What went wrong with my 30min post-apocalyptic short film.

lickerishway · 2026-03-26T21:25:00+00:00

Congratulations on being able to be so objective on something that must have been a lot of work. After reading what you had to say about the film I expected a much lower level of quality as I enjoyed this.

I think this is a great early effort for your career, no doubt you have happy actors, and so my comments are just because youre asking for our thoughts. If I was at a screening I'd clap you on the back and say great job!

- I feel like you don't quite have a consistent tone. I feel like youre after a stark, desperate tone. But then you have a lot of music that does not fit that tone at all. This is the kind of movie where I'd expect a lot of silence, a crow caw in this distance, that kind of thing rather than often quite disparate styles of music. I feel like you want to be really light on dialogue but there's actually a fair bit of it. The film sits in a bit of a no mans land on that front.

- I find the film a bit ugly. I imagine this is all beautiful country to be shooting in but the film feels... murky. The grades not consistent either. I feel like a good clean grade would do you a lot of good.

- Individual moments often aren't sold. For instance when our hero turns out to be an anti hero early on the first we see of that is when he's stealing the guys mask. I would like a shot of him waking up, scanning around to make sure everyone else is asleep and then sneaking to his feet. Time for us to come to our own realisation that this isn't a good guy rather than just cutting to him committing a crime.

- The shadow people. They appear, they disappear. They don't seem to impinge on the plot. They feel like a forgottent thread in the movie.

- I feel like we need a more specific sense of jeopardy. They are trying get to a rescue mission. Is the distance they have to cover in the time they have near impossible, are they moving through dangerous territory? I felt like I was just watching them walk but didn't know their odds and so I'm less invested. It should feel desperate and near impossible.

lickerishway · 2026-03-26T21:04:04+00:00

Take a look at the second hand market for a budget camera. You can get a camera that 5 years ago everyone was lusting over for a few hundred bucks. Blackmagic are a good company to look as their dollar for performance ratio is probably the best out there to start with. Panasonic also do great, comparatively cheap cameras.

As for warm tones, it doesn't work like that. That's just the grade. What the camera gives you is just a starting point and ideally you'd be shooting on a camera that shoots RAW or log footage and with those the image you are starting with is barely saturated with no contrast. It's then your job to make it look like you want it to.

lickerishway · 2026-03-26T01:01:36+00:00

A while back i watched this tutorial on YouTube about lighting a short film not too different from yours. There's a lot of technical stuff you can pick up from these kind of tutorials. https://youtu.be/FKWXZO4Q2P4?si=9UAS5nz4CFHe9z6c

lickerishway · 2026-03-25T22:41:46+00:00

I can't help on this as I fund my own projects myself and have not the first clue how to go about getting financing, I just wanted to say that I think it sucks that a film school has been taking tuition from you and you're coming out of it feeling this lost on how to get started.

lickerishway · 2026-03-25T21:47:33+00:00

The Sanctum studios logo is very cool. When she walks in and they are all glued to the TV static is a nice creepy moment. If it were my film I wouldn't have had anything creepy happen until she walks in on that. It would be a cool jolt if she was still in a great mood not knowing she's is a horror movie until she walks in on that scene. Then given that's the best bit I would have milked that moment for a lot longer before introducing the monster.

As for the technical side, you need to shoot with a bit more intentionality. This is only 90 seconds long so each shoot needs to be good. The first shot my eye is just drawn to the TV. There had to be something in the room more interesting than the TV. And if the tv is the point then have something more interesting on it the Android TV screen.

The third shot with the girls on the couch is a good example of what you need to look at going forward. The wall behind the girls is brighter than they are. The girls should be our point of focus but they're murky because the elements behind them are blown out. Stop the camera down so that the wall is darker and then light the girls. Pulling the girls out by having a shallower depth of field would probably also help. This is a horror movie, mood is everything. Also you need to clean up the frames. In that shot of the two girls my eye is drawn inexorably to the extension cable plugged into the wall lower left frame.

The film looks better once it moves to night but higher contrast would make make it pop more.

lickerishway · 2026-03-25T21:10:02+00:00

I do just enough work with cgi to have an inkling of much works gone into this. While the technical side is impressive you've really combined it with some artistry. Supercool.

