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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

4K Challenge - 72hr RED Film Competition

HUGE thank you to Mike for making this thing happen. I still haven't caught up on my sleep, but it was a great experience overall. If schedule permits, I'll definitely participate in the next one. :)

Also, kudos to everyone who participated - I haven't finished watching all the films yet, but I've really enjoyed everything I've seen, and I'm blown away by how much everyone accomplished in the limited time.

For the LA screening night, will there be room to invite some cast and/or crew? I know everyone would get a kick out of seeing their work on the big screen. That said, I totally understand if space is too limited; just thought I would check.

Very Best,
Tim
 
tmorten said:
HUGE thank you to Mike for making this thing happen. I still haven't caught up on my sleep, but it was a great experience overall. If schedule permits, I'll definitely participate in the next one. :)

Also, kudos to everyone who participated - I haven't finished watching all the films yet, but I've really enjoyed everything I've seen, and I'm blown away by how much everyone accomplished in the limited time.

For the LA screening night, will there be room to invite some cast and/or crew? I know everyone would get a kick out of seeing their work on the big screen. That said, I totally understand if space is too limited; just thought I would check.

Very Best,
Tim
Click to expand...

There should be enough room. Email me off list how many will be attending with you.
 
I won't be able to attend the LA event... Too bad, because I'd really love to see all these on the big screen. I'm just hoping to find some time over the next few days to improve ours a bit more before delivering a proper file for screening.


I definitely plan on participating the next time around!
 
Mike and Darren,

Thanks again for putting on this event. I know my crew and myself enjoyed this weekend and are already looking forward to the next 4K Challenge. Seriously, you guys are awesome and I appreciate the opportunity to participate in your event.

Nathan
 
mikeburton said:
That said, the top three prizes will be awarded via judges choice and the forth will be viewers choice on Vuze which will be an average of Downloads and 1-10 votes.
Click to expand...

So... Does that mean the couple videos that are way out of wack in terms of download numbers have the best chance of winning the viewers' choice fourth place, assuming they don't place in the top 3? Not to point any fingers, but I'd say a couple of them are obviously being promoted on other forums. :ohmy: ...Hehe. over 500 downloads for LIBIDO. Pretty cool really and it's one of my top 3 picks of the submitted films.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
So... Does that mean the couple videos that are way out of wack in terms of download numbers have the best chance of winning the viewers' choice fourth place, assuming they don't place in the top 3? Not to point any fingers, but I'd say a couple of them are obviously being promoted on other forums. :ohmy: ...Hehe. over 500 downloads for LIBIDO. Pretty cool really and it's one of my top 3 picks of the submitted films.
Click to expand...

Based off of the numbers right now, yes those few with the most downloads and highest rank would be competing for that prize assuming they didn't place in the top 3.
I personally don't see anything wrong with promoting your show on other forums etc. Part of being a filmmaker is promoting your material and hey, those same people that get interested to view and rank their friends show will probably watch yours and the others as well. If someone is intentionally ranking others submissions down to improve their own status that would be another story and grounds for disqualification. But, I don't think anyone is doing that here. Promote yourselves, and your films, you worked hard and deserve the attention.
Maybe next time we will make you guys create posters for your shows and print them for the screenings. Just a thought.
 
I just finished watching all the submissions, congrats guys! Lots of hard work in there (especially within the delay). Lots of creative use of the props and phrase imposed too. Actually I found myself eager to see how it was used in all films. I'm surprised no one chose the inflatable boat, I guess it was too easy to work with. People love challenges, right? :bleh:

I wonder how you guys approached this shoot? How did you prepare for it? We decided to go by the book, and do it all starting at 9am (actually it was 12 Pm for us) on friday. We had a couple actors on stand by, and most of our crew, but that's about it. We had no location and no script (not even an idea, actually). It took time to find something, but we finally managed to get it into "shooting" state by 1am. All actors and the crew came to the shoot on the 17 without any idea of what the movie would be. So there was absolutely no preparation. We made the blocking as well as our choice of shots on the set, while shooting it. It was a bit wild to my taste (and a lot more stressful that I would've thought), but we managed to not make too much mistake. There's some holes in the movie, but hey, what could we do.

What's your story?

Oh and by the way, guys, close you cell phone when shooting (or recording sound)! That makes for some nasty interferences... we had lots of those on our shoot, and it was funny hunting down who it was. Especially when we once found it was our sound man. Haha. Again, nice work everyone.
 
We did "Damage Control" by the book as well. We also found out at 12P on Friday. We had a meeting on the Wednesday before with Steve Sherrick, me, the director and script supervisor (who I had worked with before) and our main talent (who also acted as producer). She arranged the other talent. Steve arranged our audio tech, camera op and PA. We didn't know how many actors we had until the day of.

