©º°¨¨°º©©º°¨¨°º©©º°Aram Bauman & MsManhattan "5B" ©º°¨¨°º©©º°¨¨°º©

Great job Aram.

The best part about this was the story; I did not see it coming, even if I am not one that sits there and tries to figure it out. The performances were okay. I did find the 'ghost' girl to be too cute or quirky too over the top for my tastes ..

Overall, nice job. I think is your best film yet ! Its great to see you mature as an artist!
 
Okay, so technically, this looked very nice, with lush colors and DoF's.

The story was the weak part. It was predictable, and the dialogue cliche'.

That said, you have the visual skills for a filmmaker, and the CGI titles/ and computer scene were very impressive, boarding on H-wood in quality.

EJ
 
The photography on this one was excellent. It looked really good. Opening credit sequence worthy of a feature film. A solid piece of craft.

The story for me is okay and the revelation at the end was little weak. But what really weakens this film a lot is the acting. NOT that the girls in your film are bad actors. But the behavior of the girls do not match the atmosphere of the film. You have this gorgeously shot film and have created a REAL air of suspense. But the giggling girls, suposedly total strangers who are WAY TOO chummy, don't quite fit.

Summing up...

Excellent craft. Cinematography a BIG 10!

Giggling girls take away from the suspense.


John G.
 
Watched a bunch of entries, so far your's is our favorite.

Those girls crack me up and if there is one thing a good horror film can use is a little comic relief...

Nobody thought to enter a film with comic values and that makes 5B a standout in my mind.

Plus, the downfall of most of the other entries is the inability for their story to rise above their SFX. You guys seemed to have recognized your limitations early on and cleverly skirted the need for all this stuff, pushing it aside to concentrate on telling a decent story.

Consistently with this, as in past fests, only a fraction of the participants seem to understand that the story starts on paper, not on tape or on the set.

5B is a breath of fresh air in this fesival of heavy, heavys.

Erik
 
Thanks to everyone for your comments, both praise and constructive criticism. I think both Aram and I have been surprised, and very pleased, with the response since we decided to do this in the 11th hour, given Aram's surgery. I must say, I was against it initially, being worried about whether it would have an impact on his recovery, but he did an amazing job of coming up with a story and a shooting style that complied with his physical limitations.

I'm especially pleased with the positive comments about our opening title sequence as I've felt we've had weak title sequences in the past. We took a big step forward on that aspect with RF EYE-D, and this time I insisted that we get that done well before the end of the process instead of at the last minute. My initial idea was to use newspaper clippings (I am a journalist after all), and then Aram said, What about using the Ouija board? and it just all clicked in my head - I saw it all at once and started dictating, Do this, then do that.... So, many, many thanks for those comments.

Re: the acting, we figured we were taking a risk with the way we ended up directing Taina, but the first night we were shooting we found that she had the most energy when she was being off-the-wall. So, we decided to go ahead and push that and make her character "freaky ghost girl." Again, since we were doing all of this with limited time and resources on hand, we just had to "Make it work," as Tim Gunn says on "Project Runway."

It was definitely fun and refreshing to do a film with all of the fX in camera vs. in post (with the exception of the newspaper article on the computer). When Aram first came up with the idea of ending the film at the computer, I was against it; the script caled for her to google information about the fire, which I thought would be anti-climactic. For mood and tone, I wanted her to go to a library and find the weathered old clippings in the stacks. But we had no time or capability to put together a scene like that. So then I said, what if the ghost is manipulating the computer instead of Adina? and came up with the idea of the mouse moving by itself, and Aram immediately knew how to engineer that in a way that would work on camera. So, mutual brainstorming and multiple editing sessions, and we had our ending.

Editing definitely played a big role in this -- first some on-the-set editing of the dialogue and then more editing in post. I have been somewhat disappointed that many of you saw the end coming -- simply because it was more blatantly obvious in the script and we chiseled away a lot of the clues in editing, so from the perspective of where we started and where we ended up, I'd thought it would be a surprise. Nonetheless, I'm still pleased with what we accomplished.

That said, every parent loves their baby no matter what, so I realy didn't know what to expect in terms of viewer response, and it has been extremely gratifying to hear all of your comments -- like I said, both the kudos and the constructive points, most of which I agree with. Thanks again to everyone for your support. We really appreciate it.

--the producah
 
Even tho im not a parent, i loved your baby also. Wait a minute that didnt sound right...
i will be the dirty uncle!
 
Hey you two. Very nice work on a short schedule. I really liked the overall look of this piece. You created a very unified mood across the entire film with a very particular lighting style.

I especially enjoyed the humor in this story. I think this aspect of the piece was well served by the ghost-girl's somewhat over the top nutso performance.

And I love that you worked the dogs into the thing. If only you could have gotten the big one to bark/growl.
 
Thanks Steve. Glad you enjoyed the film. The only part that was sort of improvised was the part where the girl laughs after the ghost girl asks her to ask it another question. That little laugh she does was from one of the takes where they started cracking up but I thought it was perfect for the response. How did you like the dialog? It was the first dialogy script I wrote.
 
steve2bees said:
Hey you two. Very nice work on a short schedule. I really liked the overall look of this piece. You created a very unified mood across the entire film with a very particular lighting style.

I especially enjoyed the humor in this story. I think this aspect of the piece was well served by the ghost-girl's somewhat over the top nutso performance.

And I love that you worked the dogs into the thing. If only you could have gotten the big one to bark/growl.
Click to expand...


Thanks, Steve!!! That means a lot coming from you. Agreed re: the growling -- Ruby was surprisingly calm that evening...
 
Also when the camera is on her she just gets weird and won't growl. My friend said he thinks it might be because it looks like a big eye staring to them.
 
I assume that if you were to expand this piece or show it more broadly, the use of the Ouija board would be an issue (since, I assume, it's a trademarked design)?
 
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