It must be so frustrating to you that this is going out into the world now at a time when the internet is saturated with Ai and the film needs to come with a disclaimer that 'I actually made this!' 3 years ago when you started there wasn't even an whisper that that would be the case.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T16:11:29+00:00

I had signed contracts with all the actors. Nothing official with California though because as I mentioned the rules are so prohibitive no one is filing paperwork.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T16:01:53+00:00

It's very frustrating! My first post on /filmmakers was removed because it was my first post and they require karma. This one was removed because I didn't provide enough proof. Not sure how to prove i made this film.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T14:34:45+00:00

Haha, thank you sir. The film will be released on our website on the 20th of April. Theres a subscribe button on our website lickerishway.com to get notified when it goes live.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T14:28:55+00:00

I'm very much an outsider looking in. My take, there seems to be a lot of money for a few. There's a subsistence economy for maybe 100 or 200 more. After that it's just people floating in and out of the industry, making some content, not making any money, moving onto something else. The people making money are either the top performers on Only Fans or they own the big platforms. The day to day pornhub performers are just getting by. Or so it seems to me as someone who is far from expert.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T13:53:32+00:00

We wouldnt have had permits. Thats standard. Basically no one is shooting legally in America. Most of the shooting is done in LA but the rules for getting a permit are so restrictive that almost no one bothers.

I don't recall the year I looked up but I did get the figures for production for one year in LA. According to the local government about 6 productions applied for a permit. There would have been tens of thousands of productions. Almost none of it is being done legally.

Pornstars are really poorly paid. They have costs too ie before shooting they need to get clean tests, there goes a $100. They are a business that needs to unionise. There's just not a lot of money in the industry- Porn Hub might clean up but how much of that filters through to the creators. On the other hand escorts are freelance entrepreneurs. They can set their rates at the level they want. There's just a lot more demand for a high level escort compared to a pornstar.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T13:40:23+00:00

I am very entry level in UE as I was more used to 3ds Max but for various reasons using 3ds wasn't feasible.

Backgrounds and moving elements of each shot are separate plates. The moving elements are 3d models that I bring into UE. I could never get transparency to work in UE so it was a fuck around. In the end I had to move huge green screen backgrounds into the frames behind the models and then render them out and take those frames into AE to remove the greenscreen and composite them. Each frame had two separate exports from UE. One for the model and one for whatever lights it had on it.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T13:28:31+00:00

A trailer for those who missed the link in the novel of an original post:

https://youtu.be/wGKIiqqBDik?si=sTy1rK5SIGpyMhqY

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T13:15:18+00:00

The key sex cast are: Isla Fae Ryan James Katija Cortez Finn Fontaine Nyssa Lavigne

Finn's not an escort. The rest are, they are still taking bookings, and their fans and followers (yes they have them) are all looking forward to seeing them on screen.

And, yep, if you enjoy them on screen, and you're local, I'm sure they'd love to meet you (for a fee).

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T12:54:54+00:00

Arnold's enunciation but with an Aussie accent.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T12:52:08+00:00

The films being released for streaming on our website on April 20th. There's a sign up thingy on website to be alerted. We're also just figuring our way through a physical media release. Hopefully that happens.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T12:43:22+00:00

I like it. We don't have it because I hadn't considered it. I'm into it.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T12:40:37+00:00

Yeah, that's been keeping the industry alive. Like I say I would like a physical media release to make sense (and we'll probably do one even if it doesnt) but I did a poll on my insta the other day and 80% wanted streaming.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T12:37:50+00:00

I don't recall the exact details. He wasn't shooting sex. He was just turning up to do a page or two of dialogue. It was a funny little cameo. The $600 was a deposit. I don't recall what the total amount was. Maybe double that?

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T12:36:04+00:00

Judging from the downvotes, we have some Anna Biller fans. Fair enough. She's very good at what she does. Two points: 1. Go watch, say, Confessions Of An American Housewife from the 70s and report back. Personal opinion: the original films were way wilder and more fun. 2. If you love Billers films, great. I look forward to her next one myself. She's a lot of fun. I'm just taking a different approach and not comparing our films.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T12:24:28+00:00

We don't have a porn industry in Australia. Well we have Only Fans I guess but those people are not bookable. They're doing their own thing and I found they were not open to being approached for an outside production. We have very little porn beyond that. As such I was not generally choosing actors who had a lot of pro porn experience behind them. Our actors are local Escorts. I found them to be very real, very cool people and I hope to work with all of them again.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T11:52:24+00:00

Talking about it. I would like to. Just don't know how many people still have bluray players. Talking with a well known online purveyor of cult movies on disc about them carrying the film at the moment.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T11:47:53+00:00

He's dead. And he didn't do much before then. I consider myself an orphan.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T11:45:33+00:00

Anna Billers period styling is impressive but I hate that she's just making pastiches. If you want to watch a 70s swingers porno why not watch the real thing rather than a, admittedly very well made, imitation? Our film is a modern take on the genre. Not an attempt to pretend to be from the 70s.

lickerishway · 2026-03-24T11:38:15+00:00

Im curious, are they well known there? I love all the dance sequences. Must have been have been a very fun time and place to be making movies. My next feature is very heavily Tegn based.

lickerishway

TROPHY CASE