Info and forum posts by 'Ben Franklin'

RE: Marvel: The Avengers film

We shot our last short on the Alexa - it`s a beautiful camera.

What`s the best deal around on The Avengers BD?

RE: Lockout (Guy Pearce flick)

I thought the chase scene in the beginning was quite possibly some of the worst CGI I`ve ever seen in a mainstream film.

They could have pretty much cut it entirely as it added nothing.

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Actually she saw everything, including monsters, and the blood and gore. We made her feel safe and comfortable around us and what was going on with the makeup. She was a bit scared of the Suckablood monster at first, but after spending some time with the actor she realised he was just a man in makeup and costume, although I do still think she was always a little uneasy with him, which probably added to the scenes (especially the bedroom one).

The finished film is also darker than the way we shot it, due to image grading. If you see our "Making of" you`ll see the setup of shooting, and to be honest Holly was also pretty switched on for her age. So she was easy to work with, and even watched all of the gore being applied in the final death scene. We originally had a child casting company turn us down outright because of the nature of the script!

Thanks for watching Ste, glad you enjoyed it. :)

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Yep, he gave us a nice little mention on Twitter. Unfortunately the grammar police were out and seemed to be more keen to point out his error in his tweet, than clicking the link! Still, we got another 1k views or so, which is always nice.

Thanks for watching, hope you enjoy(ed) "Suckablood". :)

Mouse advice - alternative to Apple Magic Mouse

I really like my Magic Mouse, but it`s been dropped so many times by my 3 year old that it`s barely standing still.

So I`m looking for a replacement, and wanted to know if there was another mouse I could consider. One thing I love about the mouse is it`s 360 scrolling - I find it really handy when editing to be able to move left/right on my timeline. 

I wondered what you guys were using and if you could recommend alternatives?

RE: Short UK Breaks - any recommendations?

Thanks for the help with this guys.

I ended up taking a trip to Warwick for a couple of days with the family (via Legoland). Whilst there we went to Warwick Castle, which was very enjoyable although like all Tussaud`s attractions they rip you off left, right and centre. Worst of all was paying £4 each for the Merlin Dragon tour, which was absolutely godawful. Such a shameless attempt to make you spend more money, and I can`t believe the BBC have put their name to it. It felt more like a pre-ride show, than an actual one.

Literally the first thing they make you do, before going in, is queue up to have your photo taken. Once you`ve had this unavoidable trap set, then you have to exit through the photo area after the show, at which point you`re called over to try and buy your picture. This wouldn`t be so bad, where it not for the main section, where a poorly animated CGI dragon talks to you in a small room, was so shoddily done. Next time, I`ll be checking Trip Advisor where many people have said the same.

Legoland was much better for the little ones, and even though its clearly not as education there`s still lots of activities to be had. My 3 year old loved it on the most part.

Out of curiousity, can anyone recommend other good castles to visit in the country? I did like how Warwick Castle had recreated the areas with waxworks and plenty of info on the living/working conditions. Would be keen to visit more castles!

Short UK Breaks - any recommendations?

Hi guys,

I`ve got a couple of weeks off work coming up, and would like to spend a few nights in another region of the country (I live in Huntingdon). I have a wife, and 2 young children (3 and 1), and having never really had a holiday in this country since I was a child, I wasn`t sure quite where we could take them.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

RE: Eastbound and Down - anyone watching this?

Absolutely brilliant. Watch it on the train and it often has me laughing out loud.

RE: Misfits

Generally I thought the series was good, aside from the odd misfire like the awful Nazi episode, which made zero sense in the timeline of the overall story.

Interesting to see that there will be some new character additions for the next series; I thought Joe Gilgun was ace and I didn`t miss Nathan at all.

I found the whole time travel thing thing a bore and full of plot holes again. Could Simon just not have travelled back minutes before the incident with Alisha to stop it from happening?

Need some help finding some funny YouTube videos!

So I`m doing a gameshow night at work tomorrow for our Xmas party, and one of the rounds is a `what happens next YouTube` video compilation, where you guessed it... People have to guess what happens next in the video. 