On Friday our plan was to meet at the Directors house at 11A to wait for the parameters and begin writing. Because of weather some of us were late (me...I needed AAA to jump start my grip truck). Also because of the weather (it was frigid in the single digits) we decided that we would not film anything outside. It was just too cold.

We all kicked around a few possible ideas without knowing what locations were locked or what the parameters might be. It's difficult to write when you don't know if there will be a genre requirement etc.

When the parameters finally were given, we narrowed the 4 main ideas we had down to one idea and then wrote with the best location we had access to in mind. Also now knowing what actors we had (though not knowing their acting ability except for Kandace), we wrote for that ensemble. Mark and I cranked out the script in about 2 1/2 hours. By 6P we were loading into the location. Actors arrived at 8P and began going through lines as we set up lighting and camera for the first scene.

Because we had good access to the location we stopped recording at about 1A and were able to leave everything for the next day. We began again at 7:30A on Saturday and recorded till about 1A again. Sunday we got a late start again because of weather. A snow storm hit Boston. We began editing at about 10A. It snowed about a foot during our almost 24 hour all nighter edit.

I'm also very impressed with all the films...though I was surprised that there were not more entries. Everybody did great work and it's really a joy to see all the different styles and moods people came up with. Good work everybody...it's not easy to make a film in that short time!
 
OK... A long account, but here's how it went down.

We tried to approach this project by the book, I guess... Got most of the crew together for a little meeting the tuesday night before. Discussed possible locations we had access too, some concepts, etc.. Decided on the boxing gym. Deann (most people call her "DJ") knocked out a script by noon the following day. We had several actors on stand-by, more grips, a sound guy, things were really looking great.

Friday morning (10AM our time) we received the contest requirements and incorporated them into DJ's script. Planned to meet at the boxing gym at 11:30.

Erik R. takes contest requirements and knocks out a new script of his own, using the boxing gym.

We're informed we can't get into the gym until 1:00PM, Erik can't get his crew there until about then anyway.

I have minor family emergency that delays me until 1:45PM. But I arrive to find that we can't get into the gym until 2:00~2:30PM and all of our actors had bailed out. Oh, the sound guy couldn't make it either... On top of that, due to the little family crisis on my end, I missed lunch and I was crabby.

So, we decide between the scripts. Looking back on it, we probably should have taken the shorter and easier one. We decide who is playing what part out of the cast / crew we have. Kirstin, who played our female lead, was a bit timid the whole time, but I think she did well -- this was her first time acting in front of a camera, that I'm aware of. Not including a fashion shoot we did with her and some other girls a few months back -- she got to step in front of the RED One back then.

Anyway, finally got into the gym about 2:45PM. Set up, and we were about 80% complete with set up and lighting the gym when we were informed that we had to clear out of the way for another class in 30 minutes. We quickly shot our first scene, then moved all the gear out of the way. Went and had an early dinner, couldn't get back into the gym until 6:00PM

We finally got set up and had our mojo on by about 7:15PM. We shot everything we needed for the gym, or so we thought... Wrapped about midnight, everyone went home after all the footage was duplicated onto various hard drives from my DIT station. Meryem & DJ were on primary camera & sound. My camera was secondary in the gym, grabbed a couple hand-held shots, but it did most of its shooting mounted to Alan's steadicam rig. We have several kick-ass shots, some overcranked, of Raul (the boxer), but there was no good way to cut them into the short. We had steadicam of some of the other scenes in the gym, but found that most did not cut well because of various angles and a multitude of audio issues, trying to sync stuff up.

Next day, we started our exterior shooting at 11:00AM. Problems with audio mixer. I recorded audio with my RODE NTG-2 direct into my RED. I don't have the new audio board, had to run the mic from internal battery -- which does not work well, levels are way too low with that combo. Many takes I was shadowing Alan Dague-Greene (or steadicam operator) as he flew Meryem's RED, so I could capture audio into mine. Most of the effort was for not. Had to rely on foley and ADR for all the exterior, car shots. Didn't have time to finish it all in post. We wrapped the exterior location at 2:15PM

Third and final location was Nallen's Irish Pub. We arrived and started setting up about 3:00PM. It was a full bar and we were tripping over patrons and curious onlookers as we set up. Audio mixer back up and running, but the noise in the pub was constant and loud. The audio track for the pub still needs lots of work, but it was pieced together from tons of different takes and heavily modified. Not too bad overall, IMO considering the amount of chopping done to it and only a few minor lip sync issues. But not much else we could do other than just all out ADR the whole thing. I want to clean it up, but will work on the audio for the exterior sequence first -- if I have time before the submission deadline for the 1080p version. We wrapped at the pub about 5:00PM and did some more offloading right there while we had dinner from Old Chicago next door. Out of there by about 6:30... I went home, saw the family for a bit, unloaded my gear.

