Tales of Wonder and Woe - Charity Challenge 2009
 

Guys and gals, you all know what to do in here.

This is where we post what goes well, what should go well, and what... well, did not go exactly as planned in the making of our UWOL/DVC charity videos.

Oh, and for once, the UWOL rule #11 is valid for the DVC gang too:
HAVE FUN!!

Good luck, everyone!

For a change I surprised myself and have already come up with a rough idea for my film.
Now I just need a little cooperation from the weather gods. Wait, in this city "good" means anything but rain.

Oh, and I'm sure I will include one of the magic rocks out there too. :)

How is everyone doing?

I've actually got an inkling of an idea...this is a rare thing so early in a challenge...

Now, like you Trond, I just need some cooperation from the weather...

Bob

Great. I have located a supply of decent inexpensive red wine; thanks to Trader Joe's. I have begun consumption and am expecting great things to happy. Ist a good thing I'm at home because the word writing of the script is really, relly, good.

The rock will come allive and be part of my narrative short!

I have drawn up a rough version of the script, found a possible actress with some experience and sent out an email to friends to save their xmas present packages so I could use them in the film.

Seems like the ideas are flowing :)

Hopefully I get to shoot a little this weekend.
Forecast says anything from -20C to -10C up in the mountains, and we might even get snow.
White christmas, what a gift that would be! I am allowed to dream, right?

Good evening,

Good news, I got my camera back from canon in record time, good service. I need to run a long tape through it to make sure time code and audio and video are sinced, I assume they are but I will do some tests before I start.

I have a glimmer of an idea and have not written anything down yet but will start this weeekend at some point.

These themes seem to get harder every challenge, or perhaps i am just getting dumber as I get older.

Well I started work on gathering footage. Did some preset tests to see what color looked best. Working on 2 ideas simultaneously, footage of rocks with narrative, and footage of rocks narrative with (gasp) 'actual people'. Here's a couple of frame grabs:

Tomorrow will be the day when I finally can dig my rock out of the snow and film it. :)

Bill, nice photos.

Good evening,

well, I am stepping out of Dale's little box on this one!! No wildlife at all, Just a theme and some images to get a point across. Hope I can actually pull it off without a swim! i intend to do the audio myslef and have compsoed a medely for it. So I gues I am started.

Wait.. are we allowed to MOVE the rocks????

I have huge ethical issues with that. Rocks in the wild should be left wild.

The rock desided to stay under the white blanket known as snow. But it did talk to me. :)

Spent some hours out filming today. Had the nature all by myself. Didn't see any living creatures at all. But I heard a bird, and the magic rock. :)

What about tag and release?

Good evening,


Tagging any thing is actually bad as it handicaps there natural abilty to cope in their difficult lives!!!


Our Rocks have gone to sleep and have pulled the great white blanket of the north over themselves.

Guys, Marty Henderson has something to say about your musings...

Merry Christmas Marty & Chris !

I'm having terrible hardship in finding a location (good looking apartment) to shoot, because the shooting has to be on either 3rd or 4th of January, and nobody wants to be disturbed then.

Andris, don't let Marty work you ovah. I know he's a saying you gotta get a inside, get a playa station or a sometin. You don't need da apartment, you just need da footage...

In my case, I had a script, a one man crew (myself), a director, and a cast, all scheduled for shoot on Thursday, and my entire crew (myself) had to cancel due to illness. Nasty business... I will still have an entry...but not sure if it will be what was planned now.

For the first time in any of these contests, I am done. No all nighters editing. I went simple this time and pleased with the results. Much like you Chris, I had a large cast and crew totally one (myself). Now I have to wait...

I hear ya, Chris....I came down with something a couple of days ago and today I'm just useless...

I was going to do something this week, as I had it off, but one of my out of town Christmas guests found out I wasn't working and decided to hang out a few more days....
Like until Thursday....arrgggghhhh....so I lost the whole week...
Now I'm sick, with a 6 day work week facing me Monday......

Haven't given up yet, just running out of options....

My main actress came down with the flu shortly before the new year, but we hope she'll be back on her feet next week; we had to postpone a planned shooting though.

Progress report
 

The script is almost ready, a few finishing touches left. Today I draw the scenes. Tomorrow we will shoot. I hope the main actress is fit enough by then. My friend will go get the necessary things during the day – a big glass and gift wraps. I rely on another friend to get an on-camera light from a studio. It’s essential, especially during the second day. If everything clicks, it will happen. I still haven’t resolved the problem with the dolly – I haven’t got any.

At least the soundtrack side is resolved – I found some appropriate Creative Commons music on jamendo.com.

