FEATURE: This Vivid Thing - Currently on Kickstarter

S

Shaun

Active member
Campaign Picture.jpg

Hi everyone,

Since November 2008 I've been working on a feature film called 'This Vivid Thing'. It's been worked on by just my brother and I and we've just launched a Kickstarter to try and raise £60,000 to complete it.

The whole film has been shot using the continuous shooting modes of DSLR's and we've got over 180,000 frames to edit over the next 18 months.. Crazy huh?!

Synopsis:

There are three parts of existence: life, mind & imagination.

All vie for supremacy and do so with varying degrees of force.

Life conforms to exact precision, ensuring all subjects are created, controlled, developed & destroyed within its boundaries.

Mind, capable of thought, constantly tries to outthink life, and imagination provides the world to mind, but in doing so leaves itself open to attack from both mind & life.

To mitigate this weakness, entities known as Imaginary Guards are in place to ensure imagination is protected.


If this sounds like your sort of thing then please give us a helping hand. We need as many people to donate as possible!

Link to Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37808067/this-vivid-thing

Check out the opening here:

 
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The Production Story

Production started back in November 2008. May 2014, still in production but filming has wrapped, music is almost done, effects work is progressing well and we’re about 15 minutes through rough editing. When we began our aim was to make a feature film on a shoestring budget that was both original and had exceptionally good production values, we anticipated it would take 24 months. Ahem… it’s taken a little longer than 24 months so far and we’ve got another 18 months to go.

Back in ’08 This Vivid Thing had a completely different premise (and title) and was to be filmed in the summer of ’09, we thought 9 months of pre-production, coupled with an 8 week shoot and a year post would be ample time to realise our vision. 9 months pre-production on your first feature is pretty epic, but as we were working on it part time we needed as long as possible! Our pre-production mainly consisted of fleshing out the story as best as possible, script revision, filming techniques & shoot planning (logistics, locations etc.)

We were aware there was a risk of things getting very complicated, and in hindsight the story at the time was impossible to follow, and in our initial 9 month stint of pre-production we hadn’t really got to grips with it. Nevertheless, young and undeterred we battled on and started filming in May ’09 (ahead of schedule!) A few days of filming were enough for us to realise that we weren’t ready to shoot. The story needed more work, as did the script, our locations were lacking and the weather was terrible. But fear not! We are filmmakers after all.

A frantic summer of re-writes, location scouting, a (very low turnout) casting call and good old fashioned thinking and we were ready to shoot (again). We managed to shoot for 2 weeks in September 09 and whilst it didn’t go as badly as in May we were still lacking. As we developed as filmmakers we were conscious that ideas we’d had a year or two previously weren’t quite as good as we’d thought. So back to the drawing board we went. September wasn’t a complete write off; some of the footage was useable and we had a much clearer direction than earlier in the year. It was at this stage soundtrack work commenced. We’d been working on This Vivid Thing for nearly a year and had nothing to show for it, we thought we’d be able to get results much quicker from music, and we did! By the end of ’09 we had a few minutes of music and were super excited to start shooting again!

We spent the first few months of 2010 refining the story and script as well as planning our next attempt at shooting. Shooting began June 2010 and carried on right the way through July, right on cue our camera then broke and in the 13 day repair turnaround we were able to do a little visual effects work. Our camera was back and filming continued right up until September – we’d now shot the majority of This Vivid Thing! A summer of filming had taken its toll on our wallets so it was back to wage labour for the rest of the year.Music continued though right up to year end.

2011 began with the hope we’d finish within a year; re-shoots were needed (and pick-ups), visual effects were a long way from finished and we hadn't even started sound mixing and mastering, plus we’d yet to shoot the end, so one year was a ‘little’ optimistic. Re-shoots took place in April and visual effects began to take shape in May. We had planned to shoot the end in summer 2011 but for us, it had to be as perfect as we could make it. When we started work on This Vivid Thing the ending seemed to mature quickest, yet it’s what changed most during production. When we changed one story element it also altered others, and the ending seemed to be most affected. We also believed the longer we were working on This Vivid Thing the better we’d become as filmmakers so leaving it until the end felt the most natural thing to do – or we were just procrastinating.

We managed re-shoots and pick-ups in summer ’11 and reviewing our footage shot over the past few years we were finally able to start seeing This Vivid Thing how we envisioned it! Yay! Visual effects and sound work wrapped up 2011. By this stage This Vivid Thing was very much a part-time endeavour. I was working full time & my brother was in uni, sadly it just wasn't financially viable to invest all of time working on This Vivid Thing. We were still working on it every day but whereas when we started it was 8hrs now it was down to about an hour.
2012 was centered on audio and visual eff
ects, music really matured and character themes were properly developed, being able to see whole scenes, not just shots, really come to life was so rewarding.
2013 hurtled on by and we’re now in our mid-twenties, we had been working on This Vivid Thing for most of our adult life. Fittingly, given the realisation that This Vivid Thing had been a part of our lives for half a decade, we shot the ending in summer ’13. Filming had finally wrapped!

We’ve spent the past 6 months working part-time on editing, we’ve still got a lot of work to do but we're hoping to finish it within 18 months.

