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Joseph Konrad

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  1. Guess not! Oh well. I thought it was good to have a backup of my dystopia film idea online in case my main hard drive crashes...wouldn't want to lose it.
  2. Just out of curiosity, how would one go about pitching that to a studio? Would they need to see the script, or would the synopsis do? Would you be required to furnish evidence of extremely high skill in editing and music? I have that (too many copyright protection problems to post online). Would you need a connection to a working screenwriter? I have that. I guess it's just a matter of living in Los Angeles, California, rather than upstate New Hampshire!
  3. Much of the film revolves around the nightclub, where the workers, forced to work in the hot sun in the cornfield the whole day, get to be taxied down into the city to blow all of their money. These are the 6 songs featured in the film (music rights required of course): -1978 "Let's try once again." -You Set My Heart on Fire (1976), Tina Charles -Charo's "Dance a Little Bit Closer" -Gotta Keep Dancing Carrie Lucas -More (1976) AC soulful symphony -Touch My Love (1977) The whole film has an eerie feel to it.
  4. I feel comfortable discussing it here because even knowing all of the pieces of the puzzle, nobody can possibly put it all together correctly except me. The plot is an action plot; detective Hanson is searching for serial killers in the seedy city. But that's not the heart of the story. The heart of the movie is when the detective falls in love with a girl who he thinks is a "good girl" (a rare species in this future society) but who turns out to be bad like the others-promiscuous as hell, foul-mouthed, etc. This transformation is tragic and it drives Hanson insane-but not before he and his Chinese sidekick make a last ditch attempt to save the society from what it has become and return it to its former state (and even at the end, in a wheelchair, Hanson spits out his "medications" and continues to fight the system as credits roll. The movie is purely 1978. By that I mean that it is identical in every way to a film made in 1978-not just technically (proper colors, proper grain, proper speed shot, proper audio in mono and rough), but in terms of content (in the future, everybody wears sideburns, for instance). A purely 1970s take on the future. What I've just said doesn't begin to do it justice; to do it justice, I would have to make it and put the images and sounds on screen for you to fully understand. What I will say is that this is the type of movie that would generate a lot of controversy and most likely make a lot of money.
  5. In case anybody important liked that... I'm a music student, but I have a film I've wanted to do since 2006, when I wrote it. It's about a future where everything has gone bad, seen through a purely 1970s lens. The film is really about the conflict between the Baby Boomers and the generation before them, but it is dressed up as sci-fi. I can have it out in 15 months with $45 million minimum. I'll keep it under 150 minutes. Studio specifies the stars, but I get to edit and do the music, because that is what I'm best at. I'd love to do just this one film and see how it goes. Obviously, this isn't how things are done in Hollywood from my experience, but I thought I'd throw that one out there in case someone is out there waiting for exactly this kind of a project.
  6. Filmed with a shaky tripod and a bad camera battery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwOGD4R8cro
  7. I agree that Disney is in pretty good shape with the rights to Star Wars, whether we see a collapse of the blockbuster or not. I think the problem with the Lone Ranger was less that nobody wanted the subject matter and more simply that it was a very bad movie.
  8. Thank you David; that's extremely helpful. Seems that they were forced into the same corners as I will be, because of budget. Agreed too that pushing and adding contrast during transfer could be important tools. Maybe even doing the traditional process of negative, color-timed IP, release negative, and release print might give the final product that contrasty, dupy quality that comes with the extra generations. Definitely need to make sure hair is long and clothes are a certain way, yes. And the actors themselves need to have a certain core and behave a certain way....I'm trending towards midwesterners and southerners even though I am not one, because many of them have not been modernized the way the coasts have been and could easily pass for earlier generations.
  9. That's very true of course. My concern is just getting the technical end set so we don't have to worry about mimicking anything artificially, and then we can shoot in whatever style we want. I do love hard light and I'd probably trend more towards the look of the quick and dirty TV episodes from the time; this is a discussion to have with the cinematographer when the time comes. Edit: What a beautiful movie The Godfather is, though. And its sequel- a great example of how to avoid lighting a movie!
