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Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Zarban
This is all taking some of the edge off my nightmare at Laguardia Airport. It's sweltering in here and flights are getting canceled left and right.
EDIT: I was welcomed into the Delta Lounge, where the A/C was working, the grass was green, and the girls were pretty. My 5 PM flight left at 11 PM, and I stayed overnight in the very civilized Detroit Westin.
The probe droids returning to the ship are not loss. It's pretty obvious action that doesn't need a visual to indicate it. I agree on that point. Having a shadow hover over Butterfly and then retreat, plus the report, works pretty well.
I'm rereading, but did you remove the cousin reference? Just curious on that but I also see places to put it back in.
I like the ending to this script, both the trace, as well as the holgram fade and her looking to the sky. A good fade out moment, with fanfare and everything
Possible thought-have Voyne offer to use her to replace Niken as the apprentice? It's little more than subtle word play but it was a thought that came to my mind.
Yeah, I agreed with Teague's original note: the cousin link is out. We don't need a big back story or direct connection between them. Bad blood: 'nuff said.
Not sure what you mean about Voyne. He makes that offer explicitly.
Yeah, I remember now that she somehow wasn't a "full-fledged" astronaut. I've only seen Gravity once, so I may not be remembering it objectively. I can concede the point.
I love some of these ideas, especially showing the probe droids returning, but I don't think it would clarify anything or help the pacing, and there's an obvious need to hold down the effects shots. With possible pizzas for iJim and Drew, production costs are already spiraling out of control. 
Here is draft 3. I tried taking out the opening scene to save having to create the probe droid, but it felt weird telling about the inciting incident instead of showing it. I think it now draws more drama by making the conflict more personal, and the small tweak at the end of having Butterfly surreptitiously trace the communication instead of blatantly saying it provides the button the scene needs.
Is she weak just because she sometimes gets overwhelmed by her situation, and nearly gives up at one point?
No, she's weak because it's clear that she has no business being in space in the first place, panics when things go wrong, second guesses Clooney's plan instead of devising one of her own, is crippled by emotion in the middle of a life-and-death crisis, and then almost gives up.
I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek, because it's a great movie, and I like the character in the same way that I like Brody in Jaws. But gaining intestinal fortitude they don't have at first is the whole point of both characters. But Bullock's character is supposed to be an astronaut; Brody is not supposed to be a shark hunter. I don't think I'd show Gravity to a little girl and say "This is what you should aspire to."
I haven't seen 127 Hours, but Franco basically plays both the Clooney and Bullock parts in that. How does it compare?
Food for thought.
No plan for the lightsabers yet. I'll check the hardware store and cobble something together according to the kids' preferences and paint the blade orange, I guess.
certain movies like (brace yourselves) The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Braveheart, and even parts of LOTR don't work for me.
See my rant about Christopher Nolan's female characters from last year.
I'm not sure Bechdel would let Gravity off the hook. Bullock plays a pretty weak character.
It's not like it's impossible to write interesting women. Movies from the studio era generally did a far better job of it than movies do today.
It's really a shame to watch something like National Treasure and see a woman who has one clue to give, then just follows the hero around second guessing him for the rest of the movie.
Okay, that didn't work either then. I didn't really like the idea that the sneaking was fake sneaking anyway. I'll keep thinking.
Niken's ship
Draft 2 of the script, with notes from Teague and Bathilda. I've elaborated on the fight a little and made it seem more of a trap.
I've tried timing this out, and it seems to run about 7 minutes; that's quite a surprise for 3 pages.
Excellent! I'll know more this weekend when I run the script by the kids and their mothers.
I'll shoot the test footage Teague suggests and also some of the locations we'll use.
Cool! The one major daunting aspect of the project is having to light and shoot and record sound on set when my only experience is still photography and podcasting. Having real experience on set would be awesome!
There could EASILY be a Wooden Peel pizza in this for you.
That is awesome. He's a good artist, so he might have ideas. I figured you guys would use whatever spaceship model you had lying around, especially if it's recognizably Star Wars-related.
Honestly, I'd say you could just as well go in a no-twist direction, and to that end maybe even take out the reference to their relationship at the end of the script. Just have it be a Jedi and a Sith, simple and clean.
Right. The fact that they're cousins wasn't twisty enough, so it might as well go. Every story needs some kind of point, tho. So if there isn't a comedic gag then there needs to be a dramatic revelation of some kind. It turns out that "This one time, a Jedi Padawan had to fight a Sith apprentice WHO WAS HER OWN COUSIN" isn't quite strong enough.
I'll work on a different twist.
/Darth Shyamalan
Script first draft. The ending needs to be more wry and twisty, I think.
Okay! So, if I may.
1. Zarban.
When do you want to do this? What's your ideal timeframe?
You have a Rebel, can you (sometime before the actual shoot) throw me/us some backyard footage you've shot with it, just to get a sense of what we'll be working with? Include a few pans at a few different speeds, from meandering to whip. Also repeat this experiment in your kitchen at night with pretty dim light. (Point being, I wanna see what the camera does in deliberately low-light situations. Our RV might end up being dark, I wanna see if it'll be a problem or not.) The kitchen test could be done with the fridge door open, just so there's some variance going on.
