quickly people believe whatever Imdb claims - and even though they cannot in any way substantiate the rating they are displaying?

Now to address the ending. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, however, the critics do disagree with Tedd:

"Best Hot rod film since American Graffiti! A multilayered story with a dramatic ending guarantied to make the make up run" was HOT ROD MAGAZINE critique. If they thought the ending was sappy, overplayed and ruined the entire film, I doubt they would l have worded their review that way, espacially since HM catters almost solely to men.

Also, in our preliminary test screening, which involved 1300 viewers, none of which were friends of mine, the questionaires collected indicated that 99% of viewers loved the ending.

I rest my case your honor ;).

Considering what the main characters have to go through to get to that ending, you got to think about it a bit more carefully and ask yourself: If that was ME, how would I react? Also remember that the older people get, the more fragile they become. I see it day in and day out with my older friends, how quickly they become overwhelmed with emotions.

So I must strongly disagree with your assessment of the ending, although I respect your tastes and opinions. No two people will perceive the same film the exact same way. :)
 
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Just saw Ted's post. Thanks for chiming in. As soon as I can muster the fee, I'll be purchasing DoS.

Anyone know how long the shipping times are now that Faith's on the road?

24 to 48 hours. My assistant Ana is taking care of all incoming orders. We ship every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, year round.
 
NEWS FLASH:

DEUCE OF SPADES makes Fox CBS network 10 O'clock news!!

See the clip here:

http://ozarksfirst.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=456977


I was thrilled to see a Fox crew and known reporter at my last showing (Missouri). :2vrolijk_08:
Local newspaper reporter was there too and he attended the entire event, and asked many questions during the Q&A at the end of the film. He absolutely loved the film. The audience was very involved with the film, great participation, they laughed, they reacted and of course, they became emotionally involved and cried at the end.

Another very successful screening to a packed room and all our new fans left with a signed DVD and will now spread the word further in their many towns and counties...

:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

 
Got this really cool email today I tought I'd share with you because it didn't come from a hot rod fan, but rather from someone who did not even want to see the film: :)

<<
To the Lady - Faith Granger

I have already placed my order for items to remember your wonderful film by. I am not a Hotrod individual and went to the Las Vegas show for a friend
who could not attend because of work. He heard about your movie and asked me to pick it up for him. I was the first guy to purchase your movie in Vegas.
Your people finally agreed to sell me one but I had to wait until the film started in the theatre. In truth I did not want to see it.

I, my bud, and friends watched it that evening. I found the story very memorable and engaging. It felt like watching a historical play unfold.
I am a Science Fiction admirer and your balance on past and present time was flawless allowing for the story to be more important than the effect.

After some time I felt your movie should be added to my film library.

I hope my small purchase of your movie and memorabilia will add to your continue work in your field.

Not many people get to pursue their dreams, but it is good when people such as yourself do reach your dreams,
and allow others to see your gift by sharing.

Live Long and Prosper

Signed
George P. Wansor

PS: I will admit your Hotrod - the Deuce of Spades - is a nice addition to the area of "Legends".
Whether the legend is real or made up, is not important - all it takes is a whisper through time for it to become another story,
listened to by the next generation. Thank you for creating a remarkable movie.>>
 
I seem to get a lot of rewrites of my name around here for some reason...Kholi likes to condense it to TedSpencer, and Faith's new revision is Tedd... : )

Intriguing...

But I'll probably stick with the original... : )
 
It's ok...I used to use both d's plus a y when I was a kid... : )

And you spelled it right on my signed copy of "Deuce Of Spades" so it's all good : )
 
It's official, I have launched a Facebook Movie page for the film and in the painful process of moving 5000 friends from my personal "Faith Granger, filmmaker" facebook page to the new "DEUCE OF SPADES, a period hotrod film by Faith Granger" fan page.

Please visit the new page and LIKE IT and help me put the word out by posting a link to it on your walls today... Many thanks for the support and help, guys!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Deuce-of-Spades-a-period-hot-rod-film-by-Faith-Granger/133336950074823?v=wall

I have been very good at updating that page almost daily with photos and quick newsflash about my U.S. film tour...

Currently in Minneapolis and having a great time! I have a very strong fan base in Minnesotta and it has been a real treat to meet the fans, sign autographs, and sell DVDs pretty much everywhere I go. :)

Next week I am to make a celebrity appearance at the largest car show in America in Saint Paul, MN. I hope to sell a s* load of DVDs there and make many many many new fans.

LIKE the Facebook movie page and follow the film tour.
 
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