School Shooting Trailer "Empathy"

[maj_barnes]

My friend is in TV Production 1. And their latest project is to do a "Project Greenlight" film, which is basically the script given out for contestants to make and they have to make a film based on that.

I said that I'd help (which turned out to be almost like I'm co-director), and so he came up with the idea to do a film based on Columbine. Which is also good and bad. I get to mess around with guns and violence, but I also have to try and make it seem like we are not saying what they did should be okay (overly-humanizing).

Here's a trailer I put together tonight, it contains two days worth of filming. We found an abondoned elementry school, and got permission to work there as long as an OCPS employee was there. This placed was trashed, we found perfect places for the bombs to explode, broken windows, holes in walls (perfect for gun shots), but one problem: no desks, except for the main office counter.

We are also putting together a behind the scenes thing which is pretty cool so far. All the school scenes were shot by my friend (we're planning on reshooting those), and the driving scenes were done by me (it was also the first time I drove a stick shift).

Anyways, here's the lowlow Res trailer (it has a glitch near the end):
http://www.youtube.com/?v=DcP4C6kBqW0

And low Res trailer (no glitch):
http://files.filefront.com/trailerlowwm ... einfo.html

Anyways, please enjoy. The gun effects are not final.

[Theshapecool]

Looking very good, Did you put a slight blur/dreamy filter to 80% of the image?
What camera did you use? Nice Jacket too. I'm Impressed, when I read the post I thought it looked
like a poor way of using colomnbine for a movie, but watching it I see that its not just a muck about and
alot of work has gone into it, well done! Cant wait to see the final thing.
Is it creepy that the guy driving the car actually looks abit like one of the colombine killers?

[maj_barnes]

Yea, I did this little technique: duplicate the video, then blur the top layer alot then reduce the transparentancy of it until it looks good.

For the school scenes we used the school's camera which is Cannon ZR45, and for the driving scnes were done with my Cannon Optura 50.

Yea, we only have one black trenchcoat. Mine that I"m using is a WW2 Riding Coat. And that guy driving is me, lol.

Thanks for the comments, it's due March 1st so it should be up before then. Right now the date we plan on finishing the shooting stuff is this Saturday and maybe Pesident's Day.

And the title Empathy is a test title until I get my friends opinion on it. I thought it sounded kinda cool, and had some meaning to it.

[Theshapecool]

It is a great title, well I cant wait to see the finished thing. The effect worked very well, It has a good movie look to it. We get our movie look by adding a two pixel strobe to the image, works aswell as we can get it and allways looks diffrent from the average, hey on the members films page check out my new trailer, or just go here http://www.freewebs.com/sledgefilmsltd/dractrailer.htm , I think we got it down quite well, but yeah, enough about me (arrogant sod i am) but great job! cant wait to see more! Hvae you thought about doing another trailer? with diffrent clips? keep it coming!

[Trochaic]

I liked it, it looked like you balanced the gunplay with humanization quite well. Great cinematography, I loved the dream like effect. The only thing I didn't like about it was the title, empathy just didn't seem to fit. Are we feeling empathy for the students who went through this trauma, because I know that I couldn't never relate to that. Overall you did an excellent job with this, can't wait to see the finished product.

P.S. - That was you first time driving a stick!? You got some skills dude, I must have stalled the car the first 25 times I tried. Keep up the good work.

[Kentertainment]

That was pieced together very well. The Cinematography was very well done and the filters seemed to match perfectly with the style. I can't see much wrong with it with the exception of the flashes, they seemed a little too overdone but you said you were going to fix that. Keep the title, it helps add the artistic value of the film...if that makes any sense. Good job, I'm looking forward to seeing the completed piece (oh by the way, the you tube version doesn't work).

[maj_barnes]

I tried the strobe effect, it looks really good, but I like the full 30 fps look more. I would love to look at it, but at the moment all the computers I'm using have out of date flash, sorry!

Basically we're trying to give all players in this a piece so viewers can take a walk in everyones' shoes. Even if you can't relate to them, at least we can make an attempt to. I had to just throw this in since we're talking about empathy: "Walk a mile in someone else's shoes first, so if they get mad, they'll be a mile away and barefoot." And those one word titles do lend alot to the artistic value, plus the name sounds very arty-farty, .

Yea, but i'll try to put up a piece of the behind the scenes thing. You'll see it was about 15min before I had the car going. Like I forgot to take the parking brake off, so I'm worrying about the clutch, then I'm sitting there for about 10 seconds flooring it trying to make it move forward. And of course afterwards it smelt like "burnt a**" the rest of filming.

And the flashes were a quick fix to it. To me I just keep thinking it's a bunch of celeb's running away from photographers, lol.

Thanks again for commenting!

(Yea, I'll try to get up the semi retarded Youtube verison: it took it out of widescreen.)

[maj_barnes]

If anyone cares, we changed the title back to the original concept of Loss of Emapthy (got the idea from some of the sideeffects of the drugs that the shooters took).

Shooting has become a b***h, since now we've been seeing a police car staking out the school we're filming at. Even though we have permission the airsoft guns are painted over and that's bad for business.

Also made some cool looking promo poster thing:



Brand new youtube link:

http://www.youtube.com/?v=DcP4C6kBqW0