Roadside Attractions (Short Film)
 

Hi everyone,

First time poster, long time reader. I thought I'd present my latest short film 'Roadside Attractions' to you. The film was shot on a low budget using two Panasonic 24p DVX100 cameras and edited in AppleÕs Final Cut Pro.

The film has been traveling the country at festivals and since its release 3 months ago, it's been doing very well, getting 10 Official Selections and winning 7 awards including 4 Best Short Film (of its category), 2 Audience Awards and 1 cinematography award.

http://www.arkhamfilms.com/roadsideattractions.html

Hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

-CJ Roy
www.arkhamfilms.com

CJ,

That was awfully good. Before I pick let me say that I was really impressed and hope some day to have that kind of skill. The storytelling was very clear without being too obvious, the pictures were pretty, and the characters believable, in a goth comic sort of a way.

I spent most of my time just enjoying it, wondering what would happen next.

Now, my picky complaints:

The original must have been pretty good, but the transfer to Quicktime had some problems in the blacks. I could see bits of noise, and that annoying "pools of gray" effect that happens when you have flat washes of similar tones right next to each other. The pictures were pretty enough that I didn't much mind.

The swipe-pan from the Mullet Boys to Walter: did you really need to put in a sound there? The rest of the sound design was excellent, and that one sound took me out of the movie for a second.

Other than that, go you! No surprise that you're winning awards. I especially liked two things: (1) the look (framing, movement, coloration, cutting) and (2) in particular, the extended scene with the sugar, both in acting and in structural terms (perfect counterpoint!).

One technical question, however: did you shoot anamorphic, or did you crop?

Michael

Loved it all except the circle fade at the end. It just seems like it needs to end like you've made your statement. Plus going stright to your credits in the film would draw more attention to yourself. And then the scene in the bathroom where he does the karate crap, it just seemed way out of place. Other wish excellent. I mean just just great stuff.

Hey Michael & Lathe,

Thanks for checking out the film. I'm really glad you enjoyed it.

Michael - 1. The whip-pan sound effect from the Mullets to Walter was my choice. Without a sound there, something felt missing. This is the first time anyone has mentioned it, so I'm assuming it works for most people.
2. We shot it 4:3, then letterboxed it. I'm not a big fan of the anamorphic lens on the DVX, even if we could have afforded it at the time of shooting. Everything was just straight out of the box, DVX100, not DVX100a.

Lathe - Yeah, I can see that the iris wipe at the end might bug some people. It's kind of an old serial technique. But, it kind of helps the film take itself less seriously, similar to the fight scene.
Also, in my experience, if you haven't hired trained fight choreographers or actors who want to be actions stars, make the fight funny. Just my opinion, I think it added to the overall humor of the piece.

Thanks again for checking it out.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

-CJ
www.arkhamfilms.com

Wow, that was excellent. Well scripted and acted, great camera work and brilliant editing.

CJ,
Lovely, lovely, lovely!
Well observed performances; really good camerawork/lighting.
Those dawn colours.........

Robin

C.J., I thought the piece was great. The production was superb, in my opinion, and the acting was top notch. I hope to create quality work like that some day.

I love it, Good job. Theres a few things that stood out to me. I like the shot in the bathroom, with the above pan from the mullet dude to walter. The acting was awesome as well. I relly enjoyed the ending, where it shows the ball, then like 6, etc. It was a good way of ending it. My reactions where "Woh...Oh man...Whaaaaaaaaat the?" Yeah, all in all, i can see why its winning all those awards. Isaw some other films on your site that I enjoyed. KEEP IT GOIN'!!!

Very good film CJ!! You should think about submitting it to our film festival that we're organizing!! The Central Nebraska Film Festival, January 28th & 29th, 2005 in Kearney, Nebraska. It's a small festival, but the best short film prize is $300. We would love to show it!

www.sdientertainment.com/acnff/thefestival.htm

Sean

Excellent work! Very enjoyable. Some previous things mentioned
bothered me as well a bit: QuickTime encoding was doing some
weird things in the blacks; kung-fu kind of fight (didn't seem to
fit that particular character) and the closing circle. Other than
that, top notch work!

Very good piece. I enjoyed it and loved the ending.

Now, since you shared the piece with us, how 'bout sharin' some of that other stuff.

Like -
What did you shoot with? This is the DV for the masses forum, so did you shoot it on DV? What lens/adapeters/etc?

I noticed in the credits said 3D modeling and animation - where was that? In the end with all the balls?

Good Job!

Cheers

Stephen, quote from the first post on this thread:So yeah, DV.

