"Grid Down" a film by Shawn Nelson

Shawn Philip Nelson said:
your neighbor trying to kill you for food? To me that's some pretty high stakes...sorry the film didn't work for you, that's fair, can't please everyone.

if you can't buy the idea of the grid going down for 18 days...you should research the ideas of TEOTWAWKI. It's not that it goes down for 18 days, it's that it goes down and never comes back. Our modern society is 3 weeks away from the stone age. How long can you live if your water is shut off and the grocery stores are empty? Most people only have enough for a week tops. I live in Oregon, so I could scrounge for water easily enough, food is the limiting factor. Once your fridge food rots in 3 days, your pantry better last...
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It's not that I couldn't buy the scenario. I did. It's that I couldn't buy that these characters were part of such a scenario. They didn't really seem desperate enough, acting-wise. Action-wise, yes, they were.
If you had no title card saying, '18 days..' I would've thought it was a couple days later at most, just by they way they acted. The set and hair and makeup supported it, but not the acting, IMO.

The stakes are not raised when a new character comes in immediately as hostile. If we had seen that neighbor being friendly beforehand and get to know him as a nice guy THEN he turns a gun on them, that raises the stakes to me.

I think society is more like 3 days of no grid away from the stone age. Grocery stores have 3 days of food at most. Hell, I start to freak out when the power has been off for 3 hours.
 
Matt Harris said:
In terms of the color correction / flat look that Tim mentioned, i went and boosted the contrast a hair just to see what it looked like, and the contrast did wonders IMHO. It gave your short a more cinematic look while retaining the haze and detail in the shadows. But that's just a personal preference, and like you said, this was the look you wanted so all good.
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I think part of that is due to the compression and using Final Cut Pro with it's notorious gamma shift. I know that the R3D's that I did the one light grade (done in RedCine-X) on were not as flat as the final deliverable that I saw on DVXuser. They were not super contrasty either as that wasn't the look we were after.
 
Ryan E. Walters said:
BTW- I think that is a KICK ASS poster, did your brother do that one?
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Indeed, he did them all! This situation is a brilliant case for using a DSMC camera at 5k. So the 'poster image' we did looked great, but is not a good poster image for this short. Then while editing, that frame grab of him walking by the window really stuck with me, beautiful lighting by you and a really iconic image. I extracted a 50mb TIFF and sent it to Jonathon who then had plenty of res to play with and make us those kickass posters.
 
Edgen said:
btw.. not sure what's up with that new epic, but i expected some better CC. Seemed very flat to me. no punch or range of colors. :)
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Yep- all part of the design of the film- we kept it all to a very narrow color pallete. The opening scene has some color, the next scene not so much, and the following scenes are very limited. All meant to show the life being drained out of their environment, and their situation getting worse as time passed. We also played with the shutter angle, and filtration to further add to the look. (180 degrees, 144 degrees, etc.). Some of the contrast was lost in the final deliverable in comparison to what I had done in the one light grade. But it was never our intent to have a super saturated / colorful film. The world is falling apart, and it should look it, in our opinion anyway.
 
Matt Harris said:
You were one of the few people this fest who did set dressing, and created a world, so kudos for that!
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That is something that I really appreciate about Shawn- his attention to, and care for detail. The night before the shoot we were building the wood bars across the window in my house, and thought was put into the placement of where each piece went, and then thought went into the placement & design of the map that hangs on the wall. All little details that are never mentioned in the film, but all add up to make for a bigger story, and add background to what is going on.
 
Ryan E. Walters said:
Yep- all part of the design of the film- we kept it all to a very narrow color pallete. The opening scene has some color, the next scene not so much, and the following scenes are very limited. All meant to show the life being drained out of their environment, and their situation getting worse as time passed. We also played with the shutter angle, and filtration to further add to the look. (180 degrees, 144 degrees, etc.). Some of the contrast was lost in the final deliverable in comparison to what I had done in the one light grade. But it was never our intent to have a super saturated / colorful film. The world is falling apart, and it should look it, in our opinion anyway.
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Ditto!

We're going to improve the contrast and the secondaries, but just to support the original choices. We weren't going for flashy and colorful.

The majority of the scenes had a Tobacco 1 on them
 
Ryan E. Walters said:
That is something that I really appreciate about Shawn- his attention to, and care for detail. The night before the shoot we were building the wood bars across the window in my house, and thought was put into the placement of where each piece went, and then thought went into the placement & design of the map that hangs on the wall. All little details that are never mentioned in the film, but all add up to make for a bigger story, and add background to what is going on.
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thanks!

not only did we discuss, literally, the placement of every single board, we discussed what pattern of wood grain would go where, and i purchased those boards to give that look. The map on the wall I spent time writing things on it related to the world of the story, even though i knew it wouldnt play in a scene, just to dress the set. The candles on the table were prepped for some time to give it that look. I went out and bought stuff to dress behind them.

Lol, I REALLY wishd I'd had an art director/set dresser, because that was all me and Ryan.
 
Tim Joy said:
The stakes are not raised when a new character comes in immediately as hostile. If we had seen that neighbor being friendly beforehand and get to know him as a nice guy THEN he turns a gun on them, that raises the stakes to me.

I think society is more like 3 days of no grid away from the stone age. Grocery stores have 3 days of food at most. Hell, I start to freak out when the power has been off for 3 hours.
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This is how I felt. We've had the power go out around here from time to time. No way am I waiting 18 days to go to a relatives place. I would be there on the second day. :)

These are all little things that can be fixed.

