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                           Independant Film Making

Every Saturday evening I play D&D with a group of friends, the oldest being
in his mid-30s and the youngest, Marco, [1] being 18.

Tonight Marco brought a video tape he and a friend made last year for extra
credit. The project was a board game with a math theme and his group decided
to adapt D&D. The video tape was a commercial they made of their “game,”
mostly made by Marco's friend.

He popped the video in and hit play. Professional credits appeared and the
music, while “borrowed” from another movie, was a good choice. Then the first
scene: a mid shot from behind of a person wearing medival type garb walking.
I wonder what film they took that shot from, I thought. Then a cut to a
medium shot of Marco, wearing the outfit. Whoa! I thought. His friend is good
with the cinematography!

Except for the occasional telephone pole (“It's a tree!” Marco would shout at
us when we pointed it out) the setting was perfect.

“Hey Marco,” I said. “Where exactly did you film this?” This is South
Florida. No palm trees and hills were visible.

“Hill Park in Coral Springs,” He said. Ah ha!

Even though the dragon was this cheesey computer generated dragon, it was
impressive to realize that it was a high school student working on a home PC.
I've seen B-movies with worse special effects.

Medium closeup of Marco, off to one side of the screen. Behind him is a thick
forest of trees off in the distance when the dragon lands behind him, cutting
him off from the forrest. “That was shot in front of a blue screen,” said
Marco.

“Blue screen?”

“Yea, my friend made a blue screen.”

On video, Marco pulls out his sword; it glints in the sunlight. Next shot,
medium long shot from above looking down. Marco in the upper left, the dragon
taking up the rest of the screen. It starts attacking and Marco is reacting
to it—decent job actually. Then it ends with a joke about there only being a
dragon and no dungeons but that Bibo (the character Marco played) did die. It
got a laugh.

An excellent job. I was seriously impressed.

[1] http://www.angelfire.com/journal/BiBo/

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