Are you going to be recording dialogue? Got a plan for that? (Crazy as it sounds, I swear to god an iPhone can be made to do quite well for this kind of thing.)
Also, note, everyone is still expecting this to be a weird little dorky thing you shoot with a couple youngins,' nothing more. No pressure. We're just gonna go apeshit on the post side of it.
I will shoot test footage this weekend. It's the same camera I used for the road trip, but I uploaded overly downgraded video for that because the raw video was so big. I don't know if you saw any of the raw footage that I uploaded later.
I will start writing the script right away. Their mothers want to buy them proper costumes, so that will take a little time. But I imagine shooting to begin in a couple of weeks and take a couple of weekends. The post-production part can go to mid-November if necessary. That's when Sith boy's birthday is.
There will be dialog, mostly for Jedi girl, who will be the better actor. (Sith boy will probably be some Darth Maul-style freak.) I'll experiment with recording live dialog before the day. It's too bad my Edirol recorder crapped out last week....
PS,
Sith boy is already complaining that he wants Jedi girl to be the one to die because she always beats him in their plastic sword fights by going for his feet. 
I'm thrilled by the responses here, by the way. You will be making two little Star Wars fans (and one big one) very happy.
I arranged a surprise treasure hunt for my other niece and nephew when they were 10 and 12, and the younger two have been asking about one for themselves.
It suddenly occurs to me that the interior of a fancy RV could double as the Sith spaceship with a little set dressing. Sith boy's father has an RV painting business.
So I think the shot list is...
Jedi girl in woods tries to avoid a probe droid (live with prop in distance)
Sith spaceship flies thru space (CG)
Sith boy in his spaceship gets probe droid's report detecting Jedi girl (live + hologram effect)
Jedi girl in woods looks up (live)
Sith spaceship sets down on planet (live with blurry CG ship leg in foreground)
Sith boy exits ship (live with prop ramp, no ship)
Jedi girl confronts Sith boy with a warning; they duel briefly; Jedi girl wins (lightsaber effects)
Jedi girl uses Sith Boy's wrist hologram to report his failure to his master and her intention to go after him (live, with hologram effect)
It occurs to me that I'll need someone to edit this. It's beyond my meager skills and will also need audio effects and some music. I sort of assume you guys have that kind of stuff lying around, tho.
The interior spaceship shot I envisioned would be done as a dark, appropriately Sith-y location, with a spaceship wall projected behind the actor, and the actor lit minimally for effect. It won't have to be especially good because we'll do the hologram effect in that scene, and that will be the focus.
Since i have a projector, i can probably do a spaceship interior as front projection.
I can fake the ship landing with a reaction shot with a moving shadow.
How about the hologram effect? That's insanely cool.
Anything else that is easy and impressive that should be included or replace another shot?
So of this proposal, what is the hardest part and therefore should be minimized? The lightsaber roto?
Inspired by the VFX reels on this forum, I’m looking for folks who are interested in doing some work on a vanity project to star my 11-year-old niece and nephew. Here’s the best part: I can pay actual human money.
I know enough about writing and photography to shoot a little adventure starring my niece and nephew that might run 2 or 3 minutes. In order to make it awesome, it would need some spaceships and light saber effects and whatnot, so here is where you come in.
The budget for effects wouldn’t be much, of course; we’re talking a few hundred dollars, but at least it's something. To minimize the work, we can build the story around whatever spaceship models and whatnot you already have and whatever effects are easiest. I know next to nothing about visual effects, but I found a number of cool things that seem to be easy/stock effects.
I figure we'd have something like this exterior spaceship flyby
...and a bit of a probe droid like the one half-way thru this
...with a green screen scene composited with something like this spaceship interior
...and a bit of this hologram effect
....leading to slightly more sophisticated version of this lightsaber duel.
My rough idea is:
Sith spaceship flies thru space (CG)
Jedi girl in woods tries to avoid a probe droid (live with CG droid)
Sith boy in his spaceship gets probe droid's report detecting Jedi girl (green screen + hologram effect)
Sith spaceship sets down on planet (CG ship disappears behind trees)
Jedi girl confronts Sith boy with a warning; they duel briefly; Jedi girl wins (lightsaber effects)
Jedi girl reports Sith boy's failure to his master and her intention to go after him (hologram effect)
If that seems too ambitious, the stuff with the droid and some of the ship could be cut. But my hope is that certain effects are pretty easy and we could incorporate them. The limiting factor here might be my skills at shooting video. I have a Canon Rebel and no experience shooting anything but stills.
I'd really like to write something that then gets shot by someone else and turned into a real short film that would be worth taking to a film festival.
I'd also love to write and shoot some scenes with my 11yo niece and nephew and see it turned into a lightsaber battle with some fun special effects. That would crazy thrill them.
Crazier still, I think I can fund the projects to the level that it's worth someone's time to do it.
Name: Derek Jensen
Known Aliases: Zarban, Tysto
Skills: Audio editing, writing, photography, photo editing, Wordpress/PHP
Also interested in doing: Writing, collaborations, voice work
Availability: Fridays and Saturdays
Contact Info: my forum name @zarban.com, my first name @tysto.com
Love,
George
PS
What can I do for a spandex rash?
Friends In Your Head | Forums → Posts by Zarban
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