Project Stats - Here's the cold stats about the project. Running Time: 19:26 Shooting Format: Hi-8 Shooting Time: 4 hours Script Length: 15 pages, one page character breakdown, 14 pages of scribbled storyboards. Dialogue improvised (and you can tell). Lighting Kit: God's Natural Lighting Digitization: MPEG-1, 40,000kbs. Snazzi PCI card. Editing Software: IFilm Iedit 4.0, Ulead Media Studio Pro 5.2VE Editing Time: 4 hours. Audio Software: Minimal usage, Ulead MSP - Audio Editor. Total Cost: Under $50.00 (SW and HW not included). Director: Pete Bauer (also Writer, Editor, Script Girl, etc.) Actors: Tim Osterhout, DJ Koehler, Dea Bauer, Russell Matthews, Delie Koehler and Pete Bauer. Impact on My Life: Very small. Shooting and editing happened within a single day. Was nice to actually shoot something. My wife thinks I'm nuts, but she's known that for some time... this project just confirmed her suspicions.

Background - A tabloid public access TV show, called P.O.V. (Point of View), randomly selects local residents and follows them. They video tape them for the day and showcase them on the show. The show garnered their fifteen minutes of fame nationally when they recorded the city Mayor having an affair with a local stripper.
Storyline - The P.O.V. crew randomly selects a man, who turns out to be a Hitman hired to kill a man's wife. After recording the hit, they gather more information and call the police. On the way back to the studios, they discover the Hitman has known about them all along and begins to hunt them down... one by one.

Production Notes: Raw Footage is supposed to be exactly that... the raw footage found on a video tape. It's as if you were to plop the video into your blinking 12:00 VCR and watch it uninterrupted.

It was also the first project of Local Talent Productions and we originally thought of the idea some time ago, during an apparent creative convergence, because many projects came out around the time of our shoot that had similar creative styles. Projects like The Last Broadcast and the mega-hyped Blair Witch Project came out around the same time and are grotesquely more successful. However the purpose of the video, and all the projects of LTP, was to be an experiment. To see if a story could be told in this fashion.

Hard Facts - RF was shot in a single day. As a matter of fact, it was shot in four hours and edited in four hours on the same day. It was quick and cheap. Plus, it was the first part of a trilogy of short films we want to produce having to do with the ever-glamorized profession of the Hitman... but more on that later.

Critical Assessment - This creative style works, if the project is setup correctly. The acting in RF, however, is below expectations and deters greatly from the impact of the story. Directorily, most of the shots worked, some didn't. Overall, I'd say the experiment was a success on all levels, but one... acting. If the other parts of the trilogy are more competent then we will re-dub the majority of the dialogue in the project to make it sound more believable.