"In my image" my partial review

[Scotness]

I should add to - I think the biggest problem with the directing in In My Image is that I just didn't think about it enough and relied on what I had learnt from directing theatre too much - and as I found out they are two totally different things!

I think balanced criticism is good and Matt makes a good point there - but for those who don't look on things constructively - this is what they miss out on: in terms of getting people on board and time frames available etc it got to a point where the film either went ahead as it was, or not at all - the bulk of the people were only available in a certain time frame - and I had 3 other people lined up at different points to direct the film, but they all couldn't for various reasons as time progressed - so it had to go with me writing/directing /acting/producing or I had to let everyone else go who were only available for that certain time frame and then start again pretty well from scratch with a new time frame and try and get mostly new people. So I went ahead - this meant that the film was compromised in that I had little film experience and alot on my plate - but the fact is it went ahead and was completed and alot of good came from it - especially things I've learnt and the fact that people now are coming to me and asking to work on my next projects - which lightens the load on me alot and with the added knowledge/experience I now have means that the next films will be alot better.

I think informed criticism of a film in it's own right is good - but there are really two streams going on - one is the making of a film, and the other is the development of the film maker and production company/resources - and I always saw making this film as much an exercise in me learning about film making as it was about making the actual film.

But anyway I don't want to go on about this - I'm happy with what I've done - this is just for the edification of some! :lol:

Scot

[Santo]

Hopefully you can get on imdb someday with this and enjoy reviews like this (thankfully not mine or for me) :lol: :

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Summary: Unspeakably horrible...

This is one of the lamest, tackiest, ugliest horror movies it has ever been my misfortune to see. Populated by some of cinema's most unattractive nobodies dressed in K-mart fashions, this movie plods on and on with some nonsense about some Lovecraftian menace name Yog-Kothag.

Avoid at all costs. It's not even amusing in that so-bad-it's-good way Ed Wood movies are. It's just painful and depressing to sit through this shot-on-video mess.

-------------------

This was for a mid-80's film (actually shot on 16mm!) by a well-known member of this fourm who, I'm pretty sure from what I've observed, is capable of better as he's got good ideas and interesting short stories to tell. I don't think he deserves one of the worst reviews I've ever read on imdb. Although I haven't been able to track down this flic, so I can't comment on its qualities.

I'm dissapointed that you aren't going through with a NTSC version as I've been waiting a long time to have a look at this film. The trailer on your greatly improved site told me only a little, but I have to say that that shot with the three aboriginals with the face paint and the jungle behind them is fantastic!

I noticed a lot of "vignetting" in shots on the trailer and looked it up on your site webboard and learned it was lens shade induced. Goes to show for all indie filmmakers: test your equipement out before you start dropping $$$ and gather actors, crew, and locations together and shooting difficult to replace footage. I've learned a lot watching SLEEP ALWAYS and a bunch of other microbudget movies about what works and what doesn't technically when you've got "no money" and want to shoot on super 8.

How have the dvds been playing on north american computer dvd drives???

P.S. Ignore unsolicited public trashing fools who have never done anything themselves and have no credits. Serious hardball critiques by people who know what they're talking about regarding creative and not technical issues usually come in private.

[ccortez]

I'm dissapointed that you aren't going through with a NTSC version as I've been waiting a long time to have a look at this film...

How have the dvds been playing on north american computer dvd drives???
.

Played fine on all my macs. Even better:

Remember I said I thought some of those new JVC players "interpret" PAL for NTSC? Well, one of them is mine! I had only bought it recently and never tried a PAL DVD, but "In My Image" plays just fine.

Model # XV-NP10. I think many of the newer DVD players with features like VCD/SVCD, JPG, etc. will probably handle PAL --> NTSC TV.

OT Sidenote: I ended up with this new-fangled thingy b/c I took my old DVD player to the office as a very testy tester for DVD screeners I make there to send out to the world. If they'll play on my old player, they'll play on anything.

The old player? Technics DVD-A10. The video is what it is, it's a fairly old player. But the audio quality is unbelievable. Technics came out with it as the "first" DVD Audio player; but progressive scan (which it doesn't have) came out immediately thereafter and left this model behind. It was supposed to sell upwards of $1500 when it came out. I bought it for probably something like $250 a few months later.

