Jaws In Space Presents: A Movie The Way Ed Wood Would (a WIP)

[Jaws In Space]

Hello Doomworld,

Jaws In Space here with an amazing set of videos. Though you may recognize me as a master Doom map maker from such high profile releases as The Monochrome Mapping Project & Switcheroom, in my spare time I also like to write & make movies. Or should I say Movie!!!! Yes that's right folks since October of 2010 I have been in production of a stunning masterpiece of cinema I like to call THE DESTROYER.

Originally envisioned as a remake of Smokey & The Bandit, I quickly realized that there was no way in Hell that I'd ever have enough money to make something of that scale so decided to become a little more modest & chose Steven Spielberg's Duel as a base. Over the next 6 month's I slowly developed a script & finally we started filming our first scenes in June 2011. Now of course these were just interior sets which accounted for about 10% of the film, the remaining 90% was set to be filmed in New Mexico & it all had to be finished before I deployed in November of that year, would we make the deadline?!?! No of course not, don't be ridiculous. That $3,000 Jeep I bought for the movie broke down & we had to cancel the trip. Once I returned from the deployment filming once again got underway in May of 2012, only to be abruptly halted when my main actor was restationed to Alaska. I was at a complete loss at that point, my actors had moved away my equipment was broke & I had no will to finish the movie. There it sat until the end of the year when I decided to make a new years resolution to finish to movie once & for all. Thus I completely rewrote the script as a murder mystery comedy & turned all the previously filled scenes into flashbacks. Filming once again got underway & from February to April 2013 many new scenes were filmed, but after that we once again stopped. I can't remember why, I think it had something to do with me working in a different part of the building so I couldn't tell the guys when were supposed to be filming or something stupid like that. Anyways once March 2014 rolled around I realized that I only had til August to finish the movie before I got out of the Air Force & moved back to Michigan, so once again filming resumed. That's where I am now, after 11 nonconsecutive days of filming, & $8,000+ in the hole over the past 3 years, I present to you the first 45 minutes of the film free of charge.

PART 1: Opening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRY0uErFnco

Part 2: Drunkin Donuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0m1PyTjzkk

Part 3: Questioning Mary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrp3wqUbsrk

Part 4: Drunkin Donuts 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vBpmp7BKY4

Part 5: Questioning Harvey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjkv4hTSMBY

Part 6: Drunkin Donuts 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUeI81XUbcg

Part 7: Travel To Lips Lounge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEhTM5lMT64

Part 8: At Lips Lounge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KUZfrCUEnw

Part 9: Leaving Lips Lounge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YoMbxBN11U

Unfinished Parts:

Part 10: Impasse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kasi9UvTjww
Part 11: Escape
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5UCRyBDmDU
Part 12: Who done it? (This part has no shots filmed at all)

Credits:
Jesse Ung as Detective Boris
Micah (Jaws In Space) Petersen as WolfRed
Robert Rovnak as The Witness
Corey Mergenthaler as The Drunkin Donuts Waiter
Beatrice Perez as Mary
Trevor Fischer-Anderson as Alexander Johnson
Gabriel Miller as The Affair Guy
Gabe Payne as Harvey
Christopher Ford as Ford
Brett Nims as Dr. Rodney Nims
Theodore Muenster as The Gas Station Attendant
Jacob Hopfauf as Richard Handcock
Nathaniel Pugh as The Ass Hole Pool Player
William Lau as The Asian Pool Player
Jeremi Isaacs as The Black Pool Player
Wes Bjorklund as The Unlucky Motorist

Written & Directed by: Micah Petersen

Music by: Nobody yet, why don't you go make something for me, pretty please.

[RUSH]

Aaaaaaaaaand none of them play properly...

[Ichor]

The problem was that he put in the whole link in the yt tags, when all that was needed was the part after the v=. (MRY0uErFnco not https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRY0uErFnco)

[RUSH]

Watched most of these and they totally remind me of early 2008-ish Youtube skits. Part 8 was pretty funny and well done. Overall, good job.

[Nomad]

I was misled. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller about sharks swimming through the cosmos wreaking havoc on unsuspecting astronauts.

