Personal View Feature Film Collaborative project

lolo

@Elenion ok

atticusd

#

Some suggestions:

Once some ideas are put on the table and we agree on which one (or combination of ones) we'll use, we should outline the hell out of it. At that stage maybe we could use Google Docs or some kind of multiplatform collaborative writing software to shape the story. With color codes and a little bit of moderation it shouldn't get out of control.

Once outlined, we'll find ourselves on the screenwriting stage. What do you guys think of assembling a team of writers instead of putting all the responsibility on one person? I wouldn't mind writing a segment or more. I think I can write decent prose when I put myself into it (you can read some at: atticusdiablowsky.com BIG SPAM ALERT ;)). When I write in english the process is a bit slower because I have to triple check everything to make sure that every sentence sounds natural and the grammar, spelling and syntax are correct. But I've been writing english fiction for quite a while so, in any case, I have the resources to do it.

Sound wise I would say that we're already pretty well covered by the @thepalalias but in case he needs more assistance, there's this redhead northern spanish guy who happens to be both an audio magician and a very talented musician and on top of that, one of my closest friends ;). I haven't told him anything yet but I'm sure he'd be more than glad to help. You can hear one song from his 2001 album Superficie here:

Ten years later, the motherfucker continues to get better and better.

atticusd

So, summarizing, these are the things I'm more than willing to do:

* Give all the help I can in the outlining process.
* Direct a segment, and assemble a small crew and a group of actors.
* Help someone direct his (or her) segment here in Spain and possibly in another european country.
* Write at least part of the screenplay.
* Get a talented musician/audio technician to help @thepalalias with the soundtrack, audio processing, etc provided he wants/needs that help.
* Donate.

lolo

# @atticusd there is scriptwriting software that can write in the cloud called celtx studio, is opensource and a really good one, really sturdy and stable, is opensource, so it´s free, but the cloudservice is by subscription, i believe 5 u$ dollars a month for 5 writers

i´ll update your summary to the first post

----

btw, i think we should also discuss the license that the feature will have, i much prefer the creative commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

and we should probably discuss this now, so no company could come and steal any of the plots commented

lolo

# @Aksel i like your idea of having just one script, and all the Directors around the world will shoot his or her version of the same script
:D i had a similiar idea a few years a go, when i was at the berlinale talent campus, but with shortfilms, but that only remain as an idea as nobody was in the spirit to work on those short days :(,
perhaps if your artistic concept ain´t choosen for the feature we could make it still as a collage of shortfilms to make one feature :), and really short, let´say less than 3 minutes, so really everyone can make it in their own style

RRRR

@lolo

Assets: well many things depend on timing, but I know a lot of musicians. So there is a clear possibility we could borrow songs. (We can talk further about that if / when the time comes). Also, I have connections to networks of dancers and actors - so there's plenty to choose from, apart from the film-makers I usually work with.

If we write the script as a team I wouldn't mind getting involved - but I have to say it also depends on the idea and what it does for me creatively - since I work very intensely and precisely when I get down to writing. I have done a lot of creative writing, prose and poetry in English but then it's been for my own artwork and that's a different kettle of fish. At the very least I could be a part as an editor!

In terms of locations there are plenty of forests and mountain areas in my vicinity. With and without civilisation. :)

With the right timing it could be possible to work with more bulky / advanced gear like cranes and such. It could also be possible to get some additional finance from some sources which I think could be into supporting the project.

atticusd

# @lolo I used celtx at college and I agree with you, it's a beautiful piece of software. I won't mind to pay the cloudservice fees myself if we end up using it.

Talking about the license, that's exactly the same one I tend to use for all the stuff I put online. It seems the most suitable for the kind of thing we're trying to accomplish here.

