The Art Of Suicide - A Film By Matt Kieley

I didn't get into this one.

Too much talky talky. The Audio was bad. The camerawork blah. The black and white seemed forced.

I don't know; I tuned out instantly. Got bored as it it wore on.

I think much more could have been accomplished with this idea; but I wasn't laughing, I wasn't cringing. I just didn't feel it.
 
It felt as if there was too much narrative/voiceover for such a short film.

The audio sounded very roomy, and was distracting me a bit from the actual locations that were on-screen.

The cinemascope images (or as Ozu calls it, "a roll of toilet paper" :)) worked well for me, especially with the final driving shot, when the music dies out so nicely. The film might have been more effective with less music.
 
Good job! Like the widescreen B&W look - like Kurosawa's High and Low. Also reminiscent of Suture. Writing was very good - the suicide attempts could have been more dramatic. Nice little twist at the end, although it was pretty obvious. BTW the NFB of Canada made an animated short film a few years back about a depressed guy wanting to commit suicide. His attempts all fail and when he finally decides to embrace life he dies in an accident. Of course this was a comedy.
 
Some really cool shots in here. I love the b/w widescreen format, it's very expressive, for instance at the beginning 0:37, 1:33 and 2:48. The light music makes this short interesting, but what happened at the end? No music, ambient noise, nothing? It really kills the short. Still, I enjoyed it. Congratulations!
 
Maximus said:
Good job! Like the widescreen B&W look - like Kurosawa's High and Low. Also reminiscent of Suture. Writing was very good - the suicide attempts could have been more dramatic. Nice little twist at the end, although it was pretty obvious. BTW the NFB of Canada made an animated short film a few years back about a depressed guy wanting to commit suicide. His attempts all fail and when he finally decides to embrace life he dies in an accident. Of course this was a comedy.
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Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! I've never heard of that other short you're talking about. If it's on the internet, send me the link sometime.

gabrielflorit said:
Some really cool shots in here. I love the b/w widescreen format, it's very expressive, for instance at the beginning 0:37, 1:33 and 2:48. The light music makes this short interesting, but what happened at the end? No music, ambient noise, nothing? It really kills the short. Still, I enjoyed it. Congratulations!
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Thanks, man!

Yeah, I thought about the sound at the end and decided to keep it silent. The whole sound design is meant to be fairly dead, with very little sound (like faintly hearing him cough in the asphyxiation attempt, or the dripping water in the first attempt) so by the end it completely dies. As soon as the narrator references his death, the song ends, and after the voice-over ends, all of the sound is gone, and we sit quietly and linger on the last few seconds of him driving before going to credits. I thought if the sound went away, people would pay more attention to the last image.
 
Hey BillyPilgrim,

I felt the voiceover wasn't written very well and might have worked better without it or at least less of it such as if you kept all the stuff about his family and took out the narration about what he was doing. A narration about his family while the images are about him trying to kill himself seems like it would be a very interesting motif.

I liked the story and thought it was interesting and the scenes would be very cool if you showed them without narrating about them. The idea of someone trying to slit their wrists and chickening out or not doing it right and then bandaging themselves up if darkly humorous to me and it would have been great to show that without the aide of a narrator. The same goes for the pills and the car scene. Both you could have shown without VO.

I don't really like the choice of showing the film in Black and White. It seems unmotivated.

Again, I like the story and that's one of the hardest parts about making a film. You had good lighting and some good shots. Especially like the dolly while he is laying down. I like the progression of the story and the ending is pretty spooky where it's talking about him possibly causing the accident.

Laters,
Ando
 
I thought this was kind of like Wes Anderson meets does Harold and Maude or something - kind of a macbre hipster vibe.

I liked the black and white and the quirky tone of it.
 
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