[Jaws In Space]

Nomad said:

I was misled. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller about sharks swimming through the cosmos wreaking havoc on unsuspecting astronauts.

That's my goal in life.

Also, yay 250th post!

[Jaws In Space]

Almost 3 month's ago I put forth a goal to finish the final 4 scenes of my terrible movie. So here I am now presenting you with 1 of those 4 scenes. Yes that's right after month's of delays from broken down cars, unreliable drunken actors, & people loosing their jobs I was finally able to get the crew together yesterday to do some filming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YoMbxBN11U

The question still remains, will I be able to finish this film before August 1st? I give you a definite I don't know, ask me again on Wednesday after filming goes horribly wrong.

[Clonehunter]

I honestly read this title as Jews In Space: A Movie by Ed Wood Wood.

I'm fairly disappointed. However, if you do finish Jaws 5, you only have 10 more sequels to do before 2015.

[Blastfrog]

A few things could use improvement.

The first scene of part 1 is really boring, I don't need to see the guy drive slowly, park, and then walk a long distance. There are shots where the guy clearly only starts to walk, which is jarring and breaks the illusion of a continual walk. You should probably cut this sequence down to 45-60 seconds. In part 2, I noticed there was a cat running around the actors. As the cat never went directly behind the actors' backs relative to the camera, you can safely just paste the non-cat background and not worry about interfering with the actors in shot.

In general, the use of stage audio doesn't sound very good. If you're at all able to get the actors to rerecord their lines into a microphone, using that and mixing sound effects is the way to go (and has been how Hollywood has done it for decades). If you can't get the actors to do post-production dialog, you can still cut out all sound when actors are not speaking and fill the rest in with studio quality sound.

The aspect ratio is a little narrow, and the moving camera work is a little shaky at times. Personally, I'd go anywhere from 16:9 (standard consumer widescreen) to 2.35:1 (standard American film ratio). The former is probably a good idea given that people will be watching these on 16:9 displays in all likelihood, and also means you'd have to crop less.

I suggest if you do widen the ratio that you use that little bit of the extra wiggle room to digitally pan the shot in order to smooth some of the chunkier moving pans done by hand. Regardless of any aspect ratio or pan editing, I also recommend doing a bit of color correction to make the shot look nice (simple things like subtly tinting shots with color, tweaking gamma and contrast, etc).


Of course, I have no idea if you'd want any of the above to be different, if you're deliberately aiming for an Ed Wood style and that it wasn't just in reference to how you salvaged it from a halted earlier attempt.

I might be willing to lend a hand with the audio stuff (both sfx and music), just let me know if you're interested. What is the deadline to finish the movie? I know you said August, but how soon/late in August?

[Ribbiks]

this is actually quite a bit more amusing than I expected. Even though a lot of the silliness is intentional it still had a bit of that amateur/B-tier charm that I'm quite a fan of. Will continue watching.

[RUSH]

Ribbiks said:

this is actually quite a bit more amusing than I expected. Even though a lot of the silliness is intentional it still had a bit of that amateur/B-tier charm that I'm quite a fan of. Will continue watching.

Agreed. It's that case of "so bad it's good" - yet enjoyable in a goofy way.

[Technician]

I keep reading this threads title as Jews in Space.

[elic]

Technician said:

I keep reading this threads title as Jews in Space.

Same here.

Actually, for the first few months he was posting here I thought that was the guy's username.

I also thought that Tarnsman's username was Transman for a while.

[Jaws In Space]

First off thanks RUSH & Ribbiks, I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. Filming was canceled today due to rain, but I'm still going to try & finish as much filming as I possibly can. I think the best that I can hope for right now is to at least get 2 more parts finished before I move. About 1/5 of Impasse is.... oh there's an E at the end of impasse, god I've been spelling Impass for the past 4 years. Anyways about 1/5 of Impasse is already filmed, but the last 2 parts have nothing done at all, so we'll see what happens.

Sodaholic said:
The first scene of part 1 is really boring, I don't need to see the guy drive slowly, park, and then walk a long distance. There are shots where the guy clearly only starts to walk, which is jarring and breaks the illusion of a continual walk. You should probably cut this sequence down to 45-60 seconds. In part 2, I noticed there was a cat running around the actors. As the cat never went directly behind the actors' backs relative to the camera, you can safely just paste the non-cat background and not worry about interfering with the actors in shot.

