My Feature(sorta) + Help me + Looking for good reviewers

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Nobody356

Well-known member
Okay , so lets talk about my (almost) feature lengthed failure. Well not really a failure but the movie frustrates me alot. Lets start with my dismay today when I find out that some festivals consider the cutoff between shorts and features at 70 minutes. I was and still am a little crushed haha, my movie which currently in its first rough cut form will clock in at about 65 minutes with credits. Up untill now I've considered it a feature but honestly I am kind of depressed that it still counts as a short. Maybe thats a silly thing for me to be worried about but who wants to watch an incredibly long short, and I feel like when its time for me to submit to festivals i would have a better chance of getting a spot as a short feature than a really long short especially when many more shorts are submitted and I'm competing against people who were able to spend all their time worrying about five or 15 minutes. Maybe you will all tell me to stop crying because I'm an idiot for attempting a feature in the first place and i will probably nod knowingly and agree that you have a valid point, but anyways I need some ideas for adding like 5 minutes, and your thoughts on whether or not thats a good idea.. And yea, I'm a little bit bitter that after all this work I can't even officially say I made my first feature. I know that seems silly but darn it I wanna call myself a filmmaker haha.

So how bout a bit of background, I just turned 18 a little over a week ago and made this movie while finishing up highschool, as part of an independent study i did. I had a budget that was less than $200 and more problems than I ever expected(and I expected plenty of problems). Between having to replace the lead actor after shooting had already begun, and actors regularly just not showing up and not bothering to call me and let me know(and this is just the beginnings of the problems), I had quite a few obstacles. Now I've got a rough cut of this thing and although its not horrible, its far from a masterpiece. It's always humbling when you step back and look at your work and realize that its not where you ultimately want it to be, and that your not as good as you'd like to think you are. I guess in the end you get what you pay for, I payed for a movie with less than $200 and a lot of sweat and blood. Without the sweat and blood it wouldnt have gotten done, but in the end all I got was a $200 movie. I'm just not a guy who can make the $200 look like a real budget, I'm just not that good.

All this aside, its hard for me to accurately asses where I'm at now and what my movie is really like. Unfourtunately I think I might just have something that can compete on the highschool level but doesnt hold a chance out in the real world, but since I have been in the middle of this for so long I can't truly objectively view the movie, see the story unfold for the first time or figure out where this really fits in SO HERES WHERE I COULD USE SOME REAL HELP!!

I really respect this community and at many times have taken a lot from it, as I continue to gain knowledge and become more of a "legit filmmaker" hopefully I can begin to add to the community but that is neither here nor there. I would really appreciate it if a few(1 or 2) people could take a look at the film in its current very rough state and help me by giving some feeback answering some questions and giving me some advice.

I'm looking for people who:
-Would be willing to take a look at the film and talk to me about as soon as possible

-Have AOL instant messenger so I can quickly and effectively send them the movie and discuss things with them

-Are good critics and or filmmakers

So post here or PM me if you would be willing to help me out, and I also ask that you don't share the film with anyone. The idea is that I want to get the best product before I send the film out for soundtrack and sound and begin to do the color correction.

Hopefully some people will be willing to help me out, so I will choose the most experienced people, so post a little bit about what you do and your experienced. This is not because I think I'm so great or anything, actually I know that most of you are probably better and more experienced than I am. I'm just looking for the most knowledgable people willing to help, so that I can best improve my work before I send out a final product for the public to see.


Thanks, and after reading all this you probalby deserve a medal,

Chris
 
Cut it down to 15mins.

If its in a 'rough' state, its only gonna get shorter. Well, start cutting and tighten
the whole thing up. Cut anything that even remotely doesnt work to its fullest.

I'm reading between the lines here, but I think you're pretty attached to the
footage. Thats a sign that you're too close to it. Let it sit for a week, watch
it with someone 'new' and then start hacking.
 
I wouldn't say cut it down to 15 min... thats a bit dramatic... maybe 30 or 35. Anyway, I'll watch it and give you my thoughts soon.
 
