EMW

"Misconceptions" is the second collaboration between NS and Marshall Dean of the Orkney Movie Group.

James Chapman (Steve Haas) is scheduled for a regular checkup. However, when the operation goes wrong, James is thrust into situations out of his control. He must come to terms with his own mortality. James discovers that death is, in actuality, a great adventure and the next step in what we know as life.

"Misconceptions" is an abstract take on how society misreads death. This international collaborative effort intends to send the message that moving on is perhaps one of the most important things we can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbuVhNBKGLg

Dude, Ryan, excellent cinematography and sound mixing. Very, very professional. Like I said in the comments, my only annoyances were quite minor, such as:
The signing of legal document in pencil.
The signing of a legal document with no parent around...or a mention of the character being old enough to not have parental consent.
The pictures in the paper. It annoys me when pictures used for publications are obvious stills.

Dude, that foley with the voices of the children was scary as hell and very well done.

So, any production notes? Any difficulties and such?

Thank you for the positive critique

Uhm, production notes...

There were a few times when minor things caused problems. When we were shooting our greenscreen spaceship scene, we had the background lit with worklights, but needed to light the actor with a flourescent to match the ship's lighting. Something was wrong with the light tubes, the connection was faulty at best. We had two people holding the light aimed at the actor, and anytime they shifted position, the connection was lost and the light went out. And once they started laughing the light jumped on and off until they regained their composure. We needed the levity at that point in the film.

And our lead actor. Kinda forgetful, to say the least. After our first shoot, I gave him his costume to hold onto for next week's meet. Of course, he came without it - his mom threw it out, and he didn't bother to tell me. So we had to wait while he drove to a thrift store and found a substitute. 45 minutes of a two hour shoot down the drain. And on top of that, once he arrived he needed to drive his brother to football practice 10 minutes later

Next shoot, he arrives without the robe he needs. So we wait an hour while he drives to an open store on Sunday. The GPS he had directed him to the wrong location. So over the phone we used Google Maps to get him to a thrift store 10 miles away. That was ridiculous, and it shows that we had to do all of our filming in a short period of time because of our actor.

LOL... actors aren't known for they logistical expertise:)

VIP wrote:LOL... actors aren't known for they logistical expertise:)

Haha. Yeah. That's why movies have many wranglers for actors so all the actor has to do is show up.

You did the sound editing, Ryan? I was seriously quite impressed. I haven't heard sound editing like that on college shorts, so that was quite good. I loved the scary little children... Did you find that audio somewhere or record it yourself?

You did the sound editing, Ryan?

Yep. It generally falls on me to do everything except acting I'm glad you liked it. Every bit of music is completely legit, a friend composed some of it from scratch and gave me his library of personal songs for the rest. We used a boom mic for the vocal stuff, and combined with a noise remover in post provided some nice audio.

One of my friends does his own 13 room haunted house every year, he found that track on one of his old CDs, I think it provided a properly spooky feel!

The rest of the SFX came from another friend who provided 3 gigs of audio files from a dozen PC games.

I too was very impressed. Although some of the audio sounded very... tin, ish. Like the mic was too far from the subject or a camera mic was used.

VIP wrote:I too was very impressed. Although some of the audio sounded very... tin, ish. Like the mic was too far from the subject or a camera mic was used.

Yeah I heard that as well, and I the lead had a bit of problem projecting his voice such as when he first enters the dentist office.

Mhm. I had to up the dB about 20, and then needed to use a denoiser in post to get rid of the hiss. Looking back, I'd probably reposition the boom operator or use a wireless lav instead.