"Sleeper" by Matt Sconce and Mark Aro

I'm sorry, but those are ALL excuses that allude to the fact that there was poor writing. Why does anyone care if she was possesed by a demon? Yes, because I really didn't care about what was going on at all, it was poorly written.

You tell me, if you stripped out the fantastic and left the basics, would you even care?

As I said, this isn't meant to degrade your talent as a director, but surely is a means to informing you that you would benefit from finding someone with as much passion for crafting a coherent, compelling story and host of characters as you do with picking and choosing shots or Mark does with special effects.
 
im just waitin' for the final vfx shot of the demon comin outta the chick at the end, what can we expect? is it gonna be horrorish or more like a demon?

And i think all Kholi is saying is, dont get caught in the George Lucas trap of rushing the writing and acting so you can get into post. i think thats what he was saying, right?
 
Ooh ya... Score f'in roCKED! Hats off to Shane. Wish I had some of his toys and sounds to play with :)

Watching it again... Ya man, I would have been torn on whether or not to show the film for this this spyfest release.

It's like cooking a steak with a bag of ice. Some may like it raw. As for others... eh. You get the point. :)

cheers regardless.
/j
 
Correct. It's not like this was a 24 hour contest. There was equal time for pre, prod, and post here. Plenty of time to craft a story that would fit in six minutes or less (preferably less, here) that motivated the VFX.

Not the other way around.
 
Kholi said:
I'm sorry, but those are ALL excuses that allude to the fact that there was poor writing. Why does anyone care if she was possesed by a demon? Yes, because I really didn't care about what was going on at all, it was poorly written.

You tell me, if you stripped out the fantastic and left the basics, would you even care?

As I said, this isn't meant to degrade your talent as a director, but surely is a means to informing you that you would benefit from finding someone with as much passion for crafting a coherent, compelling story and host of characters as you do with picking and choosing shots or Mark does with special effects.
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Excuse me all... I am just now catching up with all of this. Back when Matt and I started this thing we both wanted to make a solid film that didn't need justification or explaining. Unfortunately, the dangers of where we are now is that no matter what we say it is going to seem unclear and unfinished. The truth is that we created a story that was way to much for the time limit. We cut out a lot (3 minutes roughly) and even that full version needed a little something to make you care about the characters. In the end... IT IS WAS IT IS. I really think it is a waste of time going back and forth. The truth is, so may look at what we did and say they never should've uploaded it, but to tell you the truth... I could care less what others say. I fully intend on finishing this thing and when all is said and done, it should be pretty enjoyable. And you can bet your bippy that I/WE intend on taking every comment that fleshing out anything useful and doing what we can to apply it. In the end, putting this out there unfinished will help us and has helped us far more than it hurts. What I am walking away with is that we need to look for ways to make you care a little more about her. Great thanks... I will add that to the mix and see what I can do.

I always say to Matt, VFX shouldn't be a band aid, they should be a vehicle to help the story not a replacement for. That said, what you guys see could be construed as the band-aid... the film we shot has the meat necessary to use the VFX as a tool, it will just take time to accomplish a version that we wont be embarassed to show.
 
Defcon said:
im just waitin' for the final vfx shot of the demon comin outta the chick at the end, what can we expect? is it gonna be horrorish or more like a demon?

And i think all Kholi is saying is, dont get caught in the George Lucas trap of rushing the writing and acting so you can get into post. i think thats what he was saying, right?
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I agree with you observation and with your point. We wont! Trust me, this thing has some meat.

The creature will be demon/zombie/alien - ish.... :)
 
Now THAT I can read and go "okay, cool.". That's realism. It's cool that you put it up, and you'll probably pull from these comments what you need.

Good luck finishing.
 
That is so true Mark! It is what it is.

Defcon said:
im just waitin for the final vfx shot of the demon comin outta the chick at the end, what can we expect? is it gonna be horrorish or more like a demon?
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Actually it is not a demon, but similar in some characteristics to one. We will develop this in later stuff. It is going to be non destructive coming out like melting or pulling and stretching out of.
Defcon said:
And i think all Kholi is saying is, dont get caught in the George Lucas trap of rushing the writing and acting so you can get into post. i think thats what he was saying, right?
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I think what he is saying is that I sucked as a writer for Stricken and Mark and I both Suck as writers for Sleeper. If he is trying to help us, it is not coming across. He says we have lame characters and doesn't tell us how to imporve them so they are un-lame.
Edgen said:
Ooh ya... Score f'in roCKED! Hats off to Shane. Wish I had some of his toys and sounds to play with :)

Watching it again... Ya man, I would have been torn on whether or not to show the film for this this spyfest release.