Erik R. and I started editing Saturday night about 9:00PM. Had our rough cut and gave up about 1:30. We were both really frustrated at that point. Tons of shots we thought we had, but didn't. Lots of audio issues. Decided to take a break. I came here and vented. Hehe...

We hit it hard at about 10:00AM on sunday morning and we worked our asses off on it non-stop until 3:45AM on monday morning. Doing everything we could to build something. Going back and reviewing the clips with all the various audio problems, lack of coherent shots to cut to, no timecode, no camera sync, no usable exterior audio, etc.. OMG.... I'm truly amazed with what we did come up with.

We had to re-record the dream sequence voice-over on sunday afternoon. Erik R. and I were recording foley sounds in a parking lot at 10:30PM on sunday night...

Erik and I were seriously considering giving all directorial and editing credit to Mr. Alan Smithee. But changed our minds as we saw that we had a passable short in the end.

Looking back on it, we had a hell of a lot of fun making this thing. In some ways, I'm kicking myself because I know we were capable of so much more. But at the same time, I'm so pleased with it all because I organized a team of people who had never all worked together before and we all got to experiment with various things. We had a lot of fun. This whole production was an experiment in some way, right down to the post process all done with Adobe CS4. I had not cut on Premiere since v5.5 or whatever about 10 years ago.

I have to give kudos to the entire "RAW MEAT" team. Everyone did a great job and everyone was a joy to work with. Alan Dague-Greene, our steadicam operator flew with masterful precision. Two separate attempts to round up a wireless focus control for his rig fell through (not including my long standing order with ViewFactor). Here and there, I or Meryem would help double-check his focus and let him go. He held focus on most of the shots with great control. Very well done in the gym with lower lighting than we should've had to deal with. We were at T4 or bigger most of the time. Some of the dream sequence shots were taken with a master prime, I don't recall what focal length - it was Meryem's camera locked down and mine on Alan's steadicam rig.

Anyway, it's all an experience that I would gladly do all over again. :)
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
So... Does that mean the couple videos that are way out of wack in terms of download numbers have the best chance of winning the viewers' choice fourth place, assuming they don't place in the top 3? Not to point any fingers, but I'd say a couple of them are obviously being promoted on other forums. :ohmy: ...Hehe. over 500 downloads for LIBIDO. Pretty cool really and it's one of my top 3 picks of the submitted films.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot Jeff. We are promoting our video for the most part by social networks (especially one where you can find old friends and school mates :wink: and emails (almost 8000 addresses, I hope my clients and friends don't hate me :) ) and the actor told me he has hundreds of relatives around the world. Actually in the beginning a national (italian) emerging actress was involved in the project but for lack of time (and money I think) she didn't accept. So we posted a thread on a Italian group of actors on this famous social network, we received a lot of cv and we watched a lot of online videos about different actors and we found our two actors and I can say they've done a wonderful job.
Congratulations to everybody, there are some really beautiful works in this contest.
It's been really stressful, this is a photo of me when I finished the contest, I got a sty on my left eye, now I'm ok, but It's been also a wonderful experience, we laughed a lot.
Ciao.
9083_1232627381.jpg
 
I still haven't made it through all the films yet, but Libido was great! My wife really loved the ending. I also enjoyed Toast a lot... very funny! Edit: I just watched All Good Things; it is also really impressive.

Here's some background on making "The Flirt":

I've only ever shot one short film before, and that was a two minute MOS piece I did on Super16 a dozen years ago. (Which begs the question of why I got a Red in the first place: I'm a videogame developer, so I rationalized getting a Red to explore using some live action backgrounds in games).

Anyhow, other than test shots, this is literally the first project I've shot with my Red. I didn't have a crew, so I signed up for a UCLA Extension "Making your first short film" class, which conveniently started the week before the contest. I was forced to come up with some story ideas in class, and luckily the contest was open-ended enough that I could adapt what I had been thinking to qualify. As part of the class, I was teamed up with three other aspiring amateurs like myself, so that solved my lack-of-a-crew problem. To DP, I recruited David Greenspan, who I'm lucky to count among my friends (his USC short "Beancake" won at Cannes in 2001). This was his first time working with Red as well. For actors, I recruited my wife and one of my best friends, both of whom have some acting experience (this is LA after all :)).