Like many folks, I use my DVD player for CD audio. Or I did when I had that thing. Because it sounded so rich and warm, mmmmmmmm... I can hear it now.

And like so many lost loves, I didn't know what I had until it was gone. This new thing sounds thin and digital. It makes me sad.

I just had to share my little story with somebody...

[MovieStuff]

Hopefully you can get on imdb someday with this and enjoy reviews like this (thankfully not mine or for me) :lol: :

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Summary: Unspeakably horrible...

This is one of the lamest, tackiest, ugliest horror movies it has ever been my misfortune to see. Populated by some of cinema's most unattractive nobodies dressed in K-mart fashions, this movie plods on and on with some nonsense about some Lovecraftian menace name Yog-Kothag.

Avoid at all costs. It's not even amusing in that so-bad-it's-good way Ed Wood movies are. It's just painful and depressing to sit through this shot-on-video mess.

-------------------

This was for a mid-80's film (actually shot on 16mm!) by a well-known member of this fourm who, I'm pretty sure from what I've observed, is capable of better as he's got good ideas and interesting short stories to tell. I don't think he deserves one of the worst reviews I've ever read on imdb.

Hah! Santo you are really too kind. But I'd say the above review was pretty accurate. I was handed a, shall we say, "rough" script and really didn't care much for horror movies so I was probably not the best candidate to direct this film (Forever Evil). But it was a first time feature directing job and I wasn't going to say no. The results were more fun to make than to watch, I'm afraid. What is fun is that the writer and I are old friends and we recently did a voice over commentary for the DVD release that is coming out this month. I believe we vindicated ourselves with honest admissions about the film's weaknesses. It was a hoot. Felt like a big time director talking about some old classic. Ah, the 80s. The time of big hair, big dreams and bad horror films.....

You can order it here, Santo:

http://www.vcientertainment.com/product ... VER%20EVIL

They still have my middle initial wrong. :roll:

Roger

[Scotness]

I'm dissapointed that you aren't going through with a NTSC version

No - I am! - I'm not sure if I mentioned it on this thread or another one - but I will - however it will most likely just be the film, the optional directors commentary and the making of - and it will all be on one disc and with out the menu's -- I'm afraid re-doing menus etc is just way too much mucking around and re-authoring. One day some bright spark will invent a programme that does it all automatically for you with just the press of a button - there's nothing like that on the net now. Anyway I reckon it will be out early Feb - I'll keep you informed. The PAL discs are playing fine on PC's in the States - I've probably sold a dozen or so there so far.

- Also about the vinjetting we did crop that out originally but in the remastered version I decided not to as it's usually in the overscan area on TV's and I thought the image would look better if ti wasn't enlarged just that little bit more by the resizing after cropping - I knew it was a trade off - but with the grain and texture now being preserved with the huffyuv codec I didn't want to do anything that might lose it a bit. But yes - tests - I agree.

Hey Roger - I've always wanted to see Forever Evil - looks like now I can


Scot

[mattias]

One day some bright spark will invent a programme that does it all automatically for you with just the press of a button - there's nothing like that on the net now.

i don't know how many times you want me to say this but: tmpgenc. that's what? fifteen? :-)

/matt

[mattias]

hey, if you replace my old discs with the new remastered ones for free i'll convert the bonus material to ntsc for you. deal? if you're very concerned about quality you can send a dv tape, but i can do it straight from the dvd too...

/matt

[Scotness]

One day some bright spark will invent a programme that does it all automatically for you with just the press of a button - there's nothing like that on the net now.

i don't know how many times you want me to say this but: tmpgenc. that's what? fifteen?

/matt

Matt it's not the converting the mpeg2/m2v file to NTSC which is problematic but resizing all the menus and the button size/definitions - it all could be done individually through photoshop or whatever but to be honest I couldn't be bothered -- its not just the overall menu but the individual pictures within them which would have to be resized, reimported as new layers - text redone -- and you know how much text there is on some of my menus (like the deleted scenes one) and then the buttons redefined etc.

It's alot of work and just not worth the effort for me - I think an auto play ntsc disc with the film and making of would be sufficient. The kind of programme I'm talking about would be one where you put a pal dvd in - it reduces the pal menus frames from 720x576 into the ntsc frame of 720x480 by shrinking it down (not cropping) and maintaining all the button positions/highlights etc -- and also converts the video and audio as well - but alas no such thing exists. I think eventually it will though.