If you follow the link and then go to behind the scenes you can
check out 5 days of shooting pictures (see the links on the top
for the various days) which shows all kind of equipment from
simple to more advanced dollies and some lighting gear.

My guess for the 3D work would be the balls as well, they looked
realistic from the small web version though!

Ah never mind... I need to read things more carefully... Going through the site now. Very interesting :)

Still doesn't answer the 3D modeling question though :)

Cheers

Hi everyone,

Wow, thank you guys so much for checking out the film. I'm really glad you're enjoying it.

Jett- That's an awesome reaction! We played in Atlanta and the crowd was very similar. At the last reveal shot, someone yelled out "Holy shit!" It was great.

Sean - We'd love to submit to your festival! Thanks for the invite! Do you have an email address so I can ask a few questions, etc?

Rob - Unfortunately the web compression isn't the greatest, but that's about as good as I can get it until the new codecs arrive.

Stephen - The 3D modelling & animation were for one moving shot at the end with all the "objects" in the field. We had to have a Maya modeller, model the environment and the objects themselves. We also had to hire a match-move artist to match the camera move, in 3D space.

The rest of the shots I did, myself, with After Effects.

Just a bit more info on the production, everything was done with the bare minimum and only the sound designer was paid for the film, to fit the $7,000 (USD) budget.

From a DV fan, it's truly been fantastic to watch a miniDV film compete and win against 35mm films. I'm just blown away with this technology.

Thanks again, everyone! Let me know if you have any questions at all.

-CJ
cj@arkhamfilms.com
www.arkhamfilms.com

Very beautifull movie, CJ!
The acting is superb, and your story is very thrilling allthough in the beginning actually not much happens. But it's so well performed by the actors and it has such a good cinematography that it's very thrilling to watch.
Your ending is just beautifull. Very funny moments in the movie also.

Every price you win, you deserve it :-) Congratulations to you and your actors and actrice!

CJ,
My e-mail is sdientertainment@hotmail.com

Sean D.

CJ: can you tell us a bit more about the actors and acting?

Hey Rob,

The actors are mostly San Francisco based theater actors, except for Francis J. McGuire who played the lead, who is a Seattle based theater actor.

I like working with theater actors because they are quite used to exaggerating everything they do, for a live audience. In my opinion, it's easier to bring the energy level down, than up.

Francis J. McGuire a.k.a Frank (Walter) was a good friend of Scott Nordquist's. I hadn't met or auditioned Frank but just talked to him on a few really long phone conversations. He also looked exactly like my storyboard version of "Walter" that I had done a year prior. He seemed to understand the character very well. He didn't go for a creepy serial-killer act, he went for something that we could sort of sympathize with.

Scott Nordquist (Mullet #1) was cast first through auditions. He blew us all away with his take on the character. We were going for an over the top kind of white trash. The script described him as " a rejected Guitar Center employee with jeans and a tight Poison t-shirt."

Cody Carroll (Mullet #2) "same shirt, different album" blew us away in the auditions as well. His energy level was so high, that we knew he was the guy for the job. Also he came in full costume.

James Anne Farrell (Waitress) has been in all of my films so I always try to find a place for her. Aside from acting, she's a wonderfully talented make-up artist.

Tom Gander (Guy in the Trunk) was one of the producers of the film. Possibly one of the jolliest people you'd ever meet. He just had that great, pathetic look to him that really gave some comedic tones to the character.

Over all we had a hell of a lot of fun making this film. The crew, the actors and people in post. It was just a fun project to work on and the mood of the set was always light and fun. It was a "Oooh, we get to do that today!" kind of feeling. We only rehearsed two nights in between the weekend shoot.

If I left out anything important, let me know.

PS) The large versions of all the films on Arkhamfilms.com won't be up anytime soon due to the overwhelming traffic we've had in October. And already we're at twice our 100gig bandwidth limit for November.

-CJ
www.arkhamfilms.com

Thanks for that CJ. I was interested to see if these where "real"
actors or just some people you knew. They did a fabalous job!

Good luck with all the bandwidth!

thanks for your footage. SHot witht the dvx , that was a great job. I loved the ligting outside. Inside the bar I would add more warm colours, cuase it is too greytone cold looking. The shot in the bathroom was cool and I couldn not detect any faults. I think the movie was a tad too long, especially in the beginning. The black-dressed actor acted like zwarsnegger in the beginning....it felt cold and amateur. The same for the fighint scenes in the bathroom. They are too melllow and you can feel that something was not right. Maybe the actions were too slow, too stiff. BUt in overall, a pretty good shot movie with a too long story and some overacted normal scenes.

Jose - Thanks for taking a look at the film. Sorry you didn't like it.

Thanks again.

-CJ
www.arkhamfilms.com