DVC 9 - The Bottle - by Kris Holodak
 

This one could also be described as what I did on my summer vacation. I promised the kids we'd make a movie together and they had it all figured out before I even arrived. So we had to sort of shoehorn the theme in. But it still works and we had tons of fun doing it.

The whole thing was shot with a little Panasonic palmcorder, for reasons which will probably be obvious after you've seen it. No good cameras on this trip. The image quality turned out not too bad considering I had almost no control over it.

I had been sort of hoping/expecting to get one or more of the kids to do the actual shooting, but they all wanted to act so that didn't work out. Maybe next time.

Hope you enjoy. Looking forward to your comments.

Smile,
Kris (and the kids)

That's great when the kids get to be involved in (1) Making a short and (2) Having that short in a contest! It looked like you all had fun and the footage did come together pretty decent, nice work on the editing.

Exaclty what Marco said.

Polo!


-Randy

Sorry Marco, could not resist.

Really looked like everyone was having a blast. I think you worked the theme in rather well and there were some great shots. Other then the shakeyness that comes with a camcorder like that, i thought that it all worked out rather well. The kids all did great jobs acting.

This is one of my favorites (oops, was I supposed to say that?).

I just liked everything about it.

Stacy

Ahhh !!! that was awesome!

I kept thinking, "that must have just been a total blast to work on".

Good action sequences and a dollop of 'fun' tension.

And I'm guessing all the actors performed all their own stunts.

I think it is awesome that you had such a great crew of committed youngsters who pulled all this together while on vacation to create a pretty darn cool project.

I loved it.

-Jon

This was a fun short to watch. The kids acting was energetic and enthusiastic, the editing fast paced and with the music you selected it had some of the flavor of a "tongue in cheek" suspense thriller.

I liked it quite a bit. Very well done!

Bruce - I had actually wanted the kids to do me up some music. They've been featured in past films of mine. Come to find out my brother always wrote it and they just played. So when I suggested they jam a bit and make it sound a bit Mission Impossible they looked at me like I was crazy. It took a lot of weeding through web sites to find this, but I love the tone of it and it was almost exactly the right length.

Jonathan - I couldn't get them to stop jumping off the cliffs actually. Mike was never quite happy with the jump onto the tube, but finally the boat driver said, "That's it. Fix it in post. I'm done." Mike realy wanted to try it again the next day, but I cut it together that night and he agreed that it worked.

Stacy - nice of you to say, even if you weren't supposed to.

Lisa - I actually brought a tripod with me, but with half of it shot while I was in a life jacket floating in the lake it seemed like it wouldn't feel right to get still while on land.

Marco/Randall - the project was actually their Christmas present but since we live 400 miles apart this was the first chance we got to do it. They were so excited that it was going to go on YouTube. I said I'd give them a link to the high res version, but they were uninterested in that. They wanted to be able to tell all their friends they're on YouTube.

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.
Smile,
Kris

A thriller!!! That was cool. While I watched it I kept thinking, “Somebody is going to see this, all because Dylan made us post on YouTube, and Kris and Co. are going to become famous!”

Great job to everyone involved, and way to go with the shooting and cutting, Kris!

p.s. Loved Blue's cameo. Has that little pooch been in every one of your DVCs?

I too noticed the cute little dog again. I watched this twice and kept thinking how much fun it had to be for the kids. Boats, tubes, and cliffs.

That was quite a jump. I don't know if I'd have the nerve to jump off that cliff. Some great shots. I definitely wouldn't have had the nerve to hold my camera in the water. Good urgency from the boys, and cute girls. Very fun.

Oh yes. I'd even include her in my work shoots if I thought I could get away with it. Hmm... maybe that's why they don't let me bring her into the building.


No good work cameras this time, just a cheap little palmcorder. The actual shooting wasn't so bad. I couldn't get as close to the landing point of the jumps as I wanted because of the splash, but other than that it was fine. The real tricky bit was when we couldn't get a dock at the cliffs and had to swim in from the boat. I'm not a particularly good swimmer to begin with. We wrapped the camera in saran warp and then I floated on my back and kicked my way in.

I'm really pleased with how well it turned out because it allows me to say to the kids see, you don't need a $3,000 camera to make a good movie, you just need a good story and a little planning. Technically you can do it with what you've already got at the house.

PS: and you couldn't pay me to jump off that cliff. Those kids are crazy.

I'd have to say this was my favorite plot line of them all... a message in a bottle waiting to be discovered, only to request a meeting! BRILLIANT! You did a great job of capturing the fun everyone was having on vacation. I certainly enjoyed it.