Friday of the contest, I had to put in a full day to get a videogame milestone delivered at work, so the only progress I could make on the "The Flirt" was to get a final script pounded out, and set up the logistics for the following day. I had dinner with the actors that night, and then they ran their lines over and over while I pulled together all my gear for the next morning. On Saturday, we all converged on my front lawn at 7am, and set about getting the lighting setup. I don't have ND's, so that was problem number one. We quickly put up an 8x8 picnic canopy, and by pure luck, one of its plastic sides served well as a silk. We put up some Mole reflectors for backlight, and added a Coollights softbox for key in some shots.

Next we got sound setup; I had picked up a SoundDevices 442, a Senn416, and a K-Tek boom, but like the amateur I am, I neglected to get an XLR cable! A quick run to Radio Shack rectified that little slip-up. After one final rehearsal, we rolled camera. Except for the DP, none of the crew spoke English as their first language (Japanese, Russian, and Turkish... quite an international mix!), which made script supervision challenging. The actors had only had one night with the script, so there were a lot of blown takes over lost lines.

We shot for about 8 hours (what can I say - I'm a total amateur!), and we all had a lot of fun in the process. In the end, we got some good coverage (despite cars driving by and ruining the audio every few minutes), and I was completely exhausted. Afterwards, we had a nice BBQ in the yard to decompress. On Sunday, I had to return the favor for one of my classmates, so I spent the day acting as DP on her short film (for class, not for the 4K Challenge). The whole time, the editing task for "The Flirt" was hanging over my head like an anvil, but we didn't wrap until the sun was setting.

I proceeded to stay up all night, learning how to use Premiere and getting something cut together. I watched a few tutorial videos, and started messing around with my footage. The workflow was surprisingly trouble-free, and by 3am I had something I was reasonably happy with. That's when the trouble started... Adobe Media Encoder froze when I tried to output my footage. I spent the next five hours trying to figure out how to work around it. After much cursing and hair pulling, I finally found a way to get it to work. Of course, by then, Vuze was down, so I wound up having stressed over 9am for naught... oh well, the extra time (and some sleep) was a welcome relief.

I didn't completely capture the playfulness that I wanted, but I was happy everything cut together, and for a complete amateur team, I feel proud that everyone worked so well together to pull it off. I ran out of time to add music, and the sound definitely needed another pass, but hopefully it's still enjoyable to watch. :) It's an honor to have our piece up there with the rest of the talented teams who submitted!

Very Best,
Tim
 
I've had complaints from several people that they have to download info into their computer to view the submissions. Many of them are taking a pass on voting because they are afraid of getting spammed from the software. And others have told me they've downloaded the Vuze player only to not have it work properly...getting audio but only still frames. I actually have that issue with my computer (Mac G5 tower dual 1.8). I cannot get a clean stream from the Vuze player.

Here's a message that I got from a friend:

"I may be going about this wrong...I don't know...but, it seems you have to download and install a 3rd party app (Vuze) to view the full version?

I'm really hoping to see the entire picture, but I'm weary about downloading 3rd party apps like these. I'll keep my eye out for a future expanded release.

The teaser looks great."
 
You will not be spammed by just downloading and installing the Vuze client application. You don't even have to register an account to download and view the submissions. It is your choice to download the application or not but presently Vuze is the hub of our distribution to the masses and our sponsor.

If you are having problems playing back content in the Vuze player wait for the file to complete downloading before playing instead of streaming it. If you continue to have issues contact the support at Vuze or just send me a PM.
 
Any update on what time the January 31st screening will be?

Cheers,
Tim
 
Darren Orange said:
Alright all my 4K Challenge friends....

Here is what we are looking for...

Apple Pro Rez 1080P 4:2:2 10-bit HQ files of your shorts.....
Click to expand...

I just did some checking, and it looks like it is not possible to encode ProRes on a Windows machine (Apple trying to motivate Mac purchases, as best I can tell -- no reason a PC couldn't do the transcode if Apple were willing to support it).

Is there an alternate code that we PC folks can submit with?

One thought is that I think I can burn a Blu-Ray disc with MPEG4, but I think you'd need a computer-based Blu-Ray player, since most stand-alone players require encryption.

Best,
Tim
 
tmorten said:
I just did some checking, and it looks like it is not possible to encode ProRes on a Windows machine (Apple trying to motivate Mac purchases, as best I can tell -- no reason a PC couldn't do the transcode if Apple were willing to support it).

Is there an alternate code that we PC folks can submit with?

One thought is that I think I can burn a Blu-Ray disc with MPEG4, but I think you'd need a computer-based Blu-Ray player, since most stand-alone players require encryption.

Best,
Tim
Click to expand...

Cineform. Go to the Cineform website and you can get a free 30 day trial.
 
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