S C H I T T E K A T T E R a Taylor Bryson Film

[Alex Jeffery]

High stakes, really nice. Great performances from everyone. I like how we were thrown right into the middle of the story here. There were a lot of creative shots, and so many shots in general that it never seemed to drag. I thought you created sympathy for Rob in a very natural way that didn't seem forced which was great!

SPOILERS AHEAD:

My only beef was that I saw the wire twist coming as soon as the other character was introduced.

But great film! Very professional. I hope I can make stuff like this one day.

 

[Blake Balu]

Hey Everyone, thanks for all the feedback. Good fun. I just wanted to clear something up since there seems to be a little character confusion. Dane Rhodes played the older cop whose name is Robby and I (Blake Balu) played Ted the younger guy with the blood issue. It's kinda hard to catch my name, but Robby says it when he says "We're not bad cops Ted". It kinda slips by, I even had to watch it a couple of times to see where it was said. Thanks alot everyone, again.

 

[Keystoned]

THANKS FOR THE COMMENTS ALL!!!

It's my pleasure to catch up with a few now

Definitely glad to be aboard this ship. Taylor Rocks. Had a great time working with him and such a great cast. .. Even if he dragged me under the bridge at 4 in the morning and threatened to dump me in the river... The COLD COLD river ... and beat me till I took his direction properly....you grow to appreciate it though...as an actor.......he really takes you there.
This really was a BLAST!

haha, thanks Blake you were awesome to work with!

Standard Disclaimer: I've yet to see a bad film so far in this fest. Congratulations to every film maker, everyone did a great job. All my comments and criticisms are meant to be constructive and helpful and in no way am I trying to take anything away from what you accomplished.

Good: Good story, good characters, good acting, good cinematography, good location. The blood looked very cool.

Not as Good: Another film that seems to be a little heavy on dialogue and light on action. Would love to see some flashbacks of what they were talking about (or something else to break up the single location).

Interesting on the flashback idea. I think they can sometimes, though not always, be a cheap trick. Something I recommend everyone do is follow along with silence of the lambs with the script. It's a great lesson in structure, as you get to about pg 30, you get to about minute 30 and act one ends, etc. You also see that whole scenes were cut to have things line up that way (you have to not count the cut pages). But also you see when they chose to use the SCRIPTED flashback scenes of Clarice's youth and when they opted to stay on the actors. Basically, they used every flashback described, dad picking daughter up, Clarice at his funeral, until the end when she's describing the screaming of the lambs and Hannibal tells her what it means sort of. Here they stay in tight closeup at this pivotal moment, and ignore the scripted flashback. Now while I am very happy with my actors in every regard, I will not be so bold as to hold them up to Jody Foster and Anthony Hopkins, but the rationale in that moment was that nothing could be as interesting or was more important than these two characters dealing with this information. I am not saying you are right or wrong at all - don't get me wrong. What I wanted to work on with this piece however, was telling a story with just the actors. I can see, particularly at the beginning some B&W grainy flashbacks working etc. But I wanted to experiment with the most basic tools here. I feel I still attempted to tell the story visually by choice of angle and composition, but again I wanted to intentionally limit myself to just the actors and their interaction for this go around.

Thanks for the feedback and going into detail on even something small. I really appreciate it. :beer:

I put this film in my top 3. Very good acting and style. The story was somewhat here and there with the reveal and all but I really enjoyed it.

Excellent Job. I thought the Acting was superior. The cinematography was great. Congrats.

Great short my friend! great acting, very believable, one of my top 3!

G.

i love this film. flawless. start to finish. Congrats.
-Matt

Thanks guys. I appreciate your comments!

Hey just saw the piece. Liked the dialogue. The acting was really, well, ditto on what the others said. They nailed it. Really great there. Camerawork, great (would've liked a little more face on the XCU, but personal taste, eh). This one felt cinematic to me. Kept me in. Felt complete in itself but also like a larger tale that should be turned in to for later stuff. Didn't buy the guy with the accent. His acting was good but his accent was not doing it for me. If that was his real accent, I'm sorry. Where is he from?

