Graduation film - Circle of Crime

G

gustavl

Member
Hey guys,

I'm new here, and I though I'd share my latest work with you guys. It's my graduation film from the European Film College, which I just got out of on May 7th (which I attended with Smettli, who is also a member here, hi buddy :kali:!). The course is an 8 month foundation course. I specialized in cinematography. The film was directed and written by Julius Telmer, a fellow student.

circle.jpg


The film is a 22 minutes (heavily) tarantino-inspired crime film, about a young criminal, who unwillingly gets mixed up in unwanted crime business. Yeah - I know it sounds cliché, and it is, but please give it a chance, and please comment on the pictures primarily (of course comments and critique on story is great, but I can't defend that as well as I can defend my pictures).

The film was shot on a Panasonic DVX100B, and the director wanted a part documentary and handheld, part stylistic steady look of the film, plus he wanted a very gritty dark look, which I think we succeded in doing quite well. The film was shot over roughly a week.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Here's a link to the film, it's 82.4mb and in quicktime format, hope everthing works:
Circle of Crime - h.264 400x300, ACC 192kbs (82.4mb)

UPDATE: Corrected version is online, sorry guys, hope you will comment!

Kind Regards,
Gustav Lassen
 
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"You got a lot of balls showing up like this" - gotta love mr. murphey. Those car shots are awesome, one day we should work together Gustav :)
 
Smettli said:
"You got a lot of balls showing up like this" - gotta love mr. murphey. Those car shots are awesome, one day we should work together Gustav :)
Click to expand...
Thanks for that my friend, and yes we will work together! When you get your ass to Copenhagen! (and I get my ass there too :) )
 
kewl

A few things to add: What were your lights used? Looks like there oculd have been a bit more inthe parking lot.

I really enjoyed your framing and cut pacing, it worked really well.

Some of the actors were plain poopoo, wanted to laugh more than anything.

But filming wise it was great!

I will be starting film school for the next three years in the fall. But i find it strange that they allow a graduating project to use digital? How did you convince them of that? :)

it would be kew to be able to use digital with my adapter ( when it comes in ) for schooling, because digitizing is easier ( already done ) i get the 35mm look with the adapter, and i have a steadicam, dolly and crane all ready to go with it.
 
Hi PaPa.

I completely agree on some of the actors. First of all, the film was made with a budget of around 250$, so all actors were non-professionals. And our director forced some of them into terrible overacting, which is kind of sad.

The European Film College is not really a film school, even though it might sound that way. It's actually an eight month foundation course, that allows the student to gain quick knowledge in a lot of areas in doing movies. Therefore we simply don't shoot on film, even though this camera is school equipment. So therefore I didn't need any convincing. I would have loved to shoot on film! :)

Lights were most natural light outside, with occational bounce-boards etc to add fill. Inside the warehouse (if that's what you mean by parking lot, ie where the last scene takes place), it's almost all practicals. Flourecent lights were all over the place. We were fortunate to find a location that would minimize the light setups. We ran with almost no light setups throughout the whole shoot.

Thanks for your comments! :)
 
very good work gustavl enjoyed it , has the film been color corected or is everything with out correction ???? and did u use an adapter ????and what were ur setting on the camera you used ????

peace n luv

Mark Dog
 
Mark Dog said:
very good work gustavl enjoyed it , has the film been color corected or is everything with out correction ???? and did u use an adapter ????and what were ur setting on the camera you used ????

peace n luv

Mark Dog
Click to expand...

Mark Dog: There were some slight color corrections on some scenes to make sure they worked in editing, other than that it's mostly straight from the camera. I didn't use an adapter unfortunately. I played a little with the settings and whitebalance in the camera to get that brownish gritty look.
 
