"Maple Mountain" - short film with Trevor Snarr, the bullie, from "Napoleon Dynamite"

[tomyboy342000]

"Maple Mountain" - (very) experimental short, shot near Sundance.

Ok, the "acting" is not that great, this is an older short, shot a year and a half ago.

Had no money for this, and to get some recognition, thought I'd cast theactor/bullie from "Napoleon" for this and found out the hard way, just like he was in "Napoleon", he's really needing to brush up on his "acting" skills, but other than that, it's really not that impressive, but if you have a second, you can check it out.

I'm more inviting on having everyone check out "Sudilkov" on my website. It's a better short. "Killer Deal" was shot before that, and "Holloh" was shot a year before, and "Maple" almost 2 years ago. It was more of an experiment with "mood", than with "story".

It was actually an assignement for a film class - to shoot a scene from a feature film script, and this would be a scene towards the middle or end of the film.

After viewing other DVX shorts on this site, I'm kindof embarrased, but I'm still learning. ((Lesson Learned: Don't post crappy shorts on this site)) My hats off to all you DVXers out there. Keep it up! This is a shout out from the DVXers in Utah!

Anyways, hope you guys can visit and watch: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tomyboy342000 :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

-- Tom

[inspire84]

i couldnt even watch it rite through. Didnt work for me at all...and the fact that the Napolean bully was in it, didnt make a difference, in fact i automatically refrenced a comedy when that was said, so i couldnt even take his acting seriously. as far as DP, wasnt impressed either

[tomyboy342000]

You should watch it again. The handheld, mixed with, steady shots, the choice of close-ups, then to mediums, this is a very artsy/music video/David Fincher style of cinematography, just my opinion, but I think everyone deserves for their videos to be completely watched before rushin in and posting. I've done this before. I've watched shorts halfway through, posted a comment, then later watched the whole short, and went back and removed or modified the comment. Either way, thanks for the critique or "half-critique". Compression sucked, but the acting was ok - in my opinion. But hey, who am I? :kali:

[inspire84]

i'll check it out again...sorry if that seemed harsh

[tomyboy342000]

No dude, you're cool bro. This short really did suck.

[tomyboy342000]

It was shot a year or so ago, and if you check out "Sudlikov" - I was DP on that as well as director. George Villaba was (suprisingly) the DP on "Maple" George has a blog on here of his stuff (that's really matiured) "Genies & Goldfish". Really appreciated your feedback. Thanks again!

[tomyboy342000]

No offense George.

[Slimothy]

I watched it all the way through. My critiques would be: The music is a bit too loud, making it too hard to hear the dialogue alot of times. Compression (obviously.) Acting was okay, not the worst I've seen. The camera work seemed like you were going for an artsy style, but I couldn't get into it at all. Overall, I didn't really like it, but I think with some changes, it could be alot better. TIm.

[tomyboy342000]

This is one of my older shorts, you can watch the others and see the difference. But thanks again!:)

[epsilonbass]

Did you use the camera to capture the audio? Or is it adr? Sounds like your levels were to high recording, making them peak.

Drama is good, drama creates a reason to watch, however melodrama... (i.e. soap opera style) is something to be avoided. You have a lot of tention, but it comes off as over the top and cheesy. I think slower cuts to settle on the characters struggles would have paid off more. The cutting to different angles just acts to show off your bloody effects, that do leave more to be desired.

I would completely LOVE to see this in about 20 shots, take out the purposely super shakey shots, take out the extreme close ups. Remember you're focusing on one particular moment in these two character's lives.

Good luck,
(ps. i could only look at him as the bulley from nap dy, you shouldn't have told us that, because everyone would be freaking out about it, 'is that him?' 'it can't be' 'whats going on'?)

Edit: Oh you also did the ww2 thing? That was a lot better, but i honestly didnt catch on to the whole father daughter thing until someone mentioned it later. For some reason i thought he was a molester, and they tracked him down.

[abalex]

I remember this short, I really had fun working on it. The movie seems to be better on color though, not in black and white. We didn't use the dvx camera, we used a sony 3ccd, one of those old one, so that made a lot of difference in the lighting. It was rainy and cloudy, none of that really helped on the cinematography. But I believe the story is really strong and I personally like it. I think Tom has a very unique style and way of doing things, I always enjoy working with him. He always feeds his crew and that's a plus!


keep up the goog work
g.

[FatBird19]

How did you get Trevor Snarr? Did you have to pay him? How did you come in contact?

[tomyboy342000]

*epsilonbass - you're last comment was hilarious about the child molester part, ha ha! I never thought of it like that. Nope, the father and daughter live up in the Russian front and they get arrested, etc. No molesting happened, you'll have to wait for the director's cut!! Kidding! On Maple Mountain, yea, the short was very artsy and free with the camera... alittle too free. The scene was shot about 20 times and we were able to use audio from different clips and match it to their voices when and were the audio wasn't as good. All audio was in camera. We had a boom plugged into the cam, but that's that. I think that the acting was not that good, the mood was quite right and it dragged on forever. It's weird cause people really like it, or really don't like it. I agree that the editting needs to be better and I hope to improve with every project. The WW2 short was my most recent and you can tell the difference from a year and a half ago. Thought I'd make the most out of a cast member while I could, so just as Napoleon Dynamite came out, I hooked up with Trevor - who played the bullie. Since I knew Jared Hess and Tim Skousen and was trying to re-hook up with them, they vanished to work on Napoleon and I thought it'd be good to have a cast member from Napoleon, before the film gets tooo big. Unfortunately, Trevor Snarr, the bullie, unlike John Heder, Napoleon, didn't land any film gigs. So all is well though.

*Slimothy - good points.

*inspire84 - hope you can watch it sometime.

Thanks everyone for posting so far.