FEATURE: FacePlant - A Comedy By Ben Sliker, Dan Black, and Tom Olson

dust'n the callipygous said:
Cool grabs. Can't wait to see the teaser footage. Let me know if you need any extra hands on set. I'm in the area, and always willing to help out.
Click to expand...

absolutely man, shoot me a PM and we'll grab a beer or something. When feature time rolls around, we'll need plenty of extra hands.

On that note ... ONE WEEK TO GO!
 
Only a few more hours now... (scrambles to get everything ready)

Why do these things always come down to the last minute? I planned to be done with this a week ago. lol.
 
Hey Ben, this stuff looks really nice. My main man Joe shot this? Looks friggin' professional as hell. I gotta work with that boyeeee again.

Maybe I'm just old, but I think you're going to have a hard time with a feature length version of this. I found it...well, pretty nasty, and didn't even want to sit through the family dinner scene. I'm not sure how I would spend 2 hrs with these people.

Obviously, I'm not the kind of person who thinks everything should be "nice" but the comedy here is just plain mean in my eyes.

I've been watching a lot of Party Down. Well, as much as there is of it. And they have a lot of characters who are mean to each other. But they actually infuse the characters with a lot of humanity.

-I'm kind of amazed at how sincere Ron is with all of his "go-getter" schemes. I'm kind of on board with him. I kind of feel bad when he doesn't get what he wants.
-Likewise, I feel it when the Kristen Bell character wants to express that she's not always a ballbuster, but has to be for the job. You see some vulnerability through the cracks in her armor.
-Roman often gets his comeuppance but he often deserves it because he set himself up with his own hubris.

But in general, I'm there with those people.

I'm not seeing anything to your people beyond meanness, between them, and from you. It feels like you don't like these people, or at least don't understand these people and don't want to understand them. It feels like you're just standing outside and poking them with a stick and laughing at how stupid they are. That's kind of nasty laughter.

Maybe what we're missing is the fact that I don't see any of your characters wanting anything. I mean I guess the woman does, but you don't get us behind her wanting it. You just make fun of her for eating too much and being "ugly." So we're never given a chance to care about what she wants, because you don't care about it.

With the lead guy, well, what I see is he's just a dude there going about his day, and he's a dick. He doesn't fight for his job, so clearly he doesn't really need that. What does he want? Not much to get behind. Michael Scott is a fool. But part of what makes him a fool is that he wants things far out of the reach of his abilities. Same with Ron in Party Down. We can laugh at their efforts, but we also understand that people want things. We want things.

I also don't think these characters are distinct enough. Look at The Office, not because it's in an office but because just like Party Down, they draw very sharp and distinct characters right out of the gate. The brother who got the new taser is a good start. I like him. He's very very clear right off the bat. Pretty much all of the other siblings at that table are kind of interchangeable. Including the two leads. I don't even remember how many more siblings there were. 2? 1? 3?

Finally, I feel like this whole concept falls into what I'm starting to call the "Hollywood already knows how to do this" category. Hollywood doesn't need you to show up and make this. They know how to make this in their sleep. So why make it?

I was trolling through IndieGogo the other day, and saw this: http://www.indiegogo.com/BIRDS-OF-A-FEATHER-The-Feature-Film?i=pift. These people raised a bunch of money, but for the life of me I can't figure out why they would make this film. Hollywood can make this without breaking a sweat. Besides which, this film will bomb because nobody who lives in reality and has jobs and kids and whatnot gives two shi*s about actors and their dreams ( Also the reason Party Down failed, I think ). But anyway, it's a case of why make that?

I think this is a critical question to ask going forward. I would encourage you to make sure what you're offering is really really really good and most of all - I think as Barry says, something they can't already do. Not to toot my own horn, cause I might fail, but this is exactly the reasoning that led me to do LOST CHILDREN as more of a multi-media project. That area is kind of wild west right now and though Hollywood is starting to do it, they don't yet know how to do it any better than anyone else. So I believe that just like in the dot-com days, the opportunities are there to show up with some good ideas and get noticed.

Or like Brandon's company does: Hollywood does NOT make films for the Christian market. So people like the B-man are offering something people can't otherwise get.

Anyway, I love your work, so take this all as me REALLY wanting you to succeed, and knowing that anything short of honest feedback would be disrespecting you. I hope you guys knock this out of the park.
 
Mark, thanks for the notes and for taking the time to offer some detailed feedback on the scenes. This is an excellent exercise for me.

It sucks that you don't think this will work as a feature. Maybe I need to put in bold and capitals 'a DARK comedy'... but I love it. I love my film. I think it's hilarious. I've gotten absolute belly laughs from test-subjects. But I do realize that comedy is this huge blanket of films, and it may just not be for everyone. These aren't the funniest scenes in the film (and they are certainly the only ones where people yell at each other) but they felt the most complete for the opening portion of Bill's storyline (instead of just a random conversation from a film) to be able to market our ability to make a film to potential investors.

