6" 45RPM EP by Matty_g and Mr. Vegas

Thanks so much! We really did luck out with our cast. We had VERY short notice and the selection choice was a no brainer.

Noel - you can hide a lot of focus issues at 720 x 360 :lipsrseal
But really, we shot this piece VERY loose and I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Mark - Sadly there aren't many pictures from the set. I'll double check my 2nd AC Sam Krueger's pics.
With going hand held the red grips were OK, but because of time issues I was pulling my own focus. I had one hand on the 19mm rods and one on the ff. After each take i'd pretty much dump the camera to Luis. Sam Took care of all the cards/lens swaps.
Any other questions just let me know.
 
even if this wasn't shot on a RED but with a decent 35 adapter goin on, it would've been one of my top picks.
 
i enjoyed this one. nice, light, playful. looked great, sound was good. acting was pretty solid. ***potential spoiler***

i do have to say i thought that the story didn't pay off like i thought it would. i was expecting some kind of twist, some really creative way that the store clerk would push the two together. i felt kind of let down that he just pushes him out and says 'go talk to her.' i don't have anything concrete to suggest as an alternative, but thought it was going to go one more step that it didn't.

still enjoyed it very much. it had a kind of 'it's always sunny in philadelphia' meets 'high fidelity' feel to it. well done!
 
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Hey man,

I loved this. The RED camera really is something. You going to post a high res version up?

The acting was great, and the music was great. Location, and sound was awesome as well!

The story really didn't do anything for me, though. That's the only negative response I got for ya. Everything else was superb!

Robbie
 
That was really cool, one of the top few I've seen so far. It had it's own distinct feel to it, which I liked. The music fit it so well I barely noticed it. Lighting, cutting, camera work, sound, all seamless.

Only thing that got me was the blatant continuity error at :56 with the headphones. Really too bad about that.
 
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Matt and Vegas, this film was a lot of fun for me. My favorite romantic comedy of all time is Hi Fidelity, so I was very curious to see what you guys would do with a similar setting. I think you all did well. This felt like a scene from a feature. The acting was really great. The guy with the headphones was especially great. The record store had nice, built in production design. The clothing and the colors that each character wore lent itself to the visual style also.

My only gripe is the ending. I HAD to know how the shy character finally got through to the girl and what special advice headphones guy gave to facillitate this. I was disappointed that these questions weren't answered. But you definitely had me care about the world and characters you established, so that says a lot.

Looking forward to more from you guys. I think I can honestly say this was a beautiful movie.
 
The continuity error with the headphones is because a whole little scene got cut out to make the piece more simple. I showed it to a small group of people and nobody caught it so I just ran with it. It actually took me quite some time to catch it.

We intentionally left it up to people's imaginations to wonder what he was told by store clerk and what he was telling the girl at the end.
 
6" 45RPM EP -- Zach and Matty haz musiks and hookupz for us -- Spoilerish

You already know what I think. You already know what I said. If I'm wrong I'll eat a shoe, f00. With that, here comes a public review... for all the "love birds", y'know?

Organic. This is the perfect term for this short. It is, in every way, organic. From the natural pace, to the acting, to line delivery (HALP!) to the damned image itself. This is an all A+ grade piece and I'm glad that you two put it together.

Dynamic performances really, seriously, completely stomp all over all other attempts. I can't believe you two found such great actors. Every single one of them nailed their character portrayal, lines and emote VERY well. Their delivery times out. Ugh. It's disgusting how well the acting is here. It's above and beyond and only rivaled (from the ones I've watched, I'm going down the list) by one other. Truly great.

And whoever wrote the dialog (I know h00), hats off t'ya. It works in this cut. There's no lingering on the unimportant. Each and every line moves the piece toward an ultimate end. Yum. If I had anything to say about the actual story/tale itself it would be the end where she stabs him with a kiss. It's very visual, I just am still not sure if it feels "tacked" on. It works in some ways, in others (if I think too hard about it) it's off. Either way, it doesn't HURT anything. A straight-forward no-twists-needed example of short writing. =( Why can't I do this?

And when can I take some camera operatin' classes from Matty_G? Handheld all the way AND pullin' your own focus. Too sick for television. It's so nice to see compositions that are not comprised of hyper-shallow backgrounds. Well used wides and tights, and pretty friggin' spot-on focus marks bein' hit. The racking wasn't gratuitous by any means, in my opinion. It all just worked.

And to that end, everything coalesced incredibly well. Take it beyond this, you guys.

Wish I could've driven south that weekend to help out!
 
I thought this was great. I especially loved the actors. The whole thing had a great vibe to it. The music was perfect

I wish there was a little more of a twist at the end/climax (but that is a small complaint).

I really enjoyed this a lot.
 
This was one of the better films in the fest. It had very good acting, the guy also in Mark's film was a find. The handheld worked well for the story.

any one that worked a few months in retail realizes how the unsupervised boredom can make these bets happen. The story didn't do too much, preferring a less is more approach. I thought it could of had a greater payoff at the end, but I haven't really thought about what it would be, without going over the top.

