Adventure Game Studio

For those who speak Spanish, yes the title is awkward. But that's not the point. The point is that I have collaborated with Philip J. Reed, VSC (yes, the guy who made Larry Vales) and I have adapted his famous short story "Somos Las Bolas" into a short screenplay. The story is featured in his latest book release "God Ran Out of Faces." Look it up on Amazon, it's true.

Anyway... Evil, another forum member, and I plan on producing the screenplay this Summer. For more information you should visit the little website I've put up. http://film.phil-reed.com

If there is enough interest, I can put up a copy of the script for some people to read. I'd love some input from others on it before we start shooting.

So... Anyone interested in having a read-through?

Ahaaa...So THIS is the secret project, what with all the photoshopped reeds. Checking out site.

Haha no, that's not the same project. But they are related, I guess.

Put me down for a copy, Lilly.

After which, I'll put down your work.  As usual.

Good to see you haven't been sitting on your ass, though.

Kay, I'll just PM copies to those interested. Anyone else interested, let me know. Babar, did you want a copy or were you just speculating? :-p

O'course! Love one. Story is enjoyably freaky. Love to see how you'd put those crazy analogies to screen.

Both of you can just put your thoughts here if you'd like. I can't wait to see what you guys think.

If the tape is featured by male people, or a group with AT LEAST one male character, the title should be "Somos lOs bolas" Might sound weird the discordance between the article and the noun, but spanish is weird... and male chauvinist, as well...

Well, I think the las is significant. The story is driven by the existance of one girl and how she screws with everyone else... literally.

This looks really cool!

Could you sign me up for a copy? :)

Wow, I just read the short story and was completely floored.  I would love to see how you went about translating this into a screenplay,  really looking forward to the film.


By the way, not to knock Phill down or anything, but doesn't this part seem a bit..well-

Quote“That girl,” he began, his voice so foreign to me that it was a moment before I realized it was him speaking, and not some ethnic radio station being broadcast somewhere. “She is your friend?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why?”

“She…” he began, and struggled to finish.


“Ping pong,” he sang to the sky with a whisper that dissolved the moment it left his lipsâ€"some pink, glorious cloud too fragile to retain its own shape, or any other shape for that matter. His head rolled slowly backward and he closed his eyes, mouthing some note of quiet appreciation to the ceiling. When his gaze became horizontal he said to me, “You are my friend.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“You are my new friend.”

He gave me his potatoes, and I ate them.

The whole thing with the quiet kid meeting a mysterious latino friend who gives him potatoes?  NapoleonDynamitesque.

Maybe.

I'd gladly give it a look.
Criticising texts will probably be my future line of career. (As if teaching was ever gonna be it...)

Quote from: earlwood on Thu 29/06/2006 09:16:37

The whole thing with the quiet kid meeting a mysterious latino friend who gives him potatoes?Ã,  NapoleonDynamitesque.

Maybe.

Phil Reed is before Napoleon Dynamite..

And I just want to say that my girlfriend did the illustrations for this book, hooray!

Also, the actress that plays Beth bought the "Cookies Love Milk" t-shirt designed by Jess. She wears it constantly.

Yeah, I thought that the potatoes thing was too similar, but there are a lot of other connections between the two that would make people say the same thing, so there's no point in changing it.

Could it be that Napolean Dynamite copied Phil Reed!?!?

edit:

Seems like we've got some PM troubles with mr. asian porn man.. So here's the link to the script. Anyone who bothers to read it, just put your thoughts in this thread.

http://film.phil-reed.com/script/somos1dot1.pdf

Sorry to double post... But has anyone finished this yet?

Edit:

Here's an image from the actual shoot. It's from the editing program, so it's not full quality and I spruced it up in photoshop roughly to give a feel of the final processing we'll do..

(http://film.phil-reed.com/images/mmmmagical.jpg)

Triple post.. Somebody arrest me!

Just thought I'd share these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilgryphmaster/sets/72157594193670558/
Production stills. Yay!

So far so good, Andrew! Your cinematography has definitely improved since some of your earlier videos, and the two scenes I've watched look really good! Well done :) Image quality is superb too! And for a minute I thought that guy was Jake Gyllenhaal!

My only criticism is your lack of reaction shots in the bridge and slow Jane scenes. It'd be nice to see what the character who isn't talking is thinking, and that's about the only thing you're not really capturing, and when you do it's from an awkward angle that you can't really see. In particular when slow Jane is talking to the dude in the car and his eyes widen almost in fear. You just can't quite see it yet that's essentially a very funny moment. So just try and find a couple more angles which are closeups of expressions, and overlap dialogue with them so we're not just looking at the people when they're talking.

All in all very good!!! Can't wait to see more dude :)

Back from the dead.. Still waiting to hear script reviews from Andail and others. In the meantime, here are some more shots:

http://film.phil-reed.com/2006/07/more-stills-to-satisfy-your-bolas-desires/

Well, shooting's been done for months and I'm just now getting the chance to get to editing.

Made a teaser for y'all. Let me know what you think:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoi6uZOuZyo

Quote from: [lgm] on Mon 02/10/2006 01:58:23
Well, shooting's been done for months and I'm just now getting the chance to get to editing.

