I made a movie called Point Man and it finally released today

[PhillyB]

a few screenshots sony selected for marketing to tease the production value of the film:

 

i'll leave it at that - y'all go see the rest for yourselves. thanks again to everyone for the support, and feel free to leave any feedback whatsoever in this thread as well! i am beyond excited to hear reactions, good and bad.

[Ja Rhule]

Congrats homie!  I was skeptical at first because I know so many people who started and never finished but you did it homie!  Proud of you and can’t wait to watch on amazon!

Edit:  Just made a purchase!

[Still Brooklyn]

I'll def stream it off Amazon this week.

Question: why did you choose to keep the uniforms so clean? In the shots I've seen there is no dirt, rips, blood, etc. Did you do research and it showed messed up uniforms are "Hollywood" and you wanted to keep true? It's always intrigued me.

[TheSpecialJuan]

1 hour ago, PhillyB said:

a few screenshots sony selected for marketing to tease the production value of the film:

 

i'll leave it at that - y'all go see the rest for yourselves. thanks again to everyone for the support, and feel free to leave any feedback whatsoever in this thread as well! i am beyond excited to hear reactions, good and bad.

What war flicks influenced your film?  I see some Full Metal Jacket in your pics.

[PhillyB]

43 minutes ago, Still Brooklyn said:

I'll def stream it off Amazon this week.

Question: why did you choose to keep the uniforms so clean? In the shots I've seen there is no dirt, rips, blood, etc. Did you do research and it showed messed up uniforms are "Hollywood" and you wanted to keep true? It's always intrigued me.

so in most of those screenshots everyone is fresh off the base or an hour into a single-day patrol in dry season - plenty of relatively fresh jackets and helmets. when they're filthy the dirt tends to be so present it just fades in. grunge is constant, not necessarily literally mud plastered on faces.

here's an example of grunge that's so omnipresent it's barely detectable:

with the close-up you can see he's actually caked in mud. the trajectory of the film takes guys from a base through a light patrol to a combat scene that covers them in poo, and then from the rest of the film they're either wet and filthy (from crawling through a swamp) or dry and filthy (100 degree heat in dry season burnt out water real quick.) either way they are filthy.

rips happened but guys usually replaced torn jackets and trousers real fast out in the field.

edit: i don't have a high-res screenshot of the actual film readily available, but here's makeup/continuity photos for the film's antagonist following a combat scene, followed by a behind-the-scenes shot with cameras rolling

[panther252]

Congrats! Definitely checking this out! 

[bandu]

8 minutes ago, TheSpecialJuan said:

What war flicks influenced your film?  I see some Full Metal Jacket in your pics.

 Stanley Kubrick & phily b do in fact resemble one another.

[bandu]

hey way to go kiddo.

[PhillyB]

23 minutes ago, TheSpecialJuan said:

What war flicks influenced your film?  I see some Full Metal Jacket in your pics.

ha, i realized after the fact that the third shot from the bottom is derivative of FMJ.

 

 

honestly FMJ didn't actually influence the film in any real sense - in fact i wanted to avoid the tropes present in every vietnam war film that's been done, especially when directors encased them in cement in the 80s and 90s. i don't think point man pulls from anything stone or kubrick or any of those guys did.

it's very film-school-neophyte of me, and probably reflective of my utter lack of industry knowledge when this thing began, but i was a huge fan of tarantino when i was writing this. the opening scene of inglourious basterds is masterful and was a profound early influence in how i wrote, and some of the dialogue structure reflects it (or did in the original uncut version.) i think some of the deliberate anachronisms i use have shades of his work as well. i really admire how alejandro inarritu and his cinematographer used space in the revenant to pit hugh glass against his topographical nemesis and i attempted to draw from that as i first immersed the protagonists in dense, choking jungle and then hurled them into the negative space of unconfined, exposed rice patties. 

i liked what the colorists of saving private ryan did - they took the grays and browns and enhanced them by casting a blueish tone across the film. it cooled it down, made it feel gritty and dreary. i went the opposite way with point man. vietnam is green and lush and wet and hot and sticky and humid. we went with slight oranges to warm up the tone of the film, draw out that lurid heat and sticky saturation from the jungle, get it up on screen the way the guys feel it as they're traipsing through it.

[Snake]

Congrats I know you put a bunch of work into this film.

[Still Brooklyn]

26 minutes ago, PhillyB said:

so in most of those screenshots everyone is fresh off the base or an hour into a single-day patrol in dry season - plenty of relatively fresh jackets and helmets. when they're filthy the dirt tends to be so present it just fades in. grunge is constant, not necessarily literally mud plastered on faces.

here's an example of grunge that's so omnipresent it's barely detectable:

with the close-up you can see he's actually caked in mud. the trajectory of the film takes guys from a base through a light patrol to a combat scene that covers them in poo, and then from the rest of the film they're either wet and filthy (from crawling through a swamp) or dry and filthy (100 degree heat in dry season burnt out water real quick.) either way they are filthy.

rips happened but guys usually replaced torn jackets and trousers real fast out in the field.

Oh, ok, cool. It was bugging my OCD for some reason lol.

[Cary Kollins]

Proud of my dude @PhillyB! As a movie nerd I was just pumped to follow along with this process but I can honestly say I was blown away by the finished product. I’m not surprised at all though and can’t wait to see what’s next.

[PhillyB]

2 minutes ago, Still Brooklyn said:

Oh, ok, cool. It was bugging my OCD for some reason lol.

perfectly valid concern - it's notoriously overlooked by indie productions. i added a pair of production photos to the quote you just posted for further reference.

you're not the only one to ask this either. i think OD green uniforms just do a great job of masking grunge to the point you've got to be up close and personal to get a real sense of just how dirty they really are, unless they just climbed out of a literal swamp and still have chunks of mud sticking to them.

[PhillyB]

2 minutes ago, Cary Kollins said:

Proud of my dude @PhillyB! As a movie nerd I was just pumped to follow along with this process but I can honestly say I was blown away by the finished product. I’m not surprised at all though and can’t wait to see what’s next.

i knew i was missing an obvious tag in the OP. thanks for the support man. let's get beers soon, i'm in WS all the time now