Well I once put my camera in an empty case of pepsi and and cut a whole in it and filmed stuff in a grocery store. But they sort of caught on when they saw my boom mic so we ended up getting kicked out!!!

Yeah, its that whole "Whatever happens in Vegas...yada yada yada...thing"

I think that allowance for filming in grocery stores is primarily going to be based on an individual basis, mostly leaning towards NOT. Pretty much never with chain stores, and perhaps sometimes in independent grocers.

Some would be concerned about patron comfort, and the potential to drive customers away if they walk in and see a film crew or cameras and lights.

More astute grocers would be concerned about potential liability issues pertaining to someone perhaps tripping over a tripod leg or mic cord, and not having such things covered under site insurance since they are not related to typical grocer/shopper activities.

We faced similar concerns regarding our shoot this week and decided not to even bother asking to shoot in a restaurant since it would have been very difficult anyway, so we ended up doing very tight shots on a set we built in my garage and exterior shots of a vacant building upon which I will add some signs and stuff in post. I won't be editing until tomorrow (Sat) so I don't really know how good it will look until then.

While filming outside the vacant building, we had some folks stop by and ask us if we were shooting for the movie they are making in town. Apparently, that day, the paper ran a story about a film crew in town filming for an upcoming feature about the year the Northern California 'wine country' swept the Paris tastings and put us on the snobbery map.

Yeah, Right ! I'm standing here with 2 friends, 1 tripod, and my XL2 miniDV cam. No dude, we're not in the papers.

It was a sweet thought though.

-Jon

We have one more evening of shooting scheduled for tonight. The shooting session went a little late last night. We shot in a friend's apartment, and it took a long time to get the shot looking right. We never got the shot we initially conceived, but what we got should work pretty well.

Tonight's shot will likely be a little complicated as it involves a few small children (including my 4 year old daughter) so we could be in for an evening of 'herding cats'...so to speak.

Plus we have to rig up some clever finagling for a 'stray balloon' shot.

I also just finished building a dolly this afternoon. I wanted to use it for a shot we did the other day, but it wasn't ready and we didn't have room for it in the space anyway - so hopefully I will be able to get a neat little shot with it tonight. I've been playing with it all afternoon, and I love how it works.

-Jon

just in from final night of shooting. stopped for pizala....pia...pizza and beer to thank the crew......feeling a little durnnk.....drunk. cutingg

cutiting'


cutting tomorrow.


goipng to bed for now.

-Jon

WOW I still don't have any idea what i'm doing yet but hopefully I will figure it out pretty soon cause the deadline proceeds to get closer and closer.

At least one allowed it. Google for "Chad Vader Day Manager". 5 short episodes and the series got mentioned in Videomaker magazine.

Chad is Darth Vader's inept brother. Starts out as the day manager in a large grocery store. Looks pretty good and is quite funny. Very well done.

Well, folks.

Like some of you posting crew letting you down...Looks like I've been jinxed from the start.

Had a fun idea and some great visuals in mind for a sad tale of unfulfulled love through the ages. Starting out in Medieval time, they cannot be together because of duty and obligations.

They almost cross paths in about the 1870's, and finally meet again in the present. With a twist.

A friend lined up some SCA folks who actually had most costumes needed and supposedly liked the idea.

No dice.

Plan B: Simpler idea, could not interest anyone in acting.

Plan C: Grandson and one of his friends helped me lay out a story that looked good, planned on shooting tomorrow but he got his work schedule mixed up and that fell through.

Plan D: I step in front of the camera myself. Story idea is there but kinda thin. However am somewhat determined to NOT hang on the wall again.

It's very frustrating. I live in an area where there is really very little interest in this sort of thing. Wife calls it the "cowtown syndrome" and she may be right. I think I'll run some ads in the local paper and see if there is any interest in forming an "Independent Video" club.

As always, I look forward to seeing what the rest of you come up with.

Mine is finished. Now I have two more competitions to finish! :)

Stacy

Looks like I will end up on the wall of shame. I have been working a lot and still have a lot of work to do so there is little of free time left. That's life when you run your own business sometimes. But I will be back for DVC10. :)

I'll be on the wall of shame, too. I kept checking the wrong thread for the theme (I'm such a dork). Just today I saw the "DVC 9 Theme ---- "Meeting"" thread. That still leaves me one whole day to write, shoot, edit, and post. Yeah...right.
To look at the bright side, I can only do better next time.

Ugh Wall of Shame for me too. Rats.

