my first short

[thephoenix]

i don't get it all but nice work !! keep up

[Ingerson]

so much better than mine, wish we lived closer so we could collab ?

[kaylee]

On 4/23/2019 at 8:24 PM, graphicnatured said:

Nice work, Kaylee! I recognize my neighborhood in there. You live here too? I like the compositions and also appreciate the color.

tysm!!! yeah, im from SD but i moved a couple years ago, but being that its the place im most familiar with besides LA, i decided to shoot it all there~! @Jonesy Jones is from the hood too! [warning: the golden west hotel is like arkham asylum ? and the horton plaza parking structure security guards are REALLY humorless ?]

21 hours ago, thephoenix said:

i don't get it all but nice work !! keep up

lol thank you. i hear ya. @Snowfun @thebrothersthre3 heres a thing: one scene is out of order

like honey bunny and pumpkin at the beginning of pulp fiction, where youre getting a glimpse of the last scene, theres one part that isnt chronological:

the part when the girl finds the red book in the hallway happens AFTER the following scene where the young man tears a page out of that same red book. he presumably drops it, and she finds it – its his journal. so she reads it, or something, and learns how to meet him "out of body" on the roof. hes been taking notes on his experiences

previously, the young man goes to the old man with a pen, and tears a piece of paper out of his journal, because they have communicated about this astral projection phenomenon. the young man wants the old man to write something arbitrary – it could be anything – to see if he can subsequently "read" it at night, (which is a thing that i dont believe in called 'remote viewing' lol. the CIA did have some psychic spies tho... ?)

so the film goes like this:

(1) the young mans day
(2) the womans day
(3) the old mans day
(4) the meeting on the roof

BUT 2 and 3 would have to be switched to make it chronological

maybe that helps a bit ?

6 hours ago, Ingerson said:

so much better than mine, wish we lived closer so we could collab ?

naww, dont say that about yourself~! ive made plenty of stuff that turned out to be a complete disaster, thats why im getting better~!!! ?

my biggest reflection on making this film is that it was a TRANSFORMATIVE experience for me because you just dont GET the whole filmmaking process until you DO it. you might have a strong intellectual understanding of it, but much like being in a NASA swimming pool it is not the same as being an actual astronaut in outer space lol. we learn by doing! at least i do. seeing the process as a whole was eye opening in an indescribable way for me, hard to explain, but you guys know what i mean~! ?

 

[graphicnatured]

On 4/24/2019 at 11:51 PM, kaylee said:

[warning: the golden west hotel is like arkham asylum ? and the horton plaza parking structure security guards are REALLY humorless ?]

 

I would be too if I was security at a place that dead. I'm going to look into golden west hotel now. Thanks for the tip.

 

.... just looked into it. That place is awful! Yikes. An asylum or jail cell. It definitely fits the role of either.

[kaylee]

1 hour ago, graphicnatured said:

An asylum or jail cell

i told u ??????

[mercer]

I wanted to watch this twice before I commented. And I think I want to watch it again, on a bigger screen, before I get too detailed. 

But I will say, I think you did a great job, Kaylee! I love the simplicity of your shots... compositions...  the handheld static shot is very powerful. Your use of frame, not only in a shot but how it would edit with the next shot left me feeling sad for the characters. I also thought all of the FX were well done. It was cool to see your earth shot come to life as it did. Very cool!!!

I think even after another viewing, the images and connotations will haunt me for a little bit. 

[kaylee]

i take that as a huge compliment, thank you so much @mercer, im so glad you watched it. and yeah, watch it on a tv~! ?

[fuzzynormal]

On 4/25/2019 at 2:51 AM, kaylee said:

the horton plaza parking structure security guards are REALLY humorless

Ha! I have a skit from 25 years ago that ends abruptly because the Horton security guys chased us off the premises.  Some things never change I suppose.

[kaylee]

3 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

Ha! I have a skit from 25 years ago that ends abruptly because the Horton security guys chased us off the premises.  Some things never change I suppose.

OMG the last shot of my short was ~literally~ captured seconds before security showed up and stopped us!!! ? ? ?  i was so pissed, i was like "ill just redo this shot somewhere else", and then i got the footage home, and i was like.... hey thisll work ? ? ? ? ? ? 