Good Morning,


Well, I am wondering if I am going to get something done worthy of entering. The fellow I contacted about copyright has not even responded, perhaps if I had a grand to offer he might, sense I do not I have been looking for copyright free material. I have only shot about ten minutes of video of which I am using about 22 seconds. my original idea is not unfolding like I thought. I am going on a shoot today, hopefully I will get something i can actually use to put up something worthy of the challenge. As always it is a one person endevor. Must be nice to have great characters and actors to work with!!!

Dale, I have found that musical artists are often reluctant to give permission to use their material, because they don't know what the end product is going to look like and don't want to do anything that involves legal decisions, without recieving some money for it. But I have had good luck editing together short films with music I like from little known artists, and then giving them a preview with their credits in place. If they say no, then you have to reedit with different music,. However, this only happened to me once with a Christian group who didn't want their songs used in what they thought was a too suggestive work.

I really did like the Christian Bluegrass band, and unfortunately never got around to reediting the piece because it lost so much with different music.

I am disappointed it didn't change :(

Meaningless post, just to get to 500, and see if it changes my status from Major Player into something like Lorinda's or Dylan's titles.

Very strange that it reversed those two last posts. Oh, well, enough playing with the message board. Good luck to all and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Dick,

Actually, it was a graphic piece I wanted to use. So I went and got a copyright free one and rebuilt it to suit my needs. I am farely pleased with the result.

I shot some key footage this morning and am capturing it as I write this. I have to go do a shoot tonight 25 miles south and then back to town and 50 miles to the North. If they go as planned I will actually complete my story. Of course it is snowing today so I am wondering if I will even get to my destinations and be able to shoot outdoors!!!

Time is closing in around us.

Oh yea, I managed to get a rock or three in mine too!!!!

Off to editing with the little amount of footage I have.
This can be interesting, and a challenge itself.

Hmm, where did my rock go? I am sure I got it on tape 2 weeks ago. :)

Lorinda might have announced the theme as GIFTS, but there seems to be a groundswell, grass roots push for ROCKS.

This made me think that anyone giving a rock as a gift, made be hitting the nail on the head for this contest. It's too late now because I already completed my film, but I should have done it on a real life story.

When I was a kid my father used to tell me this story about how tough times were when he was young. One Christmas all he got was painted rocks. Some blue ones, yellow, red and green as he recalled. I would tell the story to my kids, how my father would line up his little army of green rocks, and take on the red rocks. I tried to teach them that imagination is everything.

So last Christmas, my ex gave me a rock painting kit, complete with rocks for Christmas. And guess what? The kids LOVED painting the rocks.

Could have made a great short film with that story.

Good Evening,

Just got in from shooting, -33 temp and -38 out in the open in the wind, Uggg. Froze my toes and fingers a tad to be sure. Will look at the footage tomarrow.

Rock story

I was gifted my first painted rock this fall from a young lad after my leg accident, how could one not smile about that!!!

One more set of shots and i should have enough to finish!! Provided tonights were acceptable.

My lead actor lost his wife around Christmas.

It's unlikely we'll get anything done this time.

Bruce,

Around Christmas? How terrible! I hope he can find some comfort in family and friends at this time. Perhaps you should make a film in memory of her. A loyal wife is the greatest gift of all.

Family and friends helped a lot. It was expected but not this soon.

I'm one of the friends and photographed the service for him. He'll be OK and will be working on films with me soon. Weather is cold here and we'll pick a project to work on before long. He'd like to expand on what we did with the DV17 "trailer" idea so maybe we'll do that just to get him working on something again.

Bruce, sorry to hear about your friend's loss.

My regrets to the family, Bruce. :(


This evening finished filming the last 17 of the 22 scenes. My main actress was still ill, but luckily she found a new actress with an acting and even filmmaking experience for me, so it was a real pleasure to shoot her.

Will now edit on 6day and 7day, thanks to the time difference I'll have the time to upload on 7day night. :)

Unfortunately have no rocks in it...

Bruce, pass along my condolences to your friend, I'm very sorry he's got to go through that.

I finally managed to get a donation in to the fund, but hadn't planned on completing a film this time around. Just my luck, of course, I had an idea about fifteen minutes ago and now I'm scrambling to find some wrapping paper and as much in the way of expensive-looking electronics as I can.

Technically I had the nugget of an idea in the first day or two, but just before Christmas I was laid up a couple days with a cold, then one thing after another kept me busy and I never came up with a satisfying punchline. Then it pops into my head, last minute. This had better work as well as I think it will, I'm really getting tired of this.

Sorry to hear about that Bruce, death always saddens us all.

Okay here is my update.
Filming is complete (yeah) - all +45 minutes of it... need to cut that down a bit.
I now have to do post and a little bit of voice over.
I also need to figure out how to upload the video as per UWOL rules as its a nature film.

Cheers All,

Graeme