Hey gustavl,
i'm pretty new here myself as a member, but I've been reading every single thing this place has to offer for about a year and my opinion is that there is no other film
forum like it, so you made a good choice by joining and welcome.
You guys get my compliments with the camera angles and originality in the twists of the movie. The feel was right on what you wanted to express, dark & gritty... kinda made me feel like I was watching "smoking barrels" again. I gotta say, the black car used for the mafiosos was awesome, what type of car was it?
Overall i enjoyed the film very much, but I do have a couple points i'd like to critique.
The score & the sound... I'd like to know if not scoring the film was intentional, to me music to animate the scene is 50% of the movie and without it a whimsical scene will look plain, a funny scene will fall flat and an active scene will seem slow. But it may have been intentional so thats why i'm asking. The sound was also a little bit of a strain, kept having to turn my monitors up and down, lol, but hey the problem couldve been my monitors for all i know.
The editing was nice and smooth, tight but probably couldve been a little tighter unless there was a minimum time alloted.
These are just some points I thought to point out for constructive purposes, the movie itself was really good, cliche or not, it's what sells.
Good luck my friend, hope to see more of your stuff in the future.
 
Zim: No of course not, and it's not when I watch it. Maybe you have an old version of Quicktime? It's using the h.264 codec, and sound is AAC.

GlimmerGhost: Thanks for your comments, really appreiciate it! I'm not actually new here, been lurking for quite some time, but haven't really posted or anything before now, so.

The car was a Buick (as you can see in the images, hehe) but I forget which one. You might be able to look it up somewhere.

I think for the most part, the lack of a score is part budget-wise, and part time-constraints. We had a very short time to finish this film, and that's why I think that music was for the most part let out. I couldn't agree more with you though, music is very important, and should not be forgotten during the process of filmmaking! But I do think one has to be careful, and not cram a (relatively) short movie like this one with too much music, and what music is there has to be very relevant.

Thanks for your nice critique!
 
Hi Gustavl,

Nice work! I have some problems understanding what they were saying because of the sound. The sound was a bit low in a few scenes. Other than that, the movie is ok. I liked the story. :d

Keep up with the good work, and nice one.

All the best,

Fidel.
 
congratulations. Excellent camera work. I liked the angles and tracking shots. I thought the lead actor was quite strong. There was one or two actors I found trouble believing. There were many super film like looking shots. There were some moments where the light was way too low for my eyes. This low light problem is epidemic in independent films. It's frustrating and hard to watch because you want to see the faces but can't. One little problem that stood out to me, the shot where it looked like someone set the camera on a chair and left it running while the one gangster paced back and forth in a perfectly set pattern in front of the car. That was very contrived looking. Music certainly would have helped as well as a sound boost in some areas, but you know all that. As a whole though, I was able to suspend disbelief and feel like I was watching a serious film. NIce going.
 
dude! that film was awesome man! the acting was good. the guy at the end that showed up out of no where was sorta ...eh...and the guy the always combed his hair was just annoying...but i think all the other acting was decent. I loved the acting of the guy who was being hanged and when everyone dies around him...it was good the way he acted that out.

I was wondering...you said it took your roughly over a week to shoot it. how many days did you shoot it and how many hours per day?

also, where did you get those guns...they were sweet.
 
Araujofh: Thanks dude! Yeah the sound is bad inside the warehouse, especially in the "torture" scene with Pete. This is a sound recording issue, and is very unfortunate :(

Scrappy: Thanks a lot man! The low light was something I played with. I'm sorry if it was disturbing. It might actually have been the compressed copy that has done it to the film, because it looked really good in the cinema. Thanks again for the nice comments and critique!


Luckyproducer: Thanks for the nice comments man! Yeah I agree on the guy showing up in the end. It's kidn of a major plot hole. I think the director shortened the script in the end, and didn't think about the sudden appearance of the guy.

We shot for 6½ days. Six full days and one half day of pickup shots. We had a lot of hours each day, up to twelve hours per day at most. It was quite a stressing shoot, and a lot of the days we went up to 5 hours over time, which was stressing for the crew and actors. Filmmaking is NOT fun when something like that happens :)

Most of the guns are actually Smettlis, who is also a member here. they are aboslutely awesome! My personal favorite is the immense Desert Eagle, which feels like a cannon in your hand. They are blank firing, and makes a hell of a lot of noise when you fire them inside a warehouse, like in the last scene. :)

Thanks
 
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