It's like cooking a steak with a bag of ice. Some may like it raw. As for others... eh. You get the point. :)

cheers regardless.
/j
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I think ya meant Chance Thomas on the score my friend. Thanks for the comments. He is amaZing. Oh and that was his rough cut. By accident we put that in instead of his final with choral epic sound!:)
 
Edgen said:
Ooh ya... Score f'in roCKED! Hats off to Shane. Wish I had some of his toys and sounds to play with :)

Watching it again... Ya man, I would have been torn on whether or not to show the film for this this spyfest release.

It's like cooking a steak with a bag of ice. Some may like it raw. As for others... eh. You get the point. :)

cheers regardless.
/j
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amen brother!

Thanks on the score comments. Chance acutally scored it and we had him rewrite the ending which is amazing and it didn't make it into this cut.

Point taken about the steak. Truth be told I believe that the end product will benefit from the comments here... that is of course if we let it.
 
Yep it is new for me to be okay with people seing the process. We will definitely take what people have said and grow.
 
msconce said:
I think what he is saying is that I sucked as a writer for Stricken and Mark and I both Suck as writers for Sleeper. If he is trying to help us, it is not coming across. He says we have lame characters and doesn't tell us how to imporve them so they are un-lame.
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Matt, don't take it that way... no matter what, it is hard to say what I hope he is trying to say and truth be told most people aren't going to be able to articulate details... it is real easy to rag on something, but it takes effort to add something of value, most people don't have the skill and/or aren't willing to make the effort it takes to say anything more than "I don't care".

Really he doesn't get it or like it so it doesn't really matter. However, you can bet you bippy that we are going to do what we can to shore things up and clarify things to help shore up any weak points. At the end of the day, they got a little more than half of the story so I really don't think that story conversations matter at this point.

A funny story, many years ago as a newbie artist in the gaming industry I had an art director who NEVER complimented people on there work and he was constantly threatened by other people so he went out of the way to keep them down. When you did something stellar, your would see him struggle with a response and you knew you did great if you got...

" Well it doesn't suck!"

I kid you not! He would really said that. In contrast a year or two later I worked under a brilliant art director who was amazing and even more critical than the first guy, but the difference was two fold, the good art director wasn't threatened by me so when he critiqued me, it was all about helping me be my best and it was about me not him. Secondly, no matter how much I advanced, he did too because he invested in his team and that lent to his success. The bad AD was not that great of an artist and for him I was a threat so instead of helping me be better, he went out of his way to keep me down because he was threatened that I would pass him... I did!

The eternal truth here is that as an individual, you will have more success when you help lift people than when you push them down. In the story of the two AD's, the good one had great success and to my knowledge he never once lost ground or his job or anything else from going out on a limb and lifting his team. in fact he was/is better for it... I believe that it really helped him attain his successes. The contrast is the bad AD... he constantly complained and whined when things didn't go his way and to my knowledge, he had pretty much pissed his life away on drugs and most people can't stand him because he is a self absorbed butthead.

In short... anyone can critique without adding anything of value. It takes true courage to say here's why this doesn't work and maybe if you did this or that, it might play better. That kind of comments are worth listening to. However, if all you have to offer is that this sucks or that sucks, then don't waste the bandwidth or my time. Life is to flippin short. I truly hope that I am never guilty of that.

As a result, I just got off the phone with Matt and we came up with a great pick-up shot that will allow us to add to the beginning and hopefully give the viewer a chance to care a little more about our gal. (KHOLI) So although I really think you were just being rude... thanks man, we gained something from it. The difference is, that you didn't.

:thumbup:
 
As a completely objective observer (I don't know any of you guys or your work) I will throw in my two cents that Kholi's comments were tactless and very much not in the spirit of what most people seem to bring to this forum. That said, he's obviously entitled to say what he feels even if he borders on flaming with his comments. Mr. Aro, you have made some very constructive responses and I feel you've tried to keep your bristling to a minimum.

Clearly there is too much "sucking up" and false stroking going on so that it is actually a good thing when people have real critiques. I just hope that Kholi at some point might come back and look at his posts to see that he wouldn't appreciate identical comments if he received them (he may deny this, but I believe it is very true. ) It just doesn't help to add venom to your comments.
 
Wow. I don't really want to read the previous comments. Shame on whoever came here and started bitching someone. There's a difference between criticizing people's work vs. flaming them. I hope this doesn't go on.

I... was excited to watch this one, based on all the activity on this thread, and the fact that you guys are so excited to make films. But...

I couldn't sit through all of it. When she got to the alleyway and started talking in demonish, I turned it off. I just couldn't bear it, the cringe factor is too high. Too high.

The cool shots were there, for sure. Beautiful lighting, beautifully shot actress, good composition. But the script.... what is going on? I had no clue. No clue. After 4 minutes of what-is-this I couldn't bear it anymore.

