Star Trek ~ Project Potemkin "We Few..." S03-D NOW ON-LINE

[northstar]

What I like about Potemkin is the setting. Classic movie era is my favourite. So I enjoyed the opening with the ships shots a lot. I also like the general vignette approach.

Unfortunately, the VFX that depict the crash of the shuttle early on are really not up to par with the VFX we see in the intro. These are no easy shots and it´s fine to admit that it can´t be done - in that case find another solution that is doable and presentable (i.e. the shuttle from inside or the view of the bridge of the Potemkin with the crash just on audio).

I understand the problems why there was no snow in the landscape. It would have been nice, especially since during the crash we see a snowy landscape. Looking for an alternative shooting location might have been a good idea. Especially since the location didn´t exactly look like wilderness or an alien planet, but like a normal park with walkways (where they even camp upon).

The idea to compose the fire wasn´t a good one either - it´s very obvious that there was no real fire. Again, if it is not possible to do it in a convincing way, try something else.

Besides that, I agree with Maurice - there wasn´t really a story, no drama. It´s nice to hear about each background story, but that should be embedded into something happening - like escaping the shuttle, finding shelter, trying to send out a distress call, facing an unknown threat. There are plenty of opportunities.

The good thing is - these vignettes are a great way to learn quickly. And I am sure the next one will be benefitting from the experiences you´ve made with this one.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

Maurice - thanks for the input. I really appreciate your taking the time out to type all that up. I can see where you are coming from. Please feel free to share whatever you are interested in sharing. I'll soak it up like a sponge.

Northstar - also, thank you for your input. And you are right - vignettes are a good way to gain quick experience.

 

[MikeH92467]

Maurice, if the "Mike" you are referring to is me, you mistake me for someone involved with the Potemkin production. I am not. I have written about it in my Examiner column, but I am in no way associated with the production in any way either behind or in front of the camera. When I mentioned that the Potemkin crew has always sought and welcomed feedback, it was an outsider looking in. Full disclosure: I have asked to be considered for an audition when/if the need arises for a voice-over talent.

 

[Maurice]

Hi USS Jack Riley. I hope you got something helpful out of all that.

I wanna talk a bit more about the story. More $poilery stuff

Spoiler: More Detailed Critique

Simple Logic
Just by engaging with a program an audience signals their Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It's like a contract in which they're agree to pretend what they're seeing is real so long as you bring some truth to it. When the filmmaker fails in that, when the film becomes illogical or hits false notes, it breaches that contract and the audience stops believing in what's going on.

"We Few..." suffers from this in a number of ways. The jarringly ill-fitting VFX at the top are the most obvious, but those can be discounted since once they're over they're quickly forgotten. Where this segment really runs into trouble—and this is super common in fanfilms and fan-writing—is that the behavior of the characters is inauthentic given the circumstances. I'm not talking about their characters, I'm talking about really basic human behavior.

To wit: There is talk about "bitter cold" and "hypothermia", and Mike even says “We’ll stay together under the blanket when not on watch.” All fine and good, but then the film betrays all of that by not showing the characters behaving like any sensible person would given those circumstances. Think about what you would you do in such circumstances. My guess is:

• Fashion some sort of shelter to trap heat... a lean to, a tent whatever.

Barring that, and assuming you have to stay outdoors:

• Build the biggest damned fire you can
• Insulate yourself against the cold (under the blanket)
• Huddle together to reduce the surface areas from which you are radiating heat

Instead, the characters sit around exposed to the elements around a puny fire. There is apparently wood all around them, so why a fire barely big enough to toast "marshmelons"? Why don’t the two trying to sleep huddle together wrapped in one end of the blanket while the on-watch member sits on the other end and at least partially covers him/herself?

In short, the characters pay lip service to danger, but they don’t act as if there is any. TELLING isn't enough, SHOW us. SELL US on the peril. If the characters do not take the situation seriously, why should the audience?

The Coda
This feels like it's there because there's no ending. It feels like it's there just to say "they're fine" and to give Grigory a moment to quote TMP's tagline, which really doesn't feel earned given how little happens.

