I live in Alpharetta, GA. What's really weird is that for such an obscure town, there's alot of film-making talent at my school. There are four legitimate film-makers at my school. One of them, and probably the best (currently...) is Thomas Verrette. This man spent a year making a Vietnam movie called "The Lost Soldiers". The movie is astounding and incredibly realistic. The thing that sucks about it is that the movie is an hour and a half long, so he can't really send in the whole thing to this site. But he is sending in a full-length trailer and a scene from the movie to studentfilms. I think everyone will be impressed, because we worked our asses of on this movie. I AD'ed the movie as well as acted in it. You can look out for me. I'm the pansy of the group (the Upham of the group so to speak). Well, even though it's not my movie, I decided to promote it because it's worth promoting. I think it's due on this site early May. He also has a short film coming on here called the "Black Box". It is also a good film, but doesn't make too much sense. But the cinematography rules. Anyway, everyone be sure to check out the clip of "The Lost Soldiers" when it gets on this site. It's worth the view.

Chandler Mays

"It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything."

If it's that good, he should just split it into 3 parts and send in the 3, 30min parts seperately. That way the whole movie can be seen.

Thank you Chad for that wonderful post!
As for spliting it up into 3 parts, i thought about it but I decided not to because I have noticed that the 30 min movies on this site dont get watched as much as the shorter ones. So I figured it might not be worth it to spend the 90 bucks that I could put towards another movie.
I
dunno. Would you guys watch all three parts??

Thomas Verrette
tommy21485@earthlink.net
Imperial Pictures

Depends on how good the first 30 minutes is I guess?

If you don't look I'll force you to _=_

well I'm not a big fan of war movies anyway though... :\

probably because you're from Canada...

just kidding - I hope that got you worked up for a split second.

The goal of a filmmaker is not only to tell a story with the camera but also be able to keep an audience for a time period... I usually watch the longer movies to see if they can hold my interest.

Yeah it may be a lot of money to send in all three parts, but sometimes a movie doesnt have its full impact on you until you reach the very end of it. Look at the movie "The Others" I was board out of my mind for half of it, but i watched it all the way to the end and when I did i was amazed and i felt like the movie was GREAT. It was the same thing with the movie "O" witch most people hated but to me was one of the best films i saw that year... well back to my point, if you have solid confidence in your film lets see the whole thing!!!!

Dare to be diffrent... dont give in to the "norm"

This is Imperial Pictures, I signed on as a guest cause I forgot my password! Oops!

Anyways,

I think I will send it in after the Trailer and Scene are posted. I would like to see how it is recieved by everyone first before I send the whole thing.

I don't consider THE LOST SOLDIERS a typical War movie. It is more about the characters than the war itself, and I found while making the movie that my favorite scenes are not the action scenes but the sentimental ones. So I think it works well on that level as a character drama as well as a war movie. It also has sort of a twist at the end. Nothing like Usual Suspects or 6th Sense, cause that would be stupid in a film like this, but it did definetly suprise people when they watched it.

The coolest thing that I was happy about with the film is the fact that after we previewed it in our school and over 200 people came to the premiere, which was amazing, and many people were very touched and a few people actually cried!!!! That was the coolest thing ever! It just goes to show you how far a movie about the characters can move people. I was very pleased with the response and it got rated 4.5/5 stars by our school newspaper. Its feels incredible to make a movie and spend like 9 months on it and then when others get to see it, they like it enough to be moved. Incredible. That experience has confirmed my goal to be a director. It is an awesome feeling.

I'm wondering the same thing. My films on this site came later than the given date, so I'll guess you'll have to wait a little longer.

Is the film "BLACK BOX" gonna be on the web around the same time as the war movie trailer?

Also...can you tell me anything about the film production? Like how many actors you used...special FX...problems...budget?

TacoWagonProductions

"Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f*cking Peace Corps." - John Belushi in ANIMAL HOUSE

Man was it tedious. Its very interesting some days I had about 30 people there, and maybe 25 of them would be in uniforms and then 5 behind the camera. Other days we had 3 people, two actors and myself. It just depended on the scene we were doing.

The opening battle of the film we had 30 people, but thats not on the site or it wont be anytime soon anyway. The Trench Scene which will be on here hopefully soon, we had about 10 -12 people on the set that day. The whole movie was shot on location with a few exceptions. There were certain hooch scenes that took place at the basecamp that we shot in my garage and to make it look like a hooch, we bought a bunch of olive drab tarps and hung them up to make them look like walls of the tent. Then we just got all of the crap that we bought at the army surplus store and whatever else we could find and placed it around to give it the messy feeling of a soldier's hooch where they sleep.

As for other sections of the film, they were filmed all over Georgia, which is where we live. The exterior basecamp scenes were shot in Dahlonega, GA on sections of North Georgia College and State University (which is a military school). We set up military tents and other stuff that we borrowed from a friend of the family who works there and is a LT. COLONEL in the Army Rangers. For scenes in the dense jungle, we filmed along the Chatahoochee river, we filmes the interior basecamp scenes in my garage. And part of the film we went down to Savannah, GA to film on the beach. The coolest thing about that was we were in our Army gear and we had our M-16s, but we didnt tell anyone what we were doing. People were along the beach walking their dogs and stuff and pretty soon we actually got a crowd of people just watching us film on the Beach. It was pretty cool. People were even watching us from a watchtower near by!