Elenion

Celtx studio sounds good.
I don't find much exciting to shoot the same thing but in different styles, ok it is easier but not much original.
If we need a more orchestral score or jazz/funky/classical more than an electronic one i have a close collaborator/friend who is a great composer.

lolo

# if someone also suports the

Delivery
____a) License the feature under the creative commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ (by @lolo), Supported by:
____________1* @atticusd
____________2* @lolo

please rise your hand

atticusd

@lolo

Can you please change the title of my silly idea from Possessed to something like "Stowaway"?

lolo

# my idea for the script, (please brainstorm this)

"Cogito ergo sum"
Fiction
(original by @lolo)
__Production Restrictions:
____a) unifying off-voice in first person (I), this is the voice of the toughts in real time of the main character
__Main artistic concepts:
____a) it goes by stages, wich are different realities, in wich the main characters doesn´t know what´s going on and gets increasingly confussed,
____b) with the constant being the chase of a shadow (please brainstorm the chase of the shadow plot, as i don´t think is up to other concept of multiple realities)
__Storyline (haha per stage :D, is under creative commons already, so no evil corporation can steal it for profits):
A man walks on the street, he feels someone is chasing him, the feel continues in his home until he falls sleep, he wakes up, and everything on his bedroom (furniture, etc) is hanging from the ceiling, he gets frightened, a shadow appears in a wall and goes after him, he runs away fast but hits a wall with his head.
The main character is now a woman in a psychiatric hospital (only in one white room), she is being treated for squizophrenia, a nurse forgets her cellphone, the shadow appears and the main characters tries to defend herself with the cellphone (is the only thing that has at hand), the shadow tries to eats her, she closes her eyes.
She appears now inside a videogame (because of the cellphone)...
Then the main character appears in a world made like in the matrix, so he gets unplugged from a computer, the shadow appears and chases him, he runs towards a door, he opens it before the shadow reaches him,
He appears now on the stage of a theatre, they are rehearsing a play, and the main character is the main character of the play, he doesnt understand, but stills tries to perform, but he gets the shivers, the director calls for a break, the main character takes a sit on a sofa from the theatre set that is old and grungy, he gets itchy, he starts to scartch himself with the palm of his hand hitting his chin as a cat would do
The main character is now a cat, he enjoys the sun, he feels that a shadow is chasing him, but he catches the shadow first, he plays with his shadow, the shadow was his own shadow all along, the cat is happy

And after the credits we see an alter ending, when the main character in a creepy set drinks tea along with his shadow, and the shadow controls him as a puppet with black fishlines

atticusd

Aye to the donation for the cloud storage idea by @driftwood.

L1N3ARX

Would this be a non-dialog film, with just a bit foley sound and music to help guide the progression? Cause the one thing that could hamper the overall quality is somebody submitting a piece with crappy sounding on-board audio and mixing that in with well recorded audio. Would be fun to make some kind of art film with a real premise but without dialog. Just something really visual that keeps people on edge.

driftwood

Aye to anything you want me involved in. :-)

sohus

I can shoot stuff in Amsterdam/Rotterdam if you need some foreign storylines :)

lolo

# @L1N3ARX i think that depends of the script choosen by all of us, your comment is quite similar to this one

GUIDELINES OF PRODUCTION (Restrictions on production if the script so requires)
1) Production teams have the option of either recording with a pre-determined, inexpensive setup (with chosen settings to ensure tested consistency) or leaving the audio blank so that the voiceover and score can run through the scene. (by @thepalalias)

do i place you as a supporter of this appreciation?

@FGCU where do you live? perhaps later when we choose the teams you could join one near you (if it does exist) as a DP, or make one, or...

lolo

# @driftwood hahahahh the awesome, where can you shoot something?

perder

# silly idea for hack advertisement or partial idea for a (meta) fiction
(as an ad it would be a lot shorter than a full feature, but would still allow a lot of contributors.)

some Russian hacker "terrorist" produces some kind hack that is quickly distributed to his "evil minions" or partners in crime or whatever, literally seen in strategic positions all around the world.

- if made as an advertisement, this seemingly ominous device in the end could turn out to be the gh2vk (and the video world was never the same - que evil russian laugh)

- if a start to any fiction, the device/hack could be anything really (instructions to blow shit up, assassinate, or something completely harmless), tying the different local storylines together.

anywho, I got a gh2 in Bergen, Norway (or Ålesund/Oppdal for christmas/winter holiday) if you need some footage from here.

thepalalias

Under workflow, the section "_c)Scriptwriting in the cloud, via Celtx Studio (opensource, but cloudservice by subscription https://studio.celtx.com/#/studio/nav-pricing for the rates), "Aye" for the ones that can donate some money (by @atticusd & @lolo)"

I support extensive collaboration at the brainstorming and outlining stage, but think that there should be 1 final script writer, 1 script editor and ... well infinite proofreaders, to check for typos and such. :)

I'm not an exceptional writer myself, but I come from a family of them: practically everyone in my immediate family is published (brothers, sisters, mother, father, step-mother...) and several of them have worked at national magazines or literary journals (American Short Fiction, The Atlantic, U.S. News and World Report, Legal Affairs) and published multiple books.

