Selections from the first half of sorting through the photos from our trip to the Zoo yesterday.

(Click to make biggerness, and there are more on my photostream if one feels so inclined)

More coming once I sort through the rest.

*Tilts hat* I do what I can.

Alright so.... I can understand what you're saying, I might not agree with it, but I can understand it. What I mean by that is, personally I wouldn't be focusing so hard on retaining that in camera data (For the movement), but more on trying to unify the scene as a whole. And there's definitly a lot of tricks you could do if you had the time (Which, I mean yeah, that always bites us in the ass). Looking at it again, I think a lot of my problems with the shackicam come in the close-ups, and those first couple wide shots. I don't know about anyone else, but I can really feel the tracking noise in the camera motion, instead of just feeling the camera motion. There's a certain mechanical jerkiness to it that is really distracting, also it's really high frequency so it adds a lot of unnecassary motion to it. (For example, compare the shot at :19, with the one at 1:06, with the one at  1:25. The first has a nice smooth motion to it, that still feels handheld with out the really shaky effect (Probably closer to a steadicam shot). The second one is more of an extreme example but it stills feels like handheld. While the third has a TON of unnessacary motion underneath the handheld feel that proves to be quite distracting.) I really think that if you can manage too (And if your scenes are set up for it), just run a blur over your tracking data for the really bad ones. It should clear most of that up. Or maybe just go in and add just a little bit of float to your lock offs, it would sync them together with the rest of the scene a bit better, instead of just a jarring extreme steadicam to lock off cut. IDK, I might be alone on this but having it be so varied from shot to shot really pulls me out of the scene and kinda forces you to think about the technical aspects of what's happening instead of the story.

But I get it, I mean I really do. If you can't go back into it, at least you can keep it in mind for next time

As for the voice, it's not so much the deep voice or the echo (I actually did catch on to the whole ringing in the tin suit idea.) But it's actually the same issue Teague has with Bane in TDKR oddly enough, the rest of the scene feels like a bunch of people talking in a field, and then there's this one guy sitting right in your ear (Hence the Hello God). There's no directionality to it, no sense of where it's actually coming from, and considering he doesn't move...at all..for the bit where we meet him, that just adds to the confusion, it takes a couple seconds to reorient yourself. I think if you just pushed him a little further back and down in the mix it would solve most of it.

But again, if you don't have time, you don't have time.

Heh, that's fair enough, I mean hell, that's half the reason most of do this. It's not really that bad, there's just a couple of edits that felt a little off to my filmmaking brain, but I'm sure 90 percent of that can be pegged on style differences between us.

Alright...so since this is DiF...and you did ask for it. My initial thoughts were not all positive, although only you will be able to determine whether it was a director thing or a you guys thing.

-So the first shot just completely threw me off the scent of logic for a second. The camera is bizarrely shaky, but every element sort of moves at a different rate and shake than every other element, so the entire scene feels like it's floating and warping while underwater (And then it doesn't stop doing that for the entire scene...except when it does for some unknown reason)
-The scarecrow puppet is highly un-cohesive in it's movement from shot to shot. In the first and second shot he's pretty much moving like a normal dude, you could almost mistake him for a guy in a costume. But then in the third shot he completely defies any laws of gravity and basically turns into Christmas at Whoville. And it jumps back and and forth between those two for the rest of his time onscreen
-And then suddenly the whole shacky/floaty/background wobbling thing stops and it's pure lockoff....gah...bah...wha? Okay?

-I don't know the shot number but it's the one looking through tinmans arm at scarecrow. The entire FG (Tinman is vibrating and shaking around super hardcore, while scarecrow is just kinda chilling there. It's INCREDIBLY distracting)
-Zarban already mentioned scarecrows voice, but his didn't throw me off nearly as much as Tinman's did. First time watching it I was all "Yes god?" when he first spoke.
-Again with the shaky cam, but when we are looking up at Tinman, the shking gets so bad that he basically disappears out of the bottom of the frame for a bit, and then decides to come back. Extremely distracting, especially in a closeup.
-And then there's just a lot of really weird editorial choices, like all of a sudden we're watching scarecrow and Tinman from up in the tree... and then back to a closeup. It's all over the place.
-But on the positive, the oil can sequence is pretty good (Aside from the very CG-ness of it all, but such is the way for these projects, so I can't fault you there)

-Thank fully by the time we get to the Witch scene the cameras redbull has worn off and we get some really nice angles and general direction.
-The witches makeup is actually really nicely done, so good job to whoever did that

So in closing, I really hope more of the movie is like the witch scene and less like the Tinman scene. I may just vomit in the aisles from seasickness if the whole movie is like the first scene.

I get that it's super low budget and doing extreme stylisation can work to make the most of it...but this was missing a lot of somethings to get it to that point.

Cheers,
-a slightly blunt but honest BDA.

EDIT:

In my defence his exact words were:

It's not hard to imagine one could be asking "Who is that girl (in the movie)" and "What's going on (in the movie)" Not a word about the actress or general reason for the movies existence.

Jus sayin.

Ugh, I don't even wanna think about tracking that stuff. Amazing you got anything out of it.

And cool, looks like a pretty cool thing to take on.

You know... for ANOTHER Wizard of Oz interpretation.

In the first scene, i'm a little thrown by the shakicamness of it all, the weird framings and really bizarre camera moves seem like a weird choice, but, well to each his own.

What was the crew size like? Is this like a 2 guys in their basement type production, or a group of guys with a bit of cash type thing?

So someone in the chat today recommended Harry Potter for the next topic. I like this idea. It'll give me an excuse to get off my ass and make my thing I've been planning

So yeah. That's my thought.

Georgia Moffett in that episode managed get onto my very short list of women who are, literally, painfully cute.

No kidding. I kinda got the feeling through all of River's stuff that the writers were trying to give her this mysterious and dark past. Except none of them actually had a fucking clue what it was and just decided to make up a new one every time.

And ugh, alright I gotta get this off my chest because it kills me every time I think about it. *Spoilers*

Soooo.....you legitimately expect me to just go along with the idea that Amy has had this lifelong friend that also believes and is obsessed with the Doc...and we've NEVER met her before?! Like....she wasn't even at her wedding?!

Isn't that like the exact same set up for every episode of Sci-Fi where that friend actually turns out to be an alien that implants itself in peoples memories? (Stargate, Torchwood, I'm sure there are others)

....And this is the part where I tried....I really really tried*... to rip apart how much Melody Pond's life makes NO SENSE. And I couldn't, I just couldn't. It's like this dense ball of loop backs and contradictions and bullshitery that makes dissecting Primer look about as complicated as a book by Eric Hill.

So basically what I'm getting at is that the writers bible for Melody Pond looked kinda like this:

and the writers room like this:

*Literally. I spent about an hour reading and rereading the wiki for Melody and the episodes for season 6, and I just wound up even more confused than I started out.

River

Ripley

Bastion is a helluva lot of fun.

And yeah, shoot me a message with some det's for your server, I'll check it out. I can't promise I'll stick around right now, life is utterly insane, but I'll check it out!