In Desperate Need of Views/Critique

brownpaperbagproductions

brownpaperbagproductions

Well-known member
Hi, we made five comedy shorts with the hot and dirty dvx100a, and posted on youtube and we need people to gawk at them. http://youtube.com/profile?user=bpbp or myspace http://www.myspace.com/bpbproductions

Some of them have cursing, mild violence, adult humor; Photographer Sketch, The Duelist, come to think of it they all do, except A Breath of Fresh Air.

I would like to know what you guys think of them humor wise, and if you have any suggestions or hints for the picture and compression.

Thanks,
*wink*
Brown Paper Bag Productions
 
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Well, let's see.

These are pretty bad. Though I can only speak for the Eskimo one and the first 2 minutes of The Duelist cause I stopped watching after that.

The main problem you're encountering here is that these have no point. Well, I guess The Duelist sort of has a point. But that Eskimo one... where do I begin? It was like a Saturday Night Live skit gone bad. It was just this guy, walking around, doing things in the snow... Remember, even comedy has to have a point to keep the viewer's attention. There still needs to be a story. It might be different if you had someone like Chris Farley. But even then you're sitting there wondering, "uhhh, why am I watching this? Nothing's happening." And your actor is no Chris Farley. If you're targeting the stoned college crowd, I could see how maybe this might be funny to them. I admit that when the guy was first talking to the flamingo, I was kind of chuckling. But then it went downhill because, well because there was no point. I'll tell you when I really tuned out. When the actor is rolling around with Crutches Guy and it was no longer a movie but just him having fun with the other guy. Classic case of the two guys in the scene having fun, but nobody else is having fun.

Also, asking people to watch 5 things is a little much. You may have wanted to scatter them, starting with your best first. And see how people respond to that. I don't even know which one is your best because I gave up. As I assume other people did too.
 
Okay, well this was better than the others. But basically the same thing that gives it its moments is the thing that hurts it. You clearly have an improvisational style and that's good. But you tend to let your actor (yourself?) go on and on and then fall in love with every little thing he says, thereby making your movies way too long. I'm sure you've heard this but, cut out the boring stuff. That's why people like film. So they don't have to watch people take 20 seconds to get over to the other side of the room. They cut. Get people places faster. Of course there are moments where you want to linger, where you want to draw something out. Perfect example is when they're staring at each other at the beginning and neither will budge. That's good stuff. But it doesn't have the same impact when EVERYTHING you do is long. You see what I'm saying? The audience needs something to reference. If everything is long and you play something out long, they won't get the joke. Everything's that way. Why should they?

There were some funny moments in this. I laughed out loud 3 times I believe. My favorite line was "Oh yeah, that'll get you out of the country" or something like that. But you know, the Greek God thing was funny the first time. But not after he used it 18 more times. Clearly he was just trying to make the other guy laugh. And that's something you also have to work on. There's this sort of psudo-rule in movies. And that's that if everybody's laughing on the set, no one will laugh in the audience. And while it's not a unifying rule, there is some truth to it.

I don't know if you saw Project Greenlight but in one of the seasons they test-screened the movie and people were just hooting and hollering and generally laughing consistently. And afterwards they got the scores and they were shocked cause the scores were all bad. They couldn't figure it out. And what was explained to them was that just because an audience laughs, doesn't mean they're enjoying the movie. I know that doesn't seem like it makes sense but it's actually true when you think of it. I can laugh pretty hard a few times during a movie and then come out and completely forget it by the next day. The comedies that last are the ones that have a little bit of a story to them. Something you can latch onto. I think Dumb And Dumber is a perfect example of a movie that has kind of goofy humor like yours but knows when to contain it. I'm sure Jim Carrey went off on some 15 minute tangeants in some of those scenes. And maybe they were even funny. But if they didn't move the story along, it wasn't worth including.

Anyway, I've talked for too long. I think there's some potential here. But you gotta speed things WAY up, have a purpose, and commit to a storyline.
 
This will probably be the only time I use this phrase non-sarcastically; Thanks a million. I'm glad you mentioned the "falling in love with everything we do", I think that was one of things we couldn't put our finger on or name that was wrong. We knew that repetion was a problem but we couldn't help some of it. We're trying to throw out as much as we can out and see what sticks, starting with a large ball of clay and all that, and we'll keep in mind the greenlight story. Thanks again.
 
Well

Well

The main problem with your movies is that you shoot stuff from one angle not moving and it looks like a documentary, especially with your shooting from shoulder technique.
like for example where he knocks over the cripled guy and starts sticking that thing up his ass. I think that had an excellent comedic potential, but, you shot it from one angle and it turned out looking like a shocking torture movie.
If you would have for example showed him picking up the stick and shoving it in the cripled guys ass, then showed an insert of it going in the cripled guys ass then the agonized cripled guys face that could have been funny.
anyway, good luck
P.S. I think the actor is really good
 
You should hire dangal as a writer. His post had me laughing out loud. "...for example where he knocks over the crippled guy and starts sticking that thing up his ass."

Comedy gold.

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Dude.... what BPS rate were you using? It looks clean, but the file is so large that it doesn't stream very well from YouTube. Did you use the QT .264 ? I couldn't watch much cause of the starting and stopping... Nobody waits anymore for long downloads.... might want to consider re posting with a lower bitrate for a better stream.
 
Thanks for the comments. It was documentary style, unintentionally, because the thing was all improv and we we're losing light so didn't have time for close ups- which we always regret not doing. I like the idea of showing the agony on his face, it seems the more pain we inflict/show the funny it gets. We just might go back and shoot those.

Compressing this was an awful experience, and I'm shocked and delighted you said it looked clean, but then I came back down to reality when it was revealed that it needs to be compressed more. He giveth and he taketh away. Well try that too.
 
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