And that establishing shot Matt was talking about, something like that would really go a long way.
 
Nicely shot - a little flat for my taste, but I know what you were going for.
The story was a bit disjointed. I always hate when I have to be told something. The 18 Days Later graphic landed with a thud.
The guy is questioning his wife about money and the power goes off. Nice little touch but the misdirection lifted me out of what was actually happening - is this about the grid going down or a guy not paying the bills?
The acting was solid for the most part, but I thought the wife was weak in many places and not up to the rest of the cast.
Almost impossible to understand the girl when she's talking outside the door - very muffled and indistinct.
I know this is part of a larger whole, but the set-up just didn't work for me. Not enough backstory. We go from grid down to desperation. The interesting thing here would have been the progression, the spiral down and we don't get to see it. Six minutes, I know, but I'd rather see a finished film than a section of something else.

A few minor nit-picks:
I liked the wood over the windows, but the frame inside the window to nail the boards to so you didn't mess up the actual window frames ruined the effect.
You couldn't tell if a pump shotgun was locked and loaded just by looking at it. That line should be dropped.
Liked the epic shot at the end, but the smoke isn't moving, or if it is, it's moving too slowly to be effective.

Nice job. A good looking film and a professional effort all the way around.
 
taylormade said:
Liked the epic shot at the end, but the smoke isn't moving, or if it is, it's moving too slowly to be effective.
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If it's that far away, you don't see it moving. We have enough fires out here that I can attest to that. If it's miles away, it might as well be a still frame.
 
taylormade said:
Nicely shot - a little flat for my taste, but I know what you were going for.
Almost impossible to understand the girl when she's talking outside the door - very muffled and indistinct.
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Yep. This was the hardest part for me to do in post sound. We didn't have those lines isolated to another track so I didn't have too much control there. The first line is understood ok and I think I pushed rest of the lines to the max in a sense that I didn't want to blast the audience with an audible volume automation, which you would experience as 'pumping' with a ton of hiss. This was also the part where I got rid of an audible car by that snuck into the recording. The more I turned up that line, the more you can hear the noise reduction and hints of the remaining car by frequencies. I was going for continuity of the dialogue track and didn't want to make my edit/processing audible. The girl's last line was intentionally made muffled and inaudible by me because the fog machine "farted" during her line and pretty much disrupted the dialogue recording. I was able to take out the massive "fart" but it was so wide in the audible spectrum that it did leave some unwanted digital residue. But I agree with you :)

Shawn - let's ADR those 2 for the next cut ;)
 
If it's that far away, you don't see it moving. We have enough fires out here that I can attest to that. If it's miles away, it might as well be a still frame.


I understand, but sometimes what is technically correct doesn't seem correct on film. The lack of movement caught my eye right away and pulled me out of the scene. I'm not suggesting billowing plumes, but the total lack of movement makes it look like a freeze frame and spoils the scene IMO.
 
Thank you everyone commenting, viewing and rating!

One thing that's squishing me is the 6 min time window. My original cut was several minutes longer, so I had to make it compact and hope viewers could keep up with the fast pace. If you have to watch it a few times, that's okay. That said, after the fest we're going to put in some VO narration to help make sure everyone 'gets it' as we move along.

Hopefully we have enough positive result from this that we can get the momentum to keep the story going.
 
Shawn, the momentum for continuing this needs to come from your own confidence. Filmmaker's in these fests get, what, 20 reviews max?
It's worth listening to the feedback and incorporating it for the next shoot, but I hope you don't base the future of this "property" on how high you place in the fest. I'd like to see you continue this no matter what, I think you got something here, my 2 cents.
 
Matt, my statement was a very very broad reference to the many factors. I am NOT hinging whether this continues on this fest. I do encourage those who like it and want it to continue to give me a good score, but that's merely a sideline thingie.

The bigger issue is whether the cast and crew would like to come back together to do another episode or two. The actors have already expressed an interest. The main crew I haven't yet asked, a HUGE factor would be the audio post team of Ryan, Geoff and Herman, they put a TON of time into this. Frankly that's sort of the deal with dvxuser fest, you get to do something for 6 min, you cant just go on and on. That said, if we did like 3 eps total (2 more) with an overall story arch, there's a chance we could get enough momentum to start striking deals with advertisers. But the thing is, there'd probably never be enough money to even break even, it'd be more like "wow, we just got in $350, i guess that covers the food". So it's a difficult topic i'll have to think about and have a lot of conversations about
 
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Shawn Philip Nelson said:
The bigger issue is whether the cast and crew would like to come back together to do another episode or two. The actors have already expressed an interest. The main crew I haven't yet asked, a HUGE factor would be the audio post team of Ryan, Geoff and Herman, they put a TON of time into this. Frankly that's sort of the deal with dvxuser fest, you get to do something for 6 min, you cant just go on and on. That said, if we did like 3 eps total (2 more) with an overall story arch, there's a chance we could get enough momentum to start striking deals with advertisers. But the thing is, there'd probably never be enough money to even break even, it'd be more like "wow, we just got in $350, i guess that covers the food". So it's a difficult topic i'll have to think about and have a lot of conversations about
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I've been looking for a web series to jump on for the past year... no lie.
 
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