[kye]

6 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Ha! I have a skit from 25 years ago that ends abruptly because the Horton security guys chased us off the premises.  Some things never change I suppose.

Sounds like someone needs to make a 3 Hour 1 Minute film about getting kicked out by security...  who wants to stuff around with artists who might not show up, the security guys sound pretty reliable  

[Emanuel]

10 hours ago, kaylee said:

i take that as a huge compliment, thank you so much @mercer, im so glad you watched it. and yeah, watch it on a tv~! ?

My dear, I did it and will watch once more for several times to come I am sure, including on a 4K projector BTW : ) Absolutely mandatory to have it @ big screen : -)

[Django]

People like to throw the word organic around but this really captures it imo.

Almost makes me wanna repurchase a 5D3! 14-bit RAW FHD >>>>> 8-bit 4:2:0 4K.

RAW really lets you go hard on the grade without it looking fake/cartoonish. Worth the workflow effort for narrative.

Great execution as well.. especially considering limitations. Getting some dope eery Lynch vibes from it!

Care to share some more technical details about shooting/post? 

[kaylee]

aww, thank you so much @Django... i really appreciate it that you recognize what i was going for

41 minutes ago, Django said:

Care to share some more technical details about shooting/post? 

but of course! what can i say tho...? i dunno where to start? ask me anything...!

[Gregormannschaft]

Haven't posted on here in ages but still lurk, just wanted to say you've done an amazing job kaylee. I don't really 'get' the story, but I'm all for films being mood pieces and trying to evoke a particular feeling rather than being as accessible as possible. I'll try not to repeat what others have said on the visuals, but I really really liked what you did with colour. The opening shots of the man on the bus, at work and then on the subway home were stunning. My favourite set of shots has to be the woman travelling on the bus which felt very cinematic.

I liked the idea with the very dark shots and they'd probably look beautiful in a pitch black room, but I couldn't much on my monitor during the day. I like the idea though, did you underexpose these or did you push the levels down in post?

 

[Django]

2 hours ago, kaylee said:

aww, thank you so much @Django... i really appreciate it that you recognize what i was going for

but of course! what can i say tho...? i dunno where to start? ask me anything...!

your welcome, again nice work. basically just curious in what format it was shot and the grading level applied. i assume RAW ?

 

[kye]

13 hours ago, kaylee said:

but of course! what can i say tho...? i dunno where to start? ask me anything...!

A few questions:

1. What was most surprising during the whole process?
2. What did you learn?
3. What did you do that worked brilliantly that might be useful for others to know?

???

[kaylee]

11 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

I liked the idea with the very dark shots

thank you!

11 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

and they'd probably look beautiful in a pitch black room

lol exactly

11 hours ago, Gregormannschaft said:

but I couldn't much on my monitor during the day

i hear ya.

i basically decided that since so much of this short is about sleep, i wanted to show that my way, insofar as not like this

although shows get away with this shit all the time, and i understand why, im not an idiot, people want to see the actors faces ? but this doesnt feel dark to me, sleepy dark time feels

(a) dark

and 

(b) low contrast

so i went with that.

in the first shot, i wanted the young man to wake up ~in the dark~. he cant sleep. so, that being said, this IS supposed to be dark af, darker than anyone goes on almost anything

i just saved the above .png screengrab from quicktime, put it online, and tumblr compressed it, but look how much you can still pull out of it

this image gives you an idea of what the original exposure looked like. i would post stuff from my resolve file, but after imac broke its gonna take a couple days to put that timeline back together again, but u guys have inspired me im totally gonna do it...!

11 hours ago, Django said:

basically just curious in what format it was shot and the grading level applied. i assume RAW ?

your assumption is correct~!

yes, i said to myself, Self, what is 5d3 raw GOOD at?

well, COLOR. DEEP, RICH color. its good at... looking kinda filmic, way more lo-fi and analog compared to say, a gh5, right? totally different look. so that was my idea: make it look like that, to exploit the strengths of what ml raw is good at, and avoiding its weaknesses whenever possible in my shots. that was kinda the plan

liike i said, you guys might be somewhat interested in what i did with the color creatively, so when i get the resolve project back together ill post some stuff. i mean, a lot of how this looks is the grade u know

in general tho, i simply exposed for the highlights i wanted, and ALL the dark shots have been graded down in post, some WAY down, to avoid the noise of high ISOs. that worked – i did zero denoising in post, and i shot up to ISO 6400. yes. that exposure looks like absolute shit, with all the noise youd expect from ml raw at that iso, but like i said i reduced the exposure SO much that all that just disappeared~! lol i kno it sounds crazy but i did some tests before hand and it worked fine, and it allowed me to shoot the whole thing with practical/natural lighting~! ☺️

