FEATURE: THE LOST CHILDREN - A FEATURE FILM by Mark Harris

You know, I realized today, one of the biggest challenges in this project has to be keeping up the excitement for this long a period of time. From script, to pre-pro, through shooting and now into post, we are basically in year two of this project. And I tell you, it's often hard to get up the thrill for it.

I'm really glad I went through this on a low-budget piece, so I know what I'm in for when the stakes go up.
 
You only realized it cause of that other thread~! NYEAH NYEAH!

Kidding. Yeah, it's a long process, man. How much longer do you think before you're "wrapped"
 
Well, I want to have it ready to focus-group, all three acts, by Oct 1. But am setting a goal of Jan 1 to have it finished, score, sound mix, efx, all of it.

Just had a few things happen this week too, to solidify some of our plans, so going to start adding more detail to this thread in the next couple of weeks, including the transmedia plans we're working on, Festival/Distribution strategy, etc.
 
Did you ever, in this thread, talk about the transition you made from a large budget and very specific production to a smaller, more stylized production?

I remember when you and I were talking last year, you were slated to shoot with a pair of REDs and had a much larger budget you were going after. I actually hadn't' any idea that you reigned it back and were going a more experimental route.
 
Not in this thread. I can detail that over the next couple of days, the reasons why and what we did specifically. That was the four month period I talked about in the other thread. By this weekend I will update the thread with a detailed account.

And it' not entirely experimental. I mean some of the ways we worked were, but the convention of a documentary is a common one now. And the film still follows a pretty strict 3-Act structure, with the climaxes you typically associate with that structure, pretty much in place.
 
Gearing up for the massacre.

Entrails: check
IMAG0008.jpg


Wound up using rolled up paper towels wrapped in a latex burrito shell, then set with powder. Was pretty easy and will look deliciously gross glistening with blood in the dark. Made a bunch of these yesterday.

And now that Karo syrup comes in these handy plastic squeeze bottles, this is a lot easier than it used to be!

IMAG0007.jpg
 
This project looks interesting. I like how you've constructed the organs really cool. Maybe you could paint some thin purplish blue veins if your going for a c.u otherwise you wouldnt see it. Are you doing any shooting in brooklyn ,NY?

Cheers!
 
Shoot tonight went really well. I will hopefully get to a breakdown this week. But I am already working on another long post about why we made some decisions about the format.

Big ups to Rodney Smith for bringing his filmmaker mojo out. Thanks man, was great to have you on board.

I think the guts came out all right. Here are a couple of raw grabs. These will have a ton of processing on them before they hit the final film (already working on some), but here you go:

some_guts.jpg

massacre_1.jpg
 
Nice!
And you got Rodney out there... that's great.
The guts are lookin good in the grabs... from what I can see anyhow.

Curious to see how you process this stuff.
What's the 'source' for this footage? (within the story world, I mean)
Is it going to get dirtied up much?
 
It's meant to be shot on a handycam. During some of this film we shot footage on the cameras it really would have been shot on in the scene. But in this case, I am going to add in some compositing. So I shot all HD, with the idea that it would be infinitely easier to composite a still shot, then add camera shake in post.

So the processing will be the addition of camera movement and noise, etc in post. I am working on a few techniques for this right now, adding noise with software, re-shooting the footage through an old TV, etc. Some of this will depend on how I want to stylize some scenes. I have relaxed my need to be absolutely authentic to some degree.
 
Those guts were so real... that the actor had to DIE!

Just kidding. Bill lived to shoot another scene. I was almost killed at the hands of the Harris-man himself, but he couldn;t be bothered, since he really wanted to see me die, so let a subordinate take me out instead. Really classy!
 
Michael Anthony Horrigan said:
Great to see this moving along, Mark. How much do you think you have left to shoot?

Can't wait to get a peek at this.

MAH
Click to expand...

We have one BIG scene left in Sept. Then a few pick-ups and I want to reshoot a few interviews where I think I can get the performances better. My goal is to have the whole thing watchable by Oct 1.
 
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