Just watched the first two episodes....nicely done!
There appears to be 8 episodes now...found them at:

http://www.splu.net/chadvader.htm#ep1

Bob T.

I've seen most of those episodes myself. :)

Well, I may stay off the wall!

I went out and shot some footage today.
It may not amount to much but it might be enough to keep me off the wall of shame.

We'll see.

Mike

youtube
 

What's the best format for youtube?

Do we have a youtube channel for all our DVC9 entries?

I'd like to know that myself. My youtube posts always turn out looking like crap. I usually output them as .wmv or .mpg but the quality looks horrible by the time I get the file size small enough to upload them. When I use Quicktime the audio sounds like it's under water (some kind of funky flange or something).

I don't recall anything about a group being set up on youtube for this contest, and when I posted mine I looked in the communities section and did not see a DVchallenge contest group.

Stacy

I get crappy audio from Quicktime sometimes as well.

Youtube has a 100mb file size limit, that should be plenty for a 3 minute DVC entry.

Moviemaking ProTip: Don't shoot a movie in your own bedroom at the end of the day. Finally get all my stuff ready to go, it's ten PM, finish shooting at eleven thirty, I'm too tired to clean up all this crap. It's on my desk, on my bed, everywhere.

Maybe I'll sleep on the floor.

As far as YouTube is concerned, Douglas Spotted Eagle has some advice in this thread from the Vegas forum: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...77493&p=724504

I'm pretty sure youtube compresses the uploaded video even further leaving not much options for how your video will turn out. I would suggest not uploading your entries to youtube, but to Dailymotion, Reever and even Break. The quality of your video will be much much better on these sites.

Also, upload your entries to exposure.cbc.ca, if of course you don't mind the possibility of your entry being broadcasted nation wide in Canada.

Just to make sure...

Did you read the thread where I said everyone must upload a Youtube version?

Sorry I didn't read that. What I meant is, if it's part of the rules of course uploading to youtube is a must but also upload to the sites I suggested which offer better recompression if hosting is a problem.

Done and done. e-mail sent. nothing else i can do now about it...

Best of luck all...


Kevin

Mine's done. Jinxed from the start with no cast, no crew. 3 tries at organizing something and finally headed out to a location, just me camcorder and tripod.

Turned out a lot better than I thought it would, but I ain't a gonna hang on the wall this time.

Looking forward to y'all's films

see ya in the funnies

what are the rules on language, as in swear words? If it is OK for TV, ok for DVC? I didn't see info on this in the rules.

Thanks.

Uploading now. Woo Hoo! Almost thought I wouldn't make it because I was having trouble with the music. I stink at doing things with loops. Then I decided a little money could make the problem go away and was better than disappointing the kids by not finishing on time.

Good luck to everyone.
Smile,
Kris

I don't think there are a lot. DVC 2 or 3 had a s and f bomb I believe.

There aren't any actually. My film just pushed the boundries about half a mile....

AWESOME! Mine is not G, but it's not R ;-)

Well, I'm boned. The actual shoot came together too smoothly for me to get away without issues, I should've known something would come up.

Got a master and two over the shoulder shots for the conversation taking place; the master was poorly framed (too much headroom, and too difficult to see the funny stuff sitting on the table in front of my character), one OTS was missing audio (never work yourself into a panic over your Beachtek's battery running out, 'cause if you're an idiot like me and you turn it off to save power you'll forget to turn it back on) and the other was too dark to make out the people featured in it. Always with me this stuff is too dark, I've got to get some real lights.

I built myself a 35mm adapter earlier in the week, and while using it I neglected to perfect the relay focus at one point (changed lenses, must have bumped my camcorder's focus or zoom wheel by mistake), so most shots are very soft. Not so bad, considering it would have gone on Youtube, but still.

All that, plus the audio was horrific, the theme was weak (thanks in part to the poor framing I mentioned earlier), and I couldn't find any music. But excuses, excuses, this is all a long-winded way of saying I'm too embarrassed to attach my name to something this bad, so I'm hanging by my toes from the Wall once again. At least my spot's still warm from last time.

I give credit to Chris Ruiz, though, as while I was initially offended by his suggestion that my films could possibly have been too stretched out, I gave his one minute movie idea a shot, and came up with a story I liked that fit in less than two pages. Some last minute story tweaking (eliminating one of two 'punchline' sight gags) helped immensely, and the version of the film that I cut is fifty seconds long. The movie's a piece of garbage, but it was an excellent exercise.

Can't wait to see what the rest of you guys did with this!