Anne, The Trespasser aka Elizabeth: Lost-- Short Film Issues

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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by machf »

Hey, scallenger - any news from yur project? You didn't answer anymore... and we surely would like to know how it's going.
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by Hilwo »

Hadn't responded here yet, but just wanted to say that this sounds very nice and I look forward to seeing the end result :mrgreen: Good luck!!
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by scallenger »

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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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by tatu »

Time to share this all on reddit ;) (Just kidding).

It sucks really. Sounds like a lot of the stuff ended up begin really rushed and no one really had a clue or plan (or at least the director). I hope it turns out well in the end, otherwise we can all just blame the director, as I don't think anyone who is not as familiar as you with the game can do this better ;)
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by scallenger »

Thank you, maybe some day I'll do a remake or something. Or maybe just make it an original idea further. In the end I hope I also could be pleasantly surprised.
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by machf »

Oh, well. I can relate to this. Remember that student short I told you about, the one the writer/producer ended up scrapping? Originally I intended to direct it, but I stepped aside and became assistant director because this guy needed the credit more than I did (I've already got my engineering degree, after all). As an assistant director, any changes to the script at filming time should be done by the director an myself, but the producer/writer kept making his own changes (something a writer can't do on his own; any changes to the script must have been requested by the director beforehand) and basically overtaking the director's role. And I could only stand by and watch. The worst part of it may havee beenwhen during a scene I was asked to hold a black curtain together with another guy behind the actors (so that the background wouldn't be seen, and the scene appeared dark), and neither the cameraman, the director, nor the producer noticed that both the other guy and myself were visible at the edges of the frame during the whole time! And in the end, as I said, the writer/producer suddenly shows up and scraps the whole footage, after several days of editing, and having applied SFX and all - that's another part of the process where the director and assistant director are the only ones who work together with the editor. He said he "didn't feel satisfied with the result" and intended to get it redone "at some time".
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by Draconisaurus »

Damn dude, well keep us in the loop..
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by Hilwo »

Very sorry to hear it went the way it did, Scall...
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by scallenger »

So, without being too long-form about it, things have taken an even darker turn. There is now a lot of drama between the "friend" that did this film with me, unrelated to this film, and my other Florida friends that I knew while I was out there. In short, there is no desire to ever work with him again in any capacity. This means the film has no further involvement by me, if it ever gets released. And honestly, that is now a big if. I never got to see any footage in any form, so I have no idea just how much is even there. He would still need to do dubbing for the entire film, and possibly still have to film a whole other scene, Anne's Apartment. Last I heard he didn't like the way he shot the ending on the cliff so he was going to cut it so it abruptly ends with her just running to the cliff and ends. Essentially removing the film of any kind of the emotion and etc that could have been there and instead would just feel like the movie ran out of steam. It's not an ending in any form.

So basically he'll either never release it at all due to my heavy involvement by me and the extra work still needed to put in, or it will be released in a very undesirable form. Undesirable by me at least. And who knows, maybe he won't even credit me; which is kind of fine. Most of the dialogue is straight from Trespasser anyhow, despite many of my own tweaks and alterations for it to fit how I wanted. It just sucks; I spent so much time and energy on getting it right just for this guy to screw it all up. And he was the one who wanted it done!

Thing is, this isn't his only project he has worked on that failed. My other Florida friends used to work with him on stuff and essentially the same thing happened. I guess they thought maybe he had learned from his prior mistake but didn't. Regardless, I am back in California now. It's sad it all had to end this way on multiple levels for me personally and for the sake of this film.

Maybe it's fitting for it all to be in a locked room in an empty building with a dirty floor?

If interested, I do still have some photos of the island we filmed at, I think even some videos but those were more for BTS of them before shooting... which will make me cringe to watch now. But I can post some things here if you want.
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by scallenger »

So, the saga continues!

According to Sam's FB page for his "film company", he still plans to release the film in May. Whether that really happens by then, if at all, remains to be seen of course. Thing is... well... have a look:

https://www.facebook.com/KasolFilms/
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kasol.png (57.83 KiB) Viewed 11024 times
Of note is this part:
May: Elizabeth: Lost
Our first film that will take you to a dark island somewhere deep in the Atlantic ocean where law is forgotten.
This is clearly meant to be Anne, The Trespasser. So, that means he plans to somehow re-work what was shot to be something unrelated to Trespasser and Anne. Thing is, and those who read the script will know this, about 90% of the dialogue is straight from Trespasser! Unless he plans to cut all the dialogue, or do plenty of reshoots, and take out all sorts of other references... this will still obviously be a Trespasser-related film! He won't be fooling anybody. What's more is I don't think he is aware exactly which of all the dialogue is even from the game that I used. Because I used so much of it, you'll see in the script that Austin Grossman is actually credited in it. So, if he really plans to release this and make it seem like I had nothing to do with it, fine. But if he doesn't cut out almost all the dialogue, he'll be basically featuring uncredited use of Grossman's dialogue and for those in the know (this entire site), it'll be obvious what this was supposed to be and is.

Some of my ideas and arrangement of them were my own in this script. Many choices made while filming on the islands were still mine. While it still remains to be seen if I will be credited, I am pretty sure I won't be. So in a way, it's about principal at this point. I don't want to see this guy take advantage of anyone again.

Rest assured I am keeping an eye on this, and will see what becomes of it. This thread is evidence enough for everyone, I hope. And if in the end if I have to make it public I will.
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by machf »

Sounds like all he wanted from you was access to Hammond's lines? Or isn't he even going to use them anymore?

Anyway... way to screw up what originally was a good idea.
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by scallenger »

Well since he really is changing it to not be a Trespasser film now I don't see how he could use Hammond's lines. And I had already publicly released the untouched Alpha version of Hammond's lines anyhow, so he didn't need me for that. I feel he used me for everything else, and since I didn't want to follow his lead anymore, well... this is the result.
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by machf »

Now I can't help but wonder who else he may have manipulated for that other thing he's announcing for August...
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by scallenger »

Well, I referred a composer friend to him that I hope he doesn't try to pull anything on him.
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Re: Anne, The Trespasser - An Upcoming Short Fan Film

Post by Hilwo »

Again, sorry Scall - that really sucks...!!
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