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Sorry for my delayed response. Been on vacation (my first in 10 years) and this short being filmed was just part of it. And... it was filmed today.
Before you get too excited, let me just say I have no idea how this will turn out at this point. Literally no idea. It really could go either way of being good or bad, or it could be nothing short of "meh". There are some reasons for this mix emotions...
GOOD POINTS:
1) We really did film just offshore of Florida on two small islands. And yes, the locations looked fantastic.
2) We had some cool, yet inexpensive, props made including that electronic device, the polaroid, and Anne's knapsack looks cool.
3) The woman playing Anne I think did a fantastic job under all conditions: including putting herself in ocean water during a cold and windy morning (weather has been strange around here).
4) I was there supervising with the script and worked closely with the actress, and also the cameraman as much as I could and gave suggestions.
5) The physical effects of the shrubbery/trees moving were done pretty well from what I could see in two of the three scenes (they dropped the third one).
6) The polaroid looked good with actual (fake) blood and dirt smeared on it.
7) We generally had a fun time shooting it and it did feel a little exciting. I hope it shows.
BAD POINTS:
1) Despite being told I was to direct this, I did not. At least, not directly. I was more of a script supervisor, as noted above, with my own script. The guy who pitched the idea for me to do this and write this how I wanted had originally told me I would also direct while I was here visiting with him because such and such respect for Jurassic Time. That and the fact I told him it was something I always wanted to try again and this was something I always imagined directing myself. So this was a big bummer for me. I guess he was too interested himself. I tried to throw ideas of how to do the camera at times I felt he was being too pedestrian, but he would very seldom take such advice.
2) It was all filmed in about 4 hours total. That may seem like a long time, but not really. While it was a short script, it was built up on a lot of atmosphere and timing for tension. This guy rushed through it. He didn't even properly scout the islands before shooting while we were there. Literally I found locations along the way that were more fitting for what I had in mind, but the phrase "this works fine" was often heard. Unless he really was filming more while I wasn't looking, I seriously believe he did not shoot enough footage to allow this to feel like a movie. He got all the scenes of Anne doing this and that, but I thought he needed A LOT more of connective tissue to really create that sense of environment. I voiced this, but it was mostly disregarded. However, at one point, I basically just took the camera when they were about to leave the place we shot Anne running and stumbling and did a POV perspective of running through the environment a couple of times. I wished I had been able to have done it more.
3) The island had natural things that made it foreboding, like a really cool skeleton of a large white bird that was near the shore. I took a picture and showed it to them all excited that we had to include it even just in passing to create a sense of dread right away. I was told no.
4) The actress playing Anne was great with what she was given: the script just hours before shooting. Yeah, apparently she had no time to look it over til the long drive before getting on the boat. She worked well enough since me and her would go over the lines briefly right before shooting the next moment. However, bizarrely, the director wanted her to do the monologue in one shot. While, if she had learned her dialogue that would have been awesome... I insisted we did several different cut angles so we could do it in sections. I was told no. So instead... I am feeding her the dialogue as she is saying it. Of course this whole movie is going to be re-dubbed due to the wind and etc, but still. There will likely be awkward pauses a plenty he won't be able to fill with anything unless he cuts away to random shots of the environment around her. Oh wait, I don't think he did those: darn.
5) Some bits of my script were cut. There is no gun found at all now. This was because he didn't like the way the prop gun looked. The ID Tag is... (laughs) literally a tag. I kind of don't get it, but it says InGen so I guess it works. There are no footprints at all in that one sequence with the Brach and the Raptor prints. He claimed he didn't know how he was going to do that, without ever voicing this concern, and I told him how I had thought, and he claimed we had no time for that. We could have spent almost another 4 hours with the time we were allotted. Some other small bits of dialogue are cut or altered, which is to be fair natural of any film.
6) However, because of the gun not being in the film, this suddenly makes the climax less climactic when she is chased by the raptors and attempts to fire the shot. Now she just runs from them to the cliff (which I didn't really see get shot til I had them to an extra moment to allow Hammond's line to play over her expressions), so I pray he did it halfway decent. Her run also didn't have any of the bushes moving as she ran, making her seem even more crazy (which I GUESS could be seen as a good thing). Regardless, I feel the ending will no matter what be lacking that punch that I thought made it good.
Despite all of these good and bad points, the reason why I have no idea how this will turn out is because I am not editing it. I won't be around for the dubbing, either. I also likely won't be present for when the one "Anne's apartment" scene gets filmed with Jill, who we still have not cast. Granted that could be easily done, but they haven't even set up her apartment set yet. All of these things make me have no clue how it will turn out, because we all know how important editing can be. However, I have given him all the tools he needs at least to make it feel authentic. I gave him all extracted SFX from Trespasser, and he says he may also use some from JPOG. I gave him of course the clean John Hammond dialogue from the alpha release, but I also made a brand new echo-version that sounds better than in the retail/beta thanks to using the alpha as a source and saving the applied effect at a higher resolution. And of course, I have also given him Bill Brown's score to use.
This film isn't being made for any profit, but apparently it cost him a lot more to make it than he thought. While it was his idea for me to work on this, his choices and lack of choices may have sadly been a little wasted. Or maybe A LOT wasted. There are still so many factors at play with how this will turn out, and at this point I won't know any more until it comes through to me since I am leaving in a few days. However, I will keep you all updated here.
Also, I do have some pictures I took. Not as many as I had liked, since I ended up using my phone to view the script due to the wind blowing my paper copy around. But I can post what I have on here.
I would like nothing more for this to end up good. However, the writing is on the wall...
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(Just kidding).