  10. Maybe I am misunderstanding something, but I have always thought slower speed films looked far superior to faster films in terms of the "3d-ness" of the image, if that makes any sense. I want it to look basically like this: If there is not enough available light to properly expose the frame, treat it as if it is higher and then just push it afterwards. But I like the challenge of having to shoot indoors on 100 ASA or less. Maybe that makes me crazy, I don't know, but I do think that to replicate the style you need to have all the ingredients/components there. It's not for the sake of self-flagellation, but more because I'm afraid if I compromise on any of the components, I'm not going to get the result I want. It's going to look crude by modern standards.
  11. Thank you for the input, Brian. Any comment is especially useful because this is going to be 1 of 3 movies I want to self-finance on this budget (and submit to festivals) every other year, so I want to make sure and get everything planned out right the first time out. I've been told that the carbon arcs throw warmer light and it's exclusively what was used before HMI's came onto the picture. I agree the modern stocks don't look like 5254, which is too bad, but I thought that maybe the grainier 500T, if stopped down enough, lit hard, and then pushed a stop...this might give interesting results. The new Witter-Cinetec 200D looks very interesting too, although it's only in 16mm. The story for this first one very much fits in with the use of older methods-actually, it's a movie that could have been shot in the 70s, which is something I can't really break myself out of- it's what I grew up watching and loving, and a big part of it is that I regret not being around during that time of Lucas, Spieberg, and Coppola to comment on the cultural change happening at the time, to have my say. So I want to dig up the cultural war as if it were still those days, and have the last word with films that could have come out of that tumultuous time, because in my mind we are still feeling the after-effects of what happened then. Maybe people would stop to think- what have we done! Plus I just really like the aesthetic, the treatment of music, the bizarre feeling of a culture in the midst of destroying itself- everything. And the number one goal is always entertainment, and I find movies from the mid 60s to mid 80s infinitely more entertaining and better than now (with some notable modern exceptions). I hope I can get good people to work for experience...though I wonder if location matters- of course LA has a lot of out-of-work professionals, but I wonder about smaller cities like Boston that are not as well known for having a thriving industry. Thanks for the comment!
  12. P.S. I should add that the movie will be shot entirely on location, and the script is, out of necessity, relatively simple to execute.
  13. Hello all, It's going to take a couple more years because I'm self-financing, but eventually I'm going to hit $100,000 in personal savings and I'm going to use it to shoot a film on film, finished on film. Is there anything I should know as I go about budgeting this? Here are some costs I've come up with: -Cost of 35mm negative -Film processing -35mm Workprint/Dailies -Mag sound transfer (on-set dialog from Nagra, sound effects, and music tapes) -Negative cutting -IP print timed by a colorist -IP transfer to DVD for festival submission -Cinematographer and camera rental, carbon arc lamps, gennys, proper lenses, etc. -***Actors -***Crew and production costs -***Musicians (non-union) -Music studio rental -KEM Steinbeck 6 plate purchase or rental -Nagra 4.2 purchase+tapes, mikes Good news: -I'm the producer, director, writer, and composer- so no need to pay those. It's important to me that this is done in as old-school a way as possible, so even the 500 speed film will be stopped down to 100 or below with ND filters, necessitating the use of powerful lights to expose the frame. Perhaps even pushing the film a stop after stopping it down will give it the right textured quality. We'll have to see. Lenses are important. I basically want it to look like hard-lit 70s TV. Since I am so focused on the process and the technical end, I realize the film and processing will eat up most of the budget and will leave little room for the people. My questions is whether it is inconvenient or impossible to get these people: actors, crew, and musicians, involved if I cannot give them a good stipend for each day's work. Any personal experience would be very helpful. Your thoughts would be much appreciated. Thanks!
  14. It really is a beautiful camera. Very hefty and well-laid out. I picked it up for around $50 mint off of ebay.
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