DVC10 - Trip - by Daniel Ross
 

I'm a bit late putting this thread up-- was waiting for the film to be released, but now I missed it by a bit. Anyway...


Specs-
Shot on the PV-GS500; edited in FCP on a macbook pro, with additional work in After Effects, and a few other apps.


Well, horror is a foreign genre to me, so this was a great excuse to try something new. The plot was also new territory for me, but a few familiar things showed up (especially in the editing).

I had spoken with my friend Jesús about doing the contest, and we were looking at the theme after it was posted. Took until 4am to come up with an idea, but had a workable script by 5am [Friday morning].

I went to Sacramento [California] for the weekend [about 20 miles from Davis, where I go to school], and we shot Saturday night [driving around the Sac State campus].

Jesús' brother and his friend were very helpful, and filming went smoothly, once we worked out the details. It was tough shooting in a moving car, continuous long shots, POV (and acting). It was a good shoot, though.

Originally had planned for more angles-- playing between POV and third person, but went with [almost entirely] the POV shots. I'm happy with how it turned out.

We got a rough edit of those shots done, then met up again on Wednesday and planned to shoot that evening.

We ended up walking around the UC Davis campus for about an hour to find a suitable location. In the end, the place we found was great, but dark (as I'm sure you can tell). No way to light it effectively either, but, hey, it's a horror movie, and that's what made this especially fun.

Worked on it for the next few days, and then finished up the edit and worked on the FX through the end of the weekend. I don't want to get too sidetracked with this post right now, but if anyone is interested I'd be happy to get into the details of the FX [or other parts of the editing].


I had talked to a composer friend, but he was busy over the weekend, so I ended up working on the music myself-- completely new for me. I'm not really a musical person, so this was hard, but interesting, of course. I'm VERY glad it was a horror film so the minimalist approach could work; otherwise, I would have had no chance. I'm happy with the results, considering.
[The "incidental music" in the credits is the music playing in the car, by the way, written by Sean Beeson.]


Overall, I like the film, not to say it's perfect.


An important note:
It's supposed to be dark. I hope this doesn't distract people when watching. It's very dark in some parts, so you might feel like you can't see what's going on-- but that's ok-- you're not supposed to. (Then again, you should see SOMETHING, but I believe it's bright enough.) Not having a PC to test on makes this tough. I could up the gamma for the PC users if this is a serious problem-- from a couple friends I asked to test it, it seemed ok.
Trouble is that if someone thinks they should see more, even if they shouldn't, it distracts from the film. Wish I had a workaround on that.


Anyway, I'd love some comments, so go for it. Thanks for watching, and good luck/congrats to everyone.



By the way, the file that I uploaded to youtube can be found here:
http://ci-pro.com/misc/trip.mov
It's 50mb, for max. quality, but that'll work if you'd like to avoid youtube compression or save the file.

I liked it. I was a little thrown a round by the flash backs and the detached hand followed by bones, but I certainly understood running like a bat out of hell if I had woke up in that situation. I will have to watch the larger version again tonight when I get home and turn up the brightness a little to see if I missed something. I had the same problem with my film.

Reassuring that you saw the hand (and got that they were flashbacks). Means the brightness isn't really an issue and the story should be clear enough-- if fast. Might want to watch again, but it's all there. I certainly packed quite a bit into 2:30.

I think one thing that might throw people off is that it's confusing-- that's intentional. This is POV [ie in his head, not just his eyes], showing his confused perception of the world, and he's high and was just unconscious.

Well overall I was confused too so that part got across. I am sure when I can watch it again it will help :)

what flavor blunt? LOL just kidding. It being a new genre to you, you did a decent job of trying to interpret a method of trying to scare people. The car's gasline was cut? nice. That starts a good build up. Overall you did a decent job. You were also among the minority that shot in the dark, that always adds some good element.

"Scary" is super hard to do. You set the mood, the visuals supported the mood, and the confusion adds to the mood. Tension and suspense build and I think you carried it off quite well.

Hi Daniel
 

Wow. Those dudes and the dudette were stoned bigtime. I take it the moral of the story is NOT to by weed from "a friend" of the front passenger. lol

Seriously though, I think you have a pretty good film here. I too liked the cut gasoline line shot. Of course when I see that, almost always expect an explosion. I'm surprised you didn't hire a pyrotechnics team and totally blow that ride sky high!

You had some pretty freaky POV stuff too. Nice.

Looks like you, Yeimi, Alfonso and Jesus had a great time making this film.

Thanks, guys.

I'm very happy with how the gas line shot came out, too. Glad it worked for you.

Well, if there was an explosion, he'd have no one to chop up, eh? Ha.

JUST SAY NO!

Okay, now that I got that out of my system, :-) I thought this was a sharp film. Very well done. Moody and a nice twist on scary. Visuals execllent. Sound excellent. Lighting excellent.

Thanks, Hugh.


The original thought was that kids just relaxing and messing around being attacked, especially in a state where they couldn't defend themselves, would be scary, but, then again, it does seem to be a strong anti-drug message, doesn't it? Suppose that works, too.

Hey Daniel:

How'd campus police treat you at Sac State. Have any run in stories ?

Anyway, nice to see more Central Valley productions representing....

In the end, not sure if there was a moral to the story surrounding drugs... you left me wondering about that....

No problems there. We were basically driving around in circles, though it was worrying when we had the light on in the car with the cigar lit-- surely the police wouldn't be happy, but I guess we got lucky. We weren't really waiting around to see.
Two weird things did happen--
We were parked in a parking structure going over the script and planning-- and the police kept circling behind us. But they were just chasing the kids skateboarding through the parking structure. Ha.
Then as we were circling, these two girls in a car behind us decided to follow us-- for no explainable reason. When we finally stopped to get them to stop following us (as we needed to, y'know, film), they laughed, explained we were scared because we thought they were trying to kill us (uh... no...) then left. All of us immediately thought it was an idea to incorporate, but didn't really go anywhere. Perhaps next time.

Hmm... well, as I said, my idea was about being attacked while hallucinating and not being able to handle it, such as just reaching out and holding the chopped off hand.

hi daniel: this is a great mood piece. i like the sound mix quite a bit, the ambient radio noise with the repetitive chiming soundtrack and the mutterings and random natterings of the kids in the car is all great. very moody, very suggestive of something baaaaad about to happen with the old "running out of gas" narrative device.

the POV shots work initially but are a little over-used in the final analysis, i think, which is symptomatic of the lack of clearly defined narrative. big points for mood, but i was pretty confused about the story. i'm easily confused, though. while i think clarity is somewhat over-rated and like things that are suggestive rather than obvious, i was left in too much of the intellectual space of wondering what was going on, rather than in the more emotional and visceral space that was set up with the groovy moody elements. the drive to make sense of what i was watching, took me out of the mood that was set.

sounds great, looks great--i like the motion blur stuff--just needs a story that keeps up with the rest of it.

sorry for the belated response, but i have to give you big props for your feedback. i think you give excellent responses to the films you watched, and, since i watched your film last and my head was spinning by the end of commenting, i held off on commenting on it, until i could watch it again, to try to give you some substantive comments to chew on a bit.