The ending needs to be about where the story has taken the protagonists. If the start of the story is The Normal World, the events of the story upend that in some way, and the very end is The Road Back and The New Normal. This coda gives us none of that. We just know "they're fine", as nothing's changed.



Repetition
Another common fanfilm/fan fiction failing is pointless repetition. Audiences are generally smart enough that they only need to be told something once. The S.O.S. during the crash action tells us what is happening, but then after the crash much of it gets repeated in Mike's log.

Location Shooting Advice
I could be wrong, but my gut instinct is that the only reason a failed colony is mentioned is to justify the obviously human-made features visible in some shots.

As said colony is only mentioned in the voiceover, it could be that it was added to explain away these human constructs that got into shots, but wasn't the original intent.

If, however, it was scripted this way because of the location, that was unnecessary. There are plenty of shots in the film which betray no obvious signs of civilization. The trick would have been just to pick setups and angles where no such signs of human habitation are visible.

VFX
I agree with northstar as regards the VFX. When your reach exceeds your grasp, the best thing to do is come at the problem from a different angle. The visual effects are largely… well, not good. This is one of those cases where less would definitely have been more.

The shuttle crash looks like a pre-viz instead of a finished shot. Everything about this sequence feels off. The shaking, the skewing, the way the shuttle bounces, and the weird bop it does before sinking, none of it works. Whatever particle effect is being used for the re-entry flames looks like yellow-orange cartoon snowflakes, not fire. The ice breaking up doesn't feel motivated by the impact as the whole mass of ice chunks and instantly airborne as soon as the shuttle's nose kisses the surface. The ice isn't convincing, either, because it just looks like a bunch of blocks materializing through the surface and landing atop that surface, not like a surface which has been shattered . All the flickering polygons on the ice is very cartoonish, not helped by he fact that the background of the shuttle shots are visually dissimilar to the actual location in just about every way.

In short. this is a case where simply seeing the characters emerge from the trees with smoke rising in the distance would have been a much better solution.

The fire's been mentioned before. It draws attention to itself because it looks like it’s been double exposed atop the footage, or composited perhaps as a Screen instead of an Add, so it looks weirdly dark and ghostly. There are tricks for making this kind of stuff work, but clearly not applied here.

(Speaking of the fire, where does it come from? Mike checks the other two, walks away a few steps, looks at his own arm, then them comes back to this fire which appears like magic.)

 

[Barbreader]

MikeH92467 mostly writes columns (which I include in links from the subject's page at Star Trek Reviewed.). He and I are 'press' not production. I do read your comments, too.

I don't care that much about CGI, even though when it's really excellent I notice it. A crayon drawing of a starship with a voiceover or a beautiful rendering with 3D light and shadow that looks like a photo can both advance the story. But I can enjoy a play on a blank stage, too.

The biggest issue for me is always if something happens that pulls me out of the story. E.G., a ghost appears that is really supposed to be a ghost. (Project Potemkin) Red matter. (JJ Abrams) A story about Betazoids in which they are all empaths, rather than the full-blooded ones being mind readers. (Star Trek Outpost). I don't care if buttons on consoles are misplaced, or that kind of thing.

I do like a more complete story so I prefer the longer films. I am pleased that the two new series that will follow Potemkin will have fewer, longer films each year.

 

[Maurice]

Maurice, if the "Mike" you are referring to is me, you mistake me for someone involved with the Potemkin production....

Oh for Mike's sake... The CHARACTER is named Mike Delaney. The Captain even says, "It's time to go home, Mike." Pay attention.

 

[MikeH92467]

Maurice, if the "Mike" you are referring to is me, you mistake me for someone involved with the Potemkin production....

Oh for Mike's sake... The CHARACTER is named Mike Delaney. The Captain even says, "It's time to go home, Mike." Pay attention.

Oh really?

That said, based on what Mike wrote (above) he appears to be anxious or at least receptive to input on how to improve.

 

[Maurice]

That said, based on what Mike wrote (above) he appears to be anxious or at least receptive to input on how to improve.