Scot

[reflex]

Just imagine if Forever Evil had been a smash-hit.

There would be no Workprinters and Roger would be living in a 24,000 square foot mansion perched precariously next to Syvester Stallone's place in the Hollywood Hills.

[sonickel]

I finally got round to watching "In my Image" the other day.... thought I'd add a few comments here.

The other person who denounced it as "crap" certainly wasn't being very helpful, though the film did have many problems.

The Good:

1. I thought the overall concept was really interesting. What happens when you get the clash of two civilisations who believe they are totally "right"? The one with the most power wins, regardless of its merit. Also, the clash between opinionated individuals over values and ideals was interesting, and timely too, in these days of fundamentalisms.

2. The characters, their motivations and personalities were well imagined, too. I was especially interested in the main character and his friendship with the New Guinean preacher- how that old friendship was marred by mutual idealism taken to ridiculous extremes. Really, the preacher was the most sympathetic character of the lot, despite his rigid Christianity. He was most aware of the tension between friendship and ideals, and was genuinely disturbed by the conflict it created. The other characters were pretty oblivious and selfrighteous, to the point where I wanted to slap them - even the main character himself!!!

3. I thought reversal film, with its odd colours, was a good choice to shoot on.

Problems

1. Super 8 wasn't the best medium to use, because of the jitter, breathing, and general fuzziness. I don't think it looked anything like 35mm, and it suffered for that. 16mm reversal would have been a much better choice, for stability and clarity of image. Also, what were those blue lines at the beginning of the film?

2. People's lips were moving totally out of sync with the sound. Also, the volume levels were not matched - some people were really loud, others were inaudible. Also, some of the New Guinean accents were hard to decipher. Some subtitles might have helped here.

3. The script was more of a play than a screenplay. ie heavily dependent on dialogue, not much room for the nonverbal communication which film employs in preference to words (ie lighting, sound, closeups, location, directing...). Also, the actors were either untrained, or theatre based- they are accustomed to projecting their voice and enunciating, but not doing much with small gestures. It looked and sounded pretty artificial for a film. (Although, some of that was appropriate, to convey the early 20th century British stuffiness and arrogance of the Aussie lawyers.) Some dialogue was unnecessary and didn't advance the plot. Some more script editing would have helped make this film work better.

4. The directing was pretty dull, though the choice of location and costume was well done. Consistent with your background in theatre, though.

Overall, a pretty impressive first effort. You'd put a lot of thought into the emotional dynamics of the characters, and researching the world of 1930s Papua New Guinea. It takes a long time to learn and master technical stuff such as film cameras, directing and lighting (I'm still at square 1). Shifting from a theatre to a film mentality is also a lengthy process.

Good luck with the next project!



PS I might be living in Brisbane next year, if you need grips, or general BTS help, please give me a yell.

[Scotness]

Hey thanks for that - that's a fair and constructive review - and I pretty well agree with all your points - the synch wasn't out all the time though - just the really important scenes :evil: (the battery went flat with out us knowing it - so I had to synch them up by hand) -- those blue lines are a mystery and have been discussed here a fair bit by poeple who have also experienced them in their films as well - it's a either a processing problem or a scratch caused after development I think - there's a few threads here where people have tried to nail down the cause for it - very annoying. Those volume problems are one of the things I have fixed now in the remastered and remixed version - I should point out these are the changes I have made:

# The compression artefacting causing a faint grid like pattern to occasionaly appear has been removed in about 99% of the instances where it was visible (which wasn't that many anyway). This was due to poor use of a not very good codec - all basically inexperience on my part. It was corrected by going back to the original files (which I was able to do in about 95% of the cases and rework it forward using the Huffyuv 2.11 free lossless codec instead.

# Improved image stabilisation by working more with the deshaker plug in for virtual dub

# The restoration of one shot back into the cut (the pan across the plateau) before David imagines the murder. This is due to now getting an acceptable result with the deshaker plug in.

# More of the texture and grain of the original Super 8 being preserved - this is from using the Huffyuv codec for all stages before mpeg2 encoding.