Yeah I guess I should inform everyone that these are pretty rough cuts of the movie. The reason the walk is so long is because the credits will be played throughout him walking, I've already got this sequence finalized & it looks much better. I've already edited out the parts where he just starts to walk as well. Part 2 & beyond still need a bit of editing to fix some of the more blatant mistakes.

In general, the use of stage audio doesn't sound very good. If you're at all able to get the actors to rerecord their lines into a microphone, using that and mixing sound effects is the way to go (and has been how Hollywood has done it for decades). If you can't get the actors to do post-production dialog, you can still cut out all sound when actors are not speaking and fill the rest in with studio quality sound.

Yes this is definitely a lesson learned from making this movie, when I get around to making another film eventually I will be sure to get someone to take charge of all the sound aspects of the film. In part 5 I did attempt to do post sound recording to an absolutely disastrous effect.

The aspect ratio is a little narrow, and the moving camera work is a little shaky at times. Personally, I'd go anywhere from 16:9 (standard consumer widescreen) to 2.35:1 (standard American film ratio). The former is probably a good idea given that people will be watching these on 16:9 displays in all likelihood, and also means you'd have to crop less.

Weird aspect ratio was due to unfamiliarity with the camera when I first started using it. I eventually learned a bit about it after I had used it a few times, but by then it was to late to go back & do reshoots in a better aspect ratio. The camerawork is pretty shaky due to being mostly handheld, after I had spent about 1,200 in camera equipment I had to cut myself off from getting anything else, such as multiple mics of a camera stabilizer. I'm sure there are ways to fix this in some fancy editor, but I'm not willing to spent the money on that at the moment.

Of course, I have no idea if you'd want any of the above to be different, if you're deliberately aiming for an Ed Wood style and that it wasn't just in reference to how you salvaged it from a halted earlier attempt.

From the very first day of shooting things started off bad because everyone wanted to be goofy while I was attempting to do a more serious film. You may notice that all of the flashbacks are not nearly as funny as the scenes with the 2 detectives, this is because I was still doing a more serious film at the time with a script still heavily inspired by Duel.

I might be willing to lend a hand with the audio stuff (both sfx and music), just let me know if you're interested. What is the deadline to finish the movie? I know you said August, but how soon/late in August?

Well thanks for the offer I really appreciate it. The August deadline is only for filming, basically I trying to film as much as I possibly can by August 12th. It may seem like plenty of time, but in reality the only filming days that work are August 1st, 11th, & 12th. After that I'll be moving to Michigan. I might have been able to complete the film properly had it not rained all day today, but now I'm going to have to cut everything down the the bare minimum & tack on a really really unfulfilling ending.

[Doominator2]

Part 3 doesn't seem to load. :-(

[clamgor]

Doominator2 said:

Part 3 doesn't seem to load. :-(

Same here.

I think you may need to reupload part 3, Jaws.

[Jaws In Space]

Well I recently got a PM from a fan on Doomworld asking me what had happened to this movie, so I guess if there's still some interest in this thing 2 years after I stopped filming, I'd better upload the 2 unfinished parts of the movie that I was able to get some shots for around July 28th of 2014. The big problem that went wrong was that the actor who plays The Destroyer was just days away from moving to Alaska & didn't have any spare time to finish the movie, the same can be said for myself as was separated from the Air Force on August 1st & living in Michigan less than 3 weeks later.

Now these 2 scenes could eventually be finished, the only thing that prevents them from being complete is that I lack access to a white Ford Explorer that could be used as a replacement. The same cannot be said for Part 12 which has no scenes filmed at all, so even if I did finish part 10 & 11 the movie would never get done.

At this point I could either start completely over from scratch on this film with a whole new crew, or I could just give this one up as a failed first attempt & move on to something entirely different. Either way I have learned much from my mistakes & successes with this film & in the end I am pretty damn happy with how well it did turn out.

Part 10: Impasse (UNFINISHED)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kasi9UvTjww
Part 11: Escape (UNFINISHED)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5UCRyBDmDU