 

29 minutes ago, kye said:

A few questions:

1. What was most surprising during the whole process?

oh, i have a great answer for this – the actor in the first shot posted an even less finished version online EVERYWHERE – and called it a "trailer" for his own movie. he knew i was furious, wouldnt answer my calls or messages, and i had to do like 6 dmca things against him. sooooo he can go fuck himself

 

Quote

1. What did you learn?

SO MUCH. i mean where do i even start? the main thing is that doing ALLLLLLL this by yourself, with NO ONE TO HELP YOU AT ALL ON "SET"... is insane? its too hard, you start to fall apart, forget things, cant think straight, etc. its a surreal level of stress... sooo i wouldnt do that again without at least ONE person to be a general PA/script supervisor. that was a bad idea and im ~lucky~ things turned out the way they did, but again all this is much easier said that done when you have ~no money~

my main epiphany about making this lil thing is that JUST DOING IT has been SO empowering to me, because NOW I FEEL LIKE A FILMMAKER. i can be a shitty filmmaker, a lil baby filmmaker, but im sure af not an imaginary filmmaker. not anymore! and you CANT make a second film until you make a first film~! so my SECOND and THIRD films are already in development! wow!!! amazin @ Zach

the OTHER thing is the process, that you just need to complete to see as a whole: from start to finish, writing, storyboards, casting, locations, etc etc, post, color, vfx, sound....... i see the gestalt of it now, and thats huge. hard to explain, i just "get" it, so im rlly looking forward to doing better in the future

 

Quote

1. What did you do that worked brilliantly that might be useful for others to know?

???

that would be the above post, talking about ISOs and so on... ill pull some shots from the actual grade tho, might be fun~! will do soon!

nothing else worked brilliantly. everything else ~kinda~ worked pretty good lol.

oh, one thing: i literally shot this in 2.39 to

(A) save data

and

(b) hide my feet in the first shot, i kid you not ?

[Jimmy G]

Just so happened to to have the "cans" on my head when I clicked on your video...I truly love the audio landscape you created here. Also, I found the color choices for your world engaging. Thanks for sharing this here. :)

[kaylee]

oh wow thank you so much @Jimmy G. im so glad you HEARD it! lol

yeah thats something i should point out – all my shots (with NO audio) seemed lifeless and SHIITY and DEAD until i started adding sound, and then the film CAME ALIVE

this is my first attempt at sound design, and truth be told... i wasnt gonna do it, someone else was ? this girl i found online, we talked about it at LENGTH, over months and months, and when it came time to actually do it.... she just didnt come thru. she made nothing. it was too much for her i guess. so, i was expecting to see some stuff finished at a certain point, i find out shes done NOTHING, and i was like... *drinks a beer* FUCK IT ILL DO IT MYSELF ?

and in two days i was like.... damn i love sound design this stuff is amazin ?

i used all kinds of weird sounds, thats a huge part of the fun~! theres everything from gunshots to deep space noises from NASA. theres even a pine jay squawking at the end lol

oh @kye i thought of one thing i did brilliantly: the shot of the girl working at "walmart". i designed a badge, printed it, bought a clip-on badge holder, bought the blue vest online, had her walk in walmart with me, shot some footage for a few minutes, and walked out. how do ya like that for stealing shots ?

[kye]

lol, Walmart....

 

15 minutes ago, kaylee said:

oh @kye i thought of one thing i did brilliantly: the shot of the girl working at "walmart". i designed a badge, printed it, bought a clip-on badge holder, bought the blue vest online, had her walk in walmart with me, shot some footage for a few minutes, and walked out. how do ya like that for stealing shots ?

Nice!

People who are a bit organised and have confidence and conviction can really bend the rules and get away with things.  I'm not a rule-breaker in general, but in todays world so many rules are BS and if you're not hurting anyone then it's all good.