Heehee, yeah that is his real accent. He is from France.

The violence was hit and miss for me. The gun to the head near the end was great. The Gunshot to the head was great for me. The actually beating of the guy, maybe not so much. And ditto on what the guy said about not making it. Maybe have him shot a couple times. Also, I thought the movie would have helped if we didn't ever know what the Mcguffin was. Just let them talk about it, around it, have them understand each other. Explaining it was a little weak. Loved the rationale for why he was doing it, etc. Still, it's a pool table.

Well darn. I was going for irony with the pool table. The point is that it is something so simple and stupid, and things get so out of hand because of it. This is maybe the only thing I kind of disagree with in your comments. But if it didn't work for you, it didn't work for you. Sorry about that, especially since you seemed to have mostly dug it.

Loved it. Love to see more. Good work and good luck.

Thanks very much for your comments and taking the time to go into detail :beer:

Don't change a thing. Not a frame. More to come later ...

haha, well there are LOTS of frames and shots I would like to change.

Thanks Justin! Sid initially came up with more of the ambient stuff, and I tried more percussive stuff, but we both mangled each others' work as well ...

And then I really mangled it. Testament to these to that they are still talking to me ... I think ... :huh:

Probably a repeat of what's already been said. Great cinematrography and the acting was excellent. However... I thought the story was predictable as soon as the bookie showed up. I though the beating was unrealistic... I would have shot the smashing his head into the ground undercranked so it played faster. It just looked fake. I thought the gunshot at the end was over the top... especially for the amount of realism in the rest of the film. Aside from that I thought it was excellent!

Thanks flmmker. I either agree with all of your points or definitly see them as very viable alternatives. Thanks for giving me things to thing about as I lock the cut after contest.

Im going to try and be very picky here, as everyone already knows this is a great short. Really well executed. The type of short that really gets me excited to do more and more narrative.

One location? The script was very well written and coupled with the dynamic pacing and composition thats something I never even thought about while watching.

Audio was probably the best Ive heard yet.

That is soooooo good to hear. The post on the audio nearly killed us. It was ridiculous how hard it was. So thank you thank you thank you on behalf of me and Erik (texture) who did the initial sweetening pass and my co-producer / AD Marcus who recorded some last minute ADR for me.

Very well acted. Now this is where it gets serious - you cant have good acting without solid dialogue and direction - congratulations on getting it right.

Now to the picky part and this first one is very picky. Your light changed direction in some shots. I assume due to the sequence they were actually shot.

Second at 3.20 you start a small sequence of CU OTS shots, I thought the angle wasnt quite right. As in there was too much face cut off.

Thanks. Hopefully this reads as a very intentional choice than a mistake. It was the former. Could easily have framed more face in of course. Sorry if the framing pushed you out of the story here. It's different but I do like these shots a lot and we were pretty excited about them on set. I guess when you go extreme like this you do run the risk of alienating some people. So your comments are a good lesson for me to hear, and put in my bag of things to consider for the next one.

And lastly; someone already mentioned. Robbie didnt look quite bashed enough to be done for at the end.

The picky ones are just IMO so you can take it or leave it. For such a great short I wanted to try to be as constructive as possible.

And I really appreciate it. Having a blast here mostly because people like you are going into such detail to help me make this film or the next one better. Thanks :beer:

EXTREMELY COMPETENT FILMMAKING—WELL DONE!

I felt like I was watching a "movie." Best actors and performances I've seen yet. Great dialogue writing. Although I wish there was more action, and more than one location, it's still the most "movie-ish" of the bunch! This may be the only entry I've seen so far where I thought for a moment that your actors were not actors, but real people, spurting spontaneous, unscripted conversation. Also, well-shot, and some interesting over-the-shoulder compositions. Loved the shallow depth-of-focus as well. Mission accompished!

Thanks very much for sharing your detailed review Ralph :thumbsup:

I was impressed with the blocking and the cinematography going hand in hand. It was well thought out. Superb dialogue. Also, it's great when you can watch something and you look for emotions in the character and forget everything else.