# All the cropping that was done in the first version has been removed - this means that occasionally some vinjetting will be evident - but given that the new encoding with the huffyuv codec preserved much of the grain and texture of the film I didn't want to then go and mess with that more by cropping and resizing - it was a trade off, but the option I'm happier with - particularly when most of the vinjetting is within the overscan area of tv sets anyway

# Decreased camera noise in the scenes where it is evident - this is by comb filtering the dialogue tracks reasonably effectively with a parametric equaliser. ANd although this is an improvement on the orginal there is no substitute for good clean sound to begin with!

# Better all round sound - particularly in terms of levels being more consistent - by audio editing simultaneously in an NLE with an audio mixer and with a seperate wave form editor as well. Again something that should have been done before hand, just lack of experience on my part again

# Fixing of audio drop outs - there was about 3 of them in the film - all totally unecssary and quite embarassing - they are fixed now!

All the other problems eg dull directing (I agree!) I'll have to fix in my next film! If you're moving to Brissy that'd be great - I'm doing one short in March and another feature at the end of the year - both on 16mm.

Anyway this is definitley my last post for 3 weeks now - off to traverse the wilds of North Queensland now

Scot

[reflex]

I think Scot deserves great success with his future projects - his response to criticism (good and bad) has been remarkable. I'm not sure I would respond nearly as well as he has as we all dissect his work.

Scot - I'm glad you've made the move to 16mm, and I'm looking forward to buying your next film. Good luck.

reflex

[steve hyde]

Scott,

Thanks for the copy of "In My Image", which I watched last night with much interest. Overall I was impressed with your work. It is a truly great acomplishment to write, produce, direct, edit and star in your first feature film....I'm raising my coffee cup to you as we speak. Cheers!

After reading some of the reviews in this thread I was wondering if it was going to be a bomb. IT IS NOT. In fact the story is quite interesting. You are a good writer. After reading your own criticisms of your film. It sounds like you have identified many of the films problems. I especially agree with your statement that,

the biggest problem with the directing in In My Image is that I just didn't think about it enough and relied on what I had learnt from directing theatre too much - and as I found out they are two totally different things!

I agree. This is the "biggest" -- or I would say central -- problem with the film. Just so you know who is about to dish out a critique of your work, I should say that I myself have not made a film (not even a short) and I've never written a play, although I have been giving film making a lot of thought lately and I've been reading a bit about screen writing -- I'm really just a fan of literature and cinema and an aspiring film maker who is eager to learn the craft. That said, I'll comment on the writing since many of the technical problems have already been discussed.

There are important differences between cinema and stage. Somewhere I read that a good way to detect whether a strong screenplay underlies a film is to watch the film without sound. If you can follow the story and get a sense of who the characters are and continue to make sense of the conflict and glean some insights from the resolution, without sound, chances are that the screenplay is structurally solid. One of my favorite films, for example, is "La Strada". Try watching "La Strada" without sound. The story still flows beautifully. The character development in "La Strada" really does not rely on dialogue at all. Furthermore I think the most important sound elements in "La Strada" are actually music rather than dialogue. I'm no Fellini scholar, but I would bet that you could do this with almost any of his films and walk away with the overarching story. Fellini tells this story with facial expressions, eyes, set decor and emotive body movements.

Cinema is 50% picture and 50% sound. The picture to sound ratio for conveying the "In My Image" story is probably 30:70, which means I could follow the story better with my eyes closed than with the sound turned off.

I think your screenplay is too reliant on dialogue driven scenes, which makes it more of a theatrical rather than cinematic experience. That said, the dialogue is relatively good and engaging and kept me interested throughout the film.

Most importantly for me, I like the story...IT IS A STORY ABOUT SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER. If you had written this story as a novel I probably would have picked up the book. Your film raises some important philosophical questions about colonialism, religion and morality and the story itself points to the truth, at least the truth that I believe, which is the belief that the truth cannot be found in any religion and that the truth is always a matter of perception. And that murder is always murder regardless of whether the killing is done by a member of civil society, the church or by the state sanctioned as capital punishment (or war). Therefore, in the end, I think "In My Image" is a compelling work of postmodern art and while the writing is a bit didactic for my tastes, it is still the boldest super8 feature I've ever seen.