So that’s it. Over 5 years of working on This Vivid Thing in a nutshell.
 
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Just one man's perspective, of course. A film needs to find an audience. This is an art film, which makes finding an audience challenging, if only because that's a very tiny part of the market. And that tiny part of the market has a lot of competition too, plus the audiences are much, much, much more picky. A genre film, especially horror, has a much more tolerant audience - people will watch almost anything as long as it ticks off a few boxes consistent with genre. But an art film? That's very tough. The standards are all over the place - for a horror, we know what it has to deliver, and by and large people can agree on what makes a horror successful - but for an art film? It means you are looking for a tiny audience who will embrace your particular vision, and it's super subjective. It's much easier to give advice and opinion about genre films, precisely because the standards are clear - a horror film that's not scary is not a good horror film.

So, you ask for feedback - and like I mentioned above, that's a very difficult thing to do for an art film. What I feel may have zero relevance to somebody else, because, well, standards are so fluid in this case. I almost question the point of asking for feedback in such a case - whatever I say, for example, is also going to be totally subjective, and one could simply say "well it's not for you", or "so, it's something up your alley", with no objective arguments either way.

All that said - for what it's worth... and I'm afraid not very much... here's my take. I (and many others) tend to shy away from films that try to illustrate some very abstract idea (which is what your film strikes me as), because such films tend to not be very involving on a visceral level. That doesn't mean you can't make interesting movies with obscure themes, but there needs to be something in it for the audience. Here's an example - recently Alain Resnais died. He directed many films, among them Last Year At Marienbad. That's an art film with very obscure themes. Many people are puzzled and bored by it, but it also has its fans. However, if you've watched that film, even though the subject matter is most obscure, it does give its fans something. The visuals are amazing - the geometric framing, the atmosphere with the obsessive pursuits all make it strangely alluring - FOR SOME. I happen to like it, but completely understand that others don't. Nonetheless, even for those who like it, it's got to have SOMETHING.

That's the issue with This Vivid Thing. Watching that trailer, it's hard to follow what it's about. The wall of dense text that starts it, is quite off-putting, because it asks the audience to accept some strange philosophical concepts, which is better suited to being read in a book - text in a beginning of a film is usually very understandable and immediate - dates, places, description of events historic or invented, not think pieces, and if there is one, it's usually something brief and understandable on some level - f.ex. "What happens after death? Nobody knows." And then the films is f.ex. about somebody who invented a machine that was an X-ray into the beyond. But here we have a lengthy dense text of concepts. Immediately deflating. By the third sentence we stop reading - too much effort. Fine, whatever, we'll look for other compensation... and now as an audience we ask "so where is our SOMETHING?" Visuals? Atmosphere? Well, it didn't do it FOR ME (maybe it would for the next fellow). Talking heads (I assume the "guardians"), you can really not even understand what they are saying and barely even make out what it is they're saying and you're really not terribly interested, and it goes on and on and on before we see some guy running... do we care about his running? Not really. Example: instead, if we had a young woman lying naked on an autopsy table, and the running guy was running around that table, over and over again - well, already that's an odd and arresting image, perhaps it would pull us in. But a guy running through a field and along a road? Yawn. OK, so a car explodes... but the the visual quality, with the obscuring sfx, is so off-putting, you can barely see anything - what a combo, taking heads where you can barely hear anything, barely understand anything, and barely see anything. Pass. Where is our SOMETHING?

Again, one person's take, FWIW.
 
Hi OldCorpse,

Thanks for the feedback!

It's more or less what others have said.

Ah well, back to the drawing board with this one.

Again, thank you for your feedback, it's greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Shaun
 
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Take heart. You are miles ahead of *most* young filmmakers. First, because you actually did something - thus gathering tons of practical experience. Second, because you are willing to actually learn from your experience and not take every negative feedback as a personal attack (as so many idiots do, thus dooming themselves to be eternal losers) - instead, you listen and see what applies to your situation and benefit by that which checks out, instead of being defensive egotistical poseurs.

You will succeed. Keep at it. You will fail at first, but pick yourself up and keep going. Best of luck!
 
I agree with OldCorpse's preamble wholeheartedly. And I am also just one person. However I personally do like this kind of thing. But as previously mentioned it is hard to nail it. Really hard. When your project is defined by atmosphere and a high concept of an esoteric or poetic nature, the balance has to be perfect or it falls over. The heart can anchor a movie but for the mind to hold one up it must soar.

By and large I liked the imagery. The stylistic post treatments were on the fence for me in terms of being on the nose but I'll nudge it in the direction of working. Your main special effect with the lights had genuine cool factor. The attempt with the concept was admirable. There's the good. Now time to get mean ;)

Your introductory text had a spelling mistake. 'Degress' instead of 'degrees'. Unforgiveable. Kills any value it had. Bang, I'm out of the film. Okay, let's overlook it. The next problem I had with it is that the film did little to support this opening concept and nothing to flesh it out. You have given me the entire ideological content of the movie without watching it. Where's the mystery? Why am I watching. What is changing? How is the core idea developed? What is the source of tension? What are the stakes? As it stands you have put the answer before the question or at least would have if you had asked a question. That can work when the meaning of the answer relies on context (any episode opener from series one of Breaking Bad) but this is not the case here. As an experiment try putting the text at the end and see how that changes the impact.