Thanks dvpixl. My goal, though it is difficult to achieve is to have it be authentic enough, even if it is a movie about a troupe of dancing werewolves, that you forget you are watching a movie. Tough to do and I forget to check things against that measure sometimes - the head beating for example, but it is nice to know that you feel I achieved it on some level at least.

High stakes, really nice. Great performances from everyone. I like how we were thrown right into the middle of the story here. There were a lot of creative shots, and so many shots in general that it never seemed to drag. I thought you created sympathy for Rob in a very natural way that didn't seem forced which was great!

SPOILERS AHEAD:

My only beef was that I saw the wire twist coming as soon as the other character was introduced.

But great film! Very professional. I hope I can make stuff like this one day.

Thanks very much Alex. I appreciate people's comments on the twist. My focus was more on how the character would deal with the situation. In fact if you know the wrong guy is getting the crap beat out of him maybe that could add to it. But maybe I should have introduced in some explicit fashion the idea that it would be very unlikely SPOILER ALERT ... to be the Bookie, since Internal Affairs would not be likely to use a criminal in as a worm in an internal investigation. I guess I was working on the assumption that that would be a shared idea - Boy was I wrong, lol.

Glad you enjoyed it in spite of that, and I really appreciate you sharing the good and the bad with me. :thumbup:

Hey Everyone, thanks for all the feedback. Good fun. I just wanted to clear something up since there seems to be a little character confusion. Dane Rhodes played the older cop whose name is Robby and I (Blake Balu) played Ted the younger guy with the blood issue. It's kinda hard to catch my name, but Robby says it when he says "We're not bad cops Ted". It kinda slips by, I even had to watch it a couple of times to see where it was said. Thanks alot everyone, again.

Haha, also Robbie says "Hey Book, Teddy been meetin' with you without us there?"

It is funny because you as Teddy and Antony's character Rene, call Dane "Robbie" at least 10 times. I think maybe people are transferring the name to you because they know it is to be the name of a main character, and people probably sympathize most with your character. Also as a contest rule, Robbie is easy to remember.

But no biggie, I am glad that people are commenting, I just find the transference of the name interesting.

...

AGAIN, thanks so much for the feedback everyone.

Having a great time in SpyFest here. Keep 'em comin' of you got 'em :beer:

 

[Mark Harris]

the one thing that took me out of the story is when that Mexican guy says: "Radio TOWERS!!!" I mean, who talks like that? otherwise, it was all right. I told Jack he would love to see Dane in this, so hopefully he'll stop by soon.

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

haha "mexican guy" ... I think Mark is just busting your chops Taylor.

Full review later, still trying to watch all of these, but nice work man :thumbup:

Damn I miss New Orleans!

 

[Kholi]

Had some good looking shots, on the other hand it was long-winded.

Six minutes was too much time for this.

But again, great looking shots. The actor that discovered the real rat was a great asset to your production. Had a really great voice.

 

[jamesh]

I watched it with 3 other people and we were all speechless.

So professional, very well directed. The actors were all brilliant and totally believeable. The diaglogue was punchy and everything made sense. The story held me to the end. My favourite movie so far.

loved-it!

 

[deedive]

Great short one of the best. Great audio, I am taking lessons from u. Great exposure. Great acting except for the French guy. Sorry. Think he was a little weak. I love the bookies voice. One thing that I think, (could be bad or good) but it felt like a really good scene from a good movie.

 

[RebeccaD]

Wow, Taylor. Excellent job on this film. I felt like I was watching a short of the Sopranos. It was well acted and wonderfully shot. I loved the pool table idea. It was ironic and believable. I also think that someone could be bashed against the sidewalk that many times and not make it, so again, well done. I agree with Norm, don't change a single frame, man!! Keep it comin! I can't wait to see what you do next.

 

[Justin Kuhn]

Kept me engaged the whole way through. My Quicktime messed up though, becasue right at the end it just went to black, there was a line of dialogue and then the shot. Then I fixed the problem and realized I kind of liked it the other way. Awesome movie in any case.