Made a teaser for y'all. Let me know what you think:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hPRR1m5VKEA

was interested in having a look, but it says video has been removed by the user, same with the one on phil's site

Sorry, I had a major flaw in that one. It's fixed, waiting for YouTube to process.

Edit: Taking it's sweet time, but eventually it'll be here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoi6uZOuZyo

I hate double-posting, but it'd be really depressing if nobody watched this...

Back from the dead!

Somos las Bolas is almost finished. We're talking one to two weeks and it'll be done. So to celebrate I made another trailer.

Check it out, and PLEASE leave some feedback. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_X1z00-HCU

Okay, I know this will be the fourth conescutive post I've made, but I'm going to give this thread one final push until I let it fall into oblivion.

So here's an actual scene from the film... It's a funny one, too. One of the funniest. Please watch it! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf078NLlc0o)

Hey LGM!
I watched through the trailers/teasers and it looked darned ambitious to me :) I've done a fair share of experimenting with filming, and I know how extremely hard it is to get even a minute's worth of movie to look acceptable. There's so much in the procedure; casting, acting, directing, sound and light setting, editing etc, and everything needs to work perfectly together. So kudos, for pulling it all off.

Not one of the better scenes from the film, but probably one of the more memorable. Honestly (and I'm not saying this because I've worked with LGM on this), this is some one of the most well done amature films I've ever seen. Hopefully, LGM will be kind enough to upload the whole film when it's completed.

[/end bump]

The trailers look good... very promising, they have some Tarantino' s feeling with a touch of American Grafitti... But what' s the catch of the last "supposed to be funny" scene? Someone can transcript it, maybe it' s my poor understanding of american English.

If you've read the story (or watch before that scene), you find out that she has a genetically over-sized tongue. It's kind of hard to tell, if you don't know, I guess.

I probably should've put the VO before the scene in there. Here's what he says before the scene:

QuoteNarrator (Vo)

I've never had a girlfriend, to tell the truth. The closest I'd come was the tenth grade dinner-dance. A girl had asked me, and that's the only reason I was there. She was born with a congenital oversized tongue or something and it was hard to understand what she said. Everybody called her Sloe Jane.

Oh and thanks Andail. It was certainly very difficult, but I managed to get 23 acceptable minutes out of the thing, so I'm rather proud.

Hey there!  Yeah, the scene would have been funnier with that VO narration - cause as it stood alone, it came off as sad and awkward for the girl.  More embaressing than funny - but the narration helps explain the context.

I enjoyed the last trailer - the indoor lighting for the film is really excellent.  The outdoor shots seem a little more over-saturated, but it's not really bad.

I look forward to the final project!

Bt

Yes, I'm rather pleased with the lighting in general. As for the outside shots.. Yea, they're overexposed a bit... Even with an ND filter I still had trouble. Guess it's the harsh summer sun of Iowa. No worries, though, a friend of mine just so happens to be a great post-production editor and is fixing up all of the color and exposure.

Quote from: [lgm] on Tue 16/01/2007 19:36:27
Yes, I'm rather pleased with the lighting in general. As for the outside shots.. Yea, they're overexposed a bit... Even with an ND filter I still had trouble. Guess it's the harsh summer sun of Iowa. No worries, though, a friend of mine just so happens to be a great post-production editor and is fixing up all of the color and exposure.

It's really hard in the sunlight, sometimes, I feel your pain.

But, really, the lighting is really great.  Give your DP a hug for me.  If you're your own DP, well, give yourself a pat on the back.

Bt

I personally can't wait!  I figured this thread had been resurrected for the sake of project cancellation, glad to see I was wrong.

And the teaser really got me excited,(As I'm a huge Frank Zappa freak) will there be other Zappa works on the soundtrack?

Sadly, no. Zappa works would cost me money to include in the film due to copyright... But the film will have original scoring which is just as good!

Now I got it, thanks!  :)

For those still interested, here's a taste of the music that will be included in the film!

http://film.phil-reed.com/movies/endcredits.mp3

Quote from: earlwood on Thu 29/06/2006 09:16:37

The whole thing with the quiet kid meeting a mysterious latino friend who gives him potatoes?  NapoleonDynamitesque.

Maybe.

Good call on the "maybe" there.  I'm not absolutely sure which would have come first...I wrote the story in the fall of 2004 and I THINK Napolean Dynamite was released after that (feel free to correct me on this).  One thing I do know is that I still, to this day, haven't seen that film, which would render any similarity irrelevant.

This isn't to say that the work itself isn't immune to homage...the entire thing is based on a direct mapping to the plot of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (I refer to the story, here...Andrew wisely separated his film from that work and based it entirely on my story), and there are certain lines and characters that are pulled from song lyrics...a list would probably bore you, but I'm sure it's rewarding to the few people who would actually recognize them...

I'm not against homage.  It's just that I tend to stick with literature and music when I work it into the world of my characters.  Television and film don't interest me nearly as much, and if Napolean Dynamite shared potatoes with a Latino, well, I admit, that's a pretty interesting coincidence.  But, like anything that is genuinely coincidental, you won't find much meaning in it.

omg Phil Reed! Where have you been!?! Where is Larry Vaels 3!!!11!1?

Quote from: Simple on Sun 04/03/2007 03:58:43
  One thing I do know is that I still, to this day, haven't seen that film

You should see it, it's a fun film

Good, clean Mormon fun!