We distinctly changed the Janet character so that it wasn't a string of fat and ugly jokes. The main joke is making fun of the way that she eats (not that she's fat) and her lack of personal hygiene (not that she's ugly). And this section of the film isn't about Janet, it's about Bill's inflated sense of self-worth, Janet is just the vehicle. So, in order to realize that he needs to make a change (a character arc that's gonna take longer than 10 minutes) he has to think a lot of himself to begin with. We hint to Bill that in fact, Janet might be flirting with him, but that thought NEVER crosses his mind, he is oblivious, and reacts poorly. You mention the character from Party Down that gets his comeuppance because of his own hubris. That's how I see Bill.

I guess that's the difference between shooting a trailer and shooting a couple of scenes from the film. These scenes are from the end of the first act, they set (at least one of) the siblings off on their journey through the second act. As a promotional tool, we thought this would display the quality of our work better than 1:30 of one-liners and glory-shots. But what it sounds like is that through these scenes, you don't feel like we've given ourselves enough time to establish exactly what our film is about and what our characters want. Am I right on with that?

On the other hand, I do think that we have established what is wrong with all of these people, character flaws that they will have to rectify in order for us to get behind them and root for them by the end. Bill's hubris, Carol's sluttiness and drug use, Phil is a Loser Life coach, and Ken is the classic moron.

I gotta say, I'm just now in the business of making feature length films. I'm 25. I'm going to screw this up big-time because its my first one, it's inevitable, but if in the process, I make my first feature film and people like it and I don't go broke, that would be fantastic, my second one is going to be better. I don't crap originality, it's just not my gig. I'm certainly not trying to just retread other films, but I really kind of hate the argument that Hollywood already knows how to make this film. My characters are going to have dinner and one of them is going to get pissed and leave, i don't care if that's been done before.

We're just through our first re-write of the feature script, and I gotta tell you, I am soo concerned about ****ing this whole thing up. I guess I'm just a little lost about what your feedback is. If you think the film was just straight up bad, that concerns me. If you thought the writing was miserable, that also concerns me, but challenging Hollywood isn't something I'm concerned with right now. Making a quality feature film is going to be tough enough, an almost impossible climb. Making my first feature a film that's going to stand apart from 100 years of filmmaking? I'm gonna need more time and experience.

Again, thanks for investing the time to put some notes down for me, all of this is part of my learning experience and invaluable.
 
My thoughts, in no particular order ("Generally how your thoughts are" I hear you saying). I kind of see what Mark was getting at. Watching those scenes made me feel vaguely bad, and a bit tense. I was reminded of "Very Bad Things" which is a pretty excellent movie. I liked the punch of the ending, with the line from the mom, and the whole thing was executed with the level of polish I've come to expect from your movies. I liked the credit sequence, you got me thinking about how to put some of those Behaviors to work.

I also see his point about Hollywood or whatever, although for me it sums up basically as "Hey, boring locations. Is the whole movie like that? I need my wacky hijinx!" I'm intrigued enough to give the feature a shot if it was available for the watching, but I'm not blown away. If you want to grab investors, you might want to consider injecting some wow factor--a line montage, some hot shots, what have you. Or shoot as a trailer as well as the sample scenes. Somethin'. Grab 'em enough to make them want to see the movie. You might not need it, because those scenes were definitely well done, but it probably wouldn't hurt your chances.

To be honest I'm highly skeptical of getting funding by way of any short form, and I see a lot of people trying to do it that way--this one dude tried to get me to boom op his bareknuckle boxing web series ("To leverage into a feature") that he was shooting on his XL2 down in Asheboro, for example. I didn't do that, but I did edit a short film shot with the same purpose. What makes me skeptical of this approach is something someone told me about the investors he was experienced with: they want to see a feature you've already done. A good reel, a good short, a good trailer doesn't mean $hit if you can't hack it on a feature, in some people's view. That's why I'm convinced a better route is to just shoot the feature on as close to nothing as possible. It shows your creativity, and when you sell it your profit margin is higher--assuming you pulled it off on the low/no. Because then you're a proven quantity, a better investment.

Obviously if you make a short that's really incredibly compelling, that's different. But Neil Blomkamp was a pretty experienced VFX artist, which had a lot to do with selling the whole District 9 thing--and you know he wasn't hired initially to make that, it was Halo, but Microsoft wanted to be a little *****, etc etc...anyway. I guess what I'm saying is I'd subscribe to the Rodriguez school before I bought into the Blomkamp method.

I've subscribed to the thread in any case, so keep us posted!
 
Hey, thanks for the notes Justin. Like I think said to Mark, we've gotten a variety of reactions to the scenes so far and i think that we need to do some work on our marketing to point out EXACTLY what we are trying to accomplish. As of right now, it's been about 75% 'haha, that was really funny' and 25% 'wow, those people are really mean'

We have about a 5 or 6 tiered fund-raising plan, most of that coming from realizing that we couldn't do it with just one source of funds. So, we're not looking to be Rodriguez or Blomkamp, we just came up with a plan, and we're going to stick to it until the money's raised. If that takes 6 months, great, if it takes 2 years, great, I'm still making a feature film.

I guess the point is that while writing the script we were looking for this 'magic bullet' to fund raising for a feature, and it just doesn't exist, and all the people who HAVE raised money to shoot a film haven't given us the time of day, like what they've accomplished is one big secret or something. Regardless, we're just going to chug away at what we think will get us to the finish line, some $100,000 away from where we are right now.
 
just like to say thanks everyone for the feedback on the promotional scenes, some of your concerns guided a great script meeting today.
 
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