The next phase of the movie with the balaclava conversation didn't work for me. I liked the look but not the content. The conversation sounded okay as gibberish but I couldn't really follow what they were saying. Don't think I was meant to and that's okay. But in this instance it just drags on too long. If it had built to a clear statement such as "kill the Riddick" out of the babble of the necromunga seers in The Chronicles of Riddick (I think Minority Report had something similar) then the scene would have carried some weight, had a purpose, gone somewhere. Failing that simply having some recognisable phrases pop out of the mix that contribute to the story (or at least support the ideology of the opening text) and/or reducing the length of the scene or even intercutting more with the next might help.

Then we have the crossing of the field there. Some wouldn't like that, I was okay with it. If the whole had worked better the scene would have been stronger within it.

Finally the guy fighting the light. It was cool but in and of itself did not significantly advance the story's agenda. Again in that context went on too long. But was cool. I assume it was a 'guardian' doing his job. But that makes this simply procedural. No identifiable/relatable character, nothing to upset his normal activities and create the story. You simply have background/situation and as such cannot explore it satisfactorily because we have noone to follow and no disturbance outside of the routine. If this was the first half of act I with an inciting incident, conflict, growth and/or resolution to go what you have would be more engaging. You don't need a traditional format but you should touch base with some of these moments to give a sense of progression.

In conclusion I think for what you were trying to do this film is too short to address anything you were trying to achieve, whether on a conventional story delivery or as an artistic feeling/idea piece. You do not need to be literal or conventional but the viewer does need to have confidence that you know what is going on even if they don't (even if it isn't true). You don't need to explain anything, you don't need to be literal or conventional. But your tale should still hit some pacing markers, hit some traditional story markers, have some source of tension and a desire for resolution. And as OldCorpse said, you have to give the audience something.

I do however see a market for what you have created here pretty much in the form it sits at now. Music videos. In a music video the audience is already getting something. The song. The music video audience is quite open to new and different things. In fact they crave it. Any video that doesn't feature the band playing on a stage is a highlight in any drunken late night music video watching binge. It is a fantastic area to explore ideas and techniques and as long as there is an emotional or atmospheric link to the song it really doesn't have to follow the story of the song. Cool can be enough. Half formed ideas can be enough.

The other suggestion I'd have for you is to check out a director that might be of inspiration. Jodorowsky. I'd suggest you study The Holy Mountain ('73 I think). He explains even less than you do yet the journey is mammoth and complete understanding is far from necessary. There are obvious and less obvious cultural references but what I think will be of particular use to you is the fact that he still touches base with the markers in the traditional story journey. You get that sense of progress throughout the film and that for me is the primary element missing from yours.

Other films I'd suggest (both a little more narrative) are Donny Darko and Primer as two movies that like you create a time travel pseudoscience and do so effectively. What these do is excite the mind so as you're watching the film you are simultaneously looking for (and finding) little clues while puzzling over the implications of the 'science' and what that means for the story. You get to half-know what is going on. Primer has some of the strongest internal consistency of logic in any movie I've seen and the filmmaker knew exactly what was going on (the audience can take a dozen or more viewings to even get half of what is going on) whereas with Donny Darko it really is just made up and not even the author really knows what is going on. Yet both have strong internal consistency and enough mystery for the audience to patch up the holes themselves because they've been given just enough to go on.

A south african tv series from 2005 called Charlie Jade might also be of interest to you, both stylistically and thematically. It is a multiple dimension show, which is superior to and (along with x-files) is probably what Fringe was ripped off from (good rip off though). Especially in the first couple of episodes they do a fantastic job of not explaining things while giving you plenty to chew over while you wait for the next episode.

I'll stop there. Hope some of the things I've said help. I say these things not to tell you what to do but to hopefully get you asking some questions you maybe haven't and hopefully fuel an inspiration that comes from within. Hope you have another crack at something like this again. Some of us out here need to see things that aren't same-same all the time.
 
Hi Egg Born Son,

Thank you for your feedback and apologies for the delay in responding.

Thanks for pointing out the spelling error, when I have five I'll correct it.

The clip was actually going to be the opening to a two hour long film. I didn't want to give too much away, but I wanted it to be exciting and I kinda tried to cram as much in as possible. Lots of action, lots of dialogue, intense visuals and rich music. So after 4 minutes you're sort of left going 'uuhhhhhh', not quite knowing where you stand and needing the film to pick you up, brush you down and get on with explaining itself. The film then settles down and we're properly introduced to the Imaginary Guards & protagonist, and the story unfolds and becomes a lot clearer.
But I definitely think that as-is it's difficult to "connect" with the opening. Rather than being bombarded with dialogue, music & visuals, it's needs to be more to-the-point and easier to follow.
I've got a few ideas that I may try and develop over the coming months, and I'll update this thread with any progress.

Once again thanks OldCorpse & Egg Born Son.

If anyone else has any feedback please feel free to contribute.

All the best,

Shaun
 
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