Heck "screenwriting" was something we talked about when we watched movies long before I ever hit my teens. My step-dad would accurately predict the events in Swedish movies the rest of could understand (but he couldn't, because of the language barrier) based on the structure alone, or my father would talk about the subtext and "un-stated messages" of a given thriller, or my mother would discuss the role of a given event or character in making another character more or less sympathetic. I got tired of hearing "and if they'd followed a more traditional structure, this would be where act 2 begins", but I enjoyed most of the rest. :)

In the decades that have followed, it's been my experience that in fiction (especially in non-comedic genres) collaborative writing is infrequently successful (Casablanca excepted) in terms of its sense of unity and that a writer's "best friend" in that respect, is really their editor, not a writing partner.

That's why I think the role of the collaboration should be to really figure out all the places we want to go and the way we want to do it, but that the writing should have just one stylistic voice in the end. Just my two (or maybe four) cents. :)

Reckless

I think it would be an interesting concept if the film revolved around a central idea or event, such as the day we made contact with E.T.'s or what not. This would give all of the different teams the freedom to do what ever they wanted. The different scenes in the film would be separate vignettes all connected to the central idea. It seems a shame to me that we would have the opportunity to have so many different beautiful and varied locations available as backdrops and be forced to avoid using them to try to keep it looking the same from scene to scene. I believe it would also give the teams more freedom to show off there own separate artistic expression instead of being locked into a certain lighting scheme, film mode, camera movements etc.

thepalalias

@Reckless I think they should definitely write down your idea as a potential approach, but I just wanted to clarify something about the ideas already on the table, too. :)

For my own idea (and I got the impression this was true of several others as well) the reason we are asking where everyone is from is to try to tailor scenes to take advantage of the available locales. I don't think anyone has talked about trying to exclude the available locales at this point (and each participant is free to put in requests for places they would like included before the final scriptwriter(s) start working their magic).

The reason that limiting the more technical part of the "palette" (or at least running ideas by the team) a bit has been discussed is to try to ensure that the film comes off as a unified "film" as opposed to the compilation approach we are taking with the showreels. Nobody was saying that we should use "exactly the same" for almost anything, just that it get approved first. :)

thepalalias

+1 For Driftwood's cloud storage.

L1N3ARX

@lolo - Definitely, as I think it would really cheapen the experience. OR - you might consider a kind of "stream of consciousness" narrative overlay; where the protagonist recounts his experience at key points during the film. Not necessarily narrating each scene... but something simple, drawing attention and offering a voice where it will be most impactful. This would be done by someone with a good mic / sound setup. Everyone tells me I have an amazing voice for that kind of thing, but don't have the equipment just yet.

lolo

# @Reckless i think you have a valid point, and i like your idea better than my previous one....

developing your idea,,,
perhaps we could agree among all the teams unfying relations to get

according to your idea, the unifiyng thing can be
-a global event (event yet to be determined),

i could say that perhaps
-a choral structure will be the must suitable, something as "Babel" of "Gonzalez iñarritu", with common but distant relationships, between the several main characters,

-perhaps about the characters we could have different lines of conflict, i´m mean, some main characters will be heavy charged towards an internal conflict, others to the inter-personal conflicts, and others with the extra-personal conflict that is the global event, theirs reaction could be different to this event, but in this three groups, so we can have a three global dramatic arches for the editing room, and of course the global event, must be the one that starts the arch and the one ending it

-perhaps what @RRRR of the general and the specific can become handy in terms of the decoration and script global structure

if we can agree more unifiers, or more specific unifiers (what relationships between the characters, a father, a child, a cat, a grandpa, a boss, etc...), perhaps in this way every director could write their own segment

lolo

# @thepalalias about the "Under workflow, the section "_c)Scriptwriting in the cloud", i think that is as subjective as what the story will be, to who the writers are (and theirs cultural, familiar values heritage is, or isnt´, etc....) and what process would that script would take in order to be a movie (i´m mean just look at my post up there concerning Reckless idea), as this is not the classic way of making movies, we can try others tools, i think it is a if the script so requires, therefore i´m changing base on your comment as an alternative

btw your +1 on driftwood´s clouds, means "Aye"?

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