I don't know... a first time project, it's not unfathomable to pull a great 15 minute piece out of a less than stellar 60 minute project. I know, in terms of story anyway, my first script attempts were about at that ratio.
 
Greggl said:
Cut it down to 15mins.

If its in a 'rough' state, its only gonna get shorter. Well, start cutting and tighten
the whole thing up. Cut anything that even remotely doesnt work to its fullest.

I'm reading between the lines here, but I think you're pretty attached to the
footage. Thats a sign that you're too close to it. Let it sit for a week, watch
it with someone 'new' and then start hacking.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response, I'm not going to lie, but its not going to go to 15 minutes and honestly I don't want it to. I just spent 2 months of my life shooting the 90+ page script and turned it in to a movie that is about 65 minutes, I don't see the point in cutting it to that extreme. Actually when I first showed the cast all of the scenes in order their immediate response was that it actually needed a little bit more, so we went around and shot a few shots of the lead walking from scene to scene and it added maybe a minute or two and made the piece much stronger structurally , because before people thought it jumped around a little too much and the dialogue scenes were crammed to close together.

The one problem where shortening might help is that there is a set of 3 chase scenes that total ~5 minutes and it feels a little long, although that is the way the script was written(not be me either). People have told me that cutting them out would wrreck the flow but they seem to drag so maybe we need to find something to break them up.

And about being attached, maybe maybe not, Its not like I think this is really great and am opposed to any suggestions, but I am at a point where I shot the whole thing and have read the script and seen the scenes so many times, I can't experience the movie as a newcomer, so thats really why I'd like a few people to take a look and give me some good honest feedback and it would be nice to have some people from here because you all would be less biased than people who were involved or who know me.

Thanks, and maybe it does need to be cut to 15 minutes(I won't do that but maybe thats what it needs) but maybe take a look first before jumping to conclusions like that.
 
Nobody356 said:
Thanks, and maybe it does need to be cut to 15 minutes(I won't do that but maybe thats what it needs) but maybe take a look first before jumping to conclusions like that.
Click to expand...

agreed
 
Hehe.. I've been around the block. You hit all the 'warning signs' for a film that
you worked really hard on, as did your cast and crew with almost no resources
and no budget. Its rough and its ' far from a masterpiece' but you're looking
to make it *longer* :)

Where you are with a rough, its still supposed to be getting *shorter* and
from your post, you already don't like the direction its going. You admit its
too long for a short. That means cut cut cut.

You're adding value to scenes because of their difficulty as much as you are
their dramatic value and importance to the plot. Any film can be cut more.
You lose the subplots, you compress time and you only keep the core that
drives the narritive. As you do that, the film becomes tighter and tighter and
you'll find you need less 'relief space' as even that weighs the film down.
Those moments then cut themselves.

If you let go of the 'its a feature' and start keeping whats good and what
works, I'll bet you start seeing a lot of unnecessary elements and characters.
 
take what you've got, finish it quickly and use lessons learned to start planning project #2. it is great that you are out there getting your hands dirty. let it go and good luck on the next one.
 
I'm interested to know what you think when you see it...

18, $200 budget and 3 chase scenes adding up to 5 minutes
screen time PLUS he's not 100% happy with the overall quality :)
If the filmmaker isn't presenting it with confidence, it means that
footage needs to be cut or rearranged and as a 'rough', there are
more cuts coming even IF it was looking great at this point.

Its already a 'short'... the obvious answer is to commit to it being a
viable short and most festivals only screen the first few minutes of
each film during the initial eliminations... shorts under 15 at most
will get screened in their entirety unless they are really horrible, right
out of the gate.

I'll also echo his own fears... what exactly does one do with a
54 minute 'short'?
 
Well. there are many things to do with shorts, in fact, I am planning and have already begun production on a short film (probably totalling 40 min) which I intend to sell to a distributor. Not saying he's going to do that with this, but maybe he needs a few scenes to fill it out and it can be a feature, sometimes when you're close to a project (like you said) you forget how another viewer would see it, and even sometimes become hyper-critical of your work (I am at fault for doing this). Anyway, I'll watch it this weekend sometime, and discuss it.
 
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