THAT was a mistake, obviously. I accidentally continued using "Mike" when I meant to switch to the actor's name.

 

[MikeH92467]

Peace out!

 

[Maurice]

Some final tips for USS Jack Riley and anyone else interested in useful no-budget techniques:

Working With Talent
Most fanfilms are working with people who have no acting training or little to no experience. This means many of the performers have no barometer for gaging if what they’re doing is working, so the director and sound-recordist have to be very attentive to each take to make sure that the performances “read”.

Acting on camera isn’t the same as acting on stage, so even actors with experience in the latter can have problems scaling their performances to the unique peculiarities of the camera. What typically happens is either the actor projects too much—being used to making sure they can be heard in the cheap seats—or they play it too small and get mumbly because they’re trying NOT to project too much. When the mic-ed sound quality is mediocre you have to be especially certain that the actors play it big enough to be recorded AND that they’re not becoming mumbly or marble-mouthed when trying to play it small. MacKenzie’s line at 7:52 is an example of the latter… it’s low and marble-mouthed and very difficult to understand.

Sound
Audio has always been most fanfilms' Achilles Heel, Potemkin’s included, and We Few... continues that. Albeit some of the location sound is passable, what I assume are looped lines really sound like they were recorded indoors. Some of the delivery is muddy (e.g. the aforementioned line at 7:52). There are sync issues (MacKenzie’s “I feel all right” at 3:00 is completely off from the actor’s head and lip movements). Finally, there’s a lack of “room tone” for the planet which robs it of any atmosphere. Even a stock faint wind sound would have helped. As a filmmaker friend of mine once sagely said, "In film even silence has a sound."

Here’s a DIY tip for creating “safety” with dialog on set. The worst thing is not being able to hear the dialog in the footage, because it makes even looping more difficult since you have to try to match the lip sync by eye alone. But there's a cheapo bit of insurance you can take out in this regard, and it's probably right in the pockets of your crew and cast.

Just about any smartphone has a memo recorder app. I'm not suggesting using these to record production sound (the mics aren’t designed for that), but you can use them to create a backup audio sync track for takes. Switch the phones to airplane mode (so they won’t ring or buzz) place them just off camera by the actors (on in their lap, if it;s a closeup; one per actor if you can do it). Open the memo recorder app on each device, and at the start of each take have the actors hit “record”. Then make sure someone LOUDLY calls the slate (e,g, “scene 25 Alpha, Take 2” aka “25 Apples, 2”) and make a LOUD “clap” (slate or not, and make sure the clap is visible on camera for each take). What you’ll end up with isn’t necessarily usable sound, but can provide a scratch track for any audio the main mic doesn’t get, and which you can then use as the reference for doing looping (the clap being the necessary to help line up the separate sound with the picture).

Looping
Where dialog has to be looped but where lip-sync is not an issue, I always suggest trying recording the lines “wild” in a similar setting as the original audio. For instance, since the bulk of the this film was shot outdoors, I’d have taken the actors outdoors to record their wild (off camera) lines so that the sonic “space” would closely match. This could be in a backyard or anywhere where there’s no intrusive sound (traffic, etc.). You can always step back indoors and get a “safety” pass, but in general the stuff you record in the similar sonic setting will match better.

If the lines aren’t “wild” and require lip sync, try the reverse. First, record loops indoors in front of a monitor, preferably where the actor can see the footage and match the lip action. Once you have some useable takes, save them as your fallback, then put the loops onto a portable device (laptop, hone, whatever), go outdoors, play the audio back for the actor (even better if you can play it back in a loop over headphones) and record them there, matching the timing. If it works you’ll have sync-able loops with a similar quality to the location footage AND the indoor recordings as a worst-case backup.

And, if you’ve got no way to do the preceding, try the brute force approach. Go outside with the audio recorder and have the actor say the lines “wild” about a two dozen times and a dozen different ways. From that set you may find one of two takes which are close enough to be useable with a bit of massaging.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

Maurice and everyone else who had offered insight - thanks for the input. I appreciate you taking the time out to write a critique and offer suggestions.