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48 Hour Film Contest - Genres

Steve KSteve K Posts: 3,235
edited December 1969 in Art Studio

I'm participating in this year's 48 Hour Film contest here in Houston, taking place 16 - 18 May. This involves drawing a random genre at the kickoff meeting on Friday night, and returning a finished 4 - 7 minute video in two days. Each video will also have to include a prop, line of dialogue, and character (name and occupation), which will be also be announced Friday night (the same three elements for all teams). Here are the main genres (there are also wild cards if you don't like your first draw from these):

Comedy
Dark Comedy
Drama
Film Noir
Film de Femme (Strong Female character)
Fish Out of Water
Horror
Musical or Western (not necessarily both)
Road Movie
Romance
Sci Fi
Silent Film (Dialogue Cards, Sound FX & Music OK)
Thriller/Suspense
Time Travel

I can't start writing the story before the kickoff, but I'm leaning toward using my largest collection of 3D elements, i.e. SciFi/Steampunk, for any of these genres. Anybody got any favorites movies in one of these genres? Better yet, favorite scenes? Not that I intend to use anything verbatim, just looking for inspiration. E.g. "Star Wars" seems to have an effect on a LOT of short videos/animations. “Boy, it’s lucky you have these compartments!” (See it on YouTube)

Comments

  • Hermit CrabHermit Crab Posts: 841
    edited December 1969

    Hi SteveK

    Sorry this isn't quite an answer to your question. I'm not too much into Sci-fi but in that genre I do enjoy gruesome aliens as enemies.

    In my first plays with Carrara I was able to rig a spaceman which was shaped very quickly in Sculptris. Should you want to prepare a few weird creatures, I can recommend this. Sculptris high-poly models can decimate quite well.

    And not much later I made the 'brain-in-a-jar' shown in this video starting at 2:44.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPtVqcziRRI&feature=player_detailpage

    The full video is extremely trivial - I joined the Iclone forum just before I came to the DAZ forums and the video was mainly the result of someone asking what things I had done so far. (and someone else asking if an opening flower could be made for iclone. (You can tell I'm a beginner in iclone)

    But the Brain-in-a-jar might spark off an idea.

  • Steve KSteve K Posts: 3,235
    edited December 1969

    Marcus Severus said:
    ... But the Brain-in-a-jar might spark off an idea.

    Thanks, that was a fun video. I'm am not by any stretch a modeller, too little patience. Thankfully there are very talented modellers who provide Poser type content for very affordable prices. I just happen to have a "brain-in-a-jar" type model that looks like it will fit into several genres, especially comedy and more especially dark comedy:

    http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=101150

    Notice it can use M4's eyes and/or head, so I'm thinking a lot of the expression and character collections I have will work.

    Also, while I intend to use my SciFi/Steampunk collection, I have to be prepared to fit it into any of the genres. So one idea is a large space ship with a "holodeck" (as in Star Trek, especially TNG) where e.g. a 1930's film noir/private eye/femme fatale sequence can happen (and I think it did once on TNG).

    Thanks again.

  • Hermit CrabHermit Crab Posts: 841
    edited December 1969

    Hi Steve

    That's a wonderful Sci-fi asset you posted a link to - I love it!

    One variation reminds me of 'Mars Attacks' but the whole thing just conjures up a world of story ideas. Some artists are so gifted.

    My video was mostly just some beginner tests strung together - but I'm glad you liked it.

    I hope you get more and better suggestions before the challenge kicks off!

  • Steve KSteve K Posts: 3,235
    edited December 1969

    Marcus Severus said:
    ... I hope you get more and better suggestions before the challenge kicks off!

    Thanks. I've been working my way through this series of books which includes a lot of great scenes from well known movies:

    http://tinyurl.com/n33wu9u

    As most of the reviewers agree, its very well done and easy to follow with the actual screen grabs from the movie, plus the 3D models showing the actor and camera movements (using Poser no less). About the only complaint was that the illustrations are not in color, but I don't see that as a problem, it would just make the book more expensive.

    I particularly like the third volume, "The Director's Vision", since that's what I'm faced with in the contest - blocking the scene, deciding on actor and camera movements, etc. I have to keep reminding myself that the camera does not have to stay perfectly level ...

    :coolsmirk:

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