Overall really nice work. congrats.
 
I love this movie, great actors...they're natural. Great image quality, it's RED ONE of course but the main thing here is the content. The story is really great. Two thumbs up on this one.
 
Wonderful film. The acting was great, very natural and believable. The story was very original, and simple, but engaging, and funny. And the end didn't seem contrived or unbelievable, and it worked well, considering the time limit. It could have been rushed, but it really flowed naturally. I dug the music and photography too.
 
Great film guys and it had an almost warm fuzzy nostalgic air because of my love/hate relationship with those old retail days. Liked the cast and the whole presentation brought me into the location. Awesome.
 
great work matty g, one of the top films in the fest for me. i'd never seen any of your work before this and i am more than impressed. it's clear you had a major role in the look and design of 3 of the fest's sexiest films and i imagine i'm not the only one that has noticed this. i very much look forward to seeing your future work.

thanks and congratulations brother!
 
Dude this is very good. I mean really good. It's GREAT in fact. This is almost perfect on nearly every level... the pacing... the casting... THE ACTING... the story.

I think that momentum is everything in these fests... you get thread count early on and if the flick is good then the snowball is already rolling. I'm not saying that the top thread count flicks aren't great, because they ARE... but this is right up there with the best man. This is incredible... I could watch these guys every week.

OK... literally if I had to try to find ONE thing that I could criticize (watched it twice) is when the guy flicks on the other guy's headphones and proposes the bet... the headphone guy looks up and then the two cut comes in with him looking down again instead of still looking at the other guy... which many people wouldn't even think about anyway... I'm just saying... that is ALL I could criticize about it.

Even the sound was first rate... I mean FIRST rate. In at least one of the other films that I raved on... the sound is good at times and actually kind of bad at times... like dialog fading away from mic placement... but this one is spot on. ALL spot on. I love everybody in this... it's great... all simply great.

9.5 out of 10.

I hope to see this flick gaining some momentum soon... we have some great films in this fest, but man... this is 100% commercial right now. I guarantee that you will have this on the Sundance Channel or in a lot of festivals... and I'll further that by saying that I'll be surprised if somebody doesn't contact YOU before you have to shop this project around. It's very very good. Even the DOF control is nearly perfect... no wandering and no "interpretive" shots... simply virtually perfect DP on this.

Wow. Just wow.
 
Chris - thanks a lot man. One of the things I was really worried about was the music. We contacted quite a few bands to get festival rights to their songs and we were turned down a lot. Maybe it because I could only show them the rough cut and back then, it was rather rough. I asked a few local ska/reggae bands and they were MORE than helpful. The middle song I even got the lyrics taken off of. It was such a great experience. If you ever need anything like it contact these bands. They're listed on the 1st page.

bosindy - that is such a great description of the short. Next time you're out here let me know man.

Billy - I was really looking forward to your entry man. If you ever need a camera op a little closer to l.a. let me know.

Champloo - that is awesome. I've never worked retail, and i'm not sure about zach. Good to know that it rings true.

wartez - dude, i really liked winter lilacs. It's my favorite visually of all of the entries. The other entries I worked on are good friends of mine. They both had clear visions of what they wanted accomplished and I believe we made that happen. It's such a good feeling. I haven't really done a lot of my own work since I moved out to l.a. from kentucky a year and a half ago. I think I'm going to start doing more. What really helped was having such a great group of people to help out. All friends working for free to get this puppy done.

MattinSTL - This means a lot from you man. I always loved reading your posts about lighting and it has really taught me a lot.
The sound was one thing that totally surprised me. Originally we were going to shoot sgpro + hvx and i was just going to run the sound through there. We did it on mark and tims shoot and it worked just fine. Then we had our auditions at SABI and i heard some of the audio from I F*ucking Hate you which used the sound devices external mixer and a sennheiser 416. I was blown away and immediately went to get a similar package. My old friend Ben who I used to work with at stupidvideos.com was the boom op and he did a great job. Booming is not really his thing but he is such a well rounded man on production. Mike did a great job mixing too. I think they were both kind of pissed to be working on sound hehe.

The headphone again! haha. yeah, it's there. It doesn't bother me. I was more concerned about the guy in green's (adam lash) hand because that is where my attention in. Like I said, we cut out a good 30seconds-1min. of dialogue there to make the whole piece more steamline. I'll live with the headphones thing :)

dvpixl - my hvx+sgpro rig was the backup! But lighting this store to get a 2.8 at 100 asa would have taken a lot more lights, time, and cars to haul all the lights around in that we didn't have. It was my first time working with cine primes too and I don't ever want to go back to my nikons (i know i will but these were sooooo nice)
 
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Hi Matt. Regarding the Sennheiser 416. I thought conventional wisdom was "use a shotgun mic for outdoors and a hypercardioid for indoors". This is due to reflections and such. Have you found that the Sennheiser is a good all-purpose mic suitable for indoors, and found no need to get a hypercardioid mic?

Thanks for all the interesting info.
 
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