So it can be anything from your usual `fail` videos to stuff thats totally random. But most importantly it needs to be funny (suprising is also good too). I`ve got a few so far, but do you guys know of any great YT videos you`ve seen over the past few months that would work well for something like this?

Cheers for any help you can give!

RE: Media Streamers anyone? From PC/Mac to TV

Thanks for all the tips guys. I had some bad experiences with using XBMC recently, when I spent hours setting it up for my dad on an ION Asrock. In the end he bought a Mac Mini and that`s been flawless, although way out of my price range.

Ideally I`d have something out of the box, which is why the Boxee was attractive. Skirpy, is the streaming good/reliable and what kind of in-built services does the UK version offer?

As 1mills mentioned, the Apple TV looks a good option. Shame it`s 720p, but then I think I can live with that. By installing Firecore you can do much more with the device, so it`s a good option. Has anyone done this at all?

Thanks for the advice!

Media Streamers anyone? From PC/Mac to TV

Hi guys! Long time no speak. Love all the changes you`re doing on here RJS - top work!

Anyway, been looking into media streamers recently and was wondering if anyone here used them at all? Quite simply I`m looking to stream media from my Mac to my TV.

I already do that with my bedroom TV via the PS3, but for downstairs I typically plug in the iPad and stream via that, but it can be a bit of a pain especially when someone wants to use the iPad. So I was wondering whether anyone was using something like Boxee, or a WDTV Live Player or Asus O!Play.

So any recommendations? Thanks in advance.

RE: Suggestions for Halloween please

If its the Joe Dante film, its a very good one, but spoiled by the CGI heavy ending. 

I would say that some of Ghostbusters IS scary. I was definitely scared of some of what I saw as a kid - the ghostly stuff with Dana getting spooked is very memorable, as are those Terror Dogs that come alive and chase Louis Tully. 

Is Beetlejuice worth a look perhaps?

RE: May be getting a snake for Christmas. Need ideas for a name.

Snakey McSnakerson the 2nd.

RE: Suggestions for Halloween please

I remember "The Hole" being quite sexual in content too, as it deals a lot with sexed up teenagers.

Gremlins is a good choice, and how about Poltergeist? And The Frighteners or Ghostbusters maybe? If they like musicals then Little Shop of Horrors is always a good pick. And finally Tremors, but can`t remember gore content in that one...

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Thanks guys. It all REALLY helps, I promise. 

Jimbo, I see what you`re saying:
would you pre-order a DVD for £32....?

Of course not, but that`s not really what you are doing. It`s an incentive as such, but shouldn`t necessarily be the driving force for doing it. Some people like to pledge without receiving incentives, and you`re also forgetting the other costs involved.

For £32, 9% of that will like go to IndieGoGo. Then another percentage (not sure what it is off the top of my head), goes to Paypal. Then you have the actual cost of the DVD, which lets say for arguments sake is about £5 per unit. Then there`s postage of said item, which Internationally could be relatively expensive. Then there`s the hosting fees for the files that I`ll give secure downloads to. Add to that we need to have enough money left over to make it worthwhile, and ignoring the actual physical time it will take me to do this all logistically, I think £32 is probably quite fair. Usually when people ask you to donate, you don`t get anything back, so the fact we can give something back at all is in many ways a bonus.

On the face of it, I can see why you`d say what you`re saying, but believe me I`ve spent a lot of hours researching it and working out the mathematics behind it. If we end up giving back 50% of everything we receive, the remainder just wouldn`t go far enough to cover the entire series, bearing in mind location costs average between £500-1500 per day(!). Our campaign is very similar to many others that have proven to be a success, and in fact ours is very generous than many others. I saw one the other day, where for $150 you got a t-shirt and 2 books. That campaign was practically fully funded!

Point taken on actually setting up a shop, and we`d always intended to do that. It`s really been a time reason that we haven`t, and without truly knowing there`d be any demand for it, it wasn`t viewed as high priority with everything else we have going on right now. But if people are interested, then we`ll definitely do it! 

Cheers,

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Oh, so you`re talking about down the line, rather than now? 