The black screens with special effect explanations didn't bother me at all. This isn't Hollywood. It's DVXUSER and we're hear to learn from each other. Or, in my case, learn from people like you two. If only I could work a camera like that.

In conclusion, I can see how this evolved into a 20-30 min / maybe even feature length film. I'd definitely love to see the finished project. Keep up the enthusiasm. Your thread kept me glued to the boards for the last two months.
 
Mark Johnson said:
Time to get out some beers, get sloppy and do the "I love you, man"'s
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LOL!

Very funny!

Hey... Mark, Matt mentioned something about you comments earlier and I wanted to take a sec a just address the digital rain one. We are going to do digitial rain and we have a very good reason for it. We chose rain for a reason, it was not accidental. I will explain that to you more in detail in a PM, but for now I will just address the how, not the why.

What I will do when I get to that point is I will animate a rough character (porxy) over the top of the video, rotoscoping the actors movements and the shape of the character will be real close to the actors. Then I will use particles on the proxy and use them as the deflector. I will render this and set the proxy as NOT VISIBLE to the camera and then I will have rain that the character moves through in the final composite. This is important to the story which I will share with you later. I will add real rain in front of and behind the characters to top this scene off.

Mark
 
gabrielflorit said:
Wow. I don't really want to read the previous comments. Shame on whoever came here and started bitching someone. There's a difference between criticizing people's work vs. flaming them. I hope this doesn't go on.

I... was excited to watch this one, based on all the activity on this thread, and the fact that you guys are so excited to make films. But...

I couldn't sit through all of it. When she got to the alleyway and started talking in demonish, I turned it off. I just couldn't bear it, the cringe factor is too high. Too high.

The cool shots were there, for sure. Beautiful lighting, beautifully shot actress, good composition. But the script.... what is going on? I had no clue. No clue. After 4 minutes of what-is-this I couldn't bear it anymore.

The black screens with special effect explanations didn't bother me at all. This isn't Hollywood. It's DVXUSER and we're hear to learn from each other. Or, in my case, learn from people like you two. If only I could work a camera like that.

In conclusion, I can see how this evolved into a 20-30 min / maybe even feature length film. I'd definitely love to see the finished project. Keep up the enthusiasm. Your thread kept me glued to the boards for the last two months.
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Certainly. Like Kholi you have a valid point about the story. It is there or rather it is in the can, we just need to put it back in and like I mentioned earlier, we are adding a scene in the beginning thanks to Kholi's comments.

I feel a little bad thinking that we did a disservice to those of you that followed this thread, because you are getting so little from what we showed. We weighed out the pro's and con's of showing now or not, but I am glad we did. More than anything, I have gained a lot and I thinking that the finished version will be better for it.
 
Fellas, let's keep things constructive. Temper your criticism with ways work can be improved. Just keep things tactful and honest. Irrelevent posts have been deleted.
 
Kholi said:
That's where we differ: I used Ultraviolet as an example of the level of writing. It was all about the special effects and not about the story or characters. That's how it came off to me.

Sorry if the coorlation wasn't what you guys were expecting. I worded it just how I meant it, you aren't reading anything the wrong way. Some of us take honest criticism different than others.

Have fun.
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I get that. Honesty can be shared without rudeness. Personally I get impatient with the niceties of conversation sometimes. My wife has mentioned it a time or two. I often say, "Listen to what I said, take it for what it is, not what you think it is!" However that really only works if you live on a desert island and you don't have to socialize with others.

I read your little blurb on the Ducttape site and saw that you speak 5 dead languages. Very interesting and very impressive. Point is, to think that way, to have that capacity for thought often requires a literal or possible very analitical mind. As a result, you seem to speak your mind. That is okay, but something that I too have struggled in my own life is that when you do this, sometimes you need to be considerate of the person you are speaking to. To you, you just pointed out that Matt's stories, in your opinion lacked solid writing for one reason or another, to him you were telling him that he sucks. I think that you have something worth saying, don't let your brain and directness let it come off as an insult, because I truly think that you do not mean for it to be.

When you word something with the other person in mind, it doesn't mean that you are kissing butt or sugar coating the truth. The important thing is that your audiance hears what you mean. If not, then why even speak at all. That's what's important. You being a master of languages probably understand that. An insult in one language is not in another. When you translate, you have to take into account the language that you are speaking in. In this case, I think that you meant well, I just think that a combination of exhaustion and directness turned into a battle. Again, I thank you for your comments and I hope that you do not take offense to any of this. We will definitely take everything that you and the others have shared, to heart!
 
Isaac_Brody said:
Fellas, let's keep things constructive. Temper your criticism with ways work can be improved. Just keep things tactful and honest. Irrelevent posts have been deleted.
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Thanks Isaac...
 
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