 

[Christopher Barry]

Cinematography was excellent for a one location short, and nicely balanced footage, considering water elements and bright surrounding concrete surfaces. Cast performance and dialog was tight, really tight. Only criticism, I think Blake would have made it, and like HappyGobo said, if I interpret correctly, I would cut to black just as Blake raises his head, we then hear the gun shot, so we may then ponder if Blake or Antony got taken out. I know, everyone thinks they know how to do something better/different... Great energy in this one. Sound and music is awesome. Congrats Taylor and crew :beer:

 

[Mark Harris]

haha "mexican guy" ... I think Mark is just busting your chops Taylor.

Full review later, still trying to watch all of these, but nice work man :thumbup:

Damn I miss New Orleans!

It's true. I had PMed with Taylor some after his thread went up, so he knows i was messing with him. I've told him what I liked about it what I thought didn't quite work.

That line is actually one of my favorites. I thought the acting in this was quite good. For many films in this and in fests past, the acting seemed to be an afterthought. Taylor seems to have a really good eye for casting both the right actors and actors who can...act. And I don't know too much about his background, but I would think he's had some training himself, to get these kinds of performances under such conditions (fast shoot, homeland security, etc.)

The only thing I told Taylor I really had a problem with was the ending didn't completely make sense. I thought it was unlikely that Dane's character would not go STOP the French dude from beating the kid to a pulp. And that could have given an opportunity for an even bigger slice of drama in the end, say for example, with the French dude and Dane facing off over the kid. But this ending seemed a little too much like something the writer wanted to make happen, instead of what the characters would have naturally played out. Like Taylor was looking for a button for effect, rather than seeing it through and finding the real drama.

But it's superb work, and clearly some of the best in the fest. And Taylor clearly is a capable director, so I feel compelled not to let him off lightly.

 

[Chris Messineo]

I thought this film was excellent. One of my favorites. Wonderful performances, great pacing. It felt like a scene out of a real Hollywood movie. Very well done.

 

[tmnt]

Wow, everything was great about this. Directing was excellent and so were the actors.

What 35mm adaptor are you using? There was some bad grain on those static shots (I have a brevis with cinefuse 3 and it shows some grain too).

 

[spidey]

Looked good and acting was good. story wasnt there enough , but worked since it felt like a segment of a film. big effect scene needed lots of work. it wasn't shot well and it threw me off from the rest of the film. everything else it was like watching a movie from and larger film. good job.

work on action or curbing people... even if it happend off camera it could have been more effective or getting a dummy head with a wig to imulate hair would do the job with blood tubes....

other than that your dialouge is there just work on putting all of it more cohesive.

good job.

 

[TimurCivan]

haha "mexican guy" ... I think Mark is just busting your chops Taylor.

Full review later, still trying to watch all of these, but nice work man :thumbup:

Damn I miss New Orleans!

Yea jack im curious to know what you think of bryson's work.

 

[Kyle Stebbins]

what beautiful colors! sweet sweet sweet.
i agree with what's being said here about it feeling like it was taken from a larger movie. (namely... deja vu? funny because your lead was in it...). also reminded me of Man On Fire.

the ONLY qualm I have is the wire on 'the book' -- I think that it shouldnt have been taped so obviously to his shirt. that made me laugh out loud and that is NOT how you want your audience to react. Perhaps if the wire was underneath his shirt and was lifted when it was discovered?

either way. great job! one of better looking films of the bunch!
-kyle

 

[Mike Insane]

fantastic film... i can't say anything other than what has already been said. You have raised the bar.

 

[Beat Takeshi]

Well done short. The acting was on point, the camera was on point except for the static grain or dust on the lens. The outside colors were nicely controlled. I hated the guys voice who got shot, felt like he was a muppet and it took me out of the intense mood you set up with the other actors. The pacing and editing was great except for the part where he smashes the head I think. Something sped up for a sec but I'm guessing thats to hide the effects. Audio was on point also. Great job.

 

[Blake Balu]

Hehe, well just call me Kermitt