We`d sell merchandise if there was interest, but the series completion date is so far down the line I wouldn`t want to be getting too ahead of myself. Would be a good idea for midway through the series however.

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

By the way, the $50 (£32) category includes a DVD as one of the perks. So that`s essentially the same thing as pre-ordering a DVD anyway.

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Remember though that you aren`t getting back what you`ve paid for. If the value of the perk was even more than about 25% of the total donation, considering we lose in excess of 10%+ through IndieGoGo/Paypal too, it wouldn`t be worth our time to do it. The only way these campaigns work is if the incentive is really a fraction of the cost.

If we ordered t-shirts, which would be roughly £5 a pop, add delivery (potentially to the USA), you could easily be talking £10 at least. Trust me, I`ve spent many hours working out the maths behind it all! Whatever happens, if we reach our target we`ll be paying out about $3000 of it at the bare minimum.

Oh, and it`s too late to add any more perks now, so not much I can do about pre-ordering DVDs etc.

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Its not really. It`s modelled off of lots of other successful campaigns (that have reached over $100k), and lots of research. It`s actually pretty generous compared to most.

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

So there`s not a single person on here, aside from Sue Brown, willing to throw a $ into our virtual tip jar? Not even for an old friend of the site? ;)

http://www.indiegogo.com/Bloody-Cuts-a-short-horror-anthology

Actually this is turning out to be a lot hard than I expected. Apparently only 1% of all people that see your campaign will pledge, so its definitely an uphill struggle all the way. :(

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

A quick bump in case this wasn`t seen last night!

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

To anyone that cares in the slightest and wants to support a group of young(ish) filmmakers, we`ve just launched our IndieGoGo campaign in an attempt to raise $20,000 to complete the series. Full info here, as well as cool little video that you might just enjoy whether you fancy pledging or not! 

http://www.indiegogo.com/Bloody-Cuts-a-short-horror-anthology?a=271622&i=addr

We`ve already had the generous Sue Brown (aka smurfette) donate, so a big thanks to her for helping to kickstart the donations.

RE: Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8

I actually think the show was much smarter before the NY transition. Some of the stories have been so absurd and outlandish that it makes me wish for a return back to the usual surroundings. The Seinfeld season is still the best in my opinion.

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Guys, whatever happens, I`ll always be available to you. ;op

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Sue, all are welcome to the Facebook group. The more the merrier!

Thanks for watching guys. Some lovely feedback and I`m glad to hear you`re all enjoying it. It makes all the long hours of filming/editing it a worthwhile venture.

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

I think if we were to properly cost something like this up, you`d be looking north of £15k. Not only would you have to pay for the crew time, its the location, special fx makeup, post-production, music etc.

So the fact that we can do it that cheap, is merely down to us all having certain specialities, pieces of kit, links to particular companies, generous friends etc.

In terms of `Pennywise`:

SPOILER:
We made a concerted effort to avoid Pennywise. I don`t think he looks like him (Google a pic for comparison) and his outfit is very different indeed. Unfortunately there`s only so many ways you can do that character, and of course Pennywise is the most famous horror clown ever, so is also brought to peoples mind when horror and clowns are put together.

Cheers for watching the film Snaps! Glad it made you jump. ;)

This item was edited on Sunday, 4th September 2011, 23:22

RE: My new horror web series - BloodyCuts.co.uk

Hi guys! Back again with episode 2 in the series! This one cost us about £100 and has so far gone down really well. Hope you enjoy it. :)

RE: `Our` Ben on the beeb??..... :-

I don`t know. The company I work for gets good results in Google searches, so I`m guessing through that perhaps? Otherwise I really don`t know!

RE: `Our` Ben on the beeb??..... :-

Haha! Good spot. They called me today for an interview, which was nice. Believe me I said a lot more (rubbish) than what was printed. Nice to be asked though!

Also coincided with Episode 2 of our horror series being released, so good timing all round.(www.bloodycuts.co.uk)

Good to hear your little `un is also sleeper! We put our little 3 month old to bed and she doesn`t wake up until about 8am the next day. She`s done that from the day we brought her home. Amazing!