As for lighting, we got lights from Home Depot and lit everything the best we could. We only used lights for one scene in the day time. The night scenes were the only scenes where we lit prominently.

Anyways, as for special effects, we bought a s*itload of fireworks in Tennessee and brought them back. We bought a box of about 40 mortors which we used for the explosions. Basically we shot them sideways into dirt so when the shot of they would shoot into the dirt and get stuck and blow up instead of going in the air. The worked niceley. Some of them actually look firey. As for gunshots, we had trouble with blood squibs, and finally I just gave up because I didn't have time to waste while filming so what we did was strap MadCatz over some cardboard under their clothes and then light them off when I needed them to go off and it looked like they got shot. Kinda PG-13 way for squibs because there isnt any blood. Ala Pearl Harbor.

It took me about 2 months to write the script. It was 87 pages total when finished. The movie is 1 hr and 24 min. There was a lot of stuff I cut out for pacing and because I wasn't happy with the way it turned out. It was actually cool to be able to cut stuff for "pacing". We started filming last July 16th and we shot for about 30 days over the course of about 7 months until January. School created a big problem with finishing this film since for almost every scene there were the six principle actors present. It was very hard to schedule to film because if one person couldn't come we couldn't film that day. We filmed about 10 days in the summer and as school started we filmed on average about once a month until we were done. I edited the movie along the way to music from a lot of other films such as Pay It Forward, Road to Perdition, and The Thin Red Line. After the whole movie was done, I went back and put my own original score in which I composed over the course of another two months. I am very proud of the score and also if you would like to hear any songs feel free to email me. The original score is in the trench scene as well so you can hear some of the score when its on the site.

If you have any other questions feel free to email me about anything.

Any more questions feel free to email me.

Thomas Verrette
tommy21485@earthlink.net
Imperial Pictures

The budget was around $600-700. Our production looks like it would be alot more expensive than we really spent. I would assume its because we know alot of people that were able to help us out for free. Connections are very helpful! Everyone tells me it is very professional looking as well so that probably helps.

The coolest thing about making this movie was the fact that I basically made it for free. We showed it in our school auditorium with admission prices at 5 dollars. Over 200 people in our school bought tickets (by seeing the Trailer (and trench scene) that should be up on here hopefully next week!). I made roughly $2000 on the film. It was awesome! I did this once before last year and made $200 on a film that cost me just that much for $3 ticket sales. Its actually a cool business I got here. I make a movie and spend a s*itload of money on it (for me anyway, the money all came from my pockets) and after its finished, have a public screening and charge admission, and make it all back! and then plus some. Pretty much each feature film I make has been funding my next film. Hopefully my little business I got here keeps working.

Thomas Verrette
tommy21485@earthlink.net
Imperial Pictures

When the hell is the scene from Lost Soldiers going to be up?!?!?!!?!?? You've built it up for sooooo long and recently you said it was gonna be up soon....WHERE IS IT?!?!?!?!? ARGH!!! I wanna see it!!!

-TacoWagonProductions

Hey Thomas,

Was the premiere and such done through your school? If so was it hard to get their cooperation with using their equipment and selling tickets etc? Where did you show it and what kind of equipment did you use (film screen, big t.v. , projector etc..). Anyways u should definately submit the film, sounds awesome.

If you don't look I'll force you to _=_

what did you do with the profits?

i hope that you were able to pay off any debt from it, but have you considered saving some to make a short film on film?

what are your plans? you have a product, right? festivals?

i congratulate you on your hardwork and to make a feature is a great, great feat.
i would be proud of simply finishing a fim of that size.

i salute you.

Hey yall, I'v been reading stuff on this forum for a while & finally decided to register, for some reason & don't have the post new topic right? can any one help me with this!
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well Anyways on to this topic, I sent in a two part film called "the Mark", the first part should be on here june 13 & the second part a week later. The whole thing is only about 40 min but I thought it would be better this way then with parts cut out, Can't wait for "Lost Soldiers"...it sounds cool!

Everyone, notice that Tommy said that he made about two-THOUSAND dollars from the screening we had at our school. Just to let you know, he didn't pay his principle actors SH*T!! I got no money for all the time and effort I put into this project. I would settle for just a DVD. If he bought me a DVD, I'd be happy, but NO! He didn't even do that. Tommy is the meanest bully ever. He even made us pull down our pants for a scene and expose ourselves to him. When we asked him why we need to show him our tools, he said, "I'M THE F*CKING DIRECTOR NOW DO IT!!!" He then proceeded to turn on the camera and told us to....


Yeah... just kidding. Tommy is the man and a really nice guy. And no hard feelings on not getting paid either. If it came down to it, I would have paid him to be in his movie. Tommy is going to be famous some day. I have no doubt about it.


Chandler Mays
"Private Michael Burns"

quote:

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He even made us pull down our pants for a scene and expose ourselves to him. When we asked him why we need to show him our tools, he said, "I'M THE F*CKING DIRECTOR NOW DO IT!!!" He then proceeded to turn on the camera and told us to....

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Wow...I thought I was the only one who had my actors do that.

-TacoWagonProductions

Q.What did the right leg say to the left leg